Part 2 (2/2)
Peter's chair in riot and bloodshed. It had become plain as day that the Papacy of itself, without the support of a potent secular power, was not able to maintain its dignity, nor even to enforce order in the very city of Rome. The Papacy could not endure without the Empire. The very t.i.tles which the Frankish kings had gradually received led up to the Imperial t.i.tle. Gregory II had called Charles Martel ”Patrician,” a vague t.i.tle of honour held by the Exarchs; Gregory III had offered to him the t.i.tles both of Patrician and of Consul; Stephen II bestowed upon Pippin the t.i.tle of Patrician of the Romans; Charlemagne's own t.i.tles were King of the Franks, King of the Lombards, Patrician of the Romans; and his son had been crowned by the Pope, King of Italy (781). The t.i.tle next in order was undoubtedly Emperor of the Romans. Charlemagne himself was a man of gigantic stature and great strength, indefatigable in action, and delighting in hunting, swimming, and martial exercise. His mind also was mighty, restlessly pondering questions of state, of church, of war, of social improvement. He was the greatest of Barbarians, cast by Nature in an imperial mould.
On the other hand there was one conspicuous difficulty in the way of reviving the Roman Empire; this difficulty was that the Roman Empire still existed, and that there was a living Emperor, the legitimate successor of Csar Augustus. But that Empire was virtually Greek, and the Emperor no more like Csar Augustus than like Hercules. The city by the Tiber had as good t.i.tle to be the Imperial city as her younger rival by the Bosphorus; the _Roman Republic_ (whatever that ill-defined t.i.tle may mean), represented by the Pope, had as fair a claim to elect the Emperor, as the army and office-holders at Constantinople. In fact, to Papal and Roman eyes, the rights of Rome were much greater than those of Constantinople.
To us, as we look back, nothing seems more natural than that the great Frankish king, after the conquest of Italy, should have brushed aside the theoretical difficulty of an existing Roman Empire and a.s.sumed the Imperial t.i.tle, Emperor of the Romans. History moves more slowly.
Charlemagne was a Frank, accustomed to Frankish usages and ideas; he hesitated to adopt formally a wholly different conception of sovereignty and society. His n.o.bles probably agreed with the advice given by Pope Zacharias to Pippin, that the man who held the power should receive the corresponding t.i.tle, but being Franks they thought the dignity of Frankish king sufficient. So matters stood with nothing between Charlemagne and the Imperial crown but a theoretic difficulty, and a certain reluctance. Unexpectedly and in quick succession, events in Constantinople swept away the theoretic difficulty, and events in Rome gave the Pope sufficient energy to overcome the reluctance.
At Constantinople, the dowager Empress blinded and deposed her son the Emperor (797), and a.s.sumed to rule as sole _Augusta_. This wickedness, and the ancient doctrine that, though a woman might lawfully share the Imperial throne, she might not reign alone, combined to render plausible a theory readily adopted in the West, that the Imperial throne had become vacant. The event in Rome was this. A savage gang of n.o.bles and ecclesiasts attacked Pope Leo III in the street, beat him, half-blinded him, cut his tongue, and imprisoned him in a monastery (799). He escaped and fled to Charlemagne in Germany. His enemies followed and charged him with various crimes. Charlemagne sent him back to Rome in the company of some great n.o.bles, who were commissioned to investigate the charges, and went himself also. There, in St. Peter's basilica, in the presence of Frankish n.o.bles and Roman ecclesiasts, with Charlemagne presiding, the Pope took a solemn oath of innocence (December 4, 800). Such an oath according to the jurisprudence of the time was necessarily followed by acquittal; and the Pope's innocence necessarily proved the guilt of his accusers, who were punished.
Such crimes, east and west, were insufferable. Something had to be done.
Everybody looked to Charlemagne. His position as head of Christendom was acknowledged even beyond the bounds of western Europe. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, a subject of the Caliph Haroun al Raschid, sent to Charlemagne the keys of Calvary and of the Holy Sepulchre and the banner of the Holy City. Obviously it was time for the Imperial dignity to be added to Imperial power.
