Horace k. Mann

THE

LIVES OF THE POPES

IN

THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

VOLUME II

THE POPES

DURING THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE

A.D. 795-891

LEO III (795-816)

STEPHEN (IV) V (816-817)

PASCHAL I (817-824)

EUGENIUS II (824-827)

VALENTINE (827)

GREGORY IV (827-844)

ST. LEO IV (847-855)

BENEDICT III (855-858)

ST. NICHOLAS I THE GREAT (858-867)

HADRIAN II (867-872)

JOHN VIII (872-882)

MARINUS I (882-884)

HADRIAN III (884-885)

STEPHEN (V) VI (885-891)

LEO III

A.D. 795-816.

EMPERORS OF THE EAST.                           EMPERORS OF THE WEST.

Constantine VI (Porphyrogenitus), 780-797   Charlemagne (King of the Franks) 771-800.

Irene, 797-802. (Emperor), 800-814.

Nicephorus, 802-811.                                        Louis, the Pious or Debonnaire, 814-840.

Michael I, 811-813.

Leo V, 813-820.

THE period of the history of the papacy, co-extensive with the duration of the Carolingian Empire (795-891), opens under very different external conditions to those which its preceding period (590-795) commenced. During the latter epoch the popes were the nominal subjects at least of the emperors at Constantinople, whose representatives were installed in the crumbling palace on the Palatine. Their election had to be confirmed by them, and their lives and liberties were dependent on their whims. Italy, the center of the papal power, was divided between the rude Lombard and the grasping Byzantine.

But now all this was changed; no longer did the presence among them of a Byzantine duke remind the Romans that their lord and master was a Greek Basileus on the shores of the Bosphorus; no longer were the effigies of the descendants of Constantine received in Rome with the respectful submission due to their prototypes, and placed with honor in the chapel of S. Cesario in Palatio; and no longer did the coins of Rome, by their image and inscription, proclaim that it owed tribute to Caesar. The Byzantine power had vanished from the Eternal City, and, with the exception of Calabria and of a few isolated places (e,g. Naples, Hydruntum, etc.) in S. Italy, from the whole of the peninsula. Rome and Italy had now new masters. Leaving out of account the parts just mentioned and Venice, which was a practically independent state under the protection of Constantinople, the provinces of Italy were in the hands of the Pope and of the Frank. The former, now free in every sense of the word, was lord of Rome and its duchy (along with the southern portion of Tuscany to Populonium), of the old Exarchate of Ravenna, including the Pentapolis, and of the duchy of Perusia (Perugia), which connected these two nearly equal strips of territory. The donations of Pippin and Charlemagne gave him claims over various other portions of Italy; but the rest of the peninsula was, in fact, ruled by the Frankish, either in person or by the intermediary of subject Lombard dukes. In place, then, of being a subject insulted and oppressed by the domineering Greek and terrified by the savage Lombards he was an independent ruler honored and protected by the grateful Frank.

Rome, which already in the days of the first Gregory was falling to pieces, was now, phoenix-like, springing from its ashes into new life and splendor. During the prosperous reign of Leo, its “ever-increasing decay”, which St. Gregory had mourned and which had received a great check in the time of Hadrian, was still further arrested. The city was, in fact, furnished with a new lease of life.

What was true of Rome was true of the world at large both in the East and West. It seemed to Gregory I that “the world was fast sinking into the grave by its ever-multiplying maladies”. But now its demise seems far distant. In the West the genius and strong right arm of Charlemagne, combined with the industry and intelligence of his ministers, were evolving order out of chaos; and in the history of the long decay and successive dismemberment of the Eastern Empire, it would appear that at this epoch the effects of the revival in the eighth century are still being felt. At any rate, before the close of this century, which Pope Leo III was to inaugurate in so striking a manner, there will have been begun under the Macedonian dynasty a splendid period of expansion for the Byzantine Empire—the last, however, which its annals will have to record.

But though all this is true, and though, in the main, the epoch which is now to engage our attention was a glorious one for the papacy, it must not be supposed that it was entering a millennium. As in the life of man every age has its peculiar diseases, so in the existences of dynasties and states every period has its difficulties and dangers. The troubles of the papacy were henceforth, for a long period, to arise rather from within than from without. The great increase of temporal power and wealth which had just come into its hands had fired fresh ambitions. Powerful families arose in Rome whose members would fain, by fair means or foul, keep the papacy or, at least, its power and possessions in their own grasp. As long as the Frankish protectors of the See of Peter were strong, these evils were kept to some extent in check. But when they in their turn grew feeble, when the Carolingian empire went finally to pieces towards the close of the ninth century, the papacy fell upon evil times indeed. The savage attack upon Leo III by the relations of his predecessor, which we shall soon have to narrate, and the terrible death said to have been inflicted on John VIII, are indications of what will befall the popes when, if not the halcyon days, at any rate the comparatively bright times, of the ninth century shall have passed away.

On the very day that Hadrian was buried (December 26, of 795), Leo, the cardinal priest of S. Susanna and vestiarius (or vestararius), or chief of the pontifical treasury, one of the principal officials of the papal court, was elected to succeed him. That he was, moreover, unanimously elected was asserted by him in a letter to Charlemagne, and is also definitely affirmed by his biographer. As there was now no necessity for waiting for any imperial confirmation of the election, he was duly consecrated on the following day.

He who was thus by the suffrage of all raised to the See of Peter was a Roman and the son of Atyuppius and Elisabeth. At a very early age he had been attached to the treasury department of the Lateran, and had therein been brought up and trained. The barbaric name of his father, coupled with the fact that nothing is said in the Liber Pontificalis about his having any aristocratic connections, gives some color to the conjecture that he was of a more or less plebeian origin. An incidental notice of his biographer informs us that he was ordained priest in the Church of S. Susanna on the Quirinal, a church which, as Pope, he took care to enlarge and enrich, and of which it will have been noticed he was the titular priest at the time of his election to the papacy.

According to the Book of the Popes, he was chaste, eloquent, and of a persevering disposition; well versed, as a priest should be, in the Sacred Scriptures and in psalmody, and very fond of the society of the pious. A great almsgiver himself, he was wont, when visiting the sick, which he was in the habit of doing most regularly, to exhort them to redeem their souls by alms. Whatever was entrusted to him in this way, he used to distribute to the poor in secret, as well by night as by day. It was by conduct such as this that, whilst he was occupied with the care of the vestments, money, and plate in the papal vestiarium or treasury, he became the beloved of all. These were the arts which secured him a unanimous election to the chair of Peter.

After he became Pope, he showed himself a defender of the property of the Church and ever ready to face difficulties. Over merciful, slow to anger, quick to forgive, never returning evil for evil, nor even exacting full punishment when punishment was justly due, but on the contrary, gentle and tender-hearted, he strove to render their due to all—aye, and even more than their due. For we read that he greatly increased the pecuniary presents (presbiteria) which the popes were in the habit of making to the Roman clergy at Easter and other times.

Such is what one who knew him, who perchance worked by his side in the vestiarium, says of Leo III. It will be important to bear some of these traits of his character in mind, as it is most likely that they were the cause of much of the suffering which fell to his unfortunate lot. One of the weak points of government by ecclesiastics will generally be that, in the always difficult task of nicely adjusting mercy and justice, such rulers will be naturally too prone to mercy. And if, moreover, justice has to be meted out by an ecclesiastic who is by his own particular character already predisposed to be too forgiving, the result will not be conducive to strong government. So, in the absence of any ascertained cause for the violent behavior towards him of Paschal and his fellow-conspirators, it is far from unlikely that a certain amiable weakness in Leo’s character was to some extent, if not the cause, at least the occasion of it.

There is, however, no doubt that the fact, that some of the very phrases used by his biographer to put such a pleasing personality before us were copied from previous papal lives, causes a suspicion to arise that we are only gazing on an official portrait. The feeling is natural, but in the present case apparently not well-grounded. Other standards have come down to us by which we can judge him; and we find that he was not only honored and loved by his successors, and praised by subsequent papal biographers, but extolled by others outside the limits of the local Roman Church. Our own countryman, Alcuin, never wearied of sounding his praises. He knows that the heart of the Pope is all aglow with the fire of God’s love, and he would have him scatter from it broadcast blazing sparks “to enkindle the torches of the Churches of Christ”; and he does not think it right that the burning light of divine grace which Leo possesses should be hidden beneath his prudent breast as beneath a bushel. It must be set “on the candelabrum of the Apostolic See, that with glorious effulgence it may shine on all”. Prose does not suffice this “angel from Deira” to sound forth the virtues “of Christ’s most clear-toned trumpet”. In elegiac verse he proclaims him “ a pursuer of justice, a lover of true piety, bountiful to the poor”, and illustrious throughout the whole world for his merits. Should this seem to some undeniably glowing, but after all somewhat misty and vague, it must be noted that, if it is bright-colored indeed, it is so because it is the outpouring of one “whoever loved as far as in him lay the most blessed princes and pastors of the holy Roman See”. But the fact is that it is not really hazy, because it is founded on exact reports sent to him from his friends on the spot, of the religious and just life of his most clearly beloved Pope Leo. Alcuin’s testimony is all the more valuable because, realizing that it was for the Pope to illumine “the length and breadth of the Christian empire”, he did not hesitate to exhort him not to allow “the hardest of toils to terrify him nor any honied words of flattery to draw him off the path of truth”. Knowing, too, the dangers attending the holding of considerable temporal power, he begged him, with holy freedom, not to let “any greed of worldly ambition silence the trumpet of his most sacred throat”. And no doubt, in Charlemagne’s direct and indirect exhortations to Leo on his accession, of which we shall speak presently, we are listening to the voice of his chief counselor raised not in suspicion of the new Pope’s moral character, but in support of it.

Leo lost no time after his election in notifying it to Charlemagne. Along with the official notice of his election, he sent him letters, presents, the keys of the confession of St. Peter, and the standard of the city. He also begged him to send some authoritative person to receive the oaths of fidelity due to him, as Patricius, from the Roman people. All this was, of course, to induce him to continue his role as defender of the Roman Church. For it was not an uncommon practice for religious houses to present “banners to their defenders as symbols of armed advocacy”, and not as typifying that the recipients of them were the lords and masters of those who sent them. That Charlemagne inferred nothing more from the Pope’s presents is plain from his letter of instructions to Angilbert, who had to take to Rome the king’s acknowledgment of them. For it bears the superscription : “Charles, by the grace of God, king and defender of his Holy Church”.

Its contents, however, while they set the zeal of the Frankish monarch for the honor of God’s Church in a very favorable light, show that he knew how to exercise that pious freedom towards its earthly head which enabled St. Paul “to withstand St. Peter to the face”, and St. Bernard to send food for reflection to Eugenius III. The youthful Homer, as Angilbert was called in the literary circle of the court of Charlemagne, was instructed, whenever he had a suitable opportunity and the Pope was in a mood to listen to him, to urge upon the Apostolic lord, our father, the importance of his life being in every way spotless, the strict observance of the holy canons, and the obligation that lay upon him of governing the Holy Church of God well. The worthy abbot was to impress upon Leo how short would be the time he could hold the honor which now was his, but how endless would be the reward which would be his if he labored well whilst he held it. He was also to exhort the Pope to do all he could to suppress simony, which in many parts was doing so much harm in the Church. Finally, the missus was not to forget to speak to the Pope about the monastery which Charlemagne was anxious to build at St. Paul’s, and concerning which he had already treated with Pope Hadrian. The minutes conclude with a prayer that God will guide the heart of Leo, so that he may labor for the advantage of the Church, may be a good father to the king, and may obtain for him strength to do the will of God and to secure perpetual peace.

Angilbert was supplied not only with instructions as to the matters he was to lay before the Pope, but with a letter for him which was an answer to the one, now lost, which the king of the Franks had received from him. In its superscription “Defender of the Church of God” is replaced by “Patricius of the Romans”. Charlemagne begins by expressing his joy at learning from the Pope’s letter and from the decree of election (decretali chartula) that Leo has been unanimously elected, and has expressed his intention of being loyal to the king. After a touching allusion to Pope Hadrian, whom he mourns not as one dead, but whom he calls to mind as now living a better life with Christ, he rejoices that in Leo there will be one who will daily pray to St. Peter both for the whole Church and for the king and his people, and will adopt him as his son. The presents which he had prepared to send to Hadrian he is now sending to him. “We have instructed Angilbert as to everything which we would like for ourselves or is necessary for you, that you may by mutual conference, decide what will tend to the exaltation of the Holy Church of God, and to the strengthening of your honor and of our patriciate. For as I concluded a treaty with the most blessed predecessor of your holy paternity, so with your blessedness I wish to make an inviolable treaty of the same faith and love, so that I may obtain the apostolic benediction and the most holy See of the Roman Church may be ever defended by our devotion”. He then goes on himself to define his relations with the Church more exactly. “For it is our task to defend by arms from without the Holy Church of Christ from the ravages of the pagan and the infidel, and from within by the profession of the Catholic faith. It is yours, lifting your hands to God with Moses, to help our warlike endeavors with your prayers”. In conclusion, he entreats the Pope to let his light shine before men.

The presents of which Angilbert was the bearer were “a great part of the treasure which Eric, Duke of Friuli, had this same year (796) offered to Charlemagne, and which he had taken from the camp of the Avars, who were lords of Pannonia”. This great central camp, defended by a triple wall, and situated near the river Theiss, was the place to which the Avars, or Huns, had brought the fruit of their long series of successful raids, and was known as “the Ring”. The loss of it broke their power and put enormous wealth into the hands of Charlemagne, and thence into the hands of the Pope. This gift of the Frank king undoubtedly helped Leo to be as generous as he was to the churches of Rome.

Among the many letters of congratulation which Leo would have received on his accession, it is very interesting to find that one from our countryman Alcuin has survived the ravages of time. Begging Leo to accept his letter, he continues : “I have loved, as much as in me lay, the most blessed princes and pastors of the Holy Roman Church, desiring by their most holy intercession to be numbered among the sheep of Christ, which after His resurrection He entrusted to St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, to be fed ... Thou art, most holy father, the Pontiff elected by God, the Vicar of the Apostles, the heir of the fathers, the ruler (princeps) of the Church, the nourisher of the one immaculate dove ... The position in which you are, makes you honored by all, the nobility of your character praised by all, the devotion of your piety loved by all”.

Whether with the treasures of the Avars’ Ring or not, Leo executed a work some time before the year 800, which aptly expresses the relations between Charlemagne and himself which their first letters to each other put before us. The King is the armed defender or protector of the Pope, and as such receives from him a promise to adhere to the Frankish cause, as his predecessors had done. The religious and political relationship between them is admirably typified by the designs of the artists in mosaic employed by the Pontiff. For the iconoclastic persecution had driven many Greek artists into Italy, and rendered possible the renaissance of art, such as it was, which the popes of this period fostered.

To the east of the great pile of buildings, of which the Lateran Palace was even then composed, Leo erected a great hall, called from its superior size the Triclinium majus. This he decorated with mosaics. Although in a ruinous condition, it was still standing as late as the pontificate of Clement XII (1730-40). Its mosaics had already been restored by Cardinal Barberini in 1625, but, of course, perished with the ruined Triclinium itself under Clement. Benedict XI V., his successor, however, caused a copy of them to be made and placed under a tribune against the side of the oratory Sancta Sanctorum, to the north-east of the Lateran, where it may be seen to this day, with three inscriptions in which these facts are set forth at length. This he accomplished in 1743, from designs of it which had been drawn before its destruction. Looking at the apsidal construction of Benedict XIV, there are to be seen two groups of figures. The one on the left shows Our Lord giving the keys to Pope St. Silvester and a standard to the Emperor Constantine. A precisely similar group is depicted on the right. A seated figure with a round nimbus, which the inscription, Scs. Petrus, sufficiently indicates as that of the Prince of the Apostles, is presenting a pallium to Pope Leo, who is kneeling at his right, and is distinguished by the inscription, Sanctissimus Dominus Leo Papa. Another kneeling figure on the left of the saint is receiving from him into its right hand a standard. The letters Dn. Carolo Regi around its square nimbus show that the figure is that of the famous King of the Franks. Beneath the picture is a large tablet, on which, in the vulgar Latin of the period, is a prayer to St. Peter calling upon him to grant life to the Pope and victory to the King.

A year or two has to elapse before we hear of any further communication between the Pope and Charlemagne. But about the beginning of the year 798 the king gave his approval to the wishes of the Bavarian bishops for an archbishop. To attach Bavaria still more closely to his kingdom, he resolved to strengthen its ecclesiastical organization. For this purpose he decided to establish an archbishopric; and selecting Arno of Salzburg, the friend of Alcuin, to be its first occupant, sent him to Rome along with other missi to receive the pallium from the Pope. The Bavarian bishops, too, sent to make the same request at the same time. Finding that Arno was all that could be desired both in character and learning, he presented him with the pallium, and notified the bishops and the kings that he had done as desired by them. In the opening sentence of his letter to Charlemagne he unfolds the reason of his complying with his request. “Inasmuch as through your laborious and royal efforts the holy catholic and apostolic Roman Church, enriched with all good things, is this day in glory, it is only proper that we should in every way comply with your reasonable wishes”. It would appear that it was not long before the bishops regretted that they had applied for a master, and that they endeavored, as far as possible, to withdraw themselves from subjection to him. Accordingly, when Arno again had occasion to go to Rome, he induced the Pope to write them a letter exhorting them to obey their new metropolitan, and not to try to weaken the bonds which united them to him by flying in their canonical differences to the secular courts. He begged them to receive with joy, as their predecessors had done, the decisions of the Apostolic See. “For as the Roman Church has received authority from the decrees of the Holy Fathers, that, where Christianity has spread, the vicar of Blessed Peter should have the power of constituting an archbishop, so have we acted in your case. This holy See has had the doing of this in view for a considerable period, but up till our time it has been prevented by various causes from putting its wishes into effect”. Now that a metropolitan has been given them, he exhorts them to accept the position and to act in harmony with their new archbishop.

Both the Pope and Charlemagne were the more anxious for the upholding of Arno’s authority because to him had been entrusted the conversion of the Avars. Their power had been broken by the Franks in various campaigns from the year 791 to 795. As well to civilize them as to incorporate them the more readily with his kingdom, Charlemagne, in accordance with his usual policy, endeavored to make Christians of them as quickly as possible. Therefore no sooner had Arno been made archbishop, and had rendered to him an account of his embassy, than he sent him into the country of the conquered Avars—a country embracing the ancient Noricum and Pannonia, and, as it included the territory between the Danube, the Drave, and the Carpathian Mountains, most of the present Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In his successful work among the Avars, Arno was much encouraged by Alcuin, ever anxious to hear of its conversion. It is through the correspondence of these two great friends that we first hear the mutterings of the storm that was to break over the head of the devoted Pope in the early part of the following year. In one letter after another, Alcuin seeks for information about the designs of the Romans, or about the schemes of the Roman nobility. At length, writing to his friend towards the close of 798, he lets us see more plainly to what exactly he is referring: “You wrote to me about the religious life and virtue of our Apostolic Lord, and what troubles he has to endure at the hands of certain sons of discord. For my own part I confess I am rejoiced that, with a pious and faithful mind, without guile, the father of the churches strives to serve God. Nor is it wonderful that justice should suffer persecution in him at the hands of the wicked, when in Christ, Our Lord, Our Head, the Fount of all goodness and justice, it was persecuted unto death”.

And it was nearly persecuted unto death in the person of Pope Leo. The tragic incident we are about to relate Leo, had its origin purely in the personal ambition of a section of the nobility, and was not in the least degree prompted by any abstract objections on the part of the Romans to the Pope’s having temporal dominion. This is obvious from the fact that its chief agents sprang from the very bosom of the Roman Church itself, and were relations of the late Pope Hadrian.

The principal conspirator, Paschal, was also the principal official of the papal administration. He was a nephew of Hadrian, and under Pope Leo at least was primicerius of the Holy See. His lieutenant was Campulus, who from a notary had seemingly been made saccellarius (paymaster) by Leo. Allied with them were probably other members of the military aristocracy which the increased temporal power of the Holy See had augmented both in numbers and influence, if it had not actually brought into being. All that is known for certain regarding the motives which brought about the conspiracy against the Pope is contained in the statement of some of the chronicles, to the effect that, “The Romans (i.e. Paschal and his party) condemned or attacked the Pope through envy”. But whether the jealousy arose from the fact that Leo was not a member of the aristocracy, and consequently bestowed his favors elsewhere, or because he favored a section of the nobility to which the relations of the late Pope did not belong, cannot be stated with certainty. Moreover, in this and similar cases it is always well to bear in mind the well-founded satirical remark of that gossiping “stammering and toothless” old biographer of Charlemagne, the monk of St. Gall. “It is”, he says, “a matter of solemn custom with the Romans to be uniformly inimical to every distinguished Pontiff”.

In accordance with ancient traditions, a notary of the Roman Church had proclaimed, on the feast of St. George (April 23) and in his Church “in Velabro”, that the procession of the Greater Litany (the Litany of the Saints) would take place, as it does today, on the feast of St. Mark (April 25). This Christian custom took the place of the old pagan festival of the Robigalia or of the goddess Rubigo, and was instituted for the same purpose, viz., to ask for the divine protection on the fruits of the earth then springing into being. There was a procession connected with both the pagan and the Christian rites, and in both cases it left the city by the Flaminian Gate (Porta del Popolo). But the Christian one, which started from the old Church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, after making stations at the Church of St. Valentine, outside the walls, and at the Ponte Molle, turned to the left to St. Peter’s, the Church of the station where Mass was celebrated.

When on the morning of the twenty-fifth, the Pope left the Lateran palace to join the people who were awaiting him at the Church of S. Lorenzo, he was met, of course, by the arch-conspirators Paschal and Campulus. Neither of them was wearing the prescribed dark planeta, an ecclesiastical vestment from which our chasuble is the very much curtailed descendant, and which, from its cumbersomeness, was not a suitable garment for men about to engage in deeds of violence. Paschal hypocritically excused himself for not having his planeta by pleading ill-health; Campulus tendered a similar plea. And, “with sweet words in their mouths which they had not in their hearts”, they took their places by the Pontiff’s side.

The procession, which had been duly formed in the Church of S. Lorenzo, and which, headed by the poor from the hospitals carrying a painted wooden cross, and by those who bore the seven stationary crosses, was to move up the Corso, had scarcely started, when there rushed forth from their place of concealment by the monastery of SS. Stephen and Silvester, a band of armed ruffians. They at once made a dash for the Pope. His attendants, unarmed and helpless, fled in all directions. Leo himself, however, was seized, dashed to the ground and stripped; and whilst Paschal stood at his head and Campulus at his feet, a hasty attempt was made to deprive their victim of his eyes and tongue.

Thinking their deed of blood was accomplished, the assassins withdrew, leaving the unfortunate Pontiff lying bleeding in the street. But finding no immediate attempt was being made to rescue him, they returned, dragged him into the Church of St. Silvester, again gashed his face (eyes and tongue), covered him with blows, and left him half dead, bedewed with his own blood, before the very altar. They confined him at first in the adjoining monastery; but fearing that, if left there, his whereabouts would soon be discovered, as it would be naturally suspected that he had been taken there, they forced the abbot (eguminus) of the Greek monastery of St. Erasmus on the Coelian to receive him. Thither they took him by night, and kept him under the strictest surveillance.

“But God Almighty Himself ... wonderfully brought to naught their wicked attempt”. Whilst still in the monastery on the Coelian, “by the Will of God and the intercession of Blessed Peter, the Key-bearer of the Kingdom of Heaven, he recovered his sight and received back the use of his tongue”. Moreover, by the connivance of friends within the monastery, he was let down at night by a rope into the arms of the chamberlain Albinus and other god-fearing men. Escorted to St. Peter’s, he was received by the people with every demonstration of joy, whilst his enemies, quarrelling with each other, or else in despair, were only saved from killing each other by being led to sack the house of Albinus. Leo had been taken to St. Peter’s, and not back to the Lateran, because it happened that, at that time, there were in residence there two missi of Charlemagne, viz., Wirund, abbot of Stablo, and Winichis, Duke of Spoleto, and conqueror of the Greeks (788). As the latter had no great force with him, he did not think it wise to remain in the city, but at once escorted his illustrious but unfortunate charge to his ducal city (Spoleto).

Thither from all the cities “of the Romans” flocked the chief clergy and laity to offer their sympathy to the Pope. With some of these in his train, Leo set out for the north to seek the protection of Charlemagne. The author of the Carmen de Carolo Magna, whether Angilbert (d. 814), or whoever else was its composer, poetically represents the Pope as begging the legates, “by Charles’ dear health”, to defend him, driven from his own territories, and to bring him before the face of their king; and the legates as answering, “Apostolic Pastor, priest, revered throughout the world, it is for you to order whatever you desire; for us, 0 best of fathers, to obey your behests”. The same writer tells us of the crowds that came to look upon the Pope as he went north, eager to offer him presents, to kiss his feet, and, as the poet quaintly puts it, to gaze in astonishment at new eyes in an old head, and to hear a tongue that had been torn out speak.

News of the attack on the Pope was, of course, soon conveyed to Charlemagne, and by him to his adviser, Alcuin. He at once wrote to the king (May 799), and pointed out: “On you alone the whole safety of the churches of Christ rests ... They (the Romans), blinded in their own hearts, have blinded their own head”. In conclusion he begged him to make peace with the Saxons, against whom he was then leading his army, as the more weighty affairs at Rome needed his full attention. “For it is better that the feet (of the Church) should suffer rather than the head”. Another letter (about July loth) exhorts the king to take suitable steps to receive the Pope.

In this matter Charlemagne was not wanting. He first sent forward to meet him Hildebald, archbishop of Cologne, and Count Aschericus; and then his son, King Pippin, and more of his nobles. He was at this time staying at Paderborn. Thither went the Pope, and there, “as the Vicar of St. Peter”, the king received him with the greatest honor and affection. With Charlemagne the Pope stayed some weeks. During that interval his enemies were not idle. Their “public spirit” they displayed by plundering and destroying the papal property, and their enmity to the Pope by maliciously accusing him to Charlemagne of all kinds of crimes. But neither were Leo’s friends inactive. Alcuin, though detained at Tours by ill-health, earnestly exerted himself in the interests of the Pope, and wrote (August 799) both to Charlemagne and to his friend Arno of Salzburg. The king was advised to consider carefully how to treat the Romans and how to take measures that Leo, “freed by divine providence from the hands of his enemies, might be able in security to serve Christ, Our Lord, in his See”. To Arno he wrote : “I understand that there are many rivals of our lord the Pope, who are seeking to depose him by subtle suggestions, and to lay to his charge crimes of adultery or perjury, and who maintain that he should clear himself of these charges on oath. They are thus working in secret that he may lay down the pontificate without taking the oath and pass his life in some monastery. This must not be done at all; nor must he consent to bind himself by an oath, nor lose his See ... What bishop throughout the Church of Christ would be secure, if he, who is the head of Christ’s churches, be cast down by the wicked?”. Arno must do his best for the Pope’s safety and authority, and remember that it is laid down in the canons that the Apostolic See was to judge and not be judged. To Alcuin’s regret, however, the Pope seems even at this time to have made some solemn denial of the misdeeds alleged against him.

Whilst Leo was with Charlemagne at Paderborn, he consecrated the altar of the church there, placing therein relics of St. Stephen, the protomartyr, which he had brought from Rome, and received the clergy of all ranks, who flocked to him from every side. With the approval of his nobles, cleric as well as lay, the Frankish monarch caused him to return to Rome with a great company of his bishops and counts. Received in each city through which he passed “like the apostle himself”, he was welcomed at the Ponte Molle (November 29) by the Romans of every rank, by the clergy and by the nobility, by the senate and by the military, by the nuns and by the deaconesses—in a word, by all the Romans, carrying, as usual, the ensigns and banners of their various quarters. Equally demonstrative in their reception of the Pope, who had, as all believed, received back from Heaven his sight and speech, were the four great Schola (colonies or guilds) of foreigners, whose quarters were around St. Peter’s, viz., the Franks, Frisians, English and Lombards, and no doubt too the Greeks, from their quarter on the Aventine and the slopes of the Palatine. With canticles of triumph Leo was escorted to St. Peter’s, where he said Mass and gave to all present “the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ”.

Next day he once again took up his residence at the Lateran. At the same palace were also lodged Arno of Salzburg and the other envoys of Charlemagne; and there, in Leo’s new Triclinium, they examined the Pope’s enemies for more than a week. Fierce and bitter they proved to be. They tried both violence and calumny. Plots were hatched against the king’s envoys and the wildest charges made against the Pope’s character. But to no purpose. The Frankish power was too strong, their sense of justice too keen. Accordingly, finding that his accusers had no case, the envoys caused them to be seized, powerful though they were, and sent to France.

Next year Charlemagne held, in August, a placitum or one of his great assemblies of his nobles, at Mayence, and, “finding that there was peace throughout his dominions, he bethought him of the injury which the Romans had inflicted upon Pope Leo”, and set out for Rome. He availed himself of this first opportunity, for Alcuin had impressed upon him that “Rome, which has been touched by the discord of brethren, still keeps the poison which has been instilled into her veins, and thus compels your venerable Dignity to hasten from your sweet abodes in Germany in order to repress the fury of this pestilence”.

At Nomentum (Mentana), some fifteen miles from Rome, on the Nomentan Way, he was met by the Pope, who, after supping with him, returned to the city. The next day, after the usual solemn reception, Leo introduced him into St. Peter’s. Seven days later the king convened an assembly in St. Peter’s of the chief clergy and nobility both of the Franks and Romans. After Charlemagne and the Pope had taken their seats together the principal clergy also sat down, whilst all the rest of the clergy and the nobility remained standing. The king then explained that the principal reason which had brought him to Rome was that the charges brought against the Pope might be looked into, and that the present assembly had been summoned that it might examine the accusations. If the examination of the charges meant examination of the Pope, the assembled prelates made it very plain that they were not going to be partners in anything of that kind. “We dare not judge the Apostolic See, which is the head of all God’s churches. For by it and by His Vicar are we all judged. But as ancient custom dictates, the Apostolic See is not judged by any one. And in accordance with the canons, what the chief bishop decrees we obey”. The Pope, however, declared that, following the example of his predecessors, he was ready to clear himself of the charges leveled against him. The examination of his accusers was proceeded with. But not one of them was able to prove a point against him, or perhaps, it should be said, was even willing to make an attempt so to do. For the words of the Frankish chroniclers on this point are somewhat ambiguous. However, it was generally agreed that they had accused the Pope not for the sake of justice but through envy. Thus ended all that there was of a trial strictly so-called. “Then”, say the annals of Lorsch, “it seemed good to the most pious prince Charles himself, to all the bishops and the assembled fathers, that if he himself (Leo) chose, and himself asked, but not by their judgment, but quite of his own free will, he might purge himself. Accordingly on another day (December 23), in the same place, viz., St Peter’s, the Pope, with the book of the Gospels in his hand, ascended the pulpit, and before the assembled Franks and Romans declared “on oath in a loud tone”, that of his own free will, and not judged by any man, and without any intention of forming a precedent, but more certainly to free men’s minds from any unjust suspicion, he wished to clear himself on oath. Hence he solemnly averred that he had never done, nor commanded to be done, the wicked deeds of which he had been charged. Thereupon, all present burst forth into the Te Deum, and thanked God that they had the happiness of having the Pope preserved for them “sound both in body and soul”.

After Christmas, Paschal and the other conspirators, bitterly upbraiding one another in their hour of need, were condemned to death in accordance with the Roman law as guilty of high treason. However, despite the treatment he had received at their hands, Leo, in keeping with the character assigned to him by his biographer, actuated by his merciful disposition, begged that life and limb might be spared them. His request was granted, and the prisoners were sent into exile in France.

From some of the quotations adduced in the above narrative, it will perhaps have been observed that there was current at the time a belief in the minds of many, that Pope Leo had been actually deprived of his eyes, or at least of his sight, and of his tongue, and that they had been miraculously restored to him. A careful examination of the best authorities, however, seems to show that if the Pope’s sight was miraculously restored, his eyes at any rate had not been actually put out. Turning to the contemporary author in the Book of the Popes, we find that after saying that an attempt was made to put out the eyes of the Pope, he says a little further on that they were plucked out a second time. As it has been already noted this must mean, that a second attempt was made to put out his eyes. That his enemies got no further than making the attempt is the statement of the best contemporary chroniclers. Hence Theophanes’s version of this matter may be the correct one. Though he lived at such a distance from Rome, and is in general not well acquainted with the affairs of the West, still he was in the strictest sense a contemporary, and, by the time that the story had reached him, it may have had time, so to speak, to cool down to its original dimensions. He says that after the first attempt on the Pope’s eyes, the men who had been commissioned to completely deprive him of the use of them were touched with pity, and did not quite destroy his sight. In any case there cannot be a doubt that the unfortunate Pontiff was dreadfully mangled about the face, and it is only natural to suppose that, under the circumstances, the report would be bruited about that he had actually been blinded. And, if the account of Theophanes is true, it would be the very report that the men who had spared him would have spread abroad to screen themselves from the vengeance of Paschal. And so the first news that reached Charlemagne, and which he communicated to Alcuin, would seem to have been that the Pope had lost his eyes. For in his reply to Charlemagne’s communication, Alcuin speaks of the Romans who, blinded in their hearts, “had blinded their own head”. But writing a few months later (August), he seems to thank God that the Pope’s eyes were miraculously prevented from being torn out —which is probably the true view to take of the case—and that his wounds had healed so quickly. Speaking of what Charlemagne had told him of the “wonderful recovery” of the Pope (and that the recovery was, at least, marvelously quick cannot be doubted), he thinks that every Christian should thank God for restraining the hands of the wicked men from carrying into effect their design of blinding their head. Finally, according to a passage quoted above, it would appear that even Leo himself stated publicly that his enemies did not get further than trying to mutilate him. However one may view the evidence here adduced, most apt is the reflection of another contemporary of the Pope, Theodulfus, Bishop of Orleans : “If the Pope’s eyes and tongue were restored to him, it is a miracle. It is equally a miracle that his enemies were unable to deprive him of them. I know not whether I must marvel more at the former or the latter”.

Two days after the Pope had taken in St. Peter’s the oath by which he proclaimed his innocence of the charges made against his character, there took place, in the same basilica, an event noticed by all the historians of the time, an event which, apart from the great facts of divine revelation, has exercised more influence on the history of Europe than perhaps any other—especially if the comparatively unostentatious character of its performance be taken into consideration. The event in question, the crowning of Charlemagne by Leo as Emperor of the West, was the occasion of much fierce controversy in the later Middle Ages, when the harmonious working of the Empire and the Church came to an end; and it has been the occasion of modern historians unfolding endless theories. These controversies and theories can scarcely be said to have greatly enlightened the subject. For it was a question sufficiently understood and explained by the contemporary authors who relate it. To them we will turn in the first instance.

On the Christmas Day of the year 800, Charlemagne, clad proceeds to not in his ordinary Frankish dress, viz., in his short tunic with its silver border, his vest of sable, his blue cloak and sword, and his hose bound round with thongs, but in the long tunic, chlamys or green mantle, sandals and gold circlet of the Roman Patricius, went with his nobles to hear the Pope’s Mass in St. Peter’s. He would have made his way to this venerable basilica, then already nearly five hundred years old, by the magnificent colonnade which led up to it from the bridge of S. Angelo. A fine flight of thirty-five steps brought him to the atrium or paradise, a sort of courtyard with arcades running all round it and with two fountains in its midst. Gazing on the tombs of the popes on his left, he entered the Church by the great central doors the Porta Argentea. The building he entered was, of course, not the present glorious structure of Bramante, but the basilica which had been erected by Pope Sylvester (c. 323) on the site of the oratory built by Pope Anacletus (first century) in the gardens of Nero, at the foot of the Vatican hill, where the first Christians had been martyred in Rome, and where the body of the Prince of the Apostles had been finally laid to rest. Though not to be compared in size with the present church, which in turn stands on the site of Sylvester’s, the old basilica was a large edifice, over three hundred feet long and some two hundred broad, with its nave and aisles separated by four rows of twenty-four marble or granite columns of varying lengths, taken from old Pagan temples. When the spacious atrium which is now being erected in front of St. Paul’s Without-the-Walls is completed, the traveller will gaze on a veritable counterpart of old St. Peter’s.

As Charlemagne and his suite passed up the broad nave in stately procession, and as they crossed the great disc of red porphyry, on which his successors were to be crowned, there must have been some who, gazing on inscriptions bearing the names of the emperors Trajan and Galienus, were reflecting on the unexpected successor they were soon to have.

Approached on each side by two flights of seven porphyry steps, stood the high altar in the center of the chord of the apse. In front of it was a sort of vestibule flanked by twelve twisted columns of white marble, on which rested Gregory III’s beams covered with embossed plates of silver supporting silver candelabra, and paved by Hadrian I with pure silver. Through the silver gates affording admittance to the choir, which was enclosed by walls of marble and decorated with images of silver, and which was lit by the enormous candelabrum of Hadrian I with its 1365 candles, walked the stalwart king of the Franks. Crossing its vestibule, he found himself in front of the confession of the Prince of the Apostles and below the high altar. There by the golden railings before the confession he knelt in prayer, and the Mass began.

After the singing of the Gospel, Leo arose from his seat in the center of the apse, and placed “a most precious crown” upon the head of the Frankish monarch. At once from bishop and noble, from Frank and Roman, burst forth the acclamation, “To Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God, to our great and pacific emperor, life and victory!”. Thrice did the great basilica’s lofty roof ring with the glad shout, and thrice did its mighty beams vibrate to it. Then did the schola cantorum intone the litanies. God and His Saints were implored to give all prosperity to the Pope, the emperor and all the Franks. After the chanting of these laudes, Charlemagne was duly “adored” as emperor “after the manner of the ancient princes” by the Pope and all the nobility. On the completion of the ceremony of adoration “the most holy Pontiff anointed with holy oil his most excellent son Charles as king”.

After the Mass was over “the most serene lord emperor”, and his “most excellent royal sons and daughters”, offered a number of magnificent presents, silver tables, golden crowns and chalices to the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul, and of the Lateran and St. Mary Major. To the last-named the emperor presented a cross adorned with gems, which, at his particular request, the Pope ordained should be used in the processions of the greater litanies.

Thus, quietly, was accomplished an event which was to give a special color to the history of Europe for centuries and was to be fraught with the greatest consequences both for good and for evil.

Concerning this most momentous act many questions have been asked, and to each question many and widely differing solutions have been offered. It will here be utterly impossible to propound all these queries, and still more impossible to notice all the answers which have been suggested to them. Of the former we shall note only the more pertinent, and of the latter only bring forward such as seem most in harmony with the plain meaning and spirit of the best contemporary authorities.

As, of course, a great historical event cannot be thought of as a deus ex machina, but must be considered as the natural outcome of preceding causes, as fast welded with other links of the great chain of human events, the first inquiry regarding the revival of empire in the West which would seem to suggest itself is one into the reasons which induced men to contemplate that revival. Why did they think of bringing back the seat of empire to Rome?

In the year 476, the imperial insignia had been sent from the West to the emperor Zeno, with an intimation that one emperor would suffice for both the East and the West. Now, in the year 800, we find the same West demanding that an emperor should once again hold sway in its midst. Those who had with ill-disguised contempt sent to the emperor at Constantinople the crown and purple robe of Augustulus were the conquering Teutons. But the descendants of those who had lived under the Empire of Trajan, of Constantine, and of Theodosius the Great, of those who had known the Pax Romana, looked on with shame and apprehension. And they hoped that the day would not be long in coming when the Teuton hordes which oppressed them with their cruel swords, and with their barbarous laws, would once again be made to respect the might of the imperial arms and obey the right of the imperial laws. This was especially true of the Churchmen, who never lost sight of the sublime idea of One Church and One State, such as it had been developed by Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea under the first Christian emperor. “Formerly”, he wrote, “the world with its diverse peoples and localities was divided into a countless number of different kinds of governments. Hence endless wars and dire plunderings and ravages which are their consequences. This division was intensified by the different gods which each section adored. But today that the cross, the instrument of salvation and the trophy of victory, has been shown to the world, and has been opposed to the demons, straightway their work, i.e. that of the false gods, is dissipated like a breath; dominations, principalities, tyrannies, republics have had their day. One God is preached to all men, and a single empire is ready to receive and contain them all, to wit, the Roman Empire. Thus at the same time, by God’s holy will, two seeds have sprouted and have shot forth from the earth mighty trees which have covered the world with their shade—the Empire of Rome and the faith of Christ; and these are destined to unite the whole human race in the bonds of an eternal concord”.

These glorious yearnings never faded from the hearts of the vanquished, even after they had realized that Constantinople could not fulfill them. Moreover, by the year 800, the case had altered even for the conquering Teutons themselves. By that date, at length comparatively civilized, they were themselves in turn in dread of the surrounding barbarians. Those in the North had already heard disquieting stories of the long-ships of the terrible Danes and Norsemen which were soon to work such dread havoc. Those in the South had already felt the keen edge of the Moslem scimitar; the fame of the power of the great Caliph Haroun-el-Raschid was in the mouths of all. The world, then, must have an emperor “to make head against the nations which were surging up all round it”, or, as a contemporary author expresses it, “lest the pagans should revile the Christians if the name of emperor should die out among them”.

Now, too, that the Teutons had become Catholics like those whom they had conquered, they felt with them that the true faith and its head stood in need of an emperor who would really be its defender. They had seen that the emperors at Constantinople affected to be as autocratic in matters of faith as of civil government, and they had seen the head of the Church treated by his servile officials as an outcast. The simmering religious disunion between the real rulers of the West and the emperor at Constantinople, rendered acute by the iconoclastic controversy, deepened their political disunion, and gave strength to the idea that the seat of empire should once again be in the West, or that it, at any rate, should impose the emperor on the world.

An attempt had already been made under Gregory II to transfer this idea into the domain of fact. “Understanding the impiety of the emperor, the whole of Italy resolved to elect an emperor itself and to conduct him to Constantinople”. It was only the address of the Pope that stopped the execution of this decision. But, in the year 800, it was argued that, as the emperors by the Bosphorus had not become more satisfactory, the time had now come to choose one from the West. The empire on the one hand was practically vacant, for it was out of the question that a woman could be allowed to rule it; and, on the other, the proper person to govern it was ready in the person of the ruler of the West. Charlemagne was the undoubted lord of most of the old seats of empire. It was right that he who had the power of the emperor should have the name. Whatever may have been the Pope’s personal views on these contentions before the outbreak of Paschal, the awful peril through which he had then passed made him quite ready after it to subscribe to a scheme which would mean for him more protection even if less liberty.

Hence, if he was not himself the source whence first sprang the idea of the imperial consecration of Charlemagne, he soon heartily embraced it. To state precisely whence it originated may be impossible; but it would seem that the attempts which have been made to trace it beyond the Pope himself are not very successful. Because, impressed by the power of Charlemagne, the poets of the court have employed the loftiest language when singing his praises, and because Alcuin often before the Christmas Day of 800 calls his kingdom a “Christian empire”, it has been surmised that projects to have him proclaimed emperor were matters of common discussion among his entourage. But, when all legitimate deductions have been drawn from high-flown epithets of poets and from obscure remarks in the generally one-sided correspondence of Alcuin, it can only be said that it is possible that the elevation of Charlemagne was planned by his own advisers. The probability remains that even in such preliminary negotiations as must have taken place—and it would seem that they were of very limited extent—the greatest share was taken by him whose name is directly connected with the imperial coronation by our authorities in every variety of phrase. The unanimity of the proceedings in St. Peter’s is enough to show that Leo must have previously conferred with the chief men of the Franks and Romans, and must have secured their adhesion to what he was about to do. But it would seem that the great act under discussion was rather the result of the enthusiastic adoption of a suddenly conceived idea, at once both opportune and splendid, than the consummation of an elaborately prepared plan. “The act is conceived of as directly ordered by the Divine Providence, which has brought about a state of things that admits of but one issue, an issue which king, priest, and people have only to obey”.

If it can scarcely be doubted that Charlemagne had at least a vague knowledge that there was a movement of some sort on foot to choose him as the successor of the deposed Constantine VI, it is quite certain that he did not contemplate its coming to a head, nor himself entertain the idea of ever assuming the title of emperor. For this there is the irrefragable testimony of Eginhard. “At this time”, writes the secretary, “he received the name of Emperor and Augustus. To this he was at first so averse that he declared that, if he could have foreseen the Pope’s intention, he would never have entered the church on that day, though it was one of the chiefest festivals of the year”. The principal reason for this reluctance on the part of Charlemagne to accept the imperial crown is unfolded for us by the same authority which tells us of this unwillingness. For Eginhard goes on to say : “When he had received the imperial title, he bore with great patience the ill-will displayed towards him by the Roman emperors, who were indignant at what had been done. However, he overcame their irritation by his magnanimity, by which beyond all doubt he was immeasurably their superior, sending them frequent embassies, and, in his letters, calling them brothers”. The first attempt he made to allay the vexation which his imperial coronation caused at Constantinople was to apply for the hand, blood-stained though it was, of the Empress Irene. To Constantinople there came “apocrisiarii from Charles and Leo with a request that she might be joined to Charles in wedlock, and that the East and West might be made one”. The intrigues of the eunuch Aetius and the subsequent illness and deposition of Irene prevented the accomplishment of a scheme which might have been followed by the happiest of results in the domains both of politics and religion. Charlemagne, however, continued his negotiations with her successors, Nicephorus and Michael II, and was at length, after a display of force, recognized by the latter as emperor and basileus (812). The empire, in theory one and indivisible, was divided between two independent emperors.

Arguing from the fact that Charlemagne caused his son, Louis the Pious, to crown himself emperor, or perhaps rather crowned him himself, not a few historians conclude that his aversion arose, to a large extent at least, because the imperial crown was bestowed on him by the Church. Dr. Hodgkin, to quote one who represents the thoughts of many, believes that he “was averse to the title of emperor”, perhaps chiefly on account of the “intervention of the Pope ... He would have wished it (the imperial crowning) done in some other way by the invitation of his Frankish nobles, by a vote of the shadowy body which called itself the Roman Senate (if such a shadow still haunted the north-west corner of the Forum), by the acclamations of the Roman people, or by all those instrumentalities combined, but not by a touch of the Pontiff’ s fingers. He foresaw, probably with statesmanlike instinct, the mischief which would accrue to future generations from the precedent thus furnished of a Pope appearing by virtue of his ecclesiastical office to bestow the imperial crown”. Were this a true presentment of Charlemagne’s view of his imperial coronation, it would suppose that he had failed to grasp the most salient feature of life in Europe in the early Middle Ages. It is well-nigh impossible to overstate the influence of the Church—of the bishops, and particularly of the Pope—during that epoch on the political affairs of the West. In that age of violence no right could be acquired or held, except by the sword or by the anathema of a bishop. If Charlemagne’s father Pippin was only too glad to have his kingly title recognized by Pope Zachary, he himself, it cannot be doubted, was pleased, if he had to receive the imperial title, to have it bestowed by the Pope. Besides, not to mention the intervention of the Roman Senate, which at that time was too dead even to have a shadow, it can scarcely be believed that Charlemagne, whose only idea of the “Roman people” can but have been of men cowering before the Lombards, and trusting to the Pope even for their temporal safety, would have esteemed a request from them to become emperor. As to his “Frankish nobles”, no ground can be imagined which would give them a colorable title to offer their ruler the imperial dignity. But it was very natural that an invitation should be valued from the Pope who was the acknowledged head of the whole Catholic Church, the recognized lord and saviour of Rome (the first seat of the Roman Empire), and the successor of the one whose sanction had given stability to the Carolingian dynasty. A letter of Charlemagne’s great grandson, the emperor Louis II, addressed to the Eastern emperor Basil I, proves indeed how highly the Pope’s action was valued. Besides; the whole political career of Charlemagne was colored by papal intervention, and that, too, of his own seeking. He would have the Pope crown and anoint his sons, subscribe his treaties, and even confirm his will. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that Leo would risk performing an act which, if chiefly because done by him, would irritate his benefactor and protector. One of Charlemagne’s most trusted advisers was his cousin Adalhard, abbot of Corbey. He was with him at Rome in 800, and must have known his mind on the papacy. Now of all the Franks he was the most beloved by Leo also. It is surely, then, more than likely that he consulted with him before he took the momentous step of giving an imperial crown, and must have been convinced that, on whatever other grounds Charlemagne might not wish for it, he would have no objection to receiving it because it came from his hands. And though, in the light of Greek politics, Charlemagne might have preferred that he had never been saluted as emperor, it seems certain that he was far from bearing any ill-will to Leo personally for his share in that transaction. For Alcuin, writing only a few months after it, viz., in April 801, tells us that word had been brought to him from Rome that “the Apostolicus was in high favor with the lord emperor”.

In placing the imperial crown on the head of the Frankish monarch, Leo was animated by motives both personal and political. The cruel attack which had been made upon him rendered him more desirous of increased protection, and he felt that an emperor of the Romans would have more title to interfere on his behalf than would a king of the Franks, though styled Patricius and defender of the Church. A wish for civil as well as religious unity also urged him on. He could not fail to realize the danger to Christian Europe from the Norseman and the Saracen. He knew that before the rise of the power of Charlemagne it was split up into numerous kingdoms, without any bond of unity between them but submission in spiritual matters to the See of Rome. And he understood that if Christendom was to resist the pressure from without, and the tendency to disintegration from within, there must be more than spiritual unity amongst its kingdoms. There was need of some material unity. There must be some temporal authority to which all would look up and rally. To a Roman what was more natural than the idea of a revival of the Roman empire, held then to be theoretically vacant by the deposition of Constantine VI, and known to have been practically dead even in Italy, much less in the rest of Europe, since the descent of the Lombards (568).

Those authors, then, who would have us regard renovation of the Roman empire as an act of rebellion against the emperors of Constantinople, ask far too much of our common-sense. The authority of Byzantium in Europe at this time was simply derelict. What is derelict belongs to the first hand that can hold it. But if it be asked what special right the Pope had to revive the empire, it may be answered that he had at least as much right as the men who made the imperial power in the first instance Julius Caesar and Augustus. And in times of difficulty and danger, when there is need of ability and willingness to ward off impending disaster, any man has the natural right, if he has the power, to seize the helm and save himself and others. Besides, what more natural than that the acknowledged Head of the Church should seek to provide even for the temporal welfare of his flock? Was he not, too, lord of Rome and, as the heir of its preservers, the natural guardian of its rights?

It is sufficiently obvious that Leo could not have reestablished the authority of the Eastern emperors in Europe, had he wished to do so. And certainly he had no reason to entertain any such wish. They had proved themselves unable to save the West from the barbarians, and anything but the defenders of the Church. The Pope, then, with sense chose as emperor one who had the power to save Europe from the heathen and the will to defend the Church. The power of Charlemagne is acknowledged by friend and foe alike; his goodwill to defend the Church is proclaimed by himself. In the preface to his “Admonitio generalis”, among his Capitularies, or legal pronouncements, he styles himself: “By the grace and mercy of God, king and ruler of the kingdom of the Franks, and of Holy Church the devout defender and humble helper”. And in the heading of the first capitulary, he declares, according to one reading at least, that he is “in all things the adjutant of the Apostolic See”. As he called himself, so was he addressed by others. The bishops assembled at the Council of Mayence (813) addressed him as “the most Christian emperor, the rector of the true religion and the defender of the Holy Church of God”. Even at the risk of being tedious, we will add to the evidence already cited of Charlemagne’s position in regard to the Church an extract from an introduction to a MS. of the laws of the Lombard king Rotharis, preserved in the library of the dukes of Gotha. “As he (Charlemagne) was worthy of the empire’s honor, he obtained the imperial crown; he received all the dignities of the Roman power; he was made the most dutiful son of Lord Peter, the Apostle, and he defended Peter’s property from his foes”.

If it be imagined that too much has been assumed in supposing that it was chiefly the Pope’s act which revived the empire in the West, we have not only the word of the Pope himself that such was in fact the case, but the authoritative declaration of an emperor. The emperor of Constantinople, Basil I, wrote to the emperor Louis II (d. S75) to complain of his taking the title of emperor, which belonged to him alone. In his reply, Louis points out that, with the exception of Basil, he is recognized as emperor by all Christian kings; for they look “to the anointing and consecration by which, by means of the imposition of the hands of the supreme Pontiff and by prayer, we have been, by the will of heaven, advanced to this high position, and to the empire of the Roman principate, which we hold by God’s will ... Your beloved fraternity further writes that you are astonished that we are called emperor of the Romans, and not emperor of the Franks. But you must understand that if we are not emperor of the Romans, we cannot be emperor of the Franks. For as among the Romans this sublime appellation first arose, we have assumed it from those whose city we have received from heaven to govern, as we have received in like manner the mother of all the churches of God to defend and advance. From this mother our race received in the first instance the authority of kings (he refers to the action of Pope Zachary), and then that of emperors. For the princes of the Franks were first called kings; and then those were called emperors who were for this end (ad hoc) anointed by the Roman Pontiff with the holy oil. Charles the Great, my great-great-grandfather, anointed by the supreme Pontiff, was the first of our race to be called emperor, and to be made the anointed of the Lord. And if”, continues Louis, “you rail against the Pope for his action, you have as much reason to rail against Samuel for passing over Saul, whom he had himself anointed, and for anointing David king”. The Western then reminds the Eastern emperor of the way in which the popes had been left defenseless against their enemies by the rulers of Constantinople, and, what was worse, had been through them assailed by heresies. Hence, naturally, the popes turned their backs on the apostates, and embraced the Franks.

The outcome of Leo's act (and the letter of the emperor Louis shows how truly it was the Pope’s act), while it did not in any way interfere with the power, or real rights, of the Eastern emperors, increased that of Charlemagne at least indirectly. Though it did not add to his dominions by one rood of land, it gave him a solid increase of authority by the way in which it caused him to be looked up to as well by his own subjects as by other Christian peoples and kings. For there was such a charm about the name of emperor, that even the very barbarian rulers who had destroyed in the West the power of the emperors, kept a sort of covert respect for them, and sometimes even accepted from the emperors of Constantinople the title of patricius. But the result of Leo’s work on the Christmas Day of 800 was not confined to the reign of Charlemagne. It endured in appearance till the August of 1806, when the emperor Francis II renounced the imperial crown, and thereby brought “the oldest political institution in the world ... to an end”. It existed practically till the days of the emperor Charles V, who was the last of the emperors crowned by the Pope.

As a last word on this subject we will point out that the union of Church and State, brought about by the renovation of the empire, was in the main productive of good. It is true that, with the advance of time, great struggles arose between the papacy and the empire. From the nature of things it was inevitable that difficulties should arise. If the Church is not infallible in its temporal policy, no more, perhaps still less, is the State. And as it is impossible in some cases to fix the exact boundaries of the proper spheres of action of the Church on the one hand and the State on the other, it is only to be expected that, when both are full of life, friction must arise. In a man of energy, especially when plunged in the midst of the affairs of life, there is an endless struggle going on between the powers of his body and those of his soul. It does not, however, follow that the union of body and soul is not in itself good. Similarly the struggles, sometimes fierce enough, between the popes and the emperors do not prove that the institution of the empire was not to the great advantage of Europe generally.

There can indeed be no doubt that the grand idea of one Church and one State acting in harmony, with which the act of Leo inspired the minds of the men of the West, was productive of great good. Wild and rough as were but too many of the leaders of men in Western Europe in the early Middle Ages, they conceived the thought, so important for the development of European civilization, that they were all members of one great Christian family. It was this idea that made united action possible in Europe, that hurled the warriors of the West against the Moslem, who, like the locust, can but devour all that is good as he moves along. It was this thought, this habit of looking up with respect to a common head, not merely at Rome, but also, though to a much less degree, at Aachen, or wherever else the seat of empire might be, which so frequently averted the horrors of war at a time when men seemed to think they were born to fight. It was this feeling of the brotherhood of peoples which promoted an intercourse among the men of the West, greatly, of course, to their mutual benefit, to which nothing in our times can compare. Where there was much to be learned, or where there was much to do, thither, heedless whether to London, to Paris, or to Rome, went the workers or the seekers after truth. And gladly were they welcomed. For they were received without that miserable jealousy and suspicion which modern ideas of nationality have engendered—ideas which make many men act at least as though they believed that the be-all and end-all of everything was nationality. One Church, one empire was a clear, noble, and grand central idea to which others, at once beautiful and practical, could aggregate. Out of reflection of this kind arose the remark of Gregorovius : “All the life of nations became henceforward bound together in a great concentric system of Church and empire, and out of this system sprang the common civilization of the West”.

Among the results of Leo’s crowning Charlemagne was not that he gave up all his sovereign rights in Rome. He no more ceased to be its ruler than did the king of Bavaria lose all his regal power over Bavaria on the proclamation of William, King of Prussia, as Emperor of Germany, in 1871. No doubt, as emperor, Charlemagne would have more rights than those of a simple patricius; he would stand to the Pope in much the same position as our sovereign does to the independent princes of our Indian empire. Hence in his letters to the emperor, Leo does not fail to make it clear that Charlemagne is his defender, but not in all things his master. Writing on one occasion to complain of the doings of some of the emperor’s missi, he asks that “the oblation which your ancestors and you yourself have offered to Blessed Peter may remain acceptable in his sight, so that you may deserve to receive a suitable reward from the key bearer of the kingdom of heaven, who has constituted you his defenders in his interests”. Further, whilst consenting to work along with the emperor in taking defensive measures on the coasts against the Saracens and Northmen, whose sea power was now making itself felt, Leo’s very words show that there were coasts that belonged to him as well as to the emperor. And if the emperor’s missi, who came to assist in the administration of justice, interfered with the Pope’s arrangements, Leo did not hesitate to ask the emperor indignantly if it was by his orders that his missi hampered, to the great detriment of the papal exchequer, the administrative rights of the duces whom he had appointed over the different cities. It may be noted here that these missi were in the nature of itinerant judges, whose business it was to see that the local authorities in the different towns did their duty. Cenni, in his notes to this letter, quotes the famous constitution of the emperor Lothaire, drawn up in the time of Eugenius II (824-827), to the effect that it was the emperor’s will that missi should be appointed by the Pope and himself, who should each year report how the different dukes and judges administered justice. Complaints were in the first instance to be referred to the Pope, as to the ordinary and immediate authority, who should himself cause them to be satisfied; or, if he preferred it, they were to be referred to the emperor to be dealt with. The idea of Leo was that the emperors were to administer justice within the dominions of the Pope when invited by him so to do, though not whenever they chose to do so on their own initiative; but that in grave temporal difficulties they should constitute the ultimate court of appeal. Living at a distance and interfering only occasionally in the papal government, they were nevertheless to be always in the background, as it were, and to serve as a continual warning and menace to the turbulent nobility. While the emperor had no little ecclesiastical authority, and the Pope still more temporal power, each was to be independent in his own sphere. The scheme was, certainly, an admirable one for securing the independence of the papacy.

We may now return to the history of the course of events. Charlemagne passed the winter in Rome, occupied not only with the trial and punishment of the Pope’s enemies, but with the affairs, public and private, ecclesiastical and civil, of Rome and the whole of Italy. After dispatching an army under his son Pippin, the king of Italy, against the Duke of Beneventum, who was too independent to suit the new emperor, that prince left Rome after Easter (April 25) and set out for the North.

Whilst Einhard in his annals relates that in the following year negotiations were entered into between the Eastern court and Charlemagne, Theophanes adds that to the emperor’s ambassadors were added those of the Pope, and that, besides confirming peace between the two sovereigns, the ambassadors had in view the bringing about a marriage between the empress Irene and their master. If their mission had been successful, it would have put an easy end to the soreness felt by the East at the creation of a Western emperor. The plan, whether originating from the Pope or from Charlemagne himself, was a good one. But it miscarried, and that through the interested advice of one of Irene’s ministers. Well would it have been for Irene if she had accepted the proffered hand of the mighty Frank. For, on October 31 of this very year, she lost her throne, and found herself banished to the Isle of Lesbos by the usurper Nicephorus, who had formerly been the Treasurer (Logothete). Thus passed from the stage of the world’s history a princess whose beauty, abilities, and even virtues, were brought into more striking prominence by her later crimes. Charlemagne’s ambassadors were graciously heard by Nicephorus, who sent back legates of his own with them both to the emperor and the Pope, and concluded at least a preliminary treaty of peace.

In the following year the North of Italy was agitated by the story that there had been found in Mantua a sponge that had been dipped in the blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ and carried thither by Longinus. In the summer (803), news of this so-called discovery was brought to Charlemagne, who at once begged the Pope to inquire into the truth of the affair. Leo took advantage of this request of the emperor to go still further north and pay Charlemagne a second visit, as well for his love of the emperor as for the needs of the Church. Charlemagne was at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) when word was brought to him, about the middle of November, that the Pope wished to keep the feast of Christmas with him. At once the young prince Charles was sent forward to meet the Pope at St. Maurice in Valais. He himself received the Pope in the old basilica of St. Remy at Rheims, and then went with him to Quiercy—a place already so famous in the history of the relations between the popes and the Carolingians—where they kept the feast of Christmas. Here, and at Aachen, they were together for eight days. Unfortunately we are left utterly in the dark as to what matters were discussed between them. Gregorovius, however, who is here cited merely as a type of a certain class of historians, is not without sources of private information. Leo had come for more land. But he did not obtain “all his desires, for the dispute concerning the frontiers of his property, or those between imperial supremacy and the papal territorial power, remained to be the subject of lasting dissensions, while the exorbitant demands of St. Peter awoke the indignation of the youthful Pippin”, etc. With such pure imaginings certain modern authors are literally crammed. What lover of truth would not almost prefer the bare list of dry facts, given by many of the early chroniclers of the Middle Ages, to this? On his return journey the emperor caused the Pope to be escorted to Ravenna through Bavaria, a country which he wished to see. He reached Rome loaded with presents.

The great emperor, feeling that the allotted span of human life, the threescore years and ten, was drawing on apace for him (he was now sixty-four), and thinking that the best way to avoid disputes arising between his three sons after his death was to let them know during his life what portion of his great empire would fall to each one of them, and to have this division previously well ratified, assembled the great ones of his realm at Thionville (806). Before this gathering he announced his intention of dividing his empire between his three sons, Louis, Charles, and Pippin. This policy of endless subdivision of territory was to prove fatal not only to the Carolingian empire itself, but to the prosperity of Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries. There is no call here to give the terms of the will which Charlemagne read up before his nobles, especially as it never took effect, for both Charles and Pippin died before their father. But in assigning his dominions to Pippin, Italy was declared his “up to the boundaries of St. Peter”—a fact which shows plainly enough that Charlemagne did not consider the dominions of the Pope to be at the disposal of the emperor. And the three brothers were exhorted to be in earnest about the defence of the Church of St. Peter in the first place, and then of the other churches. They had to defend the former from its enemies, and, as far as they could and as was reasonable, to strive that it obtained its rights. After the nobles had sworn to adhere to the clauses of the will, Einhard himself, who gives us this information, took it to Rome to receive the signature of the Pope. If there is one thing that the conduct of Charlemagne towards the popes teaches, it is that he placed in everything the utmost reliance on the moral support to be derived from the concurrence of the Church. The assent of Leo to the will was given in due course.

Among the honors which his deserved reputation had won for Charlemagne was the concession to him of a sort of honorary suzerainty over the city of Jerusalem, especially over the Holy Places, by the great Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid. This suzerainty involved him as well as the Pope in discussions on the “Procession of the Holy Ghost”. On this most abstruse question the doctrine of the Catholic Church is that the Holy Ghost proceeds, or has His origin, from the Father and the Son as from one principle, and that as the Son comes from the Father by generation and is His Word, the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son by spiration, and is, as it were, the outcome of their mutual love. To express this doctrine more clearly, there sprang up, it seems, in Spain, a custom of singing the Creed of Nice with the addition of the words, “Filioque”. The Holy Ghost was thereby definitely stated to have proceeded from the Father and the Son. For it was in Spain that the orthodox doctrine was first proclaimed in a profession of faith. This was at a Council held probably at Toledo, in 447, against the Priscillianists. When the Arian Visigoths were converted under King Reccared, it was again declared at the Third Council of Toledo, in 589, that the Holy Ghost proceeds “from the Father and from the Son”. This custom, then, begun in Spain sometime between 447 and the time of Felix of Urgel, passed into France, then into Germany, and last of all into Italy. On this doctrine, the teaching of the early Greek Fathers was at one with that of the Latin Fathers. But as they often simply said that He proceeded from the Father, and sometimes that He “was sent through the Son”, some of the Greeks began to imagine that the addition of the “Filioque” implied some false doctrine. Hence the question of the “procession” of the Holy Ghost was discussed at the Council of Gentilly (767) and in the Caroline Books. And when certain Latin monks in Palestine began to use the Filioque, they were accused by their neighbors of heresy. The letter in which they make known their difficulties to the Pope is still extant, and is very interesting. It is addressed : “To the most holy and reverend Lord in Christ, Father Leo, the first Bishop and universal Pope of the Holy Apostolic City of Rome, the congregation of the Mount of Olives”. It then begins as follows : “Our Lord has deigned to exalt you, Father, over all bishops, and your holy See over all Christian Sees. For with His own lips did Christ condescend to say, ‘Thou art Peter’, etc. (Matt. XVI. 18). Most kind father, we who are strangers in this holy city of Jerusalem, love no man on earth more than you, and day and night pray for you. Hence to you do we make known the troubles we are here enduring”. They go on to state that John, a monk of the laura of S. Sabas, near Jerusalem, called them and all the Franks heretics. In defence, the Franks replied that if they were called heretics, it would be necessary to charge the apostolic See with heresy. John then had recourse to deeds; and on Christmas Day (808) sent some laymen “to pitch them out” (as the letter phrases it) of the Church built over the cave at Bethlehem where Our Lord was born. But the sturdy Franks were not easy to eject. And they proudly inform the Pope : “They could not put us forth. We all said”, they continue, “here we wish to die; and you shall not cast us out”. They piously attribute their power of resistance to extra strength which the Pope’s prayers and faith had obtained for them. They then, they say, appealed to the clergy of the city. A public meeting was held in the neighborhood of Mount Calvary. Interrogated as to their faith, they declared that it was the same as that of the Roman Church, but pointed out that they were in the habit of using certain expressions in their prayers that the Greeks were not. “In the Glory be to the Father”, urged the Frank monks, “you do not say as it was in the beginning; in the Gloria in excelsis you do not say to solus altissimus; you say the ‘Our Father ‘differently to us; and in the Creed we say more than you, we add, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” They (the Franks) then begged the people not to listen to the monk John; and reminded them that if they called the Frankish monks heretics, it would be to accuse of heresy the throne of Peter. “If you do that you will sin”. “And now, our most kind Father, deign to think of us your servants, who though so far away, are your sheep. To you, as your holiness knows, the whole world has been entrusted; inasmuch as the Lord said to Peter: If you love me, feed my sheep (S. John, XXI. 17). They then go on to inform the Pope that they had heard the words, proceeds from the Father and the Son, sung in the chapel of the emperor (Charlemagne) your son; and that in the homily of St. Gregory and the Rule of St. Benedict, which the same emperor had given them, the same words also occurred. But the monk John had caused them much trouble by asserting that the Holy Ghost did not proceed from the Father and the Son. In conclusion they earnestly beg the Pope to look into the matter of the procession of the Holy Ghost, to call to the mind of the emperor that they had heard the words, who proceeds, etc.,' in his chapel, and to let them know the result“.

Of this matter Leo at once informed Charlemagne (809), sending him the letter he had just received. He at the same time sent to the monks of Mount Olivet a creed of the orthodox faith, that all might preserve it true and intact, in accordance with this our Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

In consequence of this letter of the Pope, Charlemagne convened an assembly of bishops in November 809, at Aachen. The Council proclaimed the orthodox doctrine in regard to the procession of the Holy Ghost, and seems to have sanctioned the continued use of the Filioque in the Creed. For the sake of having the matter settled, Charlemagne sent to the Pope an embassy composed of a bishop and an abbot.

Early in the year 810, the Pope held a conference with the legates of the emperor in the sacristy (secretarium) of St. Peter’s. When various testimonies had been read, he declared that his belief was in accordance with the authors quoted, and with the passages of the sacred Scriptures adduced, and that he forbade anyone to teach or hold any doctrine opposed to that of the Council at Aachen. The testimonies here spoken of were doubtless extracts from the works of Theodulphus, bishop of Orleans, and Smaragdus, abbot of St. Michel (now St. Mihiel), near Verdun. It is from one of his letters to Charlemagne—to which such acts as we have of the Roman synod were appended—that we know what went on in Rome between the Pope and the emperor’s legates. In his work Smaragdus had made it his chief object to collect the passages of Scripture that bear directly or indirectly on this subject of the procession of the Holy Ghost; while Theodulphus aimed at collecting texts from the Greek, and especially from the Popes and the Latin Fathers. After the declaration of the Pope above rehearsed, an informal discussion took place, which the abbot Smaragdus, who was himself present, says he could not undertake to write down (clearly). By degrees the discussion took a more formal character, of which the worthy abbot has left us a most interesting summary. Of course, it was at once quite plain to the envoys that there was no difference in point of faith between the Pope and themselves. But they naturally wished to get their custom of singing the Creed, with the Filioque addition, recognized by the Pope. Hence they argued that since it was true that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and the Son, that truth ought to be taught. To this Leo agreed. Why not then teach the truth by singing? Teaching by singing, replied the Pope, is a good method, but it is not good to insert words where one has no right. The envoys admitted that they were aware that the Fathers of the different ecumenical councils had forbidden additions to be made to the Creed, but they asked whether it would not be lawful to sing the Filioque, if they (the Councils) had inserted it. It would, assented the Pope. Would not the Fathers of the General Councils have done well if they had inserted such an important addition, persisted the envoys? No doubt, was the answer; but as they did not insert it, they had very good reasons for their omission of the addition. Before night put an end to the discussion, the Pope pointed out that it was impossible to put all the articles of faith into the Creed.

When the conference was reopened next day, the envoys urged that the Filioque had been added solely with the laudable object of instructing the people on a most important point of doctrine. Whereupon Leo reminded them that after the Fathers of the different Councils had forbidden people to tamper with the Creed on their own authority, it made no matter with what intention they acted when they violated the decrees of the Fathers. But have you not yourself given leave for the singing of the Creed, put in the envoys? The Pope allowed that he had permitted the singing of the Creed, but not with the addition, told them they had better follow the custom of the Roman Church, and asked what it was to him (Quid ad nos) that the Franks could urge that they had not originated the custom. The irrepressible Franks now adduced their final argument, and acutely insisted that to drop the Filioque would be to cause the people to think that it was not true that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and from the Son. Could the Pope tell them what was best to be done, therefore, under the circumstances? “Had I been asked”, retorted the Pope, “before the custom of singing the Creed in your manner began, I should have told you not to make the insertion”. As it was, he advised, not commanded, that, on the ground that it was not sung in the Church of Rome, their custom of singing the Creed should be gradually abandoned. Then what had been established rather from love of novelty than by authority would be gradually abandoned by all. An unlawful custom would thus come to an end and nobody’s faith would be injured.

Whether or not the Pope’s wise advice was followed in the Royal chapel we do not know; but the custom of the West was not abandoned. Had his prudent counsels, however, been followed, much difficulty would have been avoided. When in the days to come the Greeks sought an occasion to quarrel with the Western Church, their only tangible argument (the Filioque) would not have been forthcoming. Meanwhile, to show “his love for the orthodox faith”, says his biographer, “Leo caused two shields of silver, weighing 94 lbs. 6 ozs., to be cast. On one of them, in Greek, and on the other, in Latin, he caused the Creed to be inscribed without the Filioque. This he did to afford a standing proof that the Roman Church preserved the Creed as it had come down to her. These shields Leo hung up, one on the right and the other on the left of the confession of St. Peter, and as late as the eleventh century they were seen by St. Peter Damian. He put up a corresponding one in the confession of St. Paul”.

Of the joint efforts of Charlemagne and Pope Leo III for the refutation of Adoptionism, and of the Council held at Rome against its able advocate, Felix of Urgel, in 799, mention has already been made under Pope Hadrian I. Their mutual relations with Fortunatus of Grado may well engage our attention now.

On the authority of the Annals of Venice, Muratori informs us that to the bishopric of Olivola Castello, an island that now forms part of Venice, there was elected a Greek of the name of Christophorus, at the instance of the Greek emperor Nicephorus and by the influence of John, the Doge of Venice. But the tribunes of Venice, who did not approve of this Greek interference, begged the patriarch of Grado, also named John, not to consecrate Christophorus. John yielded to their wishes, and even excommunicated the bishop-elect. Furious at this, the Doge sailed over to Grado and had the refractory prelate hurled from the top of a high tower. The tribunes, however, contrived to bring about the election of Fortunatus of Triest, a relation of the murdered patriarch, to the vacant See of Grado. The Pope approved the choice, and sent Fortunatus the pallium (March 21, 803). The treatment that had been meted out to his predecessor and relative led Fortunatus to conspire with some of the chief men in the State against the Doge. The plot was discovered, and Fortunatus fled for his life to Charlemagne. He found the emperor at Saltz (Koenigshofen), presented him with some beautiful gifts and implored his assistance. This Charlemagne granted, and even took him into favor and wrote to the Pope to ask him to allow the exiled patriarch to have the then vacant See of Pola, as “he did not wish to appoint him anywhere without consulting with the Pope”. The Pope consented (806), on condition that, if his See of Grado were restored to Fortunatus, he was to leave the See of Pola in every way intact just as he found it. But in a postscript to the letter he wrote to Charlemagne on this matter, the Pope asked him to use his influence with Fortunatus for the good of the latter’s soul, as he had not heard good reports of him, either whilst he was in Italy or France.

The joint action of Charlemagne and Leo in a case much nearer home serves to give us an insight as to the blessings that would have accrued to Europe, not from an ideal Roman emperor, but even from a succession of rulers like Charlemagne. With such emperors and such a union of Church and State as existed in the days of Charlemagne and Leo, the great standing armies, which sap the strength of modern Europe, and are a perpetual menace to its peace and to the priceless blessings that flow therefrom, would not be needed.

At this time, when from years of wild anarchy the once powerful kingdom of Northumbria was fast going to pieces, its king, Eardulf, who when only a noble had been wounded it was thought to death, had been seized by his enemies and cast into prison (806). During the time of his power he would seem to have acknowledged some kind of superior authority in the emperor, and to have cultivated the friendship of the Pope in a particular manner. Hence, both took an active interest in his misfortunes. Both sent special messengers to Northumbria. Whilst the emperor’s messenger succeeded in obtaining the king’s release (808), the Pope’s envoy heard what both parties had to say on the merits of the case; for appeal to the Pope had been made in the first instance. Leo expresses his delight to the emperor that his action saved the life of the king, and assures Charlemagne that this “imperial defence” of his is praised on all hands. After visiting Charlemagne at Nimeguen, about Easter 808, Eardulf went on to Rome. He would seem to have satisfied the Pope as to his right to the throne; for in the beginning of the year 809, he left Rome and was escorted back to his kingdom by the envoys of the emperor and the Pope. On this incident Gregorovius remarks : “Rome, it is true, had already beheld kings, more especially from the British Isles, come to take the cowl. Eardulf was, however, the first to sue in the Lateran for the restoration of the crown of which he had been deprived. The instance shows the views which were arising in the West concerning papal authority. And since, after Pippin’s days, it was kings themselves who, for the sake of temporal advantage, exalted the conception of the Roman episcopate in the eyes of peoples and princes, we cannot be surprised that these bishops, renouncing the idea of spiritual intercession, soon arrogated to themselves the divine power of giving and removing crowns”. The concluding statement in the foregoing quotation is simply a groundless assertion of Gregorovius himself, for which he does not venture to advance the smallest semblance of proof. And it should be observed that men do not arrogate to themselves power freely placed in their hands; so that if, in the Middle Ages, we find popes from time to time adjudicating on the rights of kings to their thrones—not arrogating to themselves the divine power of giving and removing crowns at pleasure—we might say, with Gregorovius himself, that this exercise of authority was the result of the free appeal to Rome of kings themselves. It was certainly, however, the legitimate outcome of the feudal ideas of the Middle Ages. In the eyes of men in those times, not only was every man in each kingdom subject to an overlord, but in the union which then existed between Christian states and the Church, kings themselves were taken to be responsible for the proper exercise of their power to the ultimate tribunal of the See of Rome.

There was being discussed at Rome at the same time as that of Eardulf, the case of the Archbishop of York, Eanbald, the second of that name, a man of great influence, and seemingly somewhat worldly. Whether this was in connection with the affair of king Eardulf (whose enemies he was said to have harbored), or with some other business, is not clear. It has been conjectured that it concerned the endless dispute between the archbishops of York and Canterbury on the subject of the primacy. For his pallium this prelate was indebted to the exertions of Alcuin, who had been his master. Sometime before August 797, Alcuin wrote to Pope Leo : “In behalf of the envoys—who have come from my country and my city, according to canonical and apostolic custom and the command of Blessed Gregory our apostle, to beg the dignity of the sacred pall—I humbly beg you to graciously listen to the prayers of a necessitous church. For in those parts the dignity of the sacred pallium is necessary to overcome the wicked and preserve the authority of the holy church”. Eanbald received his pallium on the 8th 3 September 797.

Whatever the case of Archbishop Eanbald was, it greatly saddened the Pope, and he daily prayed at the Confession of St. Peter that the dispute between Eanbald and Wulfred of Canterbury might come to an end. Charlemagne had interested himself in this matter as in that of Eardulf, and Leo begged him to continue his good offices. In answer to a request from Charlemagne that the Pope would send by a suitable envoy “a hortatory letter of his apostolic authority” to Eanbald, to summon him to Rome or to state his case in the emperor’s presence, Leo replied that he had already composed such a letter and sent it on to Charlemagne to be forwarded at once by one of the emperor’s envoys, as his own was not yet ready. As no more of this affair is known, it may perchance be concluded that this combined papal and imperial action was as successful in dealing with Eanbald as in restoring Eardulf.

The other relations of Leo with this country may be now suitably treated of in chronological order. With the approach of the ninth century and its Danish inroads, the glory of the Anglo-Saxon, which was at its height during the seventh and eighth centuries, began to set. With the general confusion in the civil order, disorders were increasing in the ecclesiastical. One of these was the abuse of nominating laymen to be superiors of monasteries. This breach of the canons Ethelheard, the Archbishop of Canterbury, condemned by the commands of Pope Leo in a synod at Beccanceld (or really at Clovesho in 803), declaring that whoever did not observe “this decree of God, and of our Pope, and of us”, would be accountable to the judgment seat of God, and concluding: “I, Ethelheard, Archbishop, with twelve bishops and twenty-three abbots, do confirm and ratify the same with Christ’s rood token”.

About the same time the Archbishop had another breach of discipline to contend against, which also called for the intervention of the Pope. On the death of the last descendant of Hengist, the throne of Kent became vacant. It was seized by Eadbert Praen, a cleric, in 796. Unable to pass over this violation of the canons, Ethelheard turned to the Pope, who excommunicated Eadbert, and threatened to call on the inhabitants of Britain to punish his disobedience. But this same year, Cenulf, who had succeeded the powerful Offa in the kingdom of the Mercians (796), made Eadbert’s action an excuse for invading Kent. The unfortunate man was soon deprived of his kingdom and of his eyes (797 or 798). It should be noted that the dates of the ecclesiastical affairs of England at this time are by no means easy to fix with any degree of certainty. Those here given are in accordance with the best authorities.

On another very important matter Ethelheard and Cenulf were acting in harmony at this same period. William of Malmesbury describes Ethelheard as a man of considerable energy and of great influence with the powerful ones of his time. This influence he used to win back the jurisdiction that belonged to the See of Canterbury till the time when, by the efforts of King Offa and the authority of Pope Hadrian, the extent of its sway was curtailed. Ethelheard first secured the co-operation of Eanbald II of York. These two metropolitans pointed out to King Cenulf the injustice that had been done the old See of Canterbury by the erection of Lichfield into an Archiepiscopal See. Cenulf, who “was inferior to no preceding king in power or in faith”, when he heard what was the ancient ecclesiastical discipline of the country, at once consented to use his influence with the Pope for the restoration of the ancient order of things. He accordingly wrote (797) to the Pope a letter, which began : “To the most holy and truly loving Lord Leo, Pontiff of the sacred and Apostolical See, Cenulf, by the grace of God, king of the Mercians, with the bishops, princes, and every degree under our authority, sends the greeting of the purest love in Christ”. Cenulf thanks God for giving the Church such a worthy ruler, in succession to Hadrian, as the present Pope. For “we who live on the farthest confines of the world, justly boast, beyond all other things, that the Church’s exaltation is our safety, and its prosperity our constant ground of joy, since your apostolical dignity and our true faith originate from the same source”. After begging the Pope’s blessing, recalling to his mind the ecclesiastical constitution of the country laid down by Pope Gregory, and the action of Offa, who “through enmity against the venerable Jaenberht (Lambert) and the Kentish people”, obtained from Pope Hadrian the pallium for the bishop of the Mercians, Cenulf asked Leo to take the matter into his consideration, and let him know what had to be observed in the matter for the future. The king concludes by offering the Pope a “small gift, for friendship's sake”, of 120 mancuses.

The same year there came back an answer from the Pope to the effect that he was glad to find that, like his predecessors, Cenulf came for truth to the Church of St. Peter; that Pope Hadrian would not have lessened the jurisdiction of the See of Canterbury against the custom, had not King Offa given the Pope to understand that it was the general wish, both on account of the extent of the territory ruled by the king of the Mercians and other weighty reasons; that he confirmed the primacy of Canterbury, and that he would like to remind the king that his predecessor had promised no less a yearly sum than 365 mancuses for the poor and for “the lights” of St. Peter.

It would appear that Lichfield made a stand for his newly acquired privileges. Ethelheard found it necessary to go to Rome in person to plead his cause. He was completely successful. The Pope issued (January 18, 802) a formal decree—perhaps the only fully dated document of this affair—in which, “by virtue of the authority of St. Peter”, he granted the restoration of its ancient rights to the See of Canterbury. He also wrote at the same time to King Cenulf, assuring him of the gratification he felt at learning from the king’s two letters, brought by Ethelheard, that the king was prepared “to humbly submit in all things to the apostolic decree ; ... to have given his life for that of the Pope, if he had been nigh, out of respect for his office (doubtless an allusion to the attack on the Pope’s life), ... and to receive the Pope’s letters of kindest admonition with all humility”. Leo accepts the 120 mancuses, and continues: “As you take notice in your royal letters that no Christian dares to contravene our apostolic decrees, we accordingly endeavor to decide what is of advantage to your kingdom; so that what our brother Ethelheard, or the whole body of evangelical and apostolic doctrine of the holy fathers and our holy predecessors has ordained, under canonical censure, for you, and your princes and people, you ought not, by any means, to resist at all their orthodox doctrine. For Our Lord has said, ‘He that receiveth you, receiveth me ‘(Matt. X. 40)”. After praising the archbishop, Leo goes on to say that, “by the authority of Blessed Peter ... whose place, though unworthy, we hold”, he gives him such power that, if any of his subjects, “as well kings and princes as people, shall transgress the Lord’s commandments”," he will excommunicate him till he repent. In conclusion, “having discovered the truth of the matter”, the Pope says he has restored his rights and privileges to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

On his return to England, Ethelheard held a synod at Clovesho. Here, in accordance with the authoritative precept of his prerogative, the honor of St. Augustine’s See was restored in its completeness, “just as St. Gregory, the Apostle and Master of our nation, arranged it”. And if anyone, king or bishop, dared in the future to lessen the honor due to the metropolitan See, he was to understand that he would be damned “unless before his death he made reparation for the injury he had inflicted on the Church, contrary to the canons”. After this no more was ever heard of the Archbishop of Lichfield. This same year the sturdy champion of the rights of Canterbury died. He was succeeded by Wulfred, of whom the first chronicle of our nation records that he received the pallium in 806, went to Rome, along with the bishop of Sherburn, in 832 (really in 834), and “with the blessing of Pope Leo”, returned to his own bishopric in 813, i.e. in 815.

If all is not clear with regard to that portion of our history which has been just narrated, there is a still thicker haze over the part now to be explored. Beginning our investigations with the commencement of Wulfred’s pontificate (805-32), we find that while it is certain that he received his pallium from Rome, it is not certain whether he went for it himself or not. There is extant a fragment of a letter written “to a venerable Pope Leo” by “all the bishops and priests of the whole of the island of Britain”. It is possible that this epistle may have been indicted during a vacancy in the See of Canterbury; and, if so, the necessity of synchronizing such a vacancy with the reign of a Pope Leo, would point to Leo III as its recipient. On the other hand, as there is nothing to force the conclusion that it was written during the vacancy of the See, whereas, on the contrary, though only recently deceased, Alcuin (t804) is quoted as an historical authority like Bede, it would seem that it was addressed to a later Leo, probably to a tenth-century Leo. For at that time the general disorder in Italy, and the fact that many of the passes of the Alps were in the hands of the Saracens, rendered the journey to Rome highly dangerous. At any rate the writers of the letter, quoting Bede, point out that at first the pallium was sent to the archbishops, and that they had not, as they have now, to encounter the difficulties and dangers of a journey to Rome. They also note, and here the fragment abruptly ends, that in the beginning no money was exacted when the pallium was granted. Evidently, then, the burden of the document was to obtain for the archbishops of Canterbury—evidently personally acting in their own interests—permission not to have to go to Rome for the pallium, and not to have to pay a sum of money when they received it. If Leo III ever received this request, it is certain that he did not accede to it. A full century had to elapse before Canute the Great succeeded in obtaining from Rome the abolition of the gratuity paid on the reception of the pallium.

Most of Wulfred’s pontificate was spent in quarrelling with Cenulf, King of Mercia, although, as we have seen, it was that prince who restored “its faltering dignity to Canterbury”. As early as the year 808, the two were on bad terms. The king was at that moment in opposition to both the archbishops of England. These initial troubles, whatever was their exact nature, seem to have been soon smoothed over. Whether the archbishop’s journey to Rome in 814, “on the business of the English Church”, had any connection with further difficulties between Cenulf and himself is not certain. But, at any rate, in a year or two after this, what our authorities set down as the “violence and avarice” of the king caused a serious breach between them; for he seized two of his monasteries and accused him to the Pope. The result of the appeal to Rome seems to have been that the archbishop was deprived of the right of exercising his powers, and a species of interdict was laid upon the whole country. “For nearly six years the whole of the English people was deprived of its primatial authority and of the ministry of holy baptism”.

Whether king or archbishop was more to blame in this matter, the interdict must have stirred up a great deal of unpopularity against the former. He became anxious to bring about at least a seeming reconciliation with Wulfred. He accordingly summoned a Witan to meet in London, and invited the archbishop to attend it under a safe conduct. When he had thus secured his presence, he calmly proposed that, on condition of his giving up more of his property to him, he would either clear him before the Pope, or, if that proved to be impossible, he would restore to him the money he had received from him. On the other hand, if he did not comply with his new demand, he would deprive him of everything he possessed, send him into exile, and never permit him to return, whatever might be said “by the lord Pope, the emperor, or anybody else”.

Terrified by these threats, the archbishop, after a long opposition, at length agreed on condition that the rest of his rights were respected. But no sooner had the faithless king got what he wanted, than (822) he not only kept his ill-gotten goods till the hour of his death, but continued his course of plundering the helpless primate. Even after the king’s demise the archbishop could not at once recover his property. Matters were not satisfactorily arranged between him and Cenulfs heirs till the council of Clovesho in 825.

The avarice of Cenulf is also shown in a narrative which has been preserved for us by the Historia Monasterii de Abingdon. The Mercian king had two sisters as remarkable for their virtue as for their beauty and grace. Resolved to consecrate their lives to God, they steadfastly refused the offers of marriage made to them by the noblest in the land, and begged their brother to give them a piece of land, “free from all secular dues”, in which they might be buried, and which, after their death, might go to the monks of Our Lady of Abingdon. With the consent of the lords spiritual and temporal of his kingdom, Cenulf granted them “the villa (estate) which is called Culeham”. By the decision of the secular authority it was to be free from all temporal jurisdiction save that of the abbot of Abingdon, and by a bull of Pope Leo, procured by the king, from the spiritual authority of the bishop. The Pope also confirmed the monastery in its possession of the villa, and begged the king to do likewise. Before the king’s charter was forthcoming, however, he had quarreled with the abbot of Abingdon. His “hunters and hawkers, after the fashion of men of their class”, harried the property of the abbey. In vain did the abbot Rethun appeal to the king. As he could not get justice from him, he went to Rome and appealed to the Pope. With Leo he was more successful in his quest for justice. But it was one thing to return to England with letters of protection and privilege from Rome, and another to induce the king to pay heed to them. Now by smooth speeches and now by threats, Cenulf procrastinated, and Pope Leo died in the interim. Rethun, therefore, tried what gold would effect in the way “of obtaining the king’s love and a final remedy”. The king’s heart was straightway unlocked, and a royal decree proclaimed the inviolability of the monastery and its possessions, at the request, as it declared, “of the lord apostolic and most glorious Pope Leo”, but really, as we know, in consideration of the abbot’s gold. “Lest the trouble should arise again”, Rethun committed the whole case to writing; and it is no doubt from this account that the thirteenth century compiler of the history of Abingdon drew his materials.

Affairs of the East

During all this time, affairs in the capital of the Eastern Empire had not been moving very smoothly, either politically or ecclesiastically. By the action of his mother, Irene, Constantine VI lost his throne and his eyes (August 797). She was in turn deposed by her avaricious treasurer Nicephorus, who lost his life (July 811) in a campaign against the Bulgarians. His son Stavrakios was forced by his brother-in-law, Michael Rhangabe, to retire to a monastery after a reign of two months. By the return of the wheel of fortune, Michael, who “was a weak, well-meaning man”, was himself obliged to embrace the same monastic state (July 813) by Leo V (the Armenian). Clearly the political conditions of the Eastern Empire cannot have been very sound during the life of Pope Leo III. And if there were troubles in the State, there were also troubles in the Church. These latter were the more unfortunate that they had their origin, at least, in the misunderstandings of good men. They arose between Tarasius, the patriarch of Constantinople, and certain monks. The monks regarded the patriarch as over-indulgent to sinners, and somewhat too plastic in the hands of the emperor. If Tarasius was prudent to a degree verging on cowardice, the monks were zealous to a similar point of rashness. Their chiefs were the abbot Plato and his nephew, Theodore the Studite (so called from being abbot of the famous of Studion at Constantinople), who was a relative of Constantine VI’s second wife, Theodota. “Most of the abbots round Constantinople (at this time) were men of family and wealth, as well as of learning and piety”. And as Plato and Theodore were the men looked up to by the others, their power and influence may be the more readily understood.

From two letters appended to the acts of the second ecumenical council of Nicaea and other sources, the mistrust of Tarasius by the monks must be referred to the days of Pope Hadrian. After the seventh ecumenical council was over, some of the monks averred that many of the Greek bishops had obtained their sacred office by simony, and accused the patriarch of restoring to their positions those who had been condemned on account of this vice. Tarasius was not slow to reply. He sent one of the above-mentioned letters to Pope Hadrian, whom he speaks of as “adorned with the chief priesthood”, and “by right and the will of God ruling the sacred hierarchy”. In it he denounces simony, declares his freedom from it, and begs the Pope, “the words of whose mouth we obey”, to pronounce against simony. The other letter Tarasius addressed to the abbot John. He declared that, as he detested the severity of Novatian, he of course received those who did penance for their simony. But of simony he was not guilty himself, nor had he restored to their office those who had been guilty of it. The impression, however, that the patriarch was too compliant remained, and was soon deepened by a circumstance which, both before and since, has brought much evil on many a good man.

The young emperor Constantine VI got tired of his wife Maria, and fell in love with a maid of honor, Theodota. He then tried to induce the patriarch to approve of his design of repudiating Maria. For final answer he heard from the patriarch, “I would rather suffer death and all manner of torments than consent to his design”. Constantine, however, resolved to have his own way. Maria was divorced, and Theodota was married to the emperor (795) by the priest Joseph, “economus” or treasurer of the Church of Constantinople, as Tarasius had of course refused to perform the ceremony. When it was over, however, Tarasius, thinking that no good would come of excommunicating the emperor, but rather harm, as Constantine talked of renewing the iconoclast persecution, took no further action. The monks, however, justly indignant at this flagrant breach of the laws both of God and man on the part of the emperor, boldly declared against emperor and patriarch together. “They considered that they had indeed found a Herod, but no St. John the Baptist”. Constantine, finding that he could not gain over the monks, inflicted upon them scourging, imprisonment, and exile. Plato and Theodore were among those who were so treated. From Thessalonica, his place of exile, Theodore wrote (797) to ask the help of Pope Leo. In his reply the Pope bestowed great praise on the abbot’s wisdom and firmness, but was, under the circumstances, not able to render any material aid. The deposition, however, of Constantine VI.in this year by his mother gave freedom to the monks; and the degradation of the priest Joseph by the patriarch reconciled them to Tarasius.

The intrepid monks were soon in trouble again for opposing the arbitrary conduct of the new emperor Nicephorus in nominating a layman, the secretary and historian Nicephorus, as the successor of Tarasius, who died at the beginning of 806. But the persecution which Theodore and his friends brought upon themselves for this opposition was small compared to what they had to suffer when they cut themselves off from communion with the new patriarch Nicephorus, on the occasion of his restoring the treasurer Joseph to his office at the bidding of the emperor. This act of the tyrannical Nicephorus was part of his policy “to renders the civil power supreme over the clergy and the Church”. Determined to make the monks submit, the emperor caused a council to be held (January 809), in which various disgraceful decrees—to be specified presently—were passed. The Greek emperors could always find a number of bishops to put their names to anything. The monks, banished to different islands, appealed to the Holy See. Among other letters to Leo, Theodore sent the following : “Since Our Lord Jesus Christ gave to St. Peter the dignity of chief pastor, it is to him or to his successor that, as we have learnt from our fathers, we must give notice of any new errors that arise in the Church”. He then went on to tell the Pope of the re-establishment of the priest Joseph and of the synod which was held to condemn the monks, a synod which established a heresy. It had declared that the adulterous marriage of the emperor (Constantine VI) had been contracted in virtue of a dispensation; that the laws of God are not for emperors; that those who fight even to death for truth and justice are not the imitators of St. John the Baptist and St. Chrysostom, and that each bishop is so far master of the canons that he can re-establish deposed priests at his pleasure. If our opponents have not hesitated to hold, on their own authority, an heretical council, whereas, according to ancient custom, they ought not to have held even an orthodox one, without your (Leo’s) knowledge, how much more necessary is it for you to assemble one to condemn their error?

Leo’s reply to this letter is lost; but from a second letter of Theodore we know the Pope sent him some rich presents, perhaps for the support of the exiled monks. The emperor’s persecution of them only ceased with his death (July 811). His successor Michael strove successfully to bring about peace and reconciliation between the patriarch and the monks. The priest Joseph was a second time degraded, and for a time, till the renewed outbreak of the iconoclast heresy under Leo the Armenian, the Church of Constantinople enjoyed a little peace. The great founder of the Studites did not fail to impress both upon the emperor and upon his own monks from what quarter this greatest of blessings was to come. In all their religious troubles recourse must be had to Rome. Writing towards the close of his life to the former (Michael Rhangabe), in the name of all the abbots of Constantinople, he said: “Should a question arise of which your divine magnanimity hesitates to ask or fears to receive the solution of the patriarch, let your powerful arm, strengthened of heaven, seek the decision of Old Rome, in accordance with the custom established from the beginning by the tradition of the Fathers. For it, it is, 0 emperor, imitator of Christ, which is the first among all the Churches of God, viz., that of Peter the proto-throne, to whom the Lord has said, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, etc.” Upon his spiritual children he inculcated the absolute necessity of harmony with the See of Rome, and not with that of Byzantium, which was an heretical fragment on account of its frequent habit of separating itself from the other Sees.

There are some historians who will only see in the action of the aged Plato, and of Theodore and his friends at this period, fanatical opposition of turbulent monks to constituted authority. For ourselves we confess that, when we consider the usual subservience of the Greeks, whether ecclesiastics or laymen, to the whims, however base, of the emperors, we find in this opposition of the monks something very refreshing. Even if they occasionally overstepped the bounds of prudence on the side of rashness, they are worthy of lasting honor, as they contended for principles which lie at the very foundation of the wellbeing of human society

The patriarch Nicephorus took advantage of the accession of Michael to send his synodical letter to the Pope, for Michael’s predecessor had refused to allow him to do so. In the course of a very long profession of faith, he proclaimed his belief in the seven General Councils, and begged the Pope to supply anything that might be lacking in his profession. In conclusion he excused himself for not sending to the Pope his synodical letter before, on the ground of the difficulties of resisting the powerful, and not from contempt or ignorance of what was the correct method of procedure. He begged the Pope to pray to St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, for him.

To bring about external as well as internal tranquility, Michael concluded a treaty of peace with Charlemagne—a treaty which that sovereign caused to be ratified by the Pope before it was finally delivered (812) into the hands of the Greek ambassadors.

The Pope and the Saracen corsairs

Of the many other transactions which must have passed between Leo and Charlemagne after his accession to the empire, or of the relations between the former and Pippin and Bernard, who along with him bore, in succession, the title of “King of the Lombards”, our authorities note but few. However, except for that negligible kind of friction which accompanies the contact of the smoothest of bodies, the intercourse between the representatives of the highest spiritual and temporal authorities in the West was preeminently amicable. By his numerous letters the Pope kept the emperor in touch with the political variations of the peninsula. Presents were constantly passing between them, and in matters of general policy Leo endeavored to conform with the wishes of his protector. It is true he has not unfrequently to complain of the imperial missi. They are either interfering or incompetent. It is equally true that, nettled at these complaints which he had good reason to fear were just, but which, from the material at his disposal, he could not well help, the emperor testily declared he could not find missi to please him. But the disagreements between them were merely surface troubles. The main currents of their respective policies flowed steadily and harmoniously together. Nor, indeed, was there any reason why they should not, as Charlemagne did not, speaking broadly, abuse his position as guardian (custos) and defender of the Church, “despite the efforts made by many to blacken the Pope in his eyes”.

Their political union is well seen in their joint action against the Saracen corsairs of Africa and Spain, who had begun their destructive raids in the early years of the century. Charlemagne advised the Pope to take certain precautionary measures, such as maintaining a fleet. Leo acted on the advice he had received; and, while he had to report the plundering by the Moors of the islands of Ponza (off Gaeta) and Ischia (off Naples), and the sad want of union of the maritime powers of South Italy, he was proud to be able to write that “our territories” were safe. This happy state of affairs he ascribes to the warnings and advice he had received from the emperor and to his keeping his coasts well watched in consequence. Not feeling himself competent, however, to see to the safety of Corsica, he had handed it over to the care of Charlemagne.

Though, moreover, he had no more faith in the competency of Pippin than had his father he undertook, when he should come to Rome, to receive him “as became the son of so great a defender of the Church of God”, and he consulted with him about the defence of the coasts and about the churches, “that they might get their dues (justitias)”. Not in vain did he take counsel with him or with Charlemagne about the rights of the churches. He recovered various patrimonies belonging to the Roman Church situated between Gaeta and the mouth of the Garigliano (Liris). Near the latter place rose a new town, called after his name Civitas or Castrum Leopoli, and there dwelt the papal rector of the patrimony dignified with the title of consul. Ordinarily speaking these rectors were deacons of the Roman Church, but Gay maintains that those to whom we are now referring “were members of the local aristocracy, inhabitants of the Byzantine territory of Gaeta, and that it was probably only on this condition that the popes were enabled to recover their domains”. He points out that the same names are to be found in documents which concern the territory of Gaeta and in those which have reference to the patrimony; and that, while the former are dated with the name of the emperor, the latter bear that of the Pope.

The year before his death, Charlemagne associated with himself in the empire his son Louis of Aquitaine (September 813), as his other two sons, Charles and Pippin, had died. The young Bernard, a natural son of Pippin, was allowed to hold Italy, as its king, in subjection to Louis.

Early in the following year, as the inscription on his tomb sets forth, died Charles the Great, in the seventy-third year of his age and the forty-seventh of his reign, on January 28, 814, the seventh indiction. “No one can tell”, sighs Einhard, “what grief was felt for him all over the earth. The very pagans mourned for him, as the lord of the world”. Christendom, at least, had reason to lament. For death had deprived it of the only arm strong enough to ward off the foes, from within and without, which were again to reduce European civilization to almost as low an ebb as the inroads of the barbarians in the fifth and sixth centuries had done. It was this strength that was especially admired in him by Nithard, the bastard son of his daughter Bertha, and the historian of the troubles under Louis the Pious. “What I take to be the most admirable trait in him”, he says, “is this. He alone was able, by the terror of the law (moderato terrore), to restrain the fierce barbarity as well of the Franks themselves as of the barbarians,—a thing which even the might of Rome had not been able to accomplish. So that they dared not publicly take in hand anything which was not for the general good”. And if his death was very evil for Frankland, it was still more so for Rome, Italy, and the popes.

We shall soon see the great empire of Charlemagne going to pieces. Its great nobles will soon everywhere make themselves independent, and will soon be causing dire confusion by waging war indiscriminately with their supposed sovereigns and with one another, and by oppressing with impunity all that was physically weaker than themselves, whether in the Church or State. The barbarians too had begun their assaults from without. In England and in Ireland the Northmen had already begun the work of demoralization by their savage inroads. Before the middle of this century they had harried the coasts of Spain and inflicted on the Moslem the cruelties they were themselves then engaged in practicing in other parts. In 836 they had sailed up the Rhine, burning and destroying as far as Nimeguen (Nijmegen). Even before the death of Charlemagne they were constantly making descents on the coasts. But that great monarch “constructed a fleet for the war against the Northmen. For this purpose ships were built on the rivers of Gaul and Germany, which flow into the North Sea. As the Northmen were making a practice of ravaging the coasts of Germany with constant harryings, he posted towers and outlooks in all the harbors and at the mouths of those rivers which ships could navigate... He did the same thing in the South, on the coast of the provinces of Narbonne and Septimania, and all along the coasts of Italy as far as Rome, for in those parts the Moors had lately taken to piracy. Thus Italy suffered no great damage from the Moors, nor Gaul nor Germany from the Northmen, during the reign of Charlemagne; except that Centumcellae (the modern Cività Vecchia), a city of Etruria, was betrayed to the Moors, who took and destroyed it; and in Frisia some islands off the German coast were plundered by the Northmen”. From the passage just cited it will be seen that what the Norsemen were to the Northern Seas, the Saracens were to the Southern Seas of Europe. In 831, the latter had secured a hold of Sicily, and before the middle of the century they had appeared before the walls of Rome. When the strong arm and the clear head of Charlemagne were taken away, the causes that were to produce in Europe the anarchy of the close of the ninth and most of the tenth century were free to run their course unchecked.

Among the first to feel the evil effects of the death of the great emperor was his friend the Pope, who was wont to declare how necessary his life was to all good men. During the life of Charlemagne the two had been of mutual advantage to each other. In return for the wise advice, often acknowledged in the capitularies of the emperor, and for the books and learned men supplied to him by the Pope, the latter received the protection which he required against the aggressive ambition of his more powerful subjects. Some of these latter entered for a second time into a conspiracy to compass his death. In some way, however, he became cognizant of the plot, and this time, having had experience enough of the tender mercy he was like to receive at the hands of Roman conspirators, he had them seized and executed. When news of this affair reached the new emperor Louis, he was considerably annoyed at it. Whether he had received a biassed account of the transaction, or whether he conceived that his rights as imperial protector of Rome had been infringed, is not known. At any rate, he ordered Bernard, the king of Italy, to proceed to Rome to investigate the matter. Taken ill himself on his arrival in Rome, Bernard sent to the emperor the result of the inquiries which he had caused to be made through Count Gerold who had accompanied him. The Pope sent to Louis his own ambassadors, as well ecclesiastic as lay. On all the points that were urged against him, Einhard assures us that they completely satisfied the emperor. Soon after this, when the Pope fell ill, insubordination again became rife. This time the disorders arose outside the city. As an earnest of what they would soon be doing on a more extensive scale, not only in the States of the Church but in other countries of Europe, the disaffected nobles collected bands of armed men and proceeded to ravage the country. The “domuscultae”, or “farm colonies”, which Leo had either rebuilt or newly founded in connection with the various cities of the Campagna, they plundered and burnt. They then determined to march on Rome to take by force property which they maintained had been rent from them. Very likely they claimed, as relatives, the estates of the conspirators which would have been confiscated when the original owners of the property had met their death. To what lengths these lawless nobles would have gone, had not their violence been met by force, it is hard to say.

Bernard, however, sent word to the Duke of Spoleto to quell the sedition; and, when his commands had been executed, he rendered an account of the whole affair to the emperor.

Like many of his predecessors, Leo had to enter the lists against the archbishop of Ravenna. The city itself had already felt the touch of his fostering hand. He had sent his chamberlain with a band of workmen to repair the noble sixth-century basilica of St. Apollinaris in Classe, then described as near Ravenna, but now that city and sea have shrunk away from it, it stands, with the green mould upon its columns, like a tainted thing “alone in its rice fields” some three miles distant from the city. The Roman workmen not only thoroughly repaired its roof and quadriportico, of which no trace now remains, but heated it by means of a hypocaust. To the church thus efficiently restored the Pope made many beautiful presents—embroidered silks showing the Nativity and other incidents of Our Lord’s life, and a canistrum (or plate to hang beneath a lamp) of the purest silver and fifteen pounds in weight.

From Agnellus, who was a little boy at the time of which we are writing, it appears that a certain Martin was consecrated archbishop of Ravenna by Pope Leo himself in Rome, sometime before the year 810, perhaps as early as 808. To curry favor with the powerful, Martin, on his return to Ravenna, sent word of his accession to Charlemagne. For some cause which Agnellus did not see fit to record, but which seems to have been immorality and simony, Leo found it necessary to take proceedings against the archbishop. Knowing that he had made it a point to stand well with the rulers of the Franks, the Pope took the precaution of sending a legate to Louis to secure his co-operation. The emperor entered heartily into his wishes, and sent John, archbishop of Arles, into Italy with instructions to take Martin to plead his cause at Rome. When John reached Ravenna he insisted that, on pain of the loss of 2000 golden solidi, its principal citizens should see to it that their archbishop betook himself to Rome. But to Rome Martin had no wish to go. However, he acted as though it was his intention to proceed thither, but feigned illness when he reached the ruined city known as Ad Novas, some fifteen miles from Ravenna. He at once dispatched a messenger to Rome to tell the Pope that he was really anxious to come to him, but that he was too ill and too stout to ride on horseback. Annoyed though he was, as he was very wishful to take him to task, Leo had no choice but to allow him to return to his See. Unfortunately the narrative of Agnellus breaks off abruptly and confusedly in the midst of a description of the efforts made by Martin to gain the goodwill of the imperial missus by giving extraordinary entertainments in his honor, or by making him some magnificent presents. However the episode ended at the moment, it taught Martin a lesson, and when Leo’s successor visited Ravenna, he manifested a very respectful demeanor.

It only now remains to tell something of Leo's work in the domains of liturgy and art. In the Book of the Popes we are told that he decreed that the Litanies of the Saints should be recited and that processions should be made on each of the three days preceding the feast of the Ascension, a decree observed to this day throughout the Catholic Church. In contradistinction to the litanies said on the 25th of Apri1, which are known as the Greater Litanies, these are known as the Lesser Litanies. They were instituted for the same purpose as the former, viz., to beg the blessing of God on the fruits of the earth. The custom of reciting them had originated in Vienne as early as the year 470, under Bishop Mamertus, and had spread thence through Gaul to Rome.

Another ninth century author, Walafrid Strabo (f849), a contemporary of Leo’s biographer, says he had heard that that Pope very often said Mass as many as seven or nine times a day. Strange as such a custom may seem now, it must be noted that, even for centuries after his time, it was left to the devotion or judgment of each priest to settle what number of Masses he would say each day. This freedom of choice seems to have been first limited by the Council of Seligenstadt (1022), which forbade priests to say more than three Masses a day. Alexander II (d. 1073) still further limited the number. By his ruling a priest could say only two Masses a day—one for the living and one for the dead. The present law of one Mass only a day was introduced by Honorius III.

If during the pontificates of Hadrian and Leo the papal treasury was unusually full, those large-minded and large-hearted pontiffs emptied it in a royal and useful manner. The enormous presents which the latter received from Charlemagne, both during that prince’s lifetime and after his death by virtue of his will, helped him to become, if not the most, certainly one of “the most munificent and splendid of the Roman pontiffs”. By far the greater part of his biography in the Liber Pontificalis is taken up with an enumeration of the costly offerings in silks and in the precious metals which he made, for “love of our Lord and to atone for his sins”, to different churches, and of the various restorations of buildings which he effected.

St. Benedict had foretold that Rome would not be destroyed by the barbarians, but would crumble to pieces by storm and earthquake. These potent forces, aided by neglect consequent on the fearsome shrinkage of its population and on its poverty, had already begun their work of destruction when the Saint’s biographer ascended the chair of Peter in 590. “The very buildings do we behold crumbling around us”, is the cry of his broken heart. Incessant fighting with the Lombards during most of the seventh and eighth centuries effectually prevented any serious attempt being made to stem the torrent of decay. Rome continued to go to destruction. But with peace and wealth, the ruin of the city, at least on its ecclesiastical side, was arrested by Hadrian and Leo. By the one it was the exterior of the fabrics, which, speaking broadly, was restored, by the other the interior. Over one hundred and sixty institutions are recorded by name to have benefited by the generosity of Leo. Nor was it only churches, monasteries, and oratories which experienced his devoted care. He gave of his abundance for the dispensing of that charity, which “was a virtue altogether unknown in ancient times”, to both the deaconries and the hospitals. Nor did his charity begin and end at home. His revivifying hand reached not only to places in the more immediate neighborhood of Rome, but to Albano and Palaestrina, to Porto and Ostia, to Velletri and Orvieto, and to distant Ravenna. The abodes of the dead, the silent catacombs, were no less remembered by him. Not one of the seven ecclesiastical regions but saw some of its churches at least transformed by him. From the figures actually recorded in the Liber Pontificalis, it appears that the ornaments in silver which he presented to the various churches weighed more than 22,000 pounds, while those in very ruddy gold weighed some 1764 pounds. Many of the articles, chalices, covers of the books of the Gospels, etc., are said to have been studded with rare gems. The vestments and the various ornaments of silk which he distributed with a lavish hand, and often “out of his own private means”, were embroidered most elaborately, and often represented portions of the “story of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of His holy mother, and of the twelve apostles”. It is more than probable that the execution of all this splendid work would have been quite impossible had it not been for the immigration of Greek artists resulting from the iconoclast persecution. But whoever were the master-workmen, the orders given by Leo must have been followed by a veritable revival of high-class trades in Rome. Lapidaries and silversmiths, silk manufacturers, and workers in stained glass and in the pre-eminently Christian art of glass mosaic must have had a very busy time.

All the churches did not, of course, receive equal attention at the hands of Leo. Most of the ornaments in gold went to St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, and St. Mary Major's, which last basilica he was anxious to adorn “on account of his very great love of Our Lady”. If we tell what he accomplished for one or two only of the churches, monotony will be avoided, and the reader, in possession of certain details, will no doubt be able to form for himself a mental picture of the general church restoration effected by him.

Leo, only naturally, did much for the great basilica on the Vatican hill, “on account of his great love for St. Peter, his foster-father”. Not only did he re-roof almost the whole of it, but he restored the porticos which surrounded its atrium or paradise, the steps which led up to it, the fountains which played before its silver gates, and the tower which overlooked it. Its baptistery, which stood beyond the place where the north transept was afterwards erected, and had already done duty for over four hundred years, he enlarged and rebuilt. “Seeing”, says his biographer, “that the baptistery, from its great age, was threatened with ruin, and that the place was too small for the people who came for baptism, he rebuilt it from the foundations, making it of circular form and of larger size, and placed the sacred font in the midst of this enlarged space, and adorned it all round with porphyry columns, and placed in the midst a column with a lamb upon it of pure silver, pouring water ... He also adorned the baptistery all round with pictures. At the same time he rebuilt from its foundations the Oratory of the Holy Cross (which served as a sort of vestibule to the baptistery), which was going to ruin from age, and adorned its apse with mosaics”.

One of the many inscriptions on the wall of the baptistery contained the verse : “Una Petri sedes unum verumque lavacrum”. This line, as Lanciani notes, contains “an allusion both to the baptismal font and to the chair of S. Peter upon which the popes sat after baptizing the neophytes. The cathedra is mentioned by Optatus Milevitanus, Ennodius of Pavia, and by more recent authors, as having changed places many times, until Alexander VII placed it in a case of gilt bronze at the end of the apse (of the present St. Peter’s).... I saw it in 1867. The framework and a few panels of the relic may possibly date from apostolic times, but it was evidently largely restored after the peace of the Church”.

For the sake of the poorer pilgrims, Leo looked to the outbuildings of the great basilica. He rebuilt the place which had for ages served to lodge them, built, moreover, a new abode for them, and erected baths for their convenience.

But it was on the confession of St. Peter that he lavished his care and treasure, “so that in his time the shrine attained the summit of its splendor... In the confession he made gates of pure gold with various gems ... He put many candelabra of silver round the altar and in the presbytery. He made a new presbytery of beautifully sculptured marble; a fresh proof that presbytery in dealing with St. Peter’s must be taken to denote the enclosed choir. He covered the front of the altar from top to bottom with plates of silver, and within the confession he placed images of the Saviour standing, and of St. Peter and St. Paul on the right and left; and the floor of the confession he covered with gold. These images were apparently of mosaic, and it is quite possible that the figure of Our Lord, which may be seen today at the back of the recess of the confession, may be the very one that St. Leo placed there. The figures of St. Peter and St. Paul are also still there, but they have been entirely renewed. He put twisted columns of silver both at the entrance of the body on the right hand and on the left, and also at the top of the presbytery right and left, or on the side of the men and of the women, eight pairs, weighing altogether 190 pounds. Also eight arches of silver weighing 143 pounds ... He placed a golden image of the Saviour on the beam over the entrance of the vestibule ... and angels of silver gilt right and left in front of the confession, and also the two other angels which stand on the larger beam above the entrance of the vestibule, right and left of the golden image of the Saviour”.

Very numerous and valuable are the recorded presents which he made to the great basilica. Mention is made in the Liber Pontificalis of incense stands and thuribles of gold, of crowns of silver, of precious hangings and of vestments of silk adorned with gems and embroidered with representations of Our Lord giving St. Peter the power of binding and loosing, of the martyrdom of SS. Peter and Paul, etc. He presented it also with candelabra of all sizes in gold or silver, with golden basins set with jewels, with tables of gold, with crucifixes of pure silver, and with chalices and other vessels for the altar in gold and silver. The books of the Gospels which he gave it were bound with plates of gold inlaid with gems, and the ciboriums were covered with the rich veils known as tetravila.

When Leo became Pope, he did not forget his titular Church of S. Susanna on the Quirinal. Hadrian, indeed, is said to have restored the Church; but he cannot have done more than commence the work of renovation. Built in the third century, it was, we are expressly told, on the point of falling to pieces when Leo took it in hand After his work upon it, it was really a new and larger building, resplendent with its sanctuary, its floor, and its numerous columns all of marble. Up to the time when it was again rebuilt, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, its apse displayed the figure of the Pope in mosaic. Fortunately the design of the mosaic was copied before the ruthless demolition of the apse in 1595. It exhibited Our Lord with Charlemagne and Leo, both adorned with the square nimbus. The Pope was represented as wearing the tonsure, as beardless, and as holding in his hand a model of his church. So numerous and costly were the presents of church vessels and vestments which he made to his favorite basilica, that the splendor of its appointments must have well matched the marble glory of its buildings.

Without entering into further details regarding Leo’s ceaseless work for the external glory of God’s House—to restore, for the solemn worship of the Almighty, places which had become refuges for cattle—it may suffice summarily to state that the result of his work and that of his predecessor was to impart a most refreshing luster to the churches of Rome. Their rich presents to them of plate and vestments will have given a beauty and magnificence to the divine service which must have powerfully impressed the pilgrims who flocked to the Eternal City, and hence must have given a considerable impetus to the introduction and expansion of the arts of civilization among the rising nationalities of Europe.

It has, however, been stated that one unfortunate result of the innumerable buildings undertaken by Hadrian and Leo was that the “execution of great designs became impossible, and a certain littleness is therefore everywhere perceptible in the buildings of the period”. The remark is perhaps misleading. Those two popes did certainly undertake innumerable building operations, but they were practically all in the way of restoration. Where they did not merely renew, they enlarged. So that littleness can scarcely be called a result of the work of Hadrian or of Leo. Any littleness they left behind them they had found; but they left a new city where they had found but a mass of crumbling ruins.

Leo died in the month of June, and was buried in St. Peter’s on June 12th (816), the day on which he is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology. “His”, in the words of Gregorovius, “was a powerful nature capable of shrewd reasonings and bold views. The brief moment in which he crowned the new emperor of the West in St. Peter’s made him the instrument of the history of the world, and assured him an undying renown”, as, we may add, the second founder with St. Gregory I of the medieval papacy. The tomb of Pope Leo III no longer exists. In the twelfth century his remains, along with those of popes Leo II and Leo IV, were translated by Paschal II to the oratory where, from the end of the seventh century, had reposed the body of St. Leo I, the Great. Today, these same remains are to be found in an old sarcophagus, on which are reliefs of Christ and the Apostles, the sacrifice of Isaac, etc., beneath the altar of the chapel of the Madonna della Colonna in the right transept of the present St. Peter’s.

The silver grossos (denarii) of Leo, which are still extant, and which are modeled on those of the Franks, are significant of the union of Church and State which he made so close. They bear at once the names of Leo himself, of St. Peter, and either of Charlemagne (Carlus) or of Louis (Ludovvicus) Ipa (Imperator), as the case may be. All the examples of his coinage which have reached us are of this type, with one exception. The unique specimen gives, in place of the name Carlus, a figure of Charlemagne carrying the sword and standard, as protector of the Church. The coins of Leo’s predecessor, evincing an altogether different political situation, are without the name of any other ruler but of Hadrian himself.

STEPHEN (IV) V

A.D. 816-817

Emperors of the East.                                        Emperors of the West.

Constantine VI. (Porphyrogenitus), 780-797.   Charlemagne (King of the Franks), 771-800.

Irene, 797-802. (Emperor), 800-814.

Nicephorus, 802-811.                                           Louis, the Pious or Debonnaire, 814-840.

Michael I, 811-813.

Leo V, 813-820.

Stephen, a Roman and the son of Marinus, was a member Early of that noble family which, in the course of the ninth Stephen century, gave no fewer than three popes to the Church, viz., Stephen himself, Sergius II, and Hadrian II. From his earliest youth he had been brought up in the Lateran palace under Pope Hadrian. To all the care lavished upon him the youthful Stephen faithfully corresponded, and, as a reward for his virtue and learning, Leo III ordained him sub-deacon. As his advance in the way of virtue continued, the same Pope ordained him deacon. From that time forth Stephen devoted all his energies to promote the practice of the precepts of the Gospel both by word and work. His holiness was the common talk of the people. Hence they scarcely waited for the death of Leo to elect their beloved Stephen as his successor. Amidst general rejoicings he was escorted to St. Peter’s, and consecrated (June 22) ten days after the date of Leo’s burial.

Though there is not evidence enough to compel such an inference, it is conceivable that, in their prompt election and consecration of Stephen, the Roman clergy had in view the anticipating of any imperial interference with their rights. At any rate, his election was as absolutely free as that of his predecessors from the time of Pope Zachary.

Still, of course, the emperor had his rights, and these the new Pope was anxious to acknowledge, and so his first act was to cause the Romans to take an oath of fidelity to Louis. This he no doubt did, not only as an act of recognition on his own part of the position of Louis in Rome as emperor and protector of the Roman Church, but also to remind the turbulent party among the Romans that there was a powerful suzerain over them who wielded a sharper sword than did the Pope. But it is certain that he did not make the people take this oath, because he wished to proclaim that he was not himself their ruler. For we shall see later that the Roman people swore to be faithful to the emperor, “saving the obedience they owed to the Pope”.

Stephen’s next step was to send envoys to inform Louis of his consecration. Though his election had been perfectly free, it was only just that the emperor, as his temporal overlord, should be duly informed of his canonical installation. Besides, his views could be more easily stated by word of mouth if Louis were to express any dissatisfaction at not having been allowed any voice in the matter. The envoys were also commissioned to notify the emperor that an interview with him, wherever might be convenient to him, would be acceptable to their master. It is difficult to tell with certainty whether the wish for the meeting proceeded in the first instance from the emperor, anxious to be crowned by the Pope, or from the latter, desirous of obtaining certain privileges from his powerful protector. According to Stephen’s biographer, he undertook the journey “for the sake of confirming the peace and unity of the Church”.

However all this may be, certain it is that the Pope set out for France in the month of August, in company with Bernard, the king of Italy, who was acting under the emperor’s orders. It is to be supposed that, like his namesake who had made the journey before him, he would cross the Alps by the pass of the great St. Bernard, and would rest his weary limbs after the long and dangerous climb at the abbey of St. Maurice on the Rhone. The reception he met with from the emperor was so honorable that “the tongue is scarce able to recount it”. Louis, who had been filled with joy when he heard of the Pope’s intention to come to him, sent forward his archchaplain, Hildebald, Theodulf, bishop of Orleans, and John, bishop of Arles, to meet him; whilst he himself, says Ermoldus, drew up in order to meet the Pope, the clergy, “people, and Senate”.

It was about a mile from the city of Rheims that Louis and the Pope met. Both at once dismounted from their horses. “In honour of God and St. Peter”, the emperor thrice prostrated himself before the successor of the Prince of the Apostles, and saluted him with the words, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord! the Lord our God has shone down upon us!”. “Blessed be the Lord our God”, replied the Pope, “ who has given me to see with my eyes a second King David!”.

When they had embraced each other, the emperor led the Pope to the Church of St. Remy, which was outside the city, where the Te Deum was chanted in thanksgiving. On the following Sunday, after a day or two had been Crowns spent in feastings, “before Mass, in presence of the clergy and all the people, Stephen consecrated and anointed Louis emperor and placed upon his head a golden crown of wondrous beauty and adorned with most precious stones, which he had brought with him, and which Nigellus says had belonged to Constantine the Great! He also placed a golden crown on the head of Queen Irmengard and saluted her as Augusta”.

There are today not wanting authors who, regarding the popes with other eyes than those with which they were regarded by Charlemagne, Louis, and their contemporaries, contend that this act of Stephen was simply a gratuitous interference. Louis, it is urged, had been crowned emperor by his father; but Stephen, fearing that, if he were not to have a share in his imperial coronation, crowning by the Pope would not in future be thought necessary to constitute an emperor, took upon himself to tell Louis that he would come and crown him, and actually did so, regardless of his likes or dislikes. Plastic as Louis was, it is too much to suppose that he was such a puppet as to allow himself to be treated in so high-handed a fashion. What Stephen did, he must have accomplished with the full and hearty concurrence of the emperor and the Frankish nobility.

No contemporary evidence is available to show that at this time there was any received opinion anywhere as to what was or was not necessary to constitute the chief of the “revived empire” of the West. It may, however, be regarded as certain that the Franks looked to Rome as the natural source of empire, and that to them Rome meant the Pope. From the view taken by them of the position of the sovereign pontiff at this period, there can be no doubt that just as they considered him competent to decide who should be their king, so they regarded it as equally within his power to make an emperor. While Louis and the Franks would be satisfied with such coronation as he had received as long as the Pope-crowned Charlemagne lived, they would not be content that the Roman, i.e. the papal, sanction should be wanting when Charlemagne was no more. And so, whether or not Stephen used the words, or anything like them, which Ermoldus puts into his mouth when crowning Louis, the poet voices in them the general feeling as to the source of empire : “Rome, O Caesar, presents you with the gift of Peter!”. Though most of the sources imply at least that Stephen set out for France on his own initiative, and though even Ermoldus once seems to imply the same thing, it is more than likely that what the poet states twice elsewhere is the fact; viz., that Stephen left Rome to comply with the expressed wishes of Louis. And, no doubt, while he sent for the Pope with a view of confirming the privileges of his See, he wanted him in turn to be his powerful support by confirming him in the empire. So that it may be said that Louis was simply emperor, “elect or designate”, till he had been formally crowned by the Pope. “The right to this crowning was indeed hereditary, and the heir to the throne could assume the title of emperor; but the crowning was necessary to invest him legally with this high dignity. Thus was it understood throughout the middle ages. So necessary was the crowning thought to be, that, even after the sixteenth century, the emperors of Germany, when they no longer caused themselves to be crowned, simply took the title of Roman emperor elect, which marked them off from the emperors by divine right”.

As a return for the favor of his coronation, Louis, to use the phrase of a contemporary annalist, “remunerated” the Pope with many presents. Chief among them was an estate (curtis) which the emperor bestowed on the Roman Church from his own private property. This curtis was most lively identical with the “villa Vendopera”, or Vandeuvre (between Troyes and Bar-sur-Aube). Hincmar (Ann., 865) assures us that it had been given by the emperor Louis to St Peter, and Charles the Bald, helped Nicholas I to wrest it from a certain Count Wigo who had for some years been reaping on the Pope’s land what he certainly had not sown.

Before Louis and Stephen parted, they had long conferences together, and the treaty of friendship which had already been struck more than once between the popes and the rulers of the Franks was again renewed. And such favor did Stephen find in the emperor’s eyes that he gave him whatever he asked. More definitely, we are informed by the poet Nigellus that Louis confirmed the privileges of the Roman Church, and caused the chancellor Helisachar to draw up documentary evidence of the fact, as he was anxious for the property of St. Peter ever to remain intact.

It is supposed that, whilst Stephen was at Rheims, he gave the pallium to Theodulf, bishop of Orleans. The pallium was indeed sometimes given to bishops, who were thereby authorized to take the title of archbishop, a title that is found given to Theodulf in some of the diplomas of the emperor Louis. On the strength of this gift, Theodulf maintained that he had the same right as a metropolitan of not being judged without an order from the Pope.

Loaded with presents many times greater than those he Stephen had himself given to the emperor, and accompanied envoys of Louis, the Pope set out for Rome (October 816). He was also attended by a number of liberated political prisoners. “In imitation of Our Saviour, who redeemed us from the captivity of the devil, the Pope brought back with him, as a sign of the goodness of the Church (propietate Ecclesiae), all the exiles who, for their crimes against the Roman Church and Pope Leo, were there detained in captivity”.

On his way home the Pope visited Ravenna. The archbishop Martin, who had shown himself somewhat restive under Pope Leo, was all submission. Stephen said Mass in the Basilica Ursiana, or cathedral founded by St. Ursus, archbishop of Ravenna in the fourth century, and exhibited for the veneration of the people “the sandals of Our Saviour”, a relic of which mention is again made in the life of Pope Nicholas by Anastasius.

Stephen reached Rome before the close of the month of November. After holding the usual ordinations of bishops and priests in the month of December, and confirming the famous monastery of St. Mary of Farfa its possessions, on condition of the daily recitation by the monks of “one hundred Kyrie Eleisons for our sins”, and of a yearly payment to the Roman Church of ten golden solidi, he died on January 24, 817. He was buried, according to the usual custom, in St. Peter’s.

Among the decrees of Gratian there is one of Pope Stephen, which by different authors is either pronounced spurious, or is variously attributed to Stephen V, Eugenius II, Stephen (VI) VII, or John IX. One thing seems certain, and that is, that the decree was not the work of Stephen V. The decree ascribes the tumults that take place on the death of a Pope to the absence of the imperial legates at the Pope’s consecration; sets forth that the presence of the legates was in accordance with canon law and custom, and decrees that the one who has been elected by the clergy, “in presence of the senate and people”, should be consecrated “in the presence of the imperial legates”. Now it is certain that Stephen’s successor was consecrated without the presence of the imperial envoys; that no appeal to “custom” could have been put forth by Stephen V (as Charlemagne had never had an opportunity as emperor of sending envoys to the consecration of a Pope), and that, from 741-817, there was no waiting for the arrival of imperial legates before the consecration was performed. Moreover, we have the express declaration of Florus, the deacon of Lyons, who, about the year 829, wrote a leaflet on the election of bishops, to the effect that “in the Roman Church we see that the pontiffs are lawfully consecrated without any (previous) consulting with the royal authority, but solely in accordance with the disposition of Divine Providence and the votes of the faithful”.

No doubt, then, the decree in question is the work not of Stephen V, but of John IX; for it is the same as the one issued by the Council of Rome (can 10), held in 898 under his presidency. It was evidently assigned to a Pope of the name of Stephen, through a mistake which originated in the fact that acts of the council of John IX, where it is found, begin with the words, “Synodum tempore .... sexti Stephani”.

It seems very doubtful whether any specimens of the Coins (?) of coinage of Stephen V have survived to modern times. Cinagli, indeed, assigns two silver denarii to this Pope on MS. authority. Promis, however, while pointing out that they are not, as supposed, in the Chigi collection, believes that they really are the production of Pope Valentine.

PASCHAL I

A.D. 817-824.

EMPERORS OF THE EAST.                                     EMPEROR OF THE WEST.

Leo V (the Armenian), 813-82o.                               Louis I, the Pious, 814-840.

Michael II (the Stammerer), 820-829.

No careful observer, who in a visit to Rome goes to see the principal churches, can fail to have the name of at least one of the popes of the early Middle Ages impressed upon him. He will soon realize that the monogram of Paschal I is familiar to him, and that he has seen his portrait in a contemporary mosaic more than once. Should interest in the Greek rite have led him to mount the Celian to visit the Titular Church of S. Maria-in-Domnica, one of the very oldest churches in Rome, he will have seen a great ninth century mosaic covering the vaulted roof of the apse, and representing Our Lady seated on a throne with the Divine Child on her knees and surrounded by angels. Kneeling on a step of the throne is a small figure, holding in his hands the right foot of the Virgin. It is that of Pope Paschal, whose monogram appears in a medallion above the figure of Our Lady. Beneath it an inscription proclaims that the church, which was falling to ruins, now shines resplendent, adorned with golden mosaic work. Its glory is as that of the sun in the heavens when it has driven away the dark veil of night. Mary, Virgin, it is for you that the venerable Pontiff Paschal has built in gladness of heart this house to endure through the ages.

Should his piety have drawn him to the Church of S. Prassede (or Praxedes), which dates back to the age of the great persecutions, and of which Paschal had been the titular, to pray before the column at which tradition tells Our Lord was scourged, he will have found many reminders of that “shrewd and energetic” Pope. Again will he have observed the ceiling of the apse aglow with golden mosaic work. On the right of Our Saviour, who occupies the center, is the figure of a man clad in a loose garment of cloth of gold. Holding out his hands beneath this vestment, he is supporting the model of a church. Again, both a monogram and an inscription let us know that we are gazing on the features of Paschal. In the chapel of S. Zeno, wherein is the sacred column, there is not only an inscription to tell us that it owes its decorations to the pious vows of Pope Paschal, but also a half-length figure in mosaic, with a square nimbus bearing the name and curious title of Theodora, Episcopa. In this medallion we have a portrait of the Pope’s mother.

Finally, if his love of music should have carried our observer across the Tiber on a pilgrimage to the church of its patron, S. Cecily, in Trastevere, he would have once more been confronted with a great apsidal mosaic. With her right hand on Paschal’s right shoulder, S. Cecily is seen presenting him to Our Lord, who is giving his blessing in the Greek fashion. Again is the Pope distinguished by the square nimbus of life, and represented as holding a model of the church. Monogram and inscription proclaim the handiwork of Paschal. In language closely akin to the others we have quoted, the latter tells how the Pope repaired and beautified the church, brightened its apse with mosaics, and brought hither from the catacombs the bodies of S. Cecily and her companions. In the same church there is a fresco representing the apparition of S. Cecily to Pope Paschal, of which mention will be made in the sequel. This, however, will not help us to form an idea of Paschal’s personal appearance, inasmuch as it was not painted till about the twelfth century.

All the contemporary mosaics represent him as tall, with large eyes, long face, beardless and tonsured. He is in each case also depicted as clad in a tunic reaching to his feet and ornamented with two long stripes, and wearing a white pallium, with little crosses in red.

The Pontiff, whose figure is today so prominent on the walls of the churches in Rome, was in his time no less distinguished in the world, both by his character and his works. In language borrowed from the biographies of Leo III and Gregory II, and hence, perhaps to some extent at least, made to fit Paschal, a very flattering character is given to him in the Liber Pontificalis. There we are told that the young Roman, the child of Bonosus and Theodora, devoted himself to sacred studies in the school of the Lateran palace, and became not only an adept in church music, but especially learned both in the Old and New Testament. His virtues procured for him his ordination to the priesthood. Among these virtues his piety, modesty, cheerfulness, eloquence, hospitality, love of the poor, and his ready but discriminating charity towards them are especially noted. He was also devoted to prayer and fasting, was a most careful observer of the canons, merciful but just, and a great lover of the churches and of his people. We are also told that he largely increased the donative the popes were wont to give to the clergy, and that he spent large sums of money in redeeming captives in Spain and other far distant lands—captives made by the Saracen pirates—and, “like a good and true shepherd”, bringing them back to their homes. At least before he became Pope, and had more leisure, he was very fond of holding converse with holy monks or others on pious subjects. His well-deserved reputation led Leo III to make him superior of the monastery of S. Stephen the protomartyr, near St. Peter’s. In this position his hospitality found abundant scope in looking after the poor pilgrims, who, “for love of Blessed Peter, the apostle, came from distant climes to his shrine”.

So beloved by all was he for his distinguished merits that, by divine inspiration, he was unanimously elected Pope by the concurrent voice of clergy and people, and consecrated (January 25, 817) the very day after the death of Stephen. He at once forwarded to the emperor notice of his accession. The anonymous author of the life of Louis says that Paschal “sent envoys to the emperor with presents and an apologetic letter (epistola apologetica), in which he pointed out that he had accepted the dignity of the papacy, rather moved thereto by the election and acclamation of the people than urged by any personal ambition.” This apologetic letter is called by Einhard a letter of excuse. It must be noted, however, that it is not an apology or excuse for his consecration without the emperor’s consent, but a humble explanation of his accepting the great honor at all. For Einhard himself sums up the contents of the letter by sayings that the Pope averred that “the honor had been, as it were, thrust upon him, though he did not want it, and often refused it”. Hence even Muratori concludes that it is perfectly plain that up to this period none of the agreements entered into between the popes and the Frank sovereigns included any condition that the popes should not be consecrated without the consent of the Western emperors.

Soon after the dispatch of the first, Paschal sent a second embassy to Louis, of which the nomenclator Theodore was the chief. The embassy requested that “the agreement or treaty (pactum), which had been made with his predecessors, might be renewed with him”. The request was granted. These same ambassadors are credited with bringing back a “donation” from Louis on the lines of those of Pippin and Charlemagne. The authenticity of this diploma, which begins Ego Ludovicus, is altogether denied by some, as by Pagi and Muratori, and affirmed by others. Some take a middle course, and hold that the diploma, as we now have it, contains falsifications. This is the modern line of those who do not accept it unreservedly. The document may be read among those collected by Cardinal Deusdedit towards the end of the eleventh century, and in many other authors. Our quotations will be from the copy in Theiner, who has used the text of Cencius Camerarius (thirteenth century).

The constitution begins: “I, Louis, Emperor Augustus, decree and grant by this deed of our confirmation to you, Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and through you to your Vicar the Lord Paschal, supreme Pontiff and universal Pope, and to your successors forever, the city of Rome and its duchy and dependencies (which are then named), as up to this time they have been held by you and your predecessors under your authority and jurisdiction”. Next, the Pope is confirmed in the possession of the exarchate, Aemilia, and the Pentapolis, which Pippin and Charlemagne had “by deed of gift restored to his predecessors”, and he is granted the Sabine territory and the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, with various cities of Lombard Tuscany, and “Campania, and the patrimonies that belong to your authority and jurisdiction, as that of Beneventum and Salerno, that of upper and lower Calabria, and that of Naples, and wherever, throughout the kingdom and empire committed by God to us, your patrimonies are known to be”.

In like manner Louis confirms the donations which Pippin and Charles “spontaneously” offered (spontanea voluntate), and the revenues which were wont annually to be paid into the palace of the Lombard kings, both from Lombard Tuscany and from the Duchy of Spoleto, “as is set forth in the above-mentioned donations and was agreed upon between Pope Hadrian and Charlemagne, when that Pontiff came to an understanding with him concerning the two duchies of Tuscany and Spoleto, to the effect that every year the above-mentioned revenues should be paid to the Church of Blessed Peter, but that the emperor’s supreme dominion over those duchies was to be preserved”.

All the above territories, etc., were to remain under the jurisdiction of the Pope and his successors, and were not in any way to be interfered with by Louis or his descendants, but rather defended; nor were they to assume any rights in the said territories, etc., except when requested by the Pope of the time.

On the death of a Pope, no Frank nor Lombard is to cause any trouble; but the Romans, with all veneration and without any tumult (most seasonable words for the childishly turbulent Romans), were to duly elect and consecrate a successor to him. After the consecration, envoys were to be sent to the Frankish rulers, to renew “the friendship and peace” that had existed between them and the popes during the reigns of Charles (Martel), Pippin, and Charlemagne.

The diploma signed by Louis himself, his three sons, ten bishops, eight abbots, fifteen counts, a bibliothecarius (librarian), a mansionarius (a sort of sacristan), and a hostiarius (an apparitor), was sent to Pope Paschal by the nomenclator Theodore.

It is urged against the authenticity of this diploma it gives to the popes Sicily, which was at the time in the hands of the Greek emperors, and never came into the possession of the Carolingian emperors, and that, despite the clause on freedom of pontifical elections, Gregory IV (827-844) and other popes were not consecrated until the arrival of the imperial envoys. Other points of minor importance are also brought forward.

Against this it is pointed out that perhaps the largest of the papal “patrimonies”, used to be in Sicily ; that they (along with those in Calabria) had been unjustly confiscated by the Greek iconoclast emperors, and hence that there is no reason for calling in question that the emperor Louis might, as an act of compensation, offer to give the popes the whole island, “if ever it should come into his power” —words actually used in the diplomas of the emperors Otho I and Henry I. Or it may be supposed, in accordance with the text of the two “privileges” just mentioned, that there was in this instance only reference to the patrimony in Sicily.

The clause on the freedom of elections was modified in 824 by the constitution of Lothaire (the son of Louis, and co-emperor with him), which was drawn up with the full consent of Eugenius II. Hence the clause really tells in favor of the authenticity of the diploma, as up to that time the elections had “de facto” been free, and the diploma was legislating on existing lines.

That some document was sent by Louis to the Pope bearing on the donation question is clear enough from the words of Einhard cited above, and still clearer from the words of John V III. to the Roman synod in 875, where he speaks of the great emperor Louis, who not only equaled his ancestors in their liberality towards the Head of the Church and confirmed what they had done, but even increased their donations by most munificent gifts. And if the deed of Louis is not mentioned in that of Otho I, it is in that of Henry I. We conclude, then, in harmony with the general consensus of modern opinion, that it is substantially authentic, as it is in substantial agreement with the deeds of Otho and Henry, and throws light on the donation of Charlemagne. For it shows that, by some later agreement between Hadrian and Charlemagne, the supreme dominion over Lombard Tuscany, and the duchy of Spoleto, which we never find exercised by the popes, was given back to Charlemagne. The popes, however, kept the revenues arising therefrom.

In the same year (July 817) an event, big with fate for the empire, was brought about in Frankland, at Aix-la.-Chapelle, by Louis and his advisers. Of these, the principal ones, the great ecclesiastics of the empire, were primarily anxious to preserve its unity; while others, less foreseeing, were interested in forwarding the German idea of division between sons. The outcome of these conflicting views was a compromise which took the form of an ordinatio imperii. While setting forth that it was not right that “the unity of the empire given to us by God should, for the love of children, be sundered by any human division”, the document declared that the emperor’s eldest son Lothaire should be crowned “in a solemn manner with the imperial diadem, and constituted our consort and successor”. But Pippin and Louis were to be called kings, and to have territories assigned them, “in which, after our death, they may, under their eldest brother, possess regal power”. As Agobard expressed it in 833: “You assigned to your other sons (Pippin and Louis) parts of your empire (regni), but, that it (regnum) might be one and not three, you set over them the one whom you had made the partner of your name”. Pippin was to have Aquitaine, with south-eastern France, etc.; Louis, Bavaria; while Bernard, the emperor’s illegitimate nephew, was left, in an inferior position, in charge of Italy. Various provisions, all, of course, to no purpose, were enacted to preserve the unity of the empire. The kings were not to marry, make war or peace, without the consent of the emperor, and to prevent further subdivision, the kings were not to divide their kingdoms among their children. Their people were to elect successors to Pippin and Louis out of their legitimate children.

Lothaire was accordingly at once duly crowned by his father, and was meanwhile declared heir of the kingdom of Italy. And that the ordinatio might have the highest sanction, it was sent to Rome, and received the confirmation of the Pope. Unworkable as was the new scheme of empire, the first, as we shall see, to break through it was the emperor Louis himself. In the preamble to his ordinatio he had laid it down that the unity of the empire was not to be rent for love of children. He himself was to be the cause of its being torn to pieces owing to that very predilection which he had himself condemned.

Meanwhile the new arrangement did not please Bernard. He appealed to arms; but, terrified by the approach of the emperor with a large army, he gave himself up into his hands. Though his life was nominally spared him, he perished under the punishment—the loss of his eyes—which was awarded him (Easter, 818).

It was some little time before his successor was appointed, and even after Lothaire had received his nomination as king of Italy (820) he was not immediately sent there. Whether an embassy which Paschal sent to the emperor in the May of this year had any connection with Lothaire’s appointment cannot be stated. But a later one, of which the nomenclator Theodore, now primicerius, was the chief, was closely connected with Lothaire. In the following year (828) that prince married Ermengard, the daughter of Count Hugo of Tours, one of the principal men of the empire, and received from the papal envoy the presents from the Pope of which he was the bearer.

Lothaire came to Italy under the tutelage of Wala, abbot of Corbey, in the year after his marriage (822). Under Charlemagne, one of whose most trusted ministers he was, Wala had already ruled Italy, in the name of Bernard. But, finding himself an object of suspicion to Louis, of whose abilities he had a very poor opinion, he had left the world, and retired to Corbey when he became sole emperor. His abilities, however, made him indispensable, and Louis took him from his monastery to guide Lothaire in the government of his kingdom.

Before the young emperor returned to Frankland, at the request of the Pope, and at the express will of Louis himself, the Pope, he went to Rome, “that he might be associated with his father in the empire, not merely in power and name, but also in consecration”, according to the words which Paschasius Radbert (d. 865), makes Lothaire himself use when addressing his father. Received with all honor by the Pope, Lothaire was crowned by him as king of Lombardy and emperor, on Easter Day in St. Peter’s, and, as he is made to say by Paschasius, was girt with the sword for the defence of the empire and the Church, which no one was more willing or more in duty bound to defend than himself. Some historians suppose that Paschal next proceeded to invest Lothaire with supreme power within the city of Rome. The ground for this supposition is a statement by an anonymous continuator of the Lombard history of Paul the Deacon, to the effect that the Pope “granted to the emperor Lothaire the power which the ancient emperors had over the city of Rome”. To say the least of it, this chronicler must have been here anticipating events. Under Eugenius II, the successor of Paschal, large concessions of power in the city of Rome were made to the emperor, as we shall see. But up to the present the Carolingian emperors had not put forth any pretensions to supreme power in Rome. The arrangement or treaty of 817 was still in force. And, if what is said by the anonymous continuator about Paschal’s concession be true, what was done in that direction by Eugenius II would have been meaningless.

During Lothaire’s sojourn in Rome, and whilst with the Pope and the nobility of Rome and the empire he was engaged in administering justice, Sergius, “the librarian of the Holy Roman See”, came forward and maintained that the famous Sabine monastery of Farfa was subject to the dominion of the Roman Church. The abbot Ingoald, however, was able to produce diplomas which showed that it had been under the protection (sub tuitione et defensione), first of the Lombard kings and then of Charlemagne. The latter had declared it free from all tribute, like the great Frankish monasteries of Luxeuil, Lerins, and Agaune (or St. Maurice). As the papal advocate was unable to produce any counter documents, the Pope not only decided that, with the exception of consecration, he had no temporal dominion over the monastery, but ordered the restoration to it of all that his predecessors had unjustly taken away from it.

For the favors shown them by the emperors the monks were always grateful, and in the long struggle between the empire and the papacy the monastery of St. Mary always stood for the former.

After the departure of Lothaire from Rome, the factious elements in the city again began to cause trouble. Under the pretense of loyalty and devotion to the interests of the emperor, a certain section of the higher clergy, and apparently of the nobility also, pursued their schemes of independence or personal aggrandizement with too little regard for secrecy. Two of their number, Theodore, the primicerius, a man whom we have seen deep in the councils of the Pope, and his son-in-law, Leo, were seized in the Lateran palace, blinded, and then beheaded. Their partisans at once sent word of the affair to the emperor Louis, accused the Pope of ordering or conniving at the execution, and asserted that the victims had been treated as they had because they were devoted to the young emperor Lothaire. Paschal also sent legates to the emperor. Louis dispatched to Rome, in order to look into the matter, Adalung, abbot of St. Vedases, and Humphrey, count of Coire. By “compurgation” (that is, by taking an oath along with a great many bishops) the Pope proved his complete innocence “of the blood” of Theodore and Leo. But, at the same time, he took upon himself to defend those who had put them to death, inasmuch as they were his dependents, and had justly inflicted the sentence of death on men who were guilty of high treason. Further envoys were sent by the Pope, with the result that, when Louis heard of the oath of the Pope, and his defence of the authors of the death of the traitors, he concluded that there was nothing further for him to do in the matter. Paschal’s death soon after the return of his envoys put an end, as far at least as he was concerned, to all further relations between Rome and the empire. But the terrible incident set the lovers of law and order both in the Church and the State earnestly thinking. That factions should have become so powerful as to dare, without the knowledge and consent of the Pope, to put even to a deserved death his chief minister, viz., the primicerius, revealed a state of things which imperatively demanded a remedy. The palliative invented by the statesmen of the empire and the Church was, as we shall see, the constitution of 824. If it lessened the liberty of the Holy See, it tended to strengthen its hands against the fearsome factions of the Roman nobility. Of what these were capable, indications have already been given in the cases of the attack on Leo III and of the murder of Paschal’s ministers. When, in the tenth century, the arm of the Empire, which the pact of Lothaire (824) was to place more at the disposal of the popes, became impotent, their awful power for evil will be clearly revealed against a lurid background of sacrilege and murder.

As to his predecessor Leo III, the persecuted monks in the East turned to Paschal. For a short time the upstart emperor Leo V the Armenian, had had the good sense to leave the direction of religious matters to those whom it concerned. But after completing various secret preparations, he began his more open attack on image-worship by forcing the patriarch Nicephorus, who now displayed a noble firmness, to abdicate. He was then sent into exile (March 815). An imperial officer, a layman, an ignorant and married man, one Theodotus, “who was called Cassiteras and Flavianus”, was consecrated patriarch in his stead (April I, 815). Being the brother-in-law of Constantine Copronymus, he had thoroughly imbibed his iconoclastic spirit. His immediate successors were Theodore the Studite. And again did he turn to Rome for comfort and strength in the midst of his trials (817). In his own name and in that of four other abbots he wrote to Paschal, the pastor established by God over the flock of Christ, the stone on which is built the Catholic Church. “For you are Peter”, he said, “since you fill his See”. Theodore then proceeds to tell the Pope of the persecution that had fallen on images and men alike, and begs him to come to their assistance, as Jesus Christ had given him command to confirm his brethren. He entreats the Pope, “as the first of all”, to let all the world know that he anathematizes those who had dared to anathematize the patriarch and the image-worshippers in the East, and assures him that, by so doing, he would be performing a work which would please God, sustain the weak, confirm the strong, and raise up those who had fallen. The patriarch Theodotus also wrote to the Pope, and sent him envoys. But these the Pope would not see, an action which elicited (818) a second letter from Theodore. The Pope was from the very beginning the pure source of the orthodox faith, wrote the unconquerable monk; he has proved that the visible successor of the Prince of the Apostles, recognizable by all, truly governs the Roman Church, and that God has not abandoned the Church of Constantinople.

Besides sending letters full of words of consolation to the clergy and religious of the Eastern Empire, Paschal also sent (about the year 818) legates to the emperor with a refutation of his iconoclastic arguments. In the fragment of this which has come down to us the Pope urges: “When in the Holy Spirit (I Cor. XII. 3) the name of Jesus is pronounced, the heart is filled with pious affections. To paint a picture of Jesus is to do more, as it is a more difficult thing than to pronounce His name, and surely if done in the Holy Spirit will not be of less aid to devotion. Will it be maintained that there is no need of signs to unite ourselves to God? That would be to forget that the sacraments are also signs. Would baptism be necessary if there were no need of signs? If faith does not admit of signs, why make the sign of the cross? If God detests images, why do we consider it our highest prerogative to be made after the image of God?”. The Pope also shows that the arguments drawn from the Old Testament have no weight, and points out the difference between adoration and veneration, between the substance of an image and the sublime original which it represents. These commonsense arguments had no more effect on Leo V than they have today on many non-Catholics. To both, image-worshippers are idolaters. But they had a most beneficial effect on the suffering Catholics. They gave them courage in their hour of need. Hence, while Theodore laments that the iconoclasts have cut themselves off from “the See of the supreme pastor, where Jesus Christ has deposited the keys of the faith, against which the gates of hell—the tongues of heretics—have never prevailed and never shall prevail”, he cries out, “Let, then, the apostolic Paschal rejoice, for he has accomplished the work of Peter, and let the multitude of the faithful thrill with gladness because they have seen true bishops, formed on the model of the ancient Fathers!”." Like so many other persecutors of the Church, Leo V perished by a violent death (December 25, 82o); and, as we shall see under the life of Eugenius II, the Church of Constantinople had a few years of comparative peace.

In the correspondence of the Studite, as may be seen even in the extracts cited above, there is frequent allusion to St. Peter’s keys. It is not at all unlikely that they were especially impressed upon his mind by their use in a curious religious ceremony observed in Rome in connection with them, of which we have certain knowledge only through his letters. These reveal to us the fact that he was in constant communication not only with Greek monks resident in Rome, especially with Basil, abbot of SS. Andrew and Sabas in cella nova on the Coelian, but also with others who were in the habit of going backwards and forwards between Old and New Rome. Hence there is no cause for hesitating to accept what he tells us about Roman customs on the ground that he was a stranger to the Eternal City.

In a letter of the saint treating of image-worship, comparatively recently discovered, and printed in a volume (IX) of the Nova Patrum Bibliotheca, which was presented to Leo XIII on the occasion of his sacerdotal jubilee in 1887, there occurs the following interesting passage : “I am informed that in Rome they carry in solemn procession the keys of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. Christ, of course, did not give him these material keys, but he gave them to him mystically when he gave him the power of binding and loosing. But the Romans have made silver ones, and present them for the veneration of the people. Great is their faith! Among them, according to the word of the Lord, is set the immovable rock of the faith, whilst here (at Constantinople), as it seems, infidelity and wickedness are in the ascendant”. This unique passage not only makes known to us a pretty religious observance of the Roman Church, but throws light on earlier writings which enable us, seemingly, to trace back this veneration of the keys at least to the close of the fifth century, and gives further meaning to the custom of sending golden or other keys to important personages practiced by the popes, at least, as early as the sixth century.

One result of Leo’s persecution was to cause a still further immigration of Greek monks into Rome and other parts of Italy, and a consequent deepening of Hellenic influence, especially in its more southerly portions. It was no doubt some of these exiles whom Paschal placed in the monastery which he built and endowed in connection with the Church of St. Praxedes, in order that, “by day and night”, they might in their own tongue praise God and the saints whose relics there reposed.

One of the Greek monks, who at this time came to Rome, “inasmuch as it was outside the tyrant’s sway”, was a biographer of the historian Theophanes, the holy monk Methodius. On the death of Leo V he returned to Constantinople with letters from the Pope for the new emperor, Michael II. Paschal exhorted him to return to the orthodox faith, and to re-establish Nicephorus on the patriarchal throne. But though, with courageous freedom, Methodius in person supported the Pope’s arguments, the emperor was not moved. He upbraided the good monk with being a source of trouble and bad example, and caused him to be scourged and imprisoned. In the beginning of his reign, he had shown himself comparatively tolerant towards the worshippers of images, but after he subdued the rebel Thomas (823), they felt his hand, though not so rough as Leo’s, still heavy upon them.

The efforts made by Charlemagne to subjugate and civilize the Saxons, and to secure the north-eastern frontiers of the empire by force of arms and by the preaching of Christian doctrine, had often been retarded by fierce inroads of the cruel heathen Danes, “who dwell upon the sea”. It was clearly, therefore, a work even of the first political importance to bring about their acceptance of the precepts and truths of Christianity. Some attempts had already been made to convert them.

The great St. Wilibrord had labored amongst them. We find another of our countrymen eagerly inquiring, in the year 789, “if there is any hope of the conversion of the Danes”. But from the opposition of princes, and from one cause and another, especially from the fear entertained by the Danes that their independence would disappear with their religion, no conspicuous success had attended these early endeavors. Ebbo, archbishop of Rheims, was now unfortunately to add to the number of failures. His design of working for the conversion of the Danes was at once approved by the emperor Louis, and by the great ones of the empire. To proceed with due regard to ecclesiastical order, Ebbo went to Rome with intent to procure the sanction of the Holy See. This he duly received. Paschal addressed a letter (c. 822) “to all his most holy brethren and fellow bishops and priests, and to the most glorious princes, dukes, and magnificent counts, and to all Christians”. In his solicitude for the Lord’s flock, it becomes the Pope, he writes, to have a care for those who sit in the shadow of death, and so “to the parts of the North”, by the authority of the holy apostles, he sends Ebbo to enlighten them. In any difficulties that may arise he must ever have recourse to the Holy Roman Church. One Halitgar is named by the Pope as a colleague for Ebbo. All are exhorted to help the undertaking.

In Denmark no opposition was placed in the way of Ebbo. In a short time after he had crossed the Eider, which was fixed by treaty between Charlemagne and the Danish King Hemming as the boundary of Denmark, he had baptized a great many idolaters. But, for some reason, he unfortunately gave up the great work he had taken in hand, and returned to France. Though he did not cease to interest himself in the conversion of the Danes, the glorious title of Apostle of the North was to be given not to him but to St Ansgar, who, however, in his modesty, afterwards attributed to Ebbo and to the emperor Louis all the success of his own unceasing apostolic toil. To Ebbo, on the contrary, was reserved deposition (835)—undeserved perhaps—for taking part against the emperor Louis. But though a real beginning of the Christianizing of Denmark was made by Ansgar, if not by Ebbo,” a hundred and fifty years were to roll by before the faith of Christ was anything like generally adopted by its people, and two hundred before it could be regarded as the religion of the nation”.

Concerning Paschal’s other dealings with men or things outside Rome, but little further can be gleaned from his letters or from our other sources. As that little is of no special interest, we shall only notice one more of these extra-urban relations. It is partially revealed to us by a fragment of a letter of Rhabanus (properly Hrabanus) Maurus to Hatto, abbot of Fulda. From this document, which has been preserved for us in a most confused manner by the centuriators of Magdeburg, it appears that there had been a dispute between Bernulf, bishop of Wurzburg, and the abbot of Fulda, which was in his diocese, as to the extent of the privilege which St. Boniface had secured for that famous abbey from Pope Zachary. The bishop, who lost his case before a local synod, and was condemned for holding what was decided to be an illegal ordination in the monastery, seems to have appealed to Rome, and to have secured some decision in his favor. Whatever was the nature of the verdict, it seems to have proved very distasteful to the monks. Rhabanus, who became their abbot in 822, wrote a very strong letter to the Pope on the subject of the privileges of the monastery. So annoyed was he at its contents, that he threw into prison the monks who brought it, denounced its author to the bishops of France, and threatened to excommunicate him. How this affair terminated is not known. We cannot, however, leave this, the greatest scholar of his age, the primus praeceptor Germaniae, without noting what was his idea of the position held by Pope Paschal. He calls him the first bishop of the world, the successor of Peter, and entreats him to lead men to the pastures of life. He describes himself as the follower of Paschal, and prays “Christ our God to open wide the gates of heaven that Paschal and his flock may enter it together”.

The life of Paschal must not be brought to a close without some notice of the restorations that exclusively absorb the attention of his contemporary biographer. To us the most interesting work of the Pope in this department is that in connection with the Anglo-Saxon quarter of the city of Rome, viz., that part of the Trastevere about the church of S. Spirito in Sassia. The Book of the Popes tells how, through the carelessness of some of the English, a fire destroyed not only the whole of their quarter, “which in their own language they call burgh”, and which the modern borgos that lead to St. Peter’s from the bridge of St. Angelo still mark out, but almost all the splendid colonnade that led up to St. Peter’s. Full of anxiety for the Church of St. Peter, and “for the distress of the English pilgrims”, the Pope rushed barefoot to the scene of the fire. And so much, continues the biographer, was the hand of God with the Pope, that the flames did not spread beyond the place where he first arrived. The fire had broken out in the very early morning, but Paschal remained on the spot till daylight, when at length, by his prayers and the exertions of all the people, the flames were subdued. The distress caused by the fire was relieved by the Pope by large gifts not only of money and clothes, but also of building materials, so that the English were enabled to rebuild their houses. The damaged colonnade was also completely restored by the energetic Pontiff.

Paschal’s love of the Church of St. Peter caused him to expend money upon its adornment. He built within it a large and very beautiful oratory dedicated to SS. Processus and Martinianus, erected an altar in honor of S. Sixtus II near the confession of St. Peter, and presented it with many elaborately embroidered vestments and with valuable plate.

Love of his predecessor “of pious memory, the lord Pope Leo III”, led him to put again into thorough working order the hospital for pilgrims which Leo had built near St. Peter’s, “in the spot called Naumachia”, but which the neglect of its governors had already caused to be overwhelmed with poverty.

A diligent inquiry into the condition of all the neighboring monasteries revealed to Paschal the fact that the nuns of the convent of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, situated on the other side of the aqueduct of Claudius and near his Lateran palace, were so poor that the time they had to devote to procuring for themselves the means of livelihood left them none in which to sing “the praises of God and His saints”. The Pope so endowed them that “they could live well and religiously”.

One most interesting feature of Rome, however, he did not attempt to restore, viz., the catacombs, the cemeteries of the early Christians. After the triumph of Christianity, in the fourth century, the catacombs became places of pilgrimage; for there rested the bodies of those who had given their lives for Christ, the Lord. But the damage they sustained in the following centuries at the hands of Goth and Lombard, the rapidly increasing unhealthiness of the country round Rome, and the consequent translation of the relics of the martyrs into the City, caused them to be gradually abandoned. It was about the middle of the seventh century, under Pope Theodore I, that the practice of translating the bodies of the saints from the catacombs to churches in the City was inaugurated. In the following century it was in active operation. The wholesale denuding of the catacombs by Paschal of the sacred treasures, which had so long attracted the pilgrim, was the deathblow to the custom of pious pilgrimage to them.

It was to the Church of St. Praxedes, which he had quite rebuilt, that Paschal translated most of the relics which he took from the ruined cemeteries; for he did not wish that the bodies of the saints there buried should fall into the same unhonored decay as their sepulchers. The translation was conducted with the greatest pomp. A long list of the sacred remains which were removed on July 20, 817, has come down to us engraved on marble. Altogether some two thousand three hundred bodies were brought to St. Praxedes’s. Most of them were buried beneath the high altar by the Pope’s own hand, but a few were interred in the chapel of St. Zeno, which the Pope had built in memory of his mother Theodora, and in other oratories of the basilica.

Of all the relics, however, which were touched by him, those of St. Cecily are the most famous and interesting. In fact the history of St. Cecily and her relics is not merely interesting, it is of the first importance as proving what a really large amount of credibility may be due even to those acts of the martyrs which are not considered authentic.

At one time the acts of the martyrdom of St. Cecily were regarded as almost entirely fabulous. But, nowadays, the discoveries of De Rossi in the Catacomb of S. Callixtus, following on the records of the biographer of Paschal, and on the investigation of Cardinal Sfondrati in the sixteenth century, have made it plain that if the acts of St. Cecily, as they have come down to us, do not date beyond the fifth century, and have been corrupted, they are nevertheless true, “not only in their chief features, but also in many minute details which only a contemporary witness could have collected, and which no later copyist has altered”. Finding that the Church of St. Cecily, in Trastevere, was falling into ruins through old age, Paschal rebuilt it on a more magnificent scale. And considering that the Church of St. Cecily ought to have her relics, he tried to find them. At first no success attended his efforts, and when he was told that the Lombards had carried off the body of the saint in one of their riflings of the cemeteries, he abandoned the search altogether. Early one Sunday morning, however, when he was saying matins in St. Peter’s, he fell asleep. In his slumber a maiden in angelic raiment seemed to stand at his side and upbraid him for listening to idle tales, and giving up his search for her when he had been so near her that they might have conversed together. In reply to the Pope’s questions, the maid told him that her name was Cecily, and that the Lombards, though desirous of doing so, had failed to find her body, and that he must continue his quest for it. Thus incited, Paschal recommenced his search, and at length found it clad in cloth of gold, and with linen cloths soaked in the martyr’s blood at the foot of the body. With great honor were the relics of the saint brought into the city; and, together with the body of her spouse Valerian and with those of other saints, were placed under the high altar of the new church.

Though not directly bearing on the life of Paschal, the following facts in connection with the relics of the saint are too interesting to be passed over. In the year 1599 Cardinal Sfondrati, when making certain alterations in the Church of St. Cecily, came across a marble sarcophagus. Within it he found a coffin of cypress wood, and, within that again, the body of St. Cecily, clad in its garments of cloth of gold, and in the position in which the acts of her martyrdom describe her as buried, and as it was afterwards represented in the beautiful statue of Maderno. The body was still incorrupt, and was exposed for some weeks for the veneration of the faithful. The excitement caused by this discovery can be well imagined. The sculptor Maderno often went to see the body; and, as the inscription on his marble statue of the saint sets forth, he depicted it as he saw it. The great historian Baronius and the archeologist Bosio, who were eye-witnesses of these events, have left full accounts of them.

Finally, when in the nineteenth century the great archeologist De Rossi discovered the chapel of the popes in the cemetery of St. Callixtus, mindful of the fact that, not only from the biography of Pope Paschal, but also from earlier documents, St. Cecily had been buried near the popes, made a diligent search for her original burial place. To his intense joy he discovered a chamber, then full of earth, leading from the chapel of the popes. When the earth was removed, frescos on the wall proved that the sepulcher of this illustrious virgin martyr had been discovered, and gave a most wonderful confirmation, not only to the biography of Paschal, but even to the acts of her martyrdom.

Among the many changes effected by the Pope in the churches, we read of his raising the pontifical chair in St. Mary Major’s in order that he might be able to pray and carry out the ceremonies of the Church with less distraction. Before he made the change, the women who came to Mass were close behind the Pope’s chair, so that he could not speak to the servers without their knowledge. To understand the significance of this passage of the Liber Pontificalis, it is necessary to bear in mind that in this church, while the Pope’s chair was in the center of the apse as usual, the matroneum, or place for the women, was not in its ordinary position, nor was the apse itself of the customary type. The matroneum was not in the upper galleries above the porticos of the men, but at the back of the apse, in a space formed by its peculiar arrangement. For the apse was supported not by a blank wall, but by pillars; while at some distance behind them, thus leaving a space for the matroneum, there was a blank wall which served as a sort of buttress to the basilica.

On their return from their embassy to the emperor Louis, the Pope’s envoys had found him, as we have already noticed, very ill. It is more than likely that his spirit was broken by the ingratitude and treason of his primicerius. He died soon after their return, apparently on February 11, 824; or, according to Jaffe, in the month of May or in the very beginning of June. The Liber Pontificalis says he was buried in St. Peter’s. But Theganus has it that “the Roman people would not allow his body to be buried in St. Peter’s before Eugenius succeeded him, and that he ordered the body to be buried in the place which he had built in his lifetime”, i.e. in the Church of St. Praxedes, as an ancient inscription there, now no longer in existence, once proclaimed.

When we find it stated that Paschal died “hated by a great part of the Romans”, it is necessary to note how very ambiguous is the passage just quoted, on the strength of which the statement is made. It is quite capable of meaning that they would not have the prompt election of a new Pope interfered with by funeral functions. In any case we must be on our guard against receiving a false impression. Those whom we should nowadays understand by the Romans, or the Roman people, were then of no account; they had no more influence on events than had the people of any other country at the time. If Paschal was hated, it was only by that party among the nobles which was opposed to him, and which became so powerful on his death as to carry the election of their candidate, Eugenius, in despite of opposition.

In the Roman martyrology he is honored among the saints 1 on May 14.

EUGENIUS II.

A.D. 824-827.

EMPERORS OF THE EAST.                      EMPEROR OF THE WEST.

Leo VI (the Armenian), 813-820.                Louis I, the Pious, 814-840.

Michael II (the Stammerer), 820-829.

OWING to the uncertainty which attends the date of Paschal’s death, the exact date of the consecration of Eugenius cannot be determined. It took place seemingly sometime between February and the second half of the month of May (824), certainly before June 6. For the Council of Mantua (827) is described as being held on June 6, in the fourth year of Pope Eugenius. It is also further certain that he was not elected without trouble.

In Rome, as elsewhere in this age, the nobility were striving to make themselves independent. But in Rome the strife of parties was accentuated by the fact that, whereas elsewhere there was a three-sided contest going on to decide respective rights—a contest between king, nobles, and people—in Rome there was, normally, a four-sided struggle constantly in progress. For there the views and aims of the ecclesiastical nobility were an additional factor. These parties were, of course, often increased in number by subdivision, as one section of the same party would suppose that its interests could be best promoted in one way, and another by some other method. For instance, one faction of the nobility would conclude that independence might best be won for the nobles by adhesion to the Pope, another by submission to a foreign and distant ruler.

At any rate, in the present case, the nobles, whether that faction which had been quashed by Pope Paschal or not, carried the day, and elected one, who, from his father’s name (Boemund), might perhaps have been of foreign descent. Evidently at this juncture the nobles argued that their interests would be best secured by limiting the power of the Pope and by giving greater influence to a foreign prince who would be strong enough to serve as a drag on the authority of the Pope over them, but not enough to prove any practical hindrance to their own designs. In the year 824, therefore, that party prevailed which then first appeared by name in history, and which, by completely gaining the upper hand, was to work so much harm to the papacy in the tenth century, viz., the party of the nobles. “Vincente nobilium parte”,—words worth committing to memory as presaging the history of the papacy in the following age,—the popular candidate was defeated and that of the nobles placed on the chair of Peter. Sometimes, indeed, the Roman nobles overreached themselves; and from time to time the emperors, by severe practical lessons, taught them that they had a master who was harder to reckon with than a Pope, who was generally one of their own citizens, and always more disposed to an easy and more merciful rule.

Here we cannot do better than translate a few remarks of the Jesuit, Father Lapôtre, on the growth of the influence of the nobility on papal elections, remarks eminently calculated to throw light on many episodes in the history of the popes.

“From being external (i.e. from the Byzantine emperors and from the Lombards), the danger to the papacy had become internal. From the time when the Pope came to hold within his hand all the great dignities of the State as well as those of the Church, when he had become, in a sense, the sole distributor of fortune and power, the lay aristocracy felt the need of taking a more active part in the election of the popes, and of organizing round the Holy See a more energetic defence of its interests. Under the somewhat ambitious title of Roman Senate, all those whom riches, or the exercise of civil offices or military commands, had raised above the common level, formed themselves into a kind of privileged caste, by the side of the clerical order, and often in opposition to it. Masters of the army, the high positions of which they held, and consequently all-powerful with the middle class, the only division of the citizens which was enrolled in the Roman army, they scarcely left to the clergy influence over the proletariate. Thus, by degrees, they succeeded in deciding papal elections (e.g. in the case of Eugenius II and Sergius II); whereas formerly the laity, whether high or low, had in that matter no other right than that of recognizing by their homage the candidate selected by the general assembly of the Roman clergy.

“Woe to the Pope who dared to look outside this aristocratic ring for the chief members of his government; woe especially, if born in a lower sphere, he entered the papal palace accompanied by poor relations, anxious to advance themselves. Placed between the very natural desire of securing the prosperity of his own friends and the fear of discontenting the powerful families, it was hard for him to escape one or other of these dangers, viz., either of putting himself into unsafe hands, of confiding in strangers of doubtful fidelity, or of entrusting the direction of affairs to relations attached to him indeed, but ill fitted for the task.

“The political power of the Holy See was scarcely founded when there already began the melancholy role of certain papal families, of that nepotism from which the papacy has sometimes suffered so much”.

The possession of temporal power by the popes unquestionably brought them difficulties, but it would be utterly erroneous to suppose that the want of it would have freed them from all perils. The absence of it would have left them exposed to more substantial dangers.

To return to the election of Eugenius, whom, after what has been said, we may well suppose to have been one who was at least expected to sympathize with the nobility. Still, it must not be imagined that he was not a man of character. This may be the more readily believed when it is known that the abbot Wala worked hard to bring about the election of this same Eugenius, in the hope that certain needed reforms would be effected by him. The abbot himself, if an imperialist, was one of the most distinguished men of his age, not only by his birth and talents, but also by his virtue and zeal for reform—the Jeremiah of his time, as he was called. The new Pope was at least a man of a most conciliatory disposition. From the Liber Pontificalis we learn that before he became Pope he had, while in possession of the Church of St. Sabina on the Aventine, long ably fulfilled the duties of archpriest, that he was as learned as he was eloquent and handsome, and that he was generous to the widow and the orphan, and a despiser of the world. Day and night, his only wish was to do what was pleasing to Christ. When he became Pope he was apparently advanced in years, and was then especially distinguished for his humility and his love of peace.

News of the election of Eugenius was sent to Louis by the subdeacon Quirinus. Then, to quote the exact words of Eginhard, our best authority for this period, as he (Louis) was himself “intent on an expedition against Brittany, he determined to send to Rome his son and partner in the empire, Lothaire, that in his stead he might, along with the new Pope and the Roman people, legislate on what the state of the case seemed to require. (Lothaire) accordingly set out for Italy after the middle of August ... and was honorably received by the Pope. When the young emperor had made known his instructions to him, with the benevolent assent of the aforesaid Pontiff, he so reformed the condition of the Roman people, which by the perversity of some of the judges (or nobility) had for some time been in an unsatisfactory state, that all who, owing to the unjust deprivation of their property were in great distress, were greatly consoled by its recovery which, through the grace of God, was brought about by his coming”. That the gist of all this is that the party of the nobility which had been put down by Paschal now regained its property and position, is still clearer from the words of the Astronomer. He tells us that Lothaire complained that of those who were true to the emperor and the Franks, some had been put to death and the others held up to ridicule, and that through the apathy and negligence of some of the popes, and the blind cupidity of the judges, many had been unjustly deprived of their property.

It would seem that some of these judges, i.e. noble functionaries of the opposition party of the late primicerius (Theodore), had been sent into exile in France, no doubt about the time of his murder. The only political notice in the short biography in the Liber Pontificalis is to the effect that “Roman judges, who had been detained as prisoners in France, returned to Rome during the reign of Eugenius, and that he not only allowed them to take possession of their ancestral property, but also helped them himself, as they were almost entirely without resources”.

But it was no part of Lothaire’s idea to leave the nobles supreme in Rome. If he was anxious to have a share in ruling the states of the Church, and so to interfere with the power of the Pope, he was just as determined that no one but the Pope and the emperor should have a voice in the government of Rome. He supported the power of the nobility to the extent above described, that they might act as a check on that of the Pope; but to keep them within bounds he published, with the Pope’s consent, as Eginhard took care to add, a ‘constitution’ in nine articles. If it hampered the Pope somewhat, he readily accepted it; because it would, had it been properly enforced, have effectually stopped the growing encroachments of the nobles. It was a veritable concordat agreed to between the Church and the State for their joint advantage.

It was to the following effect: “We decree, (1) that all who have been received under the protection of the Pope, or under ours, have the full benefit of this protection. And if anyone shall presume to violate it, let him know that his life is in question. For we make this decree that due obedience be paid in all things to the Pope, or to his dukes and judges appointed to administer justice”. (2) The pillage of church property, which had up to this often been practiced on the death of a Pope and sometimes even during his lifetime, was forbidden. (3) Any interference with papal elections on the part of those who had no right to take part in them was prohibited. (4) Every year, commissioners were to be named by the Pope and the emperor, who were to inform the latter how the dukes (the governors of the cities) and judges performed their duties. Failure in this respect was to be corrected by the Pope, or, if he did not do so, by missi sent by the emperor. (5) The whole Roman people were to be asked under which law (the Roman, the Gothic, or the Lombard) each one elected to live, and then to be told that they must live up to or be judged by the law they had selected. (6) The imperial commissioners were to see to the restoration to the Roman Church of that portion of its property which had been usurped by the powerful. (7) Border pillaging was to be put down. (8) When the emperor was in Rome there had to appear before him the dukes, judges, and other officials, that he might know their number and names, and admonish them as to their duty. (9) Finally, “everyone who desires to obtain the favor of God and of us, must yield in all things obedience to the Roman Pontiff”. To ensure the carrying out of this ‘constitution’, we have the authority of the anonymous continuator of Paul the Deacon for stating that Lothaire and the Pope caused the Romans to take oath as follows : “I promise, in the name of God Almighty, by the four Gospels, by this cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the body of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, that from this day forward I will be faithful to our lords the emperors, Louis and Lothaire, all the days of my life, to the utmost of my strength and ability, without guile, saving the fidelity which I have promised to the sovereign Pontiff; that I will not consent that the election of a Pontiff for this See be made otherwise than in accordance with the canons and justice, and that the ‘elect’ shall not be consecrated without taking, in the presence of the emperor’s envoys and of the people, an oath like to the one which Pope Eugenius of his own accord took for the preservation of all”.

Admitting the authenticity of this formula, it is clear that the fidelity which the Romans promised to the emperors was subordinate to that which they had to preserve to the Pope as their supreme lord. The oath to be taken by the Pope was the ordinary oath to rule justly which is taken by sovereigns at their coronation; or, as Dollinger thinks, it was to express “his desire to show to the emperor the honor which was due to him as protector of the Church”. When he had thus established for himself a position in the government of Rome, Lothaire took his departure.

Before he left, however, he witnessed the presentation by the Pope of a pallium to Adalramm, archbishop of Salzburg. As the full signification of the giving of the pallium is brought out by the letter of the emperor Louis asking Eugenius to bestow it, that letter is worth quoting. “Our faithful servant, Adalramm, the archbishop of the Church of Salzburg”, writes the emperor, “has earnestly asked us to grant him permission to visit the shrine of the blessed apostles, and to commend him to your Holiness. To his just request we have assented; and we beg you to give him a gracious reception and to bestow upon him the pallium of your sacred authority. For his predecessors have been wont to receive from yours the pallium of apostolic authority. And so, strengthened by your Holiness’s blessing and authority, he may be able to raise his people to a higher spiritual level”.

Probably whilst Lothaire was still in Rome, there arrived envoys as well from the emperor Louis as from the Greeks on the interminable image question. In the beginning of his reign the emperor Michael II, known as the Stammerer and the Armorian, though always an iconoclast, showed himself tolerant. The Studite returned to Constantinople. Under the pretense of bringing about a settlement of the difficulties respecting images, Michael endeavored to bring about a joint synod of the iconoclasts and the orthodox (821). But the latter knew the character of the man with whom they were dealing, and declared that they could not sit in synod on equal terms with heretics already condemned; and that, if there was a point which the emperor did not consider had been properly cleared up by the patriarchs, he should submit it to the decision of old Rome, for such was the most ancient custom. “That Church was the head of all the churches of God. It had had Peter for its first bishop, to whom the Lord had said, 'Thou art Peter”, etc. (S. Matt. xvi. 18).

The Studite, in a letter to the treasurer Leo, pointed out the proper conditions under which any such assembly could be held. “If there is a wish to put an end to the division, the patriarch Nicephorus must be re-established in the See of Constantinople. He must then assemble those who have along with him fought for the truth; and there must come together, if possible, deputies from the other patriarchs, or at least from the patriarch of the West (i.e. of course the bishop of Rome), who gives authority to an ecumenical council; and if that is impossible, everything could be settled by synodical letters which our patriarch could send to the first See (Rome). If the emperor does not agree to this, it is necessary to send to Rome, and thence receive the certain decision of the faith”.

Failing in his attempt to win over the Catholics, Michael showed himself directly hostile to them; and when his overthrow of the pretender Thomas (823) left him freer to turn his attention to matters of dogma, he pursued them with severity. Many fled to Rome. To prevent them from finding a home there, he endeavored to induce the emperor Louis to act along with him. He accordingly dispatched an embassy to Louis with a long letter, addressed, to flatter him, “to our dear brother”: “Michael and Theophilus, emperors of the Romans, to our dear and honored brother Louis, king of the Franks and Lombards, and called their emperor”. After giving a false account of his accession to the throne, and stating his desire for peace with Louis, Michael asserts his wish to promote religious unity among his subjects, some of whom have gone astray from the traditions of the apostles. He says that they have replaced the Holy Cross by images, and that they burn incense before them, and practice all manner of superstitious rites in connection with them. Later on in his letter, utterly blind to his inconsistency in venerating the cross and relics, and not holy images, he declares that he venerates relics—and this whilst professing his orthodoxy to the Frank. He wants Louis to drive out of Rome those of his (Michael’s) image-worshipping subjects who have fled thither. Finally, seeking the honor of the Church of Christ, he assures Louis that, by the hands of the same ambassadors whom he has sent to him, he has forwarded a letter to the Pope, and as an offering to the Church of Peter, Prince of the Apostles, a copy of the Gospels and a chalice and paten of pure gold, enriched with precious stones. In conclusion, the emperor is asked to give the Greek ambassadors an honorable safe-conduct to Rome.

These envoys came before Louis at Rouen at the close of the year, said they had been sent for the sake of confirming the peace between the two empires, and put forth “certain points concerning the veneration of images, in connection with which they declared that they had to go to Rome to consult the bishop of the apostolic See”. Thither, in accordance with their wishes, Louis caused the Greeks to be escorted. But, before acceding to their desires in the affair of the images, he wished to have the consent of the Pope. Hence with the Greeks he dispatched two of his own bishops to ask Eugenius to allow the Frank bishops to search out, in the writings of the Fathers, passages to meet the case which the Greek envoys had come to have settled. The leave was granted, and Louis ordered an assembly of divines to meet at Paris, 825.

Influenced by the Greeks, but still more by recollections of the Council of Frankfort (794) and the Caroline Books, the committee of bishops, for it was not a synod, came together in Paris (November 1, 825). They not only made a collection of extracts from the ‘Fathers’, which they believed tended to show that images should be neither destroyed on the one hand, nor honored on the other, but they also drew up drafts of two letters which were to be sent, one in the name of the emperor Louis to the Pope, and the other in the Pope’s name to the Greek emperor. The Paris assembly showed itself as ignorant of the real teaching of the seventh General Council as had the Council of Frankfort. ‘Your advocates’, as the committee style themselves in their introductory address to the emperors Louis and Lothaire, proceeded to approve the letter of Pope Hadrian to Constantine and Irene on the image question, in so far as it condemned the breaking of images, and to reject it in so far as it countenanced their “superstitious adoration”. They next treated the seventh General Council in the same way, condemning it for teaching that images were not only to be reverenced and adored, but called holy and acknowledged as a source of sanctification. And with that supreme self-confidence, of which ignorance is the sole progenitor, they assured Louis that Hadrian, in his reply to certain strictures on the seventh General Council sent him by Charlemagne “to be corrected by his judgment and authority”, had said, “what he chose, and not what he ought”. This remark, they were good enough to say, they made without the slightest intention of asserting anything derogatory to the Pope’s authority. For, by professing his intention of standing by the doctrine of Pope Gregory the Great, Hadrian had made it clear that he erred only through ignorance. From the report of the envoys of Louis, who had conducted the Greek ambassadors to Rome, they had learnt how deeply rooted the ‘image superstition’ had there become. They acknowledge the difficulty of correcting that church (viz., the Church of Rome) whose right it is to keep others in the true path, from which up to this it has never itself wandered. But they think that the emperor’s plan of getting leave from that authority itself to make a selection of suitable passages from scripture and the Fathers, would, when completed, compel it, nolens volens, to yield to the truth—viz., as taught by the most blessed Pope Gregory. The collection of texts which they have made, they present to the emperor to select such as he should consider pertinent. They add, with perfect truth, that the collection might have been better; but point out that they have only had a short time to prepare it, and that one of their number was prevented by ill-health from joining them.

The collection which they give is divided into two parts, one, much the smaller, is directed against the image-breakers; the longer part is directed against what were supposed by the committee to be the tenets of the image-worshippers. Such an assemblage of texts as is contained in the second part of the collection could indeed only have been drawn up by men who were in a blind hurry, or who had either wholly forgotten, or had never understood, what they were trying to prove. Many of the texts are not in the least ad rem, and some even clearly prove the opposite of that for which the committee were contending, e.g. the passages from St. Basil (p. 1326). To throw light on the seventh General Council, they lay down what that council had already done, i.e. that the worship of ‘atria’ (absolute worship) was to be given to God alone. And with curious inconsistency they grant an honor to the “cross of Christ” which they deny to His image.

In that portion of the scheme of the letter to be sent by Louis to the Pope which has come down to us—for many portions of the committee’s report are wanting—the position of the Pope as Head of the Church is set forth, and he is reminded of the permission he had given in the matter of the collection.

In the longer letter which the committee proposed that the Pope should send to the Greek emperors, he was to establish what it proclaimed to be, the true doctrine, viz., that images were neither to be adored nor honored, but at each one’s pleasure to be kept as souvenirs or means of instruction.

As a matter of fact, however, Louis did not fully carry out the recommendations of the Paris assembly. He instructed Jeremiah, archbishop of Sens, and Jonas, bishop of Orleans, who were to convey to the Pope the results of the deliberations at Paris, to make suitable extracts from the Parisian document, and with modesty to try to win the Pope over to their views. Further, in a letter of his own composing he assured Eugenius that he had no intention, in sending him what his bishops had put together, of teaching him, but only of helping him, as in duty bound.

Here, as far as the records of history go, the affair ends. Probably convinced that, in the matter of image-worship, things were really on the right lines in France, Eugenius, in imitation of the conduct of Pope Hadrian on a similar occasion, did not pursue the question. Equally probably, too, the more accurate translation of the Acts of the seventh General Council, published by the librarian Anastasius under John VIII (872-882), prevented anthing more being heard of the subject in that country.

With the ambassadors of Michael to Louis, in 824, there came Fortunatus, the patriarch of Grado, part of whose chequered career has been already noticed. The events of this the last year of his life are interesting as showing the good understanding between Louis and the Pope. Elected patriarch in 803 as successor to the murdered John who was his relation, Fortunatus had to flee from the vengeance of the Doge of Venice, also called John, against whom he was accused of plotting to avenge his relative. He fled to Charlemagne, through whose influence he returned to Italy (806), and to his church a year later. As he had been restored through the interest of the Franks, he thought it better to take refuge amongst them when a powerful Greek fleet under Nicetas came into the Venetian waters. When that danger was passed, he again returned, only to have to flee again. This time he was accused of treachery to the Franks and with favoring the Duke of Lower Pannonia, Liudevitus, who had rebelled against the emperor. Unable, or unwilling, to stand his trial, he fled to the court of the Eastern emperor. Thence he came to Louis with the ambassadors of Michael in 824. He had no doubt obtained some kind of a promise of the good offices of the Greeks. However, we are expressly told by Einhard that the ambassadors “did not say a word for Fortunatus”. After Louis had examined him as to his conduct and flight to Constantinople, he refrained from passing sentence on him one way or another, but sent him to Rome to be tried by the Pope. This would seem to imply that though Fortunatus was guilty, Louis respected his episcopal character, and consequently would not condemn him himself. How the intriguing patriarch would have fared at the hands of Eugenius is known to God alone. For it pleased Him to call Fortunatus to His own judgment seat before he had quitted France.

Next year (826) we read of a serious illness of the Pope, and of embassies passing to and fro between him and Louis. It may be that the backward state of education in Italy was one of the subjects dealt with by these envoys. However that may be, the secular and ecclesiastical authorities in Italy, about this time, made serious efforts to improve the standard of education throughout the country. The barbarous ignorance of the Lombards had swamped learning in their own dominions, and their constant wars had prevented its pursuit in the adjoining countries. Hence, about this year, the emperor Lothaire, from Cortelona, some twelve miles from Pavia, issued a decree, in which the masters he has constituted in the different cities, which he enumerates, are urged to do their best for learning, which, “in every direction, is wholly extinct”. The emperor also provided suitable places where instruction could be imparted. With the action of the emperor we have no further concern here than to point out that in the list of cities there are, of course, none mentioned that belonged to the jurisdiction of the Pope, or, indeed, to that of the Duke of Beneventum.

But, towards the close of this year, Eugenius presided over a council of some sixty bishops, his immediate suffragans, in Rome, November 15, 826. Whether or not he was too ill to compose and read an opening address, the introductory harangue of this council was the same as the one given at the Roman Council of 721, and was read by a deacon in the Pope’s name. Among the thirty-eight canons there passed, which dealt for the most part with the reformation of ecclesiastical discipline, the fourth ordains that ignorant bishops or priests be suspended till they have acquired sufficient knowledge to be able to perform their sacred functions; and the thirty-fourth canon states that in some places there are neither masters nor zeal for learning, and that consequently, where there is need, masters are to be attached to the episcopal palaces, cathedral churches, and other places, to give instruction in sacred and polite literature. From the Pope’s decree it would certainly seem that if, as in the kingdom of Lombardy, learning was not in great demand, it was nothing like so backward in the papal dominions as in the kingdom of Italy. If what is stated by Cardinal Deusdedit be the fact, viz., that this council occupied itself with papal elections “a sacerdotibus seu primatibus, nobilibus seu cuncto concilio Roman Ecclesiae”, then we may be sure that it was summoned to deliberate, among other matters, on the Constitution of 824. How it viewed it we have unfortunately no means of ascertaining.

Throughout the period of the Carolingian Empire, Christianity continued to be propagated among the Slays and Scandinavians, eastwards and northwards, where these peoples came in contact with it. Among the various Slavic tribes the faith of Christ was introduced along with the conquering armies of Charlemagne and his successors, and at this time had made some little progress among the Moravians. This Slavic people took their name from the Morava (March), a tributary of the Danube, the valley of which they had occupied since the year 534. During the reign of Eugenius, and for some time after, they were subject to the empire, and had not acquired that extent of territory which was afterwards theirs. In ancient times, before Christianity in those regions had been swept away by the ravages of the Huns or Avars, Noricum and the adjoining parts were ecclesiastically subject to the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Laureacum, or Lorch, on the Danube, according to the arrangement of Pope Symmachus. Word of the spread of Christianity in Moravia was brought to Rome (about 825) by Urolf, bishop of Passau; and it is sometimes said that Eugenius, by a bull which is still extant, and which is addressed to the four bishops who were to be his suffragans, to two dukes, and to the nobles, army, and people of “Hunnia and Moravia”, restored the archiepiscopal See of Lorch; named Urolf, its first archbishop and his vicar; and gave him the pallium. Nobles and commoners were alike exhorted by the Pope to obey their new archbishop, “not as a man, but as in the place of God”. But even supposing that the document is genuine, either because the state of Christianity among the Moravians was not sufficiently satisfactory to allow of the decree of Eugenius coming into operation, or because no successor of Urolf’s zeal was immediately forthcoming, it is certain that after his death (c. 837), we hear no more of the archdiocese of Lorch. It was reserved for SS. Cyril and Methodius really to convert the Moravian nation, and for another Pope, a century later (Leo VII, c. 937), to re-erect the metropolitan See of Lorch. At any rate, although the bull of Eugenius is apocryphal, there is no reason to doubt that the conversion of the Slavs, which was the work of the ninth century, was making headway whilst he occupied the See of Peter.

The noble mission of imparting the truths of Christianity to the Scandinavians, a people allied in blood, language, and religion to the Germans, and who at this period held Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, we have seen taken up personally by Ebbo, archbishop of Rheims, and then abandoned by him. The work thus laid down by him was resumed by Ansgar, a monk first of old Corbie, in Picardy, and then of the new Corbie, in Saxony, near Hoexter on the Weser. He was soon deservedly known as the Apostle of the North. The baptism of Heriold, or Harald, king of Denmark, or rather of part of it, at Ingelheim, near Mayence, in 826, once more directed attention to the advancement of Christianity in that country. Harald, who had been driven from his kingdom in this year, resolved, when restored to his power by the aid of Louis, to whom he did homage, to establish Christianity throughout the land. It was with him that Ansgar, who had been recommended to the emperor by Wala, went into Denmark, and it was “Ansgar and his companions” whom Pope Eugenius “commended to all the sons of the Catholic Church”. This must have been at the close of 826 or the beginning of 827, as it was in the latter year that Ansgar started for Denmark.

Some interesting details of the work of Harald and Ansgar are to be found in Saxo Grammaticus, who, though he lived long after these events (c. 1150, d. after 1208), is always deserving of attention. “Trusting in these (viz., his Saxon auxiliaries), Harald built a temple in the land of Sleswik with much care and cost, to be hallowed to God. Thus he borrowed a pattern of the most holy way from the worship of Rome. He unhallowed the error of misbelievers, pulled down the shrines, outlawed the sacrificers, abolished the (heathen) priesthood, and was the first to introduce the religion of Christianity to his uncouth country ... But he began with more piety than success. For Ragnar (Lodbrog, or Shaggy-Breech) came up and outraged the holy rites he had brought in ... As for Harald, he deserted and cast in his lot with sacrilege”. Though drawn from one of the mythical books of Saxo’s work, the account is no doubt substantially accurate. And if the apostasy of Harald is called in question, it seems established that another expulsion of Harald (828) put a stop to the good work that Ansgar had commenced in Schleswig. He had to earn his title of Apostle of the North from work that he was destined to accomplish in the northern Scandinavian peninsula.

In a very old document belonging to the Church of Rheims, and thought by Mabillon, who discovered it, to date from the ninth century, there was found a rite for conducting the ordeal by cold water, as prescribed by Eugenius. So strongly were many ancient peoples, and especially the Germans, attached to “trial by ordeal”, or to submitting the decision of legal cases to what they were pleased to call the judgments of God, that, to begin with, neither Pope, emperor, nor king could suppress this objectionable practice. Liutprand, the Lombard lawmaking king, whilst pointing out the futility of trial by battle, had to acknowledge that the custom of his nation prevented him from doing away with the impious habit. And so even Louis the Pious, who, in his capitularies, first approves and then condemns the ordeal by cold water, continued to allow difficulties which could not be settled by the testimony of witnesses to be settled by shields and clubs.

But the Church endeavored to minimize the evils which resulted from trial by ordeal. She strove to abolish such as were very dangerous to life; to substitute “compurgation”; and, by taking the conduct of the ordeals into her hands, to see at least that they were accompanied with solemnity and fairness. Trial by battle, indeed, the Church never tolerated. And in this ninth century we find it denounced by bishop, council, and Pope alike. Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, in a letter (c. 817) to the emperor Louis urges that, “as combats of this kind are quite contrary to Christian simplicity and piety, and utterly opposed to the teaching of the Gospel, no Christian ought to seek to avoid the difficulties, or seek to obtain the joys of this world by trial by battle”. The Council of Valence (can. 12, an. 855) not only decrees that those who die in such judicial combats be deprived of prayers and Christian burial, but calls upon the emperor to confirm its decree, and himself by public law to abolish this great evil. And among the decrees attributed to Nicholas I is one which declares that single combat is illegal; and that those who pin their faith to such judgments of God “are simply tempting Him”. However, as the Church could not do away with them all at once, it was found necessary for a time, as we have seen, to tolerate some kinds of them.

A very early form of ordeal was that by cold water. The person whose innocence was to be tested was fast bound, and then immersed in water. If he did not sink he was guilty. It is in connection with this particular ordeal that we have a regulation of Eugenius II prescribing the form to be observed when it was put in practice—the Mass to be sung; the solemn adjuration to be addressed to the accused at the Communion; the giving to him of the body of Our Lord, with the words, “May the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ be to you as a trial this day” ; and the oath to be taken by the accused.

The MS. concluded by stating that the form just given by it was ordered by Eugenius. That this form was really his work is denied by some authors, as the authority of this anonymous MS. is not thought by them sufficiently weighty.

A year after the death of Eugenius, the emperor Louis made (829) a vain attempt to abolish trial by cold water. It was finally condemned by Innocent III at the fourth Lateran Council (1215).

We cannot bring to a close the life of Eugenius without saying a word or two in connection with his relations with the abbot Hilduin, one of the most important Franks of his day. It is the more interesting to say something about him, because we have quoted his Areopagitica, or life of St. Denis, or really the apocryphal letter of the emperor Louis to him prefixed to that work, as an authority for the vision of Pope Stephen (II) III in the Church of St. Denis (754). The abbot, besides being archchaplain of the emperor Louis, and abbot of St. Denis in Paris, had been also named abbot of St. Germain-des-Pres in the same city, and abbot of St. Medard in Soissons. He accompanied the young Lothaire to Rome in 824, and seems to have won the affection and esteem of the Pope. For, at his request, Eugenius not merely confirmed in its possessions the Church of St. Peter’s at Rouen, but even gave him the body of the great martyr, St. Sebastian, which Hilduin placed in his abbey of St. Medard. And we are assured by Einhard, that whilst the relics of the saint were there exposed, so many and such extraordinary miracles were worked as would exceed our power of belief, did we not know that Our Lord, for whom the saint died, can do all things, as all things are subject to Him.

Eugenius died in the month of August (827), as we are informed by Einhard. It is supposed that, in accordance with the custom of this period, his body was buried in St. Peter’s, for no mention of his burial-place occurs in the Liber Pontificalis, nor is any tomb in the old basilica marked as his in the elaborate plan of it published by Alfarano in 1589.

VALENTINE

A.D. 827.

EMPERORS OF THE EAST.                           EMPEROR OF THE WEST.

Leo VI (the Armenian), 813-820.                     Louis I the Pious, 814-840.

Michael II (the Stammerer), 820-829.

As the period of the vacancy of the Holy See on the death of Eugenius is nowhere stated by our authorities, it can only be laid down as probable that Valentine was elected soon after the death of his predecessor.

He was of that city which, his biographer proudly notes, “holds the dignity of the chief priesthood and of the royal power”, and came of noble and pious parents. His father’s name is given as Leontius, and the place of his birth as the region of the Via Lata, at this time the aristocratic quarter of Rome. From his earliest years he gave every sign of a good heart, and of an extraordinary ability. The vain and wicked pleasures of the young nobles were shunned by him. But, under skilled masters, he devoted himself to the acquisition of sacred and profane learning. The beautifying effect of this training on his mind showed itself in his words and works.

Pope Paschal, moved by the fame of the youth’s excellent character, brought him from the school attached to the Lateran palace, ordained him subdeacon, and kept him near him. On account of his conspicuous qualities of mind, heart, and person, he entertained a more than ordinary regard for him, and finally made him archdeacon of the Roman Church. Valentine found the same favor in the eyes of Eugenius, who treated him as his own son.

On the death of the last-named Pontiff, there gathered together in the Lateran “the venerables bishops, the glorious nobles, and all the people of the city”. With one accord they cried out, “Valentine, the most holy archdeacon, is worthy of the Apostolic See; Valentine must be made Pope!” All then hurried off to the Church of St. Mary Major, where they found the object of their search in prayer. No notice was taken of his long and earnest declarations that he was utterly unworthy of so great a dignity. He was declared duly elected.

Then, in reversion of the usual order, as had also happened in the case of Benedict III, he was enthroned before he was consecrated. For we are told that, with every manifestation of joy and honor, Valentine was escorted to the Lateran palace and seated on the pontifical throne. His feet were duly kissed “by the whole Roman senate”, and early on the first suitable day he was consecrated in St. Peter’s. As no mention is made of the presence of the imperial missi, it may be presumed that they were not there. After the consecration was over, the Pope gave a splendid banquet and presents to the whole electoral body.

The election of Valentine was another triumph for the nobility. Not only did they secure the nomination of one pontifical of their own body, but it is again recorded that they themselves took part in the election. By the decree of the Roman Council of 769, under Stephen (III) IV, it had been definitely laid down that the choice of the Pope was to be in the hands of the clergy alone, that anyone who opposed their rights in this matter was to be anathematized, and that only after he had been chosen and enthroned were the nobility and the rest of the laity to come to salute him “as the lord of all”. But now we see “the party of the nobles gaining the upper hand” and once more claiming a voice in the election of the popes. Even if they did not secure their point in the time of Eugenius II, they certainly did in the days of Nicholas I. The share they secured in the ninth century became the preponderating one in the tenth. And the way in which they then exercised their sway was the best justification for their being finally deprived, in the eleventh century, of all the position they had secured.

Unfortunately the prosperous reign that might have been looked for after such a promising beginning was destined never to be realized. By a precious death, Valentine went to meet his Lord after a reign of from thirty to forty days.

GREGORY IV

A.D. 827-844.

EMPERORS OF THE EAST.                              EMPERORS OF THE WEST.

Michael II (the Stammerer), 820-829.               Louis the Pious, 814-840.

Theophilus, 829-842. Lothaire I, 823-855.

Theodora and Michael III, 842-856.

EVIL were the days in which fell the pontificate of Gregory IV, not so much for any particular ill that overtook the Pope himself as for the troubles which overtook the empire, and for the further development of the causes which, before the end of this ninth century, were to bring so much misery on Europe and degradation on the papacy. A monastic (Xanten) chronicler, who wrote brief jottings of the events of this period, interrupts them with the sorrowful remark : “At this time the kingdom of the Franks was terribly troubled within itself, and the wretchedness of men was daily greatly increased”. “All fear of kings or laws has faded from the hearts of many” is the assertion of Agobard of Lyons. The quarrels between Louis and his sons not merely destroyed the peace of the empire, which loss of peace was naturally accompanied by the spread of lawlessness and ignorance both among the clergy and laity, but gave the more powerful among them opportunities for still further lessening their dependence on any authority, and left the Saracens and Northmen freer to extend their ravages. It was whilst Gregory IV was Pope that Sicily was lost to the Eastern Empire and fell into the hands of the Saracens. The emperors of Constantinople were persecuting the image-worshippers and losing territory; the emperors of the West were interfering with the freedom of the Pope in his own city, and at the same time losing all authority at home.