On Christmas day in the year 800, Charlemagne and a great procession of Frankish n.o.bles and Roman citizens made their way through the streets of Rome towards the basilica of St. Peter's, whose gilt bronze roof, taken from a pagan temple, shone conspicuous on the Vatican hill. They walked through the Aurelian gate and across the bridge over the Tiber, then turning to the left, followed the colonnade which extended all the way from Hadrian's Mausoleum to the atrium of the basilica. There they mounted the broad flight of marble steps, at the top of which the Pope and his court awaited the king. Then Pope and king, followed by the procession, crossed the great atrium paved with white marble, past the fir-cone fountain and papal tombs, to the central door of the basilica, which swung its thousand-weight of silver open wide; then, up the long nave, screened by rows of antique columns from double aisles on either side, all rich with tapestries of purple and gold, they proceeded with slow and solemn steps to the tomb of the apostle. Thirteen hundred and seventy candles in the great candelabrum glowed on the silver floor of the shrine, and glittered on the gold and silver statues around it. In the great apse behind the high altar sat the clergy, row upon row, beneath the Pontiff's throne; above, the Byzantine mosaics looked down in sad severity. Here Charlemagne knelt at the tomb, and prayed. As he rose from his knees, the Pope lifted an Imperial crown of gold and placed it on his head, while all the congregation shouted, ”Life and Victory to Charles, Augustus, crowned by G.o.d, the great and peaceful Emperor!”
Thus was accomplished that restoration of the Roman Empire, which by its attempt to combine Teuton and Roman in political union so powerfully affected the history of medival Europe. Charlemagne is reported to have said that the Imperial coronation took him by surprise. However that may be, this great enterprise of a Christian Empire must be regarded, in its final completion, as the joint work of Frankish king and Roman Pope.
CHAPTER VII
FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO NICHOLAS I (814-867)
The period from the death of Charlemagne (814) to the coronation of Otto the Great (962) is a long dismal stretch, tenanted by discord and ignorance. At the beginning stands the commanding figure of Charlemagne,
With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies.
But his descendants were unequal to their inheritance, and under them his Empire crumbled away and resolved itself into incipient nations.
That Empire, in theory the restored Roman Empire, was in fact strictly Teutonic, though b.u.t.tressed by the Roman Church. Charlemagne deemed himself head of both Empire and Church. In his eyes the Pope was his subject, and he legislated, as a matter of course, upon ecclesiastical affairs. In secular matters he endeavoured to maintain local administration without detriment to a strong central government. For this purpose he divided the Empire into three divisions, of which he made his three sons nominally kings, really his lieutenants. Under these sons he appointed counts and bishops, as local governors. He maintained his central authority by means of deputies (_missi dominici_), who traversed the whole Empire, two by two, a bishop and a count together.
The maintenance of such a political unity, however, required either the organic strength and momentum of the old Roman Empire, or a breed of Charlemagnes. On the great Emperor's death the forces of disruption made themselves felt at once. His son, Louis the Pious, indeed succeeded to the whole sovereignty of the Empire; but Louis's sons demanded division.
They rebelled; and civil war lasted most of Louis's life. After his death the sons fought one another, and finally agreed on a division of the territory, though the Imperial t.i.tle was kept. One brother took the territory to the east, destined to become Germany; another, that to the west, destined to become France; and Lothair, the eldest, who also received the Imperial t.i.tle, took Italy and a long, heterogeneous strip between the territories of his brothers. This division was fatal to the Empire. On Lothair's death the Imperial crown descended to his son Louis II (855-875), and afterwards to two other degenerate members of a degenerate family. The last made himself unendurable and was deposed (887). With him ended Charlemagne's legitimate male line, and also the first revival of the Roman Empire.
This Empire had been a civilizing power. It had supported the Papacy, as an oak supports the creeper that clings to it; and in its decline and fall it pulled the Papacy down with it. Without such support the Papacy could maintain neither dignity abroad nor order at home. This lesson the Church learned once through the outrages inflicted upon Pope Leo, but forgot it; and required the experience of a hundred and fifty years to learn it a second time. In theory Papacy and Empire were co-equal powers, religious and secular, together carrying on the n.o.ble task of G.o.d's government on earth. In practice, as their respective rights and powers had not been definitely set off, they could not agree; each wished to be master. The relations between the two const.i.tute the great axis on which medival politics revolve, and for a long time must serve as the main motive of our story. The contest between them for mastery resembles a fencing match, in which the Pope thrusts at the Emperor's crown, the Emperor parries, and lunges back at the papal tiara. For convenience we divide the match into two bouts, and first take the Pope's attack.