Before Gregory died, a mortal blow had been struck at the authority of the emperor. On the field of Fontenay the domination of the Franks, through the slaughter on that terrible day of the flower of their race, had come to an end, and, by the treaty of Verdun (843), their empire had been finally broken up.

The successor of Pope Valentine was Gregory, a Roman, and the son of John. At the time of his election he was cardinal priest of the basilica of St. Mark, (336-137), a church which after he became Pope he completely rebuilt (833) and adorned with mosaics, much more splendid with their gold than artistic in their expression, for they were executed in the stiffest Byzantine style. Despite the renovations of Paul II (1468), the mosaics of Gregory still show him with a model of the church in his hand on the right of Our Lord. He is being presented to Him by St. Mark, the evangelist.

According to his biographer, Gregory was at once energetic and benign, adorned with piety and learning, modest but cheerful, and powerful in discourse, one who worked for the poor but sought himself in nothing. Illustrious by his birth, he was more so by his sanctity; handsome too in figure, but more beautiful from his faith. For these virtues he was distinguished from his early years, and he was raised to the priesthood by Pope Paschal.

The papal biographer proceeds to tell us of the distress of the Romans at the loss of popes Paschal, Eugenius, and Valentine in so short a time, and of their anxiety to find one “under whose rule”, he adds significantly, “the whole nobility of the senate might be able to live prosperously”. “Enlightened by God”, all the nobility turned their thoughts to Gregory; and, under their influence, all the electors, with one voice, chose the cardinal priest of St. Mark’s, whom they found in the basilica of SS. Cosmas and Damian. Unheeding his repeated declarations that he was unfit for so exalted an office, they carried him off in triumph to the Lateran palace, where he was declared duly elected (827). From this period till his death, his biographer practically gives us no further information about him except in connection with his building operations, or with his countless gifts to different churches, on the ground that he could not readily sum up all that the Pope had done.

But the Roman nobles were not destined to get their own way quite as easily as they had hoped. Though we do i not know for certain either the exact day on which Gregory was elected, or that on which he was consecrated, we do know that he was not consecrated, till his election had been approved by the emperor Louis. It was not that the Romans sent word to him of the election of Gregory, and craved his approval of it, as they used to do under the Byzantine sovereigns. The initiative in the matter was taken by the imperial envoys, who were bent on asserting their master’s authority. They appealed to the constitution of 824, and forbade the consecration of the Pope-elect until Louis had satisfied himself of the validity of the election. And there is reason to believe that some six months elapsed before the arrival of the imperial assent allowed the consecration to take place.

In Einhard, whose annals close with the year 829, we read of embassies from Rome to Louis in both the years 828 and 829. But of their purpose nothing is known for certain, nor do we know of any other important relations between the Pope and Louis till the fatal quarrels between him and his sons had begun in earnest.

The embassy of the year 829 may, however, have been in connection with a dispute between the monastery of Farfa and the Roman See as to their respective rights in connection with certain properties. It would appear that the decision of Pope Paschal in 823 had not been put into effect, or, at least, that there was a difference of opinion as to what the popes had taken and what they had not. A document preserved in the Chronicle of Farfa, and dated January, the sixteenth year of the emperor Louis, the seventh Indiction, i.e. 829, tells us that bishop Joseph and count Leo, missi of the emperor, for the purpose of hearing causes, opened their court in the Lateran palace in the presence of Pope Gregory. Before them came Ingoald, abbot of the monastery of Farfa, in the duchy of Spoleto. Trusting to his charters of exemption obtained from the emperors, he asserted that popes Hadrian and Leo had by force possessed themselves of certain properties that belonged to the monastery, and that under the succeeding popes the monks had in vain tried to get justice. In support of his claims, Ingoald produced various deeds. These were allowed by the imperial missi, who decided that the lands in question should be restored to the monastery. The Pope, however, refused to accept the decision. Whether he regarded this whole trial as a violation of his sovereign rights, we know not. We are in equal ignorance of the result of his carrying the matter before the emperor. But from a fact, with the issue of which we are unacquainted, it is scarcely scientific with Muratori to draw conclusions against the supreme power of the Pope in the city of Rome.

In the history of Louis the Pious we have a striking example of the truth, that weakness, even when more or less innocent in character, is often as injurious in its effects as malicious wickedness. Louis was naturally a weak man. All he desired was to be allowed plenty of time for hunting and for the performance of exercises of piety.” Quietissimus” is the description of him given by the anonymous monk of St. Gall. After the death of his first wife, Ermengarde (818), the weakness of his character became more apparent; and when, in 819, he was induced to marry Judith, the young, beautiful, insinuating, and fascinating daughter of the Bavarian count Welf, he fell completely under her influence. This count Welf (whose name appears in Italian as Guelf) is worth a second thought, as he was the founder of the Guelf family, which was hereafter to give its name to one of the great parties into which Italy was to be for so long miserably divided—the Guelfs and Ghibellins.

The new empress at once became supreme in the State, and, of course, lost no time in scheming to promote the interests of the son (known in history as Charles the Bald), to whom she gave birth in the year 823. Under the influence of her winning ways the young emperor Lothaire agreed to become his half-brother’s guardian, and to allow a kingdom to be carved out of his domains for him. Accordingly, with the most reckless disregard of consequences, the arrangement of 817 was broken, and an imperial edict proclaimed him king of Alamannia. He was crowned on June 6, 829. To strengthen his hands, Louis summoned to court, Bernard, the dashing duke of Septimania (or the Spanish March), entrusted his favorite child to his care, and made him “the second man in the empire”.

The infatuated monarch had now done everything to ruin his empire and his home. Judith preferred the society and love of the young and brilliant duke to her duty towards her devoted husband, who was neither young nor bright. Her illicit amours seem to have been known to everybody but to Louis, and justly scandalized the good, especially, of course, the clergy, the natural guardians of morality. Such as were possessed of any degree of statecraft, and these again were for the most part at this period in the ranks of the clergy, foresaw that the breaking of the constitution of 817 would prove fatal to the unity of the empire. From the Pope downwards did the clergy denounce its alteration as the cause of the troubles which came upon the empire. Of the nobles some were only too ready to foment any cause of disturbance in order that they might fish for themselves in troubled waters; others were disgusted at the imperiousness of Judith, and the ambition of Bernard. Lothaire was easily induced to repent of the concessions he had made. And as Louis and Pippin had been indignant at the elevation of Lothaire, they were now even more indignant at the intrusion of their half-brother. Under the plea of restoring the empire, Pippin of Aquitaine applied the spark to this inflammable material, and, in the spring of 830, raised the standard of rebellion. The emperor was seized, Judith was forced into a monastery, and Bernard saved his life by flight. Those of the empress’s relatives, of whose undue advancement the sons of Louis also complained, who were unable to escape the vigilance of their enemies, were maltreated in various ways. At a diet held with the concurrence of Lothaire, at Compiegne, the emperor Louis had to declare that it was his will that the constitution of 817 should hold good. He was then himself placed by Lothaire under the surveillance of monks.

But many of the party in opposition were quite satisfied with the removal of Bernard and Judith, and with the undertaking that the arrangement of 817 should be left undisturbed. Towards Louis himself they had no ill-will; and they saw that under the weak but dictatorial Lothaire the affairs of the empire were daily going from bad to worse. From personal affection also, the Germans were attached to Louis. First their own ruler Louis, king of Bavaria, known as Louis the German, and then Pippin, fell away from their eldest brother. A reaction set in. In a diet at Nimeguen (October 830), Louis found himself restored to his position by the resolution of that assembly, and to his wife by the sentence of the Pope, who of necessity decided that Judith was not bound to remain in the convent, as she had been forced to take the veil.

Comparatively little punishment was inflicted on the rebels. Many of their leaders were, however, deprived of their property and exiled, and at a diet in the early part of the following year (February 831) Lothaire was deprived of his title of emperor. He was allowed, indeed, to retain the title of king of Italy, but was not to do anything of any importance without consulting his father.

Next year there were fresh disturbances, inasmuch as the younger sons did not receive for their desertion of Lothaire all they had expected. As a consequence, the emperor, in September (832), removed Pippin from his kingdom, and most unadvisedly gave it to his young favorite son Charles. It was plain that everything was to be sacrificed for Judith and her son. And it was to no purpose that Agobard, foreseeing what was coming, addressed his Flebilis epistola to Louis, entreating him to abide loyally by the constitution of 817. Practice had now made rebellion and the flouting of imperial authority quite easy and natural. Lothaire and Louis espoused the cause of Pippin, and once again the whole empire was ringing with the clamor of internal strife. And, just as in the rebellion of 830, perhaps most of the really virtuous and enlightened ecclesiastics and statesmen espoused the cause of the rebellious sons. Men of energy and character were disgusted at the uxorious weakness of the emperor Louis. They attributed, not indeed without reason, all the internal troubles which were breaking up the empire to the weak folly of Louis in destroying the arrangement of the kingdoms of the empire sanctioned by Rome and by general agreement in 817. They deplored the influence of Judith over him, and the careless way in which he managed the affairs of the empire in Church as well as in State, tolerating grave abuses in both. Such we know was the eminently plausible position taken up by Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, and by Wala.

Towards Easter 833, the emperor drew together his forces at Worms. His sons assembled theirs at Colmar. In the camp of Lothaire was Pope Gregory IV, who was to learn by his own experience how difficult it is to mediate, in a family quarrel especially, without incurring the suspicion of both parties. That Gregory acted throughout this miserable affair with the purest motives is abundantly evident, even from the writings of the friends of the emperor Louis. He was really anxious to bring about a lasting peace. And if he was desirous of working to preserve the unity of the empire, for what nobler cause, for what interest then more vital for the safety of Europe, could he strive? For the same end were struggling the most lofty-minded statesmen in Frankland, such as the abbot Wala and archbishop Agobard. Who, moreover, had more right to interfere in behalf of the unity of the empire than Gregory, seeing that it was from the hands of a Pope that the two emperors had received their crowns, and that it was the signature of a Pope which had confirmed the deed of 817? And so we find the biographer of Wala asserting that Gregory did come to work not only for peace, but also for unity, “that the empire might be saved”. Gregory’s motive in starting from Rome is given by the Astronomer. He was naturally, from his position, easily persuaded by Lothaire that he ought to make every effort to reconcile father and son. He was next assured that he alone could bring about this most desirable result. At last, after urgent entreaties, and perhaps partly deceived, he was induced to accompany Lothaire, and left Italy by the Pennine Alps. He sent word to Agobard that he wished fasts and prayers to be offered up that God might give success to his efforts to restore peace to the emperor’s household and kingdom. And when summoning the abbot Wala to him, he sent letters to that energetic partisan of the inviolability of the empire, on the subject of peace and the reconciliation of Louis and his sons.

The true partisans of unity conceived the highest hopes from the coming of the Pope, “the Prince of the Apostolic See, the light of golden Rome, the honor, teacher, and tender lover of the people”. But if the Pope was really in earnest in his efforts for peace, the whole conduct of Lothaire proves that he was not so. He was only working for his own ends. His first object was to gain time, which was all-important to a rebel host that had to come together from so many different quarters. A war of words was meanwhile carried on vigorously. The presence of Gregory in the camp of Lothaire not unnaturally gave the impression that he was committed to support the cause of the emperor’s sons. Whereas from Lothaire’s recorded action with regard to the Pope, there cannot be much doubt that he was kept in his camp by a judicious combination of persuasion, fraud, and quiet pressure.

The bishops of the emperor’s party, when summoned to come and meet the Pope, suspicious of his impartiality, refused to obey. They even talked of excommunicating him if he should have in mind to excommunicate them, language which even the Astronomer, who reports it, and is a friend of the emperor, does not fail to stigmatize as a piece of audacious presumption quite opposed to the language of the ancient canons. But in the excited and suspicious state in which the minds of men then were, we find that the bishops, inspired, no doubt, by the daring empress, went further. As Gregory’s reply to them shows, they threatened to depose him. Of all this we have knowledge from a letter of the Pope which, in a more or less complete form, is cited by Agobard in his short tract on “The Comparison between Ecclesiastical and Civil Government”, but which is printed separately in the collection of Agobard’s letters in the Monumenta Germania..

In the early part of this pamphlet Agobard does not fail to point out to the bishops of the emperor’s party that there might be some ground for their hostility towards the Pope, if he had come in a hostile spirit; but that as he had come on an errand of peace, he must be obeyed.

Gregory was naturally annoyed by the blind opposition which the ecclesiastics who remained faithful to the emperor had evinced towards him; and he began to think that perhaps he had better retire without making any further efforts at a reconciliation, as feeling was evidently running too high to give much room for reason. But the abbot Wala and his friend and biographer the monk Paschasius Radbert comforted the Pope by reminding him, by means of quotations from the Fathers and his predecessors which they handed him in writing, that his was the power and authority, derived from God and St. Peter, to go to all the nations to proclaim the true faith, or to make peace. “In you”, they said, “is all the authority of Blessed Peter, that great and living power, by which all must be judged, while you yourself cannot be judged by anyone”.

Encouraged by this reminder of the charge that had been laid upon him, Gregory proceeded to address a sharp rejoinder to the letter he had received from the bishops of Louis. To cite the excellent summary of Jaffe: “He chastised their insolence, repelled their charges, and derided their threats”. You professed, urged the Pope, to have felt delighted when you heard of my arrival, thinking that it would have been of great advantage for the emperor and the people; you added that you would have obeyed my summons had not a previous intimation of the emperor prevented you. But, continued Gregory, you ought to have regarded an order from the Apostolic See as not less weighty than one from the emperor. Besides, it is false that the emperor’s prohibition preceded your receiving mine. He then lays down the principle which every God-fearing man must regard as fundamental : “ government of souls, which belongs to bishops, is more important than the imperial, which is only concerned with the temporal”. Gregory brands as shameless their assertion that he has only come blindly to excommunicate, and naturally holds up to contempt their offer to give him an honorable reception if he should come exactly in the way the emperor wants him. Their appeal to the oath of fidelity which he has taken to the emperor, Gregory twice distinctly declines to admit. He, however, allows it to pass, and says he will avoid perjury by pointing out to the emperor what he has done against the unity and peace of the Church and his kingdom. As the cause of all the subsequent troubles, the alteration of the partition of 817 is strongly denounced by the Pope. He upbraids the bishops for opposing his efforts in behalf of peace. “What they threaten has not been done from the beginning of the Church”.

If only Louis had acted vigorously, he would certainly have crushed his enemies; but, even when he began to move his forces forward, he continued to negotiate. Messengers were sent on the one hand to ask the Pope why he so long delayed to come to him, and on the other to remind his sons of their duty, and to ask them why they prevented the Pope from visiting him.

By the feast of St. John the Baptist (June 24, 833), the two armies stood facing each other at a place called Rothfield (Red field), afterwards, from the treachery manifested thereon, known as the Field of Lies, and thought to be what is now called Rothleucht (Red light), near Colmar. Then, at length, to gain time for his schemes, Lothaire allowed the Pope to go to the emperor. But Louis, despite the previous exhortation given him by Agobard, did not receive Gregory “with becoming honour”, to quote the expression of the Astronomer. However, it did not take the Pope long before he convinced the emperor of his good faith, and of his impartiality. He assured Louis that it was only to make peace that he had undertaken so long a journey. The Pope remained some days with the emperor arranging matters, and giving and receiving presents. At length he was sent back to Lothaire “to arrange a mutual peace”.

But the few days had been adroitly spent by the crafty Lothaire in buying the fidelity of the emperor’s troops. They deserted him in crowds, till he was left practically helpless, and the scheming Lothaire took heed that he had not even the moral support of the Pope'’ presence. For he refused to allow Gregory to return to the emperor, in accordance with the latter’s wishes. Clearly, in all this unfortunate affair, Gregory had very little of his own way.

Abandoned by his followers, Louis once again fell into the hands of his sons. The empress Judith was sent off into exile to Fortona (the ancient Dertona), one of the oldest cities of the North of Italy; Louis was shut up in the monastery of St. Medard at Soissons; and, to his intense grief, his young son Charles was taken from him and imprisoned in the monastery of Prum. Lothaire “seized the imperial power and allowed the Pope to return to Rome (July 833), Pippin to Aquitaine, and Louis to Bavaria”.

If Lothaire thus arrogated the supreme power to himself alone, it was because he was emboldened so to do by the action of the Pope and his own party in previously deciding that the empire had fallen from the hands of Louis, and should be taken by Lothaire. As for the Pope, he returned to Rome in the most profound discouragement.

Knowing that the aged emperor would be more affected by the condemnation of the Church than by that of the State, Lothaire caused a diet to be held (October 833) at Compiègne. Through the agency of the bishops of his party, i.e. of those interested in the cause of the unity of the empire, under the presidency of Ebbo of Rheims, the unhappy Louis again declared himself ready to submit to public penance. The condemnation passed upon him by the synod was based mainly on his breaking the ordinatio imperii of 817. A little later he laid aside the insignia of his office, and put on the garb of a penitent.

But the millennium had not yet come for the empire of the Franks. On the contrary, there rather came a time when it might almost be said that all were for a party and none were for the State. Lothaire’s chief supporters quarreled among themselves as to who was to be the second in the empire; and the empress Judith went on steadily plotting to increase the portion to be held by her son. The real imperialists were disgusted, and it was the thought of many that Lothaire had gone too far in his humiliation and ill-treatment of his father. His brothers took up arms against him, and he had to fly hastily towards Italy (834) to avoid falling into their hands. In the Church of St. Denis, at Paris, Louis was reinvested by the bishops with the symbols of empire (March). Too fortunate in having such a father, the base Lothaire once more received pardon, and was allowed to keep the kingdom of Italy.

But he had the soul of a tyrant, and when he found himself unable to oppress his tender-hearted father, he turned his attention to harassing the possessions of the Roman Church (836). When word of this was brought to Louis he was very much annoyed, and sent (836) envoys to Lothaire to remind him that, when he gave him the kingdom of Italy, he had recommended him to have a care of the Holy Roman Church, to be its defender and not its despoiler. Lothaire was also ordered to have everything ready for his father, who intimated his intention of going to Rome as well to protect the Roman Church as for prayer. One, however, of the numerous irruptions of the Northmen, which occurred about this time, prevented the emperor himself from going to Rome, but in his stead, as the Astronomer informs us, he sent Adrebald, abbot of Flaix.

The imperial envoy found the Pope very ill, suffering from a continual bleeding at the nose. But, as Gregory himself said, the consolation he received from the emperor’s kindly words made him almost forget his illness. After bestowing all manner of favors on the abbot, the Pope sent along with him, on his return, two bishops, Peter of Centumcellae (Cività Vecchia) and George, who was also regionary of the city of Rome. When they reached Bologna the party found that they were not to be allowed to proceed further. Lothaire evidently did not wish his conduct to be too well known by the emperor. However, the letter which they were bearing from Gregory to Louis, Adrebald managed to smuggle to its destination. One of his followers, under the disguise of a beggar, contrived to evade the vigilance of Lothaire’s soldiers, and conveyed the document in safety to Louis across the Alps. Although our knowledge of this affair terminates here, the incident is noteworthy. It shows the cordial feeling of Louis for the Pope—a feeling he could not have entertained had he not been convinced that Gregory had not been unfriendly towards him—and the despotic, because weak, character of Lothaire.

Whilst the Northmen and Saracens were making fierce descents upon the empire (the Saracens plundered Marseilles in 838), the endless succession of ungrateful rebellions on the one hand and weak acts of folly and forgiveness on the other went on. Pippin of Aquitaine died in December 838. A fresh division of his empire by Louis to the benefit of Charles and Lothaire drove Louis the German to arms. Subdued and pardoned one year (839), he again appealed to force the next. Marching to subdue him, the unhappy father died (June 20, 840), at the age of sixty-four.

On his deathbed Louis had ordered the imperial regalia to be sent to Lothaire, who resolved to be emperor in fact as well as in name. He thought to crush Charles and Louis the German, separately. Again the whole empire was seething inwardly with the violent passions of war which were consuming its vital force, as fatally as, when unbridled, corresponding ones destroy the human frame.

Undeterred by previous failure, Gregory made an effort to bring about peace between the brothers, as we learn from Prudentius, bishop of Troyes, who wrote the fourth part of the annals that go by the name of St. Bertin, and was an eye-witness of many of the events about which he treated. This time the Pope did not go himself to the scene of action, but sent George, archbishop of Ravenna. But, as on a previous occasion, Lothaire had detained the Pope himself when on a similar errand of mercy, so now he would not suffer George to go and visit the kings, his brothers. Prudentius goes on to inform us that in the battle of Fontenay, of which we shall have to speak presently, George fell into the hands of the forces of Louis the German and Charles, but was sent back with honor to his own country. Such is the account, probably the correct one, of Prudentius in connection with the mission of George. The historian’s episcopal city of Troyes was not far from the field of Fontenay. He was, in the strictest sense, a contemporary (as he was already a bishop in 847) and a man of known uprightness of character. There is, however, an account of this embassy of George which is quite different to the one already given. It is furnished us, in his life of Archbishop George, by Agnellus of Ravenna, a writer of this same century, and acknowledged to be hostile to the popes. The following is the substance of Agnellus’s story. After his consecration at Rome by Gregory, and after he had taken the usual oath of obedience to him, George at once became his opponent. Hearing that Gregory was sending envoys to try to bring about peace between Lothaire and his brothers, he asked Lothaire to obtain the Pope’s permission that he himself might be attached to the embassy. Leave was granted, and he went with the apostolic curse. He took with him all the money and plate that belonged to his Church, and “all the privileges which Maurus and all the other bishops of Ravenna had obtained from the emperors” (Greek). With the money, he hoped to induce Lothaire to make him independent of the Roman Pontiff. After the overthrow of Lothaire’s army at Fontenay, George fell into the hands of the enemies’ troops. His treasure was plundered, his precious documents tossed into the mud and pierced through and through with the soldiers’ lances, and he himself ill-treated. Brought before Charles and Louis, he would have been sent into perpetual exile, “as they had heard of his malignity”, had it not been for the compassionate intercession of the empress-mother Judith. At her request he was allowed to return to Ravenna, which he did, probably a sadder and wiser, certainly a poorer, man. As is very often the case with the narratives of Agnellus, much of the above has no better foundation than that worthy’s imagination.

Lothaire, who had, it would seem, lost more than one opportunity of crushing his brothers singly, at length made up his mind to fight them when their forces were combined. The hostile armies, made up of troops from every part of the empire, met at Fontenay (now Fontenoy-en-Puisaye), near Auxerre, on Saturday, June 25, 841. The battle ended in the defeat of Lothaire, though both the great armies were almost cut to pieces. In verses of no little feeling has the terrible slaughter of Fontenay been described by one Angilbert, “the sole survivor of those who fought in the front rank”. Never, he says, were more killed on one field of battle. Cursed be the day that saw it. May it be blotted out from memory, and may the light of the sun never fall upon it!

This engagement is generally regarded as of the first importance in the history of the modern kingdoms of France, Germany, and Italy. Their existence as separate and distinct realms is traced to the field of Fontenay. All hope of these countries being welded into one empire was destroyed by the defeat of Lothaire. For some half century longer the line of the Carolingian emperors will continue to exist. But they will be emperors more in name than in fact. The growth of the German, French, and Italian languages, seen in embryo in the texts which have come down to us of the oaths taken at the treaty of Verdun, will render permanent the division begun in June 841. Unfortunately, at the time, the subdivision of the empire into three great parts did not end the breach. Following out the thought of an author (Florus) of this very year (841), we may write : “for an emperor, there were kings; for kings, kinglets. And for kingdoms there were soon to be but mere fragments of kingdoms”. Even Agnellus of Ravenna, a writer by no means gifted with any extraordinary intelligence, had the wit to write, in a prophecy which—to fill up his life of Gratiosus—he puts into the mouth of that prelate : “What is now the Roman empire shall be desolated, and kings shall sit on the emperor’s throne ... And to the sea coasts shall come unknown nations, who will plunder those regions and render tributary those of the Christians they do not slay .. And Christian shall rise up against Christian ... And from the East shall rise up the race of Agar (the Saracens), who shall plunder the cities by the sea; and no man shall escape them. For in every part there shall be but powerless kings, who will oppress their subjects. All things shall grow smaller. Servants will be above their masters, and every man shall trust in his own sword. And over the new generations there shall arise judges and dukes, who will overturn the earth”. This semi-scriptural language very aptly expresses the breakup of the Carolingian empire into kingdoms; and of the kingdoms themselves into more or less independent dukedoms, countships, and the like, when fathers went on subdividing their kingdoms between their sons; and when, in the course of the intestine wars that arose in consequence of these partitions, the kings had to give such privileges and grants of land and money to procure help from their nobles as to make them practically small sovereigns. In this descending subdivision we have the groundwork of feudalism.

After the decisive battle of Fontenay, some time elapsed before a modus vivendi could be agreed upon between the three brothers. At length, after more fighting and much negotiation, the famous treaty of Verdun was agreed to (August 843). With the imperial title Lothaire was to have Italy, and, roughly speaking, the belt of land stretching therefrom to the North Sea, that lay between the Rhine on the east, and the Rhone, Saone, and the Meuse on the west; Charles, the Bald, was to have France, and Louis, the German, the country between the Rhine and the Oder, and all the territory drained by the Danube, the Drave, and the Save to the point where the two latter rivers merge into the Danube. After this division there was for a short while the semblance of peace in what once had been the empire of the Franks.

But their imperial power had passed away forever. “Woe to the race of the Franks!” cries out Florus the deacon, the head of Agobard’s school of Lyons, and the heir of his elevated political views. “Once there was one empire and one people. But now this great power is trampled underfoot, like a garland of lovely flowers cast from the brow it adorned. This empire, lately one, is now divided into three; and no one can be looked up to as its emperor”.

The end of iconoclasm, 842

About the time that in the West this temporary lull in the quarrels between Louis’s sons occurred, the close of the iconoclastic heresy was celebrated in the East. As Gregory had no particular share, as far as we know, in bringing about this most joyful and important event, it will here be merely touched upon. Michael II (the Stammerer) had shown himself a persecuting foe of the image-worshippers. His son Theophilus (829–January 20, 842) proved himself even a more cruel enemy of holy images. He even went to the length of branding two brothers on the forehead with some offensive verses of his own composing. Methodius, who was afterwards patriarch, was kept in prison for seven years. But the efforts of one emperor after another for one hundred and twenty years could not prevail against truth. Theophilus had not been dead a month when iconoclasm in the East was also dead. His wife Theodora was an image-worshipper. As his son Michael III (the Drunkard) was only three years old at the time of his father’s death, Theodora was named regent. With the advice of her councilors, the iconoclastic patriarch John was deposed, Methodius appointed in his stead, and a synods summoned which decreed the restoration of the images and the celebration of a “feast of orthodoxy” in commemoration of that event. The first feast was kept immediately after the holding of the synod, viz., on the first Sunday of Lent, which that year (842) fell on February 19. Nowadays, both in the Greek and Russian Church, this feast (still kept on the first Sunday of Lent) has a wider signification, for on it is now celebrated the victory over all heresies which are then anathematized. Iconoclasm was dead, but its effects, in the direction of separating the East from the West in the domain both of politics and religion, remained.

To say “iconoclasm was dead” in the East is perhaps to make too strong an assertion. For with curious inconsistency it would seem that the so-called orthodox Greeks are today both image-breakers and image-worshippers. The writer of these pages will never forget his astonishment when, in speaking to a well-informed Russian on the possibility of union between the Greek churches and the See of Rome, he interjected : “But there is the question of the icons!” It appears that the orthodox Greeks are not only passionately attached to their venerable icons, made in the same form now for many centuries, but regard the Latin Church as idolatrous. Those who worship icons of two dimensions are orthodox, but those who worship statues of three dimensions are heterodox, are idolaters.

Ignoring, then, both the principles laid down by the second council of Nicaea and by that of 842, and their previous practice, the use of statues (even of the crucifix, if with a solid and not merely a painted figure on it) apparently gradually died out among the disunited Greeks. And insensibly there came into vogue with them that traditional style in sacred art, anything but beautiful and artistic, with which all are so familiar in the Greek or Russian icon. “This”, writes the Rev. H. F. Tozer, “was stereotyped by a remarkable book, which was compiled at an unknown but early period—the Guide to Painting of Dionysius of Agrapha, which contains rules, very often of a minute description, for the treatment of (sacred) subjects ... This manual is in use at the present day, and explains the singular uniformity of design in the paintings, both ancient and modern, of the Greek Church”.

The Saracens in Sicily and Italy

Whilst the Christians of the empire were slaughtering one another, the Pagan Northmen and the Mohammedan Saracens were taking possession of various parts of their country. In 827, brought in by a traitor, the Saracens of Africa, the subjects of the Aglabite dynasty of Kairouan, effected a landing in Sicily. Messina and Palermo were captured in the course of a few years. They had indeed made inroads into the island during the two preceding centuries, but this time they came to stay. They soon got possession of a large portion of the island, and in little more than a century the Greeks were completely driven out of it. The Greek officials, in withdrawing to the mainland, that is, to the cities of Southern Italy which still acknowledged the suzerainty of the Greeks, carried with them the name of Sicily. Hence the origin of the name the “Two Sicilies”. Even before they had established themselves in Sicily, the Moslems of Africa had made descents upon Italy. Despite the exertions we have seen made by Leo III to put his coast in a good state of defence, Centumcellae (Cività Vecchia) was sacked by the Moors in 813, even during the lifetime of Charlemagne. The ravaging of the west coast of Italy naturally increased after the Moors obtained a firm foothold in Sicily; and of course their devastations spread further after they had been basely called in as allies (840) both by Radelchis and by Siconulf, who were fighting for the dukedom of Beneventum. But the infidels simply turned to their own advantage the furious civil dissensions which they found raging in Beneventum. They seized Bari by treachery, and kept it. Up to the year 851 they ravaged Southern Italy with more or less impunity. In danger such as this, well might the popes bestir themselves.

While the different sovereigns of the Franks and the princes of Southern Italy, utterly careless of everything except their own personal gains, were calling to their aid the foes not merely of civilization but of Christianity, the pagan Northmen and the Mahomedan Saracens, Gregory was doing what lay in his power to protect that part of Christendom over which he held sway. That he was equally solicitous for the spiritual and temporal welfare of his people is the verdict of his biographer, when about to speak of his defensive works. The Book of the Popes goes on to explain how the depredations of the “wicked race of the Agareni (Saracens), which are still going on”, caused Gregory to reflect seriously as to the most efficacious measures to be taken to secure the safety of his people.

He concluded that the best thing to be done was to guard the Tiber by rebuilding the city of Ostia which was then in ruins. Gregory accordingly betook himself to the spot (probably after 841) with a number of Romans, and built himself a villa hard by. By dint of great exertions a new city, or, perhaps, rather a new citadel or fortress, designed by the Pope to be known as Gregoriopolis, arose, as it would appear, close to the ancient Ostia. The new city was made “very strong”, and its high walls were further defended by a deep moat, crossed by drawbridges, and by a supply of military engines (called petrarix) for casting huge stones. Nowadays, however, Gregoriopolis is supposed by some to have been within the circuit of the walls of the ancient Ostia “towards the Porta Romana, instead of occupying the site of medieval Ostia, which still remains”. According to Lanciani, the account in the Liber Pontificalis “is greatly exaggerated, to judge from the remains of Gregoriopolis which the late C. L. Visconti and I laid bare in the winter of 1867-8 ... He simply selected two or three blocks of old houses on the left side of the main street, and filled up the doors, windows, and shop fronts with mud walls. He also barricaded the openings of the streets, which ran between the blocks. It is possible, though we found no evidence, that the houses surrounding this rudimentary fort on the opposite sides of the boundary streets were leveled to the ground”. However, as it does not appear that the Pope’s biographer was writing a romance, it would seem more rational, pending further excavations, to accept his statements more literally. It is far more likely that the discoveries of Lanciani relate to the hasty work accomplished by the people of Ostia themselves when, in the following pontificate, the Saracens made their famous raid up the Tiber in 846. For we are expressly told, in the Farnesian addition to the Liter Pontificalis, that the inhabitants had made an attempt to block up the city before they abandoned it.

This, whether or not the most important, was by no means the only restoration effected by Gregory. In addition to the various churches which in different parts of the city he restored, or rebuilt, Gregory also once more put into working order the great Aqua Trajana or Sabbatine aqueduct, which had been damaged, very likely in the commotions during the reign of Leo III. “Reflecting”, says his biographer, “on the privations of the Romans, inasmuch as they had no means of grinding their corn, Gregory set to work and repaired the Sabbatine aqueduct which, for many years, had remained broken”." The baths and fountains belonging to the basilica of St. Peter and the corn-mills on the Janiculum were once again filled with refreshing and copious streams of water. To this day it supplies the fountains in front of St. Peter’s and a large area of the Trastevere.

Other damage certainly done in Leo III’s reign was also repaired by this successor. The domusculta or farm colony of Galeria which Hadrian had founded on the Via Portuensis by Ponte di Galera, was restored by Gregory, who himself founded a new colony of Draco, on the left bank of the Tiber, some eleven miles from Rome on the Via Ostiensis, and hence not far from his new city. The “tenuta di dragoncello” still preserves the memory of Gregory’s colony. In connection with this colony he also built what is supposed to have been the first papal villa. This would have doubtless been built by the Pope for himself and his court whilst he was superintending the building of Gregoriopolis.

According to his biographer, it was immediately after his consecration that Gregory “began to entertain a very great zeal for the saints and their churches”. St. Peter’s, of course, profited by the Pope’s zeal. Not only did he present it with elaborately worked hangings on which were represented “the passion of SS. Peter and Paul”, but he largely rebuilt and redecorated its atrium. To a newly decorated chapel within the basilica itself, he transferred the body of St. Gregory, “through whom the Holy Ghost had enlightened the world”, and then, from the catacombs, the bodies of SS. Sebastian, Tiburtius, and Gorgonius. “With a pure heart” he both offered splendid gifts to the Church of S. Maria Trastevere, and made considerable changes therein, by raising the altar and putting a presbyteriurn or chancel in front of it, in order to prevent the clergy from being mixed with the laity during divine service. And that the worship of God might be carried on in this famous basilica with greater regularity and devotion, he founded a monastery close to it, and placed therein—to serve it—‘canonical monks’ or canons, probably of the order instituted in the preceding century by St. Chrodegang of Metz.

In order that at least after prayers or Mass he might have a little rest and quiet, he erected, by St. Peter’s, a small but suitable chamber adorned with frescos, and in the Lateran palace “where there was the greatest amount of quiet” a hall wherein, surrounded by his clergy, he could offer up his prayers of thanksgiving to God.

St. Ansgar and Sweden.

Whilst the continent of Europe was, for the most part, settling down into anarchy, owing to the ravages of Northman, Slav, and Saracen, but still more owing to the intestine strife of selfish monarchs, the self-denial of one man was taking into the far North, the peace and order which Christianity proclaims, and which are the first fruits of its proper cultivation. We have already seen how the work of Ansgar among the Danes was interrupted in 828. But, in 829, word was brought to Louis that there was a suitable opening for some fervent missionaries in Sweden. With many valuable presents for the Swedish king, Bern, or Biorn, “of the Hill”, who, even when a heathen, used to say, “he would never lean more to treachery than to good faith”, Ansgar set out for Sweden. Success attended his efforts. On his return (831) to report to Louis the state in which the Church in Sweden then was, the emperor, to carry out Charlemagne’s ideas, founded the archbishopric of Hamburg, and caused Ansgar to be consecrated its first incumbent (832). This he did by the authority of Pope Gregory IV, and with the object of making that city the center for the missions of the North. Ansgar was then sent to Rome. Gregory not only gave our saint the pallium, and, “before the body and confession of Blessed Peter, full authority to preach the Gospel”, but named him apostolic legate “among the nations of the Swedes, Danes, Slavs, and other northern peoples”, in conjunction with Ebbo, archbishop of Rheims, who had held that office before (c. 834). Although the city of Hamburg was burnt by the Normans in 845, and its See had to be joined (847) to that of Bremen, still the work of Ansgar went steadily on. He did not, indeed, though he longed for it no less ardently than St. Boniface had done, receive, like the apostle of Germany, the crown of martyrdom. But by the time he ceased from this mortal conflict (February 3, 865), God had begun, through the labours of this His servant, to listen to the sad cry for help against the Northmen which was ascending to Him all over the empire. It was not, however, till the very close of the following century that Christianity took anything like a firm hold of the Northmen. Still the good seed had been sown by Ansgar; and no doubt even during its gradual propagation must have exercised at least some mitigating influence on the “fury of the Northmen”.

The records of history enable us to consider Gregory, not only founding new metropolitan Sees, but having various relations with existing metropolitans and their suffragans. He sends the pallium to the archbishop of Salzburg (May 31, 837), and to Venerius, the patriarch of Grado (c. 828), to show his sympathy for that See in its struggle for its rights. In June 827 a synod assembled at Mantua, at which had assisted representatives of the Pope (Eugenius II) and the emperors (Louis and Lothaire), had allowed itself to be imposed upon by an erroneous narrative of the history of the Sees of Aquileia and Grado, presented to it by Maxentius, the patriarch of the former See, and had decided against Venerius that Maxentius and his successors were to have control over toe bishops of Istria.

Against the Mantuan decision Venerius had appealed to Rome—his last hope of obtaining justice, as it has been for many other injured men and woman both before and since the days of Gregory IV. Like a child, wrote the patriarch (838), who hopes all things from its parents, he turned to the Pope against the ceaseless attacks of his rival, because “after God, our insignificance has no refuge except in the majesty of the dignity of the Apostle, whose place, by the authority of God, you hold”.

“By the emperor’s orders”, continued Venerius, “I ought with Maxentius to have gone to Rome before this to get the affair between us settled. But Maxentius was unwilling to be judged by you, and preferred a verdict at Mantua. Thither I repaired. Not finding my opponent there, I would not wait; but, showing the emperor his letter, in which he decided that the matter should be concluded at Rome, I declared that I would only enter into the case before the vicar of Blessed Peter, whose place, with the power of binding and loosing bestowed upon him by Christ our God, you hold; and if his suffragans have decided the affair in his favor, there is fulfilled in them the saying of the Apostle (Phil. ii. 21): “All seek the things that are their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ’s”. For it is only right that he who is the head of all, should judge all. During many years our Lord has given to His Church no more honorable, upright, and just prelate than you, 0 most blessed father, whom no one can cause to swerve from the right path. You are not moved by the favor of princes nor by the persuasions of those below you. Occupying the throne of Peter, you display his firmness. Up to this, the princes of this world have not presumed to interfere in this matter, but have left it to you, though gifts have blinded the eyes of some of their subjects to justice. But now, as I understand, Maxentius openly boasts that, by a decree of the emperor, he is to have the diocese of Istria. I, however, fully trust that you will be my defender”.

Better informed than his predecessor of the truth with regard to the respective rights of the two Sees, Gregory favored Venerius. Like many another ambitious prelate, unable to establish his rights in the legitimate way, Maxentius appealed to the secular arm. Backed by Lothaire, whom this history has shown ever ready to interfere in the concerns of others, whether Pope or emperor, Maxentius compelled the bishops of Istria to yield him obedience. It was altogether to no purpose that Gregory warned him to desist. The quarrels between Aquileia and Grado were to continue to disturb both their own peace and that of Rome.

John of Naples.

Very interesting and edifying is the history of bishop John of Naples, as we find it in the pages of John, the Deacon, who in the latter half of this ninth century wrote down all he could discover relative to the lives of the bishops of the Church to which he was attached. The last bishop he wrote of was Athanasius I, who died in 872. A certain Bonus, duke of Naples, turned his mind to oppressing its Church. In vain did the saintly bishop Tiberius threaten the duke with the judgments of God. Bonus cast him into prison, and ordered the election of another bishop. This arbitrary proceeding was stoutly resisted by a learned and holy deacon of the same name as our author. At once, by a whim not unusual with tyrants, Bonus declared that the young deacon should himself be the new bishop. “Never”, cried the youth, “will I be an intruder into the See”. The enraged duke thereupon threatened to decapitate Tiberius and his household if he were not obeyed. To avoid greater evils, John consented to be elected on condition that he was to be allowed to visit Tiberius, and that the latter was not to be harmed nor removed from the palace, conditions to which the tyrant, who must have conceived an admiration for John, agreed. The day before the outraged bishop Tiberius died, so kindly had he been treated by John, that he publicly declared that his quondam deacon had taken the bishopric during his lifetime, out of compassion for him, and not from any ambition. He accordingly hoped that no condemnation, either of the Roman See or of others, would fall upon him. On the death of Tiberius, the duke Sergius, for Bonus had died meanwhile (834), moved by this declaration of the dying Tiberius, sent envoys to Rome to ask that John might be enthroned. But before Gregory would consent, he convinced himself by his legates that all that had been said in the candidate’s favor was really true. To the immense profit of the people of Naples, John was summoned to Rome and duly recognized. After all we have had to write of the ambition and cruel faithlessness displayed by men in high places during the years that Gregory was Pope, it is pleasing to read of the devotedness and gratitude which Tiberius and John of Naples displayed towards each other.

Before passing on to speak of Gregory’s dealings with certain bishops in Frankland, it will be worthwhile to quote a letter to him from a certain cleric there. This cleric is, with good reason, believed to be the abbot Gozbald, who was made bishop of Wuzburg in 842. The document is important, because it shows that the Carolingian monarchs did not always act so arbitrarily in the matter of appointing bishops as has been sometimes asserted. The certain cleric writes : “From the time when Holy Church was founded on the solidity of the firmest of rocks, it has ever been considered necessary by all who wish to live piously in Christ to seek all spiritual favors from the Apostolic See. Those who in their quest pass over it commit the greatest mistake. You know, my lord Gregory, the most excellent of all distinguished men, and prelate most beloved by me, that in seeking that to which the ardor of my mind impels me, I consider it must not be sought nor obtained from any other, or elsewhere, than from the holy Apostle Peter, and from you his successor and from your holy See ... For though some things which are not right are pleasant, still every wrong rather drags down to hell than raises to heaven. This, my most beloved lord, I say on account of the letter of your son Louis (the German) and his request in my behalf, that you may know that I desire to receive from the Apostolic See, if such be the will of Christ, the sacred gift (of episcopal consecration), not stealthily, nor from a desire of filthy lucre, like some, but with a pure and single mind”. Needless to say, much trouble and scandal would have been spared the Church if every candidate for the honors of the episcopate had been animated by the zealous, yet humble, sentiments that inflamed the heart of Gozbald.

Of the bishops of France (Francia, Frankland), the one in whom Gregory took most interest, during the time of the troubles between Louis and his rebellious sons, was S. Aldric. His eminent virtues had caused him to be elected bishop of Le Mans (832), and had induced the Pope to send him, along with a pastoral staff, the vestment which he had himself worn during the Easter solemnities. With these presents he sent (833) him a letter in which, knowing him to be a devoted partisan of the emperor, he asked him to come to him if possible, and promised to grant him whatever favor he chose to ask of the Apostolic See. When Gregory made his memorable journey into France in 833, he is said to have written a letter to Aldric, in which, if it be not a forgery, he decided that any accusations alleged against S. Aldric must be brought before him. It is supposed that owing to his unshaken fidelity to the unfortunate emperor Louis, proceedings were instituted against Aldric with a view to getting him removed from his See, and that the saint appealed to the Pope. The fact that the above-mentioned reply of the Pope was in some of its copies undated, and hence had been printed without a date in some works, has caused certain writers to transfer all persecution of Aldric, along with this letter itself, to the year 840, after the death of his supporter, the emperor Louis. But in the copy printed by Mabillon, Gregory’s letter is dated from Cohlambur (Columbaria, Colmar), July 8, 833. It was therefore, if genuine, written before he returned to Rome, and not unlikely whilst full of indignation at the baseness exhibited on the Field of Lies, and at the way he had himself been treated by Lothaire. He accordingly took advantage of this appeal to address a strong letter to the bishops of “Gaul, Europe and Germany”. He lays down that Aldric may, if he think fit, “appeal to us” from the decision of the primates of the province, “in accordance with decrees of the fathers, and that, till that appeal has been heard, no one is to presume to pass any sentence upon him”. All are exhorted to obey the Pope’s mandate if they wish to remain in communion with the apostolic church, “which is their head”. He concludes by reminding his correspondents that, “by his present decision, he is not ordering anything new, but is only reaffirming what has been of old decreed. For no one is ignorant that not only episcopal causes, but all that relates to our holy religion, must be referred to the Apostolic See, as to the head, and must thence take their rule”. This energetic letter, and the rapid restoration of Louis the Pious to power seem to have prevented any harm from coming to Aldric at this time. But his enemies were able to get the upper hand of him for a short time after the death of Louis, till he was reinstated by Charles the Bald.

In connection with this case, Jager well remarks that it was time for the popes to intervene in the matter of the condemnation of bishops. The metropolitans were becoming mere tools in the hands of the princes. Hence, in restricting the powers of the metropolitans and summoning bishops before them, the popes prevented both the metropolitans from being seduced from the path of duty and the bishops from being oppressed.

In concluding our notice of Gregor’s relations with bishops and metropolitans, it may be observed that they are enough of themselves to show that the False Decretals, which are soon to make their appearance on the scene, added absolutely nothing to the rights of the Pope, well understood and recognized before they were ever thought of. The False Decretals have been made to appear as a sort of magic wand, which, skillfully handled by the popes and other interested individuals, were powerful enough to blot out from men’s minds the knowledge of the position and rights previously occupied by the Pope in the Church, and to at once create a new order of things. Credat Judaeus! What is of historical certainty, is that neither the popes, nor any other Christian writers who subscribed to the papal power, based it on any other ground than the words of Our Lord, Thou art Peter, etc., and the other kindred texts.

If his alleged excessive attention to works of piety had some effect in bringing difficulties on the emperor Louis, it was certainly not altogether unproductive of good. It resulted in the further cultivation of at least one of the arts. For, following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, Louis turned his attention to church music. Under cantors whom he had induced Pope Hadrian to send to him, Charlemagne had established two schools of singing, one at Soissons and the other at Metz. By these authorities the antiphonaries of France had to be regulated.

Metz had been prepared to become a center of this kind by the action of its bishop, S. Chrodegang. Probably about 754, he had adopted the Roman liturgy and its chant (Romance cantilena). Other local and individual efforts in the same direction were followed by a decree of king Pippin abolishing the Gallican liturgy, which had fallen into the same state of disorder as the Church itself in Gaul under the latter Merovingians. The action of Pippin was endorsed by Charlemagne. Not unnaturally, then, was a deacon of the Church of Metz picked out by Louis to be sent to Rome (831) to obtain information on certain matters connected with the choral and other parts of the ritual. Amalarius, for such was the deacon’s name, was most kindly received by the Pope, who put him for instruction under one Theodore, who was then archdeacon of the Roman Church. When he had obtained the information he was in quest of, he asked the Pope to send an antiphonary to the emperor Louis. But Gregory had to acknowledge that he had not a suitable one to send. All those, doubtless the ones of sufficient value and accuracy, which he had to spare, he had allowed, he said, the abbot Wala to take with him to France. This journey of the deacon of Metz, and the few recorded facts in connection with it, are worth noting, at least so far as they show us the interest that was then taken in church music in France; and the rarity, owing to the expense of their production, of works of such a kind and size as antiphonaries.

Whilst on the subject of the mutual action of Gregory and Louis in the matter of the ritual of the Church, it may be noted that we have it on the authority of Ado of Vienne that, in accordance with directions received from Gregory, Louis decreed that the feast of “All Saints”, which the Romans observed from the institution of Pope Boniface IV, should be celebrated throughout all Gaul and Germany on the 1st of November.

Gregory, the quiet and unassuming man, the peace-loving priest, died in January 844, and was buried in St. Peter’s.

SERGIUS II

A.D. 844-847.

EMPERORS OF THE EAST.                              EMPERORS OF THE WEST.

Michael II (the Stammerer), 820-829.               Louis, the Pious, 814-840.

Theophilus, 829-842. Lothaire I, 823-855.

Theodora and Michael III, 842-856.

SERGIUS, whom the influence of the nobility, this time, however, not without vigorous opposition, was to carry to the See of Peter, received his father’s name, and, as might have been expected, was of noble birth. His family had already given one Pope (Stephen V) to the Church, and was soon to give another (Hadrian II). He was born in the fourth quarter of the city, but whether in the fourth ecclesiastical or fourth civil region, in the Alta Semita or Via Sacra, is not clear. His father, Sergius, died whilst his son was very young, so that the task of his early education fell entirely upon his mother. To her ‘daily joy’ the little Sergius fully responded to the efforts made by her to bring him up in the fear of God. So that, as we are told, he even shunned the sports of his companions that no one might witness anything unbecoming in him. The virtues of his noble ancestry seemed to be summed up in him. And, although his pious mother died when he was only twelve years of age, the good seed had been sown, and he grew up to be a delight to his fellow-men, humble before God, distinguished in mind and body, the support and comfort of the poor, a despiser of the empty things of this world, but an eager seeker after divine wisdom.

The talents and misfortunes of the little Sergius attracted the attention of Pope Leo III, who sent him to the school of cantors that he might learn not only music, but also the ordinary subjects of general knowledge. To the great pleasure of the Pope, Sergius was soon at the top of his class. He was ordained acolyte by him. The favor he had found in the eyes of Leo, Sergius found in the eyes of Leo’s successors. Stephen made him a sub-deacon, and Paschal created him cardinal priest of the Church of SS. Martin and Sylvester (S. Martino ai Monti). This church was afterwards restored by Sergius when he became Pope. In a confession, which still exists beneath the high altar, he placed the remains of Sylvester, of five other popes, and of other saints from the catacomb of S. Priscilla. Unfortunately the mosaics with which he then adorned the apse have perished, doubtless in the great restoration of 1650. Rude though the mosaics of this age were, they have preserved for us, in the figures of the popes they present to us, not only their dress, but at least some distorted shadow of their personal appearance. Their loss, therefore, is always to be deplored. Under Gregory IV the upward career of Sergius still went on, and he was made archpriest.

On the death of Gregory, the principal clergy (proceres) and the laity, both high and low, assembled to deliberate on the choice of a candidate. By divine Providence, after various names had been suggested, the minds of all were turned to Sergius. It was unanimously resolved to select the archpriest.

When this assembly had broken up, a certain deacon, John by name, collected a band of the rabble of the city, and, to the terror of its residents, broke into the Lateran palace by force. But the Roman mob, easily roused, were just as easily frightened. They had not held the Lateran an hour, when the news of the gathering of the princes of the Quirites (Quiritum principes) caused them to disperse and abandon John to his fate. The princes, with a large body of horse, betook themselves to the basilica of SS. Martin and Sylvester, and with great joy and pomp escorted Sergius to the Lateran. A shower of snow which fell that same day seemed to the people a sure sign that their candidate was certainly the one chosen of heaven. John was ignominiously thrust into a monastery; and, but for the prohibition of Sergius, “who was unwilling to render evil for evil”, the unhappy deacon would have been cut to pieces.

To the great joy of all, Sergius was consecrated in St. Peter’s, January, 844. If full trust is to be placed in the Farnesian edition of the Liber Pontificalis, Sergius, the Pope, was far from resembling Sergius, the bright young acolyte, Sergius, the favorite of Pope after Pope. He had now lost all his graces of body and mind. Owing to the gout, he was deprived of the use of his feet and almost of his hands, and was, not unnaturally, irritable, and not too careful in his choice of words. If he was troubled with the gout, it was no doubt because he was addicted to the pleasures of the table. As a gourmand, he had, of course, no appetite for business, but entrusted that to one of his brothers named Benedict. No wonder, then, that it is further stated—if all this be not spiteful exaggeration—that the princes of the Quirites, whose privileges he increased, set such a man at naught.

Benedict is described as worse than his brother. Heavy and brutal, he took advantage of his brother’s helplessness and usurped all ecclesiastical and civil power. Besides being blamed for wasting the funds of the Church and State over buildings, on which, with the worst of taste, he labored day and night, he is denounced for obtaining from the emperor, by the aid of bribery, “all power and dominion over Rome”.

It may be remembered that, by the Constitution of 824, it was arranged that two missi should be appointed, one by the Pope and one by the emperor, to see that the various local officials performed their duty properly. It is quite possible that, appointed by his brother as his missus, he succeeded in inducing Lothaire to name him missus on his behalf also. At any rate, when he returned to Rome, he acted as its monarch, and anticipated the Alberics of the following century.

Though a slave to immorality, he did not hesitate even to usurp the bishopric of Albano, “that he might the better fight for the devil”. Once possessed of authority over civilians and ecclesiastics, he proceeded to wring money out of both alike by every expedient. He made the restoration of his brother’s Church of S. Martino a pretext to extort money from the monasteries and from the people. Bishoprics and every other ecclesiastical office were sold publicly to the highest bidder. Sometimes even more than two thousand mancuses (even a silver mancus was worth two shillings and sixpence) was extorted for a single bishopric.

This terrible indictment its author concluded by declaring that it was his belief that God had sent the Saracens against Rome, because no ecclesiastic could be found bold enough to check these excesses or to die in the attempt. “For it is better to die gloriously than live in ignominy”.

Leaving the reader to extract what truth there is in this tirade, we must retrace our steps to the period of Sergius’s elevation to the See of Peter.

When news of the consecration of Sergius without imperial intervention reached the ears of the emperor Lothaire, he was indignant, and at once dispatched his son Louis, Drogo, bishop of Metz, a number of clergy and nobles, and a large force, “to see to it that for the future on the death of a Pope no one was consecrated except with his permission and in presence of his envoys”.

On the mode of action of this army of Lothaire’s Franks, the armies of the Germans in the later Middle Ages seem to have modelled theirs. At any rate, both Louis and the later German emperors had one and the same sanguinary manner of announcing their coming to Rome. As soon as his army, advancing from Pavia, reached Papal territory “in the neighbourhood of Bologna”, they began to slay and to ravage. And this they continued to do till they reached “the fountain or bridge of Capella”. Here a sudden and most terrible storm of thunder and lightning, which killed some of Drogo’s principal associates, terrified the Franks, but did not stop their fierce advance.

Sergius, however, by quiet firmness succeeded in pacifying Louis. Nine miles from Rome, he was flatteringly received by all the judges of the city, and, when he had come within a mile of the city, he was met by the various companies of the Roman militia and of the scholae of the foreigners, and by those who bore the signs or crosses. All joined in chanting the customary hymns of welcome. Louis was greatly pleased at this reception, and, accompanied by the Romans, drew near to St. Peter’s. On the Sunday after Pentecost (June 8) he was met by the Pope at the top of the steps of the basilica. After embracing each other, holding the Pope by the right hand, Louis approached the silver gates of the church. They were shut; and the astonished monarch heard Sergius say that “if he came with a good will and for the benefit of the Republic, the city and the church, he might pass through the gates opened by the Pope’s order; but that, otherwise, they would never be opened for him by the Pope or by his orders”.

On Louis’s express declaration that he had not come with any ill-disposed or evil intent, the doors were opened, and all entered, singing the canticle, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

As the Pope would not have the Frankish army within the city, the troops, not content with taking what they required, destroyed what they did not want, so that the suburbs presented the appearance of having been laid waste by a terrible storm. On the Sunday (June 15) following his first arrival, Louis was solemnly anointed by the Pope, presented with the sword of state, and crowned king of the Lombards.

After the coronation, according to the papal biographer, there was for some days a violent altercation between Drogo of Metz, supported by the archbishops of Ravenna and Milan, by over twenty-three Italian bishops from the North, from Tuscany, and from Spoleto, and by a number of counts, and the Pope, with other bishops and the Roman nobles. What exactly the contention was about the Liber Pontificalis does not state. But from what it does say of the proceedings of the assembly, it would seemingly have us conclude that the wordy strife was in connection with rights of supremacy over the city which were put forward by Drogo in behalf of Louis. The prudent words of the Pope so far gained the day that they caused his opponents to lay aside the fierceness of manner with which they had conducted the discussion in the first instance. In a quieter style they asked the Pope to allow the Romans to take an oath of fidelity to King Louis. To this Sergius firmly refused to give his consent. “To this neither I nor the Roman nobility will consent; but, if you wish it, I will permit them to take an oath of fidelity to the emperor”. With this the Franks had to content themselves; and the Pope, King Louis, and the archbishops and bishops duly promised fidelity to Lothaire.

With this narrative of the papal biographer the accounts of the Frankish chroniclers appear not to agree. In the annals of Prudentius, and in the life of Sergius by the Pseudo-Liutprand, the crowning of Louis is placed after the holding of the council. “Peracto negotio”, says Prudentius, “Hlodowicum pontifex Romanus unctione in regem consecratum cingulo decoravit”. And the PseudoLiutprand also puts the coronation after the oath-taking, and after the council in which Sergius “was at length confirmed in his See”—prodictum Sergium post multas contentiones in sede demum confirmaverunt (Louis and Drogo). Many think, therefore, that the papal biographer has altered the order of events.

In accordance, presumably, with the convention of 824, it seems, indeed, clear that Louis came to investigate the legality of the election of Sergius; that a council was held to decide that point; that, of course, Louis was crowned after the holding of that council; and that the question of the oath arose in connection with the coronation of the young king. However, with all this the narrative in the Liber Pontificalis can be easily reconciled by supposing that there were two assemblies, one before and one after the coronation; and that of the two the latter was at least the more impressive, and hence more calculated to strike the attention of the papal biographer. For the very great majority of these biographers were very simple, though I believe truthful, men. The presence of an officially recognized Pope and a newly crowned king would naturally make the second assembly clearly convened to settle the question of the oath—more solemn, if less important, than the first gathering. The first council will have settled the question of the legality of the election of Sergius, the second will have discussed the consequences which some wished to draw from the coronation of Louis.

Before the Franks left Rome, Ebbo of Rheims, and Bartholomew, archbishop of Narbonne, who had lost their rank (at the council of Thionville, 835) on account of the part they had taken against Louis the Pious, and in favor of the ungrateful Lothaire, begged the Pope to restore to them their palliums. Though their request was doubtless in harmony with Lothaire’s wishes, Sergius firmly refused to grant it. Their Sees were in the kingdom of Charles the Bald, and he was anxious not to irritate him. Accordingly he would only admit them to lay communion. Ebbo will come to our notice again before we have finished with the life of Sergius.

During the reign of Pope Gregory IV, Siconulf and Radelchis were fighting for the principality of Beneventum, and both of them were playing into the hands of the Saracens to get their help. Siconulf, Prince of the Beneventans, as the Book of the Popes calls him, now came to Louis with a great army to try and obtain his assistance. The papal biographer bewails the still further devastation of the country caused by the arrival of this additional army, and says that Rome seemed to be surrounded by a besieging host. Siconulf made Louis a present of a large sum of money, and promised to acknowledge his suzerainty if he would assist him. Louis received both the oath and the money of Siconulf, and gave him words in return. But before he left the neighborhood of Rome, Siconulf was most anxious to see the Pope, to get his blessing, and, no doubt, to win from him a promise of assistance. Admitted to the presence of Sergius, we are told that with the greatest humility he prostrated himself on the ground, and kissed his feet. When he had received the Pope’s blessing, he departed southwards with his army, and Louis returned to Pavia with his. We may be sure that this visit of Siconulf to Sergius was in connection with his struggle against his rival. But our records do not tell us whether he wished to secure the Pope’s influence in his behalf with the emperor or Louis, or whether it was simply the support of Sergius himself that he was seeking.

On the departure of Louis, the whole Roman people, nobles and commons, “freed from a great plague, and delivered from a cruel and tyrannical yoke, venerated Sergius as the author of their safety and the restorer of peace”. But he himself gave the glory of what had been done to the divine assistance.

Despite the difference between them at the synod, Sergius must evidently have conceived a high idea of Drogo’s character; for before his departure from Rome, he named the archbishop his legate for France and Germany. Were it not for the ready way in which Drogo afterwards resigned his newly acquired dignity, and for the known animus with which Hincmar of Rheims defended his rights as a metropolitan, one might be tempted to believe that writer when he pointedly insinuates that Drogo had made use of his birth and influential position to bring pressure to bear on Sergius to induce him to bestow such a high office on him.

In the letter in which the Pope announced this appointment to the Transalpine bishops, he says that, as “solicitude for all the churches” prevents him from laboring among them in person, he sends, in accordance with the custom of his predecessors, a vicar in his stead, viz., “Drogo, archbishop of Metz, the son of the glorious emperor Charles, who made one the empire of the Romans and Franks”. And he considers that, “furnished with the authority of the prince of the apostles, conspicuous for his learning and sanctity, and, moreover, the uncle of the emperor Lothaire and of his brothers, Louis (the German) and Charles (the Bald)”, he is a very fit person to act in the Pope’s stead. And, as Drogo has to be responsible for them all, all must give him their obedience. He is empowered by the Pope to assemble “general synods of the empire”; and, if any one from those parts wants to appeal to the Holy See, he must first appeal to Drogo, and only come to Rome if the bishops of the province cannot agree on his case. Drogo is also licensed to examine into the election and qualifications of bishops and abbots, “save in all things the primacy of this universal Roman See, and the honor of our authority, as well as the rights and honor of our most dear and spiritual son Lothaire”. Sergius then goes on to speak of the necessity of the three royal brothers keeping the peace between them, and adds that if any one of them prefers the prince of discord to catholic peace, “him, with the help of God, will we endeavor to the best of our ability to chastise with the authority of the canons ... Those who love war are children of the devil”.

But to no purpose did the Pope in conclusion exhort the bishops to avoid dissensions and to act together. The same jealousy, which, working between the princes and nobles of the different kingdoms of the Franks, prevented political union in the empire, operated among the bishops to render impossible a united ecclesiastical government in the empire. The green-eyed monster devoured the good work that might have been done by an emperor over a united empire, and by Drogo over the united episcopate of the empire. And so at a council held at Verneuil-sur-Oise by Charles the Bald (December 844), for the reformation of the Church in his kingdom, his bishops, not wishing to be subject to a legate whose See was in the kingdom of the emperor Lothaire, and yet at the same time unwilling to offend so great a man as Drogo, declared in their eleventh “capitulum” that they did not wish to express their sentiments on his appointment till a great council of the bishops of Gaul and Germany had spoken on the subject. Seeing the feeling against him which inspired this decree, Drogo abandoned his struggle to keep unity in the empire, and resigned his dignity. It would seem that as in nature fresh substances are only called into existence by heat, so a great deal of heat, in the shape of quarrelling and fighting, was absolutely necessary to bring into being the kingdoms of modern Europe, the birth-throes of which we are now witnessing.

What Ebbo had been unable to accomplish at Rome, viz., his restoration to the See of Rheims, he made another effort to accomplish elsewhere by very different means. To punish him for the part he had taken against the emperor Louis I, he had been solemnly deposed by the Council of Thionville (835). But on the death of Louis and the accession of his supporter Lothaire, Ebbo was re-established (December 840) in his See by the help of his patron, the new emperor. But the next year he had had to leave his See once again, on account of the enmity of Charles the Bald, who of course was naturally hostile to him on account of the part he had formerly taken against his father and himself, and because he now sided with Lothaire. In 845, a council held at Beauvais insisted on the filling up of the See of Rheims, which had been practically vacant for ten years. In succession to Ebbo, first Fulk, and, after his death, Notho, had been elected to the vacant See. From one cause or another, among other reasons for fear lest Ebbo should contrive to get himself reinstated, they had neither of them been consecrated. But in consequence of the action of the Council of Beauvais, Hincmar was elected to the See and consecrated (May 3, 845). It was not, however, till 847 that he received the pallium from Pope Leo IV. Of all the prelates of the ninth century, Hincmar was second to none. He was as illustrious by his piety as by his birth, as remarkable for his energy as for his learning. The trusted counsellor of Charles the Bald, he was ever true to him and to the Carolingian line. And if his strong will, and a very exalted idea of his own position, authority, and rights—for always he was Hincmar—brought him, sometimes even through his own fault, into rather violent contact with bishops, kings, or popes, he was none the less a noble character, and one of the glories of the Church in France.

Taking advantage of another outbreak of ill-feeling between Lothaire and Charles (846), Ebbo induced the emperor to work for his restoration. On the ground that there was a division in the Church of Rheims on the subject of the ordination of Hincmar, Lothaire obtained leave from the Pope to reopen the question of the deposition of Ebbo. Sergius himself wrote to Charles the Bald, to direct him to send Guntbold, archbishop of Rouen, and the other bishops whom Guntbold might himself select, to Treves, there to meet the Pope’s envoys and to look into the state of the case between Hincmar and Ebbo. He also asked him to cause Hincmar to present himself at Treves, an order that he repeated to Hincmar. To Guntbold the Pope wrote to the same effect, adding that he would send his envoys to Treves after Easter (846) to carry out the emperor’s wishes.

But for some cause the papal envoys never arrived. Perhaps the inroad of the Saracens, of which we shall speak immediately, and then the death of Sergius, hindered their departure. Guntbold, however, held a synod at Paris at the close of the same year. The case was, of course, given against Ebbo, who finally retired to the kingdom of Louis the German. That sovereign gave him the bishopric of Hildesheim, in the province of Mayence. Ebbo closed his turbulent life in 851, but his case did not die till long after that date.

Saracens at Rome, 846.

During this same year (846) the attention of Sergius must have often been directed towards the Saracens, who had, in the course of it, seized the island of Ponza, even before their turbans had for the first time been descried from the walls of Rome. At any rate Adelbert, the energetic marquis of Tuscany and Frankish protector of the papal territory of Corsica, sent, on the 10th of August, an urgent letter to the Pope, informing him that a fleet of seventy-three ships, having on board an army of eleven thousand Saracens with five hundred horses, was in full sail from Africa to Rome. He advised him to remove within the fortifications of the city the bodies of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul and the treasures from their basilicas, both of which were then outside the walls. According, however, to the Farnesian biographer, the incompetent brothers made light of the information. “All regarded it as incredible”. But “the more prudent Romans”, after taking counsel together, sent Adelbert’s letter and messages of their own “to the subject cities and to their neighbors”, directing all to hasten under arms to the seacoast. The only result of this was that a few sent for further information. Considering the frequent raiding descents which the Saracens had already made on various parts of the coasts of Italy, there can be no doubt that rumors of a plundering expedition to the Tiber must often have reached Rome. Unfulfilled they had come to be discredited. This time, however, the cry of ‘wolf’ had not been raised without reason.

On the twenty-third, the piratical fleet anchored off the mouth of the Tiber. The people of Ostia, on its left bank, made a feeble attempt at resistance, and then abandoned their city to the infidel. Portus, on the opposite shore, was also soon in their hands. Terrified on hearing all this, the Romans kept watch on their walls night and day. But a company of the foreigners in Rome, consisting of English, Frisians, and Franks, marched boldly down to Portus, and inflicted some slight damage on a foraging party of the enemy. Joined by a number of Romans, another trifling success was scored by the foreign scholae; but, discovering the great numbers of the enemy, they fell back towards Rome. Unfortunately, however, they were surprised and cut to pieces. Then, occupying the low hills that skirt the Tiber, the Saracens pushed up the river, accompanied by their fleet, destroying everything by fire and sword as they went along. Some of the dukes (duces) of King Louis who had hastened towards Rome with what forces they could hurriedly gather together were driven in confusion into the city. St. Peter’s fell into the hands of the infidels, and was plundered of all its treasures, which, with those of St. Paul’s, which shared the same fate as St. Peter’s, Lanciani estimates as amounting to three tons of gold and thirty of silver. Discomfited, however, in the neighborhood of St. Paul’s, the marauders marched South, while their fleet sailed along the coast. At Gaeta the fortune of war again favored them, and they were there enabled to embark in peace with their booty. But their ill-gotten gains never reached home. Their fleet was destroyed off Sicily by a terrible tempest, in which all perished, and which even cast up some of their plunder on the Roman coasts.

The narrow escape which Rome, the center of Christendom, had had from falling into the hands of the infidel, the sacking of the basilicas of the apostles, beloved by every Christian, made the most profound impression on the imagination of Western Europe. Soon, if not at once, enshrined in verse, the incident was conveyed to the knowledge of all by itinerant reciters. Under the title of “Destruction de Rome”, a chanson de geste, certainly in existence in the twelfth century, and preserved for us in a MS. of the fourteenth, is full of details, many of them clearly accurate, of this sensational event. In the thirteenth century it used to be recited “every year at the fair of Lendit, in the plain of St. Denis”. In accordance with facts, it bewails pathetically the ravages of the Saracens, who are ready

“Pur gaitier le païs et de lonc e de lé ;

N'i remeigne chastels dungeons ne fermete,

Monstiers ne abbeye qe ne soit enbrase,” etc.

While it laments the riches taken from St. Peter’s, there is no mention of the loss of his body.

“A Dex! corn grans richesces i firent emporter,

De coupes, de hanaps (et) d'argent et d'or cler

Riches samis et pailes et cendals d'outre-mer”.

But, when help arrives, the poet dramatically depicts Rome in flames.

      “Kant it vindrent a Rome, si virent luy port(e) overee,

     Et le fu el cite moult granment alume.”

By this disastrous raid we are brought face to face with a very interesting question. Were the bodies of SS. Peter and Paul brought into the city before the arrival of the Saracens, or were they left in their respective basilicas and destroyed by the Saracens? It may be replied that there is no direct historical evidence that their sacred bodies were either removed or profaned. Arguing, however, from the condition of the two tombs in the year 846, Lanciani gives it as his opinion “that the fate of the two holy places was not in all respects the same; that the sarcophagus of St. Peter, placed in a subterranean crypt, and protected by a case of solid metal embedded in masonry, escaped rifling, while that of St. Paul, a plain marble coffin level with the floor of the basilica, was certainly injured or destroyed. We find the evidence of the fact last mentioned in the life of Benedict III: “Sepulchrum (Pauli Ap.) quod a Sarracenis destructum fuerat, perornavit”. The word destructum, however, cannot be taken in a literal sense; the lid of the sarcophagus—with the epitaph, Paulo Apostolo Mart(yri) engraved in the style of the age of Constantine—is still in existence. I saw it on December 1, 1891, having lowered myself from the fenestrella under the high altar.

Father Barnes also holds that “the sacred body of St. Peter does not seem to have been interfered with”; and, judging from the existing condition of the apostle’s tomb, believes that it was rendered still more inaccessible by the Romans having filled up the chamber above it with “loose stones and rubbish”. “At St. Paul’s”, he says, “there was nothing to be done but to close the hole (by which the tomb of the apostle could be seen) with cement, and this seems to have been the course that was adopted”.

As a last word on the subject, it may be added that if either of the sacred bodies had really been destroyed, the fact could scarcely have failed to have been categorically stated.

Despite the unfortunate final issue of this inroad to the Saracens, it had taught them that an attack on Rome was feasible. In the following reign we shall see them putting this lesson into practice. Considering the sensation it made, it might be thought that this attempt on the center of Christendom, on the source of Western civilization, would have sufficed, in view of their common danger, to have at once united in arms all the various peoples of Europe. But no! The rulers of the nations went on as before, selfishly seeking their own personal ends; and the people under them continued as hitherto to be oppressed not only by them, but by the Normans, the Slavs, and the Saracens. On the Romans, however, this event, which, as we learn from the biographer of Leo IV, struck them with the most profound sorrow and at the same time with a well-founded alarm and consternation, had a very useful effect. For a time, at least, it made them thoroughly loyal subjects of the Pope, to whom both nobles and people looked not in vain for comfort and support during the reign of the active and courageous Leo IV.

To this day memorials of this or some other ninth century Saracen raid in the Roman territory are still dug up in the shape of “daggers and poniards with curved blades of Oriental make”; and as further evidence of the same fact, high up among the clouds, on a mountain over 2600 feet above the sea level, is perched a village, with the distinctive name of Saracinesco, and with inhabitants whose names proclaim their Eastern origin.

Death, hastened no doubt by the untoward event we have been discussing, prevented Sergius from carrying into execution an attempt he was making to bring to an end the perennial dispute between the bishops of Aquileia and Grado. He had summoned to Rome, by the feast of St. Martin (November 1), both Andrew of Aquileia, the successor of Maxentius, and Venerius of Grado. But afterwards changing his mind, he wrote to order them not to proceed with their dispute, till he had succeeded in arranging with the emperor Lothaire for the holding of a general synod, at which they would have to appear before their sovereign. He evidently saw that it would require the physical force of the secular arm to enforce the carrying out of any ecclesiastical decision relative to the respective rights of such important individuals as the patriarchs of Grado and Aquileia. With his death, the negotiations he had opened with the emperor on this matter fell through.

Short as was the reign of Sergius II.—for he died suddenly on January 27, 8474—he or his brother managed to execute many important works for the further utility or ornamentation of the city or its neighborhood. Like many of his predecessors, he turned his attention to the aqueducts and to the Lateran. Built about B.C. 150, the Martian aqueduct brought to Rome the waters “cold and pure” from springs in the neighborhood of Subiaco, over thirty-five miles away. For most of its course it ran underground, but when within six or seven miles from the city it was supported on peperino arches, the most massive of any which supported the aqueducts of Rome. Many of them are to this day in a good state of preservation. A branch from it, under the name of Aqua Jovia, was constructed by Diocletian to supply his baths. It entered Rome near the Porta Appia (S. Sebastiano), and struck the Tiber near the Schola Graeca (S. Maria in Cosmedin). This aqueduct, repaired by Hadrian, but now for several years almost in ruins, was again put into good working order by Sergius, and made to supply “nearly the whole city”.

In the very beginning of his pontificate he began to improve the Lateran basilica. He enlarged its sanctuary after plans of his own, decorating it with beautiful columns of carved marble, made beneath its altar a confession decorated with plates of silver-gilt, in which with his own hands he placed relics of saints, and converted the closed narthex in front of the doors of the basilica into an open portico.

Close to the Lateran, in the Via Merulana, there was situated the Schola Cantorum, which, at one time called the Orphanage (Orphanotrophium), was ever a subject of great care to the popes. Founded by Gregory the Great, and ruled seemingly by a primicerius, it was at this period an institution for the training of young clerics. But when Sergius became Pope it was in a very ruinous condition. He completely restored it, and gave useful presents to its chapel, dedicated to St. Stephen, the protomartyr. Still standing in the twelfth century, it is catalogued as destroyed in the fourteenth.

Those who desire to know about the work accomplished by Sergius for churches outside the city, and about the numerous and valuable gifts which he presented to various basilicas, must consult the Book of the Popes. But the reader should note how little all this record of good and useful work tallies with the unrestrained outburst of the Farnesian biographer.

S. LEO IV

A.D.847-855.

EMPERORS OF THE EAST.                                 EMPERORS OF THE WEST.

Michael II (the Stammerer), 820-829.                  Louis the Pious, 814-840.

Theophilus, 829-842. Lothaire I, 823-855.

Theodora and Michael III, 842-856.

THE new Pope whose name, through the Leonine city, was to be forever indelibly connected with the Eternal City, was a Roman, and the son of one Radoald, or Radwald, a name which suggests, if it does not prove, a Lombard extraction. Following in the footsteps of his biographer, we have to write of him that he was distinguished for his patience and humility, that he was generous, holy, and kind; a lover of justice, and a benign ruler; a man in whose breast was “the wisdom of the serpent and the simplicity of the dove”. He was a lover of good men, the comfort of the poor, and a despiser of himself. The deeds which Leo performed dispose us to believe that in his case, at any rate, these words of his biographer were neither merely idle nor contrary to fact. They prove him, at least, a man of exceptional energy and courage, and as possessed of remarkable powers of organization and magnificent ideas.

For his education his parents sent him to the monastery of Blessed Martin, near St. Peters’s, a monastery which, after he became Pope, Leo rebuilt on a grander scale than before. There not only did he advance in learning, but his pious behaviour, “not like that of a boy, but of a perfect monk”, disposed even his elders to a more devout service of God. Moved by all he heard of the youth’s virtues, Gregory IV brought him to the Lateran, and made him a subdeacon. This advance in life only made him more anxious to move forward in the service of God. By Sergius he was made cardinal priest of the Church of the “Quatuor Coronatorum”, on a spur of the Coelian Hill.

When, from the charge of this basilica, Leo was called to govern the whole Church of God, he did not forget it. He not only rebuilt it on a larger scale and in a more beautiful style, but was never tired of making presents to it. Leo IV was one of the popes whose work, while it preserved many of the relics of the saints, hastened the abandonment and utter forgetfulness of the catacombs which took place in this century. He brought into the city many bodies of the Saints, and among others those of the four martyred soldiers, the Quatuor Coronati, which he discovered after diligent search. These and many others he deposited beneath the altar of his new basilica. In the present church there are two inscriptions dealing with this translation of relics. One is of the year IV, and belongs to the pontificate of Paschal II. The other merely reproduces the list of relics given in the Liber Pontificalis, and is also posterior to it. Though the work of Leo was almost entirely destroyed by Robert Guiscard (1084), his confession was left untouched by him and by the restoration of Paschal. In it are still to be found in urns, which date only from the days of the latter Pontiff, the relics of the martyrs. In the course of the centuries they were again lost and again found, as is set forth by yet another inscription of the time of Urban VIII (1624), and now to be read at the base of the sanctuary arch on the right.

The details of Leo’s election, which we have from his biographer, show us the panic into which the appearance of the Saracens had thrown the inhabitants of Rome. He says that the catastrophe had completely broken the spirit of the people; and that, what with the sudden death of Sergius, and what with the devastation caused by the infidels not only in the churches of the apostles, but “in all the territories of the Romans”, they thought that they could not themselves avoid the danger of death. Their danger made “all the Roman nobility”, cleric and lay, really anxious to find one “who could rule so holy and inviolable a place with the fear of God”. Hence, even before Sergius had been buried, the minds of all were directed towards Leo.

With one accord all betook themselves to his titular church, and, though much against his will, carried him in triumph to the Lateran palace, and, “in accordance with ancient custom”, kissed his feet. But no sooner was the first exciting joy of the election over than the Romans felt they were between Scylla and Charybdis. On the one hand the barbarous ‘protest’ made by the young king Louis, in his father’s name, in the reign of Sergius, showed them that it would not be safe “to consecrate the future pontiff without the imperial assent”, and on the other hand they feared for the safety of the city. However, after waiting for some time, Leo was consecrated (April to, 847), “without the consent of the Prince”. Even after thus waiting for over two months for an approval from Lothaire, which for some cause did not come, the Romans, in order to avoid complications, took care to state that in this their conduct they meant to “preserve the fidelity and honor which, after God, they owed to the emperor”. It is most likely that to negotiations in connection with this consecration, we must refer a fragment of a letter of Leo to the emperors Lothaire and Louis II (this latter was crowned emperor in 850), preserved by Ivo. In this fragment Leo declares that it has been solemnly agreed between them and himself that “the election and consecration of one who is to be Pope must only be performed with due regard to justice and the canon law”. By this he no doubt intended to express his adhesion to the ‘constitutio’, of Eugenius II.

As the one object of Leo’s life was to oppose the depredations of the Saracens, our account of the work of his pontificate may well begin with a narrative of what he accomplished in this direction. Towards the close of the year, 848, Leo began the work of putting the walls of the city into a thorough state of repair. Constantly going around on horseback or on foot, he urged on the work. Walls, towers, and gates were strengthened or renewed. No less than fifteen of the great towers were entirely rebuilt. To still further add to the defenses of the city, the Pope built two strong towers, one on each bank of the Tiber, where it leaves the city near the Gate of Portus, and provided them with chains for throwing across the river. So that whereas before by this approach “not only ships but even men could effect an entrance into the city, now very little boats will scarcely be able to enter”, notes the biographer. The conclusion of this important work meant salvation for the city.

The same year that the general repairing of the city was begun, Leo resolved on and started a work of even greater magnitude. The sacking of St. Peter’s by the “wicked and malevolent” Saracens had filled all Rome with the greatest grief, and a second and worse visitation of the pirates was feared. The Pope therefore determined to surround St. Peter’s and the Vatican hill with a wall. But, as this was a great undertaking, he first wrote for advice and help to the emperor, with whom he seems always to have lived on good terms. Lothaire not only gladly urged the Pope to undertake the work with all possible dispatch, but, along with his brothers, sent him no small sum of money. This he did the more readily for the reason that the idea of surrounding the Vatican hill with a wall appears to have originated with him. Before the death of Sergius, he had issued a Capitulary (November or December) bewailing the fact that the Roman Church itself, which is the head of Christianity, should have been delivered into the hands of the infidels, and in particular regretting the destruction wrought that year (hoc anno) in St. Peter’s by the pagans, and expressing his great desire of having the Church restored and placed out of harm’s way for the future. He directs the Pope to enclose St. Peter’s with a wall, and proclaims his wish that money should be sent to Rome for the purpose from every part of his kingdom, “that so great a work, which was for the glory of all, should be completed with the help of all”. The need of money had to be made known by the bishops in the churches throughout the empire, “for it is only right that sons should honor their mother, and, as far as they can, protect and defend her”. At the same time he ordered troops from the various parts of the empire to march in an orderly manner to the assistance of Louis and his Italians against the Saracens. The Pope and the duke of the Venetians are also instructed to help.

Next, with “the advice of all his counselors”, Leo decided that all the towns of his dominions (at least of the duchy of Rome), all the public domains (massae publicae, the domus cultae of the Roman Church) and all the monasteries, should bear their share of the burden of the work. And extant inscriptions prove that, just as the Roman wall from the Tyne to the Solway was built in sections by different companies of the Roman forces, so a certain length of wall and a certain number of towers were built by the different agricultural colonies (domus cultae) of the Roman Church.

During the four years the building was in progress, neither cold, wind, nor rain could keep the Pope away from unceasingly urging on and superintending the work in all directions. Leo III had made a commencement of enclosing the Vatican, but the very foundations which he had made had disappeared. The work, then, of including the Vatican within fortifications was wholly that of Leo IV, and it was from him that the new enclosure, “a masterpiece of medieval military engineering”, was called the Leonine city. According to Gregorovius and Lanciani, the walls of the new city were formed of layers of tufa and tiles, were twelve feet thick and nearly forty feet in height, and were defended by forty-four towers. Two of these round towers, which protected “the most exposed angles, are still in existence, and form a conspicuous landmark in the Vatican landscape”. One of them, “which stands at a height of 187 feet above the sea … is now used as an observatory”.

“Where the wall runs along the level, it has two galleries, one above the other. The lower gallery is supported by open arcades facing within. They were walled up in the fifteenth century by Pope Borgia, and the gallery itself was transformed into a secret passage—the famous Corridojo di Castello—connecting the palace of the Vatican with the fortress of S. Angelo. To this corridor many popes and cardinals have been indebted for escape from death or servitude”.

Of the three gates which led into the new city, the most important, the one through which the emperors entered, was the gate of St. Peregrinus, so called because near the church of that name. But the most interesting, at least to us, is the one which, from the name given to it by our countrymen, was called the Postern gate of the Saxons, as it stood in the school or quarter of the Anglo-Saxons. Various inscriptions set forth the builder and the date of the building of the new city. Over the principal gate was inscribed :

“Qui venis ac vadis decus hoc adtende viator,

Quod Quartus struxit nunc Leo Papa libens.

Caesaris invicti quod cernis iste Holothari

Praesul tantum [ovans] tempore gessit opus.

Roma, caput orbis, splendor, spes, aurea Roma,

Praesulis ut monstrat en labor alma tui”.

When the work was at length concluded, the walls were with great ceremony blessed by the Pope. Round the walls in solemn procession, chanting litanies, psalms, and hymns, went all the different orders of the clergy, barefoot and with ashes on their heads. At each of the three gates the procession halted, and the Pope prayed that Our Lord, through the intercession of the saints and angels, would preserve the city safe for ever from the attacks of its enemies. The Book of the Popes gives the three prayers. The one which was offered up at the “Postern of the Saxons” ran as follows: “Grant, we beseech Thee, O almighty and merciful God, that crying to Thee with all our hearts, we may, through the intercession of Blessed Peter, Apostle, obtain Thy merciful forgiveness; and we unceasingly implore Thy great clemency to grant that this city, which I, Thy servant, Leo IV, bishop, have by Thy help newly dedicated, may be ever preserved intact. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ”

After the circuit of the walls had been performed, the clergy and the nobles went to St. Peter’s to assist at a Mass sung by the Pope for the safety of the people and the city. After the Mass was over, Leo not only made presents to the nobles of gold, silver, and silk stuffs; but, in fulfillment of a vow, gave great largesses to all the inhabitants of the Leonine city, whether native or foreign.

The Pope had not been left to carry out all these great works in peace. In fact, they had not been long begun another when the Saracens gathered together at Totarum, near Sardinia—probably one of the small islands off its east coast. Fortunately this assembling of a powerful fleet by the infidels caused others, as well as the Romans, to fear for themselves. The great maritime cities of Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta, still nominally recognizing the emperor at Constantinople, but for a long time practically independent, joined their fleets, and sent word to the Pope that they were coming to his help against the common foe. The arrival of this unexpected fleet at the mouth of the Tiber caused quite a flutter at Rome. In those days, when almost every man’s hand was against his neighbour’s, the first thought which came into the minds of the Romans was one of anxiety to know whether the Greeks had really come to help them, or to take advantage of their troubles and oppress them. Leo sent to ask some of their commanders to come and explain their intentions. Among others there went to Rome Caesarius, the admiral of the combined fleet, who had inflicted some loss on the Saracens after their first attempt on Rome. Abundantly satisfied with his assurances, Leo resolved to co-operate with him. With a large force of Romans he marched to Ostia, where he received the Neapolitans with every sign of welcome. They, on their part, overjoyed to see the Pope, humbly kissed his feet, and gave thanks to God for giving them such a Pontiff. “That they might become the better victors over the sons of Belial, they earnestly begged that from his sacred hands they might receive the Body of the Lord”. Accordingly, in the Church of Blessed Aurea, Leo sang Mass, at which all communicated, and at which he poured forth ardent prayers to God to give victory to His people.

On the following day the Pope returned to Rome and the fleet of the Saracens appeared in sight. The allied fleets attacked the enemy with vigor. But a great wind, “which God produced from his treasury”, and which arose in the midst of the engagement, separated the fleets, and completely destroyed that of the Saracens. Their ships were dashed to pieces on the shore, and their crews were either drowned, put to the sword, or taken prisoners. Of these latter a considerable number were hanged by the Romans at Ostia as pirates. The rest were brought to Rome and made to help at the work of building the fortifications which was then going on.

Gibbon concurs with Voltaire in singing the praises of Leo IV for saving Rome from the Saracens, and both say of him that “he stood erect, like one of the firm and lofty columns that rear their heads above the fragments of the Roman Forum”. And if this victory of the Pope at Ostia inspired the pen of the writer, it furnished Raphael with a subject for one of the frescos, illustrative of the triumphs of the Church, which he designed for what are now known as his Stanze in the Vatican. With, however, the possible exception of the faces of the Pope and his attendants, faces which are portraits of Leo X and of members of his court, the fresco of the victory of Leo IV in the so-called Stanza dell' Incendio is the work of Giovanni da Udine.

No sooner had Leo finished fortifying the Vatican hill than he began to consider what was the next thing to do to guard against the attacks of the Saracens. Then, reflecting that his predecessor Gregory IV had done something to defend the mouth of the Tiber by rebuilding Ostia on its southern bank, he resolved to rebuild Portus on its northern shores. Its walls were accordingly once again rendered serviceable; new gates were made, and, where necessary, new buildings erected.

No sooner were these new structures completed than, to the great joy of the Pope, a sturdy body of men offered themselves to his hands to take possession of his new city. A band of Corsicans, whom the ravages of the Saracens had driven into exile from their native land, presented themselves to Leo, and, in return for protection, offered to serve him and his successors for ever. He received them with the greatest kindness, and told them that, if they would take up their abode in his new city, he would give them vineyards, plough-lands and meadow-lands, so that they would want for nothing. Further, till by their labor they were able to provide for their wants, he promised them horses and cattle and stock of all kinds, if they would do as they had agreed. The grateful Corsicans professed their readiness “to live and die” in the place appointed for them. Accordingly a formal charter was drawn up, setting forth that, in virtue of the concession made them by the emperors Lothaire and Louis (the latter had been crowned emperor 850) and by the Pope, what had been granted them should be theirs “as long as they remained in all things obedient and faithful to the prelates of the Holy See and the Roman people”.

In the interior of the states of the Church, long peace had caused some of the cities to be very careless about looking to their fortifications. Among these the Tuscan cities of Horta and Ameria seem to have been the most apathetic. Fearing lest the Saracens might be more successful another time, and penetrate further into the interior, as they were doing in Southern Italy, Leo stirred up the inhabitants of these cities to put their defensive works in thorough repair.

There was yet another city, the state of which very much distressed the good Pope, and that was Centumcellae, which Trajan had made of importance by the harbor which he built there. As we have already seen, it was sacked (813) by the Moors even during the lifetime of Charlemagne himself. For forty years its walls had remained dismantled, and the miserable remnant of its inhabitants led a wretched life among the mountains, always in fear of the Saracens. Leo, who carried out to perfection the sage recommendation of praying as though all depended on God, and working as though all depended on oneself, earnestly prayed to God to show him where it would be best for him to rebuild the city, so as to afford the greatest security for the people. At the same time he went down to the neighborhood, and made a most careful examination of the country. At first the want of water made it difficult for him to fix on a suitable site. But later on he found a most desirable spot, strong by nature, and abundantly supplied with water, twelve miles from the old Centumcellae. His biographer goes on to inform us that by the divine mercy the Pope planned out the new city in a dream. One night he seemed to be at the place he had fixed upon for the new city, and there to a certain Peter, the master of the soldiers, he pointed out where he must place the churches, and, from the nature of the ground, no more than two gates. Next morning the magister militum was called before the Pope, and a large sum of silver mancuses given him to aid the people to build the new city. Under the hand of the energetic Pontiff a fresh town sprang into being, and, after his name, was known as Leopolis. It was solemnly blessed, with similar ceremonies to those used in blessing the Leonine city “in the eighth year of Leo’s pontificate, the second indiction (854)”. Among the presents he made to the churches of his new city are noted “seven Catholic codices”, among which were an antiphonary, a book of the Gospels, a psalter, etc.

All the time that this building of cities was going on, Leo was rebuilding, redecorating, and making presents to churches not only in Rome, but in other parts of his dominions, and especially to those which had been damaged by the Saracens. Incredible were the sums of money he expended on these works, particularly in refurnishing St. Peter’s, to which of course he devoted the most concern. Though the body of the Apostle himself had not been interfered with, his basilica had been completely stripped of its priceless ornaments, the very altar over his confession had been broken, and the silver doors of the church stripped of their plates. To repair the damage done was one of the constant (aims of Leo IV. Inasmuch as he had the care of all the churches, it grieved him to the heart to see the mischief wrought by the Saracens, and the distress which the ruin caused to the faithful who came from all parts to pray at the Apostle’s tomb. Consistently with making as little change as possible in the arrangements of the confession, and as far as his means would allow, he worked wonders in the matter of effecting a thorough renovation. The altar, indeed, is said to have been made more magnificent than before. Once again the shrine became resplendent with the precious metals. Once more was the basilica the possessor of splendid candelabra, hangings, and church furniture generally. Its silver gates were made even more beautiful than they were before they had been robbed “by the Saracen breed”. The little basilica of St. Andrew which adjoined the sacristy of St. Peter’s was provided with a campanile and bells. But to make good all that had been devastated was “a task far beyond the powers of a single man to accomplish, and the shrine of St. Peter never again attained to anything like its former glory”.

Besides, Leo had other places to repair as well as St. Peter’s. “For it was his eager desire to rebuild all the places of the saints which had been destroyed”. Among other buildings repaired and beautified by him was the Lateran palace. He completed the erection of the marble seats which adorned its entrance, and renewed some of the additions which Leo III had made to it. During the pontificate of Paschal I, there had been stolen the gold cross set with jewels which Charlemagne, “Emperor of the Franks and Romans”, had presented to the Lateran basilica in the time of Leo. It was the one carried before the popes during the procession of the litanies. Leo caused another similar one to be made and used for the old purpose. For we are assured that he was always anxious about preserving old habits and customs; and as a further example of this tendency of his, we are given the fact that after he restored the triclinium of Leo III, he renewed the custom of the popes dining therein on Christmas Day.

Educated in a monastery, he did not forget the interests of monks when he became Pope. Very numerous were the valuable presents he made to different monasteries, some of which he restored and endowed even out of his own private property. Among those which benefited by his generosity was the famous one on the site of the cave of St. Benedict at Subiaco. To this abode of peace, destined to be the foster-mother of art, situated on the side of a glorious gorge of the rushing, roaring Aniane, he is even said to have paid a visit to consecrate an altar. At any rate the traveller who is fortunate enough to behold the frescos of the monastery of the Sacra Speco will see that its tradition counts him as one of its great patrons. He is one of the four popes whose frescos meet the eye in the entrance corridor; and among those in the upper chapel, painted perhaps by Pietro Cavallini, the master of Giotto, there is one occupying the space above the rood-screen, which shows him enthroned, and having presented to him two members of the family of the Anicii.

Another great fire in the Anglo-Saxon quarter in the very beginning of his pontificate, a fire the advance of which he stopped by making the sign of the cross, also helped to increase the building operations of Leo. But those who would know more of his work in stone must read the Liber Pontificalis. We will return to his dealings with men.

One of the most important events in his reign was the crowning of Lothaire’s son Louis as emperor. That this happened in 850 we know from the annals of Prudentius of Troyes. Some authors write that it took place on April 6th, but the month and day are not certain. As an account of the ceremony observed on the occasion of the coronation of an emperor at Rome in Carolingian times has come down to us, it may not be out of place to give some notice of it here. For even if the ordo itself belongs to a somewhat later date, it will be clear from the extracts from contemporary authorities which we shall quote in the notes, that it represents, to all intents and purposes, exactly what took place in the year 850 at the coronation of Louis II.

The function began with the Consecration, or anointing, and was continued by the first prayer : “Hear, O Lord, our prayers, and fit Thy servant to rule the empire, that through Thee he may begin to rule, and through Thee faithfully continue to rule”. Then followed a longer prayer, wherein God is asked to bless “this Thy glorious servant”, as He blessed the patriarchs of old, to grant that in his reign there might be health, peace, and dignity; to make him a most valiant protector of his empire, the comforter of the Church, a well-doer to high and low, and feared and loved by all; and to give him sons to succeed him, and eternal life hereafter.

Then the Pope placed on the head of the emperor a crown of gold, with the words: “Receive the crown that God has destined for you; may you have, hold, and possess it; and, by the help of God, leave it to your sons after you for their honor”. Then a prayer was offered up begging God to bless the emperor, and to give him prosperity in this life and the next. During the Mass that was afterwards said for the emperor, special prayers were intoned that he might reign by the power of God, and might overcome his enemies. The “end” of the empire in the mind of the Church is plainly expressed in the prayer at the Post-communion: “O God, who hast prepared the Roman empire for the preaching of the Gospel of Thy eternal kingdom, give to Thy servant our emperor, the might of heaven, that the peace of the Church may not be troubled by any tempest of war”. When the sword was presented to and girt on the emperor, the Pope said : “From the bishop’s hands, which though unworthy have been consecrated in the stead and by the authority of the Holy Apostles, receive the sword, royally given to thee, and, by our blessing, divinely ordained for the defence of Holy Church. Be mindful of the words of the Psalmist : ‘Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, 0 thou most mighty!’ (Ps. XLIV. 4) —that by it you may exercise the might of justice”. Then begin the laudes; or, to use the words of the rubric, when the Pope has finished the prayer, before the reader ascends the ambo or pulpit, two deacons or cantors give out certain versicles, to which the college of secretaries (schola scriniarum) makes answer as follows : “Graciously hear us, O Christ!” The college replies : “Life to our illustrious Lord, by God decreed our chief Bishop and Universal Pope!” This was to be thrice repeated. Then the cantors intoned : “O Saviour of the world!” and the chorus : “Do Thou help him!” The cantors : “Hear us, O Christ!” The chorus : “Life to our illustrious Lord, Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific emperor!” To shorten this account, it may be added that Holy Mary, St. Peter, and St. Theodore are next invoked to bestow their aid on the emperor’s children, and on the army of the “Franks, Romans, and Germans” (Theutonici). The laudes concluded with various ejaculations in praise of Our Lord, such as : “Christ conquers!” “To Him alone be honor and glory!”

By some such ceremony as this was Louis II proclaimed emperor of the Franks and of the Romans. Differing in this respect from the other Carolingian emperors who had gone before him, he was to reside in Italy for the twenty-five years of his reign, and was thus to be more in a position to show himself practically Emperor of the Romans.

Before, however, temporarily dismissing him for the present from our thoughts, as he departs from Rome after thus receiving the imperial crown from the Pope, it may be well to observe here that, whatever disagreements may have arisen between Louis and the popes from time to time during his rule of a quarter of a century, he never lost his respect for Rome and the successors of the Apostles —a respect entertained, despite occasional outbreaks of temper, by all the Carolingian monarchs. And so in this very year (850) we find him legislating for the safety of those journeying to Rome “for the sake of prayer”, and for the proper honor, support, and means of transport to be given to the missi, not only of his father and himself, but also of the Apostolicus (Leo IV.).

Three years after the coronation of Louis, Leo anointed another prince, and that no less a person than our own great king Alfred, the only one of our sovereigns who “received sacred unction in Rome at the hands of the Pope”. The ravages of time have played such havoc with the sources of history, that, with the exception of the notice that Archbishop Ceolnoth received his pallium from Gregory IV, we have not found any fact of history connecting England with the popes in the records of many years. But in 853, with “an honorable escort of nobles and commoners”, Ethelwulf, the king of the West Saxons, following the example so frequently set by the Carolingian monarchs, sent to Rome his favorite son Alfred, then a mere child, to receive the regal unction. Leo not only anointed him as king, but adopted him as his spiritual son by standing godfather to him at confirmation. Writing to Ethelwulf to tell him of what he had done, the Pope, in a fragment of one of his letters which we possess, speaks of having invested Alfred, as his spiritual son, with the customary “consular girdle (probably the lorus), honour and raiment, inasmuch as he had offered himself into his hands”.

Passing over the theory that nothing more was meant by all this than that Alfred became the Pope’s godson in confirmation, the object of Ethelwulf’s action may be stated in the words of one of Alfred’s modern biographers. “It is difficult to say”, remarks Dr Pauli, “what may have been his father’s motive for this proceeding; we can only suppose that his veneration for the capital city of Christendom, and for the representative of Christ upon earth, made him hope to receive the same gifts from the Holy Father which the earlier popes had bestowed upon the sons of Pippin and Charlemagne—viz., their holy unction and benediction. He wished his favorite child, whom he secretly desired might succeed him on the throne, to receive, in the blessing of the bishop of Rome, a kind of prophetic authorization of the succession”. Whether these reflections of the learned German be just or not, and they are in complete harmony with the views of Freeman, the visit of Alfred to Rome must have made a lasting impression for good on his youthful mind—an impression doubtless deepened by a second visit two years later, of which we shall speak under the reign of Benedict III.

At the close of this same year Leo held a synod at Rome (December 8, 853) of sixty-seven bishops. Of these, four were sent by the emperors Lothaire and Louis, with whose concurrence the assembly was held. Forty-two canons were passed by this council. Thirty-eight of them renewed those of the Roman council of 826 under Eugenius II, and were for the most part concerned with the improvement of discipline and learning among the clergy. The council renewed for the fourth time a sentence of excommunication against Anastasius, cardinal of St. Marcellus, and declared him definitively suspended.

This severe action brings prominently before our notice one of the most remarkable figures that appeared on the stage of the Western world during the ninth century, a figure that looms the larger from being seen through the historical haze which hangs over the period. At one time we catch a glimpse of him hurrying along the path of the world's ambitions, now scheming for the papacy and now actually an antipope. again and again deposed and restored ; and anon he was to be seen like a scholar, buried deep in books, writing histories and biographies and translating from the Greek. Then once more is he a man of action, librarian of the Roman Church and secretary of the Holy See. He was the Photius of the Latin Church.

The son of the haughty and covetous Arsenius, sometime (855-868) bishop of Horta (Orta), often legate of the Holy See, and brother of the ambitious Eleutherius, the murderer of his would-be wife and mother-in-law, his career shows that he was not untainted with some of the vices of his family. His erudition, or perhaps his family influence, attracted the attention of Leo IV, and he made him cardinal-priest of S. Marcellus in 848. But he soon saw cause to repent of his action, and Anastasius became to him an object of suspicion. He was thought, perhaps, to be either unduly attached to the imperial party or to be intriguing to secure the papacy. He was probably one of those “strenuous men, well acquainted with the powers exercised by the emperors of old” whom Louis, “anxious to subject all Italy to his sway”, supported at Rome. Had it not been “for his reverence for the Blessed Apostles”, he would, at their suggestion, have taken all authority in the Eternal City into his own hands. Finding himself under a cloud, the cardinal fled from Rome to Aquileia, whence nothing could induce him to return to his duty at S. Marcellus.

Already, in 850, a council at Rome of seventy-five bishops had excommunicated him for being absent for two years from his titular church without cause, and for neglecting to take any notice of repeated summonses to come and give an account of his conduct. Then at Ravenna, where he had had an interview with the emperor Louis II, Leo had renewed (May 29, 853) the sentence, and once again at Rome (June 19, 853), with fifty-six bishops. His subsequent life proved still further that Anastasius was a turbulent, disobedient spirit, and fully justified the strong measures which we find Leo taking against him so frequently excommunicating him, and “all who might wish to afford him any help to obtain episcopal”, or perhaps, rather, “papal election”. Two years after this and we shall see Anastasius an antipope.

Several of the fragments of Leo’s letters, if they do no more, reveal at least the fact that Anastasius was not the only rebellious spirit with whom he had to contend. It is quite possible, however, that several of the others belonged to the party of which he was the tool or the prime mover. Whether or not with the connivance of the imperial government, a considerable amount of oppression was being exercised in the papal territories in the north. One of the offenders, traditional it might almost be added, was John (IX. or X., 850-878), archbishop of Ravenna, a partisan of the emperor Louis II. “Without legal sanction”, he seized the property of the Pope’s subjects. In the pursuit of his ambition or his avarice he was ably seconded by his brother George or Gregory, the duke of Emilia, who, with the assistance of two other nobles, Peter and Hadrian, went to the length of murdering a papal legate while on his way to the emperor Lothaire. The assassins no doubt supposed he was going to lodge a complaint against them. With their excesses we must join those of a certain Gratian, perhaps the magister militum of that name, with whom Leo had lately had trouble. This ruffian not only did not scruple to put men to death by the sword, by the scourge, or by drowning, but affected to play the part of an independent sovereign even in theory, and forced several people to take an oath of fidelity to him. With robbers such as these at large, the roads became unsafe for pilgrims and merchants alike. But not in vain was appeal made to Leo. He betook himself to Ravenna after intimating to John and his brother that he would not tolerate their oppression of his people.

This journey was undertaken seemingly just before Easter, and the Pope appears to have remained at Ravenna till after his interview with the emperor Louis, and his condemnation of Anastasius.

George, Hadrian, and Peter were tried and condemned to death “by Roman law”. The fact that the trial took place at Easter (853) saved the lives of the culprits. The law forbade executions at that sacred season, and they had time to appeal to Louis. Ashamed to take their part openly, and yet anxious to support them as his partisans, he proposed that Peter and Hadrian should be sent to Rome, and that a fresh trial should be held. The Pope absolutely refused to agree to the first proposal. His life, he said, would be in danger if they came to Rome. With regard to the second, he expressed his astonishment that it should be made, considering that the accused had had a fair trial in presence of the emperor’s missi. However, he had no objection to another trial if it were only conducted by imperial missi, possessed of the fear of God, and who would act as they would in presence of the emperor himself. How all this affair ended is not known. But John and his brother George or Gregory were still in undisturbed possession of their positions and property in the days of Nicholas I.

Before the Pope left Rome for Ravenna, expecting to be absent for some time, and anxious that good order should be observed in his absence, he issued a special injunction ordering all the officials, clerical and lay, connected with the administration of justice to attend at the Lateran palace at the appointed times, just as if he himself were present.

Hincmar of Rheims also, to whom Leo had sent the pallium in the first year of his reign, had dealings with the Pope this same year (853)

It was the emperor Lothaire himself who had asked for the pallium for Hincmar, in a letter which began, “Divine Providence wished that the Apostolic See (which, through the most Blessed Prince of the Apostles, is the head and foundation of sanctity wherever in the world the Christian religion is spread) should obtain the primacy of the churches, that in all religious difficulties recourse should be had to it by all as to the standard (norma) of religion and the fount of justice”.

The case of Wulfad.

It has been already stated that Ebbo of Rheims, after his canonical deposition, was restored to the archdiocese by the power of the emperor Lothaire in 840. On his restoration, Ebbo had ordained certain priests and deacons. These ordinations Hincmar, on the advice of his brethren, as he afterwards maintained, refused to recognize, and they were subsequently declared invalid by a council at Soissons (853). For this council Hincmar endeavored to procure the confirmation of Leo IV. This, however, he refused on various grounds. The acts of the council had not been sent to him, his legates had not been present at it, no explanatory imperial letter had been sent him, and finally the degraded clerics, chief of whom was one Wulfad, had appealed to the Holy See. He therefore wrote (c. July 853) to order Hincmar to hold a fresh synod in presence of the papal vicar, Peter, bishop of Spoleto, and to go into the case again. If the deposed clerics, not satisfied with the verdict of this new synod, persisted in appealing to Rome, then, “that the privilege of the Apostolic See might not be rendered nugatory”, not only was leave to go to Rome not to be denied them, but Hincmar or his envoy must accompany them. But before he could succeed in effecting the repeal of the archbishop’s unnecessary severity against the clerics, Leo died, and Hincmar managed to obtain a qualified approval of the doings of the Council of Soissons from Leo’s successor Benedict. This latter gave his approval “on condition that everything was as stated to him” in the letters of Hincmar. Nicholas I, too, gave 4 (863) a similarly guarded confirmation of the acts of the council of 853. Later on, however, Nicholas listened to the repeated protests of the deposed clerics against the harshness of the sentence decreed against them, and at once took up the affair with his characteristic energy. He wrote (866, April 3) to Herard of Tours, Remigius of Lyons, and other metropolitans, bidding them convoke a synod at Soissons (August 18, 866) and restore the deposed clerics to their respective ranks if Hincmar would not do so of his own accord. He at the same time wrote to Hincmar himself, and begged him to be merciful to the unfortunate clerics. He added, however, that if Hincmar could not see his way in conscience to restore the clerics, he had ordered the archbishops and bishops of Gaul and Neustria (Galliarum et Neustrix) to meet at Soissons, and restore them; or, if they could not agree on that course, to insist at least on envoys from Hincmar and the clerics coming to Rome. He concluded by telling him that he had ordered Remigius to approach him, and to summon the council himself, “if he (Hincmar) feared to restore the clerics on his own authority”. The acts of the council must be sent to the Pope, and Hincmar must take good care not to neglect anything which has been ordered.

This was one of those cases always difficult to manage, where one in authority has inflicted punishment on grounds which are, at least, prima facie just, and then will not yield to those reasons of mercy, if not of the strictest justice, which strongly commend themselves to the common superior of the one who has inflicted and the one who has to endure the punishment. Hincmar in degrading the clerics had not done wrong. But he would not extend that mercy to them which, under the circumstances, was really their due. The synod was accordingly summoned.

It met at the time and place appointed by Nicholas. “To Remigius (of Lyons), to Wenilo (of Rouen), and to the other archbishops and bishops, by the authority of the Lord Pope Nicholas, assembled in the synod at which he has ordered me and my suffragans to appear”, Hincmar addressed four letters or memoirs. He unfolded the whole history of the affair from his point of view; and while declaring his readiness to obey the decrees of Nicholas, endeavored to make capital out of his previous confirmation and out of that of Benedict III; and urged that, as he had not himself condemned the clerics, he could not by himself restore them, and that what had once been decreed in councils ought not to be altered without necessity.

The council, however, decided in favor of the deposed clerics. It is true it followed a course suggested by Hincmar. It did not annul the previous decisions against the clerics in question, but it resolved to reinstate them as an act of grace. In its synodal letter to the Pope (August 25) the council showed how much it was influenced by the character of Hincmar, a character which certainly wanted more Christian humility to put it on the road to perfection. While professing to think as the Pope thought, and to put into execution what he decreed, the council endeavored to make the Pope unsay what he had said, rather than themselves, as a body, undo mercifully what the former Council of Soissons had done with severity. They would be only too glad to restore the clerics—but then there were the former decrees ratified by popes. The corroboration of those decisions naturally rested with the Apostolic See, and, therefore, to that magisterial authority they would leave the restoration of the clerics. Hence, if the Pope thought it advisable, these clerics might be reinstated on the same lines as the Council of Nice had restored the reconciled Donatists. In conclusion, they begged the Pope to see to it that no advantage of this indulgence was taken by any in future to exercise clerical duties without proper authority.

Egilo, archbishop of Sens, who was commissioned to take the synodal decrees to Rome, was also the bearer of letters from Charles the Bald, and Hincmar himself to the Pope—both for different reasons anxious for the confirmation of the council. Hincmar’s letters (dated September 3, 866), is addressed “to the Lord most holy and reverend Father of Fathers, Nicholas, the Pope of the first and greatest Apostolic See and of the universal Church, Hincmar, bishop of Rheims, the most devoted servant of your most holy paternity”. It was quite in the same strain as that of the synod : “If you will stretch out a hand to the clerics, we will also do so with you”. However, he begs the Pope’s confirmation of the synod, and asserts his readiness to stand by the papal decision.

But Nicholas I was not the Pope to be first hoodwinked and then played with. Four letters of December 6, 866, to the bishops of the synod, to Hincmar, to Charles the Bald, and to the oft-mentioned clerics made the Pope’s mind tolerably plain. In his letter to the bishops, Nicholas goes back to the doings of the previous Council of Soissons, and shows that many things were there done or said which were not correct. It was said, for instance, that the clerics had of their own accord appeared before the synod, whereas the fact was that they had been forced to appear. Their metropolitan (Hincmar), acting at this synod now as the accused, now as the accuser, and now again as judge, showed himself like the chameleon. In the acts of the council important documents, such as the appeal of the clerics, had been omitted, and others of much less importance inserted. With regard to the confirmations of that synod by the Holy See, safeguarding clauses had been introduced as well by Benedict III as by himself. And though at the synod assembled by his orders (866) its members had decided that the clerics ought to be restored, they had not restored them, nor had they sent to him a full account of what had been accomplished. He therefore ordered (1) that the bishops should come together to discuss the matter again; (2) that meanwhile the clerics should be restored; and (3) that within a year Hincmar must present to him his accusations against the clerics, and his proofs that they had been canonically deposed. Besides this letter, Nicholas sent a very severe one to Hincmar, which he concluded by threatening to take away his pallium from him, if he used it at unwonted seasons for the purpose of raising himself above the other archbishops. A letter to the clerics, whilst announcing their restoration to them, exhorted them to respectful obedience to their archbishop (Hincmar).

These letters of Nicholas were followed in the first instance by the immediate dispatch to him (July 867) of a very submissive letter from Hincmar. He assured Nicholas that he had at once restored the clerics, that in this matter his one desire was to please the Pope, and that despite all that had been said against him, he had always, wherever opportunity offered, showed himself “faithful and devoted, humble also, and ever and in all things subject as regards the Holy See and its rulers”. In proceeding to defend himself against the Pope’s charges, he most earnestly assures him that in so doing he wishes not to resist the Pope’s authority in any way, “because he desires to follow that authority as a servant obeys his master, a son his father”. With this letter of Hincmar Nicholas expressed himself (867) completely satisfied.

To carry out the instructions of the Pope, Charles the Bald, by virtue of the authority of the same (auctoritate Nicolai), summoned a synod to meet at Troyes (October 25, 867). The bishops sent a full account of their proceedings to the Pope. In their synodal letter they inform Nicholas that they are forwarding him, at his request, all the documents that relate to the case of Ebbo, Hincmar, and the deposed clerics, and conclude by asking him to decree that in future, to avoid similar troubles, no bishop be deposed without the consent of the Holy See.

Actard, bishop of Nantes, was deputed to carry this letter to Rome. And here Hincmar was to learn how foolish it is to put faith in princes. The archbishop tells us, in the Annals which he wrote, “that Charles the Bald, now interested in advancing Wulfad, one of the deposed clerics, unmindful of the fidelity and toil of Hincmar in his service, forced Actard to give up the Acts of the Synod, broke their seal and read them. And, finding that Hincmar had not been condemned by the synod, forwarded, with the Acts, a letter directed against him”.

This tedious affair did not end even under Pope Nicholas. When Actard reached Rome, Hadrian II was Pope. But Rome was tired of this business. Hadrian at once (February–March 868) issued various letters on the matter to Charles, Hincmar, etc. The last-named is praised, Charles is told to let this useless question “die for ever”, the synod of Troyes is confirmed, and Wulfad recognized as archbishop of Bourges. This case of Ebbo, which we have thought advisable to follow out here to its close, is interesting, not as giving us any further insight into the ecclesiastical polity of the day—for that it does not do—but as supplying us with a study of character. It shows us also to what extent a proud and headstrong man in the grasp of authority will turn and twist in his efforts to get his own way, and only succeed in the end in securing for himself greater humiliation.

It may also be noted in connection with this case that in every instance in which they find the Pope intervening, some historians always see him striving to rob someone of his rights in order to increase his own power. It should not, then, surprise anyone to find certain historians trying to calculate how much fresh power accrued to the popes by this case of Ebbo. It would, however, be more than difficult to point out what the popes did in settling this “useless question”, which we have not seen them doing often enough before.

Still there is no doubt that the increased frequency of papal intervention in the affairs of the Church among the Franks, furnished some ground for the idea entertained by some of their bishops that their privileges were being interfered with. We know how much local authorities at home resent any unwonted, even if perfectly legal, intrusion of the central government into their affairs. Such an attitude on their part is perfectly natural. Are they not on the spot? Are they not in a better position to be acquainted with the circumstances of their own neighborhood? There is much in this thought calculated to explain the persistent opposition sometimes offered to the action of the popes in different countries.

But for all that, it is the right of the chief authority to judge how far its direct action in any locality is necessary either for the preservation of its own power, or for the advantage of the community; and, despite all opposition, to see that such action is respected and that its decisions are acknowledged.

Hincmar, for instance, was often able, in his differences with the popes, to make out a good case of having precedent on his side. But if that fact gave him some title for endeavoring to maintain the status quo, it certainly did not debar the central authority of Rome from putting an end to a state of things which it conceived to be, from any cause, undesirable.

Several other fragments of Leo’s letters enable us to get glimpses of many further transactions between him and the Franks or their rulers—glimpses which serve to bring out the uncompromising yet conciliatory character of the Pope. While assuring Lothaire that he will ever observe his decrees and those of his predecessors, he does not see his way to granting his request for the pallium for Alteus of Autun.

He reminds Charles the Bald, that if,” a thing which we do not believe, we are thought by you to be of no account, the Church, at least, over which we preside is rightly regarded by everyone as the head and source of all”. Another fragment to the emperors Lothaire and Louis is useful as showing how the freedom of election of bishops in the empire, proclaimed in theory by Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, was practically non-existent. The Pope had to write to ask the permission of the emperors before he could consecrate the deacon Colonus to be bishop of Reate, a town in the duchy of Spoleto, and hence under the emperor’s jurisdiction.

One of the forces at work in disintegrating the empire of the Franks was Nomenoius, duke of Brittany. It was in the course of his efforts in that direction that he entered into correspondence with Pope Leo. Originally one of the counts missi of Louis the Pious he was given (826) jurisdiction over Brittany with the title of duke. It was not long, however, before he aimed at making himself independent of the empire, and securing the title of king. Understanding right well what was best at least for his own interests, he made up his mind to create a national Church, or, at least, to have in Brittany an ecclesiastical organization, over which he could have complete control. As he found matters, the bishops of Brittany were spiritually subject to the archbishopric of Tours, a See in the realm of Charles the Bald. An opportunity of forwarding his views was not long in presenting itself. St. Convoyon, abbot of Redon, accused the Breton bishops of simony. Nomenoius took cognizance of the matter; and, as the bishops did not succeed in justifying themselves, it was agreed that the Pope should be consulted as to whether a simoniacal bishop could be received into penance without being deposed. Solutions of other questions were to be likewise sought from Rome, “which”, as the anonymous disciple of the saint informs us, the accused bishops called “the head of all the churches under the expanse of heaven”; and where, “before the vicar of S. Peter, i.e., the Roman pontiff”, they declared their intention of stating their case and of receiving judgment. St. Convoyon and two of the accused bishops therefore set out to lay the matter before Leo. Though the Pope decided that bishops found guilty of simony must be deposed, he did not himself order the deposition of the Breton bishops. He would only have them condemned before twelve bishops, or on the evidence given on oath of seventy-two witnesses. And further, as he laid down in the letter which he addressed to the bishops of Brittany (848 or later), if any bishop appealed to Rome, no one was to presume to pass sentence on him. In this same letter, in answer to various queries addressed to him, Leo decided that it belonged to bishops to regulate ecclesiastical affairs and to govern the diocese; condemned the practice of judging cases by lots, and pointed out by what canons bishops were to be tried.

The decision of Leo regarding the bishops accused of simony did not suit Nomenoius. With threats of death he made them resign their bishoprics, had their places filled by men devoted to him, and created three fresh bishoprics, making one of these, Dol, the metropolitan See for his new kingdom. It was not till the thirteenth century that the upstart claims of Dol were once for all finally put down, and those of Tours again allowed to have their way. Despite the protest of Leo, and that of a council of Paris (849), which urged the authority of the Holy See on him, Nomenoius not only persisted in his course in the matter of the Breton bishops, but even expelled Actard from Nantes, which did not properly belong to Brittany, and put one, Gislard, in his place. Nomenoius, however, did not continue long to defy the authority of the Church. He died in 851.

The trouble raised in the Church by Nomenoius was but a trifle compared to the one which was now gathering in the East, and of which Leo witnessed the first forerunners. St. Ignatius had been enthroned as patriarch of Constantinople on July 4, 846. To show his good-will to the Pope he sent him a present of a pall (pallium superhumerale). Leo, however, felt compelled politely to refuse the proffered gift—“because it is not the custom of this Church, the mistress and head of all the churches, to receive the pall from others, but throughout Europe to send it to those to whom it is appointed”."

The holy patriarch had occasion, on some grounds not known to us, to slight Gregory Asbestas, bishop of Syracuse, who, after the coming of the Saracens to Sicily, had withdrawn to Constantinople. So outrageously did Gregory behave in consequence, that Ignatius caused him to be deposed in a council at Constantinople (854). According to a letter of Stylian, the metropolitan of Neocaesarea, addressed to Pope Stephen (V) VI, Gregory, and the few clergy of no standing who adhered to him, appealed to the Pope. Leo at once wrote to Ignatius to ask him to send an envoy to Rome who might lay the case of the schismatics before him from the patriarch’s point of view. Ignatius thereupon sent one Lazarus, a monk illustrious as a confessor of the faith, who was thoroughly acquainted with the case. Lazarus, who was the bearer of letters from the patriarch, put the whole matter before the Pope, who confirmed the sentence of Ignatius, a decision which was repeated by his successor Benedict. This version of Leo’s action given by Stylian, who in this letter gives a summary of the whole affair of Photius, a name to be forever notorious in the history of the Church, does not quite agree with the notice left of it in several of his letters, by Nicholas I, nor with the Liber Pontificalis, according to which Lazarus only reached Rome in the pontificate of Benedict III. And certainly it is more likely that Nicholas would know what exactly had been done by his predecessors, than a Greek who lived at a distance. According to Nicholas, though Ignatius asked the Apostolic See to consent to the deposition of Gregory, Leo and Benedict, “guarding the moderation of the Holy See”, were unwilling so far to give ear to one side as to leave no opening for the other.

And, indeed, within comparatively recent years, the discovery made by Mr. Bishop of many fragments of papal letters in the British Museum has proved conclusively that at least for a time Leo certainly did not approve of the action of Ignatius. For an extract from a letter of his (c. 853) to the patriarch runs thus : “From the time when the only Son of God founded on Himself His holy Church, and by His apostolic institutions (apostolicis institucionibus, i.e., as I take it, by the dispositions He made among His apostles), established a head of all His priests, any difficulty or trouble which arose in your Church your predecessors hastened with all zeal and diligence to make known to the Roman pontiff, and then, strengthened by his assent and light-giving counsel, they peacefully accomplished whatever the circumstances required. But you, their successor, have assembled bishops and deposed certain prelates without our knowledge. This you certainly ought not to have done in the absence of our legates or of letters from us”.

Leo died before the evidence before him could be cleared up. Benedict, though he declared Gregory suspended, did not go to the length of deposing him, a fact which, as Nicholas acknowledges in the first of the three letters just quoted, only made Gregory more insolent against his patriarch. We have said that Leo witnessed the forerunners of the storm soon to be caused by Photius. Gregory and his party were the chief tools made use of by Bardas Caesar and Photius. It was Gregory that made Photius from a layman into a patriarch in a day or two.

Another Greek affair, much nearer home, also troubled last days of Leo. A certain Daniel, a magister militum, who, according to the description of him in the Liber Pontificalis, was partly wicked and partly foolish, went off to the emperor Louis to lay a charge against Gratian, who is therein set down not only as the most eminent magister militum, but also as “the worthy Superista of the Roman palace (the Lateran) and councilor” of the Pope. It is possible he may be the Gratian of whom mention has already been made. Daniel assured Louis that Gratian had secretly said to him that the best policy of the Romans was to form an alliance with the Greeks and get rid of the domination of the Franks. Roused to fury at once, as his relations with the East were at this period not of the best, Louis flew to Rome, without a word of warning either to the Pope or to the Senate. Leo received him, on the steps of St. Peter’s, and soon calmed the imperial anger. The two, assisted by the Roman and Frankish nobles, held a placitum to examine into the affair. Daniel was soon condemned out of his own mouth when tried by the Roman law, and only the intercession of the emperor saved the unfortunate man’s life.

Soon after the departure of Louis, died the energetic and courageous Pope Leo IV, a pontiff as ready, when duty called, to wield the spear as the crozier (July 17). He was buried in St. Peter’s, and is ranked among the saints in the Roman martyrology on July 17. It is on this day that the feast of St. Leo IV is still kept.

According to the Liber Pontificalis, Leo was illustrious, even in life for the working of miracles. As examples we find there cited his stopping the advance of the fire in the Anglo-Saxon quarter by making the sign of the cross, of which we have spoken above; and his destroying by his prayers, “in the first year of his Pontificate”, and on the day “on which the Assumption of the Blessed Mother of God and ever Virgin Mary is celebrated”, a serpent of the “dire kind, which in Greek is known as a basilisk, and in Latin as a regulus”. According to the papal biographer this serpent infested certain dark caverns in the vicinity of the Church of S. Lucia in Orfea (so called from its proximity to a fountain with a statue of Orpheus), now S. Lucia in Selci, and caused general consternation by the number which it killed “by its breath and by its appearance”. Leo, with all the clergy, went in solemn procession to the said caverns, singing hymns and carrying a statue, or rather a representation of Our Lord. After the Pope had earnestly begged of God to drive away the serpent, the reptile was never afterwards seen. Whatever may have been the origin of this portent, it reminds one of the devastating monster Cacus represented by Livy (as living on the Aventine, who, according to Varro, used to vomit forth flames, and who was finally slain by Hercules. Leo’s basilisk is evidently related to the dragon, which, according to the legend of Pope Silvester, that Pope shut up in its cave in the Tarpeian rock. And whatever was done by Leo to give rise to this curious legend, the memory of it survived for centuries. Canon Benedict, who wrote an Ordo Rornanus, or Book of Ceremonies of the Roman church, during the reign of Innocent II (1130-43), speaking of the very procession of the image of Our Lord just described, says that, when it left the Church of St. Hadrian, the statue was carried through the arch in Lathone, because of old the devil had caused great trouble in that part. Then the procession passed by the Domus Orphei on account of the basilisk which used to lurk there in a cavern, and which by its breath and hissing used to cause people who passed thereby to sicken and die. Hence Pope Sergius (II) instituted this procession on this great festival, that by the prayers of so many people and by the intercession of the most blessed Virgin, the Roman people might be freed from these troubles. From a sixteenth century writer, it appears that the arch, in Lathone, or really in Latrone, the Robber arch, was so called from the robberies and murders which took place near it, and which the neighborhood of the ruins of the Basilica of Constantine enabled to be committed with more or less impunity. The same author assures us that it was on account of these outrages that the mid-August procession of the statue of Our Saviour carried on the shoulders of the Roman nobility passed by the Robber arch. It is not unlikely, therefore, that the original basilisk of Leo IV was a robber band.

Doubtless in connection with this event Leo ordered the octave day of the Assumption to be observed in Rome. Up to this time, only the feast itself (August 15), introduced from the East during the course of the seventh century, had been kept there. He was so pleased with the attendance of the people on the occasion of the first celebration of this new octave that he gave all present a considerable present of money.

Among the frescos discovered in the subterranean basilica of St. Clement was one of the Assumption. It represents Our Lady with outstretched arms, standing on the top of an empty tomb, and looking up towards God and His angels. On each side of the tomb are six of the apostles in various attitudes of astonishment, and beside them on one side a figure with the words (Scs. Vitus); and on the other a figure bearing a square nimbus, wearing the pallium, and with the words Sanctissimus Dom. Leo —rt PP Romanus. A letter in front of the “rt” is effaced; it was doubtless “q”—qrt, quarti (IV). Beneath the fresco are the words : “That this picture may outshine the rest in beauty, lo! the priest Leo studied to compose it”. As the titular Church of Leo when cardinal priest of the Quatuor Coronati is just opposite that of St. Clement, it is not unlikely that he either designed or painted this fresco whilst a simple priest, and that the pallium, etc., were added afterwards. Of course it may be that the work was executed by another priest of the same name.

Seeing that Leo’s preaching is especially alluded to by his biographer, it is the opinion of many, that the “Homily on the Pastoral Care”, which is still in the Pontificals, and which is also to be found in the various editions of the Councils, should be assigned to Leo IV. The homily is an instruction on sacerdotal duties which Leo wished that bishops should read to all priests who had the cure of souls. The instruction first tells the priests what they themselves must do, and then what they must impress upon the people—for instance, that on Ash Wednesday they must exhort the people to come and confess their sins. They must urge them to approach “to the communion of the Body and Blood of the Lord at Christmas, Maundy Thursday, Easter, and Pentecost, and must, on the contrary, condemn’ wakes’. Farm laborers of various kinds have to be especially reminded of their duty to go to Mass on Sundays, and to teach their children, or cause them to be taught, the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed”.

Besides being a preacher, Leo was also a musician, or, at least, took great interest in music. It would seem that at the monastery of St. Martin, where he had been educated, that art was especially cultivated. Its abbot John, at the time archcantor of St. Peter’s, had two centuries before this been sent to England to instruct our countrymen in the ecclesiastical chant. We have two indications of Leo’s concern for matters musical. In 847 he ordered that vespers should be publicly chanted in the basilica of St. Paul. The schola cantorum and all the clergy had to proceed thither on the saint’s feast (June 30), just as they betook themselves to the stational churches for Mass. And somewhere about the year 852 he wrote to Honoratus, possibly abbot of Farfa, the following letter, which will speak for itself, and which, especially on account of the interest now taken in the Gregorian chant, is worth inserting to the full extent in which it has come down to us.

“A quite incredible story has reached our ears, which, if it be true, must rather prejudice than do us honor.. . . It is averred that you have such an aversion to the sweet chant of St. Gregory, and the system of singing and reading which he drew up and bequeathed to the Church, that you are at variance in this matter not only with this See, which is near to you, but almost with every other church in the West, and, in fact, with all those who use the Latin tongue to pay to the King of Heaven their tribute of praise. All these churches have received with such eagerness and such devoted affection the aforesaid system (traditio) of Gregory, that although we have communicated the whole to them, they are so delighted that they leave us no peace with their inquiries about it, thinking that there must be more of the same remaining with us. It was, indeed, the holy Pope Gregory ... who both devoted his best energies to the salvation of souls, and who also with great labor and much musical skill composed this chant which we sing in the church, and even elsewhere. It was his desire to rouse and touch the hearts of men, so that by the sound of these highly elaborated strains he might draw to church not only ecclesiastics, but also those who were uneducated and hard to move.

“I beg of you not to allow yourself to remain in opposition to this Church, the supreme head of religion, from whom no one wishes to separate, or to the other churches mentioned, if you desire to live in entire peace and harmony with the universal Church of God. For if, which we cannot believe, you have such an aversion to our teaching and to the system of our holy Pontiff, that you will not conform in every point to our rite, whether in the chanting or in the lessons, know that we shall reject you from our communion”.

BENEDICT III.

A.D. 855-858.

EMPERORS OF THE EAST.                                              EMPERORS OF THE WEST.

Theodora and Michael III. (the Drunkard), 842-856        Lothaire I, 823-855.

Michael III., 856-867. Louis II, 850-875.

AFTER informing us that Benedict was a Roman and the son of Peter, his biographer assures us that as a youth he took in learning as a sponge absorbs moisture. The good report of him that soon spread abroad was the cause of his being brought to the Lateran palace and added to the ranks of the clergy. He soon showed himself wise in mind and speech, and a man full of sympathy for all. Gregory IV made him a subdeacon, and Leo IV priest. As priest of the title of St. Calixtus, his signature is to be found among those of the cardinal priests appended to the decrees of the Roman Council of December 8, 853.

On the death of the latter Pontiff, the clergy, nobles, senate, and people gathered together immediately to beg God to point out to them a worthy Pope. After failing to induce Hadrian, the priest of St. Mark’s, to accept the burden of the pontificate, they unanimously resolved to select Benedict, straightway went off to his Church of St. Calixtus, and declared their wishes to him. Falling on his knees, the humble Benedict begged them, with tears, not to take him from his church, as he was unable to bear the weight of the papacy. He pleaded in vain. He was carried off in triumph, and, to the great joy of the whole city, enthroned, according to ancient custom, in the Lateran palace. The decree of election was at once drawn up, signed by both clergy and nobles, and, as old custom requires, sent off to the emperors Lothaire and Louis II.

The envoys to whom this decree was entrusted, Nicholas, bishop of Anagni, and Mercury, a magister militum, were met at Eugubium on their journey to Louis II by Arsenius, bishop of Horta. With arguments, in all likelihood, more cogent than words, he persuaded the envoys to be false to the commission they had received, and to espouse the candidature of his son, the cardinal priest Anastasius, whom we have seen excommunicated by Leo IV. Although Arsenius, who had for some years been a man of considerable importance in Rome, was devoted to the emperor Louis II, his action in behalf of his son was no doubt the outcome of personal ambition rather than of any zeal to promote an imperial candidate. What story the envoys told Louis is not known. On their return to Rome they announced the coming of imperial missi. When these latter arrived at Horta, on the persuasion of Arsenius, they, or at least some of them, the counts Adalbert and Bernard, attached themselves to Anastasius. At Horta the counts were joined by Nicholas and the rest of his party, who left Rome on pretense of going to meet the imperial missi.

The first legates sent by Benedict to meet the counts were taken into custody, a mode of treatment which even barbarians, as the Book of the Popes takes notice, do not mete out to ambassadors. Benedict next sent forward Hadrian, the secundicerius of the Holy See, and the Duke Gregory.

Understanding from his missi that such was the emperor’s wish, the Romans, “not knowing the intrigues that were in progress”, went out across the Ponte Molle to meet them. All then entered the Leonine city together. Immediately a scene of violence ensued. The superista Gratian, whom we saw in the last pontificate arraigned for his real or supposed antipathy to the Frankish overlordship, and the scriniarius Theodore were seized; Anastasius entered the basilica of St. Peter, and, behaving worse than the Saracens, not only destroyed the representation of the synod in which he had been condemned, and which Leo, according to custom, had had painted and placed over the gates of the sanctuary, but also broke and burnt the images all about it. He then forced his way into the Lateran palace, ordered Romanus, bishop of Bagnorea, to drive Benedict from the pontifical chair, and himself sat on a throne “he was not worthy to touch” says Benedict’s biographer. The barbarous Romanus even went the length of tearing the pontifical robes from Benedict, and loading him with reproaches and blows. This is not the first time we have seen the Vicar of Christ treated like his Divine Master, and it will not be the last.

Anastasius then (September 21) handed Benedict over to the custody of certain priests, who for their crimes had been deposed by Pope Leo. Meanwhile the whole city was filled with grief, and clergy and laity flocked to the churches, and implored the help of God. On Sunday they met together in the Basilica Emiliana, and there, right into the apse where the clergy were assembled, the imperial missi forced their way, and with drawn swords called on the clergy to elect Anastasius. Finding they could not terrify the whole body, they seized the bishops of Ostia and Albano, for Radoald of Porto, the third bishop who had the right to consecrate the Pope, had already been gained, took them apart, and tried, first by promises and then by threats, to induce them to consecrate Anastasius. This they firmly refused to do, and pointed out to the missi that they were asking for what was opposed to the sacred scriptures. The noble courage and pointed words of the bishops had their effect on the Franks. For after a private discussion in their native language, their anger abated. Again early on Tuesday a great mass of the clergy and people assembled in the Lateran basilica and made it quite plain to the Franks that Benedict only would they have. The missi thereupon called the clergy into the Lateran palace, and at length found it necessary to yield to their arguments and firmness. They then consented to expel Anastasius from the Lateran and to agree to whatever should be decided upon after a three days’ fast. Anastasius was accordingly driven forth from the palace, while Benedict was restored to his party. From the place in the Lateran where Anastasius had confined him, he was escorted with great joy “on the horse which Pope Leo was wont to use” to St. Mary Major’s, where the next three days were spent in fasting and prayer. At the close of the fast the partisans of Anastasius came to Benedict, humbly acknowledged their guilt, and begged the forgiveness which they received. Even the imperial missi came to make soft speeches to the Pope.

He was then honorably escorted back to the Lateran palace, and on the following Sunday, October 6, or with Jaffe, September 29, was duly consecrated in the presence of the imperial envoys at St. Peter’s.

Surely this example of the methods of the interference of the secular power is enough to make any Erastian blush. For its own ends it would have put a wicked excommunicated cardinal in the chair of Peter by the sword, and by the hands of any villains whom they could have found to do their work.

Anastasius was condemned by a synod, but mercifully admitted by Benedict to lay communion, and, as a layman, made abbot of the monastery attached to S. Maria in Trastevere.

The Franks would at this period have been very much better employed in attending to their own internal affairs. But oppression was then the order of the day among them. The emperor Lothaire died (September 29) on the same day as that of the consecration of Benedict. Following the fatal example of his predecessors, he subdivided his long strip of territory. Louis II kept Italy and the imperial title, Charles received Provence, the duchy of Lyons, Dauphiné and that part of the old kingdom of Burgundy which was on the other side of the Jura mountains, and Lothaire II—of whom we shall have to say much—had, roughly speaking, the country between the Rhine and the Scheldt, between the Meuse and the Rhine, and southwards to the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone and the Jura mountains. This last kingdom came to be known as Lotharingia, or Lorraine in French. There were now five kings of the Franks. The Aquitainians were in constant revolt against Charles the Bald, the Slays were defeating Louis the German, and the Normans and Saracens were still devastating the north and south coasts respectively. The kings or nobles were constantly oppressing and robbing the Church. There is scarcely a council held among the Franks at this period which does not protest against the seizing of church property; and with much of what they did not rob, they did worse. They gave it to their utterly unworthy relations. The great nobles were daily making themselves more independent.

One of the few letters of Benedict which have been preserved, while treating of one man, gives us a vivid picture in miniature of the disorders among the Franks we have just sketched. In 856 Lothaire married Theutburga, the daughter of a certain Count Boso. The brother of Theutburga was a subdeacon, Hubert by name. Falling into bad company, the young man soon became remarkable for wickedness even in his age and country. He went about with a gang of abandoned men and women, and, though he had no lack of money from his various monasteries, he seized the famous monastery of St. Maurice (of Agaune) in Valais, and scattered its revenues on harlots, dogs, and birds. Of this monastery he kept permanent possession. He also violated the sanctity of the equally famous monastery of Luxeuil, by keeping possession of it for some days with his vile crew Nor did he hesitate to endanger the peace which the Pope had contrived to make between the emperor Louis II and his brothers; for the former had shown himself dissatisfied that his father’s will confined him to Italy. This infamous conduct of Hubert was at length brought to the notice of Benedict, who in a letter addressed to all the bishops of the kingdom of Charles, king of Provence, ordered the subdeacon to come to Rome to answer the charges brought against him, under pain of excommunication. It is not to be wondered at that a threat of excommunication did not alarm Hubert. Thinking to strengthen himself by advancing his relatives, Lothaire II in 859 granted Hubert a duchy between the Jura and the Pennine Alps. But after Lothaire began to dishonor his lawful wife Theutburga, Hubert’s sister, that worthy took up arms against his brother-in-law. And in his mountain fastnesses he defied the power of Lothaire. However, after the death (863) of Charles of Provence, that part of his kingdom which embraced Hubert’s duchy fell into the hands of the warlike emperor Louis II, and in 864 the subdeacon was slain by one of the emperor’s counts. What can have been the power of the law when a ruffian noble could so long despise with impunity the moral and physical forces of Pope, emperor, and king?

The letter just cited was not the first which Benedict had addressed to the bishops of France. He had written before to urge them to speak out against the evils which were impeding the action of the Church in France, and rather attributing the difficulties under which they were laboring to their silence. This letter, now lost, put, according to the Frankish bishops, the blame on the wrong persons. They were not conscious to themselves of having been “dumb dogs”. And so, thinking that their king (Charles the Bald) was the one at fault, they did not fail to tell him so. They addressed a memorial to him, in which they urge: “We should have felt keenly the reproofs which the Pope addresses to us in the letter which we have heard together with you, if we had really done what, with so much vehemence, he lays to our charge. But as we have never given our consent to the disorder (monastic laxity especially) concerning which he is most insistent; nay, as, on the contrary, we have often raised our voices against it, and have often warned you and your subjects by our words and writings to correct what has been done against the canons, we are less affected by his reproaches. Nevertheless once again we join our voices to that of the Pope, and exhort you to re-establish, as soon as may be, order in the monasteries of your kingdom which are in a deplorable condition, and to cause to be observed the capitularies to which you have affixed your seal at Coulaines, Beauvais”, etc. But to effect this much-needed reform Charles the Bald, if he had the wish, had not the courage. It would have been necessary for him to have put himself in active opposition to many of his great nobles, to whose relations, female as well as male (laics), many monasteries had been handed over.

However, it is a satisfaction to find that some monasteries in France, even in the midst of national disorders of every kind, were well governed, and were steadily laboring to preserve the monuments of antiquity, to be enjoyed in times of greater repose. Lupus, who, though born of noble parents (805), was, contrary to the rule at least of the ninth century, if not of the twentieth, an ornament to his rank, was in 842 appointed to the abbey of Ferrieres by Charles the Bald. The pupil of Rhabanus Maurus, and hence through him of Alcuin, he loved learning for its own sake, and his letters, which represent “the scholarly spirit of the ninth century, are not limited to the orthodox routine”. He reformed several monasteries, and kept his own up to a high standard of excellence. To simplify the work of reform by introducing unity, he sent some of his monks to Rome to learn the customs of the Church of Rome. By them he sent a letter addressed as follows : “To the most excellent and by all Christians specially venerated universal Pope Benedict, Lupus, the last of abbots, from the monastery of Gaul, which is called Bethlehem, or Ferrières, wishes present prosperity and future blessedness”. He ventures to address the Pope, because he knows that he has inherited the humility as well as the power of St. Peter, begs him to instruct those he has sent in the Roman customs so that one rule might prevail over the diversity of customs which reigned in different places. “For”, he adds, with great fullness of truth, “in all that relates to religion and morality variety begets doubt”. Hence he has recourse to the fountain-head of faith. In conclusion he begs the Pope to let him have the loan of the latter portion of the Commentaries of St. Jerome on the prophet Jeremiah, Cicero’s De Oratore, the Institutes of Quintilian, and the commentary of Donatus on Terence, promising most faithfully to have them returned when copied.

It was stated in the biography of Leo IV that Benedict refused to do more than to declare Gregory of Syracuse suspended till he had received further particulars regarding his case from St. Ignatius. But his violent expulsion from his see (November 23, 837) prevented him from holding further communication with the Pope. Whilst still on good terms with the holy patriarch, the emperor Michael III, the Drunkard, “on account of his love for the apostles”, and also on account of his interest in the case of Gregory, and his wish by this action to secure the adhesion of the Pope to the sentence passed against him, had sent to Blessed Peter, whilst Leo was still Pope, a copy of the Gospels, with covers of pure gold adorned with precious stones, a chalice, a vestment of imperial purple, etc. These presents he had dispatched by the envoy of St. Ignatius, the monk Lazarus, a Chazar by birth, an artist of no mean order, and one who had suffered grievous persecution, for the use to which he had put his skill, at the hands of Michael’s father, the iconoclast, Theophilus. It would seem to follow from this notice that the representative whom Leo IV had asked Ignatius to send to Rome did not arrive there, at least till after that Pope’s death. But, as we have seen, Benedict would not give a final decision. He did not think he had received sufficient information either from Gregory’s agent, Zachary, or from Lazarus.

Benedict also received valuable presents from Ethelwulf, who this time came to Rome himself along with his son Alfred and a very numerous following. “In the same year (855)”, says the contemporary historian Asser in his life of Alfred, “he (Ethelwulf) went to Rome in great state, and taking with him the aforesaid King Alfred, for a second journey thither, because he loved him more than his other sons, he remained there a whole year”. The Book of the Popes tells us of the gifts he offered to Blessed Peter—crowns, images, other ornaments all of gold, such as baucae (goblets, small chalices or cruets), gabathe saxisce (dish-shaped lamps for floating wicks of Saxon work, saxisce?)—and such vestments as a saraca de olovero cum chrisoclavo (a dalmatic? with stripes of gold), a camisa alba sigillata olosyrica cum chrisoclavo (possibly a silken alb ornamented with the apparel in gold work), and vela majora de fundato (large hangings of cloth of gold). Being evidently in a generous mood, he gave, at the request of the Pope, public largess in the Church of Blessed Peter, gold to all the clergy and nobles, and small silver to the people.

Not content with this, on his return to his kingdom of Wessex, he did not forget Rome when he made his will. Among other provisions “he commanded also a large sum of money, namely 300 mancuses, to be carried to Rome for the good of his soul, to be distributed in the following manner, viz., 100 mancuses in honour of St. Peter, specially to buy oil for the lights of the church of that apostle on Easter eve, and also at cock-crow; too in honor of St. Paul for the same purpose, and too for the universal apostolic pontiff”. If Rome acquired a powerful hold on this country, incidents such as this show that it sprang from the free-will of its people. Rome’s influence in England was the result of the nation’s love for the successors of St. Peter, and not, in its origin at any rate, of any grasping for power on their part.

These personal donations of Offa and Ethelwulf must not be confounded with the Rome-feoh, or Peter’s Pence, which was a national tax, levied yearly for a long period at the rate of a silver penny from every family that had land or cattle to the annual value of thirty pence. The money thus raised was sent to Rome, and was for many ages divided between the Pope and the needs of the Schola Anglorum. There can, however, be no doubt that the regular payment of Peter’s Pence, which began at the close of this century, took its origin from these donations of our kings to Rome, which were given as well for the Pope himself as for the maintenance of the Schola Anglorum. This schola, seemingly the first of its kind, was certainly in existence at the close of the eighth century. It was the Anglo-Saxon quarter of Rome. In its church, now S. Spirito in Sassia, the English found priests of their nation, in its hospitals, food and lodging, and in its schools, instruction. It was enabled to do all this by the generosity towards it of our kings and people. But there is no reason to think that Peter-pence was in existence before the reign of Alfred. Under his son Edward, the Rome-feoh is mentioned for the first time by name; and then it appears, not as a new imposition, but as one of the accustomed dues of the Church. In confirmation of this assertion of Lingard may be mentioned the discovery, in 1883, in the north angle of the house of the Vestal Virgins at the foot of the Palatine, and close to the palace built by Pope John VII, of an earthen vessel containing 830 Anglo-Saxon silver pennies ranging in date from 871947 A.D. Of these, 3 were of Alfred the Great, 217 of Edward I, 393 of Athelstan, 195 of Edmund I, a few of Sitric and of Anlaf, kings of Northumbria, 4 of archbishop Plegmund of Canterbury, etc. A bronze fibula of Marinus II (942-6), found buried with the treasure, would seem to fix the date of the burying of it to the time of that Pope. The treasure, now in the Museo delle Terme, was probably concealed by a papal official living in the palace of John VII during the time when Alberic, prince of the Romans, was at war with Hugo, king of Italy.

Forty years before the discovery just mentioned, another very large number of Peter’s Pence had been found. This collection illustrates the subsequent history of the Rome-penny, as the former does that of its origin. When the old campanile of St. Paul’s, outside the walls, was destroyed in 1843, there was discovered a hoard of over a thousand silver denarii belonging to a period from the close of the tenth century to the middle of the eleventh. In it were sixty different kinds of coins, coming from seventy-two mints in Italy, France, England, Germany, Burgundy, Holland, Flanders, and Hungary. Some hundred of them were Anglo-Saxon thirty-three of which dated from the reign of St. Edward the Confessor, while the rest were of earlier kings.

The first people, then, to pay the Rome-feoh were the English, and they were, moreover, the only people who paid it in the ninth century, and, possibly, even in the first part of the tenth century. Then it was gradually introduced into other countries, and the following century saw it paid by all the kingdoms of Western Christendom.

The earliest extant laws treating of the Petrespenny date, as has been said, from the time of Edward the Elder (921); but their preamble shows that earlier regulations on this subject had been issued. In process of time a fixed sum was sent, which from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, when its payment was stopped, amounted to about 48,000 denarii, or, as it is expressed in the Liber Censuum, “three hundred marks less one”.

Not long before he died Benedict had to take action on a matter with which his successor had also to deal. We have spoken above of a count Boso. Another Boso, (probably his son) a Lombard noble, had married a certain Ingeltrude. She proved to be a very dissolute woman, left her husband, and led a scandalous life in various parts of France. After Boso had to no purpose endeavored to induce her to return to him, he begged Pope Benedict to help him. As we learn from a letter of Pope Nicholas to the bishops of the kingdom of Louis the German, Benedict made strenuous efforts, by writing to the emperor, to bishops and to princes, to induce them to cause the runaway to return to her lawful husband. Owing to the protection afforded the adulteress by Lothaire II, himself an adulterer, neither Benedict nor Nicholas effected anything. After the latter Pontiff had in vain directed various letters to the different parties concerned, he listened to the request of several bishops that sentence of excommunication should be pronounced against her. Accordingly, by his orders, a council was held at Milan (c. 860), and Ingeltrude was excommunicated. But despite many other letters in Boso’s behalf written by Nicholas, despite of his enlisting the support of Charles the Bald, against her protector, Lothaire, despite the confirmation of the sentence of excommunication, pronounced against her, at the councils of Rome (863) and Attigny (865), Ingeltrude continued to do as she pleased with impunity. The last event that we know of in connection with this lady took place soon after the holding of the council of Attigny. At this council Arsenius, the legate of Pope Nicholas, besides dealing with the case of the divorce of Lothaire, had renewed, as we have just said, the excommunication against her. After the council he was met by Ingeltrude at Worms. She swore before him to amend her life, and to go with him to Rome to get reconciled to the Church. But to give up her evil courses was too much for her. When near Augsburg she took to flight, and fades from our view covered with the legate’s excommunication.

This persistent effort of two popes, in the interests of Christian morality, to check a great cause of scandal in high places, though important it itself, was put into the shade by the far more serious struggle which had to be waged, in the same vital interest, in the case of King Lothaire in the days of Nicholas I, and with which this struggle was to a large extent contemporaneous. To the bold resistance, which with moral weapons alone the medieval popes made against the base passions of sovereigns, backed by all the material resources of their kingdoms, is due the position of woman in modern Europe. But for their unflinching firmness, monogamy, understood in its strictest sense, at once the glory and strength of Western civilization, would have been destroyed; and woman would have been in the West, what she is today in the East, the slave or the plaything of man.

What is recorded of Benedict’s work in connection with the various churches of Rome has reference, for the most part, to gifts to them of ecclesiastical vestments or furniture. Among these presents there is frequent mention of an evangelium of pure silver or gold, as the case may be. It is by no means clear whether these evangelia are copies of the liturgical gospels bound with ornamental plates of precious metal, or whether they are those symbols of the four Evangelists which “used formerly to be kissed by the faithful, who declared by this act . . . . that they accepted all that was written by the four Evangelists”. He also becomingly replaced the precious binding of the volume, containing the epistles of St. Paul and of the other apostles and the lessons of the Prophets, which was used by the subdeacons at the stations, and, moreover, added to it the Greek and Latin lessons which were wont to be read on Holy Saturday and on the eve of Pentecost. He became acquainted with the needs of the different churches by his pious custom of visiting them in turn, “singing heavenly hymns”, to pray for the flock entrusted to his care; for we are told that he relied “on the divine intuition of the saints”.

Following in the footsteps of his predecessor, his first care was to help to make good the damage done to the tombs and churches of the apostles by the Saracens. With plates of silver he redecorated the “sepulchre of St. Paul which had been destroyed by the Saracens”, and gave a “cover of pure gold to the bilicum, or upper cataract of the confession (of St. Peter); that is, of course, the little orifice in the floor, the fenestrella or little window of St. Gregory of Tours”, through which a glimpse could at one time be obtained of the actual sarcophagus of the Apostle. He presented to his basilica a large silver candelabrum, to replace the one “formerly carried off by the Saracens”. It was arranged to carry both lamps and candles, and was placed near the lectorium. He also re-roofed a large portion of the basilica, and especially that portion of it “which is over his body”.

Another interesting renovation effected by him was that of the seven stational crosses, viz., the silver crosses which were carried in front of the solemn processions to the different stations, and were very likely the same as those carried before the exarchs or emperors when they visited Rome. In the very earliest of the Ordines Romani, there is mention, in connection with the stations, of those “who carry the crosses”, and in ordines of the ninth century it is expressly stated that the processions to the stations are to be headed by the seven crosses. When in the twelfth century the number of the regions was increased to twelve, the number of the stational crosses was also brought up to the same figure. They appear to have been usually kept in the Church of S. Anastasia.

One of the one hundred and thirty-two great floods of the Tiber, which in historic times have spread their slime over the city of Rome, devastated it and the surrounding country at the beginning of Benedict’s reign. There is no need to describe this inundation, because its course was much the same as that of its predecessors, and its details in the Liber Pontificalis are consequently much the same as those already given there in describing them. But no doubt it added to the amount of restoration which the Pope was called upon to perform.

We may fittingly close our account of Benedict by recording his decree regarding the burials of his clergy. He laid down that on the death of a bishop, priest, or deacon, the Pope, with all his clergy, was to assist at his burial and in commending his soul to God,—a decree which, his biographer says, Benedict was as ready to fulfill himself as to make, and a decree which his great successor, who imitated the good deeds of his predecessor in this as in other respects, was also himself careful to execute.

Benedict was buried in front of the principal gate the basilica of St. Peter, probably on April 18, 858, the day after his death.

ST. NICHOLAS I THE GREAT.

A.D.858-867

EMPERORS OF THE EAST.                              EMPERORS OF THE WEST.

Theodora and Michael III

(the Drunkard), 842-856.                                     Lothaire I, 823-855.

Michael III, 856-867.                                             Louis II, 850-875.

IN Nicholas I, the Saint and the Great, we have not only the greatest Pontiff of his century, but one of the greatest of the very long line of grand characters who have in every age adorned the Chair of Peter. It is a saying no less true than trite that, of those few to whom men have accorded the title of Great, still fewer, if their claims be weighed in the balance of reason and not of sentiment, have been worthy of it. But to very few indeed have any large body of men ever given the combined titles of Great and Saint. Nicholas I is one of that rare company who have been so honored, and in his case the distinction has been conferred on very solid grounds. In the troublous and stormy times in which his days were cast, he was the pharos to which men, buffeted about by the angry waves of life, looked with eager hope. It mattered not what was the grief under which they were groaning; it was all one whether they were strong men or helpless women, whether they were in authority or in subjection, whether they were bishops or simple clerics, peers or peasants, they all in their distress turned to Nicholas; they all flocked to him as to their common father. For he did not raise his voice merely in commanding tones to warn men from the ways in which they should not tread, or to point out to them the narrow road which led to life eternal, but in encouragement also to help them faint, weary, or willful, along it.

So many people crowded to Rome in his time that it became “the rendezvous of the world”. They came to pray and to obtain pardon of their sins; they came for justice and they came for privileges or for protection. Some came, too, as ambassadors of kings or emperors, others from barbarous lands to seek the light of faith. But if all the world was thus in touch with Nicholas, he was in touch with all the world. If he was the center of the gaze of all, his eyes were equally fixed on all. He knew what was going on in the different parts of the world from the words of those who came to him from every part thereof, from his legates whom he dispatched to North and South, to East and West, and from the letters he received from all quarters.

And if the gaining of victories and the framing of laws give men a title to distinction, then was Nicholas great both as a conqueror and a lawgiver. For he was really a conqueror, though not as the kings of the earth, leaving in his track blazing cities and heaps of slain. It was by peaceful measures that he won over the Bulgarians to the obedience of Christ, that he overcame the princes of the world, and opposed himself as an impassable barrier to their career of violent wickedness. But though moral only were the arms by which he hoped to secure real peace, they were wielded with a certain startling effectiveness. The whole civilized world was electrified by the flashing mandates he directed against its great ones. The emperor Michael, the Caesar Bardas, the king Lothaire, the patriarch Photius, the metropolitan Hincmar, and the archbishop John of Ravenna found there was one who could and would oppose their excesses. Emperors and kings were taught that, even in this world, they had a superior who could bring to bear upon them weapons even more powerful than sword or bow. In Nicholas, on the other hand, the weak and the down-trodden found strength and support. In him Themberga, dishonored and disgraced, and none the less, but rather the more, dishonored and disgraced that she was a queen and friendless, found strength not to break down under her cruel wrongs, and a sure haven of hope. To the Bulgarians he was a civil as well as an ecclesiastical legislator, and churchmen were soon taught that he was a canon-lawyer.

If he was ambitious, he was ambitious of showing himself what he believed himself to be, the first bishop, the most authoritative teacher of faith and morals, and the supreme ruler of man’s spiritual destinies. He was no doubt anxious for the light of the papacy to shine to the greatest number possible, and he assuredly strove to place it on a higher candlestick, that more might see it. But in that care and effort he did nothing which his predecessors had not done. He may have expanded principles, have pushed precedent along, but it was on the old lines that he acted. He was no innovator. And if he thought that in him lay the highest legislative, judicial, and executive powers in spiritual matters, he was guided in his conduct not by his own will acting arbitrarily, but by written law and custom, by scripture and tradition.

Such a commanding position did he occupy, with such authority did he speak, that his contemporaries thought of him as the emperor of the world. Now it was an archbishop (Gunther) who, condemned by Nicholas for supporting, Cranmer-like, a licentious monarch, exclaimed in impotent rage : “The Lord Nicholas makes himself emperor of the whole world!” Now it was a monk who, contemplating with feelings of triumphant righteousness the way in which he opposed wickedness in high places, acclaimed him for presiding “authoritatively over kings and tyrants as though he were the lord of the earth”.

Like Leo I and Gregory I, the other two pontiffs who share with him the titles of Saint and Great, Nicholas was a Roman. His father, Theodore, is described as a regionary, probably a regionary notary and the same man as the Theodore who with the titles of notarius and scriniarius figures in the Roman Council of 853. From his very boyhood the future Pope is said to have been of a serious and studious turn of mind; and his father, himself a great lover of learning, had him carefully instructed in sacred and profane literature. The youth made most gratifying progress, and grew in learning as he grew in stature. Those who had “the discernment of spirits”, loudly declared that the boy would mount high the ladder of fame. The great reputation which he soon gained induced Pope Sergius II to bring him from his father’s house into the Lateran palace, and make him a sub-deacon. By Leo IV, to whom he was most dear, he was made a deacon, in which capacity “he was loved by the clergy and people, and honored by the nobility”. To Benedict III, “a most amiable man and most holy Pontiff”, who was never happy without his company, he was an object of greater affection than his own relations, and was employed by him to assist him in important ecclesiastical affairs, in which the excellent judgment of the young cleric showed itself conspicuously. With other deacons, Nicholas carried his predecessor’s body to St. Peter’s, and with his own hands placed it in the tomb. And during his after career he kept his example ever before his eyes, and “in every good work made himself his most zealous heir”.

After such an illustriously well spent youth, and after the important part he had played under Benedict III, it certainly causes us no surprise when we find it recorded in the Liber Pontificalis that he was elected to succeed him after the cardinal of S. Mark’s had again refused to be Pope. On the death of the last-mentioned pontiff, the emperor Louis II, who had been in Rome just before that event and had left it, at once returned thither, while the clergy and nobility adjourned to the basilica of S. Dionysius, i.e. to the church now known as S. Silvester in Capite, to earnestly beg of God a worthy successor. “By divine inspiration”, after a consultation of some hours, they unanimously elected Nicholas. But he, saying he was unworthy of such an honor, fled to St. Peter’s. Thence, however, he was taken perforce to the Lateran palace and “placed on the apostolic throne”.

This account, as well of the early career as of the election of Nicholas, furnished us by his biographer, is decidedly calculated to make us slow to accept the assertion of Prudentius that the choice of him as Pope was due more “to the presence and support of Louis and his nobles than to the election of the clergy”. Doubtless he was a persona grata both to the emperor and to his nobility; but his virtue, his conspicuous ability, and the position of importance and trust he had held under Benedict, fully justify the assertion of the Liber Pontificalis that his election was the unanimous work of clergy and people. Louis’s influence simply swelled the tide of popular favor which was flowing steadily towards Nicholas.

But whether Nicholas owed his exalted position to Louis or not, it is certain that he was very much opposed to the interference in papal elections of any individuals not authorized by the canons. Accordingly, in the council of 862, he renewed the decree of the Lateran Council of 769, which forbade any persons not of the recognized Roman electoral body to concern themselves in the election of a Pope. The reference, however, to the decree of Pope Stephen, which was directed against the doings of the antipope Constantine, would seem to show that this canon was aimed not so much against the emperor as against the party of the antipope Anastasius.

On Sunday, April 24, in the presence of the emperor, Nicholas was consecrated in St. Peter’s, and then, after offering up the Holy Sacrifice “over the most sacred body of the apostle”, he was, as usual, escorted back with hymns and canticles to the Lateran amidst the densest throngs of both nobles and commoners, through a city bedecked with garlands, and amid the greatest rejoicings of clergy, senate, and people.

Through a false punctuation, the old editions of the Liber Pontificalis were made to state that Nicholas was crowned when he reached the Lateran. In later ages the popes were crowned in St. Peter’s, and if Nicholas was crowned at all, it was no doubt in the same place. Though it is not so stated in the Book of the Popes, there seems, however, good reason to believe that a papal coronation ceremony was introduced in the course of this century. The forged document known as the Donation of Constantine pretended that Constantine gave to Pope Sylvester “the diadem, i.e. the crown of our head and a tiara (frigium - candido nitore, as another passage has it)”; but that, as the Pope would not wear a golden crown on the clerical crown of his tonsure, “we have with our own hands placed upon his most sacred head a mitre of exceeding whiteness typical of the glorious resurrection of Our Lord”. Now whether the Donatio first saw the light in the Vatican in 774, as many authors hold, or in France along with the False Decretals, it was certainly in existence before the days of Nicholas, and affords proof positive that the wearing of a regal crown by the Pope had been mooted.

If the ceremony of crowning the popes was discussed in the first half of the ninth century at latest, it would seem that it was practiced before the close of its second half. We have seen that Mabillon’s Ordo Romanus IX, which includes the rite of consecrating the bishop of Rome, was in all likelihood a production of this same century, and contains a notice of the imposition of a crown upon the head of the Pope. Its venerable antiquity is our excuse for giving it in full.

The Pope-elect, who must, it says, be a cardinal priest or deacon, is to be escorted to the basilica of St. Peter by all the clergy and people. After the pontifical vestments have been put upon him in the sacristy, he is to go to the confession of St. Peter, and there prostrate himself in prayer, while the schola cantorum sings the Introit, Elegit te Dominus. He must then rise, go up to the altar and again prostrate himself in prayer, and all the clergy with him. Raised by the bishops, he is to be placed between the faldstool or throne (sedes) and the altar. The Book of the Gospels is to be held over his head, and after the first and second of the consecrating bishops have each said a prayer over him, the third is to consecrate him. Then the archdeacon must invest him with the pallium, and, assisted by the deacon, place him on the throne. From the steps thereof he must intone the Gloria in excelsis and wish Peace to all. Thereupon the schola and the heads (patroni) of the different regions are to acclaim him with the laudes. Then the Pontiff is to proceed with the Mass, at which all are to communicate. After Mass, as he returns in full procession to the sacristy, his blessing is to be asked by all the scholae of the foreigners, by the English, by the Franks, etc., who are to respond to its reception by a resounding Amen!

Returned to the sacristy, the Pope must then take his seat in the sella gestatoria (sella apostolica). When he reaches the lower steps of St. Peter’s, he will there find ready for him his predecessor’s horse or sedan chair. After the patroni of the regions have thrice chanted the words:

“The Lord Pope Leo, whom St. Peter has chosen to sit in his chair for many years”, the Master of the Horse is to approach and place on the Pope’s head “a crown (regnum) made of some white material and like a helmet”. The word regnum would seem to imply something more than the frigium of the Donatio. It was no doubt a real crown, a tiara with golden circlet at its base.

With the regnum upon his head, mounted upon his horse, and surrounded by the judges, he is to ride through the crowded streets, while the people sing the customary laudes.

A coronation ceremony of some sort, then, was apparently in vogue during the ninth century, and there is evidence that it affected Nicholas. But again, unfortunately, there is a weak link in the chain of evidence. In the narthex of the subterranean Church of St. Clement, discovered by Father Mullooly in 1857, there is a fresco executed at the expense of a certain Maria Macellaria, in return for favors received. The painting represents the translation of a body, evidently that of a saint and bishop, for it is depicted with a pallium and a round nimbus. The body is followed by a Pope between two ecclesiastics, dressed alike, but in a costume which is not that of Rome. Of these persons one has a round nimbus and the other holds a large cross. The Pope, whom the inscription below the fresco enables us to identify as Nicholas I, also has the round nimbus, and wears a tiara with a crown attached. The same Pope is represented on the right of the picture as saying Mass in a little chapel.

The question now arises, Who is the saint whose body is being translated, and when was the fresco painted? As the church was ruined by Robert Guiscard in 1084, the painting must have been executed before that date, and it would appear probable that it was really painted before the death of S. Methodius (d. 885), the brother of the other great Slav apostle, St. Cyril. For it seems to us that the translation is that of St. Clement, whose body the two brothers brought to Rome, that the ecclesiastic with the round nimbus on the right of Pope Nicholas is St. Cyril, whose head was so decorated because he was dead when the picture was painted, and that the other similarly dressed ecclesiastic on the left of the Pope is his brother S. Methodius, still alive when the fresco was executed. Pope Nicholas, however, was dead when the holy brothers reached Rome, and the translation of the relics took place under his successor, Hadrian II. But it was he who ordered them to come to Rome, and hence on that account might well be honored with the important place in the fresco and in its inscription. Moreover, by depicting him with the round nimbus, the artist has sufficiently indicated that he was actually dead at the time of the translation. If, then, the reader is prepared to accept the conclusion that this fresco was painted before the death of S. Methodius, then we have contemporary evidence that Nicholas I wore a crown I adorned with gems.

In the sacristy of St. Peter’s there exists yet another relic of the past which seems to prove that in the ninth century the popes wore a crown. It is a picture described in an inventory of 1455 as “of Constantine”, and showing, in its upper portion, the half figures of SS. Peter and Paul, and a similar figure of Our Lord between them giving His benediction. Over the two apostles are their names in Slavonic characters. In the center of the lower half is a male figure clad in a chasuble, wearing the pallium on his shoulders and “a tiara or papal mitre with one crown”, and in the act of blessing a man, also clad in a chasuble, who is kneeling at his feet. Two other figures, represented as Greek monks, stand one at each side. There is little doubt that the figure wearing the crown is that of Pope Hadrian II, that he is blessing S. Methodius, that the “monks” are the two brothers Cyril and Methodius, and that the picture is contemporary with the latter. It would seem likely that it was offered to the confession of St. Peter, where it used to be placed, by S. Methodius in memory of his brother Cyril, or Constantine. If, however, with all this the reader is not prepared to be bound by a chain not at all strong, he must at any rate admit that the popes were crowned at least in the eleventh century.

The Pontiff, the order of whose consecration and coronation we have been able to view through the old ordo brought to light by Mabillon, is said by his biographer to have been patient and temperate, humble and pure, “handsome of face and graceful of form, both learned and modest in his utterances, illustrious by his great deeds, devoted to fasting and to the Divine Services, the support of the widow and the orphan, and the defender of all the people”. That he was a real lover of the poor he proved by his conduct. Like his great predecessor S. Gregory I, he kept by him a list of the blind and the disabled throughout the city, and to these he had food sent daily. But to such of the poor as were strong enough to come for food, he distributed provisions in turn on the different days of the week. And that they might know on what day they had to present themselves for the Pope’s alms, they received tokens marked with his name and having attached to them a number of knots formed by nuts. The number of nuts on his token showed the poor man on what day he had to come.

Another distinguishing trait in the character of Nicholas, recorded by his biographer, was his unceasing energy in working for good. If any scandal arose in the Church “he gave neither rest to his body nor sleep to its members” till by his envoys, letters, or prayers, a reformation was effected. He was assuredly one of those who worked as if good had to be wrought by himself alone, but who prayed as if it had to be done by God alone.

The fame of his learning and of his clear-headed justice caused more cases to be brought for his decision from all parts of the world than were ever brought before “within the memory of anyone”. And those who were so fortunate as to be thus able to lay their cases before him, returned home “blessed and instructed”. And yet it must be borne in mind that as far back as the fourth century, a secretary (St. Jerome) of a Pope (St. Damasus) had already declared (Ep. 13o) that he had “to reply to many consultations which were addressed to the Apostolic See from the East and from the West”. All this work for the spiritual and temporal good, not only of Rome but of the world at large, meant a terrible strain upon the physical powers of the master laborer in the vineyard. And if this pressure of work was not the original cause of the breakdown of his health, it had at least to be borne by a frame often racked with disease. “With such pain”, he wrote, “has our Heavenly Father seen fit to afflict me, that not only am I unable to write suitable replies to your question, but I cannot, through the intensity of my sufferings, even dictate an answer to them”. Like Gregory, the Great, he found strength to work for God and man where ordinary men could scarce find strength to live for themselves.

But if Nicholas was a father to the poor, and meek and mild to those who kept the law of God, he always spoke as one having authority, and was “terrible and full of harshness to those who wandered away from the right path”, and “he ruled kings and tyrants, and, as though he were the lord of the earth, presided authoritatively over them”. Such is the language of the monk Regino, who rightly regarded him as the greatest pope after S. Gregory I. It is to be hoped that the course of this narrative will make it plain that even the eminently flattering character ascribed to Nicholas, in the almost stereotyped language of the Liber Pontificalis, was not overdrawn, and that, in the words of an old fourteenth century English monk, “scarce any occupant of the papal chair was to be compared with him”.

Two days after his consecration the Pope and the emperor met at a solemn banquet, at which the brilliant conversational powers of the former were conspicuous, and parted after a cordial embrace.

It was probably at a Mass celebrated by the Pope on one or other of these days, at which the emperor was present, that were chanted just before the Epistle the solemn laudes, in honor of Nicholas and Louis, which have been printed by Grisar. In the midst of invocations to Our Lord Jesus Christ, “the Saviour of the world”, for His mercy and help, “life” is wished “to our lord Nicholas, by God’s decree supreme pontiff and universal Pope”, and “life and victory to our lord Louis Augustus, crowned by God, the great and pacific emperor”. Then whilst the help of Our Lady, SS. Peter and Paul, and SS. Andrew and John is being besought, “life” is wished “to the emperor’s most excellent royal sons”, and “life and victory to the army of the Romans and Franks”. The laudes terminated with, “Christ conquers. He is our king and emperor”.

When Louis left the city, he rested at St. Leucius, close to where the remains of the Tor di Quinto now stand—so called from its being about five miles from the Porta Ratumena of the Servian walls. Thither, with the notables of Church and State, Nicholas went out to salute him. When Louis saw him coming, he advanced to meet him, and led his horse about “an arrow’s flight”. After talking and feasting together, the Pope set out for Rome loaded with presents. Louis, who accompanied him for some distance, again did himself the honor of leading the Pope’s horse. In these acts of mutual courtesy we see summed up the amicable relations which, for the most part, distinguish the intercourse between Louis and Nicholas, and the commanding position to be taken up by the latter in the face of the world.

The Greek schism.

Now that we have seen Nicholas fairly launched on his pontificate, we cannot do better than begin our account of its history by treating of Photius and the Greek schism, not only because Nicholas had not been Pope very long before he came into contact with the Greeks, but because the story of Photius is of the first importance, not merely in the life of Nicholas, but in the history of mankind.

To bring about the schism of the Greeks, which was virtually consummated by Photius, and which resulted in such political, intellectual, and spiritual loss both to the East and to the West, there had long been many causes at work.

For if it is obvious that it has brought great loss to the Greeks, it cannot be denied that the Latins have also suffered through it. While, for instance, the arms of both peoples ought to have been directed against the Moslem, the most aggressive foe of Christianity, they were, after frequently crossing more or less in the dark, finally destined to be openly and bitterly turned against each other. From the want of hearty co-operation, not to say through the presence of secret hostility, on the part of the Greeks, the heroic struggle of the Latins to recover the Holy Land from the infidel, failed; while, on the other hand, the power of the Greeks themselves was broken for ever by their expulsion from Constantinople (1204) by the Latins. And by thus breaking down a lock-gate which retarded the wave of the Mohammedan, they were in turn to be fearfully afflicted by its unchecked flood.

If, moreover, the schism had the effect of cutting off the Greeks from beneficial contact with the intellectual life, vigorous if youthful, which sprang up among the Western nations in the Middle Ages, the latter, in consequence of it, received a diminished infusion of the superior intellectual and material refinement possessed by the former and a smaller share of their inherited wisdom.

And finally, while, by their separation from the Latins, the East failed to be influenced by the vivifying faith of the West, which in the Middle Ages was as bright and as energetic as its intellectual endeavor, the West lost the benefit it would have derived from close union with the deep religious feelings of the East. By its divided front, too, all Christendom has been weakened in the face of both heresy and unbelief.

Of the causes which brought about this disastrous and deplorable schism, some were natural and others artificial; and of these again some were of a more or less accidental growth, and others directly predisposing to schism. Under natural causes may be grouped the great diversity of character between the practical Romans and the theoretical Greeks, and the dissimilarity of their languages. Difficulties from this latter difference became quite pronounced even in the sixth century, and the lessened intercourse between the East and West, brought about by this linguistic difficulty and by the barbarian invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries, was increased by the antipathy with which the Romans regarded a Roman empire which became less and less Roman every day, and by that with which the Greeks in turn looked on the growth of the “temporal power” of the popes and the renovation of the Western empire. And if the Eastern bishops looked down upon the Western for their want of culture, they were themselves despised by the latter for their base subservience to the emperors. Furthermore, the Italians could not forget how they had been oppressed by the Greek exarchs, and how even the popes had been maltreated, and their patrimonies in Sicily, etc., confiscated by the emperors of Constantinople. Nor could the popes themselves be unmindful of the many heretical patriarchs who had disgraced the patriarchal throne of Constantinople, and of their unjust usurpation of papal rights over the province of Illyricum during the iconoclast controversy.

Accidental causes were such political events as the separation of the empire into two parts, which sooner or later practically corresponded with the two divisions of its subject races into those which spoke Latin and those which spoke Greek. Then there followed the extinction of the Western-Roman empire and its occupation by barbarian peoples, objects at once of hatred and contempt to the more cultured inhabitants of the Eastern-Roman empire. Accidental causes also were differences of religious rites and discipline, especially in the matter of the celibacy of the clergy, and the different state of theological science in the East and West. To the once great activity in that respect among the Greeks had succeeded a languor scarcely disturbed by the iconoclast difficulty, whereas, among the Latins, the conversion of the nations and the controversies on Adoptionism, on Grace and Predestination, had given a considerable impetus to the study of theology. This development of doctrinal studies in the West was viewed with suspicion by the Greeks, and they turned their genius for controversy against the Latins.

To pass over the effect of previous schisms in preparing the way for the schism of the ninth century, its most potent cause was that which modern authors call Byzantinism, which they compare with Gallicanism and Josephism, and which may be defined as a suspicion of, and hostility towards, the supreme spiritual authority of the Holy See engendered by a false idea of national independence, and carefully cultivated by ambitious men for their own advancement. Its chief propagators in the Greek Church were the body of bishops whom the emperor kept at his beck and call, and who formed the assembly which, in time known as the Permanent Synod, has survived to this day, and which soon came to regard itself as the imperial agent in matters spiritual.

When the clergy of a country, hoping to be freer by getting rid of the jurisdiction of the Holy See, have embraced these views of national independence, they have only earned for themselves a base dependence on the civil power. They have found the local civil authority a very different controlling power to that of a spiritual power at a distance. And if, for instance, the clergy of the established Church of England and of that of Russia are today dependent on the State even in matters most sacred and most spiritual, the clergy of Constantinople were in the same condition long before the century of which we are now treating. For many of the causes already enumerated had been at work for centuries. The schism of the Greeks really began with the rise of Constantine’s new city by the Golden Horn. The transference of the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople had for one of its results the popes’ gaining temporal power in the West and losing spiritual authority in the East. What their primacy gained, during the interval between the foundation of Constantinople and the final schism of the Greeks under Michael Cerularius, in intensity and directness, it lost in geographical extent. If Photius and Cerularius were able to sever the last bonds which connected the East and the West, it was because the process of sundering had been begun under Constantine by Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, and his supporters in the war he waged through court influence on the Council of Nice, on St. Athanasius, and on the popes who upheld him.

The Eusebians had cleared the approaches which led to the stout wall of Unity which had surrounded the East and West up till the days of Constantine. The bishops of Byzantium, now become patriarchs of Constantinople, were to make breaches in it and finally to throw it to the ground. Anxious to be the first ecclesiastics in the empire, they did not scruple, in order to purchase the support of the might of the emperors, to prostitute their spiritual prerogatives to the will of their temporal lords. The clergy of Constantinople, partly through jealousy of the power of the Bishop of Rome and partly to curry favor with their own patriarch, were ever prepared to lend their support to his ambitious aims. And finally the emperor, that he might rule the minds, wills, and consciences, as well as the bodies of his subjects, was also ever ready to push forward the spiritual pretensions of a man of whose subservience he was sure.

A short sketch of the means by which the once simple bishops of Byzantium, dependent on the metropolitan of Heraclea in Thrace, became patriarchs of Constantinople, with precedence over the patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, and then rivals of the popes of Rome, will shed, it is to be hoped, no little light on the attitude and action of Photius.

Before Constantine took in hand the old Greek half-destroyed commercial city of Byzantium, and transformed it into the glorious capital to which he gave his name, there was no ecclesiastical authority of the slightest consequence at all by the Golden Horn. But it was a different thing with some of the cities of the Roman Empire, which were already famous before the advent of the first Christian emperor. Antioch by the Orontes, and Alexandria on the Nile’s delta, were renowned throughout the civilized world. Its illustrious history had given an undying fame to Carthage. The residence of St. John, the beloved apostle, at Ephesus, and of St. Polycarp, his disciple at Smyrna, had endeared those cities to the followers of Christ. Its hoary age, the fact that it was the capital of Cappadocia, and the fame of one of its early bishops (St. Firmilian), all contributed to make Caesarea one of the most distinguished of the churches of proconsular Asia. In all these places there was from the earliest times of the Christian faith more or less of episcopal jurisdiction. But while one of these churches, or even for a time Milan in the West, is seen in the foreground of Christian life at one time, and another at another, there is one Church, that of the Eternal City by the Tiber, which is regularly in the forefront, which seems to tower above the others, and to which the others bow down as did the sheaves of his brethren to that of Joseph.

Of the different churches to which the great Apostle of the Gentiles sent his epistles, one is signaled out for especial praise. It is that of the Romans. It was their faith, he said, which was already “spoken of in the whole world”, and it was to be comforted in that which made him “long to see them”. Strong in that faith, we see the Church of Rome through its bishop “confirming the brethren”, even before the last of the apostles has gone to give an account of his glorious stewardship. There were dissensions in the Church of Corinth. Rome is at once troubled, and her bishop, Clement, who is by many thought to have been the friend of St. Pau1, whose name is linked with that of the apostles by numerous documents, apocryphal and otherwise, of the early Church, and who was certainly one of the immediate successors of St. Peter as bishop of Rome, at once intervenes. About the year 97, he addressed a long letter to the Corinthians, exhorting them to concord and to submission to their ecclesiastical superiors. “For ye will afford joy and gladness to us if, being obedient unto the things written by us through the Holy Ghost, ye cut off the unrighteous passion of your jealousy, according to the exhortation which we have made for peace and oneness of mind in this our letter. And we have also sent men, faithful and prudent ... who shall also be witnesses between you and us. And this have we done, that ye may know that there hath been and is in us every longing that ye may quickly be at peace”.

Already had the bishop of Rome been recognized as the intermediary of communication between the churches. The author of that curiously mystical work, The Shepherd of Hermas, tells us that the Church of God, who appeared to him as an old woman, asked him if he had yet delivered her book to the elders of the Church, and then instructed him to send it to Clement. “For Clement shall send it to the foreign cities, because it is entrusted to him to do so”. The result of Clement’s despatch of the work of Hernias was that in some places it was placed on a level with the canonical books of the Sacred Scriptures, and his own letter was received with such respect by the Corinthians, that it became “the practice to read it in the churches”.

Another disciple of St. Peter, and not only of St. Peter but also seemingly of St. Paul, and certainly of St. John, viz., the illustrious martyr St. Ignatius, bears testimony to the exceptional position of the Church of Rome. Though letters of his to such famous early churches as those of Smyrna and Ephesus are extant, there is nothing in them to compare with the language he addresses to that of Rome. Writing to it, there is question at once of presidency. Not merely is it the Church “which presides in the place of the region of the Romans”, which might only mean “in Rome” and not “in the whole Roman empire”; but, less ambiguously, it is the Church “which presides over the universal assembly of love”, i.e. over “the whole Christian agape” or “the whole Church”.

What was said of the Roman Church by St. Paul and the immediate disciples of the apostles, in words which were striking indeed, but which, from the circumstances under which they wrote, were not very definite or explicit, was said, owing to circumstances which called for more cogent language, in a more minute and detailed way by those who had been trained by the disciples of the apostles. St. Irenatus, bishop of Lyons, whose parents had placed him under St. Polycarp, had occasion to refute certain heretics. To confound them he appeals to the tradition of the churches, and at first, not unnaturally, he appeals to that of his master, i.e. to that of Smyrna. But then he continues: “But as it would take too long to go through all the churches, it will be enough for me to point out the apostolic tradition, the teaching which has come down to us by the episcopal succession in the Church of Rome, the greatest and most ancient of all (maxime et antiquissimae), and known to all, founded at Rome by the two glorious apostles, Peter and Paul. This tradition is enough to confound all who, in one way or another, by self-conceit, love of applause, blindness, or false persuasions, are outside the truth. For with this church, by reason of its more powerful principality (or chiefer presidentship, principalitas), every church must agree—i.e. the faithful everywhere—in which (the Roman Church) the tradition of the apostles has ever been preserved by those on every side”.

Now that we have seen something of the manner in which, during apostolic and subapostolic times, the Church of Rome stands out among the other churches, we must proceed more summarily with the rest of the preConstantinian period, as this is not the place for elaborate details on such a wide subject. If throughout the epoch in question the Church of Rome is ever receiving marks of veneration from members of the Church universal, it is especially against “the peremptory edicts” of its “bishop of bishops” that her enemies point the finger of scorn. As St. Paul went up to Jerusalem “to see Peter”, the most distinguished men in the Church went, like Origen, to Rome simply “to see this most ancient church”. Heretics, too, fluttered round it like moths round a candle, only to share their fate. When other great churches differed from it, we find its pontiffs ordering their bishops to meet together in council, and threatening to cut them off “from the common unity”, if they continued to remain at variance with them. They called upon bishops even of the most important Sees to explain any doctrinal position which they had taken up, and which did not seem to them sound. Finally, owing to their care for all the churches, and because they were “presidents of the great Christian congregation of love”, they sent “contributions to many churches in every city”.

The pre-eminent position of the bishop of Rome was seen and acknowledged also by the civil authorities. The churches of the East were very much scandalized by the loose morals and equally loose doctrine of Paul of Samosata, then bishop of Antioch. He was at length condemned and deposed by numerous councils. Particulars of its proceedings were “by common consent addressed to Dionysius, bishop of Rome, and to Maximus of Alexandria”, and sent to all the provinces. Paul, however, would not submit, but kept forcible possession of the temporalities of his See. The case was brought before the emperor Aurelian, who, says Eusebius, gave a most fair decision, ordering the church buildings to be given to those “to whom the Christian bishops of Italy and of Rome should write, i.e. should send their communicatory letters”.

Before a word is said on the position of the popes between the reign of Constantine and the days of St. Gregory I, with whose pontificate this work commences, it must be noted that though Rome was then indeed the capital of the world, the principalitas assigned to its bishops is never based during the earliest period of the Church’s life on anything but their descent from St. Peter. If the place of Pope Fabian was vacant, it was “the place of Peter” that was empty.

If to the man whose clear sight enables him to penetrate the mists of remote antiquity ever so little, the principality of the bishops of Rome from the earliest ages is obvious, their commanding position after that date can scarcely escape the notice even of the man of dullest vision.

As before, true doctrine is considered to be that which is in accord with the Roman tradition. Communion with them is made the touchstone of orthodoxy, the avenue of approach to Our Saviour. Their power, said to be “derived from the authority of Holy Scripture”, is acknowledged as well by councils, ecumenical and particular, as by individuals. If synods recognized hat appeals could be carried to them, they themselves proclaimed, five hundred years before the False Decretals were heard of, that from them there was no appeal, and that, being judged by none, they were to judge the whole Church. Did they restore Greek bishops to the Sees from which they had been expelled, Greek historians proclaimed that it was in virtue “of the prerogatives of the Roman Church”. We find that ecumenical councils were only summoned with their concurrence, that they presided over them by their legates, and were called upon by them to confirm their decrees. Finally the pre-eminence of the Roman Pontiff is set forth most unmistakably in both the civil and in the canon law, or in that combination of both known as the Nomocanon, of the Greeks.

Of course it was to have been expected that when freedom from persecution allowed of free and open intercourse between the churches, and when the headquarters of the bishops of Rome were transferred from the catacomb of S. Priscilla to the Lateran palace, we should have had much more abundant evidence of the general acknowledgment of the primacy of the popes. And it was also to have been anticipated that with the passing of time the intervention of the Head of the Church in its affairs would be more frequent and more striking, as in the human body the action of the mind becomes more pronounced with its growth. But if the headship of the popes is seen in clearer light in the days that followed Constantine than in those which preceded them, his authority was not so uncontested. In the earlier period he had not to contend against imperial patriarchs at once heretical and ambitious. Still, though either in matters of faith or judicial jurisdiction, their authority had been braved for a time by different patriarchs of Constantinople up to the period of which we are now treating, the Greek Church had always in the end come into agreement with them. And when S. Ignatius was dethroned by Photius there was absolute unity between the two churches. We will now proceed to examine in detail how the assaults of his predecessors against it enabled Photius to effect an irreparable breach in it.

Rise of the bishop of Constantinople. Nectarius.

At first, as we have already said, the bishops of Constantinople were subject to the jurisdiction of the exarch of Heraclea. For, though to preserve external unity the greater ecclesiastics had to be recognized by the bishops of Rome, they had jurisdiction over the bishops of their respective provinces. But the ambition of the bishops of New Rome, as their episcopal city was called, did not suffer this subjection long. In 381, Nectarius, the successor of St. Gregory Nazianzen, induced the fathers of the first general council of Constantinople to decree that “the bishop of Constantinople holds the primacy of honor after the bishop of Rome, because it is the new Rome”. The ground on which this new honor was bestowed on Nectarius was more reprehensible than the granting of the honor itself, as far as the real, if not the nominal, prejudice of the rights of others was concerned. By the canon preceding the one just cited, the rights of jurisdiction belonging to the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, and to the three exarchs of Ephesus, Caesarea in Cappadocia, and Heraclea were confirmed in accordance with the decrees of Nice. But as a matter of fact, however, as we gather from Socrates, the bishops of Constantinople from this time forth exercised the jurisdiction that previously belonged to Heraclea; and, by judiciously stretching the third canon above mentioned, began to interfere in matters of ecclesiastical government throughout the entire East. The third canon was, however, not confirmed by the Holy See. Pope Leo I wrote to Anatolius (449-458) to the effect that this canon was null from the very beginning, as it had never been communicated to the Holy See, and that the use to which there was a wish to put it was both late in the day and to no purpose.

But the patriarchs of Constantinople pushed on their usurpations. Atticus (406-425), the second successor of St. John Chrysostom, turned to the civil power, and obtained two decrees in his favor from Theodosius, the younger. By the one, no bishop was for the future to be elected throughout the three exarchates without the consent of the synod of Constantinople. By the other, no affair in Illyricum was to be concluded without first informing the bishop of the city of Constantinople, which city boasts the privileges of old Rome. Still there is the same secular motive. But this time the usurpation of authority is in a province directly subject to Rome, through the vicariate of Thessalonica. The latter of these laws was indeed revoked, but not so the ambition of the bishops of the imperial city.

Anatolius contrived to get various canons passed in favor of his See at the general council of Chalcedon (451). Canons nine and seventeen permitted of appeals to the See of Constantinople from the exarchates; and canon twenty-eight, which was drawn up clandestinely and only received the signatures of under a third of the bishops, set forth that they confirmed the third canon of Constantinople and took the same view “of the privileges of the most holy Church of Constantinople, the new Rome”. For to the throne of old Rome, on account of its being the reigning city, the fathers naturally gave the privileges of honor; and, acting from the same motive, the 150 fathers (of the council of Constantinople) have assigned equal privileges to the most holy throne of new Rome, rightly deciding that the city, which was honored with the residence of the emperor and the senate, should enjoy equal privileges with the older imperial Rome, and in ecclesiastical affairs be exalted like her, and after her hold the second place”. Hence the metropolitans of the exarchates and bishops among the barbarians were to be consecrated by “the archbishop of Constantinople”, as he is now called. These three canons, combined with the third canon of Constantinople, or with the interpretation put upon it by the ambition of the bishops of the imperial city, would have had the effect of giving patriarchal rights to the “archbishop of Constantinople”, and of placing him above the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria, and all because of the civil position of his See. In their synodical letter to Pope Leo I, the bishops of the council make known to him what they have done with regard to the bishop of Constantinople, “not so much for the sake of granting a privilege to the See of Constantinople as to provide for the due tranquility of the metropolitan cities”; and beg the Pope to confirm what they have decided. But by letters to the bishops of the council, to Anatolius himself, and to the emperor, Leo made it perfectly plain that such a confirmation he would not give. On the contrary, he annulled what the bishops had agreed upon “contrary to the rules of the holy canons drawn up at Nicaea”, and “by the authority of the Blessed Apostle Peter, by a general definition, made it utterly void”. In his letter to Anatolius, he upbraids him for using to further his own ambition a council called to settle matters of faith; and declares that what he desires will never receive his consent. And writing to the emperor Marcian he says that Anatolius ought to be content with the bishopric of Constantinople which he has obtained by the favor of the emperor and the assent of the Pope. Although Anatolius in his reply to the Pope submitted to his decision, threw all the blame of the matter on the fathers of the council, and acknowledged that the canon had no force except from the confirmation of the Pope, his successors did not cease to strive for the prize that was so nearly in their grasp.

Pope Felix III found it necessary to depose Acacius (471-489) for his ambitious interference with the patriarchal rights of Antioch. Acacius in turn, trusting of course to the secular arm, excommunicated the Pope, and thus effected a schism. Although several of the successors of Acacius tried to induce the popes to confirm their election, as they would not efface the name of the schismatic Acacius from the sacred diptychs, they did not obtain their request, and as many as five of the successors of Acacius died out of communion with the See of Rome. The schism was healed in 519, in the reign of Pope Hormisdas, and yet the emperor Justinian (527-565) in his new code of laws reaffirmed the high place of the See of Constantinople.

Then John the Faster (582-595) essayed at least indirectly a higher flight. He arrogated to himself the title “ecumenical patriarch”, and, despite the remonstrances of Pelagius II and Gregory I, who wrote to point out to him that to take such a title was tantamount to calling himself the only bishop, he and his successors held to the title. Tending in the same direction, viz., in that of making the bishop of Constantinople no longer the second but the first in the Church, was the thirty-sixth canon which was decreed by the Greek bishops in the Council of Trullo (692), which, while professing to renew the third canon of Constantinople and the twenty-eighth of Chalcedon, declared that the See of Constantinople should enjoy the same privileges as that of old Rome, and that it should be as great in ecclesiastical affairs, holding the second rank after it.

The outline just sketched of the respective positions of Rome and Constantinople is in the main endorsed by the conclusions of the latest English non-Catholic writer on the affairs of the Eastern Roman Empire, viz., Mr. Bury. Speaking of a period much anterior to that of Nicholas I, he writes: “The bishop of Rome, as the successor of St. Peter, was the head of the Church, and the weakness of the empire in the West increased his power and confirmed his independence ... But the geographical distance from Constantinople had also another effect; it contributed to rendering the patriarch of Constantinople and the Eastern churches independent of Rome. The oriental and occidental churches had a tendency to separate along with the political systems to which they belonged, and consistent with this tendency was the desire of the patriarch of Constantinople, which in the fifth century became the most important city in the world, to free himself from the jurisdiction of Rome. In order to do so he naturally leaned upon the power of the emperor. The result was that in the West the ecclesiastical hierarchy was independent in spiritual matters, and afterwards attained secular power, but in the East the Church and the Imperium were closely allied, the Church being dependent on the emperor”.

The long series of ambitious efforts for pride of place on the part of his predecessors had well paved the way for the schism of Photius, which was the beginning of the end of the union between the Greeks and the Latins, between the East and the West. But it was reserved for his craft to give point to the growing divergence between the East and West by inventing a doctrinal basis for that divergence.

Photius.

We must now, therefore, unfold the history of his relations with the Holy See, which, if we include the affair of Gregory Asbestas, with which the story of Photius is intimately bound up, embraced a period of thirty-four years, and involved nine popes, beginning with Leo IV and ending with Formosus, and five councils.

On the death of the emperor Theophilus, as his son Michael was a minor, the government of the empire was placed in the hands of a council of regency, of which the empress-mother Theodora was the head. To assist her were appointed three of the most important men in the State. Of these the first in intelligence, in enterprise, and in crime was the patrician Bardas, the emperor’s uncle and the brother of Theedora. Their secretary was Photius, himself connected with the imperial family by the marriage of one of his uncles with a sister of Theodora. The lust of Bardas was the immediate cause not only of the downfall of the council of regency, but of that of Ignatius, and of the union between the East and West. To the great scandal of all, he repudiated his lawful wife to live with his daughter-in-law, who had been left a young widow. Despite the life of sin in which he was publicly known to be living, he had the effrontery to present himself to receive Holy Communion at the hands of the patriarch on the feast of the Epiphany 857. Ignatius, who had to no purpose of warned him to give up his evil courses, openly refused to give him the Body and Blood of Our Lord. Bardas resolved on revenge; but for that he had to make himself supreme. He had already acquired a paramount influence over the young Michael, who had very early manifested a strong inclination to every form of ignoble vice. By encouraging him in his vile habits of drink, of associating with stablemen, and of buffoonery, Bardas had made the weak and wicked youth his tool. He accordingly persuaded the young libertine of nineteen that he was now old enough to rule by himself, and advised him to order the patriarch to cut off the hair of Theodora and make her enter a convent. Naturally impatient of any control, the advice was eagerly acted upon by Michael. And as Ignatius firmly refused to be a party to this iniquity, he incurred, to the profound satisfaction of Bardas, the hatred of the emperor also. What Ignatius had refused to do was done by a baser soul, and Theodora was shut up in a convent (September 857). Next a charge of high treason was trumped up by Bardas against Ignatius, and the saint was banished to the Isle of Terebinth, the most wretched of the Princes’ Isles (November 23, 857). Bardas, who was now the real ruler of the empire (he was soon to take the title of Caesar), determined to replace Ignatius by one who would at once do his will and be a support to him. He resolved that Photius, who was anything but loath, should be patriarch. Every effort was at first made to induce Ignatius to resign. This, with the same inflexibility in right which he had shown before, he firmly refused to do. That device failing, Bardas, so it is said, by craftily offering in private the patriarchal See to each of the professed chief supporters of Ignatius, should they abandon him, suborned their fidelity to the saint. The choice of Photius was then made public, and in six days he was made from monk to patriarch (Christmas Day, 857), by Gregory Asbestas, to whose party both Bardas and Photius had attached themselves. All this Bardas accomplished in less than twelve months. Of the new would-be patriarch, Jager writes as follows : “Photius united in his person the most eminent gifts which nature has ever bestowed on one man, a high intelligence, great genius, vivacity of spirit, a wonderful energy, an incredible activity, an ardent passion for glory, a will at once as supple as gold and as inflexible as iron. He had a pronounced taste for letters, and in their study passed his nights; he was a skillful orator and an accomplished writer in prose and verse, sometimes rising to the level of the ancients. He was master of all the learning of his own and preceding ages, and was in it more than a match for any disputant. Though no stranger to ecclesiastical learning, he did not excel in it. To so many qualities was joined an illustrious birth. Although (at this time) young, he was not without experience, as he had for some time been Secretary of State, after having been on various embassies to foreign states. Add to these distinctions an agreeable exterior, a grave and modest deportment, a bright expression, manners easy and elegant, perfect politeness, in a word, all the external qualifications which attract and seduce by an inexpressible charm … What was wanting to so many eminent qualities? Christian humility ... He was the slave of an indomitable pride and a gnawing ambition”.

Such was Photius, who in virtue of his consecration by Gregory, and of the power of a tyrant, called himself patriarch of Constantinople. He at once renewed his ill-treatment of Ignatius in order to force him to resign; and, knowing that a generous soul is most hurt in the sufferings of his friends, the supporters of the saint were subjected to similar outrages. One cannot help thinking of a like device practiced by Henry II to break the spirit of St. Thomas of Canterbury. But not to no purpose had Ignatius received in his veins the blood of kings from both his father and mother. What is more, he had been brought up in that school wherein especially are trained men, the school of adversity. Ignatius could not be crushed by aught that Photius could do. And although the pseudo-patriarch made every effort to put his own friends in power wherever he could, there was so much opposition to him that, if any trust can be placed in his letters to Bardas, he was really distressed at the position he was in. But pride, and, possibly, the fear of Bardas, prevented him from taking the one step—viz., that of giving up his pretensions, which could alone have brought him peace of mind. The support which he could not win by violence at home, he next decided to try and gain by craft from abroad. He endeavored to procure the confirmation of his election from Rome.

Accordingly an important embassy, consisting of the protospatharius (captain of the guards), Arsaber and four bishops, was sent to Rome with great presents and with letters for the Pope from the emperor and Photius. The letter of Photius, besides presenting his profession of faith, gave an account of his elevation to the See of Constantinople. He did not blush therein to declare that he was overwhelmed to find himself burdened with an office which he had always regarded as too much for human shoulders to bear. For “when my predecessor left his charge”, (so euphemistically does he describe the expulsion of Ignatius), the bishops, and especially the emperor, whom he basely asserts to be unsurpassed in leniency by any who have ruled before him, forced him to take up the burden of the episcopacy. With the Pope, therefore, he is resolved to contract a firm alliance of faith and love. In conclusion, he makes the usual profession of faith, declares his acceptance of the seven general councils, and begs the Pope’s prayers that he may show himself a worthy bishop. The emperor’s letter, the contents of which have to be gleaned from the letters of Nicholas, allows that certain disorders followed on the resignation of Ignatius, and begs the Pope to send legates to Constantinople to put an end to them as well as to the remains of the iconoclast trouble.

But Nicholas was neither to be bought nor befooled; and “although up to this he was ignorant of the crafty ways of Photius, he keenly surmised almost the whole truth”. He assembled a council to discuss the matter, and it was decided that two legates, Rodoald, bishop of Porto, and Zachary, bishop of Anagni, should be sent to Constantinople. Nicholas gave them the strictest injunctions with regard to the affair of Ignatius. They had merely to inform themselves of the facts of the case, to report them to the Apostolic See, and meanwhile only to communicate with Photius as a layman. The legates were the bearers of two letters.

In a short one to Photius, Nicholas rejoices that his profession of faith shows him to be a Catholic, but cannot but regret his allowing himself, a layman, to be consecrated patriarch, and hence “cannot consent to his consecration” till the return of the legates. In a longer one to Michael (the letters of Nicholas are not unfrequently decidedly long), he points out that it is by the will of Christ, Our Lord, that the Church is founded on Peter, and while thanking Michael for his wish for peace, reminds him that the Fathers have taken notice “that no decision must be given on any new matter that arises without the consent of the Roman See and the Roman Pontiff”. Hence Ignatius ought not to have been deposed “without consultation with the Roman Pontiff”, still less ought a layman to have been elected patriarch, a proceeding condemned as well by the Council of Sardica as by the decrees of the popes. Until, therefore, his envoys have informed him of all that has been done, “he cannot give the consent of his apostleship” to the consecration of Photius. On the image question, he continues, there is no need for him to write much, as it has been settled, and there are at Constantinople the letters of Pope Hadrian. He concludes by exhorting the emperor, who, he is given to understand, is anxious for the proper ordering of all ecclesiastical affairs, to restore to the Holy See its patriarchal rights over the provinces of Illyricum and Sicily, and the patrimonies that belonged to it in Calabria and Sicily.

When the Pope’s legates reached Constantinople, and the authorities there found that the deposition of Ignatius was not approved by Rome, they determined to wring approval at least from Rome’s representatives. The legates were ill-treated, threatened, and imprisoned, with the view of forcing them to betray their trust. They resisted for months. At length, when they had been tried with gold as well as iron, they consented to become the tools of Photius. To imitate the first general council of Nice, 318 bishops were got together in council (May 861). They assembled in the Church of the Holy Apostles, situated in the center of the city by the imperial cemetery, and afterwards destroyed by Mohammed II, the Conqueror, to make room for the mosque which bears his name.