At the famous coronation on Christmas day, 800, Charlemagne and Leo stood side by side, co-labourers in the great task of reconstructing Europe. But once the coronation over, the two undefined authorities jostled each other. Charlemagne, to whom government was as much a religious as a secular matter, though he had accepted his Imperial crown at the hands of the Pope, did not regard papal partic.i.p.ation necessary for the continuance of the Imperial dignity. At Aachen, 813, he crowned his son Louis the Pious co-Emperor, without the help of Pope or priest.
This thrust must have carried discomfiture to the banks of the Tiber.
But with Charlemagne's weak successors the astute Papacy scored hit after hit. Louis the Pious submitted to be recrowned by the Pope, so did his son, Lothair, and his grandson Louis II; and their two successors were also crowned by the Pope. This sequence of palpable hits won this bout and secured for the Papacy beyond dispute the prerogative of crowning the Emperors.
If we now turn to that part of the game where Emperor lunged and Pope parried, we find a more complicated situation. A third player takes a hand, to the confusion of the game and to the great detriment of the papal defence. This third player is the Roman people, who believed that the _Senatus Populusque Roma.n.u.s_ still possessed their ancient prerogatives, and had the right to appoint both Emperor and Pope. Their claim to elect the Emperor was flimsy enough, being merely the memory of an empty form, and is not of enough consequence to stop for; but their claim to interfere in the papal election was of the highest importance.
It arose from the anomalous nature of the Papacy. The Pope was bishop of Rome, and as such his election lay in the hands of the clergy and people of Rome; he was also the ruler of central Italy, and as such the barons there were interested in his election; and, in addition, he was head of all the Christian Churches in the West, and so all western Christendom, and the Emperor as its temporal lord, was likewise concerned. The fact was that no definite method of papal election and confirmation had been settled upon during these disturbed centuries. The original practice had been for the Roman churches, priests, and laymen together a.s.sembled, to make the election; subsequently the senate, or the army, or the n.o.bles, had represented the lay body of electors; but whoever represented the laymen, they and the clergy made the election; which was then submitted to the Emperor, or his representative, for scrutiny and confirmation.
The submission of the Roman election to the examination of a Byzantine Emperor had never been acceptable in Rome, and after the breach over iconoclasm, the practice ceased. Naturally, on the revival of the Roman Empire in the West, the new Emperors claimed the old Imperial right of supervision; naturally, also, the papal party resisted the fresh exercise of the old prerogative. Here was a situation for a scrimmage, but any clear account of the papal elections in Rome, supposing such were possible, would be too minute; this narrative must confine itself to the main pa.s.ses between the papal party and the Emperors.
After the death of Charlemagne (no papal election occurred during his lifetime) several Popes were elected and consecrated without previously consulting the Emperor. On the other hand, in the next reign the Imperial deputy made the Romans take oath that no Pope should be consecrated without the approval of the Emperor. What was done at the following election is not known, but at the second the Pope was not consecrated until the Emperor had ratified the proceedings. Thereafter the Imperial right was acknowledged in theory, though in practice the elected Pontiffs did not always wait for Imperial confirmation.
With the fall of the Carlovingian Empire the fencing match ceased for lack of an Imperial contestant. The score stood thus: each had succeeded in the attack, the Papacy had won its right to bestow the Imperial crown, and the Empire had won, though not so definitely, its right to supervise the election of a Pope. We must now pa.s.s to this Imperial interregnum knowing that when the Empire shall be revived, the match will begin anew and the combatants, with foils unbated and envenomed, will fight to a finish.
The Imperial interregnum, nominally interrupted by one German and several Italian make-believe Emperors, lasted for three generations; no Imperial power was exercised from 875 to 962. It is a murky period in which shadows wander about; but before taking our candle and descending into the gloom, we will turn to the one bright spot, the career of a great Pope, Nicholas I (858-867).
This Pope, in spite of the decadence of the Papacy, won immense prestige for it by two successful a.s.sertions of cosmopolitan authority. The King of Lorraine, brother to Louis II, the Emperor, wished to put away his wife and marry another woman. The innocent queen, with the sanction of the clergy of the kingdom, was divorced and forced to enter a convent; and, with the consent of his clergy, the king married the other woman.
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