Michael, who attended the synod himself, with the Roman legates and the bishops on his right, and many of the senate on his left, opened it by saying that it was merely out of respect for the Roman Church and for the most holy Pope Nicholas in the persons of his legates that the case of the deposed Ignatius could be gone into again. After the whole assembly had declared its submission to the ruling of the papal legates, a sham trial of the defenseless patriarch was instituted. Because he would not abdicate, despite all the pressure that could be brought to bear upon him, he was declared deposed on the futile charge of having accepted his office from the civil power. The saint, however, persisted in appealing to the Apostolic See. “Such judges as you I do not recognize. Take me before the Pope, to his judgment I will gladly submit”. Those who were well disposed to the saint made the same appeal. No notice was, of course, taken of it. For form’s sake a discussion was held on the image question. The Pope’s letters, altered by Photius to suit his requirements, were next read, and twenty-seven canons of discipline were passed. Stripped of his pallium, Ignatius returned into the hands of his persecutors, and the legates to Rome to gloss over their doings to Nicholas as best they could, with the aid of letters from the emperor and Photius which were entrusted to the care of Leo, a secretary of state.

Like the whole of the affair of Photius, the acts of this synod illustrate very plainly the relation of the whole Greek Church to the See of Rome. The supreme authority of the papal legates is recognized both by Ignatius and his supporters and by the adherents of Photius. All acknowledged the right of appeal to Rome, and the consequent right of the Pope to try over again any cases whatsoever which might be brought before him. And if, at last, seeing how false they were to their trust, the holy patriarch would not recognize the papal legates, it was because they had not been sent “by the great judge, the Pope of Rome” (a magno judice P. Rom.), i.e., because they were not acting as his faithful missi.

The emperor’s letter informs the Pope of the council held at Constantinople, and of the deposition of Ignatius by virtue of its decree and the consent of the papal legates. The Pope’s assent to the council is asked, and the elevation of Photius defended by an appeal to precedent in the cases of S. Ambrose, etc. The letter of Photius, necessarily long, as its object was to mislead the Pope, is a masterpiece of sophistical reasoning and special pleading, and well worthy of the study of a barrister. The writer begins by saying that he quite understands that the first letter which the Pope wrote to him was the outcome of his zeal for what he supposed to be the right. But it must not be forgotten that the writer could not help his promotion, and that he certainly did not desire it. On the one hand, his happiness in his former life, upon which he enlarges at some length, was great; and on the other, he was thoroughly alive to the difficult character of the motley population of the imperial city, and how hard it would be to teach it the lessons of virtue. Still he hopes for the Pope’s justice. He had not violated the canons by his promotion, as they had not then been received by the Church of Constantinople. He does not, however, say all this to keep the See he never wanted. But he cannot approve of its being held by one (Ignatius) who had taken possession of it improperly, nor yet endure without a word being driven from a post even more harshly than he had been driven into it! Then, to defend his own elevation to the See, he very cleverly undertakes the defence of other laymen, like Nicephorus and Tarasius, who had, with great advantage to the Church, been made patriarchs of Constantinople. However, “to show obedience in all things to your paternal charity” ... and “because children must obey their parents in what is right and holy”, he has consented to the passing of a canon (can. 17) forbidding any layman or monk to be consecrated bishop without having passed through all the lower grades of the ecclesiastical order. He would have established all the rules laid down by the Pope had it not been for the resistance of the emperor. After highly praising the Pope’s legates, he concludes by begging Nicholas, “who holds the primacy”, mindful of the canons, not to receive those who come to Rome from Constantinople without letters of recommendation. This request was, of course, made by Photius in the hope of keeping Nicholas from finding out the truth in his regard.

On the return of his legates to Rome (862), Nicholas had no difficulty in finding out, as well from their words legates as from the acts of the council held by Photius, and the letters of the emperor and the pseudo-patriarch, that his envoys had gone beyond their powers. In a council of the Roman clergy, in presence of the imperial ambassador, Nicholas blamed his legates for their conduct, and declared that he did not consent either to the deposition of Ignatius or to the promotion of Photius.

In the spring (862) the envoy Leo returned to Constantinople with a letter for the emperor and one for Photius, both to the same effect. Nicholas plainly informs Michael that, “because, without the decision of our apostleship you have retained Photius and have expelled that most prudent man, the patriarch Ignatius, we wish you plainly to understand that we do not at all accept Photius nor condemn the patriarch Ignatius”. Nor does he fail to remind the emperor that what he now says against Ignatius is very different to what he was wont to say in his praise during the course of well-nigh twelve years after his election. The emperor’s conduct in the affair “is more than we can bear with equanimity, especially as we had ordered that the dispute between the two should be investigated and reported to us, but not decided”. That decision the Pope will not give “till the truth is made clear in our presence”.

Nicholas begins his letter to Photius, whom he simply addresses as “a most prudent man”, by establishing the authority of his See over the whole Church. “In the Church, Blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and janitor of the kingdom of heaven, merited to have the primacy, as is known to all the faithful, and has been briefly shown above (by the words of Our Lord : Thou art Peter,' etc.). After him, his vicars, sincere servers of God, free from the mists which are wont to cause men to wander from the right path, have received the same privilege, and have steadily persevered in the government of the Lord’s sheep which has been entrusted to them”. Over this Roman Church, from which “all the faithful seek the integrity of the faith”, he has been placed. Hence what he decides “with full authority” must be observed, and Photius has done wrong in taking the patriarchal dignity, inasmuch as he is a layman, and Ignatius still lives. Nicholas then shows that there were special circumstances connected with the uncanonical elevation of S. Ambrose and the others to whom Photius had appealed. With regard to the assertion of Photius that the Church of Constantinople had not recognized the Council of Sardica nor received the decretals, Nicholas flatly declares that “he can scarcely believe it”. “The Council of Sardica”, he says, “was held in your parts, and has been received by the whole Church. Why, then, should the Church of Constantinople reject it? Moreover, how is it that you have not received the decretals of the Roman Church “by the authority of which all councils receive their weight”—except that they contradict your ordination? If you have them not, you are careless; if you have them, and do not observe them, you are blameworthy. Until the fault of Ignatius is made evident to us, we can neither regard him as deposed, nor you as even in the sacerdotal order”.

Not content with these plain declarations of his views on the subject of the existing phase of the affair of Ignatius, he explained them to those “who govern the Catholic churches of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and to all the Eastern metropolitans and bishops”; and “by apostolic authority” he ordered them to take up the same attitude towards the respective rights of Ignatius and Photius as he did, and to make known his letter throughout all their dioceses.

Up to this Nicholas was quite ignorant both of the extent of the guilt of his legates and of the vile treatment which had from the first been meted out to Ignatius. He was soon to learn of both.

After his condemnation by the Council of Photius, Ignatius was exposed to even more shameful treatment than he had experienced before it, in order to make him sign his abdication. But neither chains, blows, nor tortures of any kind could wring the desired deed of renunciation from him. Having obtained a little respite, he at once drew up an appeal to the Pope, an appeal which was signed by ten metropolitans, fifteen bishops, and a large number of the clergy. It was addressed “to our most holy lord and blessed president, the patriarch of all the Sees, the successor of the apostles, the ecumenical Pope Nicholas”, and to the Roman Church. In it Ignatius sets forth his case, such as we have seen it, and in conclusion adds : “Do you, most holy lord, show pity to me, and with the great apostle say, Who is weak, and I am not weak? (2 Cor. xi. 29). Think of thy predecessors Fabian, Julius, Innocent, Leo, and all of those who nobly struggled for the faith and truth. Emulate them and avenge me, who have suffered such unworthy treatment”. This document the monk Theognostus managed in disguise to carry to the Pope. He reached Rome probably towards the close of the year 862.

Now in possession of the full truth, Nicholas was indignant indeed, and he resolved to make his indignation felt. A numerous council was promptly convoked. It met first in the Church of St. Peter, and then, on account of the weather, in that of the Lateran. The legate Zachary was at once tried for his conduct at Constantinople. When convicted he was deprived of his bishopric and excommunicated. Rodoald, who was then absent on duty as legate in the affair of the divorce of King Lothaire, and who proved as faithless in that charge as in his former, was recalled at the close of this year, and then shared the same well-deserved fate as his colleague. Photius was declared deprived of all sacerdotal rights, and threatened with perpetual excommunication if he attempted to exercise them or to interfere with the rights of Ignatius. The same sentence was decreed against Gregory of Syracuse, and those ordained by Photius were interdicted from performing any clerical duties. Ignatius, on the other hand, and his friends who had suffered with him, were reinstated in the honors of which they had been unjustly deprived. Any cleric or layman, of whatever rank (quisquis est), who may venture to interfere with the carrying out of the Pope’s decrees is threatened with deposition or excommunication.

To mitigate the effects of the previous council of the Pope, Photius had had recourse to forgery. But he gained nothing by it. The favorable letter which professed to have been written by Nicholas to him was proved to be supposititious. This discovery did not naturally improve the light in which he was regarded by those who had any concern for virtue and honor. And when word reached Constantinople of his formal condemnation by the Pope and his council of 863, and it was seen that he took no heed of the condemnation, people broke off communion with him “in crowds, being struck with horror that he would not take correction even from so great a See”. Photius, however, was not the man to sit quiet while his cause was being attacked. Resistance, he endeavored to overcome by force; support, to purchase by any means. “No profession, age, or sex was left unpunished by him, if it was not in communion with him”. To catch the good-will of the learned, he conducted a school in his palace, and spared neither his money nor his talents to gain partisans. With the same end, he scattered broadcast the most delicate attentions which his naturally most charming address enabled him to pay so attractively. No man ever understood better than Photius that “every man has his price”. He even pandered to the lower orders, and induced curriers, needle-makers, and the like, to sign various documents suitable for his purposes—documents which were collected and burnt at the eighth General Council. But especially did he strive to gain over the monks, who, headed by the Studites, had been the great allies of the popes in the iconoclast troubles, and now almost to a man opposed him resolutely. He had already affected a great zeal for their reform, and had passed various canons affecting them in his council of 861. But they were so framed that they could be made to serve his own ends. When they could not, he did not scruple to contravene his own handiwork.

Though, as we shall see, his herculean labors finally availed him nothing, they bore a lasting bad fruit. He had sowed so many seeds of distrust of Rome that a thousand years has not sufficed to uproot them.

Affairs of the West and the East

All this while Nicholas was harassed in the West as well as in the East. Hincmar of Rheims was showing himself anything but docile with regard to the appeal of Rothad of Soissons against him, and Lothaire of Lorraine was struggling to divorce his lawful wife, and was being supported in his struggle by the powerful archbishops of Trier and Cologne. The two latter, viz., Gunther and Theutgard, in their violent opposition to the Pope, endeavored to make matters unbearable for him by trying to bring about an understanding with Photius. He, however, when he received this invitation, was either not ready to act, or had not made up his mind to try all extremities. Probably the former alternative contains the true explanation of the lull in the course of his violent actions.

Convinced at length that he could not bend to his will either Nicholas or Ignatius, and that the time had come, Photius decided to break away definitely from both. By making the fullest use of his personal influence and his power at court, he had rendered the number of his creatures in places of position and trust very considerable. He made a “beginning of the end” by writing, through the emperor Michael, a letter (865) to the Pope full of abuse.

The very lengthy reply of Nicholas to this letter, now lost, will give a sufficiently clear idea of its contents. When the letter arrived, the Pope was very ill, but by a great effort he contrived to pen an answer for the imperial envoy to take back to his master, an answer which has remained an invaluable source of Canon Law, which historians of all countries have praised for its dignity and prudence, and which some regard as the grandest and most elevated document which has been written up to this day on the privileges of the Church.

As the letter purported to come from the emperor, to him Nicholas addressed his reply, though he declares more than once that he does not believe that Michael is the author of it. To the personal abuse of himself, with which the emperor’s letter began, Nicholas commences his reply by asserting that he will only oppose prayers that Our Lord will teach him what is in accordance with truth and increase his power. He reminds the emperor that as Christ Our Lord commanded the Jews to harken to the scribes because they sat in the chair of Moses, he ought still more to give heed to him as he was sitting in the chair of Peter, and ought not to consider the person of the Pope, but his doctrine.

“But as to what you have written which tends to the injury (not of me but) of the Roman Church, to the diminution of its privileges and to the lowering of its bishops, that we shall rebut with all our power, and, undeterred by any threats or calumnies, that we shall strive to our very utmost to refute as opposed to truth”.

In answer to the claim that the emperor made, that he had done great honor to the Pope in writing to him,—a thing which his predecessors had not condescended to do since the sixth General Council—Nicholas pointed out that that was the emperor’s loss. They had been in the midst of heresy, and had not come to the Apostolic See for the remedy against it. They had not written to Rome, because for the most part they had been heretics. However, as a matter of fact, those who were not heretics, such as Constantine and Irene, had sought the help of the popes. Unlike your predecessors, Honorius, Valentinian, Marcian, Justinian, Constantine, and Irene, who were content to ask and petition the Roman See, you must give it your orders, “as though you were the heir not of their clemency and respect, but merely of their imperial power”.

That the emperor should abuse the Latin language was certainly extraordinary, seeing that he called himself “emperor of the Romans”, whose language was Latin.

Nicholas again declares at length that Ignatius has been wrongly condemned, and in a way utterly opposed to the canons, and even to the civil laws of Justinian, and warns the emperor not to attack the privileges of the Holy See over all the other churches, lest they should fall upon him. “These privileges, by the words of Christ, founded on Blessed Peter, ever reverenced in the Church, cannot be lessened or changed; for human efforts cannot move the foundation which God has laid ... The privileges of this See existed before your empire, they will remain after you, and they will remain inviolate as long as Christianity shall be preached. These privileges were given to this Holy See by Christ, not by councils; by councils they have only been proclaimed and reverenced ... Neither the Council of Nice nor any other council conferred any privileges on the Roman Church, which knew that in Peter it had merited to the full the rights of complete power, had received the government of all the sheep of Christ. This is what the blessed bishop Boniface (I) attests when writing to all the bishops of Thessaly: The universal institution of the new-born church had its source in the honor accorded to Blessed Peter, who received its direction and the sovereign power”.

He could not think of yielding up to the emperor those who had fled to Rome from the East. Even barbarians would not be so false to the laws of hospitality. Besides, he has the right to summon to Rome “not only monks, but any cleric whatsoever from any diocese”, whenever there was any need for the good of the Church. Moreover, they have not told him anything which he did not know from “countless persons” who have come to Rome from Alexandria, Jerusalem, Constantinople and its neighborhood, from Mount Olympus and other parts, and, indeed, from the emperor’s own envoys and letters.

Instead of threatening Christians with the might of his arms, he should rather turn them against the Saracens for the recovery of Sicily and the other provinces they had seized.

However, to prevent things going from bad to worse, he will consent—“by an indulgence and not as furnishing a precedent for the future”—that the cause of Ignatius and Photius should be re-opened at Rome. They were to come to Rome in person or by their deputies. Those who were to represent Ignatius were specially mentioned by the Pope, that he might be sure of having his case fully and truthfully stated. He wishes the authentic acts of the proceedings against Ignatius to be sent to him. What has moved him against the party of Gregory of Syracuse is no personal enmity, but “zeal for God’s house and for the traditions of our ancestors, ecclesiastical order, ancient custom, and our solicitude for all the churches of God, as well as the privileges of our See, winch, received by Blessed Peter from God, and handed on to the Roman Church, are acknowledged and venerated by the Universal Church”. He would have Michael remember how execrated is the memory of Nero, of Diocletian, and the other persecutors of the Church, and how glorious the honor in which are held Constantine the Great, Theodosius the Great, and the others. “Remember”, he continues, “how the latter respected the Apostolic See, the privileges they bestowed upon it, and the gifts with which they enriched it. Remember how they issued decrees that its faith had to be followed. But while they assembled councils, they did not dictate to them”.

In conclusion he exhorts the emperor not to interfere in ecclesiastical concerns. For “every earthly ruler must keep himself as free from interfering in sacred matters as every soldier of Christ from temporal business ... For as Theodosius the Younger wrote to the Fathers of the Council of Ephesus ... It is not right for one who is not a bishop to meddle in ecclesiastical affairs”. It was for the emperor to learn from the Pope the way of salvation; for the Pope to receive support from the emperor. Whoever tampers in any way with the Pope’s letter is excommunicated.

Though this weighty appeal produced no effect, it might have been supposed that the death of Bardas (April 29, 866), who was slain by the orders of Michael, now suspicious of his former favorite, would have made the course of the Pope’s policy towards Photius easier. It, however, had no such effect. Michael associated with himself in the empire (May 26, 866) Basil the Macedonian, who had formerly been his groom. The new Cesar was anointed by Photius (Pentecost, 866).

Finding that the letter, the contents of which have just been cited, produced no effect, Nicholas made another effort, in the course of the same year, to put an end to the sorry state of affairs in the Church of Constantinople. Legates, whom he had received from the Bulgarians on the subject of the conversion of their people to Christianity (of which we shall treat later), were returning to their own country. To them Nicholas joined envoys of his own, whom he furnished with no less than nine letters for different personages in the East, and all dated November 13, 866. In the letter to the emperor, Nicholas repeats the history of Photius’ affair, showing in detail how his first letter to Michael had been falsified. “You say, O Emperor, that even without our consent Photius will keep his church, and will remain in communion with the Church, and that, on the other hand, Ignatius will not be in the least benefited by us ... But we believe that a member which cleaves to parts that adhere not to the head, will not long remain in sound condition”. And, full of faith, he goes on to say that he thinks nothing of delay that may take place in the fulfilling of the punishments decreed by the Apostolic See. “It is his indeed to run (Rom. ix. 16), but it rests with God when it shall please Him to bring matters to an issue ... Those who have been once struck by the prelates of the Apostolic See, are to this very day so bound by their sentence that while, in many instances, the darts of judgment launched against them have not immediately wounded such of them as have been shielded by princes, they have in others, however, penetrated to the marrow of the bone, and have rendered some hateful to all, even after death”. Instead of quoting the examples which Nicholas brings forward to exemplify the truth of his assertions, we will content ourselves with noting—what Nicholas himself did not live to see—that Ignatius died in possession of his See, and that, on the contrary, Photius died in exile, and Michael himself was murdered by Basil the Macedonian. He begs the emperor to reinstate Ignatius, and to cause the opprobrious letter he wrote to him the year before to be burnt. Otherwise it and the other similar letters will have to be burnt in presence of a synod of all the Western provinces, an extremity to which Nicholas trusts the emperor will not drive him. In conclusion he is exhorted by all that is sacred, by the terrors of the last judgment; to do what is right by taking the proper steps for restoring Ignatius to his See.

In the other letters Photius is threatened with excommunication to the hour of his death; Ignatius and Theodora are consoled; Bardas (of whose death the Pope was ignorant), Eudoxia, and the senators of Constantinople, exhorted to take the part of Ignatius, and the clergy of Constantinople and all “the patriarchs, metropolitans and other bishops, along with all the faithful throughout Asia and Libya, who with us defend the true doctrine”, are fully informed of all that has been done in the affair of Photius.

But when the papal legates, to whom these letters had been entrusted, reached the frontiers of the empire on the side of Bulgaria, they were met by an imperial official who insisted upon their signing a declaration of faith in which many so-called errors of the Latins were set forth. On their refusing to comply, they were not only not allowed to proceed towards Constantinople, but were driven away with taunts and insults, the emperor himself even going so far as to declare that, if they had not come through Bulgaria, they should never, as long as they lived, have seen either him or Rome.

Furious because the Bulgarians had turned away from him and the Greeks, and had sent to Pope Nicholas for further instruction in the truths of Christianity, Photius sent a letter to the Bulgarian king full of charges, most of them trivial, against the Latins. This letter the king gave to the papal envoys, and with it they returned to Rome. The pseudo-patriarch did not stop there. He raised the standard of rebellion against the supremacy of the Pope. He would confine the papal authority to the West, and himself be Pope in the East. He opened the campaign by an encyclical letter which he sent to the Oriental bishops, and in which he denounced the errors of the Latins and their usurpations in Bulgaria. The letter begins : “Photius, by the mercy of God, archbishop of Constantinople, the New Rome, and ecumenical patriarch”. After telling of the conversion of the Bulgarians, he says that his joy thereat is turned into tears. “Wild beasts have come from the West and ravaged the Lord’s vineyard in Bulgaria, teaching their errors therein. They have taught the Bulgarians to fast on Saturdays, and to drink milk and eat cheese, etc., during the first week of Lent, which holy season they thus abridge. They profess to look down on married priests, and have even reconfirmed those who have been anointed with the chrism by our priests, on the plea that to confirm belonged to bishops. What is worse, they have perverted the Creed, have added to it the words Filioque, and thus introduced two principles or causes into the Trinity. Instead of saying that the Holy Spirit comes from the Father alone, they make out that the Father is the cause of the Son and the Spirit, and that the cause of the Spirit is the Son”. In conclusion, he informs the Oriental bishops that a letter (that of Gunther), full of complaints against Nicholas, has reached him from the West. He sends them a copy of this letter, and calls on them to meet in synod to legislate on what he has laid before them.

Mock synod of Constantinople

In August 867 Photius held a synod in the presence of the emperor Michael, and excommunicated Nicholas. The acts of this synod, the signatures to it especially, were so falsified by Photius, that some moderns, e.g. Jager, think that no synod was held at all. However, a synod of a sort does really seem to have been held; but, according to Anastasius, out of the thousand signatures affixed to its acts, only twenty-one were genuine, as most of the assembly protested that it was not right for anyone to pass sentence on the supreme pontiff, much less for an inferior. Under Pope Hadrian II, the envoy of the emperor Basil declared at Rome that the signature of Michael had been obtained when he was drunk, and that the great mass of the subscriptions were forgeries.

To effect his further ends, Photius caused Louis II and his wife Ingelberga to be acclaimed with the imperial title—whereas but seldom was this title ever conceded in the East to the Western emperors. The acts of his synod were then sent to them; and by flattery and rich presents he endeavored to induce Ingelberga to move her husband to drive Nicholas from Rome.

But the envoys of Photius never reached Italy. For the time their master’s power for evil was over. The emperor Basil, seeing “that it is my life or yours”, caused Michael to be murdered (September 24, 867), sent Photius into exile, and recalled his envoys. Ignatius was reinstated (November 26), and word of these events at once sent to Rome. And though Nicholas, to whom much of this news must have been most welcome, had died (November 13, 867) before the emperor’s messenger reached him, he seems before his end to have become acquainted with some of it by more or less well-founded reports.

He had not, however, been inactive after the receipt of the letter which Photius had sent to the Bulgarians. He resolved that the voice of the West should make itself heard in proclaiming the true doctrine of the Church, especially on the “Procession of the Holy Ghost”. Accordingly he wrote (October 23, 867) a long letter, setting forth the conduct of Photius, to Hincmar, with whom he had had many a passage of arms, but whom he could not fail to admire for his energy, courage, and learning. He points out that in their attack against the stainless Roman Church, the Greeks are attacking the whole West, and, after enumerating the charges brought by Photius against “that part where the Latin tongue is used”, he exhorts Hincmar and the other metropolitans to call together their suffragans, to deliberate over the best answer to be made against the detractions of the Greeks, and to let him know the result of their deliberations at once. “There is nothing so much feared by our enemies, whether visible or invisible, as concord ... Let us march against our common foes like an army in battle array”. “The animus of the Greek rulers and their satellites”, he continues, “may be seen in this, that what they allege against us is either false, or has been acknowledged to be our right, not only by the West, but even by the great doctors of the Church who once flourished among them (the Greeks)”. He asks them to consider whether these attacks on the Roman Church are to be tolerated. “Never has there been any Church, let alone that of Constantinople, which was instituted long after (the other great Sees), the teaching or authority of which the Roman Church has ever followed. On the contrary, the Roman Church has rather instituted the other churches ... That we are sinners indeed we deny not, but that we have ever been stained with the slighest error, we cannot in the least allow; whereas they (the Greeks) are never free from schism or error”.

This dignified letter, which we could wish to have cited in its entirety, was written by Nicholas when he was “sick unto death”. But it produced its effect. Hincmar acted with his accustomed promptness, and works against the errors and calumnies of the Greeks came from the pens of Odo of Beauvais, Aeneas of Paris, and Ratram, a monk of Corbie.

Aeneas carried the war into the enemy’s country, and in the Preface to his work made a vigorous use of the argumentum ad hominem. After quoting numerous examples to prove his point, he urged : “It is a most lamentable truth that that very See which is now attempting to raise its head to the skies has, in place of bishops of the true faith, had heretical rulers stained with false doctrine. But by the guidance of God such a disgrace has never befallen the Roman See that an heresiarch should sit in the place which the Prince of the Apostles has adorned by his presence and consecrated by his blood, and to which with special care the Son of God has entrusted His sheep to be ruled. For to it was it said, Thou art Peter and upon this rock will I build my church, etc. (S. Matt. xvi. TS). Can He not strengthen the faith of the one to whom by His own authority He gave His kingdom?—the one whom, in saluting as a rock, He marked out as the foundation of His Church”.

In the body of his work he replies in detail to the objections raised by Photius against the Latins, which he stigmatizes justly for the most part, as trifling or altogether inane.

But the most important production on this matter was that of Ratram, who opens his treatise by expressing his disapproval of secular princes mixing themselves up in religious matters, asking them why they now object to what their predecessors have always respected, and reminding them that there are no new doctrines in the Church of Rome, but that its doctrine and discipline are those which have been handed down to it by the ancients, who had in turn received them from the apostles.

Here we may conveniently, for the present, part company with Photius, and turn our attention to that important affair in the West—the divorce of King Lothaire—out of which Photius endeavored to make capital for himself.

Lothaire’s divorce

In 856 Lothaire, king of Lorraine, married Theutberga, the daughter of Boso, count of Burgundy, and sister of that disorderly cleric Hubert, of whom we have already written. But the young licentious monarch soon wearied of her, and wished to marry Waldrada, with whom he had long had illicit intercourse. To cover his design with some show of love of justice, he called together, in 858 or 859, the bishops and nobles of his kingdom, and accused his wife of incest with her brother before her marriage. The queen indignantly denied the crime. Her champion went through the ordeal of boiling water with success, and she was declared innocent. Lothaire, however, now began to ill-treat the unfortunate woman. When her spirit had been sufficiently broken, and he had gained over to his views Gunther, archbishop of Cologne, Theutgard, archbishop of Trier, and others, two synods were held one after the other at Aix-la-Chapelle in the early months of 860, in which Theutberga was made to declare that her brother had violated her. She was condemned to a convent, and Lothaire told no longer to regard her as his wife. Theutberga, however, managed to escape to her brother, secured the interest of Charles the Bald, and appealed to the Pope.

Of the two archbishops here mentioned for the first time, Regino, who is followed by the so-called Annalista Saxe (ad. an. 864), asserts that Lothaire gained over Gunther, whom this author describes as wanting in stability of character, by promising to marry his niece, and that Gunther in turn won over Theutgard, who is set down as a simple and unlearned man, by perverting for him Scripture and Canon Law. We learn, however, still on the authority of Regino and the Annalista, that Gunther was deservedly punished. No sooner had Lothaire got his divorce sanctioned by him, that, as report went, he sent for the niece, but soon, after having dishonored her, drove her home with insult. But our Annalista did not write till the twelfth century, and Regino was not strictly a contemporary. Hence, considering the way that Gunther stood to the cause of Lothaire, he can scarcely have been so wantonly disgraced by his sovereign.

Meanwhile both Lothaire himself and his bishops wrote (an. 860–1) to Nicholas, saying that they were only waiting for a favorable opportunity to go to him, as they knew that when any important affair arose in the Church, recourse must be had to the Pope, and begging him not to give heed to any calumnious reports till their envoys should arrive in Rome.

To complete his schemes Lothaire assembled a third council at Aix-la-Chapelle in April 862. He declared before the bishops that in accordance with their decrees he had given up all intercourse with the incestuous Theutberga, but plainly told them that from long habit of indulgence he could not keep continent, but preferred legitimate to illegitimate gratifications. The upshot of the deliberations of the bishops on this appeal, as hypocritical in some parts as bluntly frank in others, was that the majority of them, after perverting Scripture and tradition, decided that Lothaire might marry again. He accordingly espoused Waldrada, December 25, 862.

He also had in the meantime sent to Rome to ask that legates might be sent to examine into the rights of his case, and to assure the Pope that his father, the emperor Lothaire, had originally given him Waldrada as his wife, but that he had afterwards been compelled to take Theutberga. For some little time Nicholas was unable to attend to the requests of Theutberga and Lothaire. But at length, in November (862), he dispatched two legates, Rodoald of Porto (the full extent of whose defection at Constantinople the Pope did not then know), and John of Ficolo, now Cervia, near Ravenna. To them he entrusted various letters to Lothaire, Charles the Bald, and others, ordering a synod to assemble at Metz, and that bishops from the kingdoms of Charles the Bald, Louis the German, and Charles of Provence should assist at it. In his letter to the bishops who were to take part in the council, Nicholas ordered them to send its acts to him, that he might approve or order them to be reconsidered, as the case might be.

Charles the Bald had already begun to exert himself to give effect to such letters of Nicholas as had before this been dispatched to Lothaire on the subject of the divorce. In the document presented (November 3, 862) to his brother Louis the German, at the assembly at Savonnière, Charles, whilst declaring that he is not acting from any motives of making political capital, that he seeks not Lothaire’s kingdom, but Lothaire himself, urges that the matter is of importance to all Christians, that kings who ought to set a good example to all must beware of giving a bad one, and that Lothaire must put an end to the scandal which is being spread through all Christendom. The Pope’s injunctions, “in no way opposed to the teaching of the Gospel or the authority of the apostles and the canons”, must be carried out. And Louis is reminded that “that holy and first See in all the world cries out to them and to all Christians, with such a one not so much as to eat”.

These efforts of Charles the Bald, if ever so well meant, came to nothing. Receiving countenance from Louis, the adulterous monarch felt himself in a position to despise the admonitions of his uncle Charles. Throughout the whole of this tedious affair, political motives entered largely into the support or opposition meted out to the king of Lorraine.

Partly through the intrigues of Lothaire and partly through an incursion of the Northmen, the holding of the synod ordered by the Pope was deferred. Then there came more letters from Nicholas, and the synod met at the place appointed (Metz) in June 863. But Lothaire had bought the legates, and by arrangement no bishops were present except those of the king’s own country. To such an assembly Lothaire’s wishes were law; his divorce was approved, and Gunther and Theutgard were commissioned, in deference to the orders of Nicholas, to convey the results of the deliberations of the synod to the Pope.

The iniquitous decision of the council was at once universally denounced, and word of it conveyed to Nicholas by pilgrims and by letters. Nicholas was, however, unwilling to credit mere report. Rodoald had the wit not to await the searching examination of Nicholas. He fled. Gunther and Theutgard, however, either trusting to their own acumen to deceive Nicholas, or relying on might rather than right, boldly faced the Pope and a Roman Council (October 863) in the Lateran palace.

Their acumen, at any rate, counted for nothing when Nicholas was in question. He laughed at it as at “a mousetrap set for the unwary”. As was his wont, he called together a synod. It was held in the Lateran palace. A little examination of the memoir of the council which they had brought with them was enough to convict them. The decision of the synod of Metz was annulled, the two archbishops deposed, and a like fate was decreed against the other bishops of the council unless they submitted at once to the decision of the Holy See. Of his decision Nicholas at once informed Lothaire, and asked him if he did not deserve to be punished also, inasmuch as, set to guide his people, he was leading them to ruin by his bad example.

But Gunther and his supporters had no intention of submitting to the spiritual authority of the Pope. They went to seek what seemed to them the more tangible might of the civil power. They turned to their king’s brother, the emperor Louis. They loudly proclaimed both in words and in writing that they had been unjustly deposed, they spread abroad all kinds of calumnies against the Pope, and they drew up a document, under seven heads, which evinced, at least to their own satisfaction, the justice of their cause on the one hand and the tyranny of the Pope on the other. This they sent to the bishops of their own country, to Photius, and even to the Pope himself; and, finally, by judiciously exalting the emperor’s pretensions, they secured his armed support. To Louis they urged that it was outrageous that proceedings should be taken against ambassadors of kings and emperors, and that metropolitans could not be condemned without the cognizance of their prince. In their manifesto, which Hincmar speaks of as “diabolical”, they spoke of “Nicholas, who is called the Pope ... and makes himself the emperor of the whole world”. They wanted the bishops of his kingdom to give every encouragement to their common lord, Lothaire. They pretended that they had come humbly to ask the Pope’s decision on what they had done, but that Nicholas, after keeping them long waiting, had “arbitrarily and tyrannically” condemned them. Nicholas and his sentence they alike despised.

With the two archbishops in his train, Louis advanced on Rome “to make the Pope restore them or pay the penalty”. Nicholas prepared for his coming by ordering fasts and prayers to beg the Almighty to move the emperor “to reverence the authority of the Apostolic See”. On the arrival of the emperor at Rome, violence became the “order” of the day.

According to Wido, a cleric of Osnabruck, who at the close of the eleventh century wrote a pamphlet against S. Gregory VII, Louis kept the Pope and his clergy besieged in St. Peter’s, and greatly oppressed by want of food and by cold for fifty-two days. As his authority for all this, Wido quotes a work De querimonia Romanorum, of which, unfortunately, nothing else is known. Confining ourselves, however, to the works of authors of whom something is known, we read that the emperor’s troops violently dispersed a procession that was making its way to St. Peter’s. In the tumult the magnificently adorned cross which contained the wood of the true cross, and which the empress Helen had sent to Rome, was broken and tossed into the mud. “Whence”, adds the archiepiscopal annalist Hincmar, “it was picked up and restored to its custodians by some men, who are said to have been English”.

The speedy death of the man who had broken the cross, however, and the fact of the emperor’s being seized with a fever, changed the aspect of affairs. Through the mediation of the empress, Louis and the Pope were reconciled. Louis withdrew his troops, who had inflicted 2he gravest injuries on men, women, and things, and ordered the degraded archbishops to return to their own country. The bishops of Lorraine, moreover, submitted to the sentence of the Pope, as did also Theutgard.

Gunther, however, took not the slightest notice of the Pope’s sentence, and did not hesitate to say Mass on Maundy Thursday. But, not choosing to have his cause utterly compromised by being connected with a deposed and rebellious archbishop, Lothaire himself abandoned Gunther, who, according to the annals, known as Xantenses, was excommunicated by all the bishops of the kingdom of Lothaire. Enraged at this treatment, Gunther, after seizing, to gratify his avarice, all that was left of the treasure of his Church, betook himself to Rome “to lay bare before the Pope all the deceits which had been practiced by Lothaire and himself in the affair of Theutberga”.

In the early part of the following year (865) Lothaire received a joint intimation from Louis the German and Charles the Bald, to the effect that before he went to Rome, as he constantly talked of doing, he was to put an end to the scandal he had caused in the Church. Fearing that the division of his kingdom was what Louis and Charles had chiefly in mind, Lothaire found it necessary to turn to Nicholas for protection. Thinking the moment favorable for bringing him to his duty, Nicholas wrote to stir up to action the bishops of his kingdom, and sent to him Arsenius, bishop of Horta. He commended his legate to the above-mentioned two kings, and assured them it was only that there might not be bloodshed that he had hitherto refrained from excommunicating Lothaire. At Gondreville, near Toul, on the Moselle, Arsenius met Lothaire and his bishops, and, in the Pope’s name, declared that, unless he took back Theutberga, he would be excommunicated.

Lothaire was now thoroughly alarmed. He and twelve of his nobles swore to recognized only Theutberga as queen. After she had been publicly accepted as his consort by Lothaire, Arsenius set out for Rome. On his return he passed through Bavaria to collect the money that was due to the Holy See from patrimonies situated therein, having in his custody, to take before the Pope, Lothaire’s mistress, Waldrada.

She, however, before they reached Rome, contrived to escape from the legate, and returned to where there might be easy communication between herself and her paramour. Indignant at this disgraceful relapse, Nicholas publicly excommunicated (February 2, 866) Waldrada, “and all her aiders and abettors”.

Meanwhile the unfortunate Theutberga had been subjected to the grossest indignities by her brutal husband, and at length, weary of the struggle, begged the Pope to annul her marriage, and let Lothaire have Waldrada as his legitimate wife. But Nicholas at once came to the poor woman’s support. He assured her by letter 2 (January 24, 867) that, from what he had heard from all sources of her cruel treatment, he knew she would write to him in that strain. She must understand one thing, however, that even if she dies, he will not, by the mercy of God who will judge adulterers, leave Lothaire wholly unpunished if he ever takes back Waldrada. He exhorts her to be brave, and not to fear, especially in the cause of truth, to meet death, which she must necessarily one day encounter. Still he does not think that Lothaire would dare to plot against her life. She has the Apostolic See on her side.

Nicholas did not stop with this letter. He wrote (January 25) to the bishops of Lothaire’s kingdom to urge them to do their duty boldly in the matter of the excommunicated Waldrada; and to Charles the Bald, that he could not believe that by the gift of a monastery he had been induced to side with Lothaire against Theutberga, and that he could not allow Theutberga’s case to be again brought forward and submitted to the trial “by single combat”. And he instructed Lothaire himself to avoid the excommunicated Waldrada lest he himself be also excommunicated. A little later (March 7) he wrote to Louis the German, to beg him to exhort Lothaire to bestow his love on Theutberga.

Lothaire replied (867) in his usual style. He professed the most unbounded respect for the authority of the Pope, and the most ardent wish to present himself before “his most beloved paternity”. But “various unfortunate circumstances had hitherto put obstacles in the way of his devotion”. However, in the month of July he is to hold a diet, and by envoys from it will prove to the Pope that he will be as obedient to him as his ancestors have ever been. “But if anyone has told you that, since the departure of Arsenius, I have anywhere seen or held any converse with Waldrada after her return from Italy, he has said what is wholly untrue”. One knows not whether more to grieve at the sufferings of the unfortunate queen, loathe the hypocrisy of Lothaire, or wonder at the patience of Nicholas in dealing with him.

To within a fortnight of his death the unwearied Pope exerted himself for Theutberga. He wrote to exhort the bishops of the kingdom of Louis the German to take up her cause; and to Louis himself to explain that he would not allow Lothaire to come and personally plead his case at Rome until, in accordance with his orders, Waldrada was first sent there.

The interminable negotiations concerning this divorce were only brought to an end in the reign of Hadrian II by the death of Lothaire. Hadrian, who was consecrated (December 14, 867) a few days after the death of Nicholas, was a man of a most conciliatory disposition. As far as man could go without sacrifice of principle, that far, without any thought of what his own status in the eyes of men might lose, would Hadrian go. And yet he was so strictly wedded to the ideas of Nicholas, that by the opponents of that great Pope he was called a Nicholaïte. He began his policy of concession by admitting to communion as priests—but not as bishops—Theutgard of Trier, Zachary of Anagni, and the cardinal priest Anastasius, whom he soon appointed “librarian of the Roman Church”.

Encouraged by this, Lothaire wrote to him lamenting the death of Nicholas as well as the fact that he had given heed rather to his (Lothaire’s) enemies than to himself, and expressing his great desire to come to Rome.

Hadrian, in reply, bade him come to receive the blessing he asked, if he felt himself free from the charges urged against him, or suitable penance if he was guilty. He would not, however, listen to Theutberga, who came to Rome to beg for the dissolution of her marriage, but threatened to excommunicate anyone who should molest her in the meanwhile, were it Lothaire himself.

As a further step in his policy of conciliation, he removed the sentence of excommunication from Waldrada on the ground that he had learnt from many, and especially from the emperor Louis, that she was sorry for her previous conduct. She was not, however, to hold any intercourse whatever with Lothaire, and was to strive so to live that the absolution he had given her might be ratified before God, who, unlike man, can see the heart.

Hoping to win Hadrian entirely over to his desires, Lothaire set out for Rome to have an interview with him, June 869. He gained the avaricious empress Ingelberga with presents, and had the desired meeting with Hadrian at Monte Cassino. As what took place at that famous old abbey is often very sensationally stated by moderns, relying on their imaginations or on other than strictly contemporary authors, we will here give verbatim the account left us by Hincmar, our best authority, in his Annals. “Through the mediation of Ingelberga, Lothaire succeeded in obtaining that the Pope, to whom he had given many presents, should sing Mass in his presence, and should give him Holy Communion on the understanding that, since Waldrada’s excommunication by Pope Nicholas, he had never dwelt with her, had criminal relations with her, or even a conversation with her. The unhappy man, like Judas, pretending a good conscience, did not hesitate boldly to receive Holy Communion. His supporters also received communion from the Pope, among whom was Gunther, the chief instigator of this public adultery. He received communion from Hadrian among the laity, after he had presented to him in public a declaration (of submission)”.

The same annalist goes on to relate that Lothaire followed the Pope to Rome (July), but was not received nor lodged in state.

However, before he left Rome he received a few small presents from the Pope, who had arranged that a final decision should be pronounced on his case in a synod to be held in Rome the following year (870). But Lothaire was seized with a fever before he left Italy, and, “not willing to perceive therein the judgment of God”, he died (August 8, 869) at Piacenza along with most of his suite. Both Theutberga and Waldrada ended their days in convents.

In bringing the long history of this divorce question to a close, we may observe that the conduct of Nicholas and Hadrian throughout it has won the admiration of all schools of historians alike. One would be less than man not to admire it.

With Lothaire on the one hand and Photius on the other, Nicholas might seem to have had enough to keep his thoughts occupied. But not to speak of smaller matters, he had many other affairs of great moment on his mind at the same time. He had to bring to submission the imperious archbishop of Rheims, and to guide the first steps of the Bulgarians along the road of Christianity. Of his negotiations with Hincmar on the matter of Wulfad and his companions we have already spoken. It remains for us to treat of the differences between them on the subject of the deposition of Rothad.

His paramount respect for the Holy See was the only thing which prevented Hincmar, the greatest prelate in the West after Nicholas himself, from bringing one or other of his disputes with the Pope to the extreme to which Photius had carried his difference with Rome; for, though good and learned, Hincmar could not brook opposition. He would go very far to have his own way.

With one of his suffragans, Rothad of Soissons, Hincmar had for many years not been on very good terms. He accuses Rothad of being “an unfruitful fig tree”. This very vague accusation was taken up by Charles the Bald, who afterwards favored Hincmar in this matter. He had long, he says, been useless in the sacred ministry; and (here was the unpardonable offence) to his archbishop’s written exhortations, had returned for sole answer that his metropolitan could do nothing but send him his booklets all day long! Descending to some detail, he further accuses Rothad of alienating at will the property of his Church. But it must be confessed that in his explanation of his conduct to the Pope, Hincmar does not attend in a straightforward manner to the facts of the case in question. According to the statement in Rothad’s apology, these were as follows. “Rothad had regularly deposed”, or, as he explains in another part, had deposed “on the decision of thirty-three bishops”, a priest taken in adultery. After the lapse of three years Hincmar espoused the cause of this man, and, “without in the least informing” Rothad, he caused the priest (whom Rothad had put in the place of the one he had deposed) to be seized, excommunicated, and imprisoned; and reinstated the adulterer. Such unreasonable, not to say uncanonical, conduct Rothad naturally resented. Thereupon, in a synod held outside Soissons (861), Hincmar declared Rothad deprived of episcopal communion till he should submit to his decision.

But when, in the following year, Rothad was prohibited by Hincmar, “who lorded it over the whole” gathering, from attending an assembly convoked by Charles the Bald, at Pistres, near Pont de l'Arche on the Seine, he appealed to the Holy See. But before he could set out for Rome, Hincmar had obtained possession of one of his letters, in which, according to him, Rothad stated that he withdrew his appeal, and asked that his case might be tried again before certain selected judges. It was really one of a series of letters which he had written preparatory to his departure. In it he had exhorted some of his colleagues to continue to sustain his cause as they had done at Pistres. The archbishop then made haste to call a second synod together in the neighborhood of Soissons, and summoned Rothad to appear before it. He, however, persisted in his appeal. “To the supreme authority of the Holy See I appeal unceasingly—to that See, the authority of which no one can gainsay, to that See which through Blessed Peter has merited such power (principatum) from Our Lord Jesus Christ. I await the decision of that See to which I have appealed, nor do I consent to be judged elsewhere than at Rome. It is preposterous that the inferior should be preferred before the superior”. Rothad was, nevertheless, declared by the synod contumacious, and deposed. He was then imprisoned, and another bishop ordained in his place. Concerning this decision Nicholas afterwards (Christmas Eve, 864) said that if Rothad “had never appealed, he ought not to have been deposed without his knowledge, inasmuch as the sacred canons and the venerable decrees of bishops have decided that the causes of bishops—as affairs of greater importance (majora negotia)—were to be left to the judgment of the Apostolic See”.

As soon as Nicholas had been informed of what had happened with regard to Rothad, unofficially at first, and soon after by the formal account of the synod of Soissons, he took up the affair with his usual vigor. Six letters were dispatched in the month of April to Charles the Bald, to Hincmar, to the bishops of the synod of Soissons, and to Rothad. To Hincmar, Nicholas expresses his indignation at the cruel treatment that had been meted out to Rothad in his old age, and gives the archbishop plainly to understand that, within thirty days after the receipt of his letter, he must either restore Rothad to his former dignity, or come to Rome in person or by deputy, in order that the matter may be there thoroughly investigated. If the Pope’s orders are not complied with, Hincmar has no longer permission to offer the Holy Sacrifice—a punishment which he must inform the other bishops, who acted with him, will also fall on them if they show themselves disobedient. The bishops themselves are blamed for trying to show from the civil law that Rothad had no right of appeal, when by the canon law they knew that he had.

They are commanded “by apostolical and canonical authority” to send Rothad to Rome under the penalty above rehearsed. He forcibly points out to them that it is to their own interest to strive that the privileges of the Roman See, “as the remedies of the whole Church”— privileges he is resolved to defend even to death—may be safeguarded. “The privileges of the Apostolic See are the protection of the whole Catholic Church, its bulwark against all the attacks of the wicked. What has happened to Rothad today, how know you that it will not happen to you tomorrow?” Charles the Bald is informed of the orders Nicholas has sent to the bishops, and is earnestly exhorted to restore Rothad to his rank, and to grant him a safe-conduct to the Pope. Finally, Rothad is told not to cease proclaiming his appeal to the Apostolic See, though in another letter to him Nicholas does not fail to admonish him not to give useless trouble to himself (Rothad) nor to others, if his conscience does not fully bear him out in the matter.

At first only a part of the orders of Nicholas was fulfilled. Rothad was released from confinement, but not allowed to go to Rome. A fresh batch of letters from the Pope—among them one now lost to Hincmar—had the desired result. Rothad was sent to Rome (864). At the same time Hincmar forwarded a long apology for his conduct. Whilst defending himself, he over and over again professes his submission to the Pope, “because all of us, whether young or old, know that our churches are subject to the Roman Church, and that we bishops are subject to the Roman Pontiff in the primacy of Blessed Peter. Wherefore, saving our faith, which has always, and, with the help of God, will always flourish in the Church, we must obey your apostolic authority ... And it is only right that when the Roman Pontiff summons any bishop whatsoever to Rome, he should haste to go to him unless sickness or some serious necessity hinder him”.

Till the close of the year Nicholas waited to see if any accuser of Rothad would come to Rome. None appeared; so that on Christmas Eve he was reclothed with his episcopal robes, and on the Feast of St. Agnes (January 21, 865) was formally restored to his See and sent back to France. He returned along with Arsenius, bishop of Horta, who, as we have seen, was sent at this time as legate to decide the case of Lothaire’s divorce. A series of letters made known the restitution of Rothad to all parties concerned. Hincmar, not indeed with the best of grace, submitted, and Rothad ruled his See in peace till his death.

Arsenius of Horta

Before adducing further examples of ecclesiastical appeal cases, lest they should prove too monotonous if treated of all together, the mention, by no means for the first time, of the name of Arsenius of Horta may be our excuse for a word or two concerning him and others like him, whom we find about the persons of the popes at this period. The power of the emperor who wished to have among the papal officials men devoted to his interests, or the influence of powerful families, managed to place round the Pope many men who would not have been respectable members of a decent lay, much less clerical, nobility. The sole thought of these men was personal aggrandizement. The presence of these noble officials, cleric and lay, in rapidly increasing numbers in the court of the Pope, had no little influence in bringing about the disorders which darkened the papal throne in the following period. Not to mention Sergius, a lay official, who married the niece of Pope Nicholas, afterwards abandoned her for a mistress, and plundered the papal palace while his uncle lay dying, nor the antipope Anastasius, possibly the secretary of Nicholas, we will confine our attention to one who seems to have been the father of the said Anastasius, viz., Arsenius, bishop of Horta. Both Hincmar and Nicholas accuse him of pride, ambition, and avarice. And John the Deacon (the biographer of Gregory the Great), who was alive at this time, tells us a story concerning the bishop which bears out his reputation for being proud and a lover of display. The story, not much in itself, is, moreover, interesting, as it gives us a peep into various legal and mercantile matters of the time. It appears that despite various laws against them, and despite the fact that they were not permitted to see the Pope, Jews contrived to do most of the trading in the more valuable kinds of merchandise. From the days of Jugurtha to those of John of Salisbury, not to come down any further, money was superior to the laws in Rome. By it the Jews brushed to one side the enactments against themselves, and contrived to bring their wares before the people. However, so indignant were the popes that the sons of Judah were able thus to set the laws at defiance, that they kept them at a distance. And for fear lest any suspicion should arise that they had themselves received anything in the way of a bribe from the Jews, they would not allow them to come anywhere near their palace gates, and made them count the money they had received for their goods publicly whilst sitting on the marble pavement. Among others, the magnificent wares of the Jews had an attraction for Arsenius. Not only did he purchase and wear some of them, but he positively wished to celebrate a station (palatina processio) clad, not in his priestly robes, but in his Jewish finery. It need hardly be said that Nicholas did not allow the fulfillment of such a wish.

Hincmar assures us that report had it that Arsenius died (868) “talking with devils”. His miserable death at Acerenza came to be quoted in later times as a warning to the avaricious. After his sudden demise without the last sacraments, his attendants set out with his body, intending to take it to Rome or Horta. But unable to endure the stench that came from it, they hastily interred it in a field.

To give the reader some idea of the number and variety of matters that were referred to Nicholas for his decision, we will here, in brief, give some of these cases, of which the letters of Nicholas give us cognizance, now that we have discussed at some length the most important of the appeals which were addressed to him.

On the death of Thierry, bishop of Cambray, Lothaire, to strengthen his hand, appointed to the vacant bishopric Hilduin, the brother of his supporter Gunther, and a relative of the more famous Hilduin, abbot of the great monastery of St. Denis. This man, as a quite unworthy subject for such a position, Hincmar, the metropolitan of Cambray, refused to consecrate. Lothaire, however, put Hilduin into possession of the temporalities of the See, and Hincmar turned to Rome for the support of his rights. Prompt to support any just claim, Nicholas at once (863) dispatched letters to the bishops of Lothaire’s kingdom, to Lothaire himself, and to the intruder Hilduin. The bishops were to exhort Lothaire to reject Hilduin, and to leave the clergy and people of Cambray free to choose a bishop for themselves, in accordance with the canons. Lothaire is told that to the other “countless execrable charges that were made against him”, he understands there is added that of interfering with the metropolitan rights of Hincmar, and of forcing an intruder into the Church of Cambray. If he does not confine himself to his proper business—which is to regulate, as it were, the bodies only of his subjects he will have to excommunicate him, especially in view of his other wicked conduct. Finally Hilduin is reminded that, if the State sanctions his holding the See of Cambray, the Church never will. After some further negotiations, and after bringing pressure to bear on Lothaire, through Charles the Bald and Louis the German, the rights of Hincmar were vindicated, and one John (865) was properly elected to the See.

To obtain money to buy off the Norsemen, the weak yet tyrannical Lothaire seized the possessions of his sister Heletrude, who was then a widow. Unable to obtain justice elsewhere, the injured woman appealed to the Pope. Again Nicholas took up the cause of the oppressed. To Lothaire himself, as he explains in his letter to Charles the Bald on this subject, he will not write, “as for his wicked deeds he holds Lothaire excommunicated”. Though Nicholas had not actually excommunicated him, he means to say that he is like one excommunicated.

But Charles and Louis the German are urged to restrain his culpable cupidity, by notifying to him the authority of the Pope and of the laws, and to see to it that the property of Heletrude is restored to her. The issue of this intercession of Nicholas we do not know. In all probability justice was done to Heletrude. Charles and Louis were ever on the lookout for a casus belli with Lothaire, who generally took care to give in at once when pressure was brought to bear upon him from those quarters.

Baldwin of Flanders and Judith

If Nicholas was stern to determined vice, he was kind to the penitent. Judith, Charles the Bald’s daughter, whom Ethelwulf had married on his return from Rome to his kingdom of Wessex, had on the death of her husband (858) been taken to wife by her stepson Ethelbald. Such an incestuous union shocked the people. After about “two years and a half of licentiousness”, Ethelbald died (860), and Judith had to return to France. On her arrival in France, Charles the Bald, her father, placed her under episcopal surveillance at Senlis, till such times as she should decide either to renounce the world or “contract a proper legal marriage”. She managed, however, to elope with Baldwin, count of Flanders. In great indignation, Charles had her condemned by both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. The pair fled to the kingdom of Lothaire, whence Baldwin betook himself to Rome to beg the intercession of Nicholas (862). Finding that the Marriage had taken place with the fullest freedom of consent on both sides, Nicholas was moved to write in behalf of the runaways. One reason which he made use of to induce Charles to relent was lest his indignation should drive Baldwin to ally himself with the pagan Norsemen, who were then inflicting so much injury on his kingdom. Nicholas assured the king he did not wish to order, only to entreat. At length (863) Charles gave his consent to a legal union taking place between Judith and Baldwin. From them sprang not only the line of the counts of Flanders, but what is of much more interest to us, Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror.

Solomon, king of Brittany

The efforts which we have seen made by Nomenoius to free Brittany from all dependence on Charles the Bald, and its bishops from all subjection to any archbishop in Charles’ kingdom, were continued by Solomon. He succeeded to the dukedom (857) by the murder of his cousin Herispoius. He endeavored to induce Nicholas to recognized the bishops whom Nomenoius had forcibly intruded, and apparently sent the Pope a very specious account of the preceding negotiations on the subject. Nicholas wrote (862) to Solomon, “king of the Bretons”, to let him know that his researches into the archives of the Holy See showed him that the letters of popes Leo IV, Benedict III, and of himself were to a different effect than that represented by the king. Hence the question of the deposed bishops could not be regarded as settled, but must be referred either to the metropolitan, the archbishop of Tours, with twelve bishops, or to the Pope himself. As to which See was to enjoy metropolitan rights over Brittany, Nicholas wisely temporized. That question could be considered when peace had been made between Solomon and Charles.

Peace was made between the two in the following year (863), and Solomon renewed his request that Dol might be recognized as the metropolitan See of Brittany. Nicholas, however, refused to accede to the petition, on the ground that no proof had been sent to him that the pallium had ever before been sent to the bishops of Dol. He ordered Festinianus of Dol to submit to the jurisdiction of the See of Tours in accordance with the previous decrees of the popes and with ancient custom. And he made it plain that he objected to civil differences interfering with the rights of churches. He had evidently no sympathy with men who wished to make use of the Church in their attempts to secure independence for themselves at the expense of the unity of established kingdoms. But not even a decree of Nicholas settled this debated point. As already noticed, it took more than three hundred years to settle the question of the rights of Dol and Tours.

Another dispute referred to the decision of Nicholas had already lasted as long as the “Dol” question was yet to endure. It was a disagreement as to jurisdiction over a monastery, which was at first known as Anisol (or Anille), from the river on which it was built, but afterwards, with the small town that grew up round it, as St. Calais (in Latin, Karilefus), from its founder (d. 542). Originally the monastery was subject to the jurisdiction of the neighboring bishop of Le Mans. But, according to the favor or disfavor with which it was regarded by the sovereign of the country in which it was situated, it was withdrawn from, or resubjected to, the authority of the bishop of Le Mans. At the period of which we are now treating it was the fashion to favor the monastery. Synods (e.g. that of Pistres, 862) under Hincmar decided for Anisol. And, in 863, Nicholas himself confirmed its privileges, on the ground of its long immunity from the jurisdiction of Le Mans. The laws placed a limit, he urged, to the period in which rights could be called in question.

Robert, bishop of Le Mans, however, appealed to the Pope against the sentence of the councils which had non-suited his claims. Nicholas accordingly ordered the affair to be gone into again by a fresh council (863). One which met at Verberie (October 863) found in favor of the monastery. The documents with which Robert attempted to prove his claims were declared forgeries and ordered to be burnt. Anisol became definitely independent.

Dealing with bishops and counts, priests and deacons, we see Nicholas informing Charles, archbishop of Mayence, and his suffragans, that he cannot see his way to passing any adverse sentence on Solomon, bishop of Constance; ordering Stephen, count of Auvergne, to restore Sigon, bishop of Clermont, to his See, on pain of being interdicted from wine and flesh; cautioning Wenilo, archbishop of Sens, not to interfere with a certain priest if he sees fit to appeal to the Apostolic See; and restoring the deacon Pepo, who had been uncanonically condemned by his bishop.

True to the traditions of his See, and in harmony with his conduct during the pontificate of Leo IV, John, archbishop of Ravenna, gave Nicholas a great deal of trouble by his insubordinate and tyrannical conduct. Deputations from Ravenna waited upon the Pope, praying him to relieve them from the oppressions of their archbishop, who was depriving them both of their property and of their rights. By legates and letters Nicholas endeavored to reclaim John. The only notice the archbishop took of the paternal admonitions of the Pope was to go from bad to worse. The librarian says of him that he excommunicated people without just ground, prevented others from going to Rome, arbitrarily seized property, even property belonging to the See of Rome, and interfered with its ecclesiastical rights. For he passed sentence upon clerics, not only on those subject to his own jurisdiction, but also on many in Amelia who were directly subject to Rome. Anastasius thinks it not wonderful that John, in the later years of his pontificate, acted in that lawless manner, as in the very beginning of his rule, like his predecessor Felix, he either falsified documents preserved in the episcopal archives of the city (no doubt those which showed the true relations between Ravenna and Rome), or added forged ones to them.

Thrice summoned to Rome to give an account of his conduct before a council, he boastfully declared that he was not bound to attend any council there (861). Finding him contumacious, and, moreover, accused of heresy, the Pope excommunicated him in a synod held, perhaps, about Easter.

John, however, again imitating the conduct of certain of his predecessors, tried to secure the support of the secular power. He betook himself to Pavia, and gained the ear of the emperor. Louis sent him to Rome with ambassadors of his own to support his claims. By pointing out to the ambassadors how wrongly they had acted in remaining in communion with one who had been excommunicated, Nicholas had no difficulty in detaching them from the archbishop’s cause. But John himself was not so amenable to admonitions of duty. He left the city, refusing to give any undertaking that he would present himself for judgment at a synod to be held on November 1, 861.

Weary of the tyranny of John, the senators of the city of Ravenna, and many of the inhabitants of other cities came to the Pope and begged him to go to Ravenna and see for himself what was being done. This the Pope did, and at once restored to the injured people the property of which they had been plundered by the archbishop and his brother.

John, who had meanwhile again set out for Pavia, did not win the same reception as he had received on the occasion of his previous visit. Headed by their bishop, Luitard, one of the chief counselors of the emperor Louis, the people would not receive the excommunicated archbishop into their houses, nor sell anything to his followers, so anxious were they not to share in his excommunication. This strong manifestation of their sentiments on the part of his people had its effect upon the emperor. When John asked him to support him a second time, he sent word to him by a messenger that he had better go and humble himself before the Pope, to whom both he himself (Louis) and the whole Church were subject. However, after much difficulty, he secured the company of deputies from the emperor, and set out for Rome. To their intercession on the archbishop’s behalf Nicholas would not listen, but remained firm in his determination to bring him to justice. “If our dear son the emperor”, he said, “had made himself thoroughly acquainted with his doings, so far from interceding in his behalf he would have compelled him to come to us, however unwilling he might have been”.

In obedience to the Pope’s orders, the bishops of the neighboring provinces assembled for the November synod, the first session of which was held “in the Leonine palace”—part of the work of Leo IV on the Vatican hill.

Finding himself abandoned by all, John begged for mercy, and drew up in clear and precise language, “according to the custom of his predecessors”, the terms of the oath of fidelity and obedience he owed to the Pope. We read in Nicholas’s biographer, that with this document in his hand, John appeared before the Pope, bishops, and nobles assembled in council, that he placed it in turn on the cross, on the sandals of Our Lord, and on a copy of the Holy Gospels, and that in fine, holding his act of submission in hand, he declared aloud that he would for the rest of his life faithfully act up to its provisions.

A day or so later, at another session held in the Lateran basilica, John cleared himself of the charge of heresy, and was restored to communion.

Next day, which was apparently November 18, John again appeared before the Pope and the college of cardinals, to hear the charges brought against him by the bishops of Aemilia and others. From the papal biographer, and from an extant fragment (?) of this council, it appears that the following decrees were passed in reference to him :—He was to come to Rome every year; was not to consecrate the bishops of Aemilia (the country round Milan, according to Hefele) except after a canonical election by the duke, clergy, and people, and after the reception of a written authorization from the Pope; was not to interfere with the aforesaid bishops when they wished to come to Rome, nor was he to exact any payment or service from them not sanctioned by the canons; nor, in fine, was he to possess himself of property, whether apparently belonging to the Holy See or to others, except after proof of legal claim in presence of the proper authorities, i.e. of the Pope himself at Rome or of his representatives, his missus or his vestararius, at Ravenna. On the conclusion of the publication of these decrees, the members of the council cried out : “Just is the judgment of the Pastor of the whole Church. With him we are all in accord!”

The synodal decree, which was signed by some seventy bishops, gives in detail the arbitrary doings of the archbishop. Every two years he “visited” his suffragans, and stayed so long with them with all his court as well-nigh to ruin them. John also made them thrice every year send “presents” of food and drink to himself and his chief officials, and in various other ways interfered with their rights or their property. It was as a ready means of putting a curb on the tyranny of such metropolitans as John of Ravenna that made the False Decretals so rapidly popular. The fact that John was deposed in 863 for siding against the Pope with Gunther shows that his submission on this occasion was only verbal.

Gotteschal and Predestination

Of what heresy John was accused we have no means of knowing, unless, indeed, as is most likely, the decrees of the council of 861 against those who held that Our Lord suffered not merely in His human but also in His divine nature, and that baptism was not equally efficacious for all, were aimed against him. Certainly the latter decree strikes at the absolute predestination doctrine of Gotteschalc who, we know, in 846 had made a pilgrimage to Rome, and had, on his return journey through Italy, broached his theories at the house of a friend in the North. Or he may, perchance, have been charged with at least countenancing that German monk. At any rate, the latter’s heretical views were the ones most in evidence at the period of which we are writing. Gotteschalc, whose name, as might be anticipated, is spelt in many different ways, revived the heresy which had been promulgated in Gaul, four centuries before his time, by the Gaulish priest Lucidus. He taught the awful doctrine of absolute predestination. Of a disposition naturally rash, headstrong, and intractable, he was soured by being compelled to remain a monk against his will. He was understood to teach that “the good were inevitably predestined by God to eternal life and the bad to everlasting death”. But in his confessions he was careful not to say whether the predestination to eternal death imposed any necessity on man’s will. Unfortunately, in the replies issued against his teaching, this point was not pressed home; and confusion was caused by some of his orthodox opponents, in their anxiety to unmask his terrible sophisms, not admitting, in the proper restricted sense, double predestination. Beginning to propagate his views before the close of the first half of the ninth century, he soon attracted attention to them. Many works were published on this most difficult subject of predestination, and not unnaturally there was no little confusion of expression, if not of thought, in some of the productions. Some of their authors were probably sounder in belief than in their mode of propounding that belief. A word or two on the subject of predestination may perhaps (we may hope not by way of example) make it clear how confusion of expression and mutual misunderstanding could readily arise among heated writers on this abstruse topic.

It will not be denied that it is impossible for anything to happen except by the will of God, i.e. either by His direct or, at least, by His “permissive” will. Everything, therefore, which comes about may be said, from that point of view, to come about in virtue of the will of God. Now it is the teaching of the Church that God gives to every man sufficient grace to be saved. But one man, using the free will which God has given to him, will avail himself of God’s proffered grace and be saved, another will reject it and be lost. Hence, in the sense noted above, God may be said to will the damnation of the latter and the salvation of the former. Further, as He “foreknows” who will embrace His grace and be saved, and who will neglect it and be damned, He may be said to predestine “the one to eternal life and the other to the second death”. It will, however, be observed that the reward or punishment is “predestined” in view of foreseen merit or demerit. So that God may be said rather to predestine “eternal death to some men rather than some to eternal death”.

It will be obvious from what has been said, that the same form of phrase, on the subject of predestination, may be either orthodox or heretical; and, from the complexity of the question, doubtless still clearer that a writer might easily be really in mind or in intention quite orthodox, and yet unwittingly use heretical phrases. Thus, if it be said that God “predestines a man to hell”, the expression would be heretical if the words are to be understood “as they stand”, in their strict sense, or absolutely. But they will be orthodox if they be meant to convey the idea that God, foreseeing that a man will freely elect to walk along the road that leads to the bottomless pit, permits him to arrive there, or to put it more strongly, decrees eternal punishment for him as the natural consequence of his evil choice. Once again, the similarly ill-sounding phrase that “Christ died only for the elect” would be orthodox, if it be explained to mean that Christ died “efficaciously” for the elect only, as they alone availed themselves of the merits of His death.

When the views of Gotteschalc became public, they were immediately controverted. Some, however, either because they were in sympathy with his doctrine or with himself, or because they thought he had been misunderstood, took up their pens in his favor. The controversy lasted some ten years. Not merely learned men, but councils, were ranged on both sides; facts which have their explanation almost more in this, that the latter were held in countries often hostile to each other, and that the former were not unfrequently occupants of rival Sees, rather than in real opposition to doctrine. Both parties brought their arguments under the notice of the Pope. Among others, Hincmar also informed Nicholas of the doctrine of Gotteschalc, begged him to check his account of it by the testimony of others, and said that, if his “authority wished the monk to be released and sent to him or to some other bishop he might appoint in order that the affair might be further investigated, he had no objection to offer”

Prudentius, bishop of Troyes, who was the author of part of the Annals of St. Bertin, even goes the length of asserting that Pope Nicholas published decrees on grace and free will, “on the truth of the twofold predestination” (viz., to life and death eternal), and on the dogma that the blood of Christ was shed for all believers. But, as we learn from the continuation of the same annals, written by Hincmar, Prudentius was a partisan of Gotteschalc. And in another place, citing this very passage of the annals of Prudentius, Hincmar declares that such a statement is not to be found anywhere else; and he conjures Egilo, archbishop of Sens, to whom he was writing, to let the Pope know what Prudentius had asserted, so that no scandal might arise in the Church, as it certainly would were men to think that the Pope had the same belief as Gotteschalc.

There is no doubt that Hincmar is correct in this matter. Nicholas prudently abstained from intervening in the controversy. He examined witnesses as to what was going on, received (863) the works of Hincmar on Predestination, and especially interested himself in the treatment that was being meted out to Gotteschalc. Hence Hincmar was careful to instruct (866) Egilo of Sens to assure the Pope that the unhappy monk was abundantly supplied with food, clothing, and all necessaries.

By his prudent reserve in not allowing himself to be drawn into the midst of the confusion of the “predestination” controversy, Nicholas effected more than he could have done by any active interference. His policy of nonintervention resulted in the close of the dispute with the death (868) of its author. The Pope knew that men who were not fanatical would hold fast to the truths that God has given free-will to man; that it requires the grace of God to win heaven; that no man will lose his soul except through his own fault, and that it was not their affair to reconcile these truths one with the other or with the supreme dominion of God over everything. He knew that words would be powerless against practical belief.

Before leaving Gotteschalc, it may be noted with some interest that one of those who by their writings on the subject of predestination only added to existing confusion, was John Scott the Erin-born; and that, too, though his work was directed against him. Much less a steady theologian than a ready-witted, pantheistic philosopher, his refutation of Gotteschalc contained more false teachings, philosophical and otherwise, than the work he took in hand to answer, and brought upon himself various literary missiles, such as canons of councils which condemned all “Scots’ porridge”, and the keen eyes of Nicholas. Hence, when at the request of Charles the Bald the clever Irishman published some time later a translation of the work De divinis nominibus, then attributed to St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Nicholas wrote to Charles to let him know, that “according to custom”, the book ought to be sent to him for his judgment, “the more so that the said John, though reported to be a man of much learning, was at one time by common report declared not to be sound on certain points. Accordingly let your industry make good what has been omitted, and at once send us the aforesaid work, that, approved by us, it may, in virtue of our authority, be the more readily received by everybody without hesitation”. This fragment is very interesting, as it shows that a papal censorship of at least famous theological works was practiced in the ninth century.

The Slavs

In the history of Christianity, the ninth century is marked out by the conversion of the Slays, like ourselves, members of the great Aryan or Indo-European family. The Slavs, though by no means to the extent commonly supposed as far as the first two qualities are concerned, were a quiet, peaceful, democratic people, devoted to pastoral pursuits, and later on, after their westward and southern migration, to commerce. They came originally from the plain of Central Europe, the region of the Don, Dnieper, and Vistula. Hence, as “die Weidenden” probably means the “dwellers on the great prairie”, they were known to the Germans, who afterwards subdued some branches of them, as Wends. They called themselves Serbs.

The Slavs began to move southwards at the end of the second century, but at first rather as auxiliaries, slaves or vassals of other tribes. They began to make their appearance within the Roman provinces as conquerors on their own account at the end of the fifth century, and continued their ravages for two centuries. By the middle of the seventh century almost the whole of the Balkan peninsula was covered with their colonies, and they had pushed as far west as Bavaria. Traces of their settlements are still to be discovered in various parts, e.g. in Greece, where for a long period none of their direct descendants have been found.

By the end of the seventh century Slav migration towards the West ceased. Since that time, while losing territory in that direction, they have made up for it by colonizing Eastern and Northern Russia. Of the various branches of the Slavs, there was originally the greatest divergence between the Slavs of the East (Russians), and of the South (Sloveni or Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, etc.), on the one hand, and those of the West (Lechs, etc.) on the other. This difference was, of course, accentuated when the latter came into contact with Rome and the Teutons, and the former began to be influenced by the Byzantine empire and the East. Of the action of these different sources of influence on the Slays we shall have to treat immediately.

In a broad way, the different families of the Slavs occupy now the same territory as at the close of the seventh century, though it was not till the invasion of the Magyars at the end of the ninth century that they began to form separate states. Nowadays the different Slav races may be enumerated as follows. Under the Slavs of the South and East are reckoned the Russians, Bulgarians, and lastly, the Illyrians, who include the Serbes, Croats, and Wends or Slovens of Carinthia; and under those of the West, the Lechs, who embrace the Poles, Silesians, and Pomeranians, the Czechs or Bohemians, with whom are counted the Moravians and Slovaks; and the Polabians, who represent the disappearing Slavonic tribes of North Germany.

These various Slavonic tribes seem to have had a vague idea of a Supreme Being, who was, later on, worshipped as the thunder maker, and perhaps impersonated by an idol known as Perun. Like the Hindoos, they were very fond of “many-headed” gods. At Arcona, the capital of the isle of Rugen, the Danish missionaries found “Svantovit” (Holy Light), an idol with four heads. At Stettin was the triple-headed Triglay. There was also, among many of the tribes, a Persian Dualism. They recognized good (Bieli-Bog) and bad (Tcherni-Bog) gods; or, more exactly, white and black gods. Procopius assures us that they were given in times of danger to the making of vows, which they most religiously performed, and also to the practice of divination. Their mode of worship was not unlike that of the Druids, and like them the northern Slavs, at any rate, offered even human sacrifices. Originally, at least, they held their religious services in the open air, in the woods and forests, which they peopled with inferior gods, fairies, and the like.

Of a well-formed frame, and by no means wanting in courage, the Slav, though said to be fond of liberty, lacked and still lacks independence of character. Though hospitable, musical, and cheerful, they were not (locally, at any rate) without cruel customs. Mothers were at liberty to destroy their infant daughters, and sons to kill their fathers when from old age they were no longer useful to the State. Wives were often obliged (another connection with the religions of India) to cast themselves upon the fire which consumed the dead bodies of their husbands. The Slavs held their women in very little account; they regarded them as beneath them.

Hence, concludes Leger, “by their manners and customs, by their religion, at once simple and poetical, by their patriarchal constitutions, the Slavs were evidently better predisposed to the coming of Christianity than any other race. With an external worship calculated to satisfy their imagination, it came to bring them the solution of those great problems of the Unity of God, the origin of evil, the immortality of the soul, with which they were acquainted, and which their own naïve myths had endeavored to resolve”.

As far as we know, the truths of Christianity were first accepted (apart from the conversion of individual Slavs) by the Croats in Dalmatia. Their king, Porga, and many of his people were baptized under Pope John IV (640642), himself a Dalmatian. Contact with Bavaria brought the faith to the Slavs of Carinthia (the country between the Drave and the Danube) at the end of the eighth century.

Events in Moravia, however, were most instrumental in bringing about the conversion of the Slavs. Strife among the chiefs of the Moravians brought German interference into their affairs. Though satisfied with the truths of Christianity which the Germans introduced into his country, the great duke of Moravia, Radislav (or Rastices), in order to be quite independent, determined to obtain teachers of the new doctrines rather from the weak Greeks than from his political enemies, the powerful Germans. In reply to his request for missionaries, Michael III sent him (863) perhaps the two most famous brothers in the history of Christianity, S. Constantine, better known by his religious name of Cyril, and S. Methodius, the glorious apostles of the Slavs. Of these devoted men, to whom the Slavs most properly pay such honor, whose “cult” has been so much advanced by the late Pope (Leo XIII), and whom Nicholas summoned to Rome, but was not destined to behold, we shall have much to say under the life of Hadrian II.

But the Slavs with whom Pope Nicholas was most concerned were the Bulgarians. The Bulgarians properly belonged to the Ugro-Finnish or the Ugro-Altaic branch of the great Turanian family. Akin to the Huns and Avars, they moved south from their homes in the north of modern Russia in the early centuries of the Christian era. Of their earlier history Oman writes : “This Ugrian tribe, who had dwelt for the last two centuries (fifth and sixth) beyond the Danube, crossed the river in the end of Constantine’s (IV, Pogonatus) reign (668-685), and then threw themselves on the Slavonic tribes who held Moesia”. Constantine at length “allowed the Bulgarians to settle without further opposition in the land between the Danube and the Balkans, where the Slavs had hitherto held possession (679). A new Bulgarian nation was gradually formed by the intermixture of the conquering tribe and their subjects; when formed it displayed a Slavonic rather than a Ugrian type, and spoke a Slavonic not a Ugrian tongue”. In the ninth century they began to extend towards the south-west, and in the tenth century ruled from Varna and the mouths of the Danube to the mountains of Thessaly and Phocis. That is, at the time of the greatest extent of Bulgaria’s rule, under the sway of its Tsar Simeon (892-927), it embraced nearly the whole of the Balkan Peninsula, part of Hungary and Walachia, and was the suzerain of the Serbs.

Contact with the Byzantine Empire brought the Bulgarians into constant touch with Christianity. But at first it made little progress among them. One of their kings, Telerig, on embracing Christianity, had to abandon his throne (777). The wars between them and the Greeks resulted, in the early years of the following century, in a great many of the latter being conveyed as prisoners into Bulgaria. Through them, though such Christians as had not fled from the country during the different barbarian invasions, and especially through Manuel, archbishop of Adrianople, which was captured by the Bulgarians in 813, Christianity made some headway. It was not, however, till the reign of King Boris, or Bogoris (852-888), that it was at all firmly established. His sister had been baptized whilst a captive at Constantinople. In fulfillment of a vow, Boris got himself baptized (864), according to the Sclavonic and Greek legends, by a Byzantine bishop, Joseph or Clement, and had for godfather the emperor Michael III. But according to the well-informed contemporary Anastasius, in his oft-cited Preface, the sacrament was administered by a Roman priest named Paul.

Next year (865) Photius sent to the Bulgarian prince a long letter explanatory of Christian faith and duty. Borrowed largely from Isocrates’s letter of exhortation to Nicocles, it was much too learned for the convert barbarian. He was, moreover, still further troubled by various doctrines which were poured into his ears by different Eastern heretics.

Accordingly, whether it was that he was “perplexed ... by these written arguments of Photius or by the contradictions of the Easterns; or that he was vexed because Photius would not at once establish a complete hierarchy in Bulgaria; or that he feared that ecclesiastical subjection to Constantinople might be followed by civil; or whether in consequence of a childish love of change, or of a cunning scheme to play off one party against the other, certain it is that, in 866, Boris “determined to go straight to the fountain-head”, and sent a solemn embassy to Rome to put the infant Church of his country under the care of the Pope. Among the presents which his envoys brought “for St. Peter” were “the arms with which he was equipped when, in Christ’s name, he overcame his (pagan) adversaries”. Very valuable or very curious, the gifts of the Bulgarian monarch appear to have aroused the cupidity of the emperor Louis, who was then at Beneventum. At any rate he sent an order to the Pope that they should be transmitted to him. Through his partisan, Arsenius of Horta, Nicholas sent him some of them, but excused himself from sending all.

Meanwhile, however, he had dispatched (866) two men “of great sanctity”—Paul, bishop of Populonia, and the famous Formosus, bishop of Porto, of whom we shall hear much more—to preach the faith to Boris and his people. They travelled with Donatus and the other legates who were going to Constantinople. He also sent, in the shape of his “Replies to the questions addressed to him by the Bulgarians”, a document which, based to some extent on the instructions of S. Gregory I to S. Augustine, served, among other purposes, as a “species of code of civil constitutions for an uncivilized nation”.

At the outset of his famous Responsa, Nicholas explained that Christianity consisted of faith and good works. He then proceeded to give his questioners various instructions on the sacrament of baptism and matrimony. With regard to the latter sacrament he reminded them that the most important part of it was the mutual consent. Entering upon some explanation of the marriage ceremonies, he speaks of the blessing and the reception of the veil, and of the happy pair leaving the church with crowns upon their heads—crowns which are wont, says the Pope, to be kept in the church for the purpose. Days of fasting are made less numerous for the new converts, but they are taught not to work on holy days of obligation. Boris is blamed for the cruelty he displayed towards certain of his rebellious pagan subjects; but “as he acted from zeal for the Christian religion, and from ignorance rather than from any malice, he will obtain forgiveness, on repentance, through the mercy of Christ”. Various superstitious practices are forbidden by the Pope. He bids them cease applying a certain stone to the sick for the purpose of bringing about restoration to health. They are not to act on ideas got from opening books at random, etc. He also gave a variety of answers all tending, if put into practice, to mitigate the warlike ferocity of the Bulgarians. They are to prepare for battle by prayer; their standard must in future be the cross, and not the tail of a horse. He always inculcated mercy, when he could not say that some of their strict laws relating to the conduct of their wars were absolutely unjust. It was their custom, for instance, to put to death those who came to the field of battle with their equipment in an unsatisfactory condition. The Pope would have them more careful of their spiritual equipment. Torture is not to be employed.

The pagans are not to be converted by force. Polygamy is prohibited, the wife must be treated more as an equal, and sound rules are laid down with regard to continence in married life. Bad priests cannot soil the Sacraments.

With regard to a patriarch for Bulgaria, as Boris evidently wanted civil and religious independence for his country, the return of the papal legates who would report on the progress made by Christianity in those parts, must be awaited. A bishop, however, will be sent to them at once; and, when the faith has spread, an archbishop, who must get his pall from Rome. Those are the only true patriarchs who govern churches established by apostles, viz., those of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. The Sees of Jerusalem and Constantinople are not of the same rank (auctoritatis) as the former ones. No apostle founded the Church of Constantinople, nor is it mentioned by the Council of Nice. But because it was called the New Rome, its bishop has been called a patriarch rather by the favor of princes than by right

In conclusion, writes the Pope, you ask us to give you, like the other nations, Christianity without spot or wrinkle, inasmuch as you are much troubled by the contradictory utterances of Greeks, Armenians, etc. “In this matter we are sufficient of ourselves, our sufficiency is from God; and Blessed Peter, who lives and presides in his See, gives the true faith to those who seek for it. The Roman Church, which is ever without spot, sends you men and books to teach you the truth. Until the roots of truth strike deep within you, we will not cease to water you. You are my joy and my crown”.

The Pope's legates took along with them (866) a written code of laws and books in addition to the Responsa. Such success attended the preaching of the missionaries sent by the Pope, that contemporary historians speak as though the king and all his people were converted by them. So greatly did Boris become attached to the Romans, that we are told that on one occasion, grasping his beard, he cried out, “Let all the nobles and people of the land of the Bulgarians know, that from henceforth, after God, I serve St. Peter and his Vicar”.

Boris expelled all the other missionaries, and begged that Formosus, “a bishop in life and character”, says the papal biographer, might be raised to the archiepiscopal dignity, and that more priests might be sent out to preach to his people. With great joy Nicholas commissioned (October 867) two more bishops and a number of carefully chosen priests to proceed to Bulgaria. Of these latter, he told Boris by letter that he might select one to be sent back to Rome to be consecrated archbishop, for he did not think that it was the right thing that the people who had been entrusted to the pastoral care of Formosus should lose their bishop. Doubtless the fact was that the Pope objected to episcopal translations. But, to all appearances at least, it would have been well for Formosus himself if he had been transferred to a Bulgarian See; and, as Boris was very much attached to him, Bulgaria might have been thus preserved in the unity of the Roman Church. Meanwhile he was destined by the Pope to go on an embassy to Constantinople in connection with the doings of Photius. Nicholas died (November 13, 867) before this second company of missionaries set out on their journey, and he was spared the pain of seeing the fickle Bulgarian monarch veer round again, and throw himself finally into the arms of the patriarch of Constantinople.

As we shall soon have to chronicle grave disputes on the subject of jurisdiction over Bulgaria, we may here examine a little more closely the sources whence the Bulgarians first drew their Christianity, and to whom jurisdiction over the countries subdued by them originally belonged. Both Pope and patriarch laid claim to priority of ecclesiastical rights over Bulgaria, and it would seem that each party had grounds for its pretensions, and that both the Latin and the Greek rite had exerted an influence in making Christians of the Bulgarians.

When, in the course of the seventh century, they established themselves in the triangle of territory formed by the Dneister, the Danube, and the Theiss, they found there, besides the Avars and the Slavs, no inconsiderable number of Daco-Romans, the descendants of the numerous colonists whom Trajan had poured into Dacia, and whom neither Goth, Hun, nor Avar had been able to exterminate. This curious Eastern-Latin race still dwells between the three rivers, is now independent, and proclaims its origin by the name (Roumania) it has given to a large tract of the country in which it was first formed. Though Dacia was separated from the Roman Empire in A.D. 270, the irrefragable testimony of the Roumanian language shows that it was through Latin agency that it first received the faith of Christ. “The fundamental ideas of Christianity are invariably expressed in the Roumanian language by words of Latin origin”. Though dominated for eight centuries by the Slavs and their ritual, the Roumanians have been but slightly influenced in their sacred terminology by them, and such ecclesiastical words as they borrowed from the Greeks only concern matters of secondary importance in religion. What is true as to the original source of Christianity in the country between the three rivers is true of the country between the Danube and the Balkans (known at the end of the sixth century as Moesia Inferior) which was overrun by Slavs in the seventh century, and was conquered and made their permanent home by the Bulgarians in the eighth century. Even during the pontificate of S. Leo I, the bishops of Moesia Inf. did not know Greek. The Bulgarians must, therefore, have encountered the Latin rite as soon as they broke into Dacia, and the Greek rite at least when they took possession of Moesia. And when in the ninth century they stretched away towards the West and South, and touched the empire of the Franks, they must again have come in contact with Latin Christianity, and have thus a second time been influenced by it.

But the question of primitive ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Bulgaria is not so easy to resolve. In a division of the Roman Empire made by Constantine the Great (306337), the Balkan Peninsula was divided into Western and Eastern Illyricum. The latter then included Thrace, in which is situated the modern Bulgaria. But, in the year 314, Thrace was separated from Eastern Illyricum, and after that date was sometimes united to it, and sometimes divided from it. Now while it is certain that both Illyricums were under the patriarchal jurisdiction of Rome, that authority does not seem to have been organized there till Pope Damasus (366-384) established a vicar at Thessalonica; and it seems that at that date Thrace was separated from Eastern Illyricum. Hence when in the days of Boris I (852-888) Photius averred that ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Bulgarians belonged to him, his contention was so far just that, at least from the days of St. John Chrysostom, the patriarchs of Constantinople had held sway over the six provinces of Thrace which embraced the modern Bulgaria. And it was there that the Greeks first met the Bulgarians. But, by the time of Photius, the Bulgarian kingdom had spread far into Western Illyricum, and King Boris resided in Achrida. When Pope Nicholas, therefore, made the same assertion as Photius, his claim would seem to have had a broader foundation. But the whole question is obviously complicated, and the present writer cannot unravel it further.

S. Ansgar and his successors

Nicholas was also watching with interest the good work which was still being done by St. Ansgar among the Scandinavians. Mention has already been made of his bull, by which, owing to the burning of Hamburg by the Danes (845), he incorporated that See with the diocese of Bremen, and named Ansgar archbishop of the combined See. This he did (864) at the request of Louis the German, after he had learnt how matters stood from Solomon, bishop of Constance, sent to Rome by Louis, and from the priests who had been sent by Ansgar himself. In his bull the Pope takes care to ordain that for the future the archbishop of Cologne, in whose diocese Bremen was originally comprised, was not to exercise any jurisdiction in the new diocese. The bull concludes by granting Ansgar the pallium on the usual conditions—“to wit, that his successors, both in writing and on oath, proclaim, in person or by their envoys, that they are united with us in faith, that they receive the six holy synods, and the decrees of all the bishops of Rome; and that they will accept and put into execution the (apostolic) injunctions (epistolae) which may be brought to them”. Certain it is that Ansgar took the greatest care of the privileges which he received from the Apostolic See, and, moreover, had them copied and sent to nearly all the bishops of Louis the German.

The same year (864) Nicholas wrote to the Danish king Horic (or Eric), the Younger (854-888?), who, though not yet baptized, had “offered his vows to God and to Blessed Peter”, to thank him for the presents he had sent him by bishop Solomon, and to exhort him to give up the worship of idols, which cannot help themselves, much less him. From some later authors it would seem that Horic followed the Pope’s recommendations, and was baptized along with many of his people. With his predecessor, Eric I (d. 854), St. Ansgar had had a good understanding, for it was “upon the healthy admonitions of Ansgar that he had laid aside the errors of his impious heart, and had atoned for whatsoever he had done amiss in the insolence thereof”. During his reign, therefore, Christianity made substantial progress in Denmark; but his successor Eric II was persuaded to act vigorously against it. In due course, however, through the instances of the Saint, Eric withdrew his opposition, and Christian churches were once again opened in his country. But whether he himself became a Christian is very doubtful. At any rate, not long before his death, Ansgar was able to report to the bishops in Louis’s kingdom that “the Church of Christ was established both among the Danes and the Swedes, and that priests perform their functions in those countries without let or hindrance”. On the death of the Apostle of the North (865), his biographer and companion, Rembert, was chosen to succeed him. He received the pallium from Nicholas in December 865. Great must have been the consolation which the heroic work of these two kindred spirits brought to the Pope. He watched so carefully the beginnings of Christianity among the Slavs and Scandinavians, because it was his contention that his authority was requisite for the due founding of a new church. “If”, he said, “according to the sacred decrees a new basilica cannot be built without the sanction of the Pope, how can a church, i.e. a collection of Catholics, be instituted without the consent of the Apostolic See?”.

So far it may be said that we have not seen any intervention on the part of the Pope in the political affairs of the empire. The fact is that, speaking generally, did not mingle in them at all. Affairs more strictly spiritual occupied his attention, and it has been well said in their regard that under Nicholas I “the papacy entered upon the full possession of its primacy of jurisdiction, drawing and reserving to itself all important questions of ecclesiastical or moral interest, and thus preparing itself to play later on, at the full tide of the Middle Ages, a most splendid role, that of the most powerful mistress of souls which the world has ever seen”.

In the domain of politics, the efforts of Nicholas were confined to endeavors to promote the cause of peace. There was ever war either between Charles the Bald and Louis the German, or between each of those sovereigns and their respective sons. In the first year of the pontificate of Nicholas, Louis, invoked by certain malcontents, invaded the territory of his brother. At first he carried all before him; but a reaction set in in favor of Charles, and Louis had to retreat to his own country. Anxious to clear himself in the eyes of the emperor (Louis II) and of the Pope, he sent (859) Thioton, abbot of Fulda, into Italy, to exculpate him, In this mission Thioton was completely successful, and returned with a letter from the Pope in his master’s favor. Peace was concluded between the two sovereigns at Coblentz (860), where they took oaths of mutual fidelity “in accordance with the will of God and for the honor and defence of Holy Church”.

Two of the sons of Charles the Bald, viz., Louis and Charles, had given serious trouble to their father. In a letter of 863, the Pope informs the rebellious sons that he was preparing to punish them when he heard from his legate, bishop Odo, that they had become reconciled to their father. He exhorts them not again to fall away from their duty to their parents. In conclusion, he commands them to be present at a council which he has ordered to assemble, and to submit to what shall be there decided concerning them. It may be noted, in passing, that if Nicholas was ready to admonish the sons of Charles to obey their father, he was equally prepared to point out to Charles himself (unless, indeed, the reference by Hincmar and the bishops of the Council of Kiersy, 858, to the Apostolic See relates to some previous Pope) what he ought to amend in the maladministration of his kingdom.

In 865, the legate Arsenius was sent into “France”, not only in connection with the divorce of Lothaire, but to renew the peaceful understanding between Louis the German, and his nephews Louis, the emperor, and Lothaire, king of Lorraine. Two years later Nicholas has to try to keep the sons of Louis the German in obedience to their father. The fruit of this incessant warfare between brothers, fathers, and sons might well be the anarchy of the tenth century.

Many of Nicholas’s letters and decrees—signs not only of the man but of the times—show that the approaching anarchy was already casting its black shadows before. They reveal to us bishops at once youthful and vicious; priests the mere servants of laymen; priests whose sacred character did not save them from being murdered; bishops deposed from their Sees by lay nobles; the nobility, on the one hand, plundering priests and people with impunity, and, on the other hand, bishops recklessly scattering abroad excommunications. The letters of Nicholas show also that the long and severe canonical penances, so characteristic of the earlier centuries of the Church, were still in vogue, though they were somewhat modified in their severity by him. On a certain monk who had killed another, Nicholas imposed a penance of twelve years’ duration. The penitent was to pass the first three years in sorrow at the door of the church, the next two among the “auditors” (auditores), but was not to be allowed to receive Holy Communion. During the last seven he was to be allowed to communicate on the great feasts, but was not to be permitted to make any offerings for use in the sacrifice. Throughout the whole twelve years, except on Sundays and great festivals, he was to fast till evening, as in Lent. If he undertook a journey, it was to be on foot. Nicholas declared that had it not been for the faith displayed by the monk, and for his respect for the holy apostles Peter and Paul, whose protection he had come to Rome to implore, he would have had to impose a lifelong penance upon him.

Whether there was less to be done after the labors of his predecessors in this direction, or whether Nicholas had less taste or leisure for work of the sort, it is certain that he did not spend so much time and money on public buildings as the popes who had immediately gone before him. Still, his biographer has to record not a few of the Pope’s gifts to different churches and many of his building operations. Among his most important undertakings in the latter department was the repairing of the Tocia, i.e. Jocia, and the Trajana or Sabatina aqueducts. The former, the locality of which was at one time unknown, had, we are told, long been out of repair. The old reading Tocia had concealed its identity, but the restoration of the reading Jocia has enabled Duchesne to identify it with the Jobia or Jovia aqueduct. It is often mentioned in the eighth and ninth centuries, and is the one which, passing over the arch of Drusus, near the Porta Appia (now the Porta S. Sebastiano), was carried towards the Circus Maximus and struck the Tiber near the Greek Quarter (schola), with its Church of S. Maria in Cosmedin. The learned abbe suggests, as we have already seen, that the restoration of this aqueduct may well have been in connection with the great hospice which Nicholas attached to that church.

The Trajana aqueduct had already been repaired by Gregory IV. Damaged, perhaps, by the Saracens, it was both repaired and improved under the personal supervision of Nicholas, especially for the benefit of the poorer pilgrims who flocked to Rome. Kept in order by successive popes, it enters Rome on the Janiculum, and supplies the fountains in front of St. Peter’s and much of the Trastevere. Nicholas also refortified Ostia, and placed in it a strong garrison.

Like his immediate predecessors, he also endeavored to make good the damage done to St. Peter’s by “the devastation of the Saracens”. He adorned with frescos the new S. Maria Antigua, and added still another building to the already very complex structure of the Lateran palace. It is most interesting to find that the fame of Nicholas had attracted some of our countrymen to Rome, and that too, despite their difficulties at home from the Danes, and that they helped him to decorate churches. Mindful of the great Pope from whom they had received the light of Christianity, we find these grateful Englishmen erecting a silver tablet in the little chapel of St. Gregory, which they found, not, as the old editions of the Liber Pontificalis say, in the church dedicated to St. Peter at Frascata, but in the basilica of the Prince of the Apostles at Rome.

To those who desire to know more of Nicholas, we must, with Anastasius, commend the perusal of his weighty letters. For if we desired to record all he did, “paper rather than material” would fail us.

Gregory I and Nicholas I

With the great deeds and words of Nicholas before them, the party cry of the False Decretals ringing in their ears, and the doings of earlier pontiffs not clearly in their minds, many authors write as though, under Nicholas, the See of Rome had exercised in the Church powers essentially higher than it had before. It is said that Nicholas asserted a new primacy over the bishops of the Christian world, and arrogated to himself new rights as teacher and as absolute ruler of the Universal Church.

It may be at once conceded that, with the development of the Church in general, and of the churches in the West in particular, on the one hand, and the growing anarchy there on the other, and with the increasing manifestation of the tendency of the East to slip away from the grasp of the popes, the intervention of Nicholas in ecclesiastical affairs generally all over the world was more frequent than that of his predecessors. But that interference was imperatively called for. And just as Gregory I took upon himself more temporal responsibility than the popes who had gone before him, because the disordered state of the times in Italy required a firm hand—and apart from his there was none—so Nicholas I did the same in the spiritual and temporal orders in the larger field of the whole Catholic world. If he proclaimed nothing new, advanced no fresh pretension, his remarkable energy in applying received principles to concrete cases resulted in a much wider recognition of the Pope’s supreme spiritual jurisdiction in the Church. If he enunciated nothing new, he no doubt gave a further expansion to admitted principles, and pushed further home conclusions already granted.

On him kings, like other Christians, were dependent in the spiritual order. For they are but men after all; and all men had been ordered by Our Lord to hear the Church. And this truth Nicholas did not fail to express in his letters. In his famous letter to the emperor Michael he writes : “By the power of God we have been born the sons (and heirs) of the apostles Peter and Paul; and, though in merit far beneath them, we have been constituted princes over all the earth, i.e. over the Universal Church; for the earth here means the Church”. And it is only fair to add that the position of Nicholas was as much recognized by the kings themselves as claimed by him. In a letter to Nicholas, already quoted, the emperors Louis II and Lothaire proclaim him their spiritual father and profess themselves his sons. “No one”, they write, “more fully and ardently desires the prosperity of your apostleship than do we both who love you; who, as spiritual and most devoted sons, embrace your loving paternity with all the affection of our hearts ... and who with mind and heart humbly commend ourselves to your holy paternity ... since the apostle says—All power comes from God”.

But with all this, it must not be thought that Nicholas either claimed or exercised any powers which his predecessors had not. The growth of the papal power in the Church was as natural as the increasing exercise of reason with the gradual development of the human frame. To bring out the truth of this assertion, we may conveniently turn for purposes of comparison to Gregory the Great. And that, not because earlier pontiffs cannot be cited in this connection, but because he was the first Pope treated of in this work.

Like his great predecessor, Nicholas always grounds his claims on the three memorable texts—Thou art Peter (Matt. xvi. 18), Confirm thy brethren (Luke xxii. 32), Feed my lambs, Feed my sheep (John xxi. 5),—on precedent, viz., on what had been said and done by his predecessors, and, lastly, on what the Fathers and the Councils had said of the power and prerogatives of the popes.

We may descend to a few particulars. If Nicholas declared he was head of the Church, and thus above all bishops, Gregory had made the same assertion over and over again. Speaking of the See which put forth the greatest pretensions, as well as in his days as in those of Nicholas, Gregory writes : “As to what they say concerning the Church of Constantinople, who doubts that it is subject to the Apostolic See? This is constantly acknowledged by our most pious lord the emperor and our brother the bishop of the same city. Still, if that or any other Church has anything good, I am ready to imitate my inferiors in good, whilst at the same time I keep them from what is not right. For a fool is he who thinks that he shows his primacy when he considers it beneath him to copy any good he may see”. And, speaking not merely of one See, however important, but of the whole Church, Gregory lays down that the care of all of it has been entrusted to him, that he is the shepherd of the whole flock of Christ, and that the Apostolic See is the head of all the churches.

If Nicholas claimed a right of censorship over books which treated of the faith, and declared that “the Roman Church confirmed councils by its authority .... and that certain councils were without authority because they had never received the assent of the Roman pontiffs”—we find Gregory declaring that he has forbidden the reading of a book, because he found therein “manifest poison of heretical infection”, and that a synod “would have no force without the authority and consent of the Apostolic See”. And if we find Nicholas resisting emperors and patriarchs, did not Gregory resist Maurice, and John the Faster? The altered conditions of his temporal position are enough to explain the greater force and freedom of the tone of Nicholas to the kings of the earth. Lastly, if to the assertions of Gregory already quoted, we add that, when he nominated vicars in any part of the Church, he took care to let them know that he reserved the more important cases (cause majores) to himself, Nicholas will not be thought to have claimed for the Roman Church more than Gregory, when he said : “It is for the Apostolic See to judge metropolitans, whose causes have always been reserved to it; moreover, it has been its wont to condemn or absolve patriarchs, as the case may be; and it has been its acknowledged and inherent right to judge all priests, inasmuch as it belongs to it by special prerogative to make laws, issue decrees, and promulgate decisions throughout the whole Church”.

In referring the reader for the further development of these points to the second part of Roy’s biography, it may in fine be noted that, if Nicholas seems to exercise more legislative, judicial, and executive authority in the Church than did Gregory I, and that if he himself seems to be eclipsed in this by Gregory VII, there can be no doubt that the conclusions, drawn from the increased study of canon law from this century onwards, did but justify their action. The more the position of the Pope in the Church was studied, whether in the domain of theology or canon law, the more fully was acknowledged his dogmatic supremacy on the one hand and his legislative and executive authority on the other. It must, moreover, be remembered that both theologians and canon lawyers always maintained that what they set down as the rights of the Pope in their particular age were legitimate conclusions from the words of Our Lord to St. Peter, and from the position of the Pope in the Church, and had, moreover, at least in some primitive way, been exercised by the popes of preceding ages. And contrary to the direct temporal influence of the Pope in the affairs of this world, which, beginning in the twelfth century, reached its climax from the days of Innocent III to Boniface VIII, and then began to decline, contrary, we say, to this temporal influence, the spiritual prerogatives of the Pope in the Church have gone on steadily developing to this present hour. The great temporal influence of the papacy was seemingly brought about by divine providence for the benefit of the rising nations of Europe, which were brought up under the parental guidance of the popes. It ceased when the nations were able to stand by themselves and were no longer in need of it, or, may be, were no longer worthy of it. But the spiritual position of the popes was for the advantage of God’s Church, and as that, in the belief of Catholics, is to last for ever, so will papal preeminence, they hold, endure powerfully to the end of time.

“Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Popes” says Macaulay, “was in the dark ages productive of far more good than evil. Its effect was to unite the nations of Western Europe into one great commonwealth. What the Olympian chariot course and the Pythian oracle were to all the Greek cities from Trebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her bishop were to all Christians of the Latin communion from Calabria to the Hebrides. Thus grew up sentiments of enlarged benevolence. Nations separated from each other by seas and mountains acknowledged a fraternal tie and a common code of public law. Even in war the cruelty of the conqueror was not seldom mitigated by the recollection that he and his vanquished enemies were all members of one great federation”.

Nicholas died November 13, 867, and we are assured by his biographer that not only did all men long bewail his loss, but the heavens themselves long shed tears thereat. He was buried “before the gates of St. Peter’s”.

Writing to Ado, archbishop of Vienne, Anastasius earnestly begs him to pray for Nicholas. “Alas !” he writes, “how late was the Church in meriting so noble a man and how soon in losing him”. In the Roman martyrology mention is made of Nicholas as “vigore apostolico praestantis” (November 13), and his successor Hadrian II speaks of him as a “new star appearing amidst the clouds of this life, and as one who, under God, by the brightness of his life and learning, drove away the darkness of error, and who by word and example showed not only what ought to be condemned, but what ought to be imitated”.

It will not be expected that we should leave Nicholas I without saying something about the famous False Decretals, inasmuch as Nicholas is said by some to have fortified his pretensions by citations from these documents. From the writings of a certain class of authors, it would seem that there are men credulous enough to believe that the power and position of the popes in the Church from the Middle Ages onwards rests solely on a collection of forged letters. Others, who do not go quite so far as this, still imagine that at least much of their authority came from the False Decretals. The fact is that, at the very most, the work of “Isidore Mercator” only quickened the development of the exercise of the power of the popes in the details of the government of the Church. It is now indeed acknowledged by many non-Catholic writers that the influence of the Pseudo-Isidorian decrees on the growth of the authority of the popes in the Church has been much exaggerated. “It will be seen”, says Mr. Wells, “that the influence of the Forged Decretals, based on a misconception of their contents and history, has been very much over-estimated”. They introduced nothing at all new, and consequently caused no radical change in the internal life of the Church. They may have caused a comparatively rapid evolution of ecclesiastical discipline in some directions, but the development was a real growth of what already pre-existed. Just as divers new conditions often result in a rapid and sometimes uneven, though quite natural, development of different parts of the human frame, the Forged Decretals perhaps precipitated a further centralization in the government of the Church; for instance, by bringing under the causae majores all that concerned the deposition of bishops. But as has been said, “they were only an expression of the principles and tendency (and, it might have been added, of the wants) of the age; and things would have gone just the same (or practically the same) if they had never existed”.

It is allowed that the False Decretals were not known to Nicholas I till 864. We shall show that whenever they were first brought to his notice, they were never used by him. If the acts of the popes from Gregory I till that epoch be compared with the doings of the popes after that date, it will be at once seen that nothing was done in the latter period which was not done in the former. The same things were practiced as before, but perhaps more frequently. It was precisely because no new principle was set forth in the False Decretals that they were so readily and unquestionably received. Had they inculcated a brand new set of doctrines with regard to Church government, they could no more have been unquestionably accepted all over the Christian world for hundreds of years, than could a Civil Code containing an important body of new and unauthorized laws be foisted without indignant protest upon a particular country.

Before the collection of Isidore Mercator, several other collections of canons had been made and circulated in different parts of the Church. Of the earlier collections, the one in most repute was that made by the monk Dionysius the Little, at Rome, in the beginning of the sixth century. It consisted of the canons of various councils and a number of decretal letters of the Popes, from S. Siricius (385) to Anastasius II (498). This had an extensive circulation and was well known to the Franks, as Pope Hadrian I had sent it to Charlemagne. Another collection, also well known to them, was one that had been made in Spain, and was ascribed to S. Isidore of Seville (636).

But about the middle of the ninth century there appeared in France no less than three spurious collections, viz., the short one known as the Capitula Angilramni, which professed to be a set of canons given by Pope Hadrian I to Angelramn, bishop of Metz. In some copies, indeed, of this work it is said that it was presented by the bishop to the Pope. This collection consists of some seventy short chapters, mostly dealing with questions of ecclesiastical judicial procedure. Then we have the Capitularies of Benedict Levita, who professed to have drawn them from the archives of Mayence, when he was a deacon there under archbishop Otgar. The work of Benedict is divided into three books, in each of which are over four hundred articles on different subjects.

Lastly, there is the collection known as that of Isidore Mercator. In the preface to his work Isidore says that he has been forced by bishops and others to collect together the various canons. Of the three parts of which the collection is made up, the first contains the preface, a letter to and one from Pope Damasus (366-384), in which latter the Pope professes to comply with a request contained in the former for the decrees of the Popes up to his own time. We have also in this first part the so-called Apostolic Canons, some sixty forged Decretals of the Popes from S. Clement to S. Melchiades (311-314) and the false Donation of Constantine. The second part gives the Acts of the Councils, from that of Nice to that of the Second Council of Seville (619), for the most part already edited, The third part consists of Decretals of Popes from St. Silvester to Gregory II, of which some forty are forgeries.

Besides treating of the primacy and other prerogatives and privileges of the Roman See and of bishops, in their various relations to the secular power, to their metropolitans, etc., it is important to remember that the documents in this collection treat of matters theological, liturgical, and penitential. Though forgeries, these decretals “are nevertheless, in matter of fact, the real utterances of Popes, though not of those to whom they are ascribed; and hence the forgery is, on the whole, one of chronological location, and does not affect their essential character”.

With regard to these three collections, the truth is that there is but little definitely known about them. Of the chronological sequence of their production, of their author or authors, of the exact year of their issue, there is no certainty. It is, however, highly probable that they were manufactured in France about the middle of the ninth century. They may easily have been the work of one man; of a man whom the works themselves show to have been working for a good end, with a good motive, but, of course, with reprehensible ideas of his own concerning literary honesty.

By degrees the work of Isidore Mercator, which was popularly supposed to be the production of St. Isidore of Seville, and which from its first appearance was at once accepted in France, practically ousted the other collections altogether, and was for centuries the collection of canons which was cited, both by councils and by individuals. Centuries also elapsed before any suspicion was entertained that the decretals therein contained were not genuine in every respect. There can be no doubt that the principal reason of this their ready acceptance was the fact that there was nothing in them out of harmony with the religious and ecclesiastical ideas of the age in which they made their first appearance. There was nothing in them to provoke suspicion. Had they manifested any general substantial clashing with the views of the period on the hierarchy, etc., they would never have been received without a searching investigation. New laws cannot be imposed on men, especially on ecclesiastics, without causing a considerable amount of sensation. And if the False Decretals of Isidore had been, as many would seem to believe they were, a collection of canons which imposed new obligations and created new privileges, it is certain that their claim to general acceptance would have been thoroughly investigated. But as they seemed to men simply to focus already more or less clearly received notions, they were readily accepted for what they professed to be. About the middle of the fifteenth century, however, they were definitely pronounced spurious by Cardinal Nicholas de Cusa, who was as great a critic in the domain of physical science as in that of literature. His verdict has been generally accepted since by writers of all creeds.

It has been most reasonably suggested that the state of the times was the cause of the publication of the False Isidore; and that, consequently, we must look therein for the cue as to the aim and object of the author of the Forged Decretals. The wars between Louis and his sons, and afterwards between these sons themselves, or again between them and their sons, which permitted of incursions with impunity of Norman, Saracen, and Slav, and of the multiplication of petty tyrants, were resulting in the decay of all order. In the midst of the growing civil anarchy, the Church, too, in the Carolingian empire was suffering in a corresponding manner. On the one hand, she was in trouble from without. Her property was being seized by powerful nobles, and the freedom of her elections interfered with. From within also was the Church in difficulties. In imitation of the higher secular nobility, the greater ecclesiastics endeavored to arrogate power to themselves, to the detriment of the rights of others beneath them. And their ambition was favored by the temporal rulers who with good reason imagined that they could the more easily get the whole of the episcopate under their control, if once the latter were brought well within the grasp of one or two metropolitans, upon whom it would not be difficult for them to keep their iron hands. The natural remedy in the case of the civil disorder would have been a strong imperial power; and in the ecclesiastical, the constant action of a strong central authority. In the ecclesiastical order, as in the civil, there was a recognized central authority—that of the bishops of Rome. One of the aims of the False Decretals was to bring that power into more constant action. In the civil order, to check oppression on the part of local authority, there was needed a ready means of appeal to a direct and less local representative of the central government. With the strength of a Charlemagne behind them, this want had been well supplied by his missi dominici. In ecclesiastical affairs the papal vicars were destined to serve the same ends. The chief' aim, therefore, of the Pseudo-Isidore was, by the appeal to very remote antiquity, to bring about the more ready acceptance of such legislation as would naturally result in freeing the clergy from metropolitan or lay oppression.

The principal end, therefore, of the author of the Forged Decretals was not—contrary to what apparently many seem anxious to believe—the exaltation of the See of Rome. On this point we will use no words of our own, but leave the field to a non-Catholic writer.

“It has been said sometimes, and it is supposed quite generally, that the main object of the Decretals was to enhance the supremacy of Rome, but this view is now given up by all the best and most recent scholars.

“In the first place, most of the arguments for it have been directly disproved. The Forged Decretals were not composed by the Popes, nor written at Rome. They were not first known to the Popes, nor first used by the Popes; indeed, they were used very little by the Popes until after the tenth century, when they had become incorporated into the general ecclesiastical legislation. The position given to the primates and the mere mention of papal vicars in only four places are regarded by Hinschius and others as showing that Pseudo-Isidore was more intent on freeing the bishops from the metropolitans than on extending the power of the Popes”.

The author of this straightforward passage remarks therein that the False Decretals “were used very little by the Popes until after the tenth century”. It is more than doubtful if they were used by any Pope before Leo IX, except once by Hadrian II, on a matter of no importance. It has indeed been said that they were used by Nicholas I. Of their existence he was in all likelihood aware, but he did not himself use them. Against this latter assertion it is urged particularly that Nicholas, in asserting that bishops could not be condemned without reference to the Holy See, and that councils must receive papal sanction, introduced a new discipline into the Church, and was in fact relying on the False Decretals. Taking these two points in detail, it is to be observed that if, as is generally agreed, Nicholas did not know of the existence of the False Decretals till 864, he could not have been resting on them when in 862 he wrote that it was “by the authority and sanction of the bishops of the first See of the Roman Church that all synods and councils were confirmed”. And even if Nicholas had known of the existence of the False Decretals when he penned that letter to Photius, it had long ago been laid down, in a genuine epistle of Pope S. Gelasius I (492-6), that it is “by the authority of the Apostolic See that every synod is confirmed”, and we are told by the Byzantine historian Socrates that Pope Julius (341-352) reminded a number of bishops that, “by ecclesiastical law, no decisions of the churches are valid unless sanctioned by the bishop of Rome”.

Again, if, in 865, in a letter famous in this matter of the Decretals, Nicholas affirmed that “more important matters” were to be referred to the Apostolic See, and that among such causae majores the condemnation of bishops must of a certainty be reckoned, not only had he himself already (863) asserted this, but S. Innocent I (402-417) had centuries before laid down “that the more important causes were to be referred to the Apostolic See, after the decision of the bishops had been given, in accordance with the synodal decrees and custom”. And if it be remembered that it is the belief of the Catholic Church that bishops have received a divine commission to rule the churches of God, and that they are regarded by her as the depositaries and organs of the faith, it would certainly seem no more than a natural development that what concerns their status should in process of time tend more and more to come under the immediate cognizance of her head.

Besides, if we look to ancient custom, we find fourth-century Greek historians assuring us that, when Pope Julius restored Paul of Constantinople and other Eastern bishops to their sees, he did so in virtue “of the peculiar privileges” or “prerogative” of the Church of Rom—a superior authority recognized as theirs even by the contemporary pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus.

It is in the letter to “all the bishops of Gaul” (865) that Nicholas says most about decretals. In it he shows that he evidently has in his mind two sets of papal documents, one a “codified” collection, and the other consisting of the decrees of Popes as he found them in the papal archives. It is also evident that the latter collection was regarded by him as of equal importance, but that it was to the codified collection that an effort was being made to restrain him by those concerning whom he was writing, and who had objected to receiving certain decretals because they were not in their code. And their code was that of Dionysius the Little. At least it was supposed to be. If, argued Nicholas, papal decrees were not to be received which were not in the collection of the canons, then not only could neither the decrees of S. Gregory I nor of many another Pope be accepted, but not even the Scriptures themselves, since they had never been inserted in any code of ecclesiastical canons. But, concludes Nicholas, the papal decrees must be received even if they have not been codified; and there is no difference between those which have been so treated and those which from their very number could scarcely be so arranged. It is perfectly plain from this letter of 865 that, though there was a recognized code of canons, Nicholas did not pin his faith to any codified collection, not even to that of Dionysius, still less to that of the Pseudo-Isidore. The whole trend of his letter was to prove that papal decretals had to be submitted to as suck, and consequently were as binding whether found in a code or not. And so, though in this letter he quotes, not indeed from the code of the Pseudo-Isidore, but from that of Dionysius, which Hincmar professed to receive, he also quotes, as of equal value, decretals of the Popes which had not then been inserted in any published code. If Nicholas did not use the False Decretals in this letter, it certainly cannot be shown that he used them in any other. The whole question of the use of the False Decretals by Nicholas has been thoroughly examined by Roy. We will cite the conclusions to which he has arrived. Though Nicholas was acquainted with, and sometimes, as we have seen, quotes from the canonical collection of Dionysius the Little, and from one attributed to John of Antioch, he often cites decrees of his predecessors which are not found in any collection. Of these latter citations, a few are not authentic, and of these latter again most are not found among the False Decretals. Of the remaining very few (two or three) spurious decrees which are found both in the writings of Nicholas and in the collection of the Pseudo-Isidore, all are to be found in documents which, though not genuine, had been forged centuries before the days either of Nicholas or the Pseudo-Isidore had passed into general use, and were therefore accessible to Nicholas without the intermedium of the False Decretals. Further, not only did Nicholas not use the great mass of the false texts assigned by the Pseudo-Isidore to the very earliest Popes, though they would have been very convenient for him, especially in his difficulties with Photius, but he invariably assigned to their real authors the true documents used in common by him and by the Pseudo-Isidore, but attributed by the latter to popes much earlier than those by whom they were actually composed. The False Decretals were then evidently ignored by Nicholas, and that, no doubt, not because he had any positive grounds for doubting their authenticity, but because he had no ready means of verifying their genuineness.

Hadrian II, however, in a letter to the bishops of the synod of Douzi-les-Près, certainly did quote one of the False Decretals, in the shape of a letter of Pope Anterus (238-240). But the citation was only introduced by him while unfolding his approval of the action of the fathers of that synod in transferring, for grave reasons, a bishop from one See to another, and may easily have been first used by the council itself. In any case, the prerogatives of the Apostolic See were not advanced by Hadrian by means of the Forged Decretals. He never cited them again, nor, practically speaking, did any of his successors, till the middle of the eleventh century. When, from the time of St. Leo IX, the said Decretals were more freely used by the popes, they were universally accepted, and the “encroachments” on the rights of others which some pretend were made by the popes, through the instrumentality of forgeries, were by that time confessedly complete. And it has been well pointed out that the tradition at Rome of practically ignoring the False Decretals was only broken when there came into the Chair of Peter a bishop (Bruno of Toul, S. Leo IX), of that nation among whom the collection had first seen the light and among whom there was not the slightest doubt as to its authenticity.

HADRIAN II.

A.D. 867-872.

EMPEROR OF THE EAST.                          

EMPEROR OF THE WEST.

Basil I. (the Macedonian), 867- 886.               Louis II., 850-875.

THOUGH the reign of Hadrian did not last for more than five years, an extraordinary amount of work seems to have been accomplished by that septuagenarian pontiff. Whether it is that chance has preserved for us more records, or at least more detailed records of his doings, or whether it is that work, which had been attracted to Rome by the splendid energy of his predecessor, was waiting there for its completion, what was actually done by a man who had already passed 1 the allotted span of human life when he became Pope cannot fail to strike with astonishment all who consider it.

Hadrian, who was a member of a family which had already given two popes (Stephen (IV) V and Sergius II) to the Church, was the son of Talarus, afterwards a bishop, and was a citizen of the third region of the city. His virtues attracted the attention of Gregory IV, who made him a subdeacon; and, in accordance with the usual custom in such cases, brought him into the Lateran palace, to be trained in piety and learning. Ordained cardinal-priest of St. Mark's (842), he so distinguished himself by his blameless and manly administration of it, that “he was revered by the people not only as one who had been made a priest, but as the future Pope”

Of his various virtues, the one most marked out by his biographer for our admiration was his love of the poor, and what others, with less faith than himself, would call his extravagant charity towards them. But his continual prayer in the Church of Our Lady “ad praesepe”, had begotten within him such confidence in Our Lord and His blessed Mother, that he felt assured that his charities would never leave him without resource, and that in carrying out his works of mercy, he might safely encounter any pecuniary risks. In illustration of his charity and trust in God, his biographer, from whom we have drawn all these details, relates the following:—On one occasion, after he had received with his fellow priests, according to custom, forty denarii from Pope Sergius, he was unable, on his return home, to get near his house on account of the number of pilgrims who flocked there as to a public granary. At the sight, the good priest was filled with a holy joy, and turning to his almoner (equester), he cried: What is it to have money in comparison with having so many brothers? Thereupon, though he saw he had not enough ‘pence’ to give one apiece even to a third of the pilgrims; in the power of Christ, said he, who, with five loaves and two fishes fed five thousand men, I will give not one but three pence to each one here. This he did, and still the almoner declared that the supply of money was not exhausted. When after each of the cardinal’s household had also received his three pence, and there were still six left over : How bountiful is the Almighty, exclaimed Hadrian to his astonished almoner, for He has not only given three pence each to so many of our brethren, but has kept three for each of us also”. There is no exaggeration in the pretty thought of his biographer, that “mercy came out from his mother’s womb together with him, and grew along with him”.

It is exceedingly difficult to place in their true light the events which cent red round the election and consecration of the successor of Nicholas. For this, doubts regarding questions of chronology and uncertainty in connection with the identity of certain important individuals are responsible. It is indeed certain that Bishop Arsenius, who had fallen out of favor with Nicholas, again acquired influence with Hadrian, while remaining well-disposed towards the emperor; but it is by no means clear whether he was acting for the emperor in supporting Hadrian, or how far he was the head and front of the opposition, which immediately displayed itself, to the policy of Pope Nicholas. Nor, again, as it seems to me, can the identity of Anastasius the librarian and Anastasius the antipope be regarded as proved, and it is not certain that Arsenius was the father of the librarian. Further, in the strife of parties which followed the death of Nicholas, it is hard to say whether Lambert of Spoleto was acting for himself or the emperor when he made his violent entry into Rome, and equally hard to say when exactly he did make it. It was made tempore consecrationis. Does that mean before, during, or after Hadrian’s consecration? In view of these uncertainties, our narrative will closely follow the order of events, presumably arranged chronologically, set forth in the Liber Pontificalis.

In Hadrian, at any rate, the “nolo episcopare” was not a mere form. Twice before, on the demise of Pope Leo IV, and then again on that of Benedict III, had the whole united body of clergy, nobility, and people pressed him to take on his shoulders the burden of the supreme pontificate. Twice with argument and “exquisite excuses” had he with modesty declined the proffered honour? On the death of Nicholas, however, the will of the united clergy, nobility, and people was not to be baulked. Hadrian they, one and all, rich and poor, would have. The two sections of the nobility, viz., the clerical and the lay aristocracy presumably, seemed at first to be divided. But it was only, says the papal biographer, because each party doubted whether Hadrian was duly loved by the other, and feared that the other would vote for someone else. When these doubts and fears had been cleared up, bishops and priests, nobles and people, with one accord hurried Hadrian from the Liberian basilica (S. Maria ad Praesepe) to the Lateran palace, where they installed him Pope. On hearing of the election, the imperial missi, who happened at that time to be in the city, expressed great indignation that the Quirites had not invited them to share in the election. However, when they were told that they had not been invited to take part in the election, not from any want of respect for the emperor, but for fear lest a precedent should be created which would require the presence of imperial envoys at the election of the popes, they were mollified.

As soon as they went to salute the newly-elected Pontiff, they were literally besieged by the people crying out for the consecration of Hadrian. The Roman people were in one of their furores. The senators had the greatest difficulty in preventing them from having Hadrian consecrated forthwith, without waiting for any imperial assent. Louis, however, hastened to assure the Romans of his satisfaction at the good choice they had made, and that their unanimity made him also desirous of Hadrian’s consecration.

He was accordingly consecrated on Sunday, December 4, 867, at St. Peter’s, by Donatus, bishop of Ostia, Peter, bishop of Cava (in the archdiocese of Salerno), and Leo, bishop of Silva-Candida (a town in Tuscany on the Aurelian Way). The two latter bishops took the place of the bishop of Albano, who was dead, and of Formosus of Porto, who was in Bulgaria.

At the Mass which the Pope celebrated on this occasion, all, we are told, were anxious to receive Holy Communion at his hands. And, as an earnest of the conciliatory policy he intended to pursue, he forthwith, on the condition of their performing satisfactory penance, restored to ecclesiastical communion Theutgard of Triers, Zachary of Anagni, and Anastasius, the former antipope. On his return to the Lateran palace, he further signalized his consecration day by abolishing the custom which had gradually come into vogue of selling the presents given to the Pope on such occasions. After retaining what would serve his table, Hadrian caused the rest to be distributed among the poor, saying that what had been freely received should be freely given; and that senseless and inanimate coin ought not to be more loved than reasonable creatures.

The consecration of Hadrian did not take place a day too soon, for every fraction of authority was needed to stem the anarchy which was rapidly getting the Western continent of Europe into its grip. No sooner had the firm restraining hand of Nicholas been relaxed in death than the clerical and lay elements of disorder had begun to assert themselves at once. Writing to his friend Ado, archbishop of Vienne, the librarian Anastasius calls on him to resist the ravening wolves who broke into the fold immediately after the death of Nicholas. “All those whom he reproved for adultery or other crimes are burning to have his acts reversed and his writings destroyed”, he says. By no means for the last time in the history of the popes, the most extravagant rumors were diligently circulated, the wildest talk indulged in immediately after the death of the late Pope. It was confidently asserted that the emperor was in favor of the malcontents, that there was to be a council held in Rome in which the metropolitans of Gaul were to get back their status, and that Nicholas had been guilty of heresy. Party feeling ran higher, or rather, the bitterness of faction fights waxed more furious than ever. “Many sons of the holy Church of God” were exiled or imprisoned on one pretext or another. On the strength of false charges, the emperor had, during the vacancy of the Holy See, banished the bishops of Nepi and Velletri, and John Hymmonides, the author of the life of S. Gregory the Great. Moved by the Pope’s letters, however, Louis not only sent back with honor the two bishops to the city, but ordered the release of those whom private revenge had been powerful enough to incarcerate on the plea of high treason against the emperor. Evidently the imperial party, or rather, that faction which strove to cover its own self-seeking under a show of zeal for the imperial authority, had not been idle during the interregnum. And we may well doubt whether the election of Hadrian had the sweetly simple character assigned to it by his biographer, or, perchance, suspect that the language in which he has described it is that of irony.

Those who were hoping to profit by the weakness of the supreme authority, whether in Church or in State, did not cease to spread abroad reports especially calculated to discredit the deeds of Pope Nicholas. When they saw Hadrian continuing the public works of his predecessor, and showing in every way, even by the manner in which in his private life he copied the conduct of Nicholas, that he was desirous of walking in his footsteps, they gave out that he was a mere “Nicholaite”. On the other hand, when it was observed that Hadrian kept near him certain of these malcontents of whose repentance as a matter of fact he entertained hopes, it was bruited about that he himself had in mind to rescind the acts of his predecessor. Nothing so much proves the esteem in which Nicholas was held by the Catholic world as the sensation which this report caused. Letters poured in to Rome from the bishops of the West, respectfully yet repeatedly impressing on Hadrian that he must be true to the memory of Nicholas. Some Greeks and Orientals who were in Rome at this time (among them men from Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople, some of whom were on an embassy from “the rulers of the world”, and others partisans of Ignatius and opponents of Photius), more easily impressible than the Westerns, went even to the length of privately withdrawing themselves from intercourse with the Pope. To get a favorable opportunity to give the lie to all these idle tales, Hadrian invited people in larger numbers than usual to the banquet that was wont to be held before Lent. At the dinner he not only waited upon his guests, but, to put them more at their ease, sat with them, a thing which, we are assured, he knew that no other Pope had ever done before him. When the repast was over, he prostrated himself before all his guests, and begged their prayers for the “Holy Catholic Church” for the emperor Louis, that he might subdue the Saracens, and for himself, who had to govern, weak as he was, the great flock that Christ had committed to St. Peter. On their crying out that the Pope ought rather to pray for them, he went on to beg them to continue praying for his predecessor, the most holy and orthodox Pope Nicholas; for to pray for the very good was to give thanks to God.

Great was the joy of the Easterns when they heard from Hadrian’s own lips that he was only anxious to accomplish the work begun by his predecessor. After they had thrice given long life to “Our lord Hadrian, by God’s decree supreme Pontiff and universal Pope”, at his request, “everlasting memory” was thrice acclaimed to the most holy and orthodox Pope Nicholas, the new Elias, the new Phinees.

One of the chief factors in keeping alive the unsettled state of men’s minds towards Hadrian was the suspicion with which many regarded his attitude towards Lothaire and his divorce. Just as the Orientals were afraid that he might regard the party of Photius in a different light to that in which it had been viewed by Nicholas, a strong section in Rome was evidently afraid that his conciliatory disposition might lead him to undo the work of his predecessor in the matter of the divorce. It was to no purpose that he was at pains to declare that his mind and will were in harmony with those of Nicholas, and that consequently his acts must also be, and that he would never tolerate any attempt to render nugatory the action of his great predecessor.

Men saw that Hadrian had given leave (868) to Lothaire to come to Rome to plead his cause again, a request which Nicholas had distinctly refused. They heard that the excommunication pronounced against Waldrada had been removed (February 868). It was pointed out that both Lothaire and the refractory Gunther had been given Holy Communion by the Pope himself at Monte Cassino (June 869). And at length (July 9, 869) Lothaire actually arrived in Rome. The upholders of the policy of Nicholas thought that Hadrian had a strange way of continuing that policy. They remembered that he had spoken of the necessity of his conforming to the altered state of the times, and moderating what the condition of things in his day had forced Nicholas to do with masterful justice. There was a general fear that he was going to carry his conciliatory policy too far, and that the greatest injury would be done to the whole Church. He must be strongly dissuaded from proceeding further in favoring the designs of Lothaire : so that when he summoned a council to treat of Lothaire’s case, after the latter had arrived in Rome, he found that his policy was not approved by his advisers. The opposition was led by Formosus, who had returned from Bulgaria, apparently in January 868, and had met with an enthusiastic reception. The speech he delivered on this occasion has been preserved, and has been already alluded to. He contrived to prevent any decision from being come to at that time, and to bring it about that the affairs in question, especially the affair of the divorce, should be referred to a larger assembly to be held in a year’s time. The death of Lothaire, which occurred within a few weeks after the holding of this synod, put an end to any necessity for calling such a council together, and in no little degree to the unsettled state of things in Rome.

Meanwhile events were happening there which testify, far more clearly than words to the growing feudalism or anarchy of the times. Of the black deeds to be done in Rome during the tenth century, there are now lurid shadows coming before. In the midst of the rejoicings connected with Hadrian’s consecration, Lambert, duke of Spoleto, burst into the city with an armed force, and conducted himself as though he were a conqueror with the rights of war. Neither ecclesiastical nor civil property was spared, virginity itself was not respected by the lawless satellites of the duke—satellites in whom, from the names of his chief adherents, Gregorovius sees the “ancestors of the later Astalli, Gualterii, Ilperini, Oddoni, and Tiberti”. At the first opportunity the conduct of Lambert was denounced by the Romans to the emperor. But what power Louis possessed at this time he was employing against the Saracens of Southern Italy. And though the outrage caused great indignation to be manifested against Lambert, not only on the part of foreigners but on that of the emperor, his conduct was for some time unpunished. It was not till some years later (871), when he thought fit to turn his arms against Louis himself, that he was, for a time at least, driven from his duchy by the emperor. Meanwhile, till they should restore their ill-gotten goods, and make full satisfaction to him, Hadrian excommunicated the other plunderers. Some of them made the necessary atonement and were pardoned, but the others definitely threw in their lot with Lambert.

Another of those events alluded to above, which fore-shadow the lawlessness of the tenth century, was enacted in the bosom of the Pope’s own family, and throws around his private life a more tragic interest than attaches to that of almost any other Pontiff. It is related by Hincmar in his annals (ad an. 868). “Like father, like son”, was illustrated in the case of Talarus and his son Hadrian. Both of them were married before they entered the ranks of the clergy, and both became bishops. When Hadrian became Pope, his wife Stephania was still alive, and living with her daughter. In the letter, which we have already quoted, from Anastasius to Ado of Vienne, the former assures his friend that the new Pope placed great reliance on the writer’s father (uncle?), and Ado’s friend—the rich bishop Arsenius; and that, too, though for some time past he had not been in good odour, owing to his having been under the displeasure of Nicholas and to having consequently drifted into the imperial party. Anastasius concludes his letter by begging Ado to use his best endeavors that the influence possessed by Arsenius with the emperor and the Pope may benefit the Church. Now it was precisely from the family of Arsenius that trouble came to the Pope. Eleutherius, the son of Arsenius, relying possibly on his father’s influence at the imperial court, carried off and married by force Hadrian’s daughter, though she was already betrothed to another (March 10, 868). To obtain immunity for his son, Arsenius set off to Beneventum to buy with his treasures the protection of the Empress Ingelberga, who was as avaricious as the bishop himself. He was, however, overtaken by sudden death, and his son, finding that he could not escape the imperial missi, in a fit of despairing fury slew both Stephania and her daughter before he was himself put to death. As the story ran that Anastasius, whom Hadrian had made “librarian of the Roman Church” in the very beginning of his pontificate, and who was the brother (or cousin?) of Eleutherius, had been the chief instigator of his violence, the outraged Pontiff summoned a synod to try him. In the sentence which he promulgated against Anastasius (October 4), Hadrian recapitulated the sentences passed upon him by Leo IV and Benedict III, and his pardon by Nicholas I. On the strength of certain charges, and no doubt prima facie evidence, Anastasius was again declared excommunicated until he should in synod clear himself of the accusations brought against him. The points of the indictment against the cardinal-priest were that he had stolen from the Lateran palace the acts of the synod which had condemned him; that he had endeavored to sow discord between the Church and the emperor; that he had been the cause of a certain Adalgrim, who had fled for sanctuary to a church, losing his eyes and tongue; and that, as one of his relations, the priest Ado, had declared before them all, he had urged Eleutherius to the murders of which he had been guilty.

Of these serious charges it would seem that Anastasius must have cleared himself. For the very next year (869) we see him sent, with Hadrian’s approval, to Constantinople, as the ambassador of the emperor Louis, and there executing business for the Pope, and also exercising the office of librarian under both Hadrian and John VIII.

These two incidents let us see what we have to expect on any further weakening of the imperial power, or on the advent to the papal throne of men whose characters were not of the firmest. The weak point, and it is an amiable one, of the papal government has always been that it has been conducted on lines that are too paternal.

Among the affairs entered into, but not brought to a conclusion by the great Nicholas, was the matter of the dukes or kings of Brittany, and the bishops in the country over which they claimed sway. Among those who, from different parts of the world, set out from home with letters for Nicholas, and reached Rome to find that Hadrian had succeeded him in the See of Peter, was Actard, bishop of Nantes.

When Nomenoius, duke of Brittany, was aiming at making himself king, and independent of Charles the Bald in every way, Actard of Nantes refused to be present on the occasion when he succeeded in getting himself anointed king (c. 848). The new monarch promptly drove Actard from his See, and placed another in his stead. Such, at any rate, is the account of the deposition of Actard in the Chronicle of Nantes (c. 12). But as its recent able editor, Merlet, points out, Nomenoius was not master of Nantes when he was crowned king (848 or 849), so that Actard was probably only driven out of his See when Nantes fell (85o) into the hands of the new king. Restored by a victory of Charles, Actard was again driven out by King Solomon. His position naturally excited sympathy, and when he went to Rome in 867, as the bearer of the synodal letter of the Council of Troyes (October 867), he also took with him a letter from Charles the Bald to Nicholas, in which he was warmly commended by that monarch. The Pope was told that contact with the Normans and Bretons had brought exile and chains upon Actard, and that his once flourishing episcopal city had been destroyed, and had for ten years been a desert. Charles proposed, with the Pope’s consent, to give him a vacant bishopric, as there was no hope of his being able to return to his own See.

This letter, along with the other documents entrusted to him, Actard delivered to Pope Hadrian, who showed the strongest interest in the unfortunate bishop. Of his concern for him he gave prompt proof by granting him various favors himself, and by endeavoring to procure others for him. He told Charles the Bald (February 868) that he granted the favors, because he thought it “unbecoming that any one in trouble should come to the Apostolic See, where help is ever to be found by Catholics, and go away without receiving consolation”. Much pleased with the modesty which he found in the bishop, he gave his consent, not only to any vacant episcopal see being bestowed upon him, but even any metropolitan see. He also bestowed upon him the honor of the pallium for himself only, as he took care to point out both to Actard himself and to the bishops of the Synod of Soissons (866) who had interested themselves in his behalf, and not for the new see to which he might be attached. Finally, he wrote to Herard of Tours (March 8, 868), to ask him to grant to Actard a monastery which he formerly held in the archdiocese : “so that he who has nothing of his own, may hence at least be able to procure the necessaries of life by the help of what others have”. Hadrian did not exert himself in Actard’s behalf to no purpose; for, on the death of Herard, archbishop of Tours, he was translated to that see (871). With such deserved ill-favor, however, was translation in general then regarded in the Church, that there were not wanting men narrow-minded enough not to be able to see that there are times at least when certain laws are “more honored in the breach than the observance”" Among these men was even Hincmar of Rheims.

This same Hincmar was to be a cause of trouble to Hadrian, as he had been to his predecessors. In the letter of Anastasius to his friend Ado of Vienne, already several times quoted, the librarian expressed a doubt whether the new Pope would himself take in hand all the work of Nicholas, or leave some of it to others. But his actions must soon have made it plain to Anastasius and to the world at large that, despite his age, he had a great capacity for business. His share in the affair of Wulfad and his companions has been already set down under Leo IV, and in that of the divorce question of King Lothaire, under the life of Nicholas. We will now look into the bitter dispute between the two Hincmars, and see what part Hadrian took in it.

Through the influence of Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, there was elected to succeed Pardulus, bishop of Laon (fc. 856), one of Hincmar’s suffragans, a nephew of the metropolitan’s who also bore the name of Hincmar, and who had been brought up by the archbishop. Between the uncle and the nephew there was that similarity of character which is more generally found between father and son. Both were self-willed, and, while themselves restive under the hand of authority, were, as generally happens in such cases, inclined to bear heavily upon others who were their inferiors. Hincmar of Laon, however, had neither the learning nor authority of his uncle on the one hand, nor his nobility of character and prudence on the other. The bishop began to get himself into difficulties by a quarrel with his sovereign, Charles the Bald (868)—a quarrel, however, which the tact of his uncle managed to prevent from becoming serious for his nephew. Hincmar of Laon must have been one of those people to whom experience teaches nothing. The very same year he was again at cross-purposes with the king, and, this time, too, with his uncle. He had violently expelled Count Norman from an ecclesiastical fief belonging to his see, which he had promised the king to give him. Of this transaction he sent a garbled account to the Pope, representing both the king and Norman as violaters of ecclesiastical property, and informing him that he had made a vow to go to Rome. On the receipt of this communication from the bishop of Laon, Hadrian addressed (perhaps in November 868) two letters, much to the same effect, to Hincmar and to Charles. To both of them he says that, as his correspondent has engaged to come to Rome, the Pope has on his side forbidden him to defer the fulfillment of his promise beyond the 1st of August (869); Norman is to be excommunicated by apostolic authority unless he restores the possessions of the Church of Laon, and Hincmar is to be punished by his uncle if he puts off carrying out his intention of coming to Rome. While he is absent on his visit ad limina, Hadrian commends the charge of the temporalities of his See to the king and to the archbishop. Whoever tampers with them is to be excommunicated. In the letter to Charles there is one more sentence than in that to the archbishop. It is a sentence which seems to show that Laon had thrown blame upon the king. Hadrian says that when he hears that, like his predecessors, Charles is good to the Church, he rejoices; but that he is saddened when he hears of the king, contrary to his wont, oppressing anyone.

Charles was naturally not a little angry when this letter was put into his hands at Quercy (December 1, 868). “Laon” was summoned to appear before a synod at Verberie-sur-Oise. That he might not go resourceless before this assembly, the bishop held a diocesan synod (April 19, 869), where it was arranged that, if the tide turned against him, and he were not to be allowed to go to Rome, his clergy were to faithfully observe the interdict which he would then lay on the diocese. At the Synod of Verberie (April 24), Laon appealed to the Pope. And as, by the order of the king, he had to go to prison, he laid his diocese under an interdict.

As for his appeal to the Pope, the archbishop declared more than once that the conduct of Laon showed that the appeal was a mere sham, and that he had no real intention of going to Rome. When he got into trouble, then out came the appeal; but as soon as the trouble had blown over, he said no more about Rome.

At the request of the Church of Laon, which naturally soon grew restive under the preposterous interdict which its bishop had laid upon it, Hincmar of Rheims, in his capacity of metropolitan, removed it. According to the latter, it was stated, in the appeal presented to him by the Church of Laon, that his nephew had ordered his priests to refrain not only from offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, or burying the dead, but even from giving the last sacraments to the dying, or baptizing the children.

This proper exercise of authority on the part of Hincmar of Rheims was the cause of fresh disturbances between uncle and nephew, when the latter was released from prison, as he was after a short time. A violent war of words at once began. Long letters full of quotations from the Fathers, decretals of the Popes, false and otherwise, passed between them.

To bring matters concerning Laon to a head, Charles assembled a synod at Attigny, on the river Aisne (May 870). Finding that the feeling of the council was against him, Laon declared in writing that he would for the future be obedient to his king and to his archbishop. But before all the accusations against him had been disposed of, he fled from the synod. He felt he had no case. But again to gain time, he made known to his uncle that he renewed his appeal to the Pope, “who has the right of judging the whole Church”, and begged him to obtain from the king leave for him to go to Rome. But again events proved that the younger Hincmar was not in earnest in his appeal. For in the address which he delivered before the bishops of the Council of Douzi (August 871), Charles showed that on no less than five occasions when Laon was with him, in the interval between the two councils, he never spoke of his wish to go to Rome.

But if Bishop Hincmar had no thought of turning to Rome, his uncle had. He wrote about the affair to the Pope, and received a letter from him, addressed to Hincmar of Laon, in which that bishop was blamed for not fulfilling his vow of making a pilgrimage to Rome, and ordered to obey his metropolitan, saving the rights of the Holy See. More angry than ever with Laon for his taking part with his rebellious son Carloman, and getting him into trouble with the Pope on account of the same youth, Charles, in August 871, convoked another synod to meet at Douzi, near Monson, a place famous in the story of the battle of Sedan (1870), in order to try the artful bishop. Laon was summoned to the synod by Hincmar, “in virtue of the authority of the Pope”, by a notice dated July 5, the fourth indiction (871).

At the synod Laon fell back on his old plan; he appealed to the Apostolic See. But this could not save him. He was declared deposed, “saving in all things the decision of the Apostolic See”, as was proclaimed as well by the first bishop (Hardwick of Besancon) who recorded his vote against Laon, as by Hincmar of Rheims in passing sentence on him.

The acts of the council were forthwith sent to Hadrian by Actard of Nantes, and along with them a synodal letter dated September 6, 871. The letter set forth in brief the charges on the strength of which the bishops had condemned Laon, “saving in all things the decision of the Apostolic See, as the sacred Canons of Sardica, and, from them, the decrees of Popes Innocent, Boniface and Leo have laid down”. Hadrian is earnestly begged to confirm the sentence of the synod. Here it would have been best for the obtaining of their wishes if the letter had ended. The bishops, however, and especially Hincmar of Rheims, were so angry at the tergiversations of Laon, who seemed so obviously guilty, that they not unnaturally could ill brook the thought of the crafty bishop’s being able to get the whole affair taken out of their hands, and of his enjoying still further immunity meanwhile. They, therefore, proceeded to tell the Pope what he must do in case he did not agree with their decision—a thing they did not expect. In conformity with the Canons of Sardica, he should order a fresh trial by the bishops on the spot, or send legates a latere to decide the case along with the bishops. In any case, “with all humility of devotion”, they beg the Pope not to restore Laon to his rank in the meanwhile, till the case has been again gone into in the province in which it had been already decided. Such has hitherto, their letter continued, been the universally received method of procedure in the Gallic and Belgic Churches. As they are anxious for the preservation of the privileges of the See of Peter, they beg the Pope to have a care of theirs. But if, by some means or other, Laon should be restored to his see by the Pope, then, said the bishops, “under favour”, Laon will be able to do, what he has all along wanted to do, viz. as he likes, and it will only remain for them to leave him alone.

Whether Hadrian was annoyed at the pettiness displayed in the conclusion of the synodal letter, whether he was in possession of facts which are unknown to us, whether he was afraid of establishing a precedent if under the circumstances, he confirmed the synod, or whether, in fine, he was simply ill-advised, certain it is that he refused to confirm the synod (December 26, 871). As Hincmar of Laon had appealed to Rome, he, with one of his accusers, must come to Rome, where the affair would be considered in a synod. Till then no bishop must be consecrated for the See of Laon. In another letter, addressed to the king, while attempting to soothe his anger at the letter of expostulation which he had sent him (July 13, 871) on the subject of his treatment of Carloman, the Pope declares that “as long as he lives” he will not confirm the synod till Laon comes to Rome. Irritated as the recipients of these letters were at the trouble which Laon had given them, the papal documents were viewed with no little disfavor. The bishops wrote back to the Pope to say that they were astonished at the letter they had received; but that, as Actard had informed them of the important matters on which the Pope and his officials were fully engaged, they supposed that the one whom he had directed to write to them had not read, in their entirety, the acts of their synod, or he never could have written as he had done. The conclusion of this letter is wanting. If the tone of the answer of the bishops was somewhat sharp, those of Charles the Bald, in which all recognize the hand of Hincmar, were absolutely violent. He professes at first to believe that the language of the Pope’s letters to him is due to the one to whom he had entrusted the drawing of them up; but in a following letter he says he has found they have come from the Pope himself. He then launches forth. He complains of being set down as perjured and tyrannical, though he has neither confessed to the charges urged against him nor been proved to have been guilty of them. And though he does not deny, in general, the Pope’s right to excommunicate anyone whomsoever, still he strongly resents the threat of excommunication which, without any grounds, has been hurled against him. If the Pope wants the king to pay any heed to his recommendations, he must write in the style in which the popes have been wont to address the kings of France. The Pope is then roundly lectured as to what he ought to have done, and asked to bear with the king’s plain-speaking, as St. Peter, “the first Pope”, endured the hard words of St. Paul. “What hell”, he continues, forcibly at least, “has vomited forth this general law?” viz., that one (Hincmar of Laon) should be sent to Rome who had been a prevaricator of the sacred laws, a reviler of the holy priesthood, a despiser of his sovereign, a disturber of the kingdom, etc. Any condemnation that does not proceed “from a just judgment of Peter” is not to be held as of any account. A king cannot be ordered to send to Rome a man who has been legally condemned as guilty. As for looking after the property of the Church of Laon during the absence of its bishop, Charles would beg to remind the Pope that the kings of the Franks were not stewards of bishops, but rulers of the State. But in any case Laon shall not have the temporalities (episcopium) of his See, even if it has been impossible to arrive at the truth with regard to all the accusations which have been brought against him. Any of his clerics may, however, go to Rome. But the Pope is not to allow orders and excommunications, against the canons, to be sent in his name to the king. If opportunity presents itself, he will come to Rome himself as an accuser of Laon, but he will bring more witnesses with him than the Pope will care for. He will not, however, be backward in rendering him, as the vicar of the Prince of the Apostles, the obedience to which he is legally entitled. He will not send derogatory letters if he does not receive them.

This blustering epistle had the effect of making Hadrian see that it was necessary to pour oil on the troubled waters. A letter dispatched at once, not many months before he died, praised the king’s wisdom, justice, and zeal for the Church of God, assured him of his consequent attachment to him, and declared that, if in his former letters the king had found objectionable phrases, they must have come from him when tortured by sickness, or have been inserted by others. Then, as a secret only to be made known to those who were absolutely trustworthy, Hadrian assured the king that if he survived the emperor, and he himself were still alive, he would never, not even for gold untold, acknowledge any other as emperor except Charles. With regard to Hincmar of Laon, the Pope acknowledged that, from the evidence sent him, things looked black indeed against him. But it would be against the canons for him to decide anything, under the circumstances, against Laon until he had been to Rome. If he there still maintained his innocence, the Pope would then authorize a new trial in Laon’s own province.

Laon, however, was not allowed to go to Rome, but was Laon and put into prison instead. After about two years’ imprisonment, the unfortunate man was deprived of his sight, for what cause we have not been able to discover. Just before leaving Rome, after his coronation (January 5, 876) as emperor by John VIII, Charles obtained from him the confirmation of the Synod of Douzi, and his consent to the election of a new bishop for the See of Laon. One Hedenulf was accordingly duly elected (March 876). But when John came to France and held a synod at Troyes (August 878), the poor degraded Hincmar, blind but dauntless still, came before him and appealed for justice. According to the contemporary chronicler of St. Vedast’s monastery (ad an. 878), he completely cleared himself of all the charges brought against him. And we know from Hincmar himself that, on the motion of several bishops, John, with the consent of the king (Laon’s enemy, the Emperor Charles the Bald, was now dead, and Louis the Stammerer was king), decided that Hedenulf was to keep the bishopric of Laon, but that the unhappy blind bishop might say mass, and have part of the episcopal revenues. Thus was this tiresome affair brought to an end. But its tragic development in the blinding of the unfortunate bishop, and the consideration that he may very easily have been—nay, indeed, probably was—less guilty than he was made to appear by king and archbishop, might well justify the Holy See in being slow to consent to the deposition of bishops, especially where there was question of a king powerful enough to force his own will. It was action of this kind on the part of rulers, ecclesiastical and civil, which caused the eighth ecumenical council to decree that the causes of bishops were in future to be reserved to their patriarchs only, and no longer left to the judgment of their metropolitan or of the bishops of their province (can. 26).

Well was it for Europe in the Middle Ages that there was a power which could put a check on the tyranny of kings. No lover of liberty should murmur at the authority boldly exercised by the Popes. Even if they did occasionally overstep their powers, their actions were almost universally on the side of right and freedom. And when they were not, they did not issue in the cruel deeds of blood and iron (such as the treatment of Laon ) perpetrated by kings, when they overstepped the rights which were their due from the laws of God and man.

The case against the younger Hincmar was, it would seem, rendered stronger by his political action. Hence some even suppose that he lost his eyes for siding with Louis the German, who attempted to cause a rising in Charles’s kingdom of Neustria, when that prince had gone to Rome to receive the imperial crown (875). Charles and Louis were perpetually either making war on each other, or coming to some amicable, but very temporary, understanding. On the death of the dissolute Lothaire I, king of Lorraine (August 8, 869), his kingdom ought to have fallen to his brother, the Emperor Louis II. When their third brother, Charles, had died (863), his kingdom, which consisted of Provence and the Duchy of Lyons, had been satisfactorily divided between the Emperor Louis II and Lothaire II of Lorraine. But on the demise of the latter, his uncles, Charles the Bald and Louis the German, without any consideration for the emperor, divided his kingdom between them. By a treaty concluded between the pair at Mersen, near Maastricht (August 870), the exact share of each was finally determined. The Moselle and the lower reaches of the Meuse may be said to have formed the boundaries between the two kingdoms, which were still further divided by language. Speaking generally, the realm of Louis the German was the abode of the Teutonic tongue, that of Charles, of the Romance or French.

Long before this final arrangement was concluded, Hadrian stood out for the rights of the emperor. He was the more moved to this from the fact that Louis was making determined efforts to drive the Saracens out of Southern Italy. Indeed, he had not been Pope many months before he began to work for the maintenance of the existing political order. Even though Lothaire of Lorraine was then naturally in bad odor in Rome, still when Hadrian heard that Louis the German was hoping to make capital out of his nephew’s ill-favor by invading his country, he wrote to beg him not to do so. Such action would be fatal to the Church. Louis was doing his utmost, not sparing himself in anything, to overcome “those foes of the name of Christ” the Saracens. But if his brother were touched he would feel himself injured also, and the good he was doing would be suspended. Similar letters were sent to Charles the Bald.

It was only to be expected, therefore, that, on Lothaire’s death, Hadrian would exert himself in the interests of the emperor. And loyally did he do so. The emperor and the Pope were now harmoniously working for each other’s benefit. Four letters, three of them dated September 5, 869, were at once dispatched from Rome. The dated ones were addressed respectively to the bishops, and to the lay lords of Charles the Bald, and to Hincmar of Rheims. They were all earnestly exhorted to warn Charles from seizing what belonged, by hereditary right, to the emperor, the defender of the Church against the Saracens. Those who should give any contrary advice were threatened with excommunication. The remaining letter, on the other hand, was addressed to the clerical and lay nobility of the kingdom of Lorraine, who were solemnly urged to remain true to the emperor.

But before the bishops, Paul and Leo, who were the Charles bearers of these letters, and the imperial envoy could reach Gaul, Charles had had himself crowned at Metz as king of Lorraine (September 9, 869), and the embassy was unable to effect anything. To begin with, it was the intention of Charles to keep the whole of Lorraine for himself. But Louis the German had to be reckoned with; and he soon found that the only way to avoid war was to induce Louis to share the plunder. That any such agreement had been come to was quite unknown to Hadrian, when in June (870) he sent off a more numerous embassy with letters (dated June 27) for both Louis and Charles. The latter is severely blamed for his perjury in occupying the kingdom which belonged to the Emperor Louis, and this against his oath, of which the Pope has the deed, and also for sending away the legates without addressing suitable answers to them or to the Apostolic See. We are very willing, continued the Pope, to do as you suggest, and to act as a mediator between you and the emperor. Indeed, we have begun to do so. But, even in order that peace may be made, you refuse to give way to him who is fighting the battles of the Lord against the Saracens. It is only because he is so engaged that you dare do what you have done. To show that we are acting not with any hope of favor from men, we will not leave your conduct unpunished, even if the emperor should be disposed so to do. The aged Pope even talked of himself going to Charles, if his letters failed to make him do his duty. He commended to the king his legates, viz. four bishops and a priest cardinis nostri.

In accordance with instructions received from the Pope, his envoys went first to Louis the German, in whose goodwill towards the emperor both the Pope and Louis II himself had full confidence, to concert measures with him for dealing with Charles. When, however, the envoys reached Louis the German, they found that he had also become a partner in the unjust spoliation of the emperor. Without giving them any satisfaction, he sent them on to Charles. Charles kept them for some time with him; and though he did not accede to the desire of the Pope, he sent him presents and letters by ambassadors of his own, and, at the request of the legates, set free from custody his son Carloman. The papal envoys, then, had to return and report to the Pope that they had failed to accomplish anything. Something, however, they had done. For two years afterwards, Louis the German gave up his share of the plunder to the emperor.

Among the letters brought to the Pope by his legates was, no doubt, the one which Hincmar of Rheims had written in answer to one (of September 5, 869) he had received from the Pope, instructing him to oppose Charles’s intended usurpation. As its object was to defend a very weak case, it took a very high tone. While professing that, to avoid the Pope’s censures, he had not shrunk from doing as he had been instructed, Hincmar launched forth some very hard blows. His strong words, however, he presented, not as his own, but as the remarks of “both clergy and laity who had assembled at Rheims in great numbers from the different kingdoms”. The burden of the epistle was to the effect that Charles had acted as he had from necessity. The dreaded Normans were near, and the Emperor Louis was far away. A sentence or two will show its tone. When, wrote Hincmar, I spoke of the power which had been given by Our Lord to St. Peter, the first of His apostles, and through him to his successors, and to the apostles and their successors, the bishops, “they replied : Do you then by the sole power of your prayers defend the kingdom against the Normans and its other foes, and seek not our help. But if you want to have our armed assistance, as we desire the protection of your prayers, seek not what is to our loss, but ask the Pope (as he cannot be king and bishop at once, and as his predecessors have regulated ecclesiastical affairs, which are their business, and not state matters, which are the business of kings) not to command us to have a king, who, so far away, cannot help us against the sudden and frequent attacks of the heathens, nor to order us, Franks, to be submissive ; for such a yoke have his predecessors never laid upon ours, nor can we suffer it”.

One of the causes which kept Charles irritated against Hincmar of Laon was his supporting against him the above-mentioned Carloman. Wisely determining not to imitate, at least to the full, the fatal example of his predecessors, Charles the Bald destined only two of his sons to reign after him. The other two, of whom one was Carloman, were made monks. But, as Charles thought nothing of sending Carloman on military expeditions, he ought not to have been surprised to find that his son soon got tired of a monastic life, and even commenced hatching plots against him. For this he was at once incarcerated in Senlis, after the Synod of Attigny had deprived him of the abbeys which the king had bestowed upon him. Through the intercession of the legates sent by Hadrian to induce Charles to leave for his nephew the kingdom of Lorraine, Carloman was released from confinement. But he only made use of his liberty to renew his plots. Supported by Hincmar of Laon, Carloman laid his own version of the case before the Pope. “Hadrian”, writes Pertz, “stirred up by the appeal, and deceived by the envoys sent by the wicked prince, and, moreover, angry with Charles on account of his seizing the kingdom of Lorraine, took up the cause with alacrity”. He wrote to Charles (July, 13 871) to accuse him of adding cruelty to robbery. “Surpassing the ferocity of the beasts, you do not blush to turn against your own flesh and blood, against your son Carloman”. Hadrian goes on to ask the king to restore the youth to favor, at least until his envoys come to the king, and, “saving the honor which is due to both of you”, until the affair may be settled on the observed merits of the case.

To the nobles of Charles’s kingdom he wrote to urge them to do all that lay in their power to prevent the scandal of father and son from fighting against each other, and to threaten with excommunication whoever took up arms against Carloman. By a third letter, to the bishops of France (Neustria) and Lorraine, again supposing things to be as stated to him, he forbids them to excommunicate Carloman “until we, who wish the judgments of God’s priests to be carefully considered, find out the truth with regard to all that has happened”. He concludes by saying very pointedly that, though Carloman has assured him of his innocence over and over again, he may not be guiltless. But it would look like a just judgment of God, that the one who had done such wrong to his own nephew should be punished by having a rebellious son.

According to Hincmar, before the end of this year (871), Carloman, with “a feigned profession of submission”, gave himself up into the hands of his father, who again caused him to be imprisoned in Senlis. By this time Hadrian was in a better position to judge of his aims, and henceforth we hear no more of papal interference in behalf of the young prince, who was, by a council at Senlis (873) degraded from the clerical state to which he had never voluntarily aspired. When, however, it was found that the malcontents then more than ever turned to Carloman, “in order that he might have an opportunity of doing penance”, and yet at the same time might be prevented from disturbing the peace of the kingdom, the death-penalty, which was decided to be his due, was commuted to the loss of sight. The Annals of Fulda do not put the affair so well for the king as does his friend Hincmar. They state laconically: “Charles the tyrant (tyrannus) of Gaul, laying aside all parental feeling, commanded his son Carloman to be blinded”. The unhappy young man died soon after.

The Emperor Louis III and the Saracens

In the last few pages mention has often been made of the wars of the Emperor Louis II against the Saracens. To events in connection with them we must now turn. The story of the Saracens effecting a firm foothold in Italy has already been told. Before the emperor, who has been justly called the Saviour of Italy, could turn his undivided attention to the work of driving out the Saracens, he had to bring to a close the rivalry between Radelchis and Siconulf. It may be remembered that these were the men who, in their struggle for the duchy of Beneventum, had both called in Saracens to their aid. In 85o (or perhaps rather in 849) Louis forced the two to make peace. Radelchis was to keep Beneventum itself, and the eastern half of the duchy. Siconulf became Prince of Salerno, and ruled over the Campanian and Lucanian half. Henceforth, among the Lombards of the south, the dukes of Beneventum will only be second to the princes of Salerno, which had for some time been rapidly increasing in commercial importance, and to the counts of Capua, lords of the valley of the Liris, who had come into power by breaking away from Siconulf, just as he had rendered himself independent of Radelchis. Later on (867), the emperor compelled them to do him homage, and to lend him their assistance against Mofareg-ibn-Salem, who had formed into one state the whole coast from Bari, which the Saracens had seized in 840, to Reggio. For eighteen years (853-71) this robber-king was the terror of Southern Italy. Louis also secured a half-hearted co-operation of the Greeks. Despite certain reverses, after one of which, to the great grief of the emperor himself and of the Pope, the infidels were able to make a dash, and plunder the celebrated abbey of St. Michael on Mt. Gargano. Louis took Bari, the headquarters of the Saracen occupation (February 871). Leaving his army to continue the work of ousting the Saracens, he withdrew to Beneventum. Whether it was that he yearned for the spoils which Louis had with him, or whether rendered furious by the avaricious haughtiness of the Empress Ingelberga, the new Duke Adelgisus (Adelchis) attempted to seize his sovereign. He was successful; but, terrified by a fresh invasion of Saracens (September 871), he released him and his friends, on his oath that he would never attempt to avenge the insult that had been put upon him. This outrage on the imperial dignity, taken in conjunction with those put upon the papal at the beginning of Hadrian's reign, serves to bring out in still clearer light the rapidly growing insolence of the greater nobles, and to prepare us to find both dignities still further degraded by lawless barons.

The feelings of indignation with which Louis left Beneventum can be well imagined. The duke of Spoleto fled from before him to his associate Adelgisus. Burning to avenge the insult put upon him, he sent to beg the Pope to come and meet him, and absolve him from the oath he had taken.

It would seem, however, that he was absolved from his oath only when he came to Rome for the Whitsuntide of 872. At least, the monk Regino, in his chronicle, assigns that act of supreme jurisdiction on the part of the Pope to the time when Louis came to Rome, though he wrongly attributes its performance to Pope John VIII. He says: “In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 872, the Emperor Louis came to Rome, and there in an assembly he laid his complaints against Adelgisus in presence of the Pope. Then, by the senate of the Romans, Adelgisus was declared a tyrant and an enemy of the republic, and war was decreed against him. By the authority of God and St. Peter, Pope John (Hadrian) absolved the emperor from the oath he had taken, saying that what he had done under compulsion, to avoid the danger of death, was not binding, and that that could not be called an oath which was devised against the safety of the republic.

On the day of Pentecost (May 18) Louis was crowned by the Pope, doubtless as king of that portion of Lothaire’s kingdom which Louis the German had restored to him, and after Mass rode, in company with the Pope, in great state to the Lateran.

Before he left Rome, the entreaties of the holy bishop of Naples, Athanasius, induced Louis to at least suspend his desire of vengeance against the duke of Beneventum, and to turn his arms on those Saracens whose landing had been the cause of his release. And next year, because, according to some authorities, he felt himself unable to chastise Adelgisus, he allowed Pope John VIII to reconcile him with the duke. But there was no real submission in the heart of the Lombard.

Athanasius, the saintly prelate of whom mention has just been made, was, at the time of which we are now writing (872), in exile. Uncle of the Duke Sergius of Naples, he had been put in prison for reproving the young prince’s evil courses. The clamors of the people, however, forced the duke to release him from confinement. But he ceased not to oppress him, and to hinder him in his work in every way. The saint, therefore, left Naples (871), and took refuge in the Isle of the Saviour, about a mile and a half from the city. Sergius would have brought him back by main force, had not the emperor sent out troops for his delivery. Rendered furious by being thus baulked, Sergius plundered the episcopal treasury, and treated the ecclesiastics in Naples with the greatest barbarity. In two letters, which are now lost, Hadrian wrote to him and to the clergy and people of Naples, ordering them, under pain of excommunication, to receive back their bishop. When no notice of these letters was taken by the duke, Hadrian, through the librarian, Cardinal Anastasius, laid the city under an interdict. But the thought that his episcopal city was in this sad condition was more than Athanasius could long bear. At his entreaty, Hadrian removed the interdict. The saint’s death (July 15, 872) alone prevented the Emperor Louis from restoring him to his See. This sketch of the history of St. Athanasius of Naples furnishes us with another view of one of the innumerable petty tyrants into whose hands, strong in nothing but evil, all power in Western Europe was now falling. A great and powerful tyrant who lords it over an extended empire stifles liberty, but a number of petty tyrannical princes rend it to pieces.

Some little space must now be devoted to the narration of the most important story, not only in the reign of Hadrian, but in the ninth century, viz., that of the would-be patriarch of Constantinople, Photius. It has been put off to the end of this biography, that, taken up again in the beginning of the life of John VIII, there may be as few great gaps as possible between its different parts.

It has been already stated that Nicholas I had died before official news reached Rome that the Emperor Michael had been assassinated, and that his quondam groom, Basil the Macedonian, was emperor of Constantinople in his stead. Despite the means by which he raised himself to the supreme power, Basil proved a good emperor, and founded the longest of the Byzantine dynasties—a dynasty which gave to the Greek empire at least stationary prosperity.

The first act of any importance which Basil performed was, in accordance with the sentence of the Roman Church, to banish Photius, the intruded patriarch (September 25). This he did on the day following that on which he had himself been saluted as emperor. By his orders, also, the envoy, Zachary, was recalled, who had been made metropolitan of Chalcedon by Photius, and who was on his way to Italy to convey to Louis and Ingelberga the forged acts of the petty council which Photius had held (867) against Pope Nicholas, and forged acts against St. Ignatius. Photius’s papers, too, which he tried to smuggle out of his palace, were also seized; and it was then that copies of the forged acts of a council against Ignatius, and of one against Pope Nicholas, which Photius had entrusted to Zachary, were all also secured.

The day following the expulsion of Photius, “moved by the prayers of all the people”, Basil “confirmed the decision come to in Old Rome by Pope Nicholas concerning the expulsion of Photius and the restoration of Ignatius, recalled Ignatius from exile, and degraded Photius”—an item of news, to use the expression of the monk Michael, “received with the greatest joy by the prelates of the other apostolic thrones”.

Basil lost no time in communicating with Rome, and in sending word of what had been done to Pope Nicholas, of whose death, on December I, the emperor was still unacquainted. Of the two letters which he sent to Rome, the first is lost, but the second (dated December 11) has come down to us. He tells the Pope, whom he addresses as the “head, sacred, divine, and reverend, like Aaron”, that he is sending him a second letter, for fear that, owing to the great distance which separates them, some accident might prevent the first from being delivered into his hands. He goes on to speak of the wretched state in which he found the Church of Constantinople when he took the reins of government, and to say that he had taken certain remedial measures himself, and had left the rest to be done by the Pope. He had removed Photius from the patriarchal See because he had acted against the truth and against the Pope. Ignatius, on the other hand, he had recalled in virtue of the decision contained in the Pope’s letters—letters which his predecessors had kept secret. It is for the Pope to settle the other questions; nay, to approve what he had himself accomplished. He wishes him to decide what has to be done with those—the great majority—who through violence, fraud, levity, or bribes have been false to Ignatius and have gone over to Photius. “That the Pope’s divine and apostolic sentence may be made known even to the party of Photius”, he is sending to Rome John, the metropolitan of Siheum, to represent Ignatius; Peter, the metropolitan of Sardis, for Photius and, on his own behalf, the spathar Basil. In conclusion, he begs Nicholas to act promptly, that the fold of Christ (of which he is the chief minister and immolator) may again become one, obeying one pastor.

By the 1st of August 868 (if there is no mistake in the dates or addresses of the two letters which we are about to quote), neither the last-mentioned letter of Basil, nor the embassy therein spoken of, had reached Rome. For the Pope, in two letters of that date, simply praises Basil for what he has done in the matter of Photius and Ignatius, rallies the latter in a friendly way for not writing to him about the state of affairs, and commends to him “the most glorious spathar Euthymius”, who, as the emperor’s envoy, was the first to tell the Pope what he had so long wished to hear concerning Ignatius.

Owing to the slow means of communication of those times, these two letters of Hadrian, and the embassy of Basil with his letter (just quoted), and one from Ignatius (also addressed to Pope Nicholas), crossed. This letter of St. Ignatius is important, as it is as explicit an acknowledgment of the position of the Pope in the Church on the part of the Church of Constantinople, as that of Basil was on the State's behalf. The saint begins by saying that there are many physicians of the ailments of the body; but for the cure of His own members, Our Saviour has appointed “only one excellent and most Catholic physician . . . . your holiness”. It was for that that He addressed St. Peter with the words : “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church”,"etc. (S. Matt. xvi. 18). These blessed words He did not address to St. Peter simply, but through him to all those chief pastors who were to come after him and were to resemble him—“the most divine and sacred bishops of Old Rome”. “Ofttimes have your predecessors shown themselves vigorous in rooting out heresies and putting an end to other evils. And in these our days your blessedness has worthily used the power given you by Christ. With the armour of truth, which prevails over everything, you have expelled the man (Photius) who forced his way into the sheepfold like a thief, robbed another of his rights, and even went so far as to forge the acts of a council against you. The falsely-called Photius (Light) you have cut off from the body of the Church, me you have restored, and to the Church here you have brought tranquility. Obeying you cheerfully, like a son, the emperor has meted out what is just to Photius and to myself. After assuring the Pope of his affection for him, and telling him how much he thanks him for what he has done for him, Ignatius goes on to ask what has to be done with those who have been ordained by the intruder Photius, and with those who, ordained by Ignatius himself, have yet gone over to the side of Photius, either from fear or choice”. In conclusion, he begs the Pope to send legates, with whose aid he may settle the affairs of Constantinople.

With these letters of Basil and Ignatius the imperial envoys at last reached Rome; at least some of them did. For Peter of Sardis, the representative of Photius, though he had chosen a new ship for his voyage was shipwrecked; “and he who had torn the bark of Christ, i.e. the Church, perished by the rending of his own ship”. Doubtless the same storm which shipwrecked the envoy of Photius delayed the other ambassadors of Basil.

When they reached Rome they presented (at the end of 868, or the beginning of 869) their letters and presents to the Pope, who received them with his bishops and nobles in the sacristy of St. Mary Major. After the singing of the laudes, and after the envoys had returned thanks to the Roman Church, “by the exertions of which the Church of Constantinople had been freed from schism”, they asked the Pope to make known to everyone the forgery of Photius, which had converted the latrocinale (assembly of robbers) of 867 into a regular synod. Basil and Ignatius, “restored by your good offices”, had thrust the forged document from the city, like the plague, and had sent it to the supreme head. The document was then introduced by John, the metropolitan of Silaeum in Pamphylia, who dashed it to the ground, exclaiming, “Condemned at Constantinople, may it be condemned again at Rome. The devil’s agent, the new Simon (Magus), the inventor of lies, even Photius put it together; the minister of Christ, the new Peter, the lover of truth, even Nicholas broke it to pieces”. Stamping upon it, and striking it with his sword, the other envoy, an imperial spathar, declared that the signature of Basil which appeared in it was a forgery, as he was prepared to maintain on oath, and that the signature of Michael was obtained when he was drunk (ebriosissimum). Not only, he continued, was the signature of Basil a forgery, but, with the aid of his few accomplices, Photius forged the signatures of numerous bishops, “that by the fraud of those who were present the simplicity of the absent might be played upon”. Before a formal decision was passed upon the production in synod, Hadrian gave orders to have it carefully examined by such “as were skilled in both languages”, who were to present a report thereon to a council.

In due course Hadrian summoned the synod. The imperial envoys were heard, the letters of Nicholas bearing on the subject read, Photius, his false council and his accomplices condemned for the third time, and the forged document committed to the flames. To the intense amazement of all, concludes the papal biographer, before anyone could imagine that it was half burnt, exhaling a vile smell, it was entirely consumed,—a shower of rain which occurred at the time only serving to augment the flames. Moreover, all the faithful, whether of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem or elsewhere, were required, under pain of anathema, to give up or burn any copies of the forgery which they might possess.

On the termination of the synod, Hadrian dispatched Papal legates to Constantinople. To Donatus, bishop of Ostia, and the deacon Marinus, who had been selected by Nicholas to go to the imperial city, Hadrian added Stephen, bishop of Nepi. They were furnished not only with the letters which Nicholas had prepared for them, but with two from Hadrian himself, and with certain instructions.

They were to pacify the Church of Constantinople, and restore to their churches the bishops who had been consecrated by Methodius or Ignatius, and who had sided with Photius, on condition of their signing the “deed of reparation” which Nicholas had already drawn up for the embassy of 866, and which had been preserved in the archives of the Roman Church. With regard to those who had been consecrated by Photius but were repentant, pending a final decision of the Holy See, the decision of Pope Nicholas was to remain good, and they were not to be recognized as bishops.

Of the letters which Hadrian entrusted to his envoys, one was addressed to “his most desirable son”, Basil. Hadrian therein informs the emperor that he has received the ambassadors sent to his predecessor Nicholas; thanks God for what has passed at Constantinople; praises Basil for turning to the Apostolic See, “which is ever wont to help Catholics”, and for the cure of the troubles of the Church of Constantinople; assures him that, in the treatment he has meted out to Ignatius and Photius, he has only done “what the Apostolic See, with the whole episcopate of the West, had long ago decreed was to be done”; expresses a wish that through the exertions of the emperor a numerous council might be called, over which his legates would preside and would decide on the guilt of the culprits, according to the instructions they had received; and commands all copies of the false council of Photius against the Holy See to be burnt. Finally he exhorts Basil to see to it that the decisions of the synod just held at Rome be confirmed by the signatures of the council, and carefully preserved in the archives of all the churches.

Letter to Ignatius.

In his letter to St. Ignatius the Pope expressed his delight at his restoration, and assured the patriarch that he was determined to stand by the decisions of his predecessor, and hence that Photius and all, without exception, whom he had ordained were to be deposed.

After a "tortuous and toilsome" journey, the papal legates at length reached Thessalonica, where they were met by a spatharius candidatus (an imperial life-guardsman), whom the emperor had sent to greet them and escort them on their journey. At the old town of Selymbria, on the Propontis, they found awaiting them aprotospatharius (a captain of the guards), and Theognistus, the great supporter of Ignatius at Rome, whom the Liber Pontificalis dignifies with the title of patriarchalis egumenus, or abbot-general, as it were. Forty horses from the imperial stables, silver plate, and a crowd of servants were also there ready for their convenience. On Saturday, September 24, they had reached Castrum Rotundum, near San Stefano, where some hundreds of years before legates of Pope Hormisdas, who had come on a similar errand, had been received. The following day was fixed for their triumphal entry into Constantinople. Mounted on horses with trappings of gold, they were met by all the gorgeous groups of officials that formed the magnificent household with which the emperors of Constantinople strove to impress both the barbarians and their own peoples with a sense of their exalted power and dignity. There were imperial chamberlains, civil functionaries, grooms of the imperial stables, various corps of the guards in their long white tunics, with their golden shields and helmets, and with their gold-inlaid lances and swords, and lastly, the different grades of the clergy. At the Golden Gate, in the southwest corner of the city walls, they were met and greeted by deputies of the patriarch, his librarian and others, in their ecclesiastical vestments, and by the people, all bearing torches. Thus, for some three miles, were they solemnly escorted to the palace of the Magnaura, which communicated by covered arcades with Saint Sophia.

The Eighth General Council, 869.

Most flattering was the reception given to them by the emperor (September 27). He received them with the greatest kindness, kissed the letters of the Pope, and assured the envoys that “the Roman Church, the holy mother of all the Churches of God”, had looked after the interests of the Church of Constantinople, torn in pieces by the ambition of Photius, and that by the authority of the letters of Pope Nicholas, Ignatius had been restored to his See. For two years, he continued, have we and all the Oriental patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops been awaiting the decision of our holy mother the Roman Church; and we now trust that at length by the authority of your holy college (i.e. the council) the scandals caused by Photius may be terminated, and that the long-wishedfor unity may be at last restored in accordance with the decrees of Pope Nicholas. The papal legates made answer that it was for those purposes that they had come. But, they continued, we cannot admit any Oriental into our synod before he has signed the “libellus satisfactionis” which we have brought from Ro.ne. Upon this the emperor and the patriarch at once asked what was the purport of the document, as the demand was a new one. At once translated into Greek, the “libellus” was forthwith signed by some, and at first rejected by others. However, these latter afterwards changed their minds, and were admitted equally with the former to the council.

The Eighth General Council was solemnly opened October 5, 869. Apart from the lay representatives of the emperor, the council was at first composed of the following only : the three legates of the Pope, the patriarch St. Ignatius, Thomas, archbishop of Tyre, who came to respond for the See of Antioch, which was at that time vacant, the priest Elias, who came to represent Theodosius, patriarch of Jerusalem, and the twelve bishops who had throughout remained faithful to Ignatius.

Prefixed to the acts of the Council there is an introduction, which was drawn up by the Greeks at the close of the synod; and as it sums up its work, it may be usefully cited here. It notes that the S. Scriptures had prepared us for false prophets, for wolves in sheep’s clothing, for trees which bring not forth good fruit. Such was Photius. But Pope Nicholas, the new Elias, had slain the wolf and cut down the barren tree. With his good work had the emperor Basil co-operated.

At the beginning of the first session of the council, the papal legates were rather startled by being asked to read the papers showing their powers; but complied when it was pointed out to them that the request was made not out of any want of respect for the Holy See, but because the previous legates, Radoald and Zachary, had not acted in accordance with their instructions. After the credentials of the envoys of all the patriarchs had been found satisfactory, the libellus satisfactionis was then read in both Latin and Greek. This document, substantially the same as that of Pope Hormisdas (519), opened by proclaiming that it was of the first importance to guard the rule of the true faith. And “in the Apostolic See the Catholic religion has ever been preserved immaculate”. Desiring, continues the document, never to be separated from this faith, and following in everything the decisions of the Fathers, and especially of the prelates of the Apostolic See, we anathematize all heresies, the iconoclasts, and Photius, as long as he shall remain disobedient to the decrees of the Roman pontiffs, and refuse to anathematize the acts of the so-called council (conciliabulum), which he had gathered together, outraging the Apostolic See. We follow the synod held by Pope Nicholas, and subscribed by you, “0 supreme Pontiff Hadrian, and the one which you yourself have lately held. And we will hold to all that has been therein decreed, and condemn all those who have been there condemned—viz., Photius, his partisans, and the robber-synods which he held against Ignatius and against the principate of the Apostolic See”.

With regard to Ignatius and those of his party, “we follow devoutly what the authority of your Apostolic See has decided”. The Libellus was at once accepted by the whole synod. After a declaration on the part of the representatives of the Oriental patriarchs, that all—as they did themselves—ought to obey the decrees of Pope Nicholas, the session closed with the customary acclamations in honor of the emperor, popes Nicholas and Hadrian, the patriarchs of the East, and the synod.

After this detailed account of the first session of the council, the work of the other sessions must be given in the brief; as to narrate at large the history of the council belongs rather to the historian of the history of the Church than to the biographer of the popes. In the second session the bishops who had been consecrated by Ignatius and his predecessor Methodius, but who had had the misfortune afterwards to take sides with Photius, were allowed by the legates to take their seats in the council, on the conditions of repentance and signing the libellus. Hence in the third session there were present, over and above the Roman legates, Ignatius and the vicars of the Oriental patriarchs, twenty-three bishops; and the number gradually increased as time went on. As Photius would not listen to any exhortations to confess his misdeeds, but affected the silence of innocence, he was solemnly anathematized (seventh session, October 29). In the eighth session (November 5) there were burnt before his eyes the false acts of the synods which he had held against Ignatius and Pope Nicholas, and other documents to which he had illegally obtained signatures. Iconoclasm was also condemned in this session. By the ninth session (February 12, 870) sixty-six bishops had assembled, and the representatives of the patriarchal Sees received an addition to their number in the person of the monk Joseph, archdeacon of Michael, or Chail I, patriarch of Alexandria. Joseph expressed in writing his adhesion to what had been decided by the “vicars of Old Rome and of the Oriental Sees”. The tenth and last session (February 28, 870) saw present the ambassadors of the Emperor Louis II, among whom was the versatile Anastasius, some twelve envoys from the king of the Bulgarians, and 102 bishops. The comparatively small number of bishops who attended this synod is due to the fact that a very large number of sees had been filled up by Photius with his creatures, and that, as most of them adhered to him and to his schism, they were not allowed to take part in the deliberations of the council.

The twenty-seven canons, which were published in this session, were inserted in a condensed form in the definition (terminus) put forth as usual by the council. Particular mention need here only be made of the twenty-first, as it directly concerns the Popes. It forbids any display of want of respect towards any of the five patriarchs,” especially towards the most holy Pope of Holy Rome”, against whom no one may presume to speak or write. Should any difficulty arise regarding the Roman Church, modest enquiries may be made about it, but not even a universal synod “may audaciously pass decrees against the supreme pontiffs of Old Rome”.

After reaffirming the decrees of the previous seven general councils, the definition proclaimed that Photius, “a man who trusted in his varied cunning”, had come to such a pitch of arrogance as to vent his spleen on the most blessed Pope Nicholas. In his pretended synod “he dared to anathematize the Pope and all who communicated with him”, i.e. as the definition adds, all the bishops and priests throughout the world, for all were in communion with Pope Nicholas. And so “this holy and universal synod” now condemns Photius as popes Nicholas and Hadrian have already done.

As soon as the Acts of the council had been drawn up and placed in the hands of the legates, “to guard against Greek fraud”, they placed them for careful examination in the custody of Anastasius, the librarian, who had come to Constantinople on behalf of Louis II, to negotiate a marriage between his daughter and the son of Basil. He was present at the last session of the council, and was officially described as an “apocrisiarius of Louis, emperor of the Italians and Franks”, not, be it noticed, “emperor of the Romans”. Anastasius soon discovered that the additions “in praise of our most serene emperor”, which Hadrian, on the instigation of Arsenius, had added to the letter of Nicholas, had been erased. In great indignation the papal legates declared they would not subscribe the acts unless the Pope’s letter were inserted in its entirety. But the Greeks simply declared that they had not met together to deliberate about imperial titles, but about the things of God. The legates, therefore, resolved to sign the synodal decrees only conditionally.

Five copies of the Acts (one for each of the patriarchs) were prepared for signature. The papal legates signed first, and each of them used the same restrictive formula as Donatus, whose signature headed the list, and ran as follows: “I, Donatus, by the grace of God, bishop of the Holy Church of Ostia, holding the place of my lord Hadrian, supreme Pontiff and universal Pope, presiding over this holy and universal synod, have promulgated all that is read above, and have with my own hand put my signature to it, till the will of the aforesaid pre-eminent prelate (be made known)”. The signatures of the Emperor Basil and his two sons followed those of the patriarchs, and then came the signatures of the 102 bishops.

Nicetas, indeed, asserts, on the authority of having heard it “from those who knew”, what he might well call “a most awful thing”, viz., that the bishops, when signing this decree, dipped their pens not into ink but into the Sacred Blood of Our Saviour, contained in the consecrated chalice. But of this there is not a word in the Acts of the Council; nor has Anastasius, who has left us notes in connection with this synod on much less striking points, a word to say about so extraordinary a proceeding. And as the Acts specially mention that the emperors’ signatures were countersigned by Christopher, the first of the secretaries and “keeper of the purple ink”, it is hard to believe that, had the bishops not signed with ink, such a circumstance would not have been mentioned. Besides, we do not know who those were “that knew” and told Nicetas—not one of the bishops, or he would have said so. There seems, therefore, no need to attach any credence to the story.

In addition to an encyclical letter to all the faithful recounting what it had done, the synod addressed a letter to Hadrian, asking him to confirm the decisions of the council, which were practically his own, and to publish them. Letters to him followed, somewhat later, from the emperor and Ignatius also. Both of them write to ask the Pope to allow of certain exceptions to be made in the matter of the decision not to allow any of those who had been ordained by Photius to exercise their functions. And the emperor expresses astonishment that he has not heard of the safe return of the papal legates.

In a letter,1 dated November to, 871, the Pope, in reply to the emperor, thanks God that he has shown such care for religion, and for seeking, in accordance with ancient law, the decisions of the Holy See on disputed questions. But he lets Basil see how indignant he is that his legates were so far neglected after the council that (as has been narrated above) they fell into the hands of pirates and were completely robbed; and that he has given his countenance to Ignatius’s consecration of a bishop in Bulgaria—of which more hereafter. He begs Basil to hinder Ignatius from interfering in that country, or else the patriarch and others who may there exercise any ecclesiastical functions will find themselves excommunicated. In fine, he cannot see his way to altering the decision come to against those who have been ordained by Photius.

Before the papal legates started on their disastrous homeward journey they were inveigled into a discussion on the patriarchal rights over Bulgaria. It has been already stated that Pope Nicholas refused the request of King Boris that he might be allowed to have Formosus of Porto as his archbishop, and even terminated the latter’s mission to the Bulgarians by ordering him to proceed to Constantinople. But he so far complied with the king’s wishes that he had commissioned a fresh band of missionaries to set out for Bulgaria when his death interfered with their departure. One of the first acts, however, of Hadrian was to dispatch the missionaries (867), furnishing them with the letters which had been drawn up by Pope Nicholas, but which he now sent in his own name, to show that, “as far as the stormy state of the times would permit”, he intended to walk in the footsteps of his predecessor.

Whether he went to Constantinople or not, Formosus remained some time longer in Bulgaria. But he returned to Rome apparently in the very beginning of the year 868, and was present at the council held there in June 869. Finding that he could not get his favorite Formosus made archbishop of Bulgaria, Boris sent him to Rome to ask that the deacon Marinus might be given that post. Marinus had taken the wild monarch’s fancy when, in 866, sent by Nicholas, he passed through Bulgaria to try to reach Constantinople by that route. The legates of Boris were further instructed to the effect that, if they could not obtain the consecration of Marinus as their new archbishop, they were to ask that one of the cardinal-priests of the Roman Church might be sent out for their approval. A request for a man who “in character, learning, and appearance was most worthy of the archiepiscopate”, shows at once the wisdom of Boris himself, and his estimate of Formosus, who was evidently his ideal of a bishop. As Marinus had already been selected to represent the Pope at the General Council, and was, moreover, unwilling to go, Hadrian “sent a certain subdeacon Silvester” for the approval of the Bulgarians. He was, however, promptly sent back by Boris, who most earnestly requested that an archbishop, or Formosus of Porto, might be granted him. This importunity on behalf of Formosus has been attributed both by his contemporaries and by moderns to his own intrigues. Hence, when he was condemned by John VIII in 876, it was declared that he had so played upon the new convert that, under oath, he had engaged Boris not to accept any other archbishop than himself, and had in turn agreed to come back as soon as he could. Other authors, however, are inclined to believe that Boris acted as he did from genuine admiration for the character of Formosus, that he was anxious for a hierarchy that would rival that of Constantinople, and that he thought that Formosus would be no mean match even for the learned Photius. At any rate, when he found that his request had not been granted—for Hadrian, who evidently did not care to have another man of his choice rejected, had only written back to say that he would consecrate any one (other than Formosus) whom Boris might choose to select—he became utterly impatient, and turned to Constantinople.

His envoys reached the imperial city (February 870) in time, as we have seen, to take part in the last session of the council. Whether Basil’s procuring the aid of the Pope to put an end to the religious strife of his empire was a mere political move or not, his action with regard to Bulgaria was certainly dictated by motives of worldly policy. Bulgaria, spiritually dependent upon his patriarch, would be a step nearer to being altogether submissive to his power. He determined, therefore, to bring about its ecclesiastical subjection to Constantinople. Accordingly, three days after the completion of the council and the signing of the acts, with artful intent (callicie), he called a meeting in his palace of the papal legates, St. Ignatius, the representatives of the three other patriarchs, the envoys of Boris, and a few others to receive the letters of the Bulgarian monarch. The envoys of the king opened the proceedings by saying that their master, hearing that “by the apostolic authority” an assembly to deliberate on the needs of the Church had been gathered together from all parts, had sent them to enquire from it to what Church the Bulgarians ought to be subject. They were at once told by the papal legates that they belonged to the Holy Roman Church, and that their king had dedicated himself and his people to Blessed Peter, the prince of the Apostles, from whose successor, Nicholas, he had received not only instructions as to how his people were to live, but also bishops and priests. That they were still under the jurisdiction of the Roman Church, they showed by the fact that they had yet in honor among them the ecclesiastics who had been thus sent. The Bulgarians, however, while acknowledging all this, called for a formal definition of their ecclesiastical position. But the legates declared that all the matters with which they had been commissioned to deal had been settled in the council; but that, as far as they were concerned, they would not agree to Bulgaria’s being subject to any patriarchal jurisdiction other than that of Rome, seeing that the whole country was full of Latin priests. Here the Orientals interjected that, when the Bulgarians took possession of their present country they found Greek priests there, and argued that hence its present occupants ought to be under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople. Against this the papal legates keenly urged that it was undoubted that at first both the old and new Epirus, Thessaly, and Dardania, including the present capital of the Bulgarian kingdom (Achrida, the ancient Lychnidos), were included in the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome as patriarch of the West. They further contended that the Bulgarians had of their own accord voluntarily submitted to the jurisdiction of Rome, and that filially the missionaries from Rome had, in fact, converted the nation and ruled it for three years. Besides, continued the legates, the Holy Apostolic See judges, but is not judged; to that See, which is as easily able to annul “any decision you may come to, as you are inconsiderately to form one, to it we reserve all decision on this matter”. Thereupon the vicars of the Oriental patriarchs declared that it was anything but right that the Romans, who were separated from the Greek empire, and had allied themselves with the Franks, should be able to hold ordinations within the Greek dominions, and that they decided that Bulgaria must pass under the jurisdiction of Constantinople. But the papal legates at once proclaimed their sentence of no value, and solemnly adjured Ignatius, by God, His angels, and all those present, not to presume to ordain anyone for Bulgaria, or to send any of his subjects thither. This prohibition, they said, they made in accordance with a letter of Pope Hadrian which they handed him. Though much pressed to do so, Ignatius would not open the letter, but vaguely declared that he would never be so presumptuous as to act against the honor of the Holy See.

Greek ecclesiastics again in Bulgaria.

To this account of the conference on the “Bulgarian question”, furnished by the Book of the Popes, a few important additions must be made from the introduction to his translation of the Acts of the Eighth General Council by Anastasius. He was at Constantinople at the time when the conference was held. The librarian assures us, in the first place, that it is by no means certain that the vicars of the Oriental patriarchs ever really did decide in favor of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Bulgaria passing to Constantinople. For, to begin with, the conference was a “packed” one, from which Anastasius himself, whose thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin would have been of great assistance to the papal legates, was carefully excluded. Only one interpreter was admitted to the meeting, and he was merely allowed to exercise his office in accordance with instructions received from the emperor. That is, the words of the papal legates and the Orientals were so arranged as to deceive the Bulgarian envoys, who were given a document in which it was set out that the Oriental vicars had decided between Rome and Constantinople in favor of the latter.

The sequel to this disreputable affair was that Greek clergy were again introduced into Bulgaria. One, Theophylactus, was consecrated its archbishop by Ignatius, and the Latin clergy, according to the report of Bishop Grimwald, were expelled. The papal biographer, however, assures us, on the authority of the banished clergy, that they were not so much driven out by the Greeks or Bulgarians as betrayed for gold by their bishop himself (Grimwald).

It was to no purpose that Hadrian wrote (November 10, 871) both to the emperor and to Ignatius to protest against the conduct of the latter. Although, as we shall see, successors of Hadrian endeavored to bring back the Bulgarians to their allegiance to Rome, it was all in vain. After considerable coquetting with both Rome and Constantinople, they, most unfortunately for themselves, threw in their lot with the decaying East; and, until comparatively quite recently, shared in the decline and fall of Constantinople. On December 30, 1860, a section of the Bulgarians united themselves with the See of Rome. But when, a few years ago (1896), a little display of character on the part of the Catholic sovereign of Bulgaria (Ferdinand I) would have paved the way to the reunion of the whole country with Rome, the opportunity was lost; and, for fear of losing his crown, estimated at more than honor and conscience, he allowed his son—another Boris —to be baptized in the Greek Church.

Anything but pleased with the spirited conduct of the papal legates at his secret conference, the emperor, while by loading them with presents, did not trouble to take proper measures for their safe return to Rome. His officials conducted them to Dyrrachium, and there left them without furnishing them with warships for their sea voyage. At that seaport they parted company with Anastasius. With his own copy of the acts of the council, and with the satisfactions of the Greek bishops which had been entrusted to his charge, the librarian sailed to Siponto, and reached Rome in safety. But the legates, sailing by the more northerly route to Ancona, were attacked by a fleet of Slavonic pirates from the Dalmatian coast under Domagof, grand Joupan of Croatia, stripped of all they possessed, even of the original acts of the council, made prisoners, and only at length released through the strong representations which were made both by the emperor and the Pope.

SS.Cyril and Methodius

If, towards the end of his pontificate, Hadrian was saddened by the defection of one branch of the great Slavonic people, he was gladdened by the conversion of others, and by the coming to Rome in the beginning of his reign of the apostles of the Slavs, SS. Cyril and Methodius. With their glorious names Christianity in every Slavonic country, from Russia and Poland to Dalmatia and the border confines of Germany, is connected either by the authentic records of certain history or by a no mean tradition.

In their endeavors to get control over the Slavs of Moravia, the Germans, unhappily for themselves, replaced the rebel king Moimir by his nephew Rostislav, or Rastiz — to give two more different spellings of his name in use. They had replaced a weak enemy by a powerful one. Rastiz freed his people from the arms of the German, and gave them Christianity. Naturally, however, he turned elsewhere than to Germany for teachers of it. SS. Cyril and Methodius were sent (c. 863), at his request, by Michael III from Constantinople. Two men better fitted by nature and by grace for the work to which they were called could not well have been found. The two brothers, possibly themselves of Slavonic origin, were born of a good family at Thessalonica (Salonica), a city of the Eastern Empire, then only second in importance to Constantinople itself. It was a city not only crowded with Slavs, but in contact with Slav populations who had settled all round it. Before they left their native city the two brothers had acquired that knowledge of the manners and language of the Slavs which they were hereafter to turn to such good account. Constantine (born 827), better known as Cyril, the name he took along with the monastic habit on his death-bed, received the most considerable part of his education at Constantinople; for his father, who held an important position among the local authorities at Thessalonica, could afford to give his children the best education that money could purchase. Among the famous men under whom he studied was Photius, with whom, as did every other man who came under his influence, he formed a close friendship. It was on the strength of this familiarity that the saint afterwards blamed him for his attitude towards Ignatius, whilst the latter was yet patriarch. It is, he said, because “you are quite blinded by the smoke of avarice and jealousy, that the eyes of your wisdom, though naturally keen, cannot see the path of justice”. Cyril’s learning became so great that he received the surname of the “Philosopher”. Although the highest offices of the State were within his reach, he preferred, after having been ordained priest, to retire from the world. It was only with difficulty that he could be prevailed upon to leave his monastery and return to Constantinople to profess philosophy.

Methodius, who was some years older than his brother, had qualities and experiences which his more intellectual and retiring younger brother lacked. He was a man of action. For many years he was governor of one of the Slav colonies which were then so numerous both in the East, in the Opsikion theme (or province), and in the West, in the neighborhood of Andrinople and Thessalonica. After a time, however, he also withdrew from the world, and betook himself to a monastery.

When the ambassadors of Rastiz reached Constantinople, in their quest of Christian teachers for their country, Cyril had already gained fame as a missionary. At the request of the emperor he had labored among the Moslems during the caliphate of Mutawakkil (847-861); and then, along with his brother, with complete success among the powerful Khazars on the northern shores of the Black Sea. It was during this mission that S. Cyril obtained possession of the relics of Pope St. Clement from the Crimea. The martyr had been drowned near Cherson.

Although from his previous toils Cyril was, to use the words of his biographer, “exhausted, and worn with disease”, and had retired to the monastery of Polychronius in Constantinople, he consented, when asked by the emperor, to go with his brother to labor for Christ among the Moravians. Before the middle of 864, the brothers had begun their new work. Their amiability and gentleness, their learning and experience, their knowledge of the Slavonic tongue, and the administrative capacity of Methodius, told with wonderful effect for the spread of Christianity among a people who had hitherto only known it as the religion of the men who were trying to crush their independence, and were as much disposed to drive them into the fold of Christ at the points of their lances as to call them into it with His sweet words. Still further to attract the people to the truths of Christianity, St. Cyril, with his brother’s aid, invented a practical Slavonic alphabet. There had already been in existence for some centuries an exceedingly clumsy alphabet, known as the Glagolitic (from glagol, a sound or word), and thought by some to have been invented by St. Jerome, himself a native of Dalmatia. The letters of the new alphabet, called from the name of our saint the Cyrilic, were made to follow the order of the Greek alphabet, and new characters were added to the existing Glagolitic to express the sounds peculiar to the Slavonic tongue. By means of this alphabet the brothers translated portions of the Bible and of the Oriental, or, more probably, Roman, liturgical books into Slavonic.

The country in which first the two brothers together, and then Methodius by himself, especially labored was Moravia. But it was a larger country than that of today; it was the Moravian empire at the height of its power under Rastiz (d. 87o) and his nephew and successor Swatopluk. It embraced not only the land north of the Danube which now bears that name, but also Bohemia, Silesia, and most of the other provinces which make up the modern kingdom of Austria proper, along with Western Hungary as far as the Theiss. Hence it included as well the old imperial South-Danubian provinces of Noricum and Pannonia which had tasted of Roman civilization and Christianity, as heathen lands north of the Danube into which the arms of Rome had not forced an entrance, and into which the Cross of Christ had been but fitfully hitherto carried. Greater Moravia had neither a long nor a peaceful existence. Begun under Moimir I, during the reign of the emperor Louis the Pious, and after the destruction of the kingdom of the Avars by Charlemagne, this Slav empire endured till the days of Moimir II, when it was destroyed by the fiercesome Hungarians at the terrible battle of Presburg (907). During the whole period of its existence it had to struggle against a strong tendency to internal dissolution, as its chiefs were but feebly attached to the central authority, and against the Germans, who strove to subject it both politically and ecclesiastically to the empire of the Franks. Hence, while its temporal rulers had to fight for national independence with the secular princes of the Teutons, its saintly Greek missionaries had to struggle against the pretensions of the German hierarchy which claimed spiritual jurisdiction especially over the Slavs of the South-Danubian provinces. For after the Huns and Avars had blotted out their primitive (imperial) Christian organization, the blessings of the faith had been reintroduced among them by the Franks, and a certain ecclesiastical organization, subject to the bishops of Salzburg, Passau and Ratisbon, established by Charlemagne. Such then was the land, and such the circumstances in which the saintly brothers carried on their heroic labours.

As Cyril was not a bishop, and Methodius not even a priest, it became necessary for them to turn their attention to obtaining bishops for the Moravians, that the Church in their country might be put on a proper and independent basis. It was at this juncture that Pope Nicholas sent for them to come to Rome. That they should be summoned to Rome was necessary, not only because, in introducing a liturgy in a new tongue (the Sclavonic), they were doing something out of the ordinary, but because of the opposition, jealous indeed, but not unnatural, of the Germans, which we shall see coming to a head under the reign of John VIII; for from the days of the conquest of the Avars by Charlemagne, part of the country (Pannonia) held at this period by the Moravians and other Sclavonic tribes, had been put under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the bishops of Salzburg and Passau. And the two brothers seem to have acted quite independently of these German authorities. Further, it is possible, as Leger suggests, that, in endeavoring to secure the co-operation of SS. Cyril and Methodius, Nicholas may have had in view the erecting of a barrier of Christian Slav states, devoted to the Church of Rome, against the impending schism of the Church of Constantinople.

To Rome, then, they went, taking with them the body of Pope St. Clement. The Italian legend of Leo of Ostia tells us of the honorable reception accorded to the saintly brothers by Hadrian (for Nicholas had died before they reached the Eternal City) and the Roman people. The subterranean basilica of St. Clement shows a fresco depicting a funeral procession, and an inscription to the effect that “Hither from the Vatican is borne (Nicholas being Pope) with divine hymns the body which with aromatics he buried”. This is thought to represent the translation of the body of Pope St. Clement. “The time at which these pictures were painted might be supposed rather soon after Rome was moved by the arrival of the relics than a couple of hundred years after”. However, for this supposition Father Mullooly, who makes it, has to maintain that, as Nicholas was dead at the time of the arrival of the relics, “the anachronism of the painter, in representing Nicholas with his nimbus accompanying the funeral procession, is deliberate”. It may, indeed, easily have been so. Considering that it was Nicholas who called the saints to Rome, it was not unnatural to depict him as taking part in the translation of the relics brought by them.

There were in the West, at the time of which we are now writing, a body of men known as Trilinguists, from the opinion which they held that it was not proper for the services of the Church to be conducted in any other languages than in those used in the inscription on the Cross, viz., Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. By some of these theorists opposition was made to the Slavonic liturgy of St. Cyril. However, so well did the brothers plead their cause, that the Pope not only approved of the new liturgy, but placed their translation of the Gospels on the altar of St. Peter, and took pleasure in assisting at Mass said in Slavonic. The ordination of Methodius and several of his companions was so far at once proceeded with that they were made priests. Untimely death (February 14, 869) unfortunately cut short the nobly useful career of Cyril, apparently after he had been consecrated bishop. Methodius, at any rate, was certainly consecrated and proclaimed archbishop of the Slavs, who inhabited the ancient province of Pannonia and the parts to the north and east of it which bordered on the territories of the Germans. Of what had been thus done at Rome, Hadrian informed Rastiz in a letter which he wrote to him, to his nephew, Swatopluk, and to Kozel (or Kociel), the Slav prince of Balaton, who had begged the holy brothers to instruct him in the use of the new liturgy. The Pope speaks of the examination which had been made of the doctrine of Cyril and Methodius, and declares that “they had recognized the rights of the Holy See, and had done nothing against the canons”, and that he had resolved to consecrate Methodius bishop, and “knowing him to be a man of upright mind and orthodox”, to send him back to the Slavs. He approved the Slavonic liturgy, but wished that in the Mass the epistle and gospel should be read first in Latin and then Slavonic.

The document known as the Italian legend has a pretty story relative to the burial of St. Cyril. On the death of his brother, Methodius went to Hadrian and thus addressed him : “When we left our father’s house for the country in which, with God’s help, we have toiled, the last wish expressed by our mother was that, if either of us should die, the survivor would bring back his dead brother, and becomingly bury him in his monastery. Help me, your Holiness, to fulfill a mother’s prayers”. But when the people of Rome heard of this request, they flocked to the Pope and said : “Venerable father, it is wholly unfitting that we should allow to be taken from here the body of a man who has done such great deeds, who has enriched our Church and city with such precious relics, who, by the power of God, has drawn such distant nations towards us, and who was called to his reward from this city. So famous a man must have a famous burial-place in so famous a city as ours”. Moved by their words, Hadrian decided that the saint should be buried in St. Peter’s, in the very tomb he had prepared for himself. Seeing that there was no hope of his first request being granted, Methodius begged that his brother might be interred in the basilica of St. Clement, whose relics he had with such care and difficulty brought to Rome. This petition was granted, and amid the greatest pomp was the body of St. Cyril laid to rest at the right of the high-altar.

The history—somewhat tragic—of Methodius after his return to Moravia will be related under the life of John VIII.

The day on which Hadrian closed his short but full pontificate is not known. From certain catalogues, Pagi gives the date as November 26, Duchesne as December 14. Several fragments of his epitaph are still to be seen in the crypts of the Vatican.

“On Hadrian’s death”, it says, “mother earth here turned to dust what he had taken from it. But while his flesh returned to earth, his soul took its flight to heaven. Kind and tender was he, generous to all, and renowned throughout the world. Do you, reader, tearfully pray to God that he may live with his Lord beyond the stars”.

The repeated mention in one papal biography after another of the name of Anastasius the librarian, will no doubt have turned the reader’s thoughts on more than one occasion to that institution of which he was the guardian. The library of the popes, now, at any rate as far as manuscripts are concerned, the most valuable in the world, “the cornerstone of modern scholarship”, the source whence the learned of every civilized land are drawing the materials wherewith to construct the history of their respective countries, had a very early, if, naturally, very humble origin. To the volumes of the Old and New Testament, which formed its appropriate base, were soon added documents of all kinds, liturgical books, letters of the popes, writings of the Fathers, lists of the occupants of the See of Rome, and of its poor, etc. In thus founding a library, the Church of Rome was only doing what was being done by the other great churches even before the days of persecution were over, and settled peace was granted to the Church by Constantine. Of the character and contents of these early ecclesiastical libraries we may judge by the remark of Eusebius, the Father of Church History and the biographer of Constantine, that he found materials for his history in the library of the Church of Jerusalem, which its bishop Alexander had founded in the third century.

This primitive papal collection of books seems to have come to an untimely end in the persecution of Diocletian (303), so that of the acts of the martyrs collected by Pope Anterus, Gregory the Great could scarcely find a trace, nor could he lay his hands on the works of so distinguished a Father as S. Irenus. But with that unconquerable patience in construction and reconstruction which has distinguished the line of Roman pontiffs, the popes at once began to form a new library as soon as peace was restored to the Church. Pope S. Damasus (305-384), a most distinctly scholarly Pope, in one of his invaluable marble inscriptions, as remarkable for their literary as for their artistic finish, tells us that, near the theatre of Pompey, probably where the old library was situated, he built a new home for the papal library, with which it was his wish to have his name perpetually associated. This building was in connection with the Church of S. Lawrence in Damaso, and it was to this charter-house (chartarium) that S. Jerome, once the secretary of Pope Damasus, referred Rufinus for a letter of Anastasius I (400--1). Henceforth there is frequent mention of the library or archives (scrinium) of the Roman Church and of its contents. Pope Boniface I (418-422) refers to the “documents of our archives”, and Pope Pelagius I. (578-59o) says that extracts were read to the bearers of the letters of the Istrian bishops “from the codices and ancient polyptici of the library of our Holy Apostolic See”. Less important libraries were also founded by them in different parts of the city. Among these, we may specify one built by Pope Agapetus in AD 535. It had been his intention, in conjunction with Cassiodorus, to found a college for teachers of Christian doctrine. Before death overtook him, he had so far accomplished his design that he had erected a fine library for them, and had adorned it with a series of portraits, amongst which was one of himself. Its home was in the house on the Coelian hill which afterwards came into the possession of S. Gregory I; for there it was, namely, “in the library of S. Gregory”, i.e. in that attached to the Church of S. Gregory, that the Einsiedeln pilgrim read the following inscription :

Here sits in long array a reverend troop,

Teaching the mystic truths of law divine.

'Mid these by right takes Agapetus place,

Who built to guard his books this fair abode.

All toil alike, all equal grace enjoy,

Their words are different, but their faith the same.

As in process of time the work connected with the government of the Church became more and more attached to the Lateran Palace, the Library of the Holy See was, at some date unknown to us, transferred thither. The acts of the Roman Council of 649 prove that it was there in the seventh century. And there, just as Englishmen today are working in the Vatican library at the registers of the popes of the later Middle Ages, worked, more than a thousand years ago, the London priest Nothelm at the registers of the popes of the early Middle Ages for the benefit of our first historian, Bede. Not long after Nothelm’s visit, the Lateran library (scrinium Lateranense) was adorned by Pope Zachary (741-752) with a portico, towers, bronze gates, triclinium, and paintings.

Moreover, just as today the Vatican palace has its printing press, its Tipografia Vaticana, so in the Middle Ages the Lateran palace had its body of copyists, whose productions enabled the popes to make presents of bibles and of liturgical and learned works to Saxon, to Frank, and to Teuton. And a letter of the famous Lupus of Ferrières to Benedict III (855-8), asking for the loan of Cicero’s de Oratere, Quintilian’s Institutes, and the commentary of Donatus on Terence, is enough to show that the learned works of the library were not all ecclesiastical.

The first librarian of the Apostolic See whose name has come down to us is Gregory, afterwards the great Pope Gregory (715-731). For some time during the following century we find the signature “of the librarian of the Holy Apostolic See” appearing on the papal bulls; and, in that same epoch, principally through the agency of Anastasius, the Lateran librarian occupied for many years no small place in the eye of the world. But it was with the librarians of the Apostolic See as with every created thing. The highest point of their power was the nearest to their decay. After the reign of Hadrian’s (II) successor, the importance of its custodian began to wane along with the library itself. The feudal horrors of the tenth century and the first part of the eleventh were not destined to render Rome a favorable spot for books or their cultivation.

On the slopes of the Palatine, near S. Maria Antigua, Pope John VII built a palace at the beginning of the eighth century. Perhaps in connection with it, but probably somewhat later, though at an unknown date, there was built close to and partly over the arch of Titus a strong tower, a portion of the Palatine fortifications afterwards held by the Frangipani. It was in vain that to this fort, known from its contents as the Cartulary Tower (Turris Chartularia), part of the papal archives were for greater safety’s sake transferred; it was to no purpose that its contents were recruited from time to time by presents and, towards the end of the tenth century, by tributes of books from monasteries directly subject to the Roman See; the terrible disorders of the time and the disastrous fire in the Lateran quarter enkindled by the Norman Guiscard (1084) seem to have destroyed at least the greater part of the second library of the popes. On a future occasion we may tell how a third papal library was destroyed during the internal troubles in Rome in the course of the thirteenth century, and by the defection from the popes of the Frangipani, who handed over the Cartulary Tower to Frederick II.(1244). Even then, before the foundation of the present Vatican library by Nicholas V (1447-1455), there would still remain to be discussed the library of the popes of the thirteenth century, with its new series of papal registers dating from that of Innocent III; the library of Boniface VIII; and that of the Avignon popes and its wanderings till the glorious days of Nicholas V.

JOHN VIII.

A.D. 872-882.

EMPEROR OF THE EAST.                            EMPERORS OF THE WEST.

Basil I. (the Macedonian),1 867-886.             Louis II., 850-875.

                                                                       Charles II. (the Bald), 875-877.

                                                                       Charles III. (the Fat), 881-888.

JOHN VIII, like all great men, made enemies in plenty. And in the nineteenth century, well-nigh as many looked askance at him as did in the ninth. That John VIII really was a great man is what, in unison with Gregorovius, we imagine will be conceded by all. He opens his account of John VIII, a Pope “yet more vigorous” than Hadrian II, thus: “The Church, however, was fortunate at this time in having a succession of popes no less able than those who had freed Rome from the Byzantine yoke. While the throne of the Carolingians was occupied by a series of ever weaker rulers, the chair of Peter was filled by a set of men immeasurably their superiors in diplomatic skill, firmness, and power”. . . John’s energy against the inroads of the Saracens causes the same author to exclaim “The activity which the priest displayed put kings to shame, and covered his memory with military renown. A man such as the Pope well deserved to govern Rome”; and: “When we read the Pope’s letters, we are forced to admire his diplomatic skill. He possessed a capacity for political finesse such as but few popes have shared”. Finally: “He was distinguished by gifts of intellect and energy of will so rare, that his name shines with royal splendor in the temporal history of the papacy between the times of Nicholas I and Gregory VII”.

That, despite this, Gregorovius should regard John as “revengeful to an almost unequalled degree”, as “totally absorbed in aims of temporal dominion”, and “ambiguous, intriguing, sophistic, unscrupulous”, need not surprise us, when we find a Catholic author like Cantu asserting that John VIII was “intriguing and passionate, formed very false judgments on the morality of acts, was prodigal with excommunications, converted penance into pilgrimages, and allowed himself to be befooled by Photius”. To form an accurate estimate of the character of John may well be difficult, when we have Baronius assigning to John’s weakness of character the origin of the fable of Pope Joan, and Photius repeatedly praising him for his manliness. Here we will only observe that whatever moderns may think of John, his contemporaries in the West speak of him as highly as does Photius in the East. The panegyrist of Formosus unites with the schismatical patriarch in eulogizing the untiring struggle of John against wrong. Later on we may add a word of our own on the character of John VIII. Meanwhile it must be stated who he was and what he did.

In the Roman Council of 853 we find the signature of a certain archdeacon John. Sixteen years later, one of the allocutions of Pope Hadrian against Photius in the Roman synod of 869 was read by the same archdeacon; “and on December 14, 872”, as we are informed by the annals of the time, “ John, archdeacon of the Roman Church, was substituted in place of Pope Hadrian”. That the new Pope was by birth a Roman and the son of Gundus, and that Formosus, bishop of Porto, had endeavored to thwart his election as Pope by securing his own, is all the further information we have to give of John before he ascended the chair of Peter. From the long time that he held the important office of archdeacon, and from frequent allusions in his letters to the weak state of his health, we may fairly conclude that he was not only at least somewhat advanced in years when he became Pope, but that he was also of feeble health.

In recounting the deeds of this heroic Pontiff, we will begin with what he did for the Moravians, in order to continue their history with as short a break as possible. Before the death of Hadrian, Methodius, as archbishop of Pannonia, i.e. seemingly of Sirimium, had returned with a light heart to work among his beloved Slavs. For with the episcopal character he had received from Hadrian, he would be able to establish a native hierarchy, and win the confidence of the people still further by being able, now that he had secured the approval of the Holy See, to propagate freely the Liturgy in their own language. But as in the case of most other works which are calculated to do great good, the conversion of the Moravians was not to be allowed to proceed smoothly. The efforts of Methodius were to be interfered with as well by German princes as by German ecclesiastics. The former had designs on the country held by the Slavs, and the latter regarded Methodius as an intruder, seeing that it was through their efforts that Christianity had long before been introduced into various of the Slav tribes on the German boundaries, and that, as we have seen, they regarded Moravia as ecclesiastically subject to the bishops of Passau and Salzburg.

Hardly had Methodius reached Moravia, and put himself into in touch again with the different Slavonic peoples, when, trough the secret support of Swatopluk, the nephew of Rastiz, not only was the power of the Moravian monarch broken by the Germans, but he himself and Methodius along with him were carried off prisoners into Germany. By the comparatively recent discovery in the British Museum of extracts, at least, of certain of the earlier letters of John, we now know something of our saint’s treatment there. Brought before a council where he was unmercifully bullied, and treated most shamefully, he was afterwards, viz., at the end of the year 871, cast into a cruel dungeon in an old tower, where he languished, exposed to cold and rain, for two and a half years. The barbarian in these Teutons was as yet covered with but a very thin skin of Christian feeling and conduct, and that skin was very easily broken. Every effort was made to keep the Pope, to whom Methodius at once appealed, in ignorance of what had passed. Anno of Freising, one of the very bishops who had condemned Methodius, nay, who had been the very soul of the opposition to him, even declared to the Pope (873) that he knew nothing about him. When, however, at length, towards the end of the first half of this year (873), John learnt, at least, much of the truth, he at once dispatched a legate (Paul of Ancona) to Bavaria.

The instructions given to Paul by the Pope will serve admirably to put the reader in possession of the points at issue between the Germans and Methodius, and of ideas on the firmness and justice of John VIII. Paul was to remind the king (Louis the German) that Pannonia (Pannonica diocesis) was of old subject to the Apostolic See, and that from the earliest times (antiquitus) the disposition of bishoprics throughout the whole of Illyricum (totius Illyrici fines) belonged to it. Ecclesiastical rights may, indeed, in certain cases be lost by a contrary prescription, but not where an existing state of things has been upset by an invasion of pagans. The German bishops must be given clearly to understand that Methodius must be restored before any case against him can be considered. When he has been in possession of his See for as long a time as he has through them been deprived of it, then, if they have anything against him, both parties must come to Rome. Paul himself must not put off going to Swatopluk with Methodius, on account of any rumor of war. “Those who are in the service of St. Peter are men of peace, and wherever they go are not to be hindered by wars from working for the public weal”.

Although Paul was instructed to prohibit the use of the Slav liturgy, the German bishops were, as we have seen, peremptorily ordered, under pain of suspension, to restore Methodius to liberty, and to come to Rome if they wished to accuse him. In a number of other letters King Louis the German is put in possession of the Pope’s view of the case. Anno of Freising and his episcopal partners in oppressing Methodius are severely reprimanded for their arrogance in condemning an archbishop sent out by the Apostolic See, and for their brutal treatment of him; and Alwin, archbishop of Salzburg, is commanded to atone for his conduct by being the first to see to the restoration of Methodius.

At once released, the apostle of the Slavs returned to Moravia to find it again becoming a powerful state under the of guidance of Swatopluk, who, after using the Germans to overthrow his uncle, then successfully opposed them on his own account. But blows and imprisonment on German soil were not to be the last of the troubles of Methodius. The good work he was once more accomplishing in Moravia received yet another check. There were unfortunately at the court of the Slav monarch two men who were jealous of the influence which his virtues gave to the Byzantine archbishop. To ruin him, these men, John of Venice, a priest, and Wiching, a German, accused him to the Pope of not adding the Filioque to the Creed, a custom which, as we have seen, though supported by Charlemagne, had not even yet been introduced into the Roman Church. What seemed still more likely to work his downfall with John was the accusation they made to the effect that Methodius, despite the Pope’s orders to the contrary, had continued to use the Slavonic tongue in the liturgy. “The archbishop of the Church of Pannonia” was promptly (879) ordered to come to Rome, that “we may hear from your own mouth whether you believe and preach as in word and writing you promised the Holy Roman Church that you would”. This summons the archbishop obeyed immediately.

Soon convinced of his orthodoxy and good sense, John wrote (880) to Swatopluk, “glorious count”. He began by praising the devotion of the count and his people to the Apostolic See and himself. “For, inspired by divine grace, and setting at naught other princes of this world, with all your faithful nobility and people, you have chosen to have as your patron and helper and defender in all things Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and his vicar”. The venerable archbishop Methodius “we have examined in presence of our brother bishops”, as to whether he holds the same faith as the Roman Church. John then goes on to state that, finding him thoroughly orthodox, he confirmed his mission and station. Unfortunately, however, in accordance with the wishes of Swatopluk, as he expresses it, he consecrated Wiching to be bishop of Nitra (on the Nitra). It is true he ordered this enemy of Methodius “to be in all things subject to his archbishop”. Swatopluk is next asked to send out another cleric, with the approval of Methodius, so that John may also consecrate him bishop. The three thus consecrated will then be able canonically to consecrate such other bishops as may be required. Finally, he approves of the Slavonic tongue to be used in the Mass and in the liturgy of the Church generally; for God, “who made the three principal languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, made the others also for His honor and glory. However, in all the churches of your land we order that, for the sake of honor, the Gospel be first read in Latin and then in Slavonic, and, if you and your judges wish to have Mass said in Latin, that it be so done for you”.

Methodius was no sooner back again in Moravia than the German, Wiching, who was likely enough a secret agent to Arnulf, duke of Carinthia, began again to obstruct the good work of the saint (880). The efforts of Methodius, if allowed to develop naturally, would have not only made the Moravians Christians, but probably a powerful united nation also. This would not have suited the Germans. Wiching accordingly gave out that he was the bearer of other letters and secret instructions from the Pope, which were quite to the opposite effect to those which Methodius professed to have. Methodius and his liturgy, declared the lying German, were to be driven forth by the Pope’s authority. In despair, Methodius once again (88 1) turned to John, and informed him of all that had been said by Wiching. On March 23, 881, came back a letter from the Pope. He praised the saint’s zeal for souls, his orthodoxy, and denied that he had sent any other letters to Swatopluk than the one with which Methodius was acquainted, or that he had given any commission whatsoever to Wiching. He entreated him not to be cast down by the various trials which had befallen him, but rather, with the apostle, to consider them a joy. However, he will not fail in due course to chastise the offences of the aforesaid bishop.

The reception of this letter enabled Methodius to prove before the Moravian assembly, which had come together expecting to hear of the expulsion of their beloved apostle, that he had the full approval of Rome in all that he was doing.

This silenced Wiching for a time. But when, worn out the Slav with the labors of a life devoted to the welfare of his fellowmen, Methodius had died (April 6, 885), Wiching succeeded, by his forgeries and duplicity, in leading Stephen (V) VI to believe that Pope John had actually condemned Methodius and his Slavonic liturgy. Believing, then, and stating in as many words, that he was following in the footsteps of his great predecessor, Stephen definitely condemned the use of Slavonic in the sacred liturgy (885), whilst bestowing praise upon the traitor Wiching. This and the Germanizing influence of Wiching proved fatal to the ideas and disciples of Methodius. They were expelled the country and betook themselves to Boris of Bulgaria. The liturgy of the Moravians was transported to the Slavs of the East and North, and their liberty was destroyed by the Germans and Hungarians. By these powerful forces the Slavs were divided once for all into two great parties, as well in religion as in politics. But for the incursions of the Hungarians, a further effort to shake off German domination, which was made by Moimir II, the son of Swatopluk (d. 894), might have succeeded. At his request John IX. sent him an archbishop and two bishops to reorganize a national hierarchy a proceeding which greatly annoyed the Bavarian bishops. But, as we have said, the Moravian kingdom was swept away at the beginning of the tenth century by the whirlwind of the Magyar cavalry.

In this sketch of Moravia and the popes of the ninth century, the conclusions of Lapôtre have been adopted. For the arguments on which he rests these conclusions the reader must be referred to that author. Like an able barrister dealing with circumstantial evidence, he has in a most remarkable manner pieced together and harmonized what seemed to be not merely the isolated, but even the contradictory records of antiquity.

It is not the place here to speculate as to what might have been the future history of the Slavs, politically and religiously, if the policy of John in allowing the Slav liturgy had been persevered in. Suffice it to reaffirm here that it was not. Stephen (V) VI, deceived by Wiching, as we have said, as to what John had really done, proscribed (c. 885) the Slav liturgy. Its condemnation was renewed by John X (914-928) and other popes. However, even among the Slavs who remained in union with Rome it must have survived in some way; and, in 1248, the bishop of Zengh (Austrian Croatia) begged Pope Innocent IV to allow the celebration of the Roman liturgy in the Slavonic tongue, but written out in characters invented by St. Jerome, i.e. as we suppose, in Glagolitic characters. Innocent gave the required permission for the employment of the Slavonic liturgy in those parts where the “special characters” were in use. It is the words which must be subordinated to the matter, and not the matter to the words, wrote the Pope. At first the permission seems to have been very largely used. The Glagolite rite was at one time common throughout Dalmatia, Bosnia, Servia, and Bulgaria, and various Glagolite missals, etc., were printed from time to time in Rome. Now the use of this extremely curious rite has shrunk to the four dioceses of Veglia, Zara, Spalato, and Sbenico.

Croatia.

In addition to the Slavs of Lake Balaton, Schiavonia, and Moravia, John’s interest and concern for that people extended also to the Slavs of Croatia. The Christianity established in Croatia under the direction of the Dalmatian Pope John IV had not been able to exist long.

However, when John VIII became Pope there were among the Croatians a number of priests, Germans, and Greeks from various parts, who were anything but calculated to convert them. According to the epistle which the Pope wrote to Muntimir, duke of Croatia, they were doing more harm than good, breaking the laws both of the Church and of God himself; and, as they were not subject to any recognized superior, could not be checked. Muntimir is exhorted in the same letter to follow the examples of his forefathers, and to place himself under the spiritual direction of Methodius, archbishop of the neighboring Pannonia. Whatever effect this letter had upon Muntimir, it is certain that in 879 his successor, King Branimir, made his submission to the See of Rome. John wrote to thank him, “because, by the mercy of God, like a beloved son, he desired to be faithful in all things and obedient to St. Peter and to himself ... With paternal love he received him returning to the bosom of his holy mother, the Apostolic See, whence your fathers drank of the honeyed waters of saving preaching. . . In all your acts ever have God before your eyes. Fear and love Him with your whole heart”. In the following year, after the Pope had consecrated a bishop for the Croatians, he writes once more to the “glorious count Branimir, and to all his religious priests, honorable judges, and to all the people”. After again thanking God for the devotion they had shown to the See of Peter, he exhorts them to persevere in the service of Blessed Peter, under whose “guidance, rule, and protection” they had placed themselves. John concludes this letter by instructing Branimir, if he would have his wishes fulfilled, “to send suitable envoys to us, who, on your part, may take counsel with us and the Apostolic See on the matters which you have written to us, so that we also may send a legate to you, to whom (viz., to the combined envoys of the Pope and king), according to the manner and custom of our Church, your whole people may promise fidelity”.

This letter is the more interesting that it reveals the fact that Branimir had followed the example of the Moravian chief, Swatopluk, and had placed himself and his people under the protectorate of the Holy See. “And that it was the Slavs who began that great movement which led so many kings and nations in the Middle Ages to seek in the suzerainty of the popes a support for their weakness or a title for contested power”. Was it not but natural that tribes should look up with respectful gratitude to the common father of all the faithful, through whom with the incomparable blessings of the Christian faith they received the substantial benefits of civilization? Was it not to be expected that men surrounded by dangerous enemies should seek protection from one who had given to them in their weakness the same blessings he had before bestowed upon their more powerful foes, and who, they knew, must have great influence with their opponents, as he was the common spiritual father of both of them? The influence which the popes acquired in the Middle Ages sprang from the respect begotten of the loving gratitude of men who had been Christianized and civilized by them. No student of history can call in question the assertion that the greatest factor in the civilization of the West was the hierarchy established and sustained by the bishops of Rome. That our fathers in this country, “who” says an old chronicler, “are ever great lovers of the Apostolic See”, were ever giving of their gold to the popes, ever braving every peril of land and sea to visit them, and ever dedicating most of their churches to St. Peter, was due to the fact that they remembered St. Gregory the Great. But as grown-up children sometimes forget and even despise the parents who tended and protected them in their helplessness, so the popes are nowadays at times despised by peoples who have only grown to their present strength by the fostering care of the Roman pontiffs.

With his eye turned towards the Slavs, it was not likely that John would forget the Bulgarians, who, with a dalliance between Rome and Constantinople, which was repeated in the nineteenth century, had connected themselves, as we have seen, in the matter of ecclesiastical jurisdiction with the latter. John tried everything to bring them back under the direct authority of the See of Rome. He wrote to Boris himself and his chief men on the one hand, and to the emperor Basil and St. Ignatius, and afterwards to Photius, on the other. It was not, as the Pope said to Boris, that the faith taught by Rome and Constantinople was not in itself one and the same; but that the patriarchs of Constantinople and the Greeks were very prone to schism and to error, as he knew but too well. It was the wish of the Pope, consequently, to save the Bulgarians from attaching themselves to the Greeks, and thereby sooner or later losing their faith. It was with the view of detaching them from Constantinople that he was induced, in the opinion at least of some authors, to recognize Photius as patriarch on the death of Ignatius. And as a matter of fact, Photius himself never interfered in the ecclesiastical government of Bulgaria, which was henceforth no longer inserted in the episcopal lists of the patriarch of Constantinople. If John did not attain his end, it was because of the ideas of unbounded independence entertained by the Bulgarians; or, perhaps it should rather be said, because of the ideas of absolutism conceived by the Bulgarian rulers. They would be the first in the Church as in the State. They were soon, however, and were long so to remain, the subjects of Constantinople in both.

A full analysis of John’s first extant complete letter to Boris (April 16, 878) will show how earnestly he set about his hopeless task. “At your conversion”, wrote the Pope, “we rejoiced, but now that you have been deceived into following the Greeks, we are sad; and we fear that since they are wont to fall into different heresies and schisms, you also may fall with them into the depths of error”. This reflection it is which makes us anxious “for we look not for glory, honor, or revenue from you. It is you and not yours which we seek. We do not desire to govern your state; but, in accordance with ancient custom, we wish to resume the spiritual care of those parts, in order that, of the solicitude which we owe to all the Churches, we may be able to bestow a special share on you. Return then to Blessed Peter, whom you loved, whom you chose, whom you sought, whose help you have received in your necessities, and of the flood of whose teachings you have drunk. ... We do not say that ours and theirs is not the one faith, one Lord, one baptism (Ephes. IV. 5), but we speak as we do, because amongst them, through the patriarch or emperor of Constantinople, or both, heresies often arise, and many of those who are their subjects, through flattery or fear, become like to them. Woe then to those who keep their company. ... We believe, however, that it is well known to you that the Apostolic See has never been reproved by other Sees, whereas it has very often reproved, freed from error, or, in cases of refusal to retract, judicially condemned all other Sees, and especially that of Constantinople”. John warns them that, if they follow the Greeks, they may fare as did the Goths, who, from them, for Christianity received Arianism. Speaking then prophetically, he assures the king that if he turns to the Greeks he will inevitably share their fate. In conclusion, he thanks the king for the present he has sent him.

John at the same time dispatched other letters, equally full of honorable feeling, to certain influential men of Bulgaria, who were exhorted to urge Boris to return to the bosom of the Roman Church. Letters were also sent to the Greek clergy who had established themselves in Bulgaria, declaring them excommunicated, and, moreover, deprived of their dignities if they did not leave the country within thirty days. The same penalties were decreed against Ignatius, who had been already twice warned by the Pope of what would befall him if he did not withdraw his clergy from the aforesaid country. Bishops Paul of Ancona and Eugenius of Ostia, the bearers of these letters and of others to the emperor to the like effect, found on their arrival at Constantinople that Ignatius was long since dead (October 23, 877), and that Photius, reconciled to Basil, was patriarch in his stead.

John now continued more earnestly than ever his efforts to recall Boris to his duty. In May 5, 879, three letters were dispatched to the king and to others, in which he excuses some bungling on the part of his ambassadors. The return of Branimir to the Roman obedience furnished the occasion for sending further letters in June. In one of them he reminded Boris of the gratitude he owed the Holy See on account of the civil and religious code he had received from Pope Nicholas. Up to the end of his reign John continued his appeals to the king. Yet, though he offered to do all he conscientiously could for him, he got nothing but words and presents. Boris had discovered that the patriarchs of Constantinople would go further than the popes of Rome.

The little that remains to be said about Bulgaria and the popes till the thirteenth century may be as well mentioned here. Simeon (893-927), the younger son of Boris, who did so much for the spread of the Bulgarian power, but who could not hope for substantial concessions from the Byzantine empire with which he was often at war, reopened negotiations at Rome for an imperial crown and an independent patriarch of his own to crown him. He had the usual Bulgarian weakness; he would be the equal of the emperor at Constantinople. At any rate, while it is certain that about the year 928 a papal embassy went to Bulgaria, it was asserted in later times by a Bulgarian king, Calojan Jonitza, who restored the Bulgarian empire at the close of the twelfth century, and who asked similar favors of Innocent III, that the Pope had about that time sent a crown to be solemnly bestowed on the ruler of the Bulgarians.

In any case, however, the power of the Bulgarian monarchs and the privileges thus obtained did not last long. The Bulgarians in the East (971), whose capital was Presthlava, and afterwards (1019) those in the West, who had fallen back upon Achrida, soon passed under the sway of Byzantium. They were subdued by the terrible Basil II, “the slayer of the Bulgarians” (Bulgaroctonus).

It was during the century and a half of its subjection to Constantinople (1019-1186) that the final rupture between the popes and its patriarchs took place. As a conquered province, Bulgaria had, of course, to throw in its lot with the orthodox Greeks. On the recovery of their freedom they renewed, as we have seen, intercourse with Rome. But they, or their rulers, have had but little thought except for their own personal ends. And up till today they have gone on playing off the Latins on the Greeks, and viceversa, for that object.

Photius in exile

Inseparably connected with this early stage of the Bulgarian question, as this narrative has already shown, was the notorious Photius, whom we left sent into exile by Basil. Although at times depressed by his fall, Photius did not give way to despair. He turned his exceptional energy to letter writing, and took good care never to lose an opportunity. He realized the force of the proverb which he quoted to Anastasius that “opportunity has long hair in front, by which it may be seized. But it is bald behind, and when once it has passed by, we cannot grasp it, do what we will”. He also well understood how to improve an occasion. A master of the art of letter writing, he wrote to everybody to his friends, to his foes, and to those he wished to make his friends. And he wrote in every variety of style. He entreated, he bemoaned, he persuaded, he exhorted, he encouraged, and he cut and thrust too when he wanted to make an enemy respect him. “It has been said”, he wrote to one such, “that many have climbed up into the tree of tyranny; but no one has ever come down except with a crash. Why are you then so proud and haughty? With all your power and pride you are not at the top of the tree; you are only stupidly seated among the leaves and branches”.

But he made no headway with Basil himself until he had the wit, so it is said, to draw up a genealogical tree, and to prove to Basil that he was, after all, of illustrious descent, and that he had come down in the direct line from Tiridates, king of Armenia!

His capability of forging documents stood Photius in good stead. He was recalled to court, and on the death of S. Ignatius (October 23, 877), was forthwith acknowledged as patriarch by the emperor. Once again patriarch de facto if not de jure, Photius resumed his old methods to get himself acknowledged both at home and abroad. His faithful friends were rewarded, new ones were made by favors, and his enemies were won over or punished, some even unto death. And again an effort was to be made to get the approval of Rome for his appointment.

In a letter now lost, Basil, without making any mention of the death of Ignatius, wrote to the Pope to ask him to send legates, whom he took good care to name, to heal the schism which was still unsubdued between Ignatius and the partisans of Photius a schism which the emperor acknowledged had resulted in much violent usage of a great many clerics. On receipt of this letter, John at once dispatched two envoys to Constantinople, Paul, bishop of Ancona, and Eugenius of Ostia, with seven letters, all dated April 878. Of five of the letters, addressed to the Bulgarians and to Ignatius, whom the Pope supposed still alive, enough has been said already. In the letter addressed to Basil, John praises him for his efforts in behalf of the peace of the Church of Constantinople. To second those efforts, he says, he is sending Paul and Eugenius, as those whom the emperor had asked for are otherwise engaged. “For we bear the burdens of all who are heavily laden, or rather who bears them in us is Blessed Peter, who protects and guards us the heirs in everything of his charge”.

It would seem that when John’s legates arrived in Constantinople, they were treated by Photius as he had treated those of Nicholas. He so acted upon them by presents, threats, and deceptions, that he prevailed upon them to declare in a public gathering of clergy and laity that they had been sent to anathematize Ignatius and to proclaim Photius. This sufficed to induce many to communicate with him. But he felt that he could only obtain general recognition by securing the approval of the Pope. He accordingly dispatched to Rome one Theodore Santabarenus, a magician by repute, a man devoted to his interests, and as unscrupulous as himself in using any means whatsoever to accomplish an end. In a letter entrusted to Theodore, the Pope was assured that Photius had again taken possession of the Patriarchal See, but much against his will, and because compelled by clergy and people alike. The emperor and the metropolitans, all, high and low, were said to have expressed their opinion in writing that such was the best way to secure peace. In fine, John was asked to commission legates to represent him in a council to be held at Constantinople, and was assured that the emperor would send him that assistance of which he stood in so much need against the Saracens and his other enemies.

The emperor’s envoys, for whose safety John took what precautions he could, reached Rome about May 879. Amazed at the unexpected turn that events in Constantinople had taken, John took time to consider what decision he ought to form. He held a synod, at which seventeen bishops and seven cardinal priests and deacons assisted, and at which, after carefully weighing all the information that was to hand, five letters were drawn up, as well as a set of instructions (commonitorium) for the Pope’s legates. These documents, dated August 16, 879, were, for the most part, afterwards shamefully mutilated in his own interests by Photius. Of this there is no doubt whatever; for, with regard to the letters, the authentic original Latin text still remains to be confronted with the versions of such of them as Photius read before his council (November 879). The original Latin text of the commonitorium is no longer extant; but that it was tampered with is evident from a comparison between it and the authentic copies of the letters. The outcome of the deliberations of the synod was that, under the circumstances, the best thing would be to acknowledge Photius; and so, if possible, to avoid the schism which the Greeks seemed bent on causing. This was clearly stated in the following letter of the Pope to the emperor. The chief emendations of this letter made by Photius will be given in the notes, so as not to confuse the real with the counterfeit.

John begins by praising the emperor for following in the footsteps of his “most pious predecessors” in paying reverence to the Holy See, and in submitting everything to its authority. That the “ Roman See is the head of all the Churches of God is attested by the Fathers and by the laws of the orthodox emperors and the most reverent letters of Basil himself”. What, therefore, the emperor petitions for, “considering the needs of the time as much as anything”, we have decided shall be done “by virtue of our apostolic power and with the knowledge and consent of the Apostolic See” (the council noticed above). You have asked that the Apostolic See should show its mercy and should acknowledge Photius as patriarch, lest the Church of God, so long disturbed, should be allowed by us to remain divided. Consequently, now that we know that the patriarch Ignatius, of blessed memory, is dead, we have decided, under the circumstances, to overlook what has been decreed against Photius; and that, too, though without the consent of our See, he has usurped an office from which he had been interdicted. Accordingly, without going against the canons, or the Fathers; nay, rather following what they allow to be done in case of necessity, and having regard to the unanimous wish for his restoration on the part of the other patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and of all the bishops, even of those who were consecrated by Methodius and Ignatius, and for the peace and advantage of the Church of God, we acknowledge Photius as our fellow bishop, on condition of his asking pardon before a synod (a condition on which John insists twice). Uniting, therefore, with the emperor in his desire for the peace of the Church, we on whom rests the solicitude of all the churches, absolve Photius and all the clerics and laity who were condemned with him from all ecclesiastical censures. This we do by virtue of that power which the Church throughout the whole world believes was given to us by Christ, our Lord, in the person of the prince of the Apostles, when He said to him : To thee will I give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven”.

All this the Pope does on the understanding that after the death of Photius, some cardinal priest or deacon of the Church of Constantinople be elected patriarch but not a layman or a member of the court; that inferior clerics be not promoted rapidly; and that Photius give up all pretensions to jurisdiction over Bulgaria.

Bearing in mind that the emperors of Constantinople often treated their patriarchs merely by whim, the Pope goes on, greatly to his honor, to beg Basil to treat Photius with that respect which his position demands, and not to listen to what others may urge against him. He exhorts the emperor to treat with every consideration those who had been ordained by S. Ignatius in order that unity in the Church may be secured.

In conclusion, those who, after due warning, will not recognize Photius, are to be excommunicated; as is the patriarch himself if he receives any bishops condemned by the Pope.

John’s letter to Photius himself is to the same effect. The Pope refers the excessive praise given him by Photius to God. On the ground that all with one accord desire him; that he will ask pardon before a synod; and that no act of mercy towards one who repents is to be condemned, he acknowledges Photius for the sake of the peace of the Church of Constantinople, on the same conditions with regard to Bulgaria, etc., that he laid down in his letter to the emperor. This letter, which concludes with a threat of excommunication if the patriarch does not do all in his power to restore the authority of the Pope in Bulgaria, was altered to suit his purposes by Photius in the same way in which he altered the letter to the emperor. Among other points may be noticed that praises which in the Pope’s letter are given to God, Photius transfers to himself; and he makes John expressly condemn the Eighth General Council.

Unfortunately the instructions which John gave to his legates at Constantinople (to whom was now added the cardinal priest Peter, the bearer of all these letters) only exist in the form in which Photius presented them at the third session of his synod. That they also were tampered with will be clear to the reader, from the manner in which they contradict the Pope’s real mind as set forth in his letters to Basil and to Photius. However, as the document is an interesting one, as showing the form in which the popes of the ninth century conveyed their wishes to their representatives abroad, we will give a synopsis of it. It was drawn up on the lines of the one sent by Pope Hormisdas to his legates at Constantinople in 515.

The legates are to live at Constantinople in the place assigned them by the emperor, and, till they see him, they are not to give the Pope’s letters to anyone. When they deliver them to the emperor they are to say to him that the Apostolic Pope, the lord John, his spiritual father, salutes him; and that in his daily prayers for him, he begs that God, who has implanted this desire for the peace of the Church in the breast of the emperor, may give him every good gift. If asked about their mission, they must refer the emperor to the letters ; and if he further asks about the letters themselves, they must tell him that they contain greetings and all directions as to what has to be done. Next day they must go and salute Photius, give him the Pope s letter to him, and address him becomingly to the effect that the Pope receives him as his colleague. Then, according to the version of the commonitorium that has come down to us, but quite in opposition to the real directions of the Pope, they are simply to require that Photius should appear before them in synod to be acknowledged by all. Then (doubtless as a means of softening the opposition, and at the same time of not offending his friends) the Pope is made to recommend that, of the bishops of the party of Ignatius who may become reconciled to Photius, those of them who had been consecrated before (i.e. by Ignatius before Photius had been intruded into his See, and of whom there would not be many) should keep their Sees; but that those among them who had been consecrated by Ignatius after his restoration should simply receive support from the bishops in possession. The synod, over which the legates are to preside along with Photius and the legates of the Orientals, is to be asked whether it receives the Pope’s letters to the emperor. On its signifying its acceptance of them, it is to be told that the Pope, who has the care of all the Churches, has sent his legates to do all that is necessary for peace.

Finally the legates are to insist on civil functionaries not being in future elected to the See of Constantinople, to ask Photius not to tamper with Bulgaria, and to declare null and void the synods under Hadrian, in Rome and Constantinople against Photius. The legates are not to allow themselves to be bribed or terrified, but must stand firm “as holding our place and power”. Then come the signatures of the bishops who were present at the Roman synod, whence issued all these documents. The first runs : “I, Zachary, bishop of Anagni and librarian of the Apostolic See, have with my own hand signed this commonitorium for the reception of Photius, the most holy patriarch”. There can be no doubt that the same hand which manipulated the preceding letters used the same methods of addition and subtraction with regard to these papal instructions also.

In the three remaining letters put into the hands of Peter, the legates are told to perform this second mission better than the first; and Stylian and Metrophanes, and other opponents of Photius, were ordered to communicate with him, seeing that he has been restored for the sake of peace.

Here the narrative may be interrupted to consider the what is to advisability of this indulgence of John towards Photius. It has been severely criticized by many Catholic writers; and the illustrious cardinal Baronius goes so far as to ascribe the origin of the Pope Joan fable to what he calls this feminine weakness of John VIII. A fuller study of all the circumstances has, however, led many moderns to the conclusion that John’s action was neither weak nor foolish. The wholesale abuse which was made of his clemency he could not foresee. And the state of affairs at the close of 879 was different from what it was under Nicholas and Hadrian. Now Ignatius was dead, so that Photius was no longer in the position of one who would hold what belonged to another.

No doubt, too, both the emperor and the Pope were thoroughly convinced that the only hope of bringing about unity in the Church of Constantinople was to restore Photius. When he had been expelled, and Ignatius restored by Basil, it was hoped that by degrees the partisans of Photius would be reconciled to Ignatius. But for some reason, these most reasonable expectations the more reasonable when the pliability of the Greek hierarchy is considered were doomed to disappointment. Photius was even able to boast that not one of his partisans had abandoned his cause. Nicetas ascribes this to the clemency exercised by the Eighth General Council a clemency which, he asserts, was due to the action of the Holy See to which, “in compliance with ancient custom, the right of passing judgment was accorded”. Modern authors, however, with much greater reason, attribute this obstinate adhesion to the severity of that council. By not recognizing the orders of the partisans of Photius, the council, as it were, burnt the boats by which the condemned might have returned to the Church. Further, there was much in the characters of Ignatius and Photius to account for the devotion of his followers to the latter. Severe to himself, Ignatius seems to have been somewhat severe towards the faults of others; whereas Photius was not merely attractive by his genius, but was prepared to go all lengths and his talents enabled him to go far in accommodating his conscience as well to the desires of his own heart as to those of his followers. It is possible, too, that John was at least partly deceived as to the real state of things in Constantinople, particularly in the matter of the alleged unanimity of desire on the part of clergy and laity alike for the restoration of Photius.

Finally, though there is no valid reason to doubt that the Pope’s first motive in restoring Photius was to heal the dissensions in the Church of Constantinople, and to stave off as long as possible the inevitable schism between the East and the West, it may well be granted that the hope of saving Bulgaria from schism and of getting help from the emperor against the Saracens also influenced him in acceding to the desires of Photius. For in this year, 879, dire were the difficulties of the Pope. Harassed on the one side by the Duke of Spoleto, and on the other by the Saracens, with no ruler in the West able or willing to take the imperial crown, John found that while the new empire of the West was rushing to ruin, the old empire of the East was, under Basil, renewing its youth. No wonder the Pope was inclined to be as accommodating as possible in cultivating the friendship of Basil. And when once he had made up his mind on a certain line of action to be pursued, he acted with vigor. If he was anything, he was thorough. All his letters, those on the subject of the restoration of Photius included, show anything but weakness. Hence the decided tone of his letter to Metrophanes and Stylian and to the other firm and faithful adherents of Ignatius. No sooner had he determined that the acknowledging of Photius was the best thing for peace, than he resolved that friend and foe alike must be made to fall into line. And certainly that was the only consistent policy.

On the arrival (November 879) of the cardinal-priest Peter at Constantinople, Photius at once assembled a council. As the acts of this synod embody not only the Pope’s letters, tampered with as just shown, but other matters, for different reasons difficult of explanation, some authors have expressed their belief that no council was held by Photius at all, and that what purports to be its “acts” is but another forgery on the part of that false Greek. However, the general opinion now is that a council was held, but that its acts contain much that cannot be relied on. In reading them, distrust is instinctively aroused. If, for instance, the Pope’s legates acted and spoke as the acts would have us believe, they must have betrayed their cause even more absolutely than any other papal envoys in Constantinople had ever done before them. However, as it is certain that they were largely ignorant of Greek the proceedings of the second session show that Peter needed an interpreter it is more natural to suppose either that their discourses have been wrongly interpreted, or that the words of others were falsely rendered to them, or both.

The council was opened in November; and, according to the acts, was presided over by Photius, and was attended by no less than 383 bishops. Of these bishops who were all from the patriarchate of Constantinople, some had already taken part in the Eighth General Council, and others represented Sees which have never been heard of in any other connection than with this council. With regard to the Oriental Sees, in the first session held in the great sacristy in the Church of St. Sophia, only the See of Jerusalem was supposed to be represented. But by the fourth, the other two Sees of Alexandria and Antioch were equally supposed to be represented. Supposed, because it is extremely doubtful whether Cosmas and the other professed envoys of the Oriental Sees were really their properly accredited legates.

Though Photius on several occasions in the course of the synod spoke in very flattering terms of John himself, even calling him his spiritual father, and though at the end of the first of the three canons promulgated in the fifth session there was a declaration to the effect that there was no intention of introducing any innovations with regard to the privileges of the Holy See, the Pope was throughout the council even in this very canon spoken of as though he were nothing more than patriarch of the West, and as though, consequently, he had no rights over any other part of the Church and was in no way superior to Photius himself. Indeed, in the fifth session, Basil, metropolitan of Martyropolis, who was set down as the representative of the See of Antioch, openly declared that, as Photius was the highest bishop, he held the primacy by the will of God. And this, too, if the acts are to be trusted, without a word of protest not merely from any other bishop, but from the Pope’s legates. These latter may, indeed, have been wholly ignorant of what was really being said.

The acts, as we now have them, are simply one hymn of praise in honor of Photius. Even the papal legate Eugenius is, in the first session, made almost blasphemously to assert : “The soul of the Pope was so intimately united to that of Photius as to form, as it were, but one soul with it; and just as he desired to be united with God, so he desired to become one with Photius”. Who can resist the feeling, on reading such things as this in the acts, that he is not dealing with facts but with the exuberances of fancy? Such language Photius might wish to have been used by others, but surely it cannot be that they proceeded from any other brain than his own.

In the second, third, and fourth sessions the Bulgarian question came up for consideration. While Photius and the synod professed to be ready to fall in with the Pope’s wishes in this matter, they asserted that the marking out of boundaries was a matter for the emperor to deal with. However, in the fourth session, they promised to use their influence with the emperor to get the Pope’s requirements on this subject complied with. In the fifth session, which began on January 26, 880, the council was largely concerned with vainly endeavoring to bring over to its views Metrophanes of Smyrna, the faithful friend of Ignatius. With the signing of the acts, at the close of this session, the synod was, properly speaking, over. But in the acts two more sessions are reported as having taken place. They were held in the imperial palace, and at the first of them the emperor presided. Besides the papal legates and Photius, only the Oriental vicars and eighteen metropolitans were present. To strengthen the foundation for the defence of his doctrine on the “Descent of the Holy Ghost”, Photius procured the signatures of all to a formula containing the Nicene Creed without the addition of the Filioque, and anathemas against such as should add to this symbol words imagined by themselves.

On the 1 3th of March (880) was held the seventh and last session of the council. The formula of faith propounded at the previous private sitting was proposed to this public session, and, of course, accepted. Nor was this last session brought to a close without another pronouncement that Photius “had the spiritual priority over the whole Church”.

Before parting company with the Acts of the Council of Photius, a letter purporting to be from the Pope to Photius, and which is appended to the acts, must be noticed. In this document John declares that he condemns those who have dared to add the Filioque to the Creed, “as transgressors of the divine word, and overthrowers of the theology of Christ”. There is no need to give here the arguments, intrinsic and extrinsic, which demonstrate the apocryphal character of this letter, as even Bower concludes “the letter in question to be forged”.

Loaded with presents for themselves, and with presents and letters from Photius both to the Pope and to various bishops, and with a letter from the emperor to the Pope, the papal legates returned to Rome, which they reached about August. Unfortunately the letters of Photius and the emperor to John are lost; but the replies of the Pope to them, sent off before the acts of the council could be translated, are still extant. In his letter 1 to Basil (August 13, 880), he praises and thanks him for his efforts in behalf of the peace of the Church, and for his acting in concert “with the merciful authority and decisions of the Apostolic See, which, through the will of Christ, holds the primacy of the whole Church”. The interest the emperor takes in “the Church of St Peter and our paternity”, he has proved by deeds as well as words. Hence John goes on to thank him first for the men-of-war he had sent to protect the territory of St Peter; then for restoring to the jurisdiction of the Holy See the monastery of St Sergius in Constantinople; and lastly, for allowing us to have “the diocese of the Bulgarians”. The Pope concludes with these words : “ What has been mercifully (misericorditer) decreed in synod at Constantinople as to the restitution of Photius, we accept. But if, perchance, in this synod our legates have acted against our apostolic instructions, then we do not accept what has been thus done, nor do we regard it as having any force at all”.

The Pope’s letter to Photius is more uncompromising still. He commences by saying that his one aim has ever been to promote the peace of the Church. Hence, wishing to have pity on the Church of Constantinople, he had willed that the elevation of one man should not prove the loss of another, but rather be to the profit of all. And so, while he rejoices at the unity now to be found in the Church of Constantinople, he feels bound to say that he is astonished that many of his instructions have not been duly carried out by whose fault he knows not and this, too, when he had decided that through mercy special treatment was to be granted to him (Photius). He will not listen to the excuse that forgiveness is only to be asked by those who have done wrong. “Let not your prudence, which is said to be acquainted with humility, be angry that it has been ordered to ask pardon of the Church of God, but rather let your prudence learn to humble itself that it may be exalted”. The Pope concludes this letter in the very same words as the preceding. He receives Photius, but not what his legates may have done against his injunctions.

What further steps were taken by John in connection with this assembly, which the Greeks to this day speak of as the Eighth General Council instead of the one in 869, are by no means clear. However, from the letter of Stephen (V) VI to Basil, it is regarded as certain that John dispatched on a new embassy to Constantinople Marinus, who had distinguished himself as a deacon at the Eighth General Council and was now bishop of Cervetri, the ancient Caere in Etruria. Finding that Marinus was made of different metal from the other legates of John, and that he could neither be hoodwinked nor bribed, Basil tried to frighten him. Marinus was thrown into prison, but he could not be won over.

On the return of his legate to Rome in the beginning of 881, John apparently solemnly condemned Photius. This would seem to be proved, first by the way in which his legate Marinus had been treated for carrying out the Pope’s instructions, and then by the testimony of the Greek abridgment of the acts of the Eighth General Council of 869. This authority positively states that John condemned Photius, who had “deceived and corrupted” the legates Eugenius, etc. Gospel in hand, he is said to have mounted the pulpit, and to have declared that whoever should not regard Photius as condemned by the just judgment of God should be anathema.

It is further certain that there is no more mention of Photius in the letters of John. If it be argued against what has been said, that Photius would not have continued to speak of John in terms of praise as he did, if that Pope also had excommunicated him, it may be replied that it doubtless suited Photius to have it believed that John s recognition of him was never withdrawn.

The condemnation of Photius, pronounced by John, was renewed by his immediate successors, Marinus, Hadrian III, Stephen (V) VI, and Formosus, who became Pope the same year in which it is believed by most authors that Photius died (February 6, 891). The details of their proceedings against him will be found in the biography of Stephen VI.

Whilst John was occupied with these important events in the East, he was busy with others of no less importance, though of a more political character, in the West. But if his skill in politics has evoked the praises not only of his contemporaries but of modern writers of every shade of opinion, some of the latter would make out that he devoted his abilities in that direction to raising to a greater height the fabric of the temporal power of the Roman See on the ruins of the empire ruins which he himself helped to cause. A careful examination of the Pope’s actions, however, reveals the fact that he did all he could to strengthen the empire. If the empire of Charlemagne went still further to pieces during his pontificate, it was not owing to any imaginary humiliation inflicted on it by the Pope. It was due to the only too natural want of a series of rulers like Charlemagne. Only by a succession of such master-minds could the numerous and powerful obstacles to the imperial unity of the West have been overcome obstacles, not only from without, caused by the incessant inroads of barbarians, but also from within, in the shape of physical barriers, linguistic differences, and racial enmities. The glorious unity, laboriously erected after hundreds of years of toil by the genius of Rome, had been so shattered, especially in the fifth century by Hun and Goth, that apparently its fragments could not be welded together again. With his keen political insight John realized clearly enough that it would require all that emperor and Pope could effect, working in the fullest harmony, to stem the tide of anarchy which was setting in strongly, in Italy especially. And nobly did he strain every nerve to try to stop it. But “neither the diplomatic genius of John the Eighth, nor the abilities of any other Pope were capable of overcoming the chaos which prevailed in Italy. The bishops of Lombardy, the feudal dukes, who had all risen to power with the fall of the empire, the princes of southern Italy, the Saracens, the German kings, the rebellious Roman nobles, had all to be overcome at one and the same time, and the task of the subjugation of so many hostile forces proved beyond the powers of one solitary man”. But without feeling, indeed, must he be who can see the heroic old Pope battling with every form of evil till he has to cry out that the misery of the people entrusted to him is so great that the tomb is the only comfort left for him, and who can then withhold from him his admiration.

John began his efforts in behalf of the well-being of Italy by giving his hearty support to the emperor Louis. He loved Italy, and therefore did all he could for Louis, whom he properly regarded as its only hope. In the first months of his pontificate he wrote to Charles the Bald. And, as he avers in his letter, following in the footsteps of his spiritual father Hadrian, from whom he had inherited the overlordship of the Church and the power of punishing the disobedient, he exhorted the king to give up to the emperor the kingdom of Lothaire. If he fails to do this, the Pope “will come himself with a rod, as his spirit of meekness has been set at naught” (1 Cor. IV. 21). We have already seen how, to save the honor of Louis, John lent himself to his policy in the matter of the reconciliation between him and the duke of Beneventum. In every way, too, did he second the efforts of the emperor in his endeavors to break up the Saracen power in south Italy. And when the tyrannical Sergius, duke of Naples, of whose treatment of his uncle mention has been made, and of whom we shall hear again, thought himself powerful enough to despise emperor and Pope alike, and, following the example of Michael the Drunkard, even went to the length of treating an embassy of the Pope with contempt, John wrote to Louis that he would strike Sergius, if not with a sword of steel, like that with which Michael had been slain, at least with a spiritual sword. He will excommunicate him at once in council, and will inform the patriarch of Constantinople and the other patriarchs of his impious cruelty, so that he may be condemned by the whole Church as he has been by the Church of Rome.

Hence, despite some minor differences between them, John could write in all confidence to the widowed Engelberga that he had ever had the greatest affection for Louis, and that he would never cease to pray for him daily.

John was as true to Engelberga as to her husband. He always watched over her interests, as many of his letters to her show. We will cite a beautiful extract from his letter to her of March 877. He begins by assuring her that his sentiments towards her have not undergone any change, for love knows not change. He writes to her in order that she may not give way under her troubles; for the apostle has taught us “that tribulation worketh patience; and patience trial; and trial hope. And hope confoundeth not” (Ros. V. 3) “The things which are seen are temporal ; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. IV. 18). “Have ever, therefore, before your eyes the saints who through patience have shone like stars in the world; and so walk with sinless feet to your heavenly home, in which they shall dwell who, guided by the words of our Lord, possess their souls in patience (St. Luke XXI. 19). For hostile death has taken nothing away, which the life, which is Christ, has not changed to what is better. Death has deprived you of a mortal husband, but the latter (Christ) has given you in Himself an undying spouse. You who were called the wife of an earthly spouse, may now with greater honor be said to be the bride of a heavenly one. A corruptible crown has been taken from you, an incorruptible one is being made ready for you. Insignia which fade have been removed from you, but there have been stored up for you ornaments which grow not old. What further? For a kingdom full of cares and phantoms, you will receive one truly real and happy. Truly this is a change of the right hand of the Most High. But, as a word or two is enough for a wise man, you will find these few words enough for you, who know well how to draw many thoughts from a few sentences”.

Charles the Bald, emperor, 875

On the death of Louis II (August 12, 875), the last of emperor, the Carolingians who bore with anything like credit the title of emperor, both of his uncles, Charles the Bald and Louis the German, were anxious to succeed to his kingdom and to the proud name of emperor; for Louis had only left behind him a daughter, Hermengard. When they assembled at Pavia, the Italian nobles, chief among whom at this time were Berenger of Friuli, Lambert of Spoleto, and Adalbert I of Tuscany, played a double game. Unknown to either of the candidates, they invited to the throne of Italy both Charles the Bald and Louis the German. Whilst they were acting in this diplomatic or rather cunning manner, John sent to Charles the Bald an embassy, in which figured Formosus of Porto, to express to him the goodwill of the Romans for him, and his own wish “that his excellency might be elected for the honor and exaltation of the Holy Roman Church, and for the security of Christian people”. Charles waited for no more, and by the quickness of his movements disconcerted his rival. The two sons of Louis the German, Carloman and Charles the Fat, who had entered Italy to support their father’s claims by force of arms, found themselves compelled to leave the country. Whereas Charles the Bald, the chosen candidate of the Pope, successfully made his way to Rome, and received the imperial crown on Christmas Day (875).

On the action of Pope John in his choice of Charles the Bald, Mgr. Duchesne, who ordinarily seems rather disposed to belittle the part played by the popes before this period in bestowing the imperial crown, makes this comment in one of his latest works Les premiers temps de l’état pontifical: “There is here no longer question (as in 816, 823, and in 850) of a mere ceremony of consecration, nor even, as in 800, of an outward initiative, more or less obvious, but of a real determining choice. How the situation is changed indeed! From the year 824, the popes, in principle and generally in fact, were confirmed by the emperor. Now the emperor is chosen by the Pope. And John was destined to have the opportunity of making such a choice no less than twice in the ten years of his pontificate”.

If we are to believe the German annals of Fulda and Regino, equally likely with the author of the annals to favor his ruler, Charles the Bald, who according to them was a worthless coward, bought the imperial crown from John and the Romans. But against this, it is certain that both Nicholas I and Hadrian II had already looked forward to Charles’s being emperor. Moreover John himself had, on the death of Louis, at once declared his preference for him, both because he was the most fit to bear the responsibilities of the empire, and because he himself wished to carry on the policy of his predecessors. No doubt Charles the Bald was not equal to the emergencies of the times; but he was the best of those from whom the Pope had to select, and was anything but the coward the annals of Fulda would make out. Not only had John a genuine admiration for Charles an admiration which he expressed even after his death, when he could not hope for anything for him but his predecessors, Nicholas I and Hadrian II, had also expressed their regard for Charles in their letters to him. Even such a judge of character as the librarian Anastasius was free with his praises of the king of the West Franks. In fine, Charles’s love for and patronage of learning would weigh with Rome. Indeed, the imperial pamphleteer, who wrote about 897, as Lapôtre has proved in a masterly manner, expressly asserts that the Roman pontiffs invited Charles to come for the imperial crown “because he was a sort of philosopher”. There is not, then, the slightest reason for supposing that John fixed upon Charles the Bald to wear the imperial crown for any other fundamental motive than that he was the most suitable candidate under the circumstances. The bribes spoken of by the German annals were no more than the customary presents. Nor can it be said that Charles paid for the title by giving up any of the rights which had been claimed by his predecessors since the agreement of 824. It was not, as we shall see, till the latter half of 876 that any important concessions were made by Charles to the requests of the Pope. Whilst he was in Rome, John made no effort to induce him to abolish those rights with regard to administration of justice within the pontifical states which were claimed by the emperors in virtue of the constitution of 824, or to carry out in full the donation of Charlemagne.

The Dread of Louis the German prevented the new emperor from remaining long in Rome after his coronation. The month of February found him at Pavia, receiving, at a diet he held there, oaths of obedience from the Italian prelates and nobles who confirmed the choice made by God through the Vicar of the Apostles. A capitulary was published by Charles with the consent of the bishops and nobles of the kingdom of Italy, “for the peace and advantage of the whole empire”. It opens by declaring that, “as the Roman Church is the head of all Churches, it must be honored and revered by all. Its rights must not be molested, so that it may be able to extend its pastoral care to the universal Church”. Mindful of what had been done for him by the Pope, Charles next (c. 2) lays down that “honour must be paid by all to our lord and spiritual father John, supreme pontiff and universal Pope; and that what he decrees in the order of his sacred ministry by apostolic authority must be observed by all with the greatest reverence”. Especially are the territory and property of the Apostles to be respected. The bishops and the emperor are to be honored; and the former are to do their duty without being hindered. While most of the items of this capitulary concern the conduct of bishops, the last one forbids anyone to harbour any of the enemies of the emperor.

On the departure (January 5) of Charles for Pavia, whither, as we have seen, he went to receive the submission of the great nobles of Italy and to settle the details of its government, John, no doubt in consequence of an understanding with him, set out for Naples. He went in company with Guy and his brother Lambert, duke of Spoleto, who had been commissioned by Charles to help the Pope. The object of his journey was to break up the disgraceful league which in 874 the southern states and cities had formed with the infidel Moslems. Of all the troubles which John had to encounter, this Saracen alliance gave him the greatest pain. No thorn pierced him more deeply. Still, though it was clear that the infidels were about to renew their aggressions in force, he was able to effect but little. So self-seeking were the small states and the independent cities of the coast, that not only Sergius, duke of Naples, and Adelgisus of Benevento, but even Lambert of Spoleto, refused to give up the Saracen alliance. Only Guaifer of Salerno, Landulf, bishop and count of Capua, and the city of Amalfi hearkened to the Pope’s entreaties. Besides the failure of his efforts to bring the southern states to a sense of their duty as Christians not to say as Italians John had other weighty matters to trouble him at this time. The attitude of Louis the German towards Charles had caused him anxiety for some months past; and, when he returned to Rome at the end of March, he had to face great difficulties brought about by some of the most important men in the city.

As the feeling of jealous hostility to Charles on the part of his brother, Louis the German, had been sufficiently evinced by his sending his sons to try to prevent his march to Rome, John wrote to him, before Charles arrived there, to exhort him not to invade the latter’s territories. But of these letters Louis took no heed. He crossed the frontier (875) and ravaged the country in all directions. Charles could not, under those circumstances, stop long in Italy. By the beginning of March (876) he was en route for France, accompanied by two papal legates, who were the bearers of several letters from John, and had been sent to promote peace. In these letters, addressed to the nobility of both kingdoms, those of Charles’s kingdom who remained true to him were praised, those who had gone over to Louis blamed and exhorted to penance. The bishops and counts of the kingdom of Louis are reprehended for not preventing their sovereign from invading the territories of his absent brother, and told to make satisfaction to the Pope’s legates. And strong is the language in which John denounces that king himself, “if king (rex) he deserves to be called, who has not controlled (rexit) his unruly passions”, that prince “who, while the fields of Fontenay are still soaking with the blood which he had shed there in his youth, in his old age hastens to shed the blood of innumerable Christians to gratify his lust for power”. But, despite of enemies of all kinds, the Pope continued, everything has worked out well for Charles. For God “has permitted him to march through Italy, not only without shedding of blood, but with great honor and to the general joy of all the people; and, by the favor of the Apostolic See, and with the approval of all, has raised him to the imperial throne”.

But there were at this time also troubles nearer home in store for John. On his return to Rome towards the end of March, he had to take action regarding Formosus of Porto and several of the chief officials of his court. Whether he had not felt himself strong enough to remove them before, especially while the Emperor Louis II was alive, or because the cup of their iniquities was not full, he had left in the positions in which he found them, Gregory the nomenclator, and apocrisiarius of the Holy See, George of the Aventine and Sergius, masters of the soldiers. With these men, whose lives are samples of the increasing lawlessness and licentiousness of the Roman nobility which is soon to cause such degradation to Rome and the Papacy, Formosus was in some way connected. We are unfortunately very much in the dark in connection with the condemnation of these men by John VIII. However, from the account of the sentence passed on them by him, which he sent to “all the people of Gaul and Germany”, it appears that Gregory had done nothing else, for the eight years during which he had held office, but enrich himself by plundering everybody and everything within his reach; and, when he had had to fly the city, had taken with him “almost all the treasure of the Roman Church”. As bad as Gregory was his brother, the secundicerius Stephen; and worse than he was his son-in-law, George of the Aventine. After poisoning his brother for the sake of his mistress, whom he desired for himself, he repaired his fortunes, ruined doubtless by his luxurious life, by wedding the niece of Benedict III. And then, to become the son-in-law of the apocrisiarius, he murdered almost in public, writes the Pope, his lawful wife, to whom, needless to add, he had been unfaithful. He escaped the consequences of this crime through perjured imperial missi, and, of course, through the connivance of his new father-in-law, Gregory.

Of the same clique, and as deep in crime, was Sergius. Like George, he had saved himself from utter destitution by marrying the niece of a Pope (Nicholas I), and had then shown his attachment, first to Nicholas, by robbing him, while he lay in his last agony, of money he had set aside for the poor, and then to his wife, by deserting her for his mistress whom he swore to marry.

Of this vile company, some, at least, of the women were just as bad as the men. In the same company as those already mentioned, the Pope classes a certain Constantiana, another daughter of the nomenclator Gregory. Lawfully married to Cessarius, the son of Pippin, “a most powerful vestararius”, she did not hesitate, on the ruin of her father-in-law’s fortunes, to publicly marry Gratian, though Cessarius was still alive. But, as true to Gratian as she had been to Cessarius, she fled with a third man.

Such were some of the Roman nobles of the ninth century. It could not even then have required a prophet to foretell what would be the unspeakable condition of Rome and the papacy, if the city were to fall, as it was soon to do, into the hands of men and women whose swinish lust was only second to their cruelty and avarice. At the moment, however, there was safety for Rome. The reins of government were in strong hands.

From the letter from which the sombre particulars just cited have been extracted, it is clear that accusations against Gregory and his family connections were in the first instance laid before Charles 1 at Pavia (February 876), and then brought before the Pope (March 31). Summoned to appear before John, they continued putting off doing so, under various pleas; hoping, adds the Pope, in the meantime to overthrow him either by themselves, or by the aid of the Saracens, whom they had summoned to their assistance. Baffled, however, by the watchfulness of the Pope, and feeling too guilty to await trial, they fled, along with Formosus, with the treasures of the Church, which Gregory had under his charge. Thereupon, in a synod (April 19) held in the Pantheon, John decided as follows with regard to the accused. On the charge of having made an unlawful compact with Boris of Bulgaria, and of having conspired against “the safety of the republic and of the Emperor Charles, by us elected and consecrated”, Formosus was declared excommunicated, unless he presented himself for trial before the 2pth, deprived of his sacerdotal rights if he did not appear before May 4, and irrevocably anathematized if he had not given an account of his conduct by the 9th of May. On the charge of the commission of the crimes above laid to their account, corresponding sentences were passed on Gregory, Sergius, and the others. Owing to the non-appearance of the accused, the sentences thus threatened were finally decreed (June 3o).

But whether men are joyful or sad, the year rolls on, and brings with it its routine of festivals, sacred and profane. And so, in the midst of all the troubles which the year 876 brought to John VIII, Easter came, with its joys of body and soul, with its festivities civil and ecclesiastical. Among the secular amusements of the season was the ancient and popular festival of the Cornomannia, which, until the troubles of the reign of Gregory VII, used to be held in the Pope’s presence on Easter Saturday, which in 876 fell on April 21.

A copy of the Polyptycus of Canon Benedict, found by the late Paul Fabre, which proved to be more complete than the one published by Mabillon, enables us to give a full account of this quaint festivity, which was closely connected with the feast of fools, the feast of asses, and the feast of children.

After midday on Easter Saturday the archpriests of the eighteen deaconries (or parishes) were to assemble the people in the churches by the sound of the bell. Then the sacristan, clad in a white garment, with his head crowned with flowers and two horns as though he were Silenus, and carrying in his hand a brazen wand covered with little bells and followed by the archpriest in a cope, led a procession of the people to the Lateran palace. There, in front of its principal entrance, the crowd halted, and awaited the coming of the Pope. On his appearance the people formed into a huge circle, each parish grouped about its archpriest, and then the whole body intoned the laudes in honor of the Pope. Whilst in both Greek and Latin verses every blessing was being wished to the Pope “who in Peter’s place rules all things”, the sacristan danced about before the people, shaking his bells. When the laudes were over, one of the archpriests mounted an ass with his face towards its tail, and bending backwards was entitled to keep for himself as many denarii as he could in three attempts take from a basin-full which a papal chamberlain held at the ass’s head. Crowns were then laid at the pope’s feet by the clergy; the archpriest of S. Maria in Via Lata offering him also a little vixen which was allowed to run away. In return he received from the Pope a byzant and a half. The archpriests of S. Maria in Aquiro and of S. Eustachius, after respectively presenting a cock and a doe, received a byzant and a quarter; whilst the other archpriests received a byzant apiece. The papal benediction brought the proceedings to a close as far as the Pope was concerned.

Still clad in his fancy dress and accompanied by a priest with two attendants carrying holy water, light cakes, and boughs of laurel, the sacristan went dancing along from house to house, shaking his bells. Whilst the priest blessed the houses with holy water, placed the boughs on the hearth, and gave the cakes to the children, the sacristan and the two attendants sang this “barbaric chant” “Iaritan, Iaritan, Iarariasti, Raphayn, Iercoyn, Iarariasti”. The master of the house brought the festival of the Cornomannia to an end by a donation of a penny or two.

On the particular occasion of which we are speaking, however, the ordinary singing of the schola cantorum was replaced by a recitation of the so-called Caena Cypriani. This supposed production of the great saint of Carthage was introduced into Rome by the philosopher Charles the Bald. It portrayed an imaginary feast, in which most of the important characters of both the Old and New Testament were depicted as taking part. From this old piece of prose, John the Deacon, well known to us as the biographer of Gregory the Great, made “a burlesque poem of doubtful taste”, to which he added a prologue, an epilogue, and a dedicatory letter to John VIII. It is from these additions, newly edited and commented on by Lapôtre, with all his wonted learning and ingenuity, that we know something of the way in which the ancient Caena was received at Rome by the court of John VIII. Before the deacon’s poetic version of it was finished, it had been recited before the Pope twice this very year (876) the first time when it was introduced to his notice by the learned monarch of the Franks, and the second time on Easter Saturday. When the Emperor Charles the Bald, clad in the gorgeous raiment of which he was so fond, first caused it to be recited in Rome by his Frankish poets, the ancestors of the trouvère and the troubadour, not only was it applauded by him and his drinking Gauls, but it seems also to have enchanted the papal court. In a few words, the deacon gives a striking picture of its effect on the chief Roman ecclesiastics. While the learned librarian Anastasius explained the more obscure allusions of the piece and many of them were curious and recondite enough the simple-minded Zachary of Anagni listened in wondering amazement, and the hagiographer, Gaudericus of Velletri, fell back on his couch with laughter.

When for the second time the Caena was recited in Easter week for the amusement of the Pope, it was declaimed by the prior of the schola cantorum, the subdeacon Crescentius, who, to judge even from the humorous and bantering description of him furnished us by the lively deacon, must have been somewhat of a character. If the little, old, asthmatical, and stammering prior was calculated to provoke laughter under ordinary circumstances, he must have been perfectly irresistible when, mounted on an ass, he appeared before the papal court, like a Silenus, crowned with flowers and decorated with horns. And no wonder even the singers themselves could not control their laughter when the old man, overcome by his own risible faculties, by his cough, and by his desperate efforts to enunciate difficult scriptural names, was unable to keep a sufficient guard “over all nature s outlets”. The deacon might well assure the Pope that, if he caused his new poetical rendering of the Caena to be read by old Crescentius, the man would have to be made of marble who could refrain from laughing.

But John VIII had something else to do besides listening to poems, even when recited by Crescentius Balbus. With the Saracens at his gates, with traitors within the city, and with many of the neighboring Christian princes, even those whose duty it was to afford protection to the Holy See, in alliance with the infidels, what wonder if John longed for a freer hand to deal with all these difficulties? What wonder if he wished to make Rome fully subject to the Pope alone, as it was under the pontificate of Paschal I (817-24), which he had known in his youth, and if he wished to revert to the pact of 817, which assured to the popes protection and yet independence? Accordingly, with this end in view, he dispatched an embassy to Charles. The papal legates, viz., his nephew, Bishop Leo, now apocrisiarius of the Holy See, and Peter, bishop of Fossombrone, found Charles engaged in celebrating at Pontion a synod which he had summoned “by the authority of the Pope and the advice of the papal legates (John of Toscanella, John of Arezzo, and Ansegisus of Sens), and with his own sanction”. At the first session (June 21, 876) was discussed the appointment by John VIII of Ansegisus of Sens as his permanent legate in Gaul and Germany “to lessen the stress of the work from those parts with which the Pope had to deal”. That anyone in Gaul should be put over him, was not in the least to the taste of Hincmar. However, when Charles could get nothing further from the archbishops than that they would obey the Pope, saving their rights, he caused Ansegisus to be placed next to the legates, despite the audible murmur of Hincmar that such an act was contrary to the canons.

In the next session, the choice which the Pope had made of Charles for emperor, and which had been ratified by the diet (synod) at Pavia (February 876), was confirmed by the assembled prelates. At the assembly of Pavia the acts of the coronation at Rome had been read and approved. In these acts the Pope is reported as declaring that, because he believes it to be the will of God, as did also, he knows, his predecessor, Pope Nicholas, “we have with good reason elected and approved (of Charles), with the consent and wish of all our fellow-bishops, and of the other ministers of the holy Roman Church, and of the senate, and of all the Roman people, and of the gens togata. And, in accordance with ancient custom, we have solemnly advanced him to the scepter of the Roman empire, and have adorned him with the title of Augustus, anointing him with oil without, to show the power of the inward unction of the Holy Spirit”. The Pope goes on to assert that Charles had not himself assumed the title of emperor; but, as one invited by us, had come humbly with the intention of working for the peace of the empire and the exaltation of the Church. “And unless we had known that such was his intention, never would we have been so ready to promote him”.

After these acts had been read before the assembly at Pavia, the bishops and nobles there gathered together had declared that, as the Divine goodness, through the intervention of the Vicar of the Apostles, their spiritual father, Pope John, had raised “the most glorious Emperor Charles” to the imperial dignity, they also with one accord “chose him as their protector, lord and defender”. The act of submission to the new emperor, which had been thus made by the optimates of the kingdom of Italy, was then imitated by the nobility of the West Franks at Pontion, who declared that, as first Pope John at Rome and then all the nobles of Italy at Pavia had elected Charles as emperor, so they from France did the same with the like unanimity and devotion.

In other sessions of the synod the letters of the Pope to the bishops of Germany were delivered to the ambassadors of Louis the German, who had come to put forward their master’s claims to part of the kingdom of the late Emperor Louis II; the special legates of the Pope, Leo and Peter, were received; and the condemnation by John of Formosus and his party was read.

Though not mentioned by Hincmar in his abridged account of the acts of the assembly at Pontion, we know, from various letters of the Pope, that there was drawn up at this synod the agreement (a summary of which is given by the anonymous imperialist) by which the relations between the Pope and the empire were to become more like those sanctioned by the decree “Ego Ludovicus”. The freer hand that John required was given to him. In renewing the concordat with Rome, the emperor waived “the rights and customs of the empire”. He handed over to the Pope the taxes which from various monasteries used to flow into the imperial exchequer, and gave him Samnium and Calabria, all the cities of the duchy of Beneventum, the whole duchy of Spoleto, and two cities of the duchy of Tuscany, viz., Arezzo and Chiusi. He removed from Rome the imperial missi and gave up the right of being present by his missi at papal elections. That it was really with a diploma to this effect that the papal and imperial envoys reached Rome in September 876, the obvious imperialist prejudices of the author of these details are a sufficient guarantee.

But in those days of increasing anarchy through the multiplication of petty tyrants, an imperial decree was often not worth the parchment on which it was written. The envoys of Charles could not or would not carry out their instructions. John had to complain of the insincerity of one of the envoys, even of Ansegisus of Sens, in coming to an understanding with Lambert of Spoleto. It would have required a Charlemagne to enforce the carrying out of his will in Southern Italy at this time. If, later on, John was recognized as suzerain of Capua, that would seem to be all the tangible result that accrued to him from the diploma of Charles the Bald in his favor. And we are expressly informed by Erchempert that Pandonulf, the nephew and successor of Landulf, made his submission to John, and had charters drawn up and money coined in his name.

Meanwhile Louis the German, who, as we have seen, had supported in arms his claims to the throne of Italy or the imperial crown, endeavored also to make them good by negotiating with the Pope. To judge from a letter of John to Louis, in reply to others (now lost) received from the king, the Pope was considerably affected by their contents. But when it was written, Louis had been called to a higher tribunal than that before which John invited him to state his case. After a long reign, much disturbed by wars against barbarian invaders and the rebellions of his sons, Louis the German died on August 28, 876. Sometime before his death, he had divided his kingdom between his three sons. The eldest, Carloman, received Bavaria and Carinthia, and the suzerainty over the Slavs of Pannonia and Moravia; the second, Louis III, known as the Young, had Franconia, Thuringia, and Saxony; and Charles the Fat, afterwards emperor, had the more central portion, Alemania (Swabia, Alsatia, Switzerland).

Instead of turning his attention to putting in order the Dominions which he had already acquired, and to stopping the destructive inroads of Northman and Saracen, Charles the Bald showed himself no better than any of the other grasping princes of his time. Thinking that the death of his brother offered him a fair opportunity of seizing at least a part of his kingdom, he invaded the realm of Louis the Young. But his usual hurry exposed him to the crushing defeat, which he sustained at Andernach (October 8, 876). His aggressive action stirred up his nephews against him; and their hostility not only prevented him from doing his duty as protector of the Holy See, but even precipitated his death when he attempted to perform it.

From the close of the year 876 John had been sending letters in all directions to obtain help against the Saracens, who were devastating the whole south of Italy, and, on their light horses, scouring the country even to the walls of Rome. The Pope first tried to get help from Duke Boso, whom Charles had left in North Italy as his representative; but to no purpose. Boso was more intent on his personal aggrandizement than on the public good. Then he turned to the natural defender of the Church, the emperor. He did everything he could to help himself, writing for cavalry horses to Alfonso III, king of Galicia, and for warships to the Greeks, and making every effort, by letters and interviews, to break up the Southern league with the Saracens. But he felt that nothing less than the coming of the emperor with a large army would suffice to expel the unbeliever, and curb the insolence of the petty tyrants, especially of Lambert of Spoleto, by whom he was surrounded. Accordingly, from September (876) till well on into May 877, John sent off letter after letter to Charles himself, entreating him to come to his aid, and to the empress and the bishops of the empire, begging them to use their influence with him in the same direction. But, harassed by the Normans and by ill-health, and, with good reason, fearing the resentment of his nephews, Charles for some time paid no heed to the entreaties of the Pope.

In his last letter to Charles on this subject, John reminds him that the imperial crown has been bestowed upon him by the will of God, that he may defend the Church from the cruel ravages of the infidels, who are now laying waste everything with fire and sword. They have so devastated Campania, he continues, that there is nothing left for “our support, for that of the Roman senate, or for the up keeping of the venerable monasteries and the other pious places”. There is no inhabitant in the Roman suburbs. “So filled with grief are we at these dire woes, that we can neither take food nor sleep. But in place of sweet repose we have to endure ceaseless toil, and instead of the delights of the feast we have bitterness of soul”. He implores the emperor to delay no longer, but to come to the help of the Roman Church, “which with the womb of religion begot you to empire”.

The letters of the Pope and the arguments of his legates, whom Charles received about Easter (April 7), at last had their effect on him; and, against the wishes of his nobles, he set out in the summer for Italy, in company with his wife, Richildis. He took with him, in addition to a large sum of money, a force more conspicuous as a cavalcade than formidable as an army.

In Italy, meanwhile, John had been endeavoring to improve the prestige of the emperor, which the disaster at Andernach had considerably weakened. In a synod held in February 877, the election of Charles to the empire was confirmed, and punishments were decreed against whoever should attempt to contravene it. When he was assured that the emperor was really coming to his aid, he went north to meet him, and with his characteristic energy improved the occasion by holding a council at Ravenna.

This “universal council of the kingdom of Italy, i.e. of the whole province”, the Pope summoned “as well for certain necessities of the Church as for the needs of the state”. Of the acts of this synod nineteen canons have come down to us. Among them, some forbid bishops elect to put off their consecration; and others, revealing thereby the state of the times, forbid injury to be done to sacred persons, places or things; rape, murder, mutilations, arson, etc. Finally, John made an effort to prevent the territorial property of the Church from sharing the fate of state property elsewhere in the West. He forbade anyone “to seek the patrimonies” of the Roman Church, to get possession of its property under the pretex of a benefice or in any other way. These enactments were aimed against those customs of a growing feudalism which were sooner or later to deprive the central authorities in Western Europe of all power and wealth. Powerful tenants soon changed into full ownership the usufruct of landed estates, which were granted them as benefices for their lifetime. The patrimonies which are thus forbidden to be alienated are enumerated (can. 15) as : the Appian patrimony, the Labican or Campanian, the Tiburtine, the Theatine, that of both the Sabine territories, and that of Tuscany, the portico of St. Peter’s (the Leonine city), the Roman mint (moneta Romana), the public taxes, riparian dues (ripa), and the harbours, Portus and Ostia. The next canon (16) forbids the alienation of any portions of the above patrimonies (the masses, farms, and the coloni, the tillers attached to the soil); and canon 17 extends a like prohibition to the parts “of Ravenna, Pentapolis, Emilia, Roman and Lombard Tuscany, and of all the territory of St. Peter”.

At this council also the election of Charles to the empire was confirmed. In his address to the synod, John declared that what he had done at Rome in the matter of conferring the imperial crown, he wished to confirm here in this general synod, which he had called together for the countless needs of the Church. After the holding of this synod, at which were present, besides the archbishops of Milan and Ravenna, and the patriarch of Grado, forty-eight other bishops from different parts of Italy, the Pope moved west to meet the emperor. They met at Vercelli; and, after a most honorable reception had been accorded to the Pope, they went together to Pavia. Here their conference, from which the Pope had hoped so much, was cut short by the alarming intelligence that Carloman, with a very large force, was marching upon them. While John endeavored to pacify the king by sending him the presents Charles had given to St. Peter, the emperor, naturally enough, retreated towards France first to Tortona, where the Pope anointed Richildis as empress, and then to Morienne, to await the arrival of the great nobles of his kingdom. But they would not come. The emperor had left France against their will, and follow him they would not. There was therefore nothing left but that the Pope and Charles should return whence they had come.

Charles, however, weak in health, was not able to bear up against these troubles. He died of dysentery at Brios, thought to be Briançon, a hamlet on the banks of the Isere a little below Moutiers-en-Tarentaise, October 6, 877. After mentioning the death of Charles the Bald, two ancient historians have appended important remarks. Their importance is our reason for citing them. Ademar of Chabannes (d. 1034), in his Chronicle, founded chiefly on the earlier Gesta of the Frankish kings, observes that after Charles the Bald “none of the kings of France received the imperial dignity (imperium)”. The kings who became emperors after Charles the Bald were rulers in either Germany or Italy. The other remark, which serves to show the degradation of the imperial dignity after the demise of Charles the Bald, is the one with which the anonymous pamphleteer of Spoleto(?) closes his work. From the date of the death of Charles “no emperor nor king obtained the royal rights. Owing to the strife and the endless divisions in the empire either power or wisdom failed them. Hence plundering and war became the order of the day”.

Master of the situation in North Italy, Carloman set about establishing his authority on a firm basis. But, as so often happened to the German armies that swooped down upon Italy in the Middle Ages, disease fastened upon the soldiers of Carloman. Crowds of his troops only returned to Germany to die. He himself was conveyed home, struck down with a mortal disease, apparently paralysis.

The first authentic news of Charles’s death had come to the Pope from one whose letter revealed also the fact that the empire, he himself wished to succeed the late emperor. This candidate for the imperial crown was Carloman, then master of North Italy. His letter to the Pope is lost, but we have John’s answer. Considering that the first thought of a Pope at this time would, of course, be to turn for an emperor to the Western Franks, and that John would regard Carloman as the cause of the death of his friend, Charles the Bald, he, not unnaturally, did not respond to the advances of Carloman with enthusiasm. He expressed his deep sorrow at the death of Charles, and then proceeded to speak of the coining of Carloman (to receive, of course, the imperial crown), of his most sublime promises to exalt the Roman Church more than all his predecessors, and of the reward he hoped Carloman would get from God when he had fulfilled his engagements. Then, doubtless as well to gain time as to try the worth of his promises, he said that when Carloman had returned from the conference, which he told the Pope he was going to hold with his brothers, he would send him a solemn embassy “ex latere nostro”, with a charter which would set forth point by point what he would have to grant to the Roman Church. That matter settled, John will send another embassy to conduct the king to Rome. Meanwhile Carloman is asked not to aid in any way the Pope’s enemies (Formosus and his party); and while, at the king’s prayer, he grants the pallium to Archbishop Theotmar, he begs him in turn to entrust to Theotmar the annual sending to Rome of the revenues belonging to the Holy See in Bavaria.

If, however, Carloman was unable through the failure of his health to prosecute his aims with vigor himself, he found a useful ally in Lambert of Spoleto. Or perhaps the truth is, Lambert found it convenient to cloak his own ambition under the pretext of zeal for Carloman. Such a supposition would make his conduct harmonize with that of the great nobles of the period. Besides, we find the Pope himself maintaining that he was merely pretending to act in the name of Carloman, and that he was really aiming at the empire himself. And, in fact, we shall soon see the house of Spoleto producing an emperor.

Lambert get possession of Rome, 878

Lambert’s family came originally from the valley of the Moselle. One of his ancestors, another Lambert, had governed the Breton March, but his partisanship with Lothaire had forced him to fly to Italy. In 842, his son Guy (known as the elder) appears as duke of Spoleto, and “with him begins the important part played by this house in the affairs of Italy”. Guy’s eldest son, Lambert, whom the emperor Louis II had deprived of his duchy, but who had been restored by Charles the Bald at the request of Pope John, and had been appointed by him to act as the protector of the Holy See, soon showed that he had no gratitude, and that he was concerned about nobody’s interests but his own. Before December 876, his men had been preying upon the Roman territory of the Pope. On the retreat of Charles the Bald from Italy, Lambert instantly began to act, nominally, in the interests of Carloman. He sent to the Pope to demand that hostages from the Roman nobility should be sent to him doubtless as a guarantee of their adhesion to Carloman. Needless to say, he did not get them. With the spirit of the ancient Romans still burning in his aged breast, John let him know that “the sons of the Romans have never been given as hostages”. A little later the Pope threatens Lambert with excommunication if, during his absence, he shall dare in any way to injure “any part of the territory of the Prince of the Apostles, or the city of Rome, which is a city at once sacerdotal and royal”. For John had determined to go to France by sea, and to visit Carloman “for the benefit and defence of the territory of St. Peter and of the whole of Christendom”. The inroads of the Saracens, he writes, he has been enduring for two years; and the daily oppression he suffers at the hands of others will not allow him to remain in Rome in peace and safety, nor to rule his territory and his people with success, and with that power which becomes a king (regia virtute). In reply to this letter, Lambert promptly offered to come to Rome to help the Pope, and to bring with him Adalbert, marquis of Tuscany. John, of course, wrote to decline the offer; the more so, because he had heard that one of the objects of his coming was to restore their property and status to his enemies (Formosus, etc.) against his will a thing which “had never been done to the Pope’s predecessors by any emperor, king, or count, within the memory of man”.

Seeing that negotiation was not likely to forward his possession schemes, Lambert tried first a hectoring tone in dealing with the Pope, addressing him like a layman, as your nobility, and laying down that John’s legates must only come to him when they were sent for. Then, as that had no effect, he had recourse to violence. Pretending to be coming to Rome merely on a visit of devotion, he was kindly received (in the early part of 878) by the Pope. The next day he threw off the mask. With the aid of Adalbert I of Tuscany, he seized the city and behaved as he had done before, when he raided it at the time of the election of Hadrian II. For thirty days the two dukes kept the Pope imprisoned in the Leonine city, reintroduced his enemies into the city, and, giving out that they were acting in the name of Carloman, compelled the Roman nobles to swear fealty to that monarch.

When they left the city, John at once excommunicated them, and lost no time in informing the chief men in the empire of the outrage which had been put upon him. He wrote to the ex-empress, Engelberga; to Berenger, duke or marquis of Friuli, of royal descent, and of whom, as one of the future lords, or devastators, of North Italy, we shall have more to say; to John, archbishop of Ravenna; to Louis the Stammerer in France, and to the three kings in Germany. Besides informing the kings of the doings of Lambert, he tells them that, ready if need be to suffer death for the liberation of Christ’s flock, he intends to go to France, there to hold a council, “most necessary for all Christian peoples”; and he exhorts them to come to it themselves with the bishops of their respective kingdoms. With a fleet of three dromons, John set sail for France, and landed at Arles on May 11. Here he was much impressed with what he saw of Boso and his wife Hermengard, the daughter of the late emperor Louis II. Boso, who was to make himself king of Provence (October 879), had been appointed his vicar in Lombardy by the emperor Charles the Bald. With the stupid Charles the Fat, and the unhealthy Louis the Stammerer, and with Louis the Young and Carloman as the representatives of the house of Charlemagne, no wonder that John, who was a man of vigor and intelligence himself, if ever there was one, looked with favor on the energetic and ambitious young couple at Arles. If it be conceded that John was really anxious to have the best and strongest man he could find as emperor and there is no historical ground for refusing the concession then his seeming hesitancy at this period admits of a ready explanation. With the weak characters he had in the ordinary course to deal with in the first instance, John knew not what to do. That he was attracted to Boso is clear from his letter to that prince’s mother-in-law, the dowager empress Engelberga. He tells her that, by the mercy of Heaven, he has in good health reached the territory of her darlings; that there he has found everything prosperous, and that “for the affection he bears her and her late husband, he will exert himself for their benefit, seek at their hands protection for the Roman Church, and, if he can do so with honor, strive to raise them to yet higher honour”. As an immediate proof of his good will towards them, he restores to the See of Arles its old position as representative of the Apostolic See in Gaul.

Meanwhile, however, he remained true to the Carolingian house. Honorably received by Louis and his nobles, he exerted himself with his characteristic energy to bring about a meeting of the bishops of the whole empire and the four kings “for the exaltation of the whole of Christendom”. The assembly was fixed for the 1st August; but the ill-health of Louis of France delayed matters. At length the synod, at which only the bishops of “the Gallic and Belgic provinces” and King Louis of France were present, was opened on August 11. The proceedings commenced with a relation of the doings and of the excommunication of Lambert. Following Hincmar of Rheims, the assembled bishops expressed their adhesion to what had been done by the Pope in these words: “According to the sacred canons, which have been instituted by the assistance of the Holy Ghost, and consecrated by the reverence of the whole world, those whom the Pope and the Holy Roman Church, the mother of all churches by the privilege of S. Peter, condemn, I condemn; those whom they excommunicate, I regard as excommunicated; whom they receive, I receive; and whatever, following the Holy Scriptures and the sacred canons, they hold, I will ever hold, with the help of God, to the best of my knowledge and ability”. The excommunication of Formosus, Gregory, George, and the rest of their party was renewed; decrees were passed against episcopal translations, and against such as plundered Church property; the affair of Hincmar of Laon was concluded, and various disciplinary canons enacted. Further, with regard to Formosus, who had meanwhile betaken himself to France, we are told by Auxilius (who assures us that he had his information from an eye-witness, viz., Peter, archdeacon of the Church of Naples) that John caused him to be brought before him, and forced him to sign a written undertaking never to resume his dignities nor to return to Rome.

Coronation of Louis the Stammerer, 878

Although John crowned Louis as king (September 5), he was not named emperor. Whether Louis was unwilling to take on his feeble shoulders the burden of empire, or whether his nobles or his infirmities dissuaded him from trying to seize the dazzling phantom, we know not. However, as the other three Carolingian kings did not trouble themselves to come to the synod, John seems to have made up his mind not to trouble about them; but, at the first convenient opportunity, to raise Boso to the dignity of emperor.

At any rate, he came to some arrangement with Louis of France by which Boso was to be the special protector of the Holy See. And of this arrangement, while blaming the sovereigns of Germany for their non-attendance at the synod, he took care to inform them through a letter to Charles the Fat. After setting forth the trouble to which he has put himself in order to keep faith with the kings of the Franks, he continues : “Through my legates and letters I made every effort to bring all of you (reges Francorum) together, that you might try to fulfill the agreement (pactum) which your father and your fathers’ fathers promised on oath to keep with the Holy Roman Church. But alas! through disobedience you all neglected to come, except King Louis (the son of the emperor Charles), by whose advice and encouragement I have made the glorious prince Boso my adopted son, that he may look after my worldly affairs and leave me free to attend to the things of God. Wherefore be you content with the present boundaries of your kingdom and keep the peace, as we are resolved to excommunicate whoever shall attempt to harass our above-mentioned son”.

After transacting various business conferring privileges on monasteries, granting the pallium to Walo, bishop of Metz, confirming the rights of the archbishop of Tours over the bishops of Brittany, for “we have heard that you were not consecrated as you ought to have been by your metropolitan in accordance with ancient custom; but simply on the authority of your Duke, you are consecrated by one another”; after the transaction of these and other similar affairs, John set out on his return journey to Italy, accompanied by Boso. In writing on this occasion to Count Suppo to come and meet him at the pass of Mont Cenis, the Pope reveals how much he felt that the political advantages he had hoped for as the fruit of his journey to France had not been reaped. “We, upon whom by the will of God the last things have come, in our work for the Church have been tossed hither and thither. But we are not without hope, for He who comforts us is Christ Jesus. Keeping the fidelity of our predecessors to the race of the Franks, we went to Gaul to bind the hearts of kings in the bonds of peace and unity. But we found what we read of in the Gospel : Because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many hath grown cold (S. Matt. xxiv. 12)”.

Arrived at Turin (November 24), he wrote to Anspert of Milan and other bishops of North Italy to meet him in synod at Pavia, on December, to discuss “the condition of the Church and the peace of the republic” But whether because of their loyalty to Carloman, or whether, as seems to us more likely, they dreaded to be called upon to recognize Boso, in whom they would have a real master, the bishops would not obey the Pope’s summons. John had to return to Rome no nearer the end of his difficulties.

However, he did not lose hope that Boso would act, and that consequently he would get help from him. Accordingly, in the early part of 879 he wrote to him that the time had now come for him to bring to effect what had been secretly arranged between them. “Waiting for the fulfillment of your promise, we are reduced to the greatest sadness on account of the ravages of the pagans with which we are incessantly harassed. As yet, we have not sought elsewhere for help against our pressing necessities. If, then, you are going to act, act at once; if not, let me know forthwith”. But though Boso was urged on by a wife who was as ambitious as Lady Macbeth, and who declared to him that “she, who was the daughter of an emperor and who had once been affianced to the emperor of Greece (to Constantine, the son of Basil the Macedonian), was loth to live if she did not make her husband a king” - he was unwilling to risk anything for the imperial crown. He knew that Louis of France was in a dying state (he died April 10, 879); and, likely enough, thought it would be easier for him to extend his duchy and turn it into a kingdom, when he had only the youthful sons of Louis to oppose him, than to cross the Alps, force the Italian nobles to obey him, and brave the enmity of the German kings.

And so it turned out; for he was elected king of Provence by twenty-five bishops at Mantaille, October 15, 879. Though this election was certainly not in accordance with the wishes of Pope John, his influential position among the Franks is clearly brought out by it; for those who framed the decree of Boso’s election were careful, when setting forth his claims to honor, to call attention to the fact that “the apostolic lord John of Rome” not only embraced him as his son and loudly praised his nobility of character, but on his return to Rome entrusted himself especially to his care.

What is known of the election of the kings of the Franks at this period, shows us how expressly the Pope’s spiritual jurisdiction was acknowledged, especially on occasions of the transaction of concerns which were then regarded as of a more or less spiritual character, such as the election of kings, and amply foreshadows the central position to be taken in the affairs of Europe by the popes of the later Middle Ages. And so we find Boso declaring not only that he professes the Catholic faith, but that he will submit to the authority of the Gospel, of the popes, and of just laws. However, for thus proving false to his engagements, and showing himself merely a self-seeker, John not unnaturally looked upon him as a disturber and a tyrant.

But help against the Saracens must be had; and the name of emperor must not be allowed to die out. For if it be granted that at this period there was little more than name about the imperial dignity, there was still much virtue in that name. The name of emperor carried with it prestige. In the churches he was publicly prayed for. And it was no small gain in those days, when little else was respected but brute force, that there was one whom princes and people alike thought, at least, that they ought to look up to and respect. As. then, the beginning of the year 879 still found Western Europe without an emperor, and Italy practically without any supreme ruler at all, John summoned (March) a synod to meet on May 1st, that he might arrange with the bishops of Italy what was necessary for the benefit of Church and State. “And because, as we have heard, Carloman’s health will not allow him to hold the kingdom, we must consult together about the election of a new king. Before that date, you must not acknowledge any king without our consent. For he who is to be raised (ordinandus) to the empire by us, must be called and elected by us most especially”. Meanwhile, in reply to a communication received from Charles the Fat, the Pope wrote (April 3) to him to send ambassadors at once, that with them measures might be taken for the good of the Church and of the State, and for the honor of Charles himself; and not to hesitate to come himself. In another letter to the same king he adds that, thinking the cause of his non-appearance might be the opposition of Carloman, he has written to that prince and admonished him that to keep this kingdom in such a disordered and defenseless state any longer is to risk his soul’s salvation; and that, consequently, he must not dare to hinder Charles from coming to defend the Church.

But things were not destined to turn out well for the anxious pontiff. His synod of May 1st was unable to effect much, as Anspert of Milan again failed to present himself. And though the disobedient archbishop was excommunicated, Charles did not act. In his despair, we find John appealing now to one and now to another of the three brothers. Unfortunately, the paucity of fully dated letters prevents us from determining whether John observed any order in addressing his appeals to the brothers, or whether he sent them off simply to the one whom he thought most likely to come to his help at the moment. Thus Wibod, bishop of Parma, the Pope’s agent, is plainly told by him to try Carloman, or, if his infirmities unfit him, Charles. For he (the Pope) is so harassed by the infidels that he would be glad of the help of any of the kings. And hence, as Charles would not move, and Carloman could not, John tried to induce Louis (the Young) to come and help him. “If with the help of heaven you receive the Roman empire, all kingdoms are subject to you!”. But Louis was busy intriguing for the reversion of the kingdom of the paralyzed Carloman, and fighting for as much of that of the late Louis of France as he could lay his hands upon. June 7th saw a dispatch for aid sent off even to Carloman. From a letter of the Pope, which Lapoôtre assigns to September, it appears that Carloman, feeling his inability to look after Italy himself, transferred the care of it to John.

Whether or not it was this act of his brother which had an effect upon Charles, at any rate John was not long the ruler of Italy. Coming to an understanding with his brothers, Charles the Fat entered Italy, October 26, 879. Advancing straight to Ravenna, he summoned to his side the Pope and the bishops and nobility of Italy. By them he was proclaimed king, and then, “with the exception of the bishop of the Apostolic See”, he constrained them to swear fealty to him. Before they parted, the Pope and the new king of Italy had a conference on the subject of the imperial crown. The Pope hoped for an increase of the privileges of the Roman Church, and especially for help against “the ferocious severity” of his enemies. He wanted Charles “to renew and confirm one of the treaties (pactum) and the privileges of the Holy Roman Church, after the manner of his predecessors”. Unable, however, to make any headway at all with Charles in these respects, John returned to Rome “to find that matters had gone from bad to worse”. Hearing that Charles was about to recross the Alps, he sent another embassy to him begging him to take measures to protect “the territory of St. Peter” from the Saracens and from “bad Christians”, and assuring him that the only way to ensure the safety of the Church was for him to come to Rome in person. If Charles will do this and fulfill his engagements, the Pope on his side will work for the king’s “honors and glory”.

But Charles, who left Italy early in the year 880 to wage war upon the upstart monarch Boso, contented himself with sending word to his marquises on the borders of the Pope’s territories to afford him all necessary help. Needless to say, this they did not do; they only helped themselves at the Pope’s expense. Hence a fresh batch of letters was dispatched by John to induce Charles to come to Rome in person.

At length the German king made up his mind to set out for Rome to receive the imperial crown; and, apparently, to obtain it on his own terms. He made, what so many other German monarchs were destined to do after him, a violent dash for Rome. But it did not at all suit the Pope’s views that Charles the Fat should have all his own way. He sent legates to him, with a clear statement in writing of what he considered was a fair agreement between them. Unfortunately, this important document has not come down to us. Indeed, we know very little of what happened just at this juncture not even the exact date of the imperial coronation of King Charles. In the letter in which he informed Charles that he was sending him this memorandum of his wishes, the Pope subjoins: “If you do not completely carry out all the conditions we have laid down, we will ourselves, as far as in us lies, see to what pertains to the honors of the Holy Roman Church. From which course, no violence nor threats of wicked men will have any power to turn us, as long as life remains in our body. In setting down, with great presumption, our memorandum as absurd, you are only striking yourself, and, like a deaf asp, turning your ear away from what is for your advantage. In fine, by our apostolic authority, we definitely forbid you to enter the territory (terminum) of St. Peter until our legates have returned to us with full intelligence, and until you have sent us new ones”.

The only certain issue of these negotiations with which we are acquainted is that Charles was crowned as emperor, cat probably in the latter part of the month of February 881. Had the adipose German been in the least degree equal to his position, he might have inaugurated another age of Charlemagne and staved off the disasters of the tenth century. Even before John died, most of the kingdoms of the different Frankish sovereigns had fallen to him by the death of their rulers. His brother Carloman had died, March 880, and his other brother, Louis the Young, died January 20, 882. The somewhat later deaths of the youthful rulers of France (Louis III, August 4, 882, and Carloman, December 6, 884) made him master, in name at any rate, of practically all the empire of Charlemagne. But he was equally unfit to rule much or little; he had to be deposed (887). Comparing the career of Boso with that of the Carolingian rulers of his time, weak in body or mind, or both, it is clear that in him John had picked out the best man of his time. Things might have been different if the gallant Boso and his intrepid spouse had been allowed to receive the imperial diadem.

As it was, John could get no aid from the impotent emperor. Owing to his weakness, and to the continued dissensions among the Christian princes of South Italy, the Saracen power fixed itself there more firmly than ever. This very year (881) the infidels established themselves in a strong fortress on the Garigliano (the ancient Liris), and from it they plundered the surrounding country with impunity for forty years. But while John, on his side, was willing to take charge of the ex-empress Engelberga, that she might not plot with her son-in-law Boso against Charles, his oft-repeated letters for help against the Saracens brought him no aid from the emperor. A diet at Ravenna (February 882), in which were present both the Pope and the emperor and a number of bishops and nobles, does not seem to have led to much. On his return to Rome, John found “that all our coast had been plundered, and the Saracens as much at home in Fundi and Terracina” as in Africa. “Though grievously infirm”, continues the Pope, “we went forth to battle with our forces, captured eighteen of the enemy s ships and slew a great many of their men”. But it was to no purpose that he asked for aid to be able to render the victory of lasting value, and to resist the violence of Guy of Spoleto, who was continuing the tyrannical opposition of his brother Lambert to the Holy See. The very last letters of John, however, written about a month before he died, show that his last days were somewhat cheered by the news that the emperor was coming for the defence and security of the Roman Church and to expel Guy “from our territories”. But death had given rest to the weary pontiff before the emperor had crossed the Alps.

The Pope and the Saracens

Even from the foregoing narrative the reader will probably have gathered that of the various troubles against which the heroic pontiff had to struggle during his arduous reign, one was ever before him the devastations of the Saracens. The letters of the first year of his reign are as full of them as are those of the last. What the Lombards were to Gregory the Great, the Saracens were to Pope John. And as Gregory’s difficulties with the Lombards were increased by the vexatious conduct of the Christian exarchs, so those of John with the infidels were bitterly intensified by the unpatriotic conduct of the petty princes of South Italy. The importance and long duration of the Saracen question require that it should be treated of separately, and not simply woven into a part of the narrative.

The enormous empire won by the successors of Mahomet, which extended “at its widest . . . from the Indus to the and the Atlantic and the Pyrenees, and from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean”, was subject till the middle of the eighth century to the Caliphs who ruled at Damascus. But in 750 the Omayyad dynasty, which had succeeded that of the four rightly-minded caliphs who had known the Prophet, was overthrown, and the Abbasid dynasty of Bagdad (750-1258) was established. Till then the caliphate had been practically undivided. But the break-up of the immense Saracenic empire began under the Abbasids. Spain never acknowledged their authority, and it was not long before they lost Africa. The Idrisids founded an independent caliphate in Morocco (788) ; and when the Aghlabids established a new dynasty at Cairowan (south of Tunis) in 800, Egypt was the only part of North Africa which obeyed the caliphs of Bagdad. It is with the Aghlabids, or Aglabites as they are more commonly called, that we are at present concerned. At first, at least, we are assured that they “were not only enlightened and energetic rulers on land, but employed large fleets on the Mediterranean”. In the very first terrific outburst of Moslem fanaticism, Arab galleys had begun to harry its shores. Not fifty years had elapsed since Mahomet’s famous flight (622) before Saracen fleets had made descents upon Cyprus and Sicily, and had anchored under the walls of Constantinople itself. In the next century they had burnt towns in Italy. But it was under the Aglabites (800-909) that was witnessed “the greatest ascendancy of the Arabs in the Mediterranean”. Aided by Moors from Spain, “their corsairs were the terror of the seas”. They took Sicily (827-78), Crete and Malta, Corsica and Sardinia, and we have already seen much of their ravages in Italy. In 840 they established themselves in South Italy, and between that date and 845 the attack of the Saracens on Italy was general. They had rifled St. Peter’s in 846, and by about 860 their power was as formidable in South Italy as it was in Sicily.

Angered by the loss of Bari (February 871), and on the other hand favored by the treachery of Adelgisus towards the emperor Louis II, and then later by that emperor’s death (August 875) and by the detestable conduct of some of the princes of Southern Italy, who were constantly seeking their alliance, the Saracens, ever reinforced by fresh bodies of marauders, started again with renewed vigor to prey on the wretched peninsula. They reduced Calabria, as the toe of Italy was then called, to the state in which “it had been left by the deluge”, and expressed their determination above all things to destroy the city of “the old dotard Peter”.

But Petrulus senex has for many a long century shown himself a difficult foe to deal with; and his aged representative of the last quarter of the ninth century had in him a great deal of his master s martial temperament. John met force with force, and in person patrolled the coast. In the first instance he directed all his energies to the breaking up of the alliance which the Southern Italian states had formed with the Saracens; for, by the year 875, the whole of South Italy, except the parts in the hands of the Greeks, was in alliance with the infidel, and was actively siding with them in harrying the papal territory. By letters and embassies John pointed out to the various princes of Naples, Capua, and the rest, how utterly un-Christian was their conduct in thus allying themselves with the greatest enemies of the Cross of Christ. All that Charles the Bald, after his coronation as emperor, felt himself able to do by way of assisting the Pope in his difficulties was to commission Lambert of Spoleto and Guy his brother to afford what help they could.

Accordingly, as he had effected nothing by his letters, John set out with the two dukes for Naples, etc., in the early part of the following year (February 17-March 31), although in very bad health, to see what he could do by his personal influence towards breaking up the disgraceful league. He succeeded in detaching from it Guaifer, prince of Salerno, and Landulf, count bishop of Capua. But the complete success of the Pope’s mission was marred by the secret treachery of the men who ought to have been working for him. Lambert, who had an understanding with Adelgisus of Beneventum, persuaded Sergius, magister militum or Duke of Naples, not to break off his alliance with the Saracens. Of the character of this Sergius we have already seen something in his treatment of his uncle St. Athanasius, the archbishop of Naples. With such a powerful state as Naples at the back of the Saracens, what could John hope to effect against them? However, in dealing with Sergius, he tried mild measures to begin with. He exhorted Athanasius, whom he had just consecrated bishop, to do all that in him lay to draw his brother from the Saracen alliance. To no purpose; John accordingly excommunicated him, and war broke out between him and Guaifer.

But all this while John was not merely seeking help from others. He was doing all he could to help himself. The real founder of the pontifical navy, he was actively engaged in building war-ships, especially those of the pattern then known as dromons, and in preparing munitions of war of all kinds. And, what was perhaps the hardest task of all, he was trying to infuse into his new marines his own fearless courage; for fear of the Saracen pirates would seem to have filled their hearts. On his return from Naples, he found that “all our coast about Fundi and Terracina had been ravaged by the Saracens, and that they had taken up their abode there as though at home”. Although very unwell, John only rested five days in Rome. He then put to sea, and overtook the pirate fleet off the promontory of Circe, at the extremity of the Pontine marshes. Eighteen of the enemy’s vessels were captured by the Papal squadron, many of their men slain, and about six hundred captives liberated. Surely this is enough to show that there was nothing of the woman about John even in the midst of old age and sickness. Of this victory John at once informed Charles the Bald and his wife, and also Alphonso III. “Like you”, he writes to the last-named, “are we constrained by the pagans; and day and night have we to fight with them. But Almighty God has given us victory over them”.

To organize further opposition to the infidel, the Pope had recourse to other means also. Hearing of the victories gained over the Moors by Alfonso III, the brave and learned king of the Asturias and Leon, or of the Gallicias, as John calls him, he begged that monarch to send him, along with arms, some first-class Arab horses. Evidently John had in mind to form a body of light cavalry suitable for coping with an enemy whose main strength was in rapidity of movement. At the same time he sent letter after letter to Boso, who had been left in Italy as his representative by Charles the Bald, imploring him so to attack the Saracens that they may not be able to get an opportunity to recover. “Energetic action”, he writes, “is all the more necessary, as he has received reliable information that the enemy are about to dispatch a fleet of a hundred sail, including fifteen large vessels carrying horses, to assail the city”. Boso could not or would not furnish the desired help; and John had to appeal (November) to the emperor and empress directly. “Were all the leaves of the forest turned to tongues”, he writes to the emperor, “they could not tell of all the troubles we are suffering at the hands of the Saracens. .. Cities, walled towns and villages, bereft of their inhabitants, have sunk into ruin. Their bishops have been driven hither and thither. The thresholds of the Princes of the Apostles are the only places they have to turn to for refuge, as their houses have become the dens of wild beasts. Homeless wanderers, no longer have they to preach but to beg. ... In distress, rather in ruin, is the mistress of nations, the Queen of cities, the Mother of Churches ... In the year that has passed we sowed the seed, but did not gather in the harvest. This year, as we have not planted we have not even a hope of reaping. But why do we speak of the infidels when Christians do no better? We allude especially to those on our borders whom you are wont to call margraves or marquises ... You must come and help the Church, which, setting aside for you a good and great brother, freely chose you as another David for the imperial sceptre ... If this Church is brought low, not only will the glory of your empire totter, but the greatest loss will accrue to the Christian faith”. It is the cry of Gregory the Great over again. If the Lombards are bad, the exarchs are worse!

Still no help came. And so the Pope had not only to keep up his own heart, but to do his best to keep up the constancy of the loyal party. Guaifer, Landulf, and Aio, bishop of Beneventum and brother of Adelgisus, who was opposed to the traitorous conduct of his brother, had to be encouraged to struggle on. The close of 876 and the beginning of 877 saw several letters dispatched to them, urging them “to put their trust in God and not in the Sultan, or in Satan, as he might be more suitably styled”. Further letters (in February 877) to the emperor and empress let us see that matters have gone on getting worse. So bold have the Saracens grown that, in the night they have even come up to the walls of the city, sighs the Pope; and, after having laid waste the Campagna, they have even crossed the Teverone, formerly known as the Anio (Albula), and harried the Sabine territories. His heart has grown sick waiting for the imperial army so long promised but so late in coming. There is nothing left for it but the destruction of the city itself. By all that he (the Pope) did to secure him the empire, in defence of the Roman Church.

At the same time John did not slacken in his efforts to detach the Christian states from the Saracen alliance, and to unite them in a common effort “to eliminate the impious race from our country”. With a view of impressing the others, John once more took in hand Sergius of Naples. He promised him, if he would abandon “the profane alliance”, that he would give him in abundance of that wealth which he coveted; but assured him that if he would not give it up, he would not only excommunicate him afresh, with the sword of the spirit, but see to it that those who carried “not without cause material swords” should attack him. The Pope’s remonstrances at length produced an effect, if not on Sergius himself, at least on his people. They rose up against him, and elected his brother Athanasius, the bishop, to be their duke. As for Sergius, “they put out his eyes and sent him to Rome, where he perished miserably”. In the letter in which the Pope congratulates “all the eminent judges” and the people of Naples for electing Athanasius and for rejecting Sergius, “who wrought more evil in Naples and in our territories than all his predecessors”, he tells them that at present he has no more money at his disposal, but that at the beginning of Lent or on Easter Sunday he will send them 1400 mancuses. For John was in the habit of generously subsidizing the states which were true to the cause of Christianity. But he was soon to find to his cost that Athanasius was little better than his brother.

We may here again emphasize the fact that, while John writing or talking to envoys, he was also acting. Besides building ships, fighting at sea, and rearing cavalry horses, he added to the fortifications in connection with the city. The isolated position of St. Paul s, on the high-road from Ostia to Rome, naturally exposed it to the danger of being again plundered by the Saracens. It had in course of time become the center “of a considerable group of buildings, especially of monasteries and convents. There were also chapels, baths, fountains, hostelries, porticoes, cemeteries, orchards, farmhouses, stables, and mills”. In the cloister of the present monastery of St. Paul s are still preserved a few fragments of an inscription which, copied first by the famous tribune Rienzi and then by Sabino, tells us all we know of the works executed by John VIII for the preservation of the basilica and its dependencies. It was apparently after his naval victory off Cape Circe (877) that the triumphant Pope surrounded the Burgh of St. Paul, as it came to be afterwards called, by a wall, protected it by a fortress, which was still in good condition at the close of the eleventh century, and gave the whole enclosure the name of Johannipolis. The castle was of the utmost importance, as “it commanded the roads from Ostia, Laurentum, and Ardea, those, namely, from which the (Saracen) pirates could most easily approach the city. It commanded also the water-way by the Tiber, and the tow-paths on each of its banks”. Unfortunately, it had disappeared before the beginning of the fifteenth century. Lanciani, who tells us that he has often examined the site of Johannipolis, has not found any certain remains of it ; but he believes “that the wall which encloses the garden of the monastery on the south side runs on the same lines as John’s defences, and rests on their foundations. And in 1890 he saw on the river-side what appeared to be a landing-stage”.

From about the year 875 a new power had been making itself felt in South Italy ; or, rather, an old power had been once more there reviving its influence. Greek fleets of no little strength had appeared in Italian waters, testifying thereby to the fresh vigor which Basil the Macedonian was infusing into Byzantine administration. As the Franks had failed, the Lombards of Apulia appealed for help against the Saracens to the Byzantine governor of Otranto. Having obtained possession of Bari (875), the Greeks gradually conquered (875-94) most of South Italy, Beneventum included. To help to drive out the Saracens furnished them with an excuse to interfere in its affairs, and the dissensions of its various states supplied them with an easy means to subdue it. Their entry into Bari may be said to mark the beginning of the rule of the Greeks in South Italy, as its fall (1071) marks the close of their two centuries of possession of it.

Feeling that the death of Louis made it incumbent on him “to work more than anybody else”, and declaring that he would “decline no toil nor pain of body that he could at all endure”, John endeavored to procure from the Greeks help against the infidels who were again threatening his territories. On the arrival of the Greek fleet off the coast of the Duchy of Beneventum (in partibus Beneventanorum), he wrote to its commander to send him “at least ten good swift war-ships to our harbour (Portus) to clear our coasts from those thieving and piratical Arabs”.

Without delaying to see whether his request would be granted by the Greeks, the Pope wrote (April 28) to arrange for a congress to be held at Traetto between Athanasius of Naples, Landulf, the prince bishop of Capua, Guaifer of Salerno, Pulchar of Amalfi and himself, to arrange for the dissolving of the Saracen league. The congress met in June, and an agreement was come to, by which in return for a payment of 10,000 mancuses from the Pope, the people of Amalfi were to guard the coast from Traetto to Civita Vecchia. But once more was John betrayed. When the money had been paid, Amalfi did nothing. It was 12,000 not 10,000 mancuses which had been promised, was their excuse.

All this while John had not ceased to urge on the emperor, Charles the Bald, the necessity of his coming to crush the Saracens. In the last letter which he addressed to that monarch (May 25, 877), he assures him that, as the whole of the Campagna had been devastated, there was no means by which sustenance could be procured “for the venerable monasteries, the Roman senate, or for ourselves”. The arrival in Italy of Charles the Bald, which, as we have seen, ended in his death, proved more disastrous to the Pope than his absence.

When fear of the emperor had been removed by death, Lambert of Spoleto showed himself in his true colors, and harassed the Pope so severely that, unable to cope with the Saracens and Spoleto at once, nothing was left for him but to buy off the infidel and to fly from the perfidious Christian.

On his return to Rome (879), after failing to find an emperor, John discovered that the political situation in South Italy was anything but improved. During his absence, the hold of the Saracens in Sicily had increased by their capture of Syracuse (May 878); so that they were more at liberty to send fresh bands of freebooters into Italy. And, unfortunately, many of the miserable petty princes there were as anxious for the infidels to come as they were themselves to go. The death of Landulf, prince-bishop of Capua (March 879), resulted in his principality being divided between his four nephews. Naturally they were soon at war with one another, and got help from Greeks, Saracens, and the neighboring princes. Two other relatives disputed the episcopal succession. One of them, Landulf, had been elected on the demise of his uncle; and the other, Landenulf, had been consecrated by the Pope to oblige the count of Capua. This, Erchempert tells us, John did against the earnest expostulations of certain holy men, who assured him that if he ordained Landenulf he would light a fire which would reach even to himself. “And such a fire was lighted that all the duchy of Beneventum and all the territory of Rome were utterly laid waste by the Saracens”, adds the monk. He had the best of all reason to know what he was talking about; for in the course of these Capuan struggles he experienced in his own person some of the troubles of which they were the cause. “I was taken prisoner, robbed of all the property I had gathered together from my youth, and on foot driven before their horses heads as an exile to Capua, August 881”.

Perhaps the chief cause of all this misery and anarchy in S. Italy was Athanasius, the prince-bishop of Naples. He not only entered into a compact with the infidels, but actually furnished them with a place of refuge between the so-called “Portus Aequoreus” and the walls of his city. Thus were they enabled with impunity “to harry and plunder the territories of Beneventum, Rome, and Spoleto, their monasteries and churches their cities, towns, and villages, and their mountains, hills, and islands. Among countless other monasteries which they destroyed, they burnt that most noble one of St. Benedict, revered throughout the world (883), and that of St. Vincent on the Vulturno”. Various strong centres also did the Saracens form for themselves in mountain fastnesses to be able to lay waste the wretched country with impunity. Such were Sepino (thirty-six miles north of Beneventum) among the Apennines, and the encampment they formed on the banks of the Garigliano, near Minturnae, or Traetto, sprung from its ruins, which commanded the high-road (via Appia) from Rome to Capua.

Into this seething vortex, in the forlorn endeavor to produce even the semblance of order, the heroic pontiff plunged with a vigor that fast-approaching death could not subdue. If for a little time, racked with pain and wearied out with his journey to France he contented himself with writing letters of consolation to the afflicted, and making promises therein to come and bring them aid, it was only that after a brief rest he might work the harder. And if during these last three years of his life, as in former years, he continued to write letters for help to the different Frankish kings, to the emperor Charles the Fat, and to the Greek emperor, it was only that he might leave nothing undone in his efforts to stem the ever-advancing anarchy in Italy. Despite the difficulties he had to face at his own door from Saracens and from the dukes of Spoleto, John did not hesitate to leave Rome and travel from one end of Italy to the other to promote the interests of peace. About August (879) he was at Ravenna; in October, at Gaeta; a few months after at Capua, whither he went again in 881 or 882; and in February (882) again at Ravenna. And, as the contemporary historian of South Italy, Erchempert, informs us, he sometimes had the misfortune of having to witness day after day fierce fights between the Lombard rulers, helped, not to their advantage but to their destruction, by designing Greeks on the one hand and Saracens on the other. He exhausted in the good cause every means at his disposal. He wrote letters, dispatched legates, organized congresses of the different hostile rulers, gave away large sums in subsidies, and freely used his power of excommunication. The affairs of Capua, and especially the unpatriotic conduct of the prince-bishop Athanasius of Naples, occupied his attention very considerably. In treating with the latter he displayed a singular moderation. It was not till he was utterly weary of the bishop s broken promises to dissolve his league with the Saracens, that he at length made known (April 881 ) to the bishops of South Italy that he had excommunicated him. In his letter to them on the matter, he reminded them of the way in which, with the aid of his hateful allies, the bishop had so ravaged the country that he had quite cleared it of inhabitants; that, not sparing himself, he (the Pope) had gone to Naples to exhort him to give up his infamous conduct, and had given him large sums of money for the same purpose. Athanasius had over and over again promised to abandon the Saracen alliance; but, through greed of the share of their booty which he received from them, he had invariably broken his engagements. Hence had he excommunicated him, “as the enemy of all Christendom”, till such times as he should completely sever all connection with the Saracens.

Occasionally, indeed, some consolation was afforded to the Pope by seeing success attend his efforts. Thus a victory gained by the Greek commanders, “Gregory the spatharius, Theophylactus the turmarch, and count Diogenes”, over the Saracens at Naples (879 or 880), was followed by the arrival in papal waters of certain warships, sent by the emperor Basil, to render permanent help to the Pope “for the defence of the territory of S. Peter”. And before he died he had the satisfaction of seeing Athanasius repentant and suing for absolution from the excommunication. This John granted on condition not only that he would break with the Saracens, but that he would deliver up their chief men to him and put the others to the edge of the sword. The character of the warfare waged by these robbers more than justifies the Pope’s requirements in their regard. To cope effectually with the savage African pirates we are speaking of, needed a man of the strength of will of Pope John VIII, who, as a modern historian correctly observes, “was the last of those able pontiffs of the ninth century who did their best to defend Italy from the infidel”.

Whilst all the important events above rehearsed were in progress, John’s register shows what was otherwise certain a priori, viz., that many another matter, of greater or less importance, occupied his mind at the same time. It shows him issuing decisions on matrimonial cases of various kinds; confirming the privileges of monasteries or churches; granting palliums to various bishops; transferring bishops from one See to another; restraining them from unduly interfering with monasteries, or with the election rights of others; defending Church property and the weak generally; imposing canonical penances on the one hand, and, on the other, deciding that those “who fall in battle, bravely fighting against pagans and infidels for the defence of the Holy Church of God, and for the good of Christendom, and who fall in the piety of the Catholic religion, obtain an indulgence of their sins and will be received into the rest of eternal life”. It is interesting to find, from another of John’s letters, that the bishops had then, as now, to see to the sending of the holy chrism to the churches of their dioceses every year; and from yet another that there could be no such thing as prescription where there was question of the spiritual rights of the Roman Church, and that, by imperial Roman law, it took a hundred years before prescription could prevail against its property. However out of the multitude of affairs which took up a less share of the Pope’s time than those which have already been treated of at more or less length, there are some which, from one cause or another, deserve to be particularly noticed. Of these, some may be grouped together as relating to certain of the great bishops of the Christian world.

Enough has already been said of the intercourse between the Pope and the patriarch of Constantinople, and, through him, with the Oriental patriarchs. Apart from that, John’s register only shows him in direct contact with Theodosius, patriarch of Jerusalem. To him the Pope sends presents, regretting that, oppressed by the infidels, he cannot send more, and begs his prayers. More is known of John and the patriarchal See of Grado. On the death of Senator, bishop of Torcello (875), there was elected to succeed him one Dominicus, abbot of the monastery of St. Stephen of Altino. Torcello, it may be noted, was the island to which the inhabitants of the mainland of Altino, etc., retreated from before the ravages of the barbarians of the North. Thither, to escape from the Arian Lombards, about the year 640 fled Paul, bishop of Altino, with the treasures of his old cathedral and with his people. There he fixed his See, and there, as many think, are we to recognize Venice in its infancy. Although supported by the Duke Ursus, Dominicus could not prevail upon Peter, “the worthy patriarch” of Grado, to consecrate him, as in making a eunuch of himself he had incurred a canonical irregularity which was a bar to the reception of orders. Unable, however, to resist the Duke, who was determined to have his favorite consecrated, Peter managed to make his escape to Rome, and laid his case before the Pope (876). John at once took the matter in hand, and summoned to Rome, to have the matter thoroughly investigated in a synod, not only Dominicus himself, but the bishops of Equilio (Peter) and Malamocco (Felix), partisans of Dominicus, and various others. Trusting to the support of Ursus, Dominicus paid no heed to the summons, Felix declared that he was too ill to come, and Peter that he had been commissioned by the Duke (or Doge) to go on an embassy to Constantinople. On this the Pope wrote (November 24, 876) to the Doge, as to one who had ever shown himself a friend, “because we cannot prefer the love of any man to justice”, urging him to see that if Felix could not come to Rome he should at least send a representative ; and that, if Peter had not started on the embassy, he should certainly come, as it was so much for the common good that the matter should be promptly settled. By letters of a few days later, Felix and Peter were severely blamed for the want of respect they had displayed to their patriarch, and they were ordered, as was also Dominicus, under pain of excommunication to come to Rome, in person or by deputy, before February 13. The Doge was asked to defray the expenses of their journey; the bishops of Olivolo and Caorle were requested to do their work for them in their absence, and bishop Deltus was commissioned to proceed to Venice as the Pope’s legate, and arrange for the carrying out of these directions. Ursus, however, refused to receive John’s envoy, and that, too, as the Pope afterwards observed to him, “though the words we addressed to you were those of fatherly admonition and not those of one ill-disposed towards you”.

In the letter from which the words just quoted were taken, John tells the Doge that, passing over his previous conduct, he wishes to let him know that he is going to hold a synod of all the bishops of Italy at Ravenna in the summer, and that it is his will that the bishops of Venice by the sea should be present at it, as well as the Doge himself, if possible. With the Pope, Peter went to the council at Ravenna (August 877). Not even at this council was the affair of Dominicus settled. The bishops of Venice arrived only when the council was over. The Pope in anger excommunicated them; but soon after, at the intercession of Ursus, removed the excommunication from them. Whilst the Pope was in the north of Italy, the patriarch remained with him. But when the death of the emperor Charles the Bald, for whose coming the council of Ravenna had been a sort of preparation, compelled John to return to Rome, a compromise was arrived at between the patriarch and the Duke. Dominicus was to receive the revenues of the Church of Torcello, but was not to be consecrated during the lifetime of the patriarch. Peter survived his reconciliation with the Doge but a very short time.

Seeing the trouble that John, also the Eighth, archbishop of Ravenna, gave to Nicholas I, it is not to be wondered at that the present Pope also had differences with him, and had to be severe with him for attempting to appropriate what belonged to the Roman Church. However, the two remained very friendly; and, on the death of the archbishop, John was deeply grieved, and bade the people of Ravenna and their new archbishop to pray for him. Romanus, like so many of his predecessors, soon began to show that he wished to follow the example of the other clerical and lay lords of the period, and to do as he pleased; so that, while supporting him against his enemies, the Pope had to blame him for “non-residence” in his diocese. As time went on, John had more complaints to make against him. He was oppressing certain of the nobility of Ravenna, disobeying the Pope, and generally acting in a lawless and unecclesiastical manner. He must come and clear himself before a council in September (881). Romanus, however, did not come, and was duly excommunicated. The people of Ravenna were commanded to abstain from holding intercourse with him. However, from letters of the following August to and concerning Romanus, it would appear that, though the archbishop is in fresh trouble, he had, at least, been absolved from the excommunication, as he is addressed as “most holy”. From three of these letters it may be gathered that at this period Romanus had fallen completely under the influence of a wicked cleric, one Maimbert of Bologna. The clergy of Ravenna had already complained bitterly to the Pope of what they had to suffer at the hands of Maimbert; but they had lacked the courage to act with the legate whom John had sent to arrange for his expulsion. However, once again “moved by their entreaties”, he not only sent another legate, but commissioned his representative or missus at Ravenna, and four other dukes, to seize Maimbert and send him to Rome. The clergy are commanded to co-operate with Duke John and with the Pope’s legate. If the four dukes and the clergy do not carry out John’s orders, they will be required, as a penance, to abstain from wine and cooked food, and the four dukes will have to pay a fine of a hundred aurei apiece, and the clerics will be suspended from the exercise of their spiritual functions. What was the end of this affair is not known. The Pope himself died within a few months after the dispatch of this letter. Were it calculated to throw any further light either on the history of the times, or on the character of the Pope, many another example of episcopal insubordination could be adduced from John’s register. But from what has already been said, it is abundantly evident that that submission which is necessary for order was rapidly becoming, in Italy especially, a thing of the past as well in the ecclesiastical as in the civil regime. This further breaking to pieces of the new Roman empire, helped indeed by the blows of the barbarians from without, was a general and natural reaction of the Teutonic idea of individual freedom against that which the Germans regarded as its opposite, the all-absorbing rights of an imperial state. Such a movement a movement, moreover, necessary before a new fabric could rise from the ruins of the old could not be checked by the efforts of one man, however powerful. And the material resources of John VIII were anything but extensive.

Although the materials for the subject are not abundant, in addition to what has been already said indirectly on the matter, a few facts, illustrating John’s position and action with regard to certain parts of Europe, which will hereafter develop into the countries of our time, may, perhaps not without advantage, be here grouped together. The victories over the Moors of the brave and learned Alfonso III, called the Great, naturally attracted the attention of the Pope, himself engaged in daily struggles against the same foes. At the earnest request of the king, John constituted Oviedo the metropolitan Church of his kingdom; confirmed to it all the property which king or subject might duly make over to it; and exhorted all to be properly submissive to it. He also told the king to have the magnificent church, which he had erected round “the modest chapel” erected by Alfonso the Chaste in honors of St James the Great, patron of the country, consecrated by the Spanish bishops, and bade him hold a council with them, no doubt on the organization of the Church in the newly conquered districts. Sampiro, who was bishop of Astorga in 1035, and who wrote an important chronicle, tells us that Alfonso was rejoiced at the sight of the papal letters, and that, with his bishops, nobles, and a huge crowd, he assisted first at the consecration of the basilica of St. James, and then some months later at the synod of Oviedo, which was celebrated “by the authority of the lord Pope John, and by the advice (consilio) of Charles, the great prince”, i.e. of course, the emperor Charles the Bald, and not Charlemagne, as some who would discredit this passage have imagined. John also added, in a spirit of wise moderation, to the laws of the Spaniards. At the council which he held at Troyes (August 878), a copy of the code of the laws of the Goths was laid before him, in which, while there was no law to be found in it against the sacrilegious, it was clearly laid down that no judgment could be passed on matters which were not treated of in the code. Hence in Spain and Gothia the rights of the Church were often set at naught. The archbishop of Narbonne accordingly begged the Pope to put an end to this objectionable state of things. Accordingly, in an encyclical addressed to the “bishops and counts of the provinces of Spain and Gothia, and to all the Catholic people of the West”, John proclaimed that by the law of Justinian sacrilege had to be atoned for by a payment of “five pounds of the finest gold”; but that he decreed that the milder regulation of Charlemagne was to be enforced. By that law sacrilege had to be compounded by a fine of “ 30 pounds of silver, i.e. by the sum of 600 solidi of the purest silver”, an important passage as showing the relation then existing between the silver solidus and a pound of silver. Whoever, guilty of sacrilege, did not pay this fine, was to be excommunicated till he did. The decree was to be added to the code of Gothic law.

Despite “his ceaseless efforts in Western and Eastern Europe”, John did find “the leisure” to “occupy himself in the affairs of Britain”. He found leisure to bestow on others, suffering like himself, that sympathy of which he stood in so much need himself, but which he had ever to be extending to others. In England the ravages of the Danes were causing the greatest distress, and “there was warfare and sorrow all this time over England” says our old chronicle (ad an. 870). In 874 or 875 they drove Burhred (Burgraed), king of Mercia, over sea. In his misery he naturally betook himself to Rome, but he did not, however, survive his exile long. “His body lies in St. Mary s Church, at the English school”. And whither kings turned for comfort, so also did priests. John received a letter from Edred (or Ethelred), archbishop of Canterbury, in which that prelate details the sufferings he had to endure at the hands of the Danes and of the king (Alfred), and seeks advice in his difficulties. This we know from the letter of John to the archbishop, a letter which we shall quote at length, as it sheds no little light on certain theories prevalent in this country on the former authority of the Pope in England. John begins his reply to the archbishop by observing that Edred’s letters show his devotion to the Holy See, “since after the manner of your predecessors you are anxious to refer all the important affairs of your Church to us as to your teacher, and to seek the advice and the protection of the authority of the Apostolic See (in which God has placed the foundation of the whole Church) concerning the troubles which you suffer”. Truly has the whole world gone wrong. The Pope has to bewail the sorrows of the archbishop and his own as well. But he exhorts Edred to oppose himself like a wall of brass against all evil-doers, including the king himself; and tells him that he has written to the king to urge him to show his archbishop that obedience which his ancestors have done. In connection with certain matrimonial abuses of which Edred had written to the Pope, John proceeds to affirm that divorce cannot be allowed. He concludes his letter by confirming the privileges of the See of Canterbury. The king here alluded to is no other than that glory of the Anglo-Saxon kings, Alfred the Great, who was not always the model he afterwards became. Even Asser has to write of him: “In the beginning of his reign, when he was a youth .... he would not listen to the petitions which his subjects made to him for help in their necessities, or for relief from those who oppressed them; but he repulsed them from him. This particular gave much annoyance to the holy man St. Neot, who was his relation, and often foretold to him, in the spirit of prophecy, that he would suffer great adversity on this account; but Alfred neither attended to the reproof of the man of God, nor listened to his true prediction. Wherefore seeing that a man’s sins must be corrected either in this world or the next, the true and righteous judge was willing that his sin should not go unpunished in this world, to the end that he might be spared in the world to come. From this cause, therefore, the aforesaid Alfred often fell into such great misery, that sometimes none of his subjects knew where he was or what had become of him”. It was, doubtless, one or more of these youthful acts of tyranny which caused Edred to appeal to Rome, and drew from John an answer which shows his supreme spiritual authority in this country.

Of John’s relations with the Church on the other side of the Channel much has already been said in the course of the foregoing narrative. We may add here that after naming (876) Ansegisus of Sens his vicar “in the kingdom of the Gauls”, John reverted to the ancient custom and appointed (878) Rostaing of Arles his vicar. And through that archbishop he endeavored, like his predecessor S. Gregory I, to make headway against the vice of simony, which seems to have been as rife in Gaul in the ninth century, as in the seventh.

Naturally enough we have more evidence of John’s watchful care over Italy. Apart from his unceasing efforts to save it from the Saracens, his register shows that he was ever occupied with its affairs. To note an instance or two. In Aemilia, near Modena, stood the famous monastery of Nonantula, founded in 752 on land which, from a wilderness, its founder St. Anselm had converted into a paradise. Acting on what seemed to be fast becoming the only recognized principle of action, viz. that might was right, Adelard, bishop of Verona, appears to have disdainfully set at naught the papal privileges bestowed on the monastery, and, in seizing its revenues, not to have hesitated to reduce the monks to the greatest destitution. It required excommunication to bring Adelard to a sense of his misdeeds.

Next it is for the forcible carrying off of another man’s wife that John charges the bishop of Pavia to excommunicate certain powerful men. Then abbot Anastasius is bidden to restore the cellula of St. Valentine, situated in the Sabine territory (in Sabinis), which he has taken from bishop Gaudericus. At Carpi John watches over the restoration of a church destroyed by fire. The bishops of Chieti and others are instructed to see to it that a certain widow be not bound to keep religious vows extorted from her by force. These instances will serve to show that all matters, great or small, in this part of Italy or in that, received a share of John’s watchful attention. And in order that, while he was engaged in attending to affairs at a distance, those at home might not be neglected, he published a series of regulations which the cardinals were to follow in looking after ecclesiastical discipline in Rome.

They were to meet at least twice a month in some church or deaconry, and were to examine into their own way of living their dress, comportment, and the like and into that of the lower ranks of the clergy. They were to look into the manner in which the prelates treated their inferiors and the inferiors obeyed their superiors. They had to put down abuses, and settle the cases of both laymen and clerics that belonged to the papal court. They had also to look after the monasteries during the time that they were without abbots. For the settlement of other matters concerning the clergy or the laity they had to meet twice a week in the Lateran, according to the decree of Leo IV. This decree is doubtless the one made by Leo, when he was leaving Rome for Ravenna (853), in which he laid it down that in his absence both ecclesiastical and civil affairs were to be transacted as usual. On the appointed days, as though he were there in person, all the nobles had to betake themselves to the Lateran and administer justice to those who sought it. From these two decrees, it is clear that the Lateran palace was the center of papal administration in the ninth century; and in the Lateran palace itself we find the Hall of the She-wolf the hall where stood the bronze she-wolf now in the museum of the Capitol especially noted as a hall of justice. For a satisfactory exposition of the last clause of the constitution, which relates seemingly to the seven hebdomadary cardinal bishops spoken of above, we must refer to some antiquary. The clause runs : “Concerning our dioceses (de parochiis), we decree that you possess them in perpetuity ; that you celebrate the divine office in the chief churches in turn according to the priority of your consecration; and that (saving the ancient rights of the cardinal deacons) you share equally their offerings as well for your own use as for the lights of your churches”.

Still hard at work, John was overtaken by death, December 16, 882. Regarding the details of his death, we have a dreadful account in the Ratisbon continuation of the Annals of Fulda – “if the solitary statement of an historian (distant, he might have added), is to be trusted”, says Gregorovius. In conspiracy with a number of others, who desired the Pope’s treasure and his position, one of his relations administered poison to him; but finding that the poison worked slowly, put an end to the pontiff’s life by striking him with a hammer. And then terrified at the hostile demeanour of the crowd, the murderer fell dead without anybody touching him. In refusing to accept this sensational story one will probably not be setting aside the known truth. Peter Mallius, before giving part of John’s epitaph, says that his tomb was situated near the porta Judicii in front of the Church of St. Peter. The epitaph runs:

“Beneath this cold marble rest the mortal remains of Pope John VIII, a man who was adorned with the highest qualities of head and heart. He guarded justice, loved virtue, and taught the truth. He uprooted the cockle and sowed the good seed. Eloquent, prudent, and learned, he excelled in everything. His home is now with the angels beyond the stars”.

Now in possession of the facts of John’s life, the reader will be able to decide for himself whether the charges of cruelty and the rest, so freely brought against John by writers who it would seem are either following their prejudices, or else the blind guidance of ill-informed authors, are well founded. It may be emphatically affirmed that they are not. The character of John VIII stands out well under the full glare of the search-light of history. It is a character well worthy of our admiration. If historians of all shades of opinion agree in praising the character of S. Gregory the Great, no valid reason can be given for withholding a fair meed of praise for the character of John VIII, who in very similar circumstances displayed a very similar character. In the midst of daily ill-health and sorrows, which between them did not allow him a moment’s rest, which deprived him of his sleep, and only left him the grave to hope for, he never lost heart and never lessened his energetic efforts for good. His whole endeavor was to inspire others with the courage which was aflame in his own breast, worn out, indeed, with years, but vigorous from the unconquerable soul that dwelt within it. Like Gregory, he was essentially a Roman. He may, indeed, be regarded as the last of the Roman Popes. To understand how fully he was animated with the spirit of the old rulers of the world, we must note the way in which he ever speaks of Rome to him always the queen and capital of the civilized world and the pride with which he pronounces the names “Roman, Senate of Rome, and gens togata”. John’s Roman character displayed itself not only in his untiring energy, but in his practical adaptation of means to the end he had in view, and in his iron will. If John was convinced that something had to be done, which was in itself good, he strained every nerve to accomplish that end. And if at times he may have worked a little roughly, what wonder when the character of the times in which he lived is taken into consideration. But he was not, for all that, devoid of feeling for others. We find him begging mercy for a murderer, exerting himself to suppress the slave traffic in captives snatched by the Greeks from the infidel, and reproving Bertar, abbot of Monte Cassino, for rashly judging John’s illustrious predecessor Hadrian II telling him it would be much better for him to give up abstaining from flesh meat, than to go on eating away the characters of men. And that John was not devoid of artistic feeling we may perhaps presume from the fact of his ordering an organ from Germany. In his command of money, too, John resembled Gregory. He was one of those men who, combining a diligent attention to his income with a well-regulated expenditure of it, always seem to have money to spare for useful objects. His sound business-like methods inspired confidence, and of themselves tended to bring him money. It would, of course, be a mistake to suppose that, even broadly speaking, the character of John VIII was on a par with that of Gregory the Great. In the former there was more of the rough warrior, the astute statesman, and, per chance, of the partisan leader than of the peaceful priest, the gentle scholar and the absolutely impartial judge. And if the epithet of largus (munificent) applied to John VIII by his namesake the Deacon is certainly equally applicable to Gregory, the title of Saint, which East and West alike have bestowed on the latter, has never yet been given to John VIII. But, in estimating the character of John, it must never be forgotten that the enemy he had to contend against was a cruel, barbaric, and infidel pirate, that the Italian nobles of the ninth century were much more lawless than those of the sixth and, in this respect, were on the down grade and that he had a kingdom of his own to defend against the encroachments of the ferocious Saracen and of the licentious Christian Duke.

Much less would be said against the political actions of the earlier medieval Popes by certain modern writers, if they would not bring their modern ideas of national politics to their study of the simple politics of the early Middle Ages. The idea of a united nation in a suitable geographical area was never contemplated by the men of the ninth century. The imperial idea was indeed entertained by churchmen, who were acquainted with the history of Rome, and who had ever before their eyes the Universal Church and especially, as was natural, by the Popes of Rome. But if it was grasped and accepted by such a barbarian (non-Roman) layman as Charlemagne, it was by a natural reaction rejected by the great mass of the barbarians who settled in the western parts of the Roman Empire.

Freedom from all restraint for himself was the only idea tolerated by the free German; he was a stranger to either imperial or even national ideas for many a long century. The politics, then, of the ninth century were not of an elevated or complicated order. The attempt to make the Teutonic barbarian conquerors move along the lines of the Roman Empire proved a failure; and, at the period at which we have now reached, was ending in complete chaos. Out of the chaos will emerge the feudal system, “where the bond of man to man replaces the civil bond, where the citizen is absorbed in the vassal, and the fief takes the place of country”.

In bringing our sketch of John VIII to a conclusion, it may be remarked with Dollinger that, if John “more frequently than any of his predecessors, pronounced sentence of excommunication against bishops and powerful laics, (it) must be ascribed to the prevailing depravity of the age, and to that state of hard necessity to which the See of Rome was then reduced”. The excommunications pronounced by John were just, and often brought order where nothing else would. The age in which he lived was unworthy of him, but could appreciate him. It was reserved for moderns to discover in him faults which escaped the notice of those who knew him.

MARINUS I.

A.D. 882-884.

EMPEROR OF THE EAST.                        EMPERORS OF THE WEST.

Basil I (The Macedonian), 867-886.           Louis II, 850-875.

                                                                    Charles II (The Bald), 875-877.

                                                                    Charles III (The Fat), 881-888.

IN Marinus, John VIII had a worthy successor. A native Early of Gallese (a town in the Roman Duchy which commanded the road from Rome to Ravenna by Todi and Perugia), and the son of the priest Palumbo, he entered the service of the Roman Church at the early age of twelve, as we learn from his own words recorded in the fourth session of the Eighth General Council. Ordained subdeacon by Leo IV, he was attached to the Church of S. Maria ad Praesepe, and in 860 was present as a subdeacon when Pope Nicholas received the envoys of Photius and the emperor. Ordained deacon (862-66), he was sent in the last-named year on that embassy to Constantinople which the imperial officials stopped on the Bulgarian frontier of the empire. Three years later he was dispatched by Hadrian II to preside, as his third legate, at the Eighth General Council. He enjoyed the full confidence of John VIII, as he had of his two predecessors, and was much honored by that discerning pontiff. He made him bishop of Caere (Cervetri), treasurer (arcarius) of the Holy See, and archdeacon. Among the many com missions entrusted to the courageous ability of Marinus by John VIII (880) was the one to the Emperor Basil which resulted for the legate in an honorable imprisonment. In 882 we find him at Naples on a diplomatic mission to its bishop, Athanasius.

After such a record of a well-spent life, it is not surprising that, immediately (December 16) on the death of John, the unanimous voice of the Roman people, though acting against the canons which forbade translations from See to See, called Bishop Marinus to the papal throne. He seems to have been consecrated immediately without any waiting for the consent of the emperor. But it was not to a bed of roses that he had been called. Faction troubles, which the strong hand of John had kept down, began at once. And the Annals of Fulda assign even to this very year the murder of the rich superista Gregory, “by his colleague, in the precincts (in paradise) of St. Peter’s”. The murderers did not hesitate to drag the dead body through the church, staining its pavement with the blood of their victim. Lapôtre believes this Gregory to have been that relation of John VIII who is said to have put an end to his life by the blow of a mallet; and that his (Gregory’s) marvelous death recorded by the Ratisbon continuation of the Annals of Fulda, is no other than this assassination described by Meginhard. Further, the contents of a note, which is added to the name of Hadrian III in a catalogue, to the effect that he caused George of the Aventine to be blinded, and the widow of the above-named Gregory to be whipped, are also by some authors connected with this event. But in all this finely-woven connected story there is too great a preponderance of the merest conjecture.

The emperor, Charles the Fat, from whom Marinus might naturally have looked for support, only made the condition of the empire worse than he found it. He came into Italy after Easter, and spent the whole summer there. And while, unable to keep his own counts from fighting with their armed followers under his very eyes, in attempting to do what it would have required a powerful, strong-minded ruler to accomplish, “he excited against him the feelings of the Italian nobles”. For in an assembly at Verona, he dispossessed, as far as words went, Guy, or Guido, Count of Tuscany, and others of their fiefs which their ancestors had held before them for generations, and gave them to men of low degree. Headed by Guy, the affronted nobles flew to arms, and, so far from losing their fiefs, “seized much more than they had held before”, laconically adds Meginhard. Moving south to meet the Pope, Charles received him with becoming honor at the monastery of Nonantula, where they remained together on June 20, consulting on the needs of the empire. Guy, who had meanwhile allied himself with a powerful body of Saracens, and was terrorizing the whole country, was here declared guilty of high treason. Berenger of Friuli was deputed to strip him of his fief by force. A campaign successfully begun by him was brought to an ignominious termination by the usual fever. Even the emperor was stricken with it, and had to withdraw from Italy, leaving that country in greater confusion than it was before he set foot within it. To no purpose was it decreed (next year) that the Bavarians should march against Guy. Before the year (884) had run its course, Charles was compelled to make peace with the outraged Italians. With such an emperor, no wonder that Marinus could effect nothing in the way of bringing order into the country.

In one respect, at any rate, Marinus reversed the policy of his predecessor, rather unfortunately as the sequel proved. He absolved Formosus from the sworn promises he had made to John, and restored him to his bishopric. Formosus was certainly very different in character from George of the Aventine and the other leaders of the party with which he had become involved. He was rather weak than wicked. And it is not unlikely that it was because John VIII saw that Formosus might easily become the tool of designing men or that, at least, the faction, which had secured his interest, might cloak their nefarious plans under the good name of the Bishop of Porto that he forbade him to come to Rome again. It is quite possible, also, that John was wholly mistaken in his estimate of the character or guilt of Formosus. But it is plain, at any rate, that the latter must have become closely identified with one faction which was at a bitter feud with another, if we are to judge only from the brutal manner in which even his dead body was treated under Stephen (VI) VII. The simple fact that he had left his See of Porto for that of Rome is not enough to account for the animosity with which he was pursued even after death. But of all this, more will be said when the reign of Stephen VII is treated of. It is sufficient to observe here that Marinus would have been well advised if he had left Formosus in exile. Great scandal would have been avoided if he had trusted to the wisdom and justice of his predecessor.

If, however, Marinus deviated from the policy of John in the case of Formosus, he did not with regard to Photius. He had stood by at the Eighth General Council and seen that heresiarch ape the conduct of Our Lord before Pilate; he had suffered thirty days imprisonment on his account, and had personal knowledge of the man he was dealing with, and, following the example of his predecessors, he condemned him. Hence the attack made upon him by Photius. Unfortunately the letter which, at the dictation of the latter, the emperor Basil sent to Hadrian III, is lost. Its contents are only known through the answer sent to it by Hadrian s successor, Stephen (V) VI. Basil, or rather Photius, urged inter alia that Marinus had been a bishop before his election as Pope, and hence could not be transferred from one See to the other. Such a charge came with very good grace from Photius, who had translated so many of his own friends from one See to another! Stephen, however, whose letter will be given more in full under his Life, had no difficulty in showing, from examples which he adduced, that translations had often been made for a good and sufficient cause. And he maintained that the character of Marinus, Our Lord’s “immaculate priest”, was reason enough for his translation. The breach between Rome and Constantinople, which, at any rate, had not increased under John VII I, was rapidly widened under his immediate successors.

Frodoard, who, in harmony with the epitaph of Marinus, praises his wisdom and his zeal and success in overcoming the errors of the Greeks and restoring unity to the Church, has preserved for us some knowledge of his relations with France. In response to the profession of faith which he received from the deservedly famous Fulk, archbishop of Rheims, Marinus sent him the pallium. Further correspondence passed between them. Besides asking the Pope to confirm the privileges of the Church of Rheims, and to interest himself in the young king Carloman, who, along with Fulk himself, had visited Rome with his father, the emperor Charles the Bald, the archbishop begged him to take cognizance of the action of Erminfrid. This man had seized on a monastery belonging to Fulk, but which was situated in the diocese of Eurard, archbishop of Sens. The Pope accordingly wrote to Eurard and to John, archbishop of Rouen, in whose diocese Erminfrid was then living. But of the issue of this affair we know nothing.

The same may almost be said of the rest of the work of Marinus. However, to pass over his confirmations of the privileges of a few monasteries, another little scrap of information regarding his actions should not remain unnoticed by an Englishman. Out “of regard for Alfred, king of the Anglo-Saxons, and at his request, (Marinus) freed the school (or quarter) of the Anglo-Saxons resident at Rome from all tribute and tax. He also sent many gifts on that occasion, among which was no small portion of the holy and venerable cross, on which Our Lord J. Christ was suspended for the general salvation of mankind”. And, on the other hand, we find it recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that “that same year (883) Sighelm and Aethelstan carried to Rome the alms which the king (Alfred) had vowed to send thither”. And there may now be seen in the Museo delle Terme, in Rome, a part, no doubt, of his “alms”, viz. three silver coins of Alfred, which, together with many other somewhat later English coins, were found (1883-4), as we have already noticed, in an earthen vase on the site of the House of the Vestal Virgins.

While the chroniclers give us the year of the death of Marinus, the month is a matter of conjecture. With Duchesne and Pagi it may be assigned to May, and with the former to the 15th. From the same author we cite the epitaph from Marinus’s tomb, which was in St. Peter’s “between the Silver Gate and the Roman Gate in the Portico”:

“Marinus, who with his humble mind pleased God and was an honor to the world, ordained that his members should be buried in this spot, in the hope that one day the earth would give them back to him. Shining like the stars in heaven, he was beloved by kings and peoples. Adorned with learning, he scattered abroad the good seed. Overcoming the Greeks, he banished schism from the East. Whoever you are who visit this temple of St. Peter, pray that he may reign in heaven”.

HADRIAN III.

A.D. 884-885.

EMPEROR OF THE EAST.                               EMPERORS OF THE WEST.

Basil I (The Macedonian), 867-886.                   Louis II, 850-875.

                                                                            Charles II. (The Bald), 875-877.

                                                                             Charles III. (The Fat), 881-888.

ACCORDING to the chronology, more or less probable but not certain, of Duchesne, Hadrian, a Roman and the son of Benedict, became Pope, May 17, 884. Of what he did, however, either before or after he became Pope we know but little. He seems to have maintained an impartial but firm attitude towards the party of Roman nobles which had been proscribed by John VIII. For if he blinded the notorious George of the Aventine, he retained in the service of the Holy See George’s father-in-law, Gregory, who figures as “missus” and “apocrisiarius of the Holy Apostolic See”, dignities he had enjoyed under John VIII.

He is also said to have caused Mary, the superistana, the widow of Gregory, the superista, who was murdered in the paradise or atrium of St. Peter’s, to be whipped “naked through all Rome”. We may conjecture that this was for some disgraceful intrigue with that scoundrel George of the Aventine. Although we are ignorant of the causes of these terrible events, still such horrible assassinations and barbarous punishments cannot fail to warn us that we are entering on the darkest period of the history of the papacy.

If full reliance could be placed upon the testimony Photius, it might be concluded that Hadrian resumed amicable relations with that patriarch. “Hadrian”, he said, “sent us a synodical letter in accordance with ancient custom”. Comparing this assertion with that of the inscription, previously cited, which states that Hadrian condemned Photius equally with Marinus and the rest, we may conclude that the truth probably is that Hadrian addressed a friendly letter to Constantinople to or about Photius with a view to bringing him to a sense of his duty. This failing, Hadrian renewed the condemnation passed on him by his predecessors.

Two decrees have been attributed to this Pope which have given rise to no little discussion. They are often quoted on the authority of Sigonius, a sixteenth-century writer who, on earlier Italian history, used to be a good deal more frequently cited than he is now. He was cited in the belief that he had access to much earlier writers, whose works have been since lost. But there is little doubt that an authority often consulted by Carolus Sigonius was his own imagination, and that his style is much more admirable than his facts are reliable. The earliest testimony which can be adduced in support of these decrees is the uncritical chronicle of the Dominican Martinus Polonus, who died in 1278. According, then, to Sigonius, the Italian nobility, disgusted with the weakness and discords of the Carolingian sovereigns, and grieved at the destruction caused by the Saracens, went to the Pope and begged him to consult for the safety of the state. In consequence of this appeal Hadrian issued two decrees. One had in view the liberty of the Romans, and laid down that “the pontiff elect could be consecrated without waiting for the presence of the emperor or his ambassadors”. The other, consulting for the dignity of Italy, decided that “if the emperor Charles died without male issue, the kingdom of Italy with the title of emperor should both be placed in the hands of the princes of Italy, who should confer them on one of their own number”. The only points that can be urged in behalf of the authenticity of either of these decrees is that, as a matter of fact, Stephen VI was consecrated without any information being sent to the emperor, and that some of the princes of Italy will soon be seen contending for the imperial crown. In fact, Lambert of Spoleto had already entertained the idea of making himself emperor. But the biography of John VIII shows how little the princes of Italy cared either about the ravages of the Saracens, or about unity of any kind, imperial or regal.

It only remains to note that Fulk of Rheims continued his correspondence with Hadrian on the subject of the intruder Erminfrid, that the Pope ordered Sigibod of Narbonne to see that Girbert, bishop of Nimes, ceased to annoy the monastery of St. Giles, and that, in a synod (April 17, 885), he took under his protection and confirmed the privileges of the monastery of S. Sixtus at Piacenza, built by the empress Engelberga.

The Annals of Fulda tell us of the last acts of Hadrian. The emperor, Charles the Fat, now master of Gaul also, sent to invite the Pope to France, to attend a diet he was about to hold at Worms. Though we may conjecture that Charles wanted the Pope to come that he might consult with him on the state of the empire, nothing is known for certain on the matter. The annalist states that report had it that the emperor wanted to depose certain bishops without good cause and to name his natural son, Bernhard, his heir. And because he suspected that he could not effect these measures by his own power, he hoped to accomplish them “by apostolic authority, as it were, through the Pope. But these schemes were dissipated by the finger of God”. For the Pope, after appointing “John the venerable bishop of Pavia and missus of the most excellent emperor Charles”, to rule the city during his absence, fell ill on his journey to Worms, and died at a villa on the Panaro, which Stephen’s biographer calls Viulzachara, afterwards S. Cesario, and the monk of Nonantula “Lambert’s thorn”, at any rate Spinum Lamberti, near Nonantula. The monk assigns July 8 as the date of the Pope’s death; Duchesne, the middle of September.

He was buried in the monastic Church of St. Silvester at Nonantula. Under the biography of Hadrian I. it has already been told how the monks afterwards opened the Pope’s tomb for the sake of his rich vestments, and how his chasuble was still to be seen at the monastery, when the anonymous monk unwittingly wrote about two Hadrians instead of one.

With the exception of St. Martin I, whose remains were finally laid to rest in S. Martino ai Monti, Hadrian III was the first Pope since the days of Gregory I whose body was not buried in St. Peter’s; and, indeed, he was one of the very few since the time of St. Leo I who died out of Rome. In the days of persecution the tombs of the Popes were in the Catacombs. S. Melchiades, who died (AD. 314) on the eve of the Church’s freedom, was the last one to be interred therein. At first they were buried around the body of St. Peter on the Vatican. This custom, which ceased with S. Zephyrinus (AD. 218), was resumed after Constantine had given peace to the Church. And from St. Leo I (AD. 461) to the destruction of the old basilica of St. Peter in the sixteenth century, by far the greater number of the Popes, some eighty-seven in all, were buried in its vestibule between the Porta Argentea and the south-west corner, occupied by the secretarium or sacristy.

During this period, the old Petrine-basilica period, “the pontifical graves were mostly ancient sarcophagi or bathing basins from the thermae accompanied by an inscription in verse, and, as the Renaissance was approached, by canopies of Gothic or Romanesque style”. Whereas in the Catacomb period of papal interments, the simple loculi of the Popes were closed by a slab of marble marked only with their names, in what we may call the third or new-Petrine-basilica period, which reaches down to the present day, the place in which they are now buried (S. Peter’s) has been “transformed into a papal mausoleum which is worthy of being compared in refinement of art, in splendour of decoration, in richness of material, in historical interest, with the Pantheons of ancient Rome.”

Passing over what Frodoard, in his History of the Church of Rheims, repeats about Fulk, its archbishop, we may quote as an epitaph of Hadrian, as no real epitaph of his is forthcoming, what that author sings of him elsewhere. From these verses we learn that Hadrian adopted, or authorised the adoption of, as his spiritual son, the king of France, Carloman (December 12, 884), and was a kind father to his fellow-bishops.

STEPHEN (V) VI.

A.D. 885-891

EMPERORS OF THE EAST.                          EMPERORS OF THE WEST.

Basil the Macedonian, 867-886.                    Charles III (the Fat), 881-888.

Leo VI, the Wise, 886-912.

STEPHEN, the successor of Hadrian III, who was a Roman of the aristocratic quarter of the Via Lata, proved by his conduct, as did his father Hadrian, that his character was as noble as his birth. His education was superintended by his relative, Zachary, “the most holy bishop (of Anagni) and librarian of the Apostolic See”, and the “simple-minded Job” of John, the deacon, a man who has often been to the fore, though not always in honour, in the preceding pages.

Hadrian II, perceiving the youth’s piety and his earnest application to his studies, ordained him sub-deacon, and installed him in the Lateran palace. “When he had received this honour he led a wonderful life”. In body chaste, in character kindly, in face cheerful, prudent, generous and talented, he showed himself the friend of the poor and the needy. Honoured by Hadrian, he was even more honoured by Marinus, who ordained him deacon and priest “of the title of the Quatuor Coronati” near the Lateran, and lived in the very closest intimacy with him.

At the time of the death of the successor of Marinus, the Romans were suffering from want occasioned by a plague of locusts and by the excessive dryness of the season. Convinced that Stephen’s holiness would bring them relief from their troubles, they determined to make him Pope. Accordingly, when there had gathered together “the bishops and the clergy, the senators and the nobles, the people, and a crowd of both sexes, they unanimously declared that they wanted Stephen to be their bishop”. Proceeding at once, along with John, bishop of Pavia and imperial missus, to the house of Stephen, they burst open the doors, and hurried him off to his titular Church. It was to no purpose that both father and son (for they were found together) protested they were unworthy of the honour which the people wished to bestow upon them. From the Quatuor Coronati they escorted Stephen to the Lateran palace to receive the homage of the higher clergy and nobility. The heavy rain which fell whilst the Pope-elect was being conducted to the Lateran seemed to the people to be the harbinger of happier times. Without waiting for the imperial consent, Stephen was consecrated on the following Sunday by Formosus. Powerful where no resistance was possible, Charles the Fat determined to depose the new Pope, as his consecration had taken place without his consent. He accordingly dispatched his archchancellor, Liutward, bishop of Vercelli, and certain bishops of the Roman See to carry out his will. Their mission, however, they were unable to accomplish. Stephen was too firmly seated in the affections of the people. And he pacified the emperor by showing him, from the election decree which he forwarded to him, with what unanimity he had been elected and consecrated. The decree had been signed by more than thirty bishops, all the cardinal priests and deacons, the minor clergy, and the principal laity.

With wondrous works, says his biographer, did the Pope at once begin to adorn his ministry. But it was no easier in the ninth than in the twentieth century to perform wondrous external works, at any rate, without money; and the Book of the Popes draws a melancholy picture of the condition of the pontifical treasury as Stephen found it on his accession. With his bishops, the imperial legate, and “the honourable senate”, the Pope wandered through the palace examining all the places where the papal valuables ought to have been. But the treasures of the Pope, both sacred and profane, were conspicuous by their absence. Not only was most of the pontifical plate missing, but even the sacred vessels and ornaments of the altar, the gifts of the great, such as the fine golden cross presented by Belisarius, had disappeared. The papal cellars and granaries were also empty. Stephen took such a large company with him in his round of inspection that all might know in what state he had found everything.

It is usual to explain this disastrous condition of affairs with regard to the loss of the papal property, by pointing out that it was becoming quite customary to sack pontifical and episcopal residences on the death of their owners. Hence was issued the eleventh canon of the council held at Rome by John IX. in 898. This canon forbade the continuance of this “most detestable practice” under pain of civil and religious penalties. It must not, however, be forgotten that the nomenclator Gregory had carried off “almost all the treasures of the Roman Church”, and that Pope John VIII wrote to complain that he could not recover them. No doubt, to explain the complete want of everything experienced by Stephen, both causes must be allowed for. Feeling more than ever in need of money on account of the famine, Stephen turned to his father, and succoured the needy with the wealth of his family. Stephen VI was not the first Pope who used his ancestral wealth in the same way.

The Liber Pontificalis goes on to inform us of the care taken by the Pope to have round his person men distinguished for learning and piety; of his personal care of orphans; of his entertaining the nobility with good cheer for soul and body at the same time; of his daily Mass and perpetual prayer, which he never interrupted save for the needs of his people; and of his having spiritual books read to him during his meals. To check the irreverence of the people in church by their unbridled talking, and to put a stop to the magical practices which he had heard were rife among them, Stephen often himself preached to the people during Mass. His biographer has preserved one of these sermons for us. It runs as follows :

“We have to admonish you, dearest children, that in assembling in the most sacred temple of God, you be mindful to diligently attend to that which brings you here. For if with lively faith you believe it to be the temple of God, that belief ought to be manifest by your deportment in it. Though the Lord is present everywhere, He is in an especial manner present in His temple; there, it is His will that we resort to Him in prayer, and there His graces and mercies are poured out, not on the ungrateful, but on all who approach with piety, and in proportion to the fervour of each as He has said : Many sins are forgiven her because she has loved much. For the temple of God is the place of prayer, as He says in another place : My house is a house of prayer to all nations; and the Psalmist : Sanctity, O Lord, becometh Thy house. Now, if it be the house of prayer, it ought to be used as such to pray, to chant the divine praises, to confess our sins, to cancel, by bitter tears and groans of contrition, our offences, and with firm hope to implore the forgiveness of our transgressions; because in the temple is found, in a special manner, the mercy-seat; there are, assisting the orders of angelic spirits, the choirs of the saints who present before the Lord of Hosts the vows of the people and the suffrages of the priest, when, at the altar, he supplicates for the faithful.

“With what face, therefore, can he dare to present himself in the most holy temple of the Almighty, who only comes to profane it by his garrulity and absurd fables? For if on the judgment day, an account shall be rendered for every idle word; how much more rigorously will not that judgment be exacted for such discourses, contumaciously carried on in the sight of so many saints, and in a place specially consecrated to God? With what hope of pardon for past transgressions can they approach the Almighty who come before Him only to add to their account by perpetrating new ones? Tremble at the chastisement of Him who with a scourge drove out those who bought and sold from the temple; for less guilty was their conduct, who there carried on a traffic of things in themselves useful, than is that of Christians who gratuitously insult the divine presence by their absurd nonsensical garrulity and scandalous bandying of stories!

“When ye assemble in the place of prayer, remain in a recollected silence, the heart intent on entreaty to God, that the suffrages offered up for you by the priest, may be accepted by Him, and that his prayers may be heard having ever in mind the admonition of our Lord: When you come to prayer, forgive those who may have offended you, that your heavenly Father may forgive you your offences. Meditating such things as these through the inspirations of Divine grace, and being imbued with the doctrines of the apostles and evangelists, having first of all obtained mercy from the Almighty with the fruit of good works, like lamps illuminating the sanctuary round about, you will merit to be hereafter presented to Christ in the realms of joy, and to be there crowned in the company of the saints. For the rest, most dearly beloved, we wish you to be aware that the Lord in instituting the law for His people, as Moses testifies, enjoined this ordinance, saying : The sorcerer you shall not suffer to live (Exod. XXII).

“Now it grieves me to say that in this city there are some who not only do not reprehend, but who on the contrary encourage and patronize the abandoned persons, who dread not by abominable incantations to consult devils, regardless of the doctrine thundered in their ear by the apostle. What participation of light with darkness, or what agreement of Christ with Belial? For inasmuch as contemning Christ, they turn after the custom of the Gentiles to take counsel of demons, they by all means avow themselves not to be Christians. And how execrable, how impious it is, turning one’s back on Christ to offer homage to demons, we leave you, beloved children, to ponder in your own breasts, that the thought of it may transfix you with horror.

“Wherefore, whosoever from henceforth shall be found to pollute himself with this pestilence, by judgment of the Holy Ghost, we pronounce an outcast from the vivifying Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; and if any one shall be found to set these salutary admonitions at defiance treating them with contempt, and incorrigibly persisting in his pestiferous enormity let him be anathema forever, from God the Father, and from His Son Jesus Christ”.

Not to disconnect our knowledge of this Pope derived from the man who knew him, it will be best to follow to the end what the Book of the Popes tell us about him. Whatever money he could procure he expended on the repair or adornment of churches, on ransoming such as had fallen into the hands of the Saracens, and on whatever was required for the public good. The fame of his virtues spread everywhere, and crowds flocked to him for his blessing from east and west.

Of all that Stephen accomplished for the external glory of the House of God, his biography only mentions a portion. And here only a selection of that portion will be made. In the case of the basilica of St. Peter, Stephen not only made offerings to it of various ornaments, and issued decisions as to the services carried on within its walls, but confirmed a most important regulation regarding its use which had been made by Pope Marinus. It appears that a custom had grown up by which the authorities of the basilica exacted an annual charge from those “who there daily offered up the sacrifice to the Lord”. This custom, condemned by Marinus, had again come into force under his successor. It was put a stop to by Stephen.

Not only was his own church of the Quatuor Coronati endowed by Stephen with gifts of ecclesiastical ornaments of various kinds, and copies of the sacred Scriptures, but similar presents, especially of copies of parts of the Bible and of other good books, were made by him to churches in Ravenna, Imola, and other places “for his one aim was to do what might please God”.

He also turned his attention to the plague of locusts which had begun to devastate the papal territory in the days of Hadrian III, and was still continuing its destructive ravages. He tried both natural and supernatural remedies. He offered a reward of five or six denarii for every pint of locusts which was brought in to him. Though this resulted in considerable locust-catching activity, it did not affect the plague. When human means had been tried and found wanting, the Pope turned to God by prayer. We are told that he betook himself to the oratory of Blessed Gregory (where was preserved the saint’s couch), hard by St. Peter’s, and that after he had spent no little time in tearful prayer, he blessed some holy water, gave it to the mansionarii, and told them to give it to the people and to bid them sprinkle their fields with it, and implore the mercy of God. The united faith of pastor and people was rewarded. The locust plague ceased. With even this story left a little incomplete, the first part of the Liber Pontificalis comes to an abrupt close. We must look elsewhere for further information about the work of Stephen VI.

Stephen VI had the misfortune of witnessing political events in the West which at least heralded that unhappy period for Italy and the Popes which we purpose to examine in another volume. In the forefront of these events was the deposition of Charles the Fat. Physical and intellectual decay brought it about that the Carolingian race ended as the Merovingian had already done, viz. in the deposition of its last representative who held any imperial sway. With the widening of the territories over which Charles ought to have held sway, came a narrowing of his intellect. He grew daily stouter and more incompetent. Finding him in every way useless, he was deposed in the diet of Tribur (November 887) by his nobles, acting under the leadership of Arnulf, Duke of Carinthia, a natural son of Carloman, the late king of Bavaria. Charles did not survive his disgrace long. He died January 13, 888.

Powerful nobles soon seized upon the chief portions of his empire. Arnulf, who had distinguished himself in campaigns against the advancing Slavs, was chosen king of Germany; and the west Franks, setting aside the child, Charles the Simple, the posthumous or illegitimate spring of Louis the Stammerer, elected as their king the valiant Eudes, or Odo, Count of Paris, who had inflicted many a severe blow upon the Normans, and who thus became the first “Capetian” sovereign. It has been already noted that Boso had made himself king of Provence or Cisjurane Burgundy. Now (887), Rodolf, “chief of the rival family of the Welfs, equally allied to that of the Carolingians, caused himself to be recognised as king of Transjurane Burgundy -regnum Jurense- (Franche-Comté and Western Switzerland), with St. Maurice for his capital.”

In Italy strife soon became vigorous between Berenger of Friuli and Guy or Guido IIII, of Spoleto for the crown of that country and for the imperial sceptre. From the time that the Frankish ancestors of Guido had, in the middle of the ninth century, been named dukes of Spoleto, they had gone on steadily strengthening their position. They made their duchy hereditary, and by marriage and diplomacy so extended their influence that Guido, the third of that name, felt that the time had now come to make himself king of Italy, if not emperor. If Berenger had the advantage of being allied with the Carolingian family, and of having had at least the name of king of Italy from the very beginning of 888, Guido was near Rome, and, perhaps through the exertions of his relative Fulk, Hincmar’s successor in the archbishopric of Rheims, had already (886) been adopted by the Pope “as his only son”. The north of Italy which so far, under the Carolingian rule, had enjoyed comparative peace, became now, like the south, the abode of war. After a considerable amount of fighting, Guido, who had previously failed to seize the crown of the western Franks, gained the upper hand, and had himself proclaimed king of Italy in a diet held at Pavia at the end of the year 888, or in the beginning of 889.

Of the thirteen short decrees of the diet, the first two treat of “our mother the holy Roman Church”. They lay down that her honour must be preserved. “For it is preposterous that the head of the whole Church, and the refuge of the weak should be harassed, especially as on her healthy condition depends the well-being of all of us”. After passing other decrees regarding the freedom of the Church, the assembly elected Guido (Wido or Guy) to be “their king, lord (senior), and defender” as he had undertaken to exalt the holy Roman Church, to observe the laws of the Church, to frame just laws for his subjects, to extirpate rapine, and to promote peace (c. 12).

Not content with being thus proclaimed king, Guido made use of his influence with the Pope to procure from him the coveted title of emperor, Crowned by Stephen (February 21, 891), he proclaimed “the renovation of the empire of the Franks”, though he was anything but master even of Italy. For with the good-will of Arnulf of Germany, Berenger still maintained himself in his duchy; and in south Italy, while the power of the Saracens was still unextinguished, that of the Greeks was making steady headway. The death of Pope Stephen, some six months after his coronation of Guido, meant the loss of another hope for the peace of Italy. The understanding which existed between Stephen and Guido would doubtless have worked well in the interest of the prosperity of Italy. Nor can what is stated in the Ratisbon continuation of the Annals of Fulda, under the year 890, be urged against the fact of this understanding. We there read that, in the Lent of 890, Arnulf of Germany went to Pannonia, and, at a place called Omuntesberch, held a diet with the Moravian duke, Swatopluk (or Zwentibold). There, influenced by the Pope, Swatopluk begged Arnulf to go to Rome, “the abode of St. Peter”, and free “the Italian kingdom” from bad Christians and pagans. But pressing business in his own kingdom caused the king, though unwillingly, to decline the invitation. It is certain, however, as will be shown immediately, that what the Annals proceed to relate about Hermengard under this same year (890) really belongs to the preceding year; and as the Annals are here obviously chronologically inaccurate, it is generally believed that the invitation to Arnulf here spoken of refers to that sent him later on by Pope Formosus, who was on as good terms with him as Stephen had been with Guido. Indeed, in the manuscript used by Marquard Freher in the preparation of his edition of these Annals (1600), the name of the Pope was actually given as Formosus, at least in a gloss. There seems, then, no reason to doubt of the harmony existing between Guido and Stephen.

It has been thought that this Swatopluk, of whose good-will towards Pope Stephen we have just seen an instance, received a crown from him. In Mansi’s edition of the Councils there is a record of a council held “in the plain of Dalmatia” under a King Swatopluk. At the request of the king’s envoys, a Pope Stephen sent to Dalmatia Honorius, “cardinal-vicar of the Holy Roman Church”, to whom he gave full powers to act in his name. The principal business of the synod, the proceedings of which were conducted both in Slavonic and Latin, was the coronation of the king by the cardinal legate. This transaction has been referred to Stephen VI, in the first place, because of the good-will which existed between him and “ King Zventopolco (Swatopluk)”. And attention has already been called to the fact that Slav princes set the example of entrusting the patronage of their kingdoms to the sovereign pontiffs. Swatopluk was one of those princes. In the letter (already quoted) of Stephen VI to that prince condemning the use of the Slavonic tongue in the sacred liturgy, he praises the king because he chose the vicar of Blessed Peter “as his chief patron before all the princes of the world, and commended himself to the saint’s guardian ship (tuicioni)”. In turn, Stephen promised ever to be his protector. Finally, in confirmation of all this, there is adduced the authority of Dandolo. Though a late, he is not an unreliable authority. He says : “By the preaching of Blessed Cyril, Svethopolis, king of Dalmatia, with all his people, embraced the Catholic faith. And in the presence of the bishops of the true faith and of the apocrisiarii of the emperor Michael, on whom he acknowledged that his kingdom depended, he was crowned on the plain of Dalmatia by Honorius, cardinal-legate of the Apostolic See”. There can be little doubt, however, that this papal coronation of a king of Dalmatia must be referred to a later date. About the middle of the eleventh century, the Serb, Stephen Bogislav (Boistlav), threw off the Byzantine yoke. His son, Michael, became king of the Servians. This successful movement not unnaturally influenced the Slavs of the Adriatic. They also sought independence; and, to strengthen their position, turned to the Pope. It is to this period and to these political events that the council “in the plain of Dalmatia” must be referred. Knowledge of it has come down to us through the Chronicle of the Presbyter of Dioclea (Dukla), who wrote in the second half of the twelfth century, and is believed to be the earliest of the Croato-Dalmatian writers. Unfortunately his work is based on little more than popular tradition, and is full of anachronisms. Still with regard to the incident with which we are dealing, it is more than curious that a Pope Stephen and an emperor Michael were contemporary. Stephen (IX) X became Pope on August 3, 1057; and Michael VI, Stratiotikos, only ceased to be emperor on August 31, 1057. It is certain, moreover, that Suinimirus (Zvonimir), King of Dalmatia, received a crown from Pope Gregory VII not twenty years after. If, then, in the present case, the Presbyter of Dioclea has been guilty of any mistakes, and that, it would seem, remains to be proved, he has assigned to Stephen IX, to Honorius and to Swatopluk, actions which he should have ascribed to Gregory VII, to Gebizo, and to Zvonimir. All that relates, however, to the early history of Slavonic Dalmatia is wrapped in obscurity; and, in English works, at any rate, it is very difficult to obtain any information on the subject at all.

Boso, whose usurpation of the kingdom of Provence (or Aries or Burgundy) was so strongly condemned by John VIII, died January 11, 887, leaving his son Louis a minor. But the reins of government were held firmly for him by his mother, Hermengard. She exerted herself to obtain from Pope Stephen what Boso had failed to obtain from John VIII, viz. that the new kingdom of Provence should be recognized by the Pope. A similar request was preferred by her to Arnulf of Germany, who seems to have claimed the imperial rights of Charles the Fat. At any rate, Eudes, Berenger, and Hermengard all turned to him for confirmation of their claims. It was to make good her petition that Hermengard paid a visit to Arnulf at Forcheim after Easter, in the May of 890, according to the above-mentioned continuation of the Annals of Fulda; but really in 889, as appears from a diploma of Arnulf, cited by Muratori. The energetic widow was successful in both her appeals; and at the council or diet of Valence (August 890) Louis was proclaimed king by the bishops and nobles of the new kingdom. The acts of the council relate that, on the personal representations of Bernoinus, archbishop of Vienne, Pope Stephen, “on whom rests the care of all the churches”, both by word and writing urged the bishops of Cisalpine Gaul to elect Louis king. This he did, because he had been moved “even to tears” by the story which the archbishop had to tell of the miseries of the country after the death of Boso. It had been harassed not only by its own people, whom no power could restrain, but by the pagans. On the one side had pressed the devastating Northmen, and on the other the Saracens had laid waste Provence and reduced the country to a desert. Moved by the letters of the Pope, and asserting that the emperor Charles (The Fat) had already granted him the kingly dignity, and that Arnulf, his successor, had done the same, the archbishops and bishops of the kingdom proclaimed Louis their sovereign. We shall meet with Louis again, full of his mother s ambition, and contending for the imperial title.

Frodoard has preserved for us extracts of Pope Stephen’s correspondence with various archbishops of France, among others with Aurelian of Lyons, who was present at the council of Valence. On the death of Isaac, bishop of Langres, Aurelian consecrated to fill the vacant See, Egilon, abbot of Noirmoutier, without consulting clergy or people. Not to be treated in the same cavalier fashion a second time, the clergy and people unanimously elected Teutbold, a deacon of the church of Langres, “when God called Egilon (or Geilon) to Himsel” (c. 887), and begged the Pope himself to consecrate their candidate. But, says the historian, “anxious to preserve intact the privileges of each church”, Stephen would not consecrate him, but sent him to Aurelian, and bade the archbishop consecrate him at once, if it were the fact that he had received the suffrages of clergy and people, and if there were no canonical impediment in the way. If there proved to be any obstacle, the Pope was to be informed of it, and Aurelian was not to consecrate another without consulting the Pope. To see to the carrying out of these orders Stephen dispatched, as his legate a latere, Oirann, bishop of Sinigaglia. Aurelian procrastinated, and again was Teutbold sent to Rome for consecration. And again, too, for the same reason did the Pope do as he had done before. Thereupon, construing Stephen’s excessive desire for fairness into a confession of weakness, Aurelian set the Pope’s orders at naught, and furtively consecrated another stranger for the Church of Langres. Determined not to accept the candidate thus foisted upon them, the people of Langres again betook themselves to the Pope. This time Stephen did consecrate Teutbold, and wrote to Fulk of Rheims to install him at once. This Fulk could not do before King Eudes was assured by the report of his own ambassadors that such was the Pope’s will. This Langres incident, which has been related almost in the exact words of Frodoard, shows Pope Stephen as the champion of the rights of bishops and people alike. The true verdict of history notes this role as a distinctive feature of the line of the Sovereign Pontiffs, even if it be true that, for a period during the Middle Ages, it applied itself to curtailing the power of the former, for the all-necessary purpose of drawing closer the bonds between the ruling authorities in the Church and its Head. It was tyrannical conduct on the part of such metropolitans as Aurelian that inspired the publication of the False Decretals, and not any grasping ambition of the Popes. To Rome the oppressed ever turned, always sure of sympathy and generally of effectual aid.

Aurelian, however, was not always in opposition. About the same time that he was interfering with the liberties of the Church of Langres, he was commissioned by the Pope, along with various other bishops, to put a check on the doings of Frothar of Bordeaux. Owing to the ravages of the Normans, the latter had been allowed, with the consent of John VIII, to exchange his See of Bordeaux for that of Bourges till such times as he might be able to return to his proper See. But Frothar not only usurped also the See of Poitiers, but seems to have made himself disliked by the people of Bourges. Their complaints were carried to the Pope. Stephen decided that, as the cause of Frothar’s translation had disappeared, the archbishop must return to his original See or incur excommunication. Frothar does not seem to have obeyed; for Hugh of Flavigny, who wrote a chronicle in the early years of the twelfth century, has preserved a fragment of a letter of the Pope to Aurelian of Lyons, in which that archbishop is ordered to consecrate a new bishop for Bordeaux “on account of the effrontery of Frothar”. It is supposed that Frothar’s death put an end to any further difficulties. The affair is not without its interest, as it adds to the evidence that, in ecclesiastical matters at this period, the higher clergy were as insubordinate, and acted with almost as much license, as the greater nobles in civil affairs.

Passing over, for the present, Stephen’s correspondence with Henmann of Cologne on the subject of the restoration of the See of Bremen to the jurisdiction of his archiepiscopal See, it may be noted that Stephen s dealings with the archbishop of Ravenna also serve to show his great regard for the rights of others. For if he severely blames (887-8) Romanus of Ravenna for venturing, against the canons, to elect his successor, and orders him to undo what he has attempted; he is careful, on the other hand, to explain to Dominicus, the successor of Romanus, that in consecrating a bishop for Piacenza during the vacancy of the See of Ravenna, he had no wish to detract from its rights.

But of all the ecclesiastics concerning whom Stephen had correspondence, the most important was Photius. Hadrian III had received from the emperor Basil a sharp letter in which, among other points, the election of Marinus, who had shown himself the most uncompromising opponent of Photius, had been vigorously attacked. To this document, inspired, as the Pope plainly insinuates, by Photius, Stephen sent a temperate yet firm reply. It well deserves to be quoted in its entirety.

“We have received the letter of your serenity addressed to our predecessor Hadrian, and we are very much astonished that you could write in the way you have you, who hold the scales of justice, and who know well that our sacerdotal and apostolical dignity is not subject to the power of kings. For though on earth you are the image of our emperor Christ, you ought to confine your attention to what belongs to this earth –as we pray God you may be spared for many years to do. As you have been by God set over worldly affairs, so through Peter, the prince (of the apostles), have we been placed by God over spiritual concerns. Take, we beg you, in good part what follows. It is yours to break the might of tyrants with the sword of power, to dispense justice to your subjects, to make laws, to regulate the military and naval forces (of the empire). These are the chief duties of your imperial power. But a care of the flock has been entrusted to us, a care as much more noble as heaven is distant from earth. Hearken to the Lord’s words to Peter : Thou art Peter, etc. But what says He about power and empire : Fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul. Hence we beg you to abide by the decrees of the princes of the apostles, to honour their name and dignity. The episcopate of the world is dependent upon St. Peter, through whom we with doctrine most pure and undefiled teach all.

“But let not your majesty, by reason of your power over lesser matters, boldly assert itself to decide on higher affairs; rather reflect by what authority you would do this. He who, by his slanders, has poisoned your ears against the most holy Marinus, would not refrain from blaspheming our Lord Jesus Christ. Who, on the one hand, is he who has dared to say such things against His stainless spouse and priest, and against the mother of all Churches? At any rate he is deceived should he think that the disciple is above the master, or the servant above his lord. We are truly astonished to see your consummate prudence seduced into entertaining such thoughts against that holy man (Marinus). For were we not to say who he was, the very stones would tell of him.

“If you are of the number of the sheep of God, as we trust you are, transgress not the limits of the princes of the apostles. Who has induced you, we would ask, to assail with ridicule the universal Pope, and to rail against the holy Roman Church, to which with all reverence you are bound to submit? Know you not that she is the head (princeps) of all Churches? Who has made you a judge of bishops, by whose holy teaching you ought to be guided and by whom prayers are offered to God for you? ... You have written that he (Marinus) was not Pope. How knew you that? And if you knew it not, why were you so quick to pass sentence on him? Those who hold that Marinus was already a bishop and hence could not be transferred from one See to another, must prove that assertion. Know, most honoured emperor, that though that impediment could be urged against him (which it could not), there are examples enough to justify his being raised to the first See What has the Roman Church done that that seducer has led you to raise your voice against her? Is it that, in accordance with ancient custom, no letter was sent to you concerning the assembling of the Constantinopolitan synod? ... But to whom was the Roman Church to write? To the layman Photius? If you had a patriarch, our Church would often communicate with him by letter But for our love for you, we should have been compelled to inflict on the prevaricator Photius more severe penalties than our predecessors have done. We warn you, son of ours in spirit, rise not up against the Roman Church. We were glad to hear that you had destined one of your sons (Stephen, his youngest son) for the priesthood. We beg you to send us some well-equipped war-ships (to guard the coast) from April to September, as well as soldiers to defend our walls from the Saracens. (Concerning their ravages), we will only note that we lack even oil for the lamps used in the service of God”.

When this dignified letter reached Constantinople, Basil the Macedonian was dead, and his son Leo VI, surnamed the Wise, reigned in his stead (886-912). Towards Photius, “the most gracious and sweet”, Leo had never been well disposed, and when he received the Pope s letter he took advantage of it to depose Photius. He assembled “all the priests of the truth” (who, condemned by Photius, had suffered grievous persecutions), exiled him, and proclaimed his young brother, Stephen, patriarch. Then addressing Stylian and the other adherents of Ignatius, he told them what had been done, and begged them to communicate with the new patriarch. “But if, seeing that he was ordained deacon by Photius, you would rather not communicate with him until you have consulted the Romans who condemned Photius, let us write and ask the Pope to grant a dispensation from censures to those ordained by Photius. Accordingly the emperor wrote to the Pope, as did also Stylian of Neocaesarea and his friends”.

If Photius, now shut up in a monastery, was practically dead to the world, “the evil which he had done lived after him”. By his letter to Walbert, patriarch of Aquileia, and other writings, he had long been busy in trying to show that the Latin Church was in error by teaching, contrary to the tradition of the Fathers, that the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Ghost, proceeded from the Father and the Son. The Greek Church, in harmony with the doctrines of the Fathers, as he maintained, taught, on the other hand, that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father only. Ignoring those passages of the Fathers, both Greek and Latin, where the doctrine of the Catholic Church was clearly and distinctly stated, he affected to have proved his point when he had shown that it was often said that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father. That was enough. The Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father, therefore not from the Father and the Son, but from the Father only. And he infers, equally falsely, that because the Westerns taught that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and the Son, He did so, according to them, by a double procession; and that hence He was the Grandson of God the Father.

It is not the place here to show that, in accordance with the doctrine of the Catholic Church, the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, as from one principle, by one procession. It is enough to state now that, while Photius and his works sank into oblivion at this period, it was from the armoury of his works that were afterwards drawn the subtle swords which were most used to sever the union of East and West, and to keep it severed. Of all the enemies of that united kingdom on earth which Our Lord came from heaven to establish, Photius was the most deadly. And if he did harm to the Church, he did as much to the State. Under the guiding hand of the See of Peter, the West, despite a thousand obstacles, moved on to civilization, to learning, and to liberty. The East, following first one and then another heresiarch condemned by Rome, hurried back to barbarism, ignorance, and despotism. And, with that miserable fatality with which men not unfrequently cling to what is ruining and degrading them, the East is today proud of Photius who freed them from the thralldom of Rome, and gave them military despotism in Church and State, national misery and poverty, and superstitious ignorance and fanaticism.

The letter which the emperor Leo wrote to the Pope has not been preserved. The letter of Stylian to him is the one which, containing a succinct account of the doings of Photius, has been already so often quoted. It is addressed : “To the most holy and most blessed Stephen, Lord and ecumenical Pope, Stylian bishop of Neocaesarea of the province of Euphratesia and the bishops who are with me, as well as all the bishops, priests, and deacons of the Church of Constantinople, all the superiors (of the monks) in the eastern and western portions (of the empire), and all the priests, who as monks lead a retired life”. After recounting in brief the history of the usurpations of Photius, Stylian proceeds to address himself to the Pope, whom he styles “sacred and venerated head”. “As we know that we must be corrected, and, according to the canons, punished by your Apostolic See, we humbly beg your holiness to have mercy on us, i.e. on those who not without some show of good reason accepted the ordination of Photius; so that he who received the legates of the Apostolic See, Radoald and Zachary (who in the beginning confirmed Photius in the See of Constantinople), and then Eugenius and Paul (who a second time communicated with Photius), may not be condemned equally with Photius; and so that another great number may not be driven from the Church”. Examples are then adduced to show that to grant pardon in similar cases has been the custom of the Church. “Hence it well becomes you to expel Photius, a schismatic from the beginning, ordained by schismatics and a worker of innumerable evils; but, on the other hand, we entreat you to deal mercifully with those who have been deceived by him”. Stylian goes on to tell the Pope that some wished him to communicate with them on the ground that they had received a dispensation from the Pope to exercise their sacerdotal functions; but that, pending instructions from the Apostolic See, he had refrained from doing so. “ Though I would venture to assert this, O venerated head, that none of those who communicated with Photius did so of their own will, but rather compelled by the violence of princes”.

To this letter Stephen replied that he was not astonished that they had expelled Photius, already condemned by the Church, but that he was surprised that whereas their letter spoke of the expulsion of Photius, that of the emperor stated that he had resigned. Hence before he can pronounce sentence, bishops from both parties must be sent to him that he may find out the whole truth”. “For”, he concluded, “the Roman Church has been set as a model and example to the other churches. Whatever it defines has to remain for ever inviolate, and so it is only right for her to pass sentence after careful examination”. This letter was written about the year 888. Some time elapsed before the Pope’s requirements were complied with; and when at length ambassadors and letters did arrive in Rome from Constantinople, Stephen was dead or dying.

Stylian’s reply has come down to us. In it the discrepancy pointed out by Pope Stephen between the letter of the emperor and that of the Greek bishops is explained. “Those who have written that Photius has renounced his See are those who have recognized him as a bishop. But we, who following the decisions of Popes Nicholas and Hadrian, do not consider that he possesses the least vestige of the priesthood, how could we write that he had renounced (the patriarchal See)” ?... “But”, continues the letter, “we renew our entreaties for those who have recognized Photius by force, and we beg you to send circular letters to the patriarchs of the East, in order that they may extend the like indulgence towards them”.

In the answer which Stephen’s successor, Formosus, sent to this letter (end of 891 or beginning of 892), he pointed out that, in the request for pardon, it had not been stated whether there was question of laymen or clerics. The laity deserve pardon, continued the Pope. But the case of the clerics is different. However, as Stylian has asked him “to tolerate some things, but to abolish others”, he is sending, as legates, bishops Landenulf of Capua and Romanus, to go into the different matters with Stylian himself, Theophylactus, metropolitan of Ancyra, and a certain Peter, a trusted friend of his. After the renewal of the condemnation of Photius himself, those who had been ordained by him might be received into lay communion if they offered a written confession that they had done wrong, and humbly asked for pardon. What is contained in his (the Pope’s) instructions to his legates must be closely followed.

Of the doings of this embassy, unfortunately, nothing is known. But the biography of Antony Cauleas, who is regarded both by the Greeks and Latins as a saint, and who succeeded the youthful Stephen (May 17, 893) in the patriarchal chair, states that he again brought peace to the Church, and reunited the East and West. Still, for some time after this, correspondence went on with Rome on the subject of those who had been ordained by Photius. And though Stylian continued to ask for pardon for them, the Popes persevered in ratifying the policy of their predecessors. Hence John IX (898-900), while praising the archbishop for his continued and unflinching loyalty to “his mother the Roman Church”,& declares that he accepts Ignatius, Photius, Stephen, and Antony to the same extent as Popes Nicholas, John, Stephen VI (Sextus, as John calls him), and the whole Roman Church have done, and that he grants to those who have been ordained by them the same concessions as those granted to them by his predecessors. He exhorts Stylian to do likewise, and looks forward to the schism, which has lasted nearly forty years, being healed by the archbishop’s prayers.

After this, we hear no more of Photius or his works for some time. “It seemed in the tenth century as though his memory was to be consigned to oblivion. But after the middle of the eleventh century, his works were again brought to the light, and in the twelfth century he was reckoned by the Greek schismatics among the doctors of the Church; though it was not till the sixteenth century that they ranked him among their saints”.

Affairs of Italy

No doubt during the reign of Stephen VI negotiations with Constantinople were much hindered by the condition of affairs in South Italy. In the midst of the disorders still being caused by Saracen raids and internal feuds among the principalities, the Greeks continued to improve their hold upon that part of Italy. Soon after the death of Stephen they even captured (October 18, 891) Beneventum. It is significant of their power that the patrician George, after expelling the candidate who had been canonically elected bishop of Tarentum and who in accordance with ancient custom was to have come to Rome for his consecration, wished to intrude a candidate of his own, and have him consecrated at Constantinople.

What Erchempert tells us of the career of the perjured Atenolfus is well calculated to furnish a clear idea of the men and the actions which were leaving South Italy open to be preyed upon by Greek and Saracen. Among his other famous or rather infamous doings, he came to an understanding with the intriguing Athanasius, prince-bishop of Naples, and seized Capua (January 7, 887), of which his brother Lando was count. In accordance with the terms of the agreement he had made with Athanasius, he declared himself the vassal of the bishop, and sent him his son as a hostage. Tiring, however, of this dependence, Atenolfus procured the assistance of Guido of Spoleto and obtained the restoration of his son. Then, no doubt with a view to getting free from any restraint from Guido, he turned to Pope Stephen, and offered to place himself in subjection to the See of Rome, to restore Gaeta (which he had treacherously seized), and to help the Pope against the Saracens on the Garigliano. “These promises”, quietly adds the monk, “Atenolfus forgot, and of course did not fulfill any one of them!”. Then, having taken what belonged to his brother, viz. the lordship of Capua, Atenolfus proceeded to annex all the property which belonged to the monastery of Monte Cassino and which was situated within the territory of Capua. This famous monastery, destroyed by the Saracens in 883, had begun to be rebuilt by the abbot Angelarius (886). Justly indignant, the abbot dispatched our historian to Rome. Erchempert returned with the papal blessing for the monks, a papal privilege for the monastery, and hortatory letters addressed to the spoiler. Monte Cassino regained its property; but wreaking his vengeance on the ambassador, Atenolfus seized everything of which Erchempert was possessed, “even the cell which had been given me by the abbot”.

To avenge the treatment he had received at the hands of Atenolfus, Athanasius sent against Capua (888) an army composed of Greeks, Neapolitans, and Saracens. With help, both Saracenic and otherwise, obtained from Aio, Duke of Beneventum (the latest of those to whom Atenolfus had proffered his submission), the Count of Capua advanced to meet his enemies. And while the Christians were slaughtering one another, the Saracens of both sides quietly joined hands and looked on. Atenolfus was victorious, and showed his gratitude to his benefactor by denying him the help which he soon afterwards stood in need of against the Greeks, and which he had in vain tried to purchase from Franks or Saracens. With the assistance of these latter, who now attached themselves to him as the stronger man, Atenolfus turned against Athanasius and fearfully harried the territory of Naples. So that, reflects our historian, those who by the aid of the Saracens had sent innumerable Christians to captivity and death were, by the just judgment of God, in turn themselves scourged by them. “Who”, he asks with the Preacher, “will pity an enchanter struck by a serpent, or any that come near wild beasts?”

With South Italy a prey to men with the passions of an Atenolfus, to Franks, to Saracens, and to Greeks, (worse than the Saracens) with North Italy the battlefield of rival emperors, and with Rome itself full of conspiring factions, the days of the amiable yet firm Stephen VI came to a close (c. September 891). With the political horizon as black as we have described it, and soon with the advent of wild Hungarian hordes to become blacker, we are prepared to see the storm of unbridled anarchy that swept over Italy in the course of the next hundred and fifty years, well-nigh swamping in its fury the bark of Peter itself.

Stephen’s tomb was in the portico of the old St. Peter ‘s. His epitaph, preserved by Mallius, is conceived in a happier vein that many of the others we have cited :

“Whoever thou art who comest, with contrite heart, to beg the prayers of Peter, the great key-bearer of the heavenly kingdom, gaze with clear eye on the spot where a holy body lieth. This tomb contains the sacred remains of the great pontiff Stephen V, who for twice three years ruled the people and the City, and did what was pleasing in the eyes of God. The earth has received his body turned to dust, but his sweet soul has in triumph ascended into heaven. Do ye, brethren who come hither, pray the Almighty Judge, I beg you, to grant pardon to Stephen”

Among the decrees attributed to this Pope is one of peculiar interest. Consulted by Liutbert, archbishop of Mayence, as to whether in a certain specified case it was lawful to employ the ordeals of hot iron or boiling water, Stephen replied in the negative, and on such general grounds as amounted to a condemnation of the whole system of ordeals so dear to the Northern nations. “It is Ours”, he declared, “to judge of crimes that are known either by the confession of the culprit, or by the testimony of witnesses. What (cannot be discovered by those means, and) remains completely hidden, must be left to the judgment of Him who alone knows the hearts of the children of men”.

The practice of ordeals was not abolished by the Church all at once. Its roots, like those of the system of slavery, had struck too deep down to be violently eradicated at one pull. But, under her guidance, first those ordeals which involved danger to life were abolished, and, when in process of time the justice of the principles stated by Stephen VI had been driven home, then the whole custom of appealing to the “judgments of God” was set aside.

We cannot leave the biography of Stephen without calling attention to the fact that, despite the rapidly increasing difficulties of the journey to Rome, love of the “Eternal City” and its ruler still attracted our country men to Rome. In fact, as an entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, soon to be quoted, shows, it was regarded in England as noteworthy if a year passed without some distinguished persons leaving this island for Rome. It will suffice here to quote Stevenson’s translation of the entries made in our earliest Chronicle without further comment :

A.D. 887. Aethelhelm, the ealdorman, carried the alms of the West Saxons and King Alfred to Rome.

888. This year Beocca, the ealdorman, carried the alms of the West Saxons and King Alfred to Rome; and Queen Aethelswith, who was King Alfred’s sister, died on the way to Rome, and her body lies at Pavia.

A.D. 889. In this year there was no journey to Rome, except that King Alfred sent two couriers with letters.

A.D. 890. This year abbot Beornhelm took the aforesaid alms to Rome; or, as the notice reads in the Chronicle of the noble Ethelwerd (an. 889), he carried to Rome the alms for the people, and principally those of the western English and King Alfred.

Conclusion

With Stephen VI we bring to a conclusion our account of the Popes under the Carolingian emperors. It may perhaps be thought that, as Formosus was so much connected with Stephen VI and his immediate predecessors, his biography should have been included in this volume. But apart from the fact that, wherever a division was made, some things that ought to be closely joined would have to be separated, the last of the Carolingian emperors died during the pontificate of Stephen VI; and Formosus is probably more connected in the minds of men with the treatment his dead body received at the hands of Stephen VII, than with the deeds during life which he accomplished in connection with Boris of Bulgaria or with any of his predecessors in the chair of Peter.

Full of the deeds of lasting fame performed by SS. Leo III and IV, Nicholas the Great, and Hadrian II, gazing with admiration at the old hero John VIII, priest, soldier, and sailor in one, the last doughty champion of law and order in Italy for many a weary year, the historian leaves with regret the line of the great Popes of the ninth century a line that has earned the praise of Catholic and non-Catholic writers alike. He is the more loath to leave the bright light of their deeds from the fact that the outlook is gloomy to the last degree. He has to pass from contemplating Peter in honour by the side of his Divine Master, to consider him in dishonor, to behold him but too often the sport of petty princes instead of the respected of the universe. He has to write of the “iron age” of Cardinal Baronius. But as the Rock of Peter was not broken by the fierce blows dealt it for three hundred years by the masters of the civilized world; as it was not dissolved when “the world awoke and found itself Arian”, nor shattered when the barbarians broke in pieces the majestic might of old Rome; as it was not overturned by Byzantine astuteness nor Prankish violence, so we shall find that it did not even crumble by any internal decay; for was not the Rock of Peter embedded in the eternal Rock, which is Christ?. Had not the strength of the bed-Rock passed into the Rock of the foundation? Indeed, is it ever destined to fail? For was it not of it that was said : “I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world”? If well-nigh submerged by the waves of the barbarism of the tenth century, the following century will not have half run its course before the Rock of Peter will be seen towering up aloft above the waters, a pillar of strength to those who leaned upon it, a source of dread to those who would rear themselves up against it

THE LIVES OF THE POPES IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME