The Power of the Popes
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Title: The Power of the Popes
Creator: P. C. F. Daunou
Release date: March 12, 2012 [eBook #39267]
Most recently updated: March 17, 2021
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POWER OF THE POPES ***
*THE POWER OF THE POPES*
_By_
*Pierre Claude François Daunou*
_AN HISTORICAL ESSAY ON THEIR TEMPORAL DOMINION, AND THE ABUSE OF THEIR
SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY_
Two Volumes in One
_1838_
CONTENTS
TRANSLATORS PREFACE
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE THIRD EDITION, ORIGINAL
CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPES
CHAPTER II. ENTERPRIZES OF THE POPES OF THE NINTH CENTURY
CHAPTER III. TENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER IV. ENTERPRISES OF THE POPES OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER V. CONTESTS BETWEEN THE POPES AND THE SOVEREIGNS OF THE
TWELFTH CENTURY
CHAPTER VI. POWER OF THE POPES OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER VII. FOURTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER VIII. FIFTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER IX. POLICY OF THE POPES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER X. ATTEMPTS OF THE POPES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER XII. RECAPITULATION
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
ENDNOTES AND
TO
THE REV. RICHARD T. P. POPE,
AT WHOSE SUGGESTION IT WAS UNDERTAKEN,
THIS TRANSLATION
OF
THE PAPAL POWER
IS INSCRIBED,
AS A SMALL TRIBUTE OF RESPET AND REGARD
BY
HIS AFFECTIONATE FRIEND,
THE TRANSLATOR.
TRANSLATORS PREFACE
THE Work of which the following is a translation, had its origin in the
transactions which took place between Pius VII. and the French Emperor,
relative and subsequent to the restoration of the Roman Catholic
religion in France. Its object appears to have been, to exhibit to the
world the unreasonable pretensions of the Roman Court, and to appeal to
public opinion for support in resisting claims deemed incompatible with
the independence of the civil power, and derogatory to the honour of the
French throne. In pursuance of this object, an investigation was entered
into, to ascertain with precision the line of demarcation which
separated the recognized authority of the Papal See in France, from the
rights appertaining to the civil power, and the indisputable privileges
of the French Church. This investigation naturally led the enquiry up to
a remote period, and the present work may be considered an epitome of
the political history of the Roman Court, and of its relations with the
other Courts of Europe, from the period in which its spiritual authority
began to merge into temporal power, down to the occasion of the present
essay in the pontificate of Pius VII.
In the former period of this enquiry, the pages of early history
afforded the materials from which the requisite information was to have
been derived. This source was open to all; and the merit of the work is
here confined to the discrimination exercised in the selection of the
scattered parts, and the judgment with which they may be found combined
into an uniform whole.
In the latter period, the advantages possessed by the author were
peculiar and important. Access to the papal archives appears to have
opened to him abundant sources of information, which a patient
investigation enabled him to avail himself of, in applying those
documents, otherwise perhaps destined to oblivion, to the illustration
of the object which he had in view. These documents give to this portion
of the work a peculiar interest. For, though the period to which they
relate is recent, the circumstances in which Europe was placed during
the transactions more immediately referred to, and the extraordinary
revolutions to which both public opinion and political institutions were
subjected, not only give to it the charm of novelty, but confer on it an
interest similar to that derived from the dust of antiquity. Whatever
the defects of the translation, it will I trust be found a valuable
addition to our historical records, and a source of much useful and
interesting information.
R. T. H.
Montmorenci, 1825.
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE THIRD EDITION, ORIGINAL
WE have introduced into this Third Edition some developments which were
not in the two former. We have inserted many justificatory pieces, some
of which have never before been published. These pieces, and the
reflections induced by them, occupy the second volume, which is divided
into three parts, containing:
1. Exposition of the Maxims of the Court of Rome, since the fabrication
of the False Decretals, and especially from the time of Gregory VII. to
the present day:
2. Exposition of the Maxims of the Gallican Church, from St. Louis to
the Emperor Napoleon:
3. Exposal of the actual conduct of Pius VII. with some observations
on the effects it may produce.
CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPES
WHOEVER has read the Gospel, knows that Jesus Christ founded no temporal
power, no political sovereignty. He declares that his kingdom is not of
this world;¹ he charges his apostles not to confound the mission he
gives them, with the power exercised by the princes of the earth.² St.
Peter and his colleagues are sent not to govern but to instruct³ and the
authority with which they are clothed, consists only in the knowledge
and the benefits they are to bestow.
¹ John xviii. 36.
² Luke xxii. 25.
³ Matt, xxviii. 20.
Faithful to confining themselves within the bounds of so pure an
apostolat, far from erecting themselves into rivals of the civil power,
they, on the contrary, proclaimed its independence and the sacredness of
its rights:⁴ obedience to sovereigns is one of the first precepts of
their pious morality. To resist governments is, they say, to offend the
Ruler of the world, and take up arms against God himself.⁵
The successors of the apostles for a long time held the same language:
they acknowledged no power superior to that of sovereigns but Divine
Providence itself.⁶ They subjected to kings all the ministers of the
altar, levites, pontiffs, evangelists, and even prophets.⁷ God alone
was, immediately and without mediator, the only judge of kings; to him
alone belonged their condemnation: the Church addressed to them only
supplications or respectful advice.⁸
⁴ Rom. xiii.
⁵ Qui resistit potestati, Dei ordinationi resistit; qui autem
fesistunt, ipsi sibi damnationem acquirunt.
⁶ Chrysostom. Comm, on Epistle to the Romans.
⁷ Deum esse solum in cujus solius, imperatores sunt potestate, à quo
sunt secundi, post quem primi ante omnes.— Colimus imperatorem ut
hominem à Deo secundum, solo Deo minorem.—Tertull.
⁸ Quod rex delinquit, soli Deo reus est.—Cassiodoi’us, Si quis de
nobis, 0 rex, justitiæ tram item transcendere volu-erit, à te
corrigi potest: si verô tu excesseris, quis te corripiet, quis te
condemnabit, nisi is qui se pronunciavit esse justitiam? —Gregor,
Turon. ad Chilpericum. Reges non sunt à nobis graviter
exasperandi, divino judiciô sunt reservandi.—Yvo. Carnot. See
Bossuet’s reflections on these various texts of Scripture, and of
the fathers. De(. Cler. Gail. par. 2. b. 6. ch. 13, 18, 26, 31,
32.
She exercised empire only through the medium of her virtues⁹ and
possessed no other inheritance than that of faith.¹⁰ These are the very
expressions of the holy fathers, not only during the three first
centuries, but subsequent to Constantine, and even after the time of
Charlemagne.
Every one knows, that previous to Constantine, the Christian churches
had been but individual associations, too frequently proscribed, and at
all times unconnected with the state. The popes, in these times of
persecution and of ferment, most assuredly were far from aspiring to the
government of provinces: they were contented in being permitted to be
virtuous with impunity; and they obtained no crown on earth save that of
martyrdom.
From the year 321, Constantine allowed the churches to acquire landed
property, and individuals to enrich them by legacies. Here we behold, in
all probability, says the President Henault, what has given rise to the
supposition of Constantine’s donation.¹¹ This donation preserved its
credit for such a lapse of time, that in 1478 some Christians were
burned at Strasburgh for daring to question its authenticity.
⁹ Pelag. 1 Concilior. vol. 5. p. 803. Greg. Mag. vol. 2. p. 675,
676, 677.
¹⁰ Nihil ecclesia sibi nisi fidem possidet.—Ambros. Op. tom. 2, p.
837.
¹¹ Abr. Chron. History of France, years 753, 754, 755.
In the twelfth century, Gratian and Theodore Balsamon copied it into
their canonical compilations; and St. Bernard did not consider if
apocryphal.¹² It had its origin before the tenth century,
notwithstanding what many critics say: for in 776 Pope Adrian avails
himself of it in an exhortation to Charlemagne. But, in 755, Stephen II.
had also an open to make use of it, as we shall shortly see; but as he
neither mentions it, nor refers to it in any way, it follows that it was
unknown to him as it had been to all his predecessors. It was therefore
after the middle, and before the end of the eighth century, that it must
have been fabricated. For the rest, the falsity of this piece is
according to Fleury more universally recognized than that of the
decretals of Isidore: and if the donation of Constantine could still
preserve any credit, to strip it of such credit, it would be sufficient
to transcribe it: here follow some lines:
“We attribute to the see of St. Peter all the dig−
“nity, all the glory, all the authority of the imperial
“power. Furthermore we give to Sylvester and to
“his successors our palace of the Latran, which is
“incontestibly the finest palace on earth; we give
“him our crown, our mitre, our diadem, and all
“our imperial vestments: we transfer to him the
“imperial dignity. We bestow on the Holy Pontiff
“in free gift the city of Rome and all the western
“cities of Italy; also the western cities of every
“other country. To cede precedence to him, we
“divest ourselves of our authority over all those
“provinces, and we withdraw from Rome, trans−
“ferring the seat of our empire to Byzantium;
“inasmuch as it is not proper, that an earthly
“emperor should preserve the least authority, where
“God has established the head of his religion.”
¹² De Consider, ad Eugen. book 4. ch. 4.—Dante de Monarchiâ, book 3,
proves that this donation could not bind the successors of
Constantine; he declares it null, but without disputing its
authenticity.
The respect which we owe to our readers, forbids all observation on such
palpable absurdities: but we have believed it not altogether useless to
relate them here, as they may give an idea of the means resorted to in
the eighth century to establish the temporal power of the popes. They
also furnish a standard of the public ignorance during the succeeding
centuries, in which this strange concession, revered by the people, and
even by their kings, effectually contributed to the developement of the
power of the Holy See. But we must also state, that at the restoration
of literature the first rays of light sufficed to dissipate so
contemptible an imposture.¹³
¹³ A copy of this donation will be found in the 2d volume.
Laurence Valle having demonstrated, towards the middle of the fifteenth
century, the falsity of this donation, the best writers of the
sixteenth, even those of Italy, treated it with the contempt it
deserved. Ariosto energetically expresses the contemptinto which it had
fallen¹⁴ and places it among the various chimeras which Astolphus meets
with in the moon.
Four hundred and sixty-three years had passed from the death of
Constantine in 337, to the coronation of Charlemagne in 800. Now during
all this period, no epoch, no year, can be specified, in which the popes
exercised sovereign authority. The immediate successors of Constantine
reigned, as he did, over Italy: and when on the death of Theodoras two
empires arose out of one, Rome, the metropolis of the west, continued to
be governed still by an emperor. Then, as all historians attest, the
popes assumed apostolic functions alone; they were not reckoned in the
number of the civil magistrates; although their election, the work of
the people and of the clergy, was obliged to be confirmed by the prince.
When they sought from their creed and the exercise of their spiritual
ministry, an independence which they did not always obtain, they
rendered homage to that of the civil power, and did not claim any of its
properties.
In 476 the Western Empire fell: Augustulus was dethroned; the Heruli,
the Ostrogoths, and other barbarians, invaded and laid waste Italy. Rome
was governed by Odoacre down to 493, by Theodoric to 526, and, during
the twenty-seven succeeding years, by Theodat, Vitiges, Totila, or the
generals of the Eastern Emperors.
¹⁴ Or puzza forte: Questo era il dono, se pero dir lece, Che
Costantino al buon Silvestro fece. Or I. Fur. 14th chap. 8th
stanza: This was the gift, with reverence be it said, Which
Constantine to good Sylvester made.
It is necessary to observe here, that the sovereignty of these emperors
over Italy, and especially over the city of Rome, had been acknowledged
by Odoacre and by Theodoric, and sometimes even by their successors¹⁵
But in 553, the victory of Narses over Theia restored to the Greek
emperors an immediate sovereignty over the Roman territory and the
neighbouring countries. Thus terminated seventy-seven years of wars and
revolutions, during which the popes neither obtained nor aspired to the
exercise of any temporal authority. Theodoric, in 498, confirmed the
election of Pope Symmachus;¹⁶ and when, in the year 500, this pope was
accused by his enemies, the decision of the matter was referred to
Theodoric.¹⁷
From 553 to 567, Narses governed Italy in the name of the emperors of
Constantinople. Shortly after his death, the Lombards, led by Alboin,
made themselves masters of the northern parts of Italy, and there
founded a kingdom, which lasted about two hundred years. The other
regions of Italy remained more or less under the authority of the
emperors of the East, which was administered by the Exarchs of Ravenna.
¹⁵ St Marc. Abridged History of Italy, vol. 1. p, 1 to 129.
¹⁶ Anastas. Bibliotb. of the Lives of the Roman Pontiffs, p. 84.
¹⁷ Fleury. Eccles. Hist b. xxx. n. 1.
The exarch was a governor general, to whom the dukes, prefects or
patricians, and also the governors of particular territories or cities,
were subordinate. From the exarch or the emperor they sought the
ratification of the election of each bishop of Rome: this is a fact of
which the proof exists in an ancient collection of the formulas of the
Romish Church¹⁸ Once only, at the election of Pelagius II. in 577, they
dispensed with the consent of the emperor, because the Lombards besieged
Rome, and cut off the communication with Constantinople. Paul Diacre, in
speaking of Gregory the Great, who in 590 succeeded Pelagius II. says
expressly, that it was not permitted to instal a pope without the order
of the Greek emperor.¹⁹
¹⁸ Liber decimus Romanorum Pontificum. Pere Gamier, & Jesuit,
published an edition of it at Paris, in 1680. This collection had
been published before by Holstenius, and was suppressed by the
Court of Rome.—Sec. on the Dependence of tho Popes, 3d and 4th
heads.
¹⁹ Non enim licebat tunc temporis quemlibet in Romanâ civitate ad
pontificatum promovere absque jussWeimperatoris. —Paul Diac. b. 3,
c. 4.
A letter of Martin I. to Gregory I. called ‘the Great’ has rendered
frequent homage to the civil authority; but letters have been
fabricated, under his name, in which he declares, that every king, every
prelate, every judge, who shall neglect to ascertain the privileges of
the three monasteries of Autun, and those of the Abbey of St. Medard de
Soissons, shall be deprived of his dignity, and condemned, like Judas,
to the pit of hell, unless he do penance, and become reconciled with the
monks.—See Maimbourg. Historical Treatise on the Church of Rome, chap.
99, the emperor thus commences: “Martin, bishop, to “the emperor our
most serene lord,” and ends with these words: “May the grace from above
preserve “the very pious empire of our lord, and bow the “neck of all
nations unto him.”²⁰ Thus a pope expresses himself who, imprisoned,
exiled, and deposed by Constantius, never disputed the rights of the
sovereign who treated him with so much rigour and even injustice. When
this emperor, Constantius, came to Rome in 662, the pope, Vitalien, paid
him the homage of a faithful subject.²¹
Two apostolic nuncios, stationed, the one at Constantinople, the other
at Ravenna, offered to the emperor and to the exarch the respect,
devotion, and tribute of the Roman pontiff. Pope Leo II. towards the
year 683, writing to Constantine Pogonat, calls him his king and lord.²²
In 686 and 687, the elections of the popes Conon and Sergius were
confirmed, the one by the Exarch Theodoric, the other by the Exarch
Platys, who exacted from Sergius a large sum, although this description
of tribute had been abolished by the Emperor under the pontificate of
Agathon.²³
²⁰ Morin. History of the Origin and Progress of the Power of the
Popes, p. 664,
²¹ Fleury. Ecclesiastical Hist. b. 39, n. 33.
²² Morin. History of the Origin and Progress of the Power of the
Popes, p. 664.
²³ Anast. Hist de vit. Bom. Pont, pages 147, 149.
In 710 Pope Constantine, ordered to Constantinople by Justinian the
Second, hastened to obey this superior order.²⁴ We shall only cite a
letter written by the Pontiff to the Duke of Venice in 727:²⁵
“The city of Ravenna having been taken, because
“of our sins, by the wicked nation of the Lombards,
“and our excellent master, the Exarch, being, as
“we are informed, retired to Venice, we conjure
“your Highness to unite with him, in order to re−
“store the city of Ravenna to the imperial domi−
“nion; to the end that we may, by the Lord’s as−
“sistance, remain inviolably attached to Leo and
“Constantine, our august emperors.”
The Pope who thus expresses himself, is Gregory the Second, one of those
who may be suspected of having been amongst the first, who sought to
extend, beyond the bounds of the apostolat, the pontifical authority.
His letter at least proves that the imperial sovereignty was then a
right universally acknowledged; a public and undeniable fact.
It is however in the eighth century, and a short time after the date of
this epistle, that we perceive, not the establishment certainly, but the
first symptoms of the temporal power of the Roman prelates. The various
causes which could tend to this result, about this period begin to be
perceptible, and to acquire additional strength from their combined
operation.
²⁴ Fleury. Ecclesiastical Hist. b. 41, no. 22.
²⁵ Baronius. Ecclesiastical Annals, vol. 13, p. 343.
The first of these causes consisted in the vast extension of all the
ecclesiastical institutions. Many popes, and other prelates, merited by
their virtues and their talents the respect of the people and the esteem
of their sovereigns: they obtained that imposing reputation, which, in
the midst of public troubles and misfortunes, is the universal prelude
to power. Zealous missionaries had spread the light of the gospel
through most of the countries of Europe, and prepared, nay, forwarded,
by religious instruction, the civilization of some barbarous nations. On
all sides churches and monasteries arose and were enriched: the pious
liberality of princes and private individuals increased every where, but
especially at Rome, the treasures and estates of the clergy: their
landed property acquired sufficient extent to be transformed insensibly
into principalities; a metamorphosis but too easy under such weak
governments and such vacillating legislation.— Let us add to these
circumstances the frequency and the solemnity of the councils, the
general interest which their decisions excited, and the almost
inevitable collision of their discussions with the quiet or disordered
state of political affairs. We may observe, in particular, that at the
commencement of the eighth century, there did not exist any great empire
save the Eastern; and, nevertheless, that the power of the Greek
Emperors—limited in Asia by that of the Caliphs, weakened in the very
heart of Constantinople by internal revolutions, represented at Ravenna
by unfaithful or injudicious Exarchs—with difficulty was upheld in Italy
against the arms of the Lombards, and occasionally required to be
defended by the influence of the Roman Pontiffs. In the mean while, the
thrones which had been newly erected here and there by some barbarous
conquerors, already tottered under their successors, whose ignorance,
generally equal to that of their subjects, seemed to tempt the
enterprises of the clergy. This clergy, though better informed than the
common people, was not, however, sufficiently so to perceive the bounds
of its proper functions under such circumstances, or to neglect
profiting, at all hazards, by the opportunities offered to increase its
power. When, in 681, a Council of Toledo loosed the subjects of Vamba
from their allegiance to this prince, perhaps the thirty-five bishops
who sat in this synod, neither perceived the weakness nor the monstrous
disloyalty of such a sentence. Fleury was right to point out to us²⁶
this first example of a king deposed by bishops; but he might also have
remarked, that so serious a novelty excited no reprehension—that kings
complained not of it, and that no obstacle opposed the execution of this
strange decree.
We may place in the catalogue of causes which favoured the ambition of
the popes, the preposterous taste of the Greek Emperors for dogmatical
controversies, and, the unfortunate part they incessantly took in them.
²⁶ Ecclesiastical History, b. 40, n. 34. and 3d disc. n. 10.
They thus provoked apostolic resistance, which, by its splendor and
success, hum-bled in the eyes of the people the imperial authority. They
beheld the doctrines of the pontiff exercising a solemn triumph over the
edicts of the sovereign; and he, whose pastoral charges thus limited the
civil authority, must have appeared competent to exercise it, the moment
he ceased to disdain it. A sect was formed in Constantinople against the
images, brought into disrepute in some places by the victories of the
Mahometans over them. The Emperor Leo the Isaurian placed himself at the
head of the Iconoclasts or Image-breakers: he published, at the same
time nearly, an edict which prohibited the worship of every image, and
the proposition of a new capitation-tax to be paid by the people of
Italy. Pope Gregory the Second, become the defender of their _temporal
and spiritual_ interests, and their faith, addressed respectful but
energetic letters to the emperor, to induce him to maintain in the
churches an ancient and salutary practice. Leo replied only by menaces
calculated to strengthen in the hearts of the Italians their love and
veneration for the pontiff. What does Gregory do? he appears inattentive
to his personal danger, but implores for the people and their prince the
divine mercy he thunders no anathemas, but recommends good works, and
sets himself the example of them; he desires especially that each may
remain faithful to the head of the empire, whatever may the deviations
of Leo, and perseveres in applying to him the terms of emperor and head
of the Christians.²⁷ According to Gregory, it is God himself who
preserves the empire to Leo the Image-breaker:²⁸ a pontiff has no right,
says this pope, to bestow crowns: his eye should not seek to penetrate
into the palaces of kings: and it no more belongs to him to meddle in
politics, than for a sovereign to become a teacher of dogmas in
religion.²⁹ The army, the people, Venice, Ravenna, all Italy revolted,
says Paul Diacre, against Leo the Isaurian, and would undoubtedly have
acknowledged some other emperor, if the Roman pontiff had not himself
opposed it.³⁰ Anastasius relates the same facts, and represents Gregory
to us occupied in retaining the provinces in allegiance to their
legitimate sovereign.³¹
²⁷ Imperatorem et caput Christianorum. Greg. 2d Ep. to Leo.
²⁸ Vestri à Deo conservati imperii. Ibid.
²⁹ Pontifex introspiciendi in palatia potestatem non habet ac
dignitates regias deferendi.......Ecclesiis præpositi, sunt à
negotiis reipublicæ abstinentes.—Greg. 2.
³⁰ Nisi eos prohibuesset pontifex, imperatorem super se constituere
fuissent aggressi.—Paul Diac. de Gesl. Longob.
³¹ Omni8 Italia consilium iniit ut sibi eligerent imperatorem et
ducerent Constantinopolim. Sed compescuit tale consilium pontifex
sperans conversionem principis. Ne desisterent ab amore et fide
Romani imperii admonebat.—Anast. BibI. in vild Gregor.
It would be difficult for us to verify, after a lapse of ten centuries,
whether Leo really attempted, through the medium of his officers, the
life of Gregory; but no person in Rome, none in all Italy, doubted it;
and these abortive attempts excited general indignation, or contempt
more dangerous still: on the contrary, when the Duke Peter is driven
from Rome, when the Exarch Paul is killed at Ravenna, Gregory conducts
himself so orderly that no one thinks of imputing these things to him.
Liutprand, king of the Lombards, however, took advantage of these
troubles to make himself master of Ravenna and many other places: in
this conjuncture it was that Gregory wrote to the Duke of Venice the
letter which we have already transcribed. Gregory did more, he
negociated with Liutprand, he soothed him: but the King of the Lombards
in abandoning the cities he had conquered and pillaged, was not disposed
to restore them to the officers of the emperor; he made them a present
to the Roman Church, which abstained alike from an acceptance or refusal
of them. Disconcerted by so much wisdom, Leo, the Isaurian, saw himself
limited in his vengeance to detaching from the patriarchate of Rome the
churches of Illyria, of Sicily, the duchy of Naples and of Calabria, in
order to subject them to the patriarch of Constantinople. This was all
the mischief he could do to Gregory II. who died, without condescending
to complain of it. Whatever Theophanes and other Byzantine authors may
say on the subject³² who have very severely animadverted upon this
pontiff, there prevailed great moderation in his conduct; and if it was
policy, it was so profound, that we are induced to ascribe it to good
faith.³³
³² Cedrenus, Zon&ras.
³³ This portion of the history of the eighth century, has been
perfectly elucidated, by Bossuet. Def, Cler. Gall, “The time was
not yet come, I shall be told, to display the pontifical power;
and before resorting to violent remedies, the means of mildness
and conciliation should be attempted.” “Very well,” replies
Bossuet, “but if charity and Christian prudence did not yet permit
Gregory to make use of all his power, should they not, at least,
have made a diversion, to afford a glimpse to this proud prince of
its extent, in order to intimidate him, and prevent the execution
of his criminal projects. For, behold the style of the menaces of
the emperor, as we learn from this sainted pope: I will go to Rome
and break the image of St. Peter, and I will take Pope Gregory
away, in order to transport him hither loaded with chains, as
Constantius did with Martin.—He proposed to imitate, then, the
example of the heretical emperors and persecutors of the Holy
Pontiff. Let us see what Gregory conceived it his duty to reply to
a prince, who formed such impious projects, and who flattered
himself he could execute them, by putting forth the full extent of
the imperial power. Did Gregory say, he could, when he wished,
deprive him of this power? He dreamed not of it; and for his whole
defence, he declared he desired earnestly to receive the crown of
martyrdom, as did the blessed Pope Martin, whose memory all
believers honoured. How far then was he from thinking of revolt,
of taking up arms, of repelling force by force, in fine, from
pronouncing sentences of deposition! Perhaps our adversaries will
make the trifling reply, that the Church, as yet too feeble, was
not in a state to display all its powers. But it was the Empire,
not the Church, which was weak in Italy.—See also Natalis Alex, in
sec. 8th dissert. 1. Libeaus History of Low Empire, vol. 83, p.
368, 369.
His successor, Gregory the Third, conceived himself dispensed from so
rigorous a circumspection: at the head of a council, he excommuuicatcd
the Emperor, not, indeed, by name but by not excepting him from the
general sect of the Iconoclasts; and while Leo applied to himself this
anathema, evidenced by the burst of anger with which he resented it;
while he confiscated in Sicily the lands of the Roman church; while a
fleet, dispatched by him against Italy, was perishing by shipwreck; the
Pope laboured to create in the bosom of Rome an independent state, or,
at least, one destined to become so. Some authors think they perceive,
from the year 736, in the pontificate of Gregory the Second, a semblance
of a Roman republic; and we may assure ourselves, at least, that in 730,
a short.time previous to the death of this pope, and apparently without
his concurrence, the Romans formally erected themselves into a republic.
But it was especially subsequent to the year 731, and down to 741,³⁴
that is to say, under the pontificate of Gregory III. that the
expressions ‘republic of the Romans—republican association—³⁵ body of
the Roman army,’ were accredited phrases which did not disappear till
the year 800, and which, during the seventy preceding years, are very
often employed, both in the acts of interior administrations, and in the
negociations with the Kings of the Lombards, or Mayors of the palace of
Ferara.
³⁴ Anast. Bibl. in vitâ Gregorii III.
³⁵ Reipublica Romanorum, com pages S. Reipublicæ corpus Christo
delectum exercitûs Romani. Apud Anast.
They always avoided the positive declarations which would have irritated
the Court of Constantinople; in case of necessity they even acknowledged
the supremacy of the Emperor, solicited his assistance, and received his
officers: and the homage paid to the imperial authority, is the ground
of the opinion of those authors who deny the existence of this
republic.— Without doubt, it was but a shadow of a republic; but they
loved to present themselves under this title to the sovereigns of the
west of Europe:³⁶ it was a mode of ranking themselves secretly in the
number of independent states, and of weakening still more the ties which
held them to the Byzantine empire. Generally, the pope did not fill in
person the office of first magistrate of this republic; he left the
insignia of its power to a prefect, a duke, or a patrician; and prepared
to substitute, in a short time, for these unstable forms, a definite and
pontifical government.
³⁶ Gregory III. sent two ambassadors to the Mayor of the Palace,
Charles Martel, to invite him to declare himself in favour of the
Roman Republic against the Emperor of the East.
Baronius ascribes the embassy of one of these to Gregory II.an important
mistake, which Bossuet has removed.—Def. Cler. Gall, p. 2. b. 6. ch. 18.
Another cause tended to, and even justified, the revolution which was
going to take place in Italy against the authority of the Greek
Emperors; this was, the almost absolute state of abandonment in which,
for nearly two centuries, they left the provinces they possessed in this
country. They kept no garrison in Rome, and this city, continually
menaced by the Lombards, solicited more than once, through the organ of
its dukes or its pontiffs, but in vain, the protection of the Exarch and
the power of the Emperor. The Byzantine historians of this period
scarcely ever speak of Italy: one of them, Theophylactus Simosatta,
wrote the history of the empire from the year 582 to 802, without once
naming Italy, Rome, or the Lombards. Deserted by their master, the
Romans of necessity attached themselves to their pontiffs, who were
generally Romans, and meriting such attachment. Fathers and defenders of
the people, mediators between the great, and heads of the religion of
the empire, the popes united in themselves the various sources of
authority and influence which are conferred by riches, benefactions,
virtue, and the high priesthood. They reconciled, or set at variance
around them, the princes of the earth; and that temporal power, which as
yet they possessed not, they could at pleasure strengthen or weaken in
the hands of others.
Things being so disposed, it was inevitable but that occasions must have
occurred, favorable to the ambition of the Roman Pontiffs; or, rather,
they had now need only of a more active ambition. While Zachary
continued to pay homage to the sovereignty of the emperors, Liutprand
made himself master of the exarchate, and his successor, Rachis,
immediately after stipulated with the Romans for a peace of twenty
years. Under the same pope, Pepin dethroned in France the Merovingian
dynasty, submitted to the Holy See a famous case of conscience, and
obtained from it a reply, which, absolving in the eyes of the people his
audacious enterprise, placed in his hands a sceptre which he alone could
wield. A short time after this wise reply,³⁷ Astolphus, the successor
of Rachis, broke the truce of twenty years, conquered Istria,
repossessed himself of Ravenna, which the Greek officers had re-entered,
and drove them from it for ever. Eutychius, the last of the exarchs,
took flight and retired to Naples; and every thing announced that the
power of the emperors was about to be extinguished in Middle as it had
been in Upper Italy.
³⁷ It was a reply simply of opinion: and Bellarmine vainly
endeavoured to convert it into an absolute decree which deposed
Childerick III. Pepin owed his throne to his talents and his good
fortune: he obtained it by the consent of the French, and not by
the authority of the pope. See Natal. Alex. Dissert. 2. in Century
8. ’ Dupin. Treatise on the Ecclesiastical power, pa. 245.
Bossuet. Def. Cler. Gall. p. 2. book 6. ch. 34.—Eginhard says,
Missiserat Burchardus et Foldea-dus ut consulerent pontificem de
causà regum, &c. against this Roman republic, in which the head of
the empire still preserved some shadow of sovereignty.
The Pope, Stephen II. supplicated Constantine Copronymus to relieve the
city of Rome, by dispatching an army which might put the Lombards to
flight and maintain in Italy the integrity of the empire and the honor
of the imperial authority.³⁸ It is evidently as the sovereign of Rome
that Stephen addresses Constantine. But Constantine, occupied in making
war against images,³⁹ directs Stephen to negociate with Astolphus, and,
if Astolphus was intractable, with Pepin king of the French. The pontiff
proceeds into France; there, as minister of the Greek emperor, he gives,
in 753, to Pepin and to his sons, the title of Roman Patricians, which
Charles Martel had before borne: and received, they assert, in exchange,
the gift of the provinces which Astolphus usurped, and which this same
emperor claimed, in whose name Stephen negociated. Pepin hesitated the
less in bestowing them, as he was neither their possessor nor sovereign.
³⁸ Id cum’ipsius imperio pemiciosum, tom nomine quoque apud posteros
fore turpissimum.—Sigoniut Hist. rtgn. liai. 1.3, p. 197.
³⁹ Joannes Silentiarius à Constantino cum legatis pontificiis rediit,
narrans imperatori placere ut ipse ad regem proficiscens, quantum
precibus atque auctoritate “profiscere posset,
experi-retur,—Sigm.ibii.p. 199.
Ambitious, however, to derive some advantage from his title of
patrician, he passed the Alps in 754, besieged Pavia, and compelled
Astolphus to promise that he would restore the Exarchate and the
Pentapolis, not to the Emperor of Constantinople, but to St. Peter—to
the Roman Church and Roman Republic. Vain promise! no sooner is King
Pepin returned into France, than the Lombard king forgets his oaths,
lays waste the environs of Rome, and labours to become master of the
city. It was at this time, in 755, the pope wrote to the French monarch
many letters, of which the one written in St. Peter’s name, gives us to
perceive, says Fleury,⁴⁰ “the genius of the age, and to what extent the
most grave of mankind may carry fiction when they consider it useful.”:
“Peter, called to the apostolat by Jesus Christ,
“the Son of the living God, &c........As by me the
“Roman Church, of which Stephen is bishop, is
“founded upon the stone........I adjure you, O ex−
“cellent Pepin, Charles, and Carloman, three kings,
“and with you the bishops, abbes, priests, and
“monks, and also the dukes, counts, and people....
“I adjure you, and with me the Virgin Mary, the
“angels, the martyrs, and all the other saints adjure
“you, not to suffer that my city of Rome, and my
“people, be any longer left a prey to the Lom−
“bards........If you obey me quickly, you shall in
“this life receive an abundant recompense for it;
“you shall overcome your enemies, you shall live
“long, you shall eat the fat of the land, and you
“shall, besides, receive eternal life. If you obey
“me not, know that by the authority of the Holy
“Trinity and of my apostolat, you shall be deprived
“of the kingdom of God.”
⁴⁰ Hist. Eccl. book 43. no. 17.
It is most important here to remark, that this letter makes no mention
either of the donation of Constantine, or that which Pepin-le-Bref has
the credit of having made in 703, and renewed in 754. It is not the most
feeble argument of those who dismiss to the rank of chimeras, the second
as well as the-first of these donations. They add, that the original
title of Pepin’s grant exists no where in the world—that no authentic
copy of it can be produced —and that its directions, omitted by
contemporary historians, are only known to us through Anastasius, who
compiled his History of the Popes at the end of the ninth century, one
hundred and thirty years after the death of Stephen II. The supporters
of this grant confine themselves to asserting, that Anastasius declares
his having seen the original of it, and cites besides the remains of an
inscription preserved at Ravenna, without very scrupulously inquiring
the era in which so mutilated a monument might have been erected.⁴¹
⁴¹ Pipinus. pius. primus, amplificandæ. ecclesiæ. viam. aperuit. et
exarchatum. Ravennæ. cum amplissimis. Pere le Cainte cites the
begiimiug of this inscription, and ends thus: Urbibus. temtoriis.
ac. seditibus. principi. apostolorum. ejus. qua. demum.
successoribus. lubens. ac. volens. concessit. Ann. Èçcl. Fr. vol.
6. p. 544.
Will they now ask us what the nature of the concession was which was
made to the popes by Pepin-le-Bref: if he bestowed the absolute
sovereignty or the mere administration; a secondary or delegated power,
or the property only, and, as it is termed, the fee-simple of it? In
default of a positive text which would offer an immediate reply to these
questions, we have no other way of resolving them, but by continuing,
even to the year 800, the examination of facts relative to the
government of Rome and the authority of the popes. Now, it is certain,
as we have stated, that during the fifty last years of the eighth
century, the popes had never been sovereigns, seldom administrators. We
have a series of letters in which they complain of the non-fulfilment of
the promises of Pepin, and of the infidelity of the Lombard kings, who
ravaged, or again seized on, the possessions of the church. Besides,
Constantine Copronymus never renounced his rights: he offered to pay the
expenses attending’the victories of the French army over the Lombards,
provided the places recovered from them were restored to him. Pepin,
though very little disposed to comply with these requisitions, evaded
characterizing the power which he exercised over the Roman republic by
the title of patrician; leaving it undecided, whether he considered
himself as actual sovereign, or as but provisionally invested with the
functions of the impeiial authority. What is very remarkable is, that in
fixing the limits of the states of this monarch, no French historian
extends them beyond the Alps.⁴² As to the popes, although their
influence almost always swayed the authority of the deputies of the
patrician, they did not as yet exercise a civil magistracy, properly so
called, either regularly instituted or delegated. They continued to date
from the reign of the emperors of Constantinople, and to call them their
lords and masters. This is to be seen in an epistle written by Stephen
II. in 757, a short time before his death;⁴³ in a diploma subscribed
the same year by Paul I. the brother and successor of Stephen;⁴⁴ in a
statute or rule of the same Paul in 758;⁴⁵ in a letter which Adrian
addressed, in 772, to the emperor, in transmitting to him the decision
respecting a crime committed in the duchy of Rome;⁴⁶ and in 785, in an
epistle of the same Adrian to Constantine V. and his mother Irene.⁴⁷
⁴² Antiquit. S. Dionyt. 1.2, c. 9. Regnabant inter Rhenum Ligerimque
priores, Ad Boream fuerat terminus oceanus, Australemque dabant
Balearica littora finem. Alpes et tectæ perpetuis nivibus.
⁴³ Ibid. 1.2. c. 3.
⁴⁴ Concil. vol. 6. p. 1619.
⁴⁵ Ibid. vol. 6. p. 1694.
⁴⁶ Fleury Hist. Eccles. 1.14. n. 2.
⁴⁷ [--Greek--] Concil. Vol. 7. p. 99.
Many cities comprised in the pretended donation were governed, according
to the instructions of Pepin, by the Archbishops of Ravenna, who seem to
have succeeded the Exarchs, whose title remained unrevived.
Charlemagne, called by Adrian against Didier, king of the Lombards,
blockaded Pavia, and renewed in Rome, in 774, the donation of
Pepin.—This act, however, is no better authenticated to us than those of
753 and 754. There is no original document, no authentic copy, nor even
unauthenticated one. It is Anastasius also, who, after one hundred
years, specifies its conditions to us.
To Pepin’s gift Charlemagne added, according to this Anastasius,
Corsica, Sardinia, Liguria, Sicily, Venice, Beneventum; and deposited
the chart, which was to enrich to this extent the Roman church, upon the
tomb of the holy apostles Peter and Paul. Anastasius does not explain to
us how Charlemagne bestowed provinces which he never possessed, and over
which he had no right of sovereignty, not even that of conquest. Sicily
and Sardinia were never in his possession: Venice, struggling more and
more for independence, yet recognised in form the sovereign rights of
the Greek emperors. A duke governed Beneventum, which had been ceded to
the Holy See only in 1047 by Henry the Black. This cession of 1047, does
not embrace the whole territory of Beneventum, and the deed by which it
is transferred is besides not the most authentic: but what is to be
noticed here is, that this act does not renew in any way the pretended
donation of Charlemagne; it makes no mention of it: on the contrary it
implies, that the Court of Rome, for the first time, in 1047 is going to
possess the city of Beneventum.
Another objection which Anastasius does not resolve, is, that after 774,
the popes did not assume the government or administration of either
Beneventum, Venice, Sicily, Sardinia, the Exarchate, or even the city of
Rome. Charlemagne, the conqueror and successor of the Lombard kings,
adds the title of King of Italy, to that of Patrician of the Romans. The
sovereignty or supreme authority remained in his hands; he exercised it
either by himself or by his delegates, received the homage of the
pontiffs, invested himself with the right of confirming their elections,
and subjected their possessions and their persons in such sort to his
authority, that we cannot suppose him to have ceded to them anything
more than the ownership or feudal tenure of their domains. The Duchy of
Rome, the Exarchate, the Pentapolis, were comprised, by the historians
of this prince, in the account of the states over which he ruled,
previous to the year 800,⁴⁸ and Piga thinks proper to add Corsica to
them.⁴⁹
⁴⁸ Eginhart. de Car. Mag. p. 91—96 of 6th vol. of Coll. of the
Historians of France.
⁴⁹ Crit Ann. Baiomi ad Ann. 800. a. 11.
In 778, to Charles is referred the decision of the disputes which sprung
up between the pope and the archbishop of Ravenna: the latter retained
the administration of the Exarchate, perhaps from Charlemagne having
tacitly authorised it. Many letters addressed to this monarch, by Pope
Adrian, after the year 775, have been collected into the code of
Charlemagne, they prove that Charles was not very desirous to invest the
Holy Fathers with the temporal power. The donation of Constantine is
mentioned in one of these epistles,⁵⁰ as we have already observed; the
name of the new Constantine is there promised to Charles, if he fulfils
his engagements. But in 789, the pope complains of the delightful
expectation held out to him, being still unfulfilled; he again brings
forward the donation of Pepin as an act remaining without effect. It
appears, however, that Adrian, in the course of the six last years of
his pontificate, did exercise some actual power, since we find coin
bearing his name. But the dukes of Beneventum, and other delegated
governors, exercised at the time the same privilege, with the consent of
their sovereigns. A much greater number of medals were struck at Rome in
the name of Charlemagne;⁵¹ and appeals were made to his officers from
the decisions passed by the popes.⁵²
⁵⁰ Cod. Carol. Ep. Adriani VI. p. 550 of 5th vol. of Coll. of the
Historians of France.
⁵¹ Leblanc. Medals of Charlemagne, &c, p. 17.
⁵² Velly. History of France vol. 1. p. 399.
Charlemagne, before the end of the eighth century, so little thought of
investing the popes with a sovereign power, that he avoided, on the
contrary, assuming to himself an absolute sovereignty over the city and
territory of Rome. He did not dispute that of the Greek Emperors; and
although he governed without receiving their commands, he left it to be
supposed that he considered himself only as their representative. It is
even conjectured, that in 781, he had received from Irene the letter
which created him, in express terms, Patrician of the Romans. When Paul
Diacre says, that Charles added Rome to his States from the year 774; it
is according to Duquet an hyperbolical expression⁵³ since Charles
himself was satisfied with the simple patriciate. Theophanus ascribes
only to the year 779, the commencement of the domination of the French,
over the capital of Italy; and even he is not exact, as we shall shortly
see, since he anticipates by a year, the absolute extinction of the
sovereignty of the Greek Emperors over the Romans.
To measure the extent of the authority exercised by Charles in Rome,
previous to the year 800, it is necessary to form an idea of the nature
of the dignity of patrician, with which he was invested.
⁵³ Rhetorici hâc et hyperbolici loquitur Paulus. Anno eriim 774, Roma
neque à Longobardis oppressa fuit, neque à Carolo cum dilionibus
suis unita, sed a Longobardorum in-sultibus liberata et Carolo
jure patriciatûs tantum subdita.— Collection of Gallic and French
Historian», vol. 5. p. 191. n. a.
Constantine, anxious to restore the ancient patricians, had invented
this personal title of patrician, to be given to the governor or first
magistrate of the city of Rome. From 729 to 800, that is, during the
existence of a shadow of the Roman republic, the office of patrician was
often conferred by the clergy, the nobles, and the people of this city,
almost always at the will of the popes, but never at their sole
discretion. The Greek emperors ratified either expressly or tacitly the
election of the patrician; preferring that it might be supposed he
governed in their name, rather than it should be believed he ruled in
despite of them. Many barbarous kings, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and
others, have received and borne this title; and Charlemagne did not
disdain a dignity, subordinate in appearance, but in reality
independent, and which might serve as a step to a more perfect
sovereignty.
Leo III. succeeding, in 790, to Pope Adrian, hastened to address to
Charlemagne a letter of homage, similar to those which this prince was
accustomed to receive from his vassals.⁵⁴ However, there remains to us
a monument of the supremacy still preserved by the Emperor of the East
over the Romans in 797; it is a mosaic, with which Leo III. ornamented
the hall of the Lateran palace.⁵⁵
⁵⁴ Ann. Lauresh. St. Marc, Abr. Chron. of Hist, of Italy, vol. 1.
year 796.
⁵⁵ Ciampini, Vetera. Mon. par. 2. p. 128.
We here behold a prince crowned, which circumstances prove to be
Constantine V.: another prince, without a crown, and a pope, are
represented kneeling, and by an inscription are named Charles and Leo.
The Emperor receives a standard from the hands of Jesus Christ;
Charlemagne receives another of them from St. Peter’s left hand, who,
with his right hand, bestows a pallium on the pope. This mosaic is at
once the emblem of the supremacy of the emperor, the power of the
patrician, and the pretensions of the pontiff.
In 799 a conspiracy is formed against Leo III.— he is accused before
Charlemagne, who refers to commissioners the investigation and decision
of the whole affair.⁵⁶ This fact suffices to shew, how far the pope was
from being a sovereign before the year 800.
The 25th of December this year, Charles is proclaimed emperor. He had
been raised to this supreme dignity, not by the pope alone, but by an
assembly of the clergy, of the nobility, and of the people of Rome.⁵⁷
⁵⁶ Theophan. Chron. — Eginhard, ad ann. 799.—Anastasius vit. Leonis
iii.—Fleury. Hist. Eccles. 1* 45. n. 14.
⁵⁷ Fleury. Hist. Eccles. 1. 45. n. 14. See also how Anastasias, the
historian of the popes, relates the coronation of Charlemagne:
Post hæc, adveniente die natali. D. N. J. C. in jam dictâ basilicâ
B. Petri apostoli omnes interum congregati sunt, et tunc
yenerabilis almificus pontifex xnanibus suis propriis
pretiosissimâ coronâ coronavit eum. Tunc universi jidelcs
Romani...unanimiter altisonâ voce, Dei nutu atque B. Petri
clavigeri regni cœlorum, exclamaverunt: Carolo piissimo Au-gusto à
Deo coronato, magno, pacifico imperatori, vita et victoria. Ante
sacram confessionem B. Petri apostoliter dictus est, et ab omnibus
constitutes est imperator Romanorum. Illico sanctissimus pontifex
unxit oleo sancto Carolum, &c.— Anast. Bibl. in vita Leonis III.
Behold, then, the precise period of the extinction of the sovereign
rights of the Eastern Emperor in Rome: then, also, ceased the
patriciate, properly so called; and the pope, no longer recognizing any
intermediate person between him and the Western Emperor, became, indeed,
the governor or first magistrate of Rome and of its territory.
Charlemagne, in order to deceive the court of Constantinople, had
pretended to fill only a passive part in his own coronation:—it was
without his knowledge that they decreed him the imperial crown —it was
against his consent that he suffered it to be placed on his victorious
head: such, at least, is the account which his chancellor Eginhard has
given us of this event; an account which Sigonius⁵⁸ and Muratori⁵⁹
have classed with the fabulous, and to which even Father David himself
refuses all credence.
⁵⁸ De Regn. Ital. 1. iv. p. 252.
⁵⁹ Annali d’ltalia, ann. 800.
Charlemagne hastened to dispatch ambassadors to Constantinople; he
received in return those of the Emperor Nicephoras, and concluded a
treaty of friendship and alliance with him, which fixed the limits of
the two empires, without, however, a formal recognition of the Emperors
of the West by the Greeks. But the absolute sovereignty of Charles over
the Exarchate, the Pentapolis, and the Roman territory, became
undisputed.⁶⁰
⁶⁰ In uniting all these facts, says Bossuet, it is easy to see that
Baronins asserts very inappropriately, that the popes had deposed
the emperors because of their heresy, and transferred their empire
to the French. It is on the contrary evident, that in Italy and at
Rome, the popes themselves have constantly recognized as emperors,
the image-breaking princes; and that the empire was only
transferred to the French when it was possessed by Irene, a most
catholic princess after her rejection of heresy.
It is no less evident, that the popes solicited the assistance of the
French, not on account of the heresy of the Emperor, but because they
had no other resources to oppose the Lombards: that their affairs were
altogether desperate, and that they could hope for no succour from the
emperors of the east. There were wanting none of the circumstances
necessary, as is said in the present day, to justify the deposition of
kings. These emperors were heretics, obstinate in error, cruel in their
persecutions, and besides, were forgers and perjurers; a circumstance,
which according to our adversaries, rendered them still more worthy of
deposition, since it was against the church they sinned, in violating
the oath, which they had taken at the foot of the altar, to commit no
innovation in religion.
Notwithstanding the violation of these solemn promises, the catholics
not only honored as emperor, the prince who persecuted them, but did all
which lay in their power, to restrain those who, under such pretext,
wished to excite seditions and revolt against the empire: so true it is,
that they had not then the least idea of that power, in which, at the
present day, all the hopes of the church are made to consist, and which
is regarded as the firmest bulwark of the pontifical authority. Def.
Cler. Grail, p. 26. 6 ch. 20. in the year 803,⁶¹ and in 806,⁶² dates
from the reign of the Emperor Charles. This prince designates himself
‘Head of the Roman Empire;’⁶³ and the confines of his states are,
henceforward extended, even to the lower Calabria, by Eginhard⁶⁴ and
other historians.
Stephen IV. as soon as he was elected successor to Leo. III. made the
Romans take an oath of allegiance to Louis-le-Debonnaire, the successor
of Charlemagne.⁶⁵ Among the gifts of which the Holy See avails itself,
there is one which bears the name of this first Louis, and the date of
816 or 817:⁶⁶ it is pretended, that in confirming the concessions of
Charlemagne and of Pepin, Louis has reckoned Sicily in the number of the
territories acquired by the Roman Court, and that he has renounced for
himself and his successors also, the right of ratifying the elections of
the popes.
⁶¹ Imperante nostro domino Carolo piiasimo à Deo coronato. Ughelli,
Ital. see vol. 5. col. 1095.
⁶² Concilior. vol. 8. p. 1120.
⁶³ Carolus serenissimus Augustus......imperator Romanorum gubamans
imperium......Datum idibus junii, anno iii. imperii nostri, et 35
regni nostri in Franciâ. Lecoinle Ann. ecclct. Francorvm. vol. 6.
p. 814.
⁶⁴ Italiamtotam. usque in Calabriam inferiorem. Eginhard.
⁶⁵ Theg. de gestis Ludovici Pii. ann. 816.
⁶⁶ Baronius Ann. Eccles. ann. 817.—Sigon. Hist Ital. 1.4.
But we see him, in 827, examine into and approve that of Gregory IV.
Eginhard, and another historian of Louis-le-Debonnaire,⁶⁷ attest this
circumstance to us. As to Sicily it did not in any wise belong to Louis:
he never possessed it; the pope did not even dream of governing it; and
it is so incredible that it should have been ceded to the pope in 816,
by the emperor, that Father Morin,⁶⁸ in supporting the authenticity of
the donation of Louis I. is obliged to suppose, that the name of this
isle had not been originally in it, but had been inserted in the course
of time. Furthermore, it is a donation unknown to contemporary writers,
and which appears not in historical records until long after its date.
⁶⁷ Coll. of Histories of France, toI. 6. p. 108.
⁶⁸ History of the Origin of the Power of the Popes, p. 627.
The forgery of documents occurs often in the history of the temporal
power of the popes. The Donation of Constantine was fabricated, as we
have already observed, between the years 756 and 779, and it was about
the same period that an Isidore, Mercator or Peccator, forged the
decretals of the ancient popes, Anaclet, Clement, Evaristus, and others,
down to St. Sylvester. In the sixth century, Dionysius-le-Petit was
unable to collect any decretals, but those subsequent to St. Siricius,
who died at the end of the fourth. Those of Isidore are long, full of
common place, and all in the same style, which, according to Fleury⁶⁹
is much more that of the eighth century, than of the early ages of the
Church. “Their dates are almost all of them incorrect,” adds the
historian we have just mentioned,:
“and the matter of these letters, still further
“evinces the forgery: they speak of archbishops,
“primates, patriarchs, as if these titles had been
“received from the birth of the Church. They
“forbid the holding of any council, even a provincial
“one, without the permission of the pope, and
“represent as a usual thing, the appeals to Rome.”
These false decretals have contributed to the extension of the popes’
spiritual power, and to invest them with political authority: their
fatal effects have been fully exposed by Fleury, in his fourth discourse
on ecclesiastical history.
We believe, that from the details we have collected, it is sufficiently
clear, that up to the year 800, and still later, the pope and the Romans
have always acknowledged, as their sovereigns, the emperors of the East
or the West, and even particular governors, as the exarch, the
patrician, and the kings of the Lombards, or of Italy.⁷⁰
⁶⁹ Hist, eccles. I. 45. n. 22.
⁷⁰ Muratori introduces the same results, in the three first chapters
of his work entitled: Piena Esposizione di diritti im-periali ed
Estensi sopra Comacchio, 1712, in—fol.
The pope at the end of Louis-le-Deboimaire’s reign, in 840, was not yet
a sovereign; and taking the word in its literal sense, that is, as
expressing supreme authority, independent and undelegated, we may
maintain with certain authors, that he did not begin to be such until
1355, when the Emperor Charles IV, receiving the imperial crown at Rome,
renounced in the most express terms every sort of authority over the
Holy See.
But without sovereignty a power may yet be effective. Such was that of
the popes long before 1355, and even from the time of Charlemagne. An
actual temporal power, though subordinate, delegated or borrowed, rested
from that period, in the hands of the pontiffs; and, from this time, the
perpetual quarrels between the priesthood and the empire, had no other
object, than to emancipate and extend their power. It was necessary in
the first place, to render it independent; and from the time it was or
asserted itself so to be, to amplify its prerogatives, its rights, its
limits, finally to transform itself into a universal monarchy. Behold
the common origin, of all the anathemas, all the quarrels, all the wars
of which we are about to sketch the picture! Here is the secret of the
eternal contentions of the Court of Rome with the greater number of the
European powers, especially those which obtained an ascendancy in Italy.
CHAPTER II. ENTERPRIZES OF THE POPES OF THE NINTH CENTURY
CHARLEMAGNE had condemned gifts made to the church, to the prejudice of
the children or near relatives of the donor. In 816, a capitulary of
Louis I. declared all donations of this kind void. But, far from
continuing to limit by such restraints the sacerdotal ambition, Louis
was destined to become one of the first victims, and, by the same
circumstance, one of the first founders of the clerical power.
Pascal succeeding Stephen IV. in 817, did not wait for the consent of
the prince to instal himself: he confined himself to sending him
legates, and an apologetical letter, in which he pretended that he had
been compelled hastily to accept the dignity. Some years after, Pascal
crowned Lothaire, whom Louis, his father, had associated in the empire:
the pope, say the ecclesiastical historians of the ninth century, gave
to the young prince the power which the ancient emperors had enjoyed;
they add, that with the consent and good will of Louis, Lothaire
received from the sovereign pontiff the benediction, the dignity, and
the title of emperor; expressions truly remarkable, and of which they
have since availed themselves, in order to erect the pope into the
disposer of the imperial crown; as if Charles and Louis had not
previously borne it, without being indebted for it to the bishops of
Rome!—as if it were not, above all, contradictory, to pretend at once
that these two princes founded, the temporal power of the popes, and yet
received from these same popes the dignity of Emperors of the West.
Some officers in the service of Lothaire having been put to death in the
Lateran palace, the holy fathers, accused of having ordered the
commission of the crime, hastened to send nuncios to Louis to do away
such suspicion. Louis received the nuncios coldly, and dispatched
commissioners to Rome, before whom Pascal cleared himself by oath. He
constantly, however, evaded delivering up the murderers, ‘because they
were of the family of St. Peter’, that is, of the pope’s house.
Louis-le-Debonnaire followed his natural love of clemency, says Fleury⁷¹
and notwithstanding his wish to punish this action, he consented, not to
follow up a proceeding, the first acts of which prove, at least, that he
was recognized in 823, as sovereign of Rome, and judge of the Roman
Pontiff.
⁷¹ Hist Eccles. 1.46. n. 57.
Eugene II. after the example of his predecessor Pascal, dispensed with
having his election confirmed by the emperor. Lothaire complained loudly
of it, and came to fill at Rome the functions of the sovereign
authority. He tried a suit between the pope and the abbot of Farfa, of
whom the court of Rome exacted an annual tribute—Not only was the abbey
exempted from this tribute, but the pope was obliged to restore the
property which the Roman Church had _unjustly deprived it of_: these are
the terms of a charter of Lothaire.⁷² This prince published, at the same
time, a constitution of nine articles,⁷³ in which the authority of the
pope is indeed formally established, yet subordinate to that of the
emperor. It is there stated, that complaints against the judges and
other officers shall first be taken before the pontiff, who shall apply
an immediate remedy, or inform the sovereign thereof, in order that he
may provide for it.
This constitution is of the year 824, and it is also the date of an oath
which the Romans took in the following terms:⁷⁴
⁷² S. Marc. Ab. Hist Italy, vol. 1. p. 469.
⁷³ Ibid. p. 472.
⁷⁴ Ibid. p. 473.
“I promise to be faithful
“to the emperors Louis and Lothaire, saving the
“faith I have promised to the pope, and not to con−
“sent to the election of a pope uncanonically, not
“that the pope should be consecrated before he has
“taken, in presence of the emperor’s commissioners,
“an oath similar to that which Pope Eugene has
“made by writing.”
The clause, “saving the faith promised to the pope,” has not failed to
draw after it arbitrary restrictions: but this formula expressed
decisively the sovereignty of the emperor.
We also see Gregory IV. in 827, solicit the emperor to confirm his
election;⁷⁵ which proves, as we have already observed, that Louis had
not renounced this right in 819. If the prince, said De Morca,⁷⁶ had
left to the people and the clergy the power of electing the popes, their
consecration was, notwithstanding, to be deferred till the sovereign had
consented to it. In defiance of this preliminary, the pontificate of
Gregory IV. is, nevertheless, one of the most memorable for the
humiliations of the imperial dignity. It is true, they were caused by
the weakness of the prince as much as by the ambition of the pontiff.
The first error of Louis-le-Debonaire was the partition of his states,
in 817, amongst his three sons: associating Lothaire in the empire, he
gave Aquitaine to Pepin, and Bavaria to Louis; and by these arrangements
he especially dissatisfied his nephew Bernard, King of Italy.
⁷⁵ Lpco illius (scil. Valentini) Gregorius presbyter tituli Sancti
Marci electus est, dilatu consecratione ejus ad consulterai
imperatorh. Quo annuente et electionem cleri et populi probante,
ordinatus est in looo prions.—Vit. Ludov. Pii. kq mn.
827.—Gregorius presbyter non prius ordinatus est, quam legatus
imperatoris Romam veneret et electionem populi
ex-aminaret—Eginhard. ad ann. 827.
⁷⁶ De Concordiâ sacerdotii et imperii. 1;8. c. 14. n.8.
Bernard revolted: it became necessary to subdue and punish him. In
commuting the punishment of death pronounced against him, Louis had
nevertheless caused his eyes to be put out; and this cruel punishment
cost the patient his life. Louis reproached himself with this cruelty,
and evincing still less moderation in his repentance than in his crime,
he claimed public penance. To add to his difficulties, Judith, his
second wife, becoming the mother of Charles the Bald, claimed a kingdom
for this child. She obtained a new partition, which, however, interfered
with the first, and caused the three, who were portioned in 817, to
rebel. They leagued against their father: Vala, abbot of Corbia, a
factious but revered monk, encouraged their rebellion: like them, he
heaped invectives on the emperor, his wife Judith, and his minister
Bernard. Easily disconcerted by such an outcry, Louis convoked four
councils, to which he referred the examination of his conduct and the
complaints it occasioned. These synods favoured but little the
pretensions of the revolted; but in them was professed a doctrine on the
privileges of the clergy and the duties of princes, which, at a period
so near to that of the unbounded power of Charlemagne, would seem
incredible, if the purport itself of these assemblies⁷⁷ did not
suffice, to justify and explain the idea which they had formed of their
supreme authority.
⁷⁷ Concil. Grail, vol. 1.
We will here transcribe a speech which one of the four councils makes
Constantine the Great address to the bishops:
“God has given
“you the powers to judge us; but you cannot be
“judged by any man. God has established you as
“gods over us, and it becomes not men to be the
“judges of gods. That can belong to him alone
“of whom it is written, God has seated himself in
“the temple of the gods and judges them.”
Here, then, we certainly behold the question respecting the two powers
more clearly laid down than ever it had been; for they could not be more
decisively reduced to one only.
While councils were giving Louis these lessons; while he was sending
Judith into the bosom of a cloister, and was thinking of assuming
himself the monastic gown; his sons and the abbot Vala strove to compel
him to do so, and would have succeeded, if another monk, in sowing
discord among the three brothers, had not restored to their father some
moments of repose and vigour. He recalled Judith, exiled Vala, deprived
Lothaire of the title of emperor, and, incapable of prudence, abandoned
himself in such degree to the counsels of his ambitious and vindictive
wife, that he disinherited Pepin in favor of Charles, and even alienated
the minister Bernard. Immediately the revolt revived; and here commences
the part which Gregory IV. played in these disgraceful scenes. The pope
allied himself with the three princes: he entered France with
Lo-thaire—entered it without the permission of his sovereign, what none
of his predecessors had done. At the first report of the anathema he was
about to thunder against the emperor, some French prelates had the
courage to say, that if Gregory was come to excommunicate, he should
return excommunicated himself;⁷⁸ but Agobard, bishop of Lyons, and many
of his colleagues, said, that the pope must be obeyed. Gregory, on his
part, addressed to the partisans of Louis a memorable letter, in which
the secular power is, without any ambiguity, subjected to the Holy
See.⁷⁹
“The term of brother savours
“of equality,” said he to the prelates who had so addressed him;
“it is the title of *father* which you
“owe me: know that my chair is above Lewis’s
“throne.”
In the mean time Lothario and his two brothers collect their troops in
Alsace; Gregory joins them, and quits them only to appear in Louis’s
camp in quality of mediator.
⁷⁸ Si excoiwmunicaturua adveniret, excommunicatus abiret, cum aliter
se haberet antiquorum canonum autoritas.—Vit. hud. Pii. in Coll.
of Hist, of France, vol. 6. p. 113.
⁷⁹ Agobardi Oper. vol. p. p. 53.
What the pope did we know not; but the same night on which he took leave
of the emperor, the troops of the latter disbanded themselves. This
desertion dissolved Louis’s army, and doubled that of his opponents:
compelled to give himself up to his sons, he was dethroned, _by the
advice of the pope_, says Fleury;⁸⁰ and Gregory returned to Rome, very
much afflicted, according to the same historian, at the triumph of the
unnatural children whom he had served. The plain where he had
negociated, between Strasburg and Basle, is called to this day the
‘Field of falsehood.’
It would be too painful to retrace here the details so well known of the
humiliations of Louis I.; how Ebbon, his creature⁸¹ and other bishops,
condemned him to a public penance; how the son of Charlemagne shewed
himself almost worthy of the infamy by his submission; how, on his knees
before these prelates, he publicly recited a confession of his crimes,
in the number of which they had inserted the marching of his troops
during Lent, and the convocation of a parliament on Holy Thursday; how,
dragged from cloister to cloister, to Compagne, to Soissons, to
Aix-la-Chapelle, to Paris, to St. Denis, he seemed destined to terminate
his days there, when the excess of his misfortunes provoked the public
pity, and produced against his already divided enemies the indignation
of the nobles and of the people. The great lords came to offer him
homage as their sovereign, but Louis dared not recognize himself such
until he was canonically absolved: he did not resume, he said, the belt,
but in virtue of the judgment and authority of the bishops.
⁸⁰ Hist. Eccles. 1.47. n.39.
⁸¹ Ebbon a contemporary historian thus speaks of it: Elegerunt tunc
unum impudicum et crudelissimum, qui dice* batur Hebo, Rexnansis
episcopug; qui erat ex originalium servorum
stirpe......Abstulerunt ei gladium de femore suo, judicio servorum
suorum, induentes cum cilicio. Tunc im-pletum est eloquium Jeremiæ
prophet dicentis: Servi domi-nati sunt nostri. O qualem
remuneratkmem reddidisti ei! Fecit te liberum, non nobilem, quod
impossibile est post liber-tatem: vestivit te purpurio et pallio,
tu induisti cum cilicio. Hie pertraxit te immeritum ad culipen
pontificate, tu cum falso judicio voluigti expellere à solio
patrum suorum....Patres tui fuerunt pastores caprarum, non
copsiliarii principum, &c. Thegon. de gettis budov. Pit tom. 45.
On this occasion he invited Hilduin, the monk, to compose a life of St.
Denis, a legend since become so famous, and which would suffice to
characterize the reign of Louis I. or rather the empire of gross
superstition which he permitted to rule in his place. At Thionville an
assembly was held, half parliament, half council, which replaced him on
his throne. Solemnly reestablished in the body of the church, at Metz,
he pretended that the deposition of Ebbon, the Archbishop of Rheims,
pronounced at Thionville, had need to be confirmed by the pope. Many
prelates, accomplices of Ebbon, fled to Italy, under the protection of
Lothaire and of Gregory; others, almost as shameless in confessing the
crime as in commiting it, were pardoned:—none suffered the punishment
due to such wicked attempts. Louis carried his good nature so far as to
re-establish Agobard in the see of Lyons, and placed no bounds to the
respectful deference which the pope exacted of him. Baronius even
pretends, that it was by the pope’s authority the king remounted his
throne: but Bossuet⁸² has victoriously refuted this assertion, which is
unsupported by any contemporary witness.
⁸² Def. Cler. Gall, vol.2. b. 6. ch.21.
Marianus Sectus, the Chronicle writer of the twelfth.century, cited by
Baronius, makes no mention in it of Gregory IV. and confines himself to
saying, that in the year 835, Pepin and Louis restored to their father
the sovereign power.
In the mean time the death of Lothaire gave occasion for a new
partition, and a new revolt of Louis of Bavaria. Louis-le-Debonnaire
once more took up arms against his ever rebellious son, when a mortal
fright which an eclipse produced on this emperor, whose astronomical
knowledge is boasted of, terminated in the year 840 his lamentable
reign, worthy of such termination.
The ambition of Lothaire having united against him the King of Bavaria
and Charles the Bold, they subdued him at Fontenai; and to possess
themselves of his states, they addressed themselves to the bishops
assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle. “Do you promise,” said these bishops, “to
govern better than Lothaire has done?” the princes promised; and the
prelates added:
“Reign then in his place, we allow
“you so to do; receive by divine authority the
“kingdom; govern it according to the will of God;
“we exhort you to it, we command you.”
But Lothaire did not permit it, and his brother found him sufficiently
formidable to treat with, and to continue to him the name of emperor,
with certain states.
After the circumstances which had so humbled the imperial power, we are
not astonished to see Sergius II. succeed Gregory IV. without waiting
for the Emperor Lothaire’s consent. Yet this prince was so irritated at
it, that he sent his son Louis into Italy at the head of an army. The
terrified pontiff endeavoured to appease the young prince by means of
honours and of homage. Louis examined into the election of Sergius, and
ratified it in the midst of an assembly in which Sergius was judicially
interrogated. His premature consecration was held valid only on
condition that they should act more regularly for the future. The pope
and the rest of the assembly took the oath of fidelity to the emperor.⁸³
This firmness of Lothaire upheld for a while the civil power, even in
the states of Charles the Bald. This prince held a parliament at
Epernai, in 846, to which the bishops were not admitted; in it were
reprobated the canons which limited the rights of the king and of the
lords, and measures were taken against the abuse of excommunications;
⁸³ Anast Bibl. de vit. Roman. Pontif. p. 352.
In 847, Leo IV. was also consecrated before the emperor had confirmed
the election; but they protested, that the ravages of the Saracens in
the neighbourhood of Rome obliged them to act thus; and that nothing was
meant derogatory to the fealty due to the head of the empire. Besides
Leo IV. was the most venerated pontiff of the ninth century. He
fortified Rome, built the part which bears the name of the Leonine city;
and, without desiring to disturb other states, he laboured for the space
of eight years, for the prosperity of that which he governed. The same
praise cannot be bestowed on Nicholas I. who filled the chair of St.
Peter from the year 858 to 867; but he was the pope of that century,
which extended most the pontifical authority.
Elected in the presence, and by the influence of Lothaires’s son, the
Emperor Louis, he received from this prince a devotion unknown before:
Louis seems to have thought he might honor without danger a creature of
his own. The emperor then was seen to walk on foot before the pontiff
act as his equery, lead his horse by the bridle, and thus realize, if
not surpass, one of the directions of Constantine’s pretended ‘deed of
gift,’ Such ceremonies could not remain without effect, and Nicholas
delayed not to discover occasions of availing himself of them. The power
of Charlemagne was at that time divided among his numerous descendants:
there were sons of the Emperor Lothaire, to wit, Louis, the heir to the
empire, Charles, King of Provence, and Lothaire, King of Lorraine. Their
uncles Louis and Charles reigned, the one in Germany, the other in
France; while the son of Pepin, king of Aquitaine, fallen from the
throne of their father, resumed it but to descend from it once more. All
these princes, almost equally deprived of information and of energy,
weak in the first place by their numbers, became still more so by their
discord: each of them employed against the other the principal part of
his limited power; it remained for Nicholas only to declare himself
their master, in order to become so, and he failed not to do it.
An archbishop of Sens, named Venilon,. loaded with benefits by Charles
the Bald, but stimulated to rebel against this monarch by Louis, King of
Germany, had collected in the palace of Attichi some other disaffected
prelates, and in conjunction with them pronounced the deposition of the
King of France, loosing his subjects from their oaths, and declaring his
crown to have devolved to his brother. This attempt had but one
remarkable consequence; this was, the strange complaint made of it in
857 to a council held at Savonnieres,⁸⁴
“Venloon,” said he,
“consecrated me in the Church of St. Croix in
“Orleans; he promised never to depose me from
“the royal dignity, without the concurrence of the
“bishops who consecrated me with him: the bishops
“are the thrones upon which God sits to promulgate
“his decrees; I have always been, I am still in
“clined to submit to their paternal corrections, but
“only when they proceed regularly.”
⁸⁴ Libellas proclamationis adrersus Venilonem. Concil. vol. 8. p.79.
In order to confirm this enormous authority of the clergy, Charles the
Bald resorted to it against Louis. He caused the French prelates to
assemble at Metz: these signified to the German monarch, that he had
incurred excommunication, and presented the terms to which his
forgiveness was attached. Thus, by the avowal of the King of France,
bishops had, of themselves, the right to depose, and even to
excommunicate, a foreign sovereign. One day these bishops contracted a
solemn engagement at Savonnieres, to remain united, in order to correct
sovereigns, nobles, and people; and Charles heard and received these
expressions with all the humility which should have been the portion of
those who held them.
Nicholas cautiously avoided repressing these enterprises of the clergy;
on the contrary, he was pleased to behold the advancement of their
power, provided it continued in subjection to his. The quarrels which
arose among these prelates, gave him an open for exercising his
supremacy; and those in whose favor he exerted it supported it with
ardour. Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, had deprived of his dignity
Rotade, bishop of Soissons, and Charles the Bald executed the decrees of
a council, which, in defiance of this Rotade’s appeal to the Holy See,
had condemned him for contumacy. Nicholas cancelled these decrees,
threatened Hincmar, and reestablished the bishop of Soissons. The king
never thought of supporting Hincmar: on the contrary, he protected the
nominated Vulfede, deposed by the Archbishop of Rheims, in another
council, the sentence of which, also, Nicholas annulled. To such length
had the ‘False Decretals’ extended the jurisdiction of the Holy See.
But the affair in which Nicholas made the most solemn display of his
power, was that of the king of Lorraine, Lothaire, who after having
repudiated and taken back his wife Theutberga, wished finally to part
with her in order to marry Valdrade. The opposition of the popes to the
divorces of princes has been often since renewed, but this is the first
example: we have seen Charlemagne repudiate Imiltrade, as also
Ermengarde or Desiderate, without any opposition on the part of the
Roman pontiff; but he was Charlemagne, and his great-grandson neither
inherited his genius nor his power.
Marriage is a civil act, which from its nature can be subject only to
the regulations of the civil law. The religious rules or maxims which
relate to it have no exterior force, no absolute efficacy, but inasmuch
as they are inserted into the national code: they are not so inserted in
those of the 9th century, and, consequently, the ecclesiastical ministry
should have confined itself to recommending, in secret and without
scandal, the observance, purely voluntary, of these maxims. But this
wisdom, though so natural, was already foreign to the manners of a
clergy, whose ministry the False Decretals had erected into authority;
and neither kings nor people were capable of that degree of attention,
necessary to acquire specific ideas of their civil rights and their
religious duties. While Lothaire continued the husband of Theutberga,
and had Valdrade but as a concubine, the pope and the bishops abstained
from requiring him to give an example of a more regular and decent life:
but from the time he thought of conferring upon Valdrade the rights of a
lawful wife, Nicholas was earnest to apply to this project of reform the
pontifical veto.
In truth, Lothaire himself provoked the intervention of the clergy, by
causing Theutberga to appear before a tribunal of bishops, in order to
undergo their indelicate interrogatories. Twice she confessed herself
guilty of incest; and when the office of these Lorraine priests extended
itself to extorting from her public avowals of the same, Nicholas whom
they acknowledged as their supreme head, might consider himself
authorised to revise so strong a proceeding. He therefore annulled the
decision pronounced against Theutberga by the councils of
Aix-la-Chapelle and of Metz; he degraded two prelates, Gonthier and
Theutgaud, whom the latter of these councils had thought proper to
depute to him. These prelates condemned in plain terms the Pope’s
sentence; they asserted, that Nicholas wished to make himself monarch of
the world.⁸⁵ The Emperor Louis seemed to believe so in part; he came to
Rome resolved to support his brother Lothaire again at Nicholas. But a
fast and processions ordained by the pope, a tumult which he did not
prevent, profanations about which he made a great noise, the sudden
death of a soldier accused of having mutilated a miraculous cross; so
many unlucky omens terrified Louis to that degree that it threw him into
a fever. Furthermore, while Louis had been endeavouring to protect
Lothaire, Charles the Bald, having declared against the latter, had
received Theutberga. Hincmar himself composed a treatise respecting this
divorce, which occupied all Europe, far from favourable to the interests
of Valdiade.⁸⁶
It was then enjoined by Nicholas, that Lothaire should give up the idea
of a second marriage under pain of excommunication. A legate named
Arsena came to compel the King of Lorraine to take back his first
wife;⁸⁷ and to detach him more certainly from Valdrade, this courtezan,
so she was styled by the Holy See, was borne off by the legate, who
would have taken her to Rome if she had not made her escape by the way.
⁸⁵ Fleury. Eccles. Hist 1. 60. n. 33.
⁸⁶ De Dirortio Lotharii, vol. 1. Operum Hincmari.
⁸⁷ Annal. Meteits. ad ann. 866. Annal. Fold. ad. ann. 365,
886.—Concil. Gall. toi. iii. p. 879.
The holy father who wished to convert, could therefore do no more than
excommunicate her. But he received from Lothaire an humble epistle, in
which this prince having declared that he had not seen Valdrade since
she left Arsena, conjures the court of Rome not to give the kingdom of
Lorraine to one of his rivals: a supplication that may seem to us in the
present day as the excess, if not delirium, of weakness, but which was
dictated to this king by the apprehension of being stripped of his
states to enrich Charles the Bald, who in fact did hope to obtain them
from the Holy See.
Divers letters, written by Nicholas on this subject, contain a precious
developement of his ideas of the royal powers, and of his own
authority,:
“You say,” he writes to the bishop of Metz, Adventius,
“that “the apostle commands obedience to kings: but ex−
“amine first whether those kings really be such, that
“is, whether they act justly, conduct themselves
“well, and govern their subjects properly; for other−
“wise it is necessary to account them tyrants, and
“as such to resist them. Be subject to them on
“God’s account, as says the apostle, but not against
“God.”
Fleury⁸⁸ here observes, “that the pope makes the bishops judges,
whether kings be so legitimately, or tyrants, while the Christian
morality requires their obedience of the worst of masters: in fact, to
what prince did the apostle exact fidelity from them? It was to Nero.”
⁸⁸ Hist. Eccles. 1.50. a. 35.
Nicholas wrote to the bishops,⁸⁹ to know if Lothaire fulfilled his
promises, and if they were satisfied with his behaviour to his first
wife. He wrote to the King of Germany with new complaints of Lothaire⁹⁰
“We learn,” said he,
“that he proposes
“coming to Rome without our permission: prevent
“his disobedience of us; and furthermore take care
“to preserve to us, by secure methods, the revenues
“of St. Peter, which we have not, for the two past
“years, received from your states.”
He declares to Charles the Bald,⁹¹ that Theutberga having had recourse
to the church, she could no longer be subject to a secular tribunal. In
another letter to the same monarch,⁹² he announces that he writes no
longer to Lothaire because he has excommunicated him. Lothaire, indeed,
though he had taken back Theutberga, had not altogether relinquished
Valdrade; and Nicholas would not be satisfied with a shew of compliance.
⁸⁹ Coll. Histories of France, vol. 8, p. 419.
⁹⁰ Ibid, p. 428.
⁹¹ Ibid, p. 422.
⁹² Ibid, p. 438.
Theutberga, finally, wearied with these contests, designed renouncing
for ever the titles of wife and of queen:—the pontiff would not permit
it; he addressed her in a long epistle, in which he recommended to her
perseverance and intrepidity, and directed her rather to die than to
yield.⁹³
The same principles relative to the jurisdiction and independence of the
clergy, are to be found in ‘Nicholas’s Rescript to the Bulgarians:’⁹⁴
“You who
“are laymen,” says he to them,
“ought not to
“judge either priest or clerk: they must be left to
“the judgment of their prelates.”
Thus, while the pope censures the conduct of kings, annuls or confirms
their civil acts, and even disposes of their crowns, the members of the
clerical body, to the lowest degree, are freed from all secular
jurisdiction. Such is the _regime_ to which Nicholas wished to subject
the East and the West. He especially had at heart to make Constantinople
submit; and his first step was to condemn and depose the patriarch
Photius, in defiance of the emperor Michael. He threatened to burn, in
the face of the world, an energetic letter which this emperor had
written him, to excommunicate the ministers who had advised him to this
step, and to annul in a Western council whatever had been done for
Photius in the East This quarrel, winch was prolonged under the
successors of Nicholas, was the prelude to the schism of the Greek
Church.
⁹³ Concilior, vol. 8, p. 425.
⁹⁴ Henry’s Eccles. Hist -b. 60. n. 61.
Basilius Cephalas, or the Macedonian, assassinated his benefactor
Michael, and seized upon the throne of Constantinople. Photius, on this
occasion, was willing to imitate St. Ambrose, and ventured to address
Basilius:
“Your hands are polluted with.
“blood: approach not the sacred mysteries.”
But Basilius did not in any respect imitate Theodosius: he banished
Photius, and re-established Ignatius, whom Michael had, not less
unjustly, driven from, the patriarchal chair. Adrian II. took advantage
from the disgrace of Photius to renew against him the anathemas of
Nicholas. Photius, condemned already at Rome, was also condemned in a
general council held at Constantinople.
Charles the Bald and Lewis the German, impatient to divide between them
the states of their nephew Lothaire, hoped that Adrian would finally
excommunicate that prince. But Adrian did not think it suitable to
provide such means of aggrandizing their domains: he permitted Lothaire
to come to Rome, and admitted him to the holy table;—did not hesitate to
absolve Valdrade herself, and. contented himself for such great
condescension with the King of Lorraine’s oaths and promises. The
monarch swore he had no connexion with Valdrade while she was under
excommunication, and pledged himself never more to see her. Lothaire
died at Placentia, a few days after taking this oath; and his death,
which was considered as a punishment of his perjury,⁹⁵ produced the
result for his two uncles, which they expected from his excommunication.
They divided his kingdom between them, without respect to the rights
which preceding treaties had given to the Emperor Louis.
Adrian, of his own motion, declared himself the guardian and arbiter of
the respective rights of the three princes; decreed the states of
Lothaire to the emperor, who had not as yet claimed them; enjoined
Charles and Louis, under the usual penalties of ecclesiastical censure,
to renounce the partition they had dared to make; and menaced with the
same punishment every lord or bishop who should support their
usurpation.
⁹⁵ Ann. Metens. ad. ann. 869.—Rhegin. Chron, ann. 869.
But neither in France nor Germany were any found disposed to the
obedience prescribed by Adrian—his commands were despised. Hincmar,
archbishop of Rheims, replied to him in the name of the nation, that a
bishop of Rome was not the dispenser of the crowns of Europe; that
France never received her masters from the pope’s hands; that wild
anathemas, launched forth from mere political motives, could not alarm a
king of France; that, until Nicholas, the popes had never written to the
French princes save respectful letters: in a word, that in reverencing
the apostolical ministry of the pontiff, they knew how to resist
efficaciously his attempts, whenever he sought to become at once both
pope and king.⁹⁶
⁹⁶ Hincmari Op. vol. 2, p. 689.—This letter is cited by Bossuet with
applause. Def. Cler. Gal. p. 2, b. 6, ch. 23.
This letter, worthy of a more enlightened age, excited in the soul of
Adrian the most violent anger. He knew that a son of Charles the Bald,
named Carloman, had revolted against this monarch; he knew that another
Hincmar, bishop of Laon, and nephew of the archbishop of Rheims, had
taken part with Carloman, and carried his rashness so far as to
excommunicate the king. Adrian declared himself the protector both of
Carloman and the seditious bishop. The latter, seeing his acts annulled
by his uncle, who was also his metropolitan, cited him before the Holy
See:
“an insolent step,” says Pasquier.
“unknown and contrary to the ancient
“decrees, which do not wish that causes should
“pass the confines of the kingdom in which they
“had their origin.”
They hesitated not to break this appeal, they even deposed the
appellant. A second fit of rage seizes Adrian, who commands the king, by
his apostolic power, to send the parties to Rome to await their judgment
there. In the vigorous reply of Charles, he protests that the kings of
France, sovereigns in their states, never shall humiliate themselves so
far as to hold themselves but as popes’ lieutenants,:
"exhorting him, in fine,” adds Pasquier,
“that for the future he might desist from
“letters of such a nature towards him and his pre−
“lates, lest he should be obliged to reject them.”
This epistle of Charles produced the effect which persevering firmness
always secures: the holy father became softened, excused himself,
abandoned Carloman, confirmed the deposition of the bishop of Laon, and
said no more about the partition made of the states of Lothaire. He
wrote the king a letter so full of professions of regard, of praises,
and of promises, that it contained the request to keep it very secret:
but it became and remains public.⁹⁷ Adrian died a short time after
having written it, and John VIII. succeeded him in December, 872.
⁹⁷ Concilior. vol. 8, p. 936.;—Coll. of Histories of France, vol. 7,
p. 456—468.
The ravages of the Saracens in Italy, and especially about Rome, obliged
the pope, John, to use a degree of management with the princes of
Christendom. He refrained, for instance, from displeasing Basilius, when
this emperor, having been reconciled to Photius, wished to replace this
prelate in the patriarchal chair of Constantinople, which the death of
Ignatius had left vacant. John, by his legates and letters, concurred in
the acts of the Council of Constantinople, which restored Photius, and
carried his desire to please the Greeks so far, as to blame those who
had added the word ‘filioque,’ to the Creed.⁹⁸
⁹⁸ Fleury’s Eccles. History, b. 53. n. 24.
But the competition which divided the numerous ‘heritors of Charlemagne,
offered more than one opportunity to John VIII. to constitute himself
arbiter, in return for the services he rendered to some, the right of
humiliating others, and of ruling over all.
The Emperor Louis died in 875; and Charles the Bald, in order to obtain
the imperial dignity, in prejudice of his elder brother, the king of
Germany, had occasion to have recourse to the Holy Father.—John VIII.
who did not expect to find in the German, and in his sons, defenders
sufficiently powerful ’against the Saracens, preferred Charles, and took
advantage of circumstances to dispose of the empire in favour of a king
of France. He consecrated him emperor during the festival of Christmas.
“We have adjudged him,” said he, “worthy of the imperial sceptre: we
have raised him to the dignify and-power of the empire; we have adorned
him with the title of Augustus.” Charles dearly repaid the ceremony of
this coronation. He consented to date from this day all the charters he
should henceforward subscribe: and, according to appearances, John must
have obtained from him considerable sums, which served afterwards to pay
the tributes enacted of him by the Saracens. It is even added, that
Charles stripped himself in favor of the pope, of his sovereign rights
over the city and territory of Rome; but the deed of such cession does
not exist; contemporary historians, with one exception, say nothing of
it: and John himself makes no mention of it in the letters of his which
have reached us.
In 877, when Charles had so much difficulty in defending France against
the Normans, John drew him into Italy to fight the Saracens. “Do not
forget,” he says to him, “from whom you hold the empire, and do not
cause us to change our mind.” Charles survived this threat but a short
time; and the imperial crown, which he had borne for so short a period,
was again solicited from the sovereign pontiff by several competitors.
This time John confined himself to promising it, in order to hold it for
the highest price: for three years there was no Emperor of the West:
none of those who were ambitious of the title were powerful enough to
assert it without the aid of the court of Rome. Louis the Stammerer, son
of Charles the Bald, succeeded him only as king of the French. The pope
came into France in the first year of this reign, and presided at the
Council of Troyes. He there fulminated anathemas against Lambert, duke
of Spoleto, and against Adelbert, marquis of Tuscany; against Gosfrid,
count of Mans; Bernard, marquis of Sep-temanei; and Hugues, son of
Lothaire and Valdvade.
It is decreed by one of the canons of this council, that the bishops
shall be treated with respect by the secular authorities, and that none
must be so bold as to be seated before them without their invitation.⁹⁹
One of the projects of John VIII. was to exercise over the affairs of
France a more immediate and habitual influence, through the medium of a
legate of the Holy See; already even he had clothed with this title
Angesius, archbishop of Sens: but this novelty was not pleasing to the
other prelates, nor too much so to the monarch. Hincmair, especially,
opposed it earnestly: he wrote a treatise to shew how pernicious it must
be; and his brethren, instructed by his lessons and animated by his
example, persevered in repelling this undertaking. The pope was indeed
willing to relinquish it: in truth, he had much preferred obtaining
military and pecuniary succours against the Saracens; but these were
more abundantly promised than granted.
Sergius, duke of the Neapolitans, continued to favour the Saracens,
notwithstanding the anathemas of Rome, and in despite of the
remonstrances of his brother Athanasius, bishop of Naples. Athanasius
took the resolution to tear out Sergius’s eyes, and proclaim himself
duke in his place. It is painful to relate, that the pope highly
approved this crime, or as Fleury has it, ‘this proceeding:’¹⁰⁰
⁹⁹ Concilior. vol. 9. p. 208.
¹⁰⁰ Eccles. Hist. b. 52, n. 47.4
But the letters are preserved which John wrote on this occasion,¹⁰¹ and
in which he applauds Athanasius for having preferred God to his brother,
and having, according to the precept of the gospel, ‘plucked out the
eye’ that scandalized him. This barbarous, and almost ludicrous,
application of a sacred text, opens to our view the character of John
VIII. whose three hundred and twenty letters speak so perpetually of
excommunication, that this menace presents itself as an ordinary and, as
we may say, an indispensable formula.
In 880, John disposed of the imperial crown; he gave it on Christmas-day
to the son of Louis the Gorman, Charles-le-Gros, who in 884 became king
of France, by the death of Louis III. and of Carlo-man, son of Louis the
Stammerer. The names of these princes suffice to remind us of the
decline of the Carlovingian race. A bishop of France wrote one day to
Louis III.¹⁰²
“It was not you who chose
“me to govern the church; but it was I, with my
“colleagues, who chose you to govern the kingdom,
“on condition of observing its laws.”
¹⁰¹ Joannis Epist ob.67.
¹⁰² Millofs Elem. of Hist, of France, vol. 1. p. 194.
And the bishop who held such language to his king, was the same Hincmar
of Rheims, who had so energetically repelled the daring enterprizes of
Adrian II. It seemed decreed that the monarch should have for his
master, either the national clergy or the bishop of Rome; and already
insecure against one of these powers, he inevitably sunk when they
united.
John VIII. died in 882, and we may reckon up ten popes after him, in the
course of the eighteen last years of the ninth century; none of whom had
time to render themselves illustrious by any very great undertaking. We
shall only observe, that the election of Stephen V. in 885, was, after
his installation, examined and confirmed by Charles-le-Gros;¹⁰³ that
the deposition of this emperor in 887, was pronounced, not by the
ecclesiastical authority, but by an assembly of the German and French
nobles;¹⁰⁴ that Formosus, in interfering in a dispute between Eudes and
Charles the Simple, spoke at least a language more evangelical, and less
haughty, than in similar circumstances had been held by Nicholas II.
Adrian II. and John VIII. Formosus crowned two emperors, Lambert in 892,
Amulf in 896: and in both these ceremonies, the Romans took the oath of
fidelity to the prince, ‘saving the faith pledged to the Lord
Formosus.’¹⁰⁵ This pope, in other respects, is only famous from the
proceedings which his memory, and his corpse, experienced from his
successors:—deplorable scenes, which are, however, foreign to the
subject of which we treat.
¹⁰³ Art of verifying dates, vol. i. p. 267.
¹⁰⁴ Muratori’s Annals of Italy, year 887.
¹⁰⁵ Liutprand. b.i. c. 8.—-St. Marc. Ab.of Hist of Italy, v.ii. p. 63.
In 898, during the pontificate of John IX. Arnulf was declared an
usurper of the imperial dignity, and Lambert re-assumed the title of
Emperor. The pope held, on this occasion, a council at Ravenna, in which
the sovereignty of the Western Emperors over Rome and the Ecclesiastical
State, was recognized by many decrees.¹⁰⁶ The following is the most
important:
“Considering that on the death
“of a sovereign pontiff, the Church is exposed to
“great and many disorders, when the new pope is
“consecrated without the privity of the emperor,
“and without waiting for his commissioners, whose
“authority might prevent the outrages and irregu−
“larities which generally attend on this ceremony;
“we desire that for the future the pope be nomi−
“nated by the bishops and clergy, on being pro−
“posed by the senate and the people; that, after
“having thus solemnly and publicly elected him,
“they consecrate him in presence of the commis−
"saries of the emperor; and, that no person dare,
“with impunity, under any pretence whatsoever,
“exact of him other promises or other oaths, than
“those which have been sanctioned by ancient
“usage; so that the church may neither suffer
“scandal nor injury, and that the authority of the
“emperor may receive no detriment.”
¹⁰⁶ SC Marc. Ab. of Hist of Italy, vol. 2, p. 636—640,
But, in thus rendering homage to the imperial dignity, the popes seem to
have reserved to themselves, by way of compensation, the right of
conferring it. After the death of Lambert, and of Arnulf, the bishops
and lords of Bavaria elected, in 899, a son of Arnulf, named Louis, and
solicited the pope to confirm this election, excusing themselves for
having made it without his approbation, in consequence of the pagans,
that is the Hungarians, having cut off the passage into Italy. Neither
John IX. nor his successor, Benedict IV. were in haste to crown Louis.
After the example of John VIII. they endeavoured to accustom the Romans
to dispense with an emperor: the empire remained vacant till 901.
We must recognize in the partition of the States of Charlemagne between
the sons of Louis-le-De-bonnaire, and in the subsequent subdivisions of
these states, the principal cause of the degradation of the civil
authority, and the metamorphose of the pontifical ministry into a
tremendous power:¹⁰⁷
“Hence,” says Velly,
“these enterprises of the popes, who,
“considering themselves as the dispensers of an
“empire, of which they were only the first subjects,
“assumed under the cloak of a purely spiritual
“authority, to dispose sovereignly of empires.
“Hence, the enormous power of the bishops, who,
“after having dethroned the father at the solicitation
“of the children, believed themselves empowered to
“elect, confirm or depose their masters; ambitious
“prelates, rather warriors than priests, scarcely
“knowing how to read, much less write; terrible
“notwithstanding, as well from the spiritual thunders
“which they after, as Pasquier expresses it, tilted
“too freely and carelessly with, as from the tem−
“poral power which they had usurped in their cities
“and dioceses. Hence these almost independent
“principalities that the monks established in those
“countries, where some years before they tilled, with
“their own hands, the grounds which a pious liberally
“had abandoned to them.”
¹⁰⁷ Hist of France, vol. 2 (in 12), p. 244.
Although there had been no authentic act which erected the pope into a
sovereign, and which freed from the imperial supremacy the authority
which he exercised at Rome, his power nevertheless became in effect
independent; and as, in consecrating the emperors, he already considered
himself as creating them, since he dared to speak of their dignity as a
favour for which they were indebted to him, he doubtless had the means
of placing limits to that obedience which they might be desirous of
exacting from him. Far from imposing laws on him in his own states, they
often acquiesced in his, even in the exercise of their civil rights and
political powers. In the course of the succeeding centuries, every thing
depended, not on the progress of ignorance or the return of knowledge
alone, but on the personal energy of the kings and of the pontiffs
individually.
CHAPTER III. TENTH CENTURY
PROTESTANTS take a malicious pleasure in pourtraying the court of Rome
in the tenth century, and in extracting from Liutprand a contemporary
author, the unedifying details with which he has filled up the
ecclesiastical and political history of this period. But without
examining whether the relations of this writer are as faithful as they
are satirical, we may say with Fleury¹⁰⁸ that Rome under these unworthy
popes ceased not to be the centre of Christendom. We may add with other
theologians, that so many abuses not having drawn after them the
destruction of the Holy See, their very excess serves to manifest the
care of Providence to maintain this visible focus of Catholic unity.
¹⁰⁸ Discour. 4, a. 10.
For the rest, the private lives of the popes is not the object which
claims our attention; we shall only consider their political relations
with secular governments. In confining ourselves to this view, we shall
not be troubled with unravelling the thread of succession, somewhat
confused, of thirty popes, who, in the course of this century, have
occupied, more or less legitimately, the chair of St. Peter. When two
shall start up at the same moment, we shall not stop to inquire which of
them is the true one; we shall not take on us to decide between
Baronius, who never wishes to recognize save the worthiest or the most
canonically elected, and those authors who adhere to the most effective,
that is, to the man who has more decisively exercised the pontifical
power: these are delicate questions, requiring long discussions, and the
investigation of a multitude of petty circumstances, foreign to the
history of those great disputes between the pontiffs and kings. In the
midst of those things and of those changes, two points appear to us
incontrovertible; one, that the Holy See was at this period reckoned in
the number of temporal governments; the other, that occupied with its
own affairs, and the interior troubles which agitated it, it lost,
without, a large portion of the influence and power which the preceding
century had bequeathed to it. The first of these consequences is
confirmed by Constantine Porphyrogenites, the Greek Emperor, who,
previous to the middle of the tenth century, digested a sort of
statistical table of the east and of the west: he in it represents the
popes as ‘sovereigns of Rome’.
Even in modifying this incorrect expression, we must admit, that this
text places the bishops of Rome in the rank of princes who immediately
governed states. As to the second conclusion, it followed almost of
course: pleasure ever extinguishes the fire of ambition, discord
shackles power, and the intrigues which employ us within, suspend our
exterior projects; he who is compelled to defend himself in the bosom of
his palace never meditates distant attacks. The excommunications so
familiar to Gregory III. to Nicholas I. and to John VIII. menace,
therefore, less frequently crowned heads. Theological opinions
themselves become less exposed to anathemas. We find no general council,
no new heresy in the tenth century.
This century may be divided into four epochs. The first would terminate
in 932; it would be characterised by the influence of Theodore and her
daughters. The second would present the administration of Alberic, and
of his son, up to 962. The third would open with the coronation of Otho
as emperor, and would terminate with the death of this prince in 973.
The consulate of Crescentius would designate the fourth.
The inhabitants of Rome had never ceased to nourish ideas of
independence; old customs led them back to republican forms. Their city
did not belong to the kingdom of Italy; it held only from the imperial
crown, which the pontiff himself had so far the disposal of, as
occasionally to keep it in reserve. We have noticed examples of this
interregnum of the empire, under John VIII. and John IX. p 906, when the
eyes of Louis III. who on this account was called: the Blind, had been
put out, the Romans ceased to insert his name in the public acts; and
although this, unfortunate prince persevered in assuming the title of
emperor, the imperial dignity actually remained vacant, until the
coronation, of Berengariusin 916.¹⁰⁹ During these interregnums, Rome
accustomed herself to consider, her pontiff, alone as her sovereign, or
rather her own, citizens, nobles, priests, or; sometimes even plebeans.
This, collective sovereign, created popes, and sometimes unmade them.
There had been seven or eight of these elections, or revolutions, in the
course of the first fourteen years of the tenth century; and each time
two factions were seen attacking each other, into which the Roman
nobility was divided, from the time of the proceedings against the
memory of Formosus. Some authors discover at this era, the origin of the
Guelphs, and Ghibelins: we must confess, we only behold as yet the
families which disputed the papacy, or these influence exercised, as
well over the electors as over the elected.
¹⁰⁹ St Marc. Ab. Hist of Italy, vol, 2, pa. 668.
A party in favour of the Western Emperors is the least to be
distinguished in the midst of these troubles; we rather have to remark a
tendency, weak at first, towards the Greek emperors, but which
disposition became much more evident towards the close of this century.
From the year 907, Rome behaved with complaisance to Leo VI. called the
Philosopher, whose fourth marriage had been censured by the patriarch of
Constantinople. The power of the clergy was, at this period, more
formidable at a distance from Rome than in the capital of Christendom.
William of Aquitaine, in founding the abbey of Cluni, about the year
910, declared, that these monks should never be subject to him, to his
relatives, or descendants, nor to any earthly power.¹¹⁰ In Northern and
Western Europe the monks inherited, without being inherited of, and the
edifice of their formidable opulence rapidly a rose. They made not such
a hasty progress in the Roman State, where, under ephemeral popes, the
elective chiefs of a species of republic, the intrigues attached to such
a system occupied every mind. In the midst of these political movements,
three female patricians arose, provided with all the resources of
influence with which rank, talents and beauty could arm ambition.
Theodora, the mother of the other two, seduced the nobles, calmed
faction, subjected to her authority the Church itself, and finally
softened public manners by corrupting them.
¹¹⁰ Concilior. vol. 9. p. 565—Bibl. Clun. —Fleury’s Eccles. Hist. b.
54, n. 45.
One of her lovers, at first bishop of Bologna, she raised to the
archbishopric of Ravenna, and, subsequently, to the sovereign
pontificate, which he filled under the name of John X. from 914 to 928.
We cannot make a favorable report of the holiness of this pontiff, but
in his character, as head of a state, he merits fewer reproaches. He did
not dispute the rights of other sovereigns; he acknowledged that it
belonged to kings alone to invest bishops¹¹¹ he reconciled the princes
whose rivalries destroyed Italy: on placing the imperial crown on the
head of Berengarius, he endeavoured to ally him with the Greek Emperor
against the Saracens, their common enemies: he himself marched against
these Mahometans, fought them with more bravery than belongs to the
office of a pope, and drove them from the neighbourhood of Rome.
¹¹¹ Concil. Gall. vol. 3, p. 565.
It appears that Theodora died previous to the year 928. Marosia, one of
her daughters, after having united herself in second marriage with Guy
of Tuscany, dethroned John and cast him into prison, where in a short
time he died, no doubt a violent death. He had for successors, a Leo VI.
and a Stephen VII.. creatures of Marosia’s, and finally John XI. a young
man of twenty to twenty-five years of age, of whom she herself was the
mother, and whom she had borne to Pope Sergius II. according to
Fleury¹¹² Baronius¹¹³ Sigowus¹¹⁴ and many others, who adopt on this
head the relation of Liutprand.¹¹⁵ Muratori¹¹⁶ makes Alberic, the
first husband of Marosia, the father of John XI. However it be, this
woman governed Rome, under the pontificate of her son, to the year 932,
the era of a new revolution. Marosia in her third nuptials took for
husband Hugues king of Provence, maternal brother of Guy of Tuscany.
This third spouse being disposed to maltreat Alberic, another son of
Marosia’s, a party devoted to young Alberic put him at the head of
affairs: Hugues was driven from the city, and John XI. continued to fill
in form, but without any actual power, the chair of St. Peter.
¹¹² Eccles. Hist. b. 66. n. 5.
¹¹³ Annal. Eccl. ad. ann. 931.
¹¹⁴ De regnorum Ital. b. 6, p. 400.
¹¹⁵ Lib. 3, c. 12, p. 410.
¹¹⁶ Annali Italia ad ann. 931.
At this period commenced, in Rome, a secular government which continued
about thirty years. Alberic with the title of consul or patrician,
selected the popes, ruled them, and held them in dependence. Out of the
city, the popes only possessed the property in the land; which they had
infeoffed in order to secure a part. An armed nobility had arisen in
their domains, which were now no longer part of their states, or which
had never so been. They were ignorant, in those barbarous ages, of the
art of distant government, the art of establishing over extensive
territories an energetic system of unity, subordination, and connection.
This art has been perfected only in modern times; and its absence in the
middle ages, was probably a principal cause of the establishment and
progress of feudal anarchy. They knew not how to retain an empire of any
extent, but by parcelling it out to vassals, who were desirous of
becoming independent, wherever the personal weakness of their liege lord
permitted them to become so. The pope, therefore, from 932 till towards
966, was but bishop of Rome, without any secular power, and his
spiritual influence was very much restricted. Properly speaking, the
Emperor of the West had also disappeared: for Henry the Fowler did not
assume this title in his diplomas: he characterised himself only as
‘patron’ or ‘advocate’ of the Romans:¹¹⁷ and this vain title, below
even that of patrician, embraced no authority, no duty, no political
relation. With what independence Alberic ruled his fellow citizens, we
can judge: he convoked them periodically in national assemblies; he
preserved or renewed in the midst of them, the republican forms he
supposed favourable to the support of his personal authority. Alberic
died in 954; and his son Octavian, who succeeded him, thought it
requisite to strengthen the civil power by re-annexing it to the
pontifical dignity: he became pope in 956, and took the title of John
XII. This double power would have been adequate to the restoration of
the Holy See, if the extreme youth of John, the mediocrity of his
talents, and the enterprises of Berengarius II. king of Italy, had not
led to the re-establishment of the imperial dignity. John having need of
Otho King of Germany to oppose to Berengarius, he crowned him emperor in
962.
¹¹⁷ Art of verifying dates, vol. 2, p. 10.
Berengarius and his son Adalbert were deposed: Otho reunited to his
kingdom of Germany, that of Italy, and the imperial crown. In order to
acquire such extensive power, he made most magnificent promises to the
Roman Church, and received in return the oaths and the homage of the
pope. These documents of Otho’s and of John are still in existence:
Gratian has delivered them to us in his canonical compilation; and if
their authenticity be disputed, the source is unquestionable.¹¹⁸ Otho
confirmed the donations of Pepin, of Charlemagne, and of Louis I. he
extended them perhaps, but expressly reserving to himself, the
sovereignty over the city of Rome and all the ecclesiastical domains:
“saving in every respect, he says, our own power and that of our son and
our successors.”¹¹⁹
¹¹⁸ Liutprand, b. 6, c. 6.—Pagi. Crit. Ann. Baron, ann. 962 —Fleury.
Eccles. Hist. b. 06, n. 1.
¹¹⁹ “This clause,” says Fleury, “shews, that the Emperor always
preserved to himself the sovereignty and jurisdiction over Rome,
and all places embraced in this donation: and the sequel of
history will prove it.”
The constitutions which required the emperor’s consent in the
installation of a pope were renewed: Otho considered himself even
invested with a right to depose the Roman pontiffs, and deferred not to
lay hold on an occasion for exercising it. Scarcely had he left Rome,
when John XII. measuring with terror the extent of the imperial
authority, repented having re-established it, and conceived the idea of
getting rid of it: Berengarius and Adalbert, with whom he had promised
to hold no intercourse, were to assist him in this undertaking. The
emperor who was soon apprised of it, received at the same time some
relation respecting the private conduct of the pontiff: it was not the
most edifying. Otho, appeared to pay but little attention to these
recitals:
“The pope, said he, is a child; the example of wor−
“thy men may convert him; prudent remonstrance
“may draw him from the precipice down which he
“is ready to cast himself.”
John received very ill these paternal counsels; he drew Adalbert to
Rome, affected receiving him with pomp, collected troops, and openly
revolted against the emperor, in defiance of the approach of this prince
and his army. But the forces were too unequal: John was compelled to fly
to Capua with Adalbert.¹²⁰
¹²⁰ Eccles. Hist. b.66. n. 6.
Otho entered Rome, and after receiving from the Romans an oath not to
recognize any pope not approved of by the emperor, he wrote to John XII.
a letter, which Fleury¹²¹ relates in these words:
“Being come to Rome for the service of God,
“when we demanded of the bishops and cardinals
“the occasion of your absence, they advanced
“against you things so shameful that they would be
“unworthy the folk of the theatre. All, clergy as
“well as laity, accuse you of homicide, perjury, sa−
“crilege, incest with your relatives, and with two
“sisters, and with having invoked irreverently Ju−
“piter, Venus, and other demons. We therefore
“beg of you to hasten instantly to exculpate your−
“self from all these charges. If you have any appre−
“hensions from the insolence of the people, we
“promise you that nothing shall be done contrary
“to the canons.”
¹²¹ Eccles. Hist b. 56. n. 6.
In reply the pope declared that he would excommunicate the bishops who
should dare to co-operate in the election of a sovereign pontiff. This
menace did not impede the council assembled by Otho, from deposing John
XII, and electing Leo VIII., notwithstanding some nobles attached to the
family of Alberic excited two seditions, one under the very eyes of the
emperor, the other immediately after his departure. The second of these
commotions replaced John on the pontifical throne, which he stained on
this occasion with the most horrible vengeance: he confined himself not
to excommunications, but caused to be executed or mutilated all who had
concurred in his deposition. His sudden death suspended the course of
these cruel executions: he perished from a stroke on the temple, applied
at night by the hand of some secret enemy, no doubt by one of the
husbands outraged by the Holy Father¹²² The Romans in contempt of all
the oaths they had taken to the emperor, gave him a a successor in
Benedict V: but Leo VIII. who had taken refuge with Otho, was soon led
back to Rome by this prince; and Benedict the true pope according to
Baronius¹²³ acknowledged himself the antipope at the feet of the head
of the empire, stripped himself of his pontifical vestments, sought
pardon for having dared to assume them, and finally offered his homage
to Leo as the legitimate successor of St. Peter¹²⁴ The German
publicists¹²⁵ have no doubt of the authenticity of an act, which Otho
caused Leo to subscribe at the time, addressed to the clergy and people
of Rome: it is stated in it, that no person for the future shall have
the privilege of electing the pope, or other bishop, without the
emperor’s consent; that the bishops elected by the clergy and the people
shall not be consecrated until the emperor shall have confirmed the
election, with the exception, however, of certain prelacies, the
investiture of which the emperor cedes to the archbishops; that Otho,
king of the Germans, and his successors in the kingdom of Italy, shall
have the power in perpetuity of selecting those who shall reign after
them; and that of nominating the popes, as well as the archbishops and
bishops who receive from these princes their investiture “by the cross
and the ring.”
¹²² Bellarmine, says John XII, was almost the most vicious of the
popes. Fait feri omnium deterrimus. De Rom. pontif. 6. 2. e. 29.
¹²³ Ann. Eccles. ad. aim. 964.
¹²⁴ Liutprand. I. 6. c. ult.—Vita Joannis xii. vol. 3. Rer. ltd. 1.
ii. pa. 328.
¹²⁵ See Pleffell. Abr. Chron. of the History of the Public Rights of
Germany, ann. 964; Koch’s Sketch of the Revolutions of Europe. 3d
period etc.
With the exception of these last words the act is delivered down to us
in Grotius’s decree; yet some Italian authors consider it apocryphal,
without, assigning any other reason for this opinion than the enormous
extent¹²⁶ which this constitution seems to confer on the imperial
power. We may, however, assert in this place, that though the
authenticity of this text be not very rigororously insisted on, the
testimony of contemporary historians¹²⁷ invariably proves, that Otho
obliged Leo VIII. to subscribe an explicit recognition of the imperial
rights.
¹²⁶ These decrees are inventions in which we find exorbitant
concessions to the imperial power, as well in the spiritualities
as temporalities of the Church of Rome. Cardinal Baronius in his
Ecclesiastical Annals, 964, father Pagi in his Critique on
Baronius, and others, have wisely rejected similar impostures.
Muratori’s Annals of Italy, year 964. vol. 6. p. 410.
¹²⁷ Liutprand. 1. 6, c. 6.—See vol. Pannom. 1. 8. c. 136; Grationi
Decretum dis. c. 73; De Marca Concord. 1. 8, c. 12; St Marc. Abd.
Hist, of Italy, vol. 4. dog. 1167, 1185.
The recent revolt of John XII. sufficed to excite in the emperor an
anxiety for this new guarantee: and Leo, his own creature, had no power
of placing restrictions to it. The act was such as Otho willed it to be
and this prince, a conqueror and a benefactor, would not rest satisfied
with an ambiguous formula.
Leo VIII. and Benedict V. died in 965; the commissioners of Otho caused
the election of John XIII. but the Romans revolted against this new
pope, and banished him. Otho was obliged to return into Italy, and
hasten to Rome to subdue the seditious and restore the pontiff. John
could forgive none of his enemies: he signalized his return by atrocious
vengeances, of which the emperor condescended to become the accomplice
and the instrument. They have tarnished the glory of this prince, and
justified the indifferent reception, at this period, of one of his
ambassadors to the Greek emperor, Nicephoras Phocas.:
“The impiety of thy master, said the empe−
“ror of Constantinople to the ambassador of Otho,
“does not allow us to receive thee honorably: thy
“master has become the tyrant of his Roman sub−
“ejects; he has exiled some, he has torn out the
“eyes of others; he has exterminated one−half of his
“people by the sword and by the scaffold.”
The ambassador to whom this discourse was addressed, was the historian
Liutprand, who himself relates it.
Otho, however, was not cruel by nature; in this instance he only yielded
to the importunities of the vindictive John.
The successes of Otho the Great, his excursions to Rome from the year
962 to 966, laid the foundation of the power of the German emperors, his
successors. He wished the imperial dignity to become forever inseparable
from the united kingdoms of Germany and Italy; that Christendom in its
full extent might form a republic which should recognize in the emperor
its sole temporal head; that it should be the privilege of this supreme
chief, to convoke councils, command the armies of Christendom, establish
or depose popes, to preside over, and to create kings. But in order to
elevate himself to such a pinnacle of greatness, he had need to manœuvre
the German bishops; they, therefore, received from him enormous
concessions. He distinguished the cities into two kinds, prefectorial,
and royal, since imperial, and confided the government of the latter to
the bishops, who laboured hard to render them episcopal. The bishops
became Counts and Dukes with royal prerogatives, such as the
administration of justice, privilege of coining money, collecting
customs, and other public revenues. It was by the title of fiefs, and on
condition of following him in his military expeditions, that Otho
gratified them with such power and wealth: but these dangerous
benefactions, in abridging the domains of the crown and the revenues of
the State, served the ends of future anarchy and revolution. The clergy,
as well the secular as regular, required in most of the countries of
Europe a formidable power, which would have been further encreased, if
already some symptoms of rivalry between these two bodies had not
fettered their common aggrandizement. Converts multiplied from day to
day, and enriched themselves almost beyond bounds. The Church’s period
of 1000 years was about to expire; and donations to the church,
especially to monasteries, passed for the most certain assurance against
eternal damnation. From the retirement of the cloisters arose important
personages, before whom the thrones of the world were humbled. Dunstan,
from Glastonbury Abbey, sprung forward to govern Great Britain, to
insult queens, and subject kings to penance. Otho the Great was at this
period the only prince of Christendom who fully ruled the ecclesiastical
authority: and if there remained among any people, ideas or ‘habitudes’
of civil independence, it was among the Romans in the centre of
Christianity itself.
The reign of Otho the Great, is the era to which we would willingly
refer the origin of the two factions, the papal and imperial, since
called those of the Guelphs and Ghibelins. But in the tenth century, the
partisans of the pope, were only citizens, emulous of obtaining the
independence of their city or republic, and to withdraw their elective
head from all domination. Some would have even preferred a civil
magistracy simply, as that of Alberic; they united rather in opposition
to the emperor, than in favor of the pontiffs chosen without, or in
defiance of, his authority. Such were the elements of the factions,
which revolted with John XII. which nominated Benedict V. and which
repelled, as far as in their power, Leo VIII. and John XIII. The emperor
had no partizans at Rome save his personal agents, and a few of the
inhabitants; the rest were subjected only by his presence or his arms.
Thus this pontifical faction which, in the sequel, appears to have
supported the most monstrous excesses of pontifical ambition, was
originally but a republican party, that more than once, it had been easy
to engage in the destruction of the temporal power of the popes, by
conferring on the Romans, and on some others of the cities of Italy, a
suitable government.
Otho died in 973; and from his death to the pontificate of Gerbert or
Sylvester II. the most remarkable events are, the accession of Hugh
Capet to the throne of France, the excommunication pronounced against
his son Robert, and the attempts of Crescentius to force Rome from the
yokes of Otho II. and Otho HI. the feeble successors of Otho the Great.
Crescentius was the son of Theodora, and, according to Fleury, of Pope
John X. We behold him governing Rome in quality of Consul towards 980;
but it is probable that from the year 974, he exercised a considerable
influence; stormy or weak pontificates restored the civil magistracy.
Benedict VI. the successor of John XIII. had been dethroned, imprisoned,
and strangled, or condemned to die of hunger. Boniface VII. the usurper
of the Holy See, after having plundered the churches, fled with his
booty to Constantinople: they hesitated not to fill his place, and the
imperial influence determined the election in favor of Benedict VII. who
belonged to the family of Alberic, now counts of Tusculum; a powerful
family, by whom the Emperor Otho II. and his agents, strengthened the
German party. But this emperor occupied in a war with the Greeks in the
Duchy of Beneventum, feared to displease the Romans by taking too active
a part in their affairs. He therefore prevented not Crescentius, who had
obtained their confidence, from ruling both the city and its bishop. In
983, when Benedict VII. died, the Romans and their consul elected John
XVI. Boniface, however, returned from Constantinople, made himself
master of Rome and of the person of John, caused him to perish in a
dungeon, and maintained himself during the space of eleven months, at
the head of the city and of the church. There is reason to think that
Crescentius contributed to the fall of Boniface, whom a sudden death
snatched from the vengeance of the people. John XV. elected in 985, had
disputes with the consul, who exiled him, and did not agree to see him
until the pope had promised to respect the popular authority. In despite
of this promise, Otho III. was called into Italy by John, who submitted
with reluctance to the ascendancy of Crescentius. John died at the
moment he expected to see himself delivered from this governor. Otho
III. nominated for pope a German, who took the name of Gregory V.: this
foreign pontiff elected by the influence of the Counts of Tusculum, on
the approach of the imperial army, odious on every account to the
Romans, became still more displeasing to them from German manners and
hauteur¹²⁸ It was at this moment Crescentius formed the project of
replacing Rome under the sovereign authority of the Greek emperors,
masters at once more gentle and more remote, accustomed to respect the
privileges of the people, and under whose protection the Neapolitans and
Venetians breathed freely and prospered. Greek ambassadors proceeded to
Rome under pretence of fulfilling a mission to the court of Otho; they
conferred with the consul, who deferred not to expel Gregory, and to
replace him by a Greek named Philogathus, who from being bishop of
Placentia, became pope or anti-pope under the name of John XVI. But Otho
came to Rome, and laid hold of this new pontiff, whom Gregory condemned,
in spite of the prayers of St. Nil, to lose his life by a series of the
most horrible torments. Crescen-tius had retired to the wall of Adrian;
they affected to treat with him, they pledged themselves to respect his
person: he relied on this promise given by the emperor, quitted the
fortress, submitted himself to Otho, and was instantly beheaded with his
most faithful partisans.
¹²⁸ Bellarmine and others, have attributed to Gregory V. the
institution of the seven electorates of the empire: this absurd
opinion has been often refuted. See for example, Natal. Alex.
Dissert. 18, in secul, 9 and 10; Maimbourg’s Hist, of the decline
of the empire, 1. 2, &c.; and Dupin’s Treatise on the
ecclesiastical power, p. 270.
It was John XV. who filled the chair of St. Peter, when in 987 Hugh
Capet dethroned the Carlovingian race, and made himself king of France.
This prince knew how to make this necessary revolution acceptable to the
French nobles and bishops; it proceeded without commotion, and above all
without the intervention of the Roman Court. Hugh did not apply to John
as Pepin before had done to Zachary; and the happiness of not being
indebted to the Holy See, for his elevation, was without doubt, one of
the causes of the security of Hugh, the long duration of his dynasty,
and the propagation of those maxims of independence, which have
distinguished and done honour to the Gallican church. These maxims were
proclaimed from the reign of Hugh, by a bishop of Orleans, and by
Gerbert archbishop of Rheims¹²⁹ It was in the affair of an archbishop
of this same city of Rheims, named Arnoul, who had betrayed the new
king, and whom this prince had deposed. John wished to re-establish
Arnoul and annul the election of Gerbert; but the monarch was firm, and,
while he lived, Gerbert remained in the See of Rheims, and Arnoul in the
prison of Orleans.
¹²⁹ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 2, p. 275, &c.
Robert, son of Hugh, did not resist with equal success the attempts of
Gregory V. Robert had married Bertha, although she was his relative in
the fourth degree, and that he had been godfather of a son that she had
by the Count of Chartres, her first husband. They exclaimed against a
marriage made in contempt of two such serious impediments. Too much
terrified by these clamours, Robert resolved to restore Arnoul to the
See of Rheims: this complaisance by which he hoped to reconcile himself
to the See of Rome, appeared but an indication of his weakness. The pope
did not hesitate to declare the marriage void; he excommunicated the two
spouses, and Robert, compelled to part Bertha, married Constance. This
pliability has been much urged against him; but after the
re-establishment of Arnoul, a perseverance in retaining Bertha would
have led almost infallibly to fatal consequences. We must consider that
Robert was the second king of his family; that this new dynasty had
scarcely reigned ten years; that Gerbert, one of the most judicious men
of this epoch, had left the King of France in order to attach himself to
Otho III.; that this emperor had appeared at the council in which
Gregory V. had excommunicated the son of Hugh; and finally, that these
anathemas were then so dreadful, that at the present day we can scarcely
avoid suspecting exaggeration in what is related to us of their
effects.¹³⁰ It was the first time France beheld herself placed under an
interdict, and that she received the injunction to suspend the
celebration of the divine offices; the administration of the sacrament
to adults, and religious sepulture to the dead. We are assured that
Robert, when excommunicated, was abandoned by his courtiers, his
relations, his household, and that even two servants who remained with
him caused to pass through the fire the things which he had touched.
¹³⁰ “I know,” says Bossuet, “that Peter Damien assures us, that no
person held intercourse with the king, except two servants for the
necessary occasions of life. But, either those of whom the pious
Cardinal received this information have exaggerated, or at least
we must suppose that the public officers continued to exercise
their duties, since without it the government could not subsist an
instant. Besides if it were true, that the exercise of certain
public offices had been suspended for some time, all history would
testify to this interregnum, and relate the confusion which would
have resulted from it.” Defence of the Grail. Cler. p. 2,1. 6, c.
27. Bossuet also observes, that at the moment in which Robert was
struck with these terrible anathemas, nobody thought or asserted
that this excommunication could carry the least attaint to the
sovereign authority of this monarch.
This Gerbert whom we have mentioned, became pope after Gregory V. by the
name of Sylvester II. It was he who, being archbishop of Rheims, and
seeing himself condemned by John XV. had expressed himself in these
words:¹³¹
“If the bishop of
“Rome sin against his brother, and that, often warn−
“ed, he obey not the church, he ought to be re−
“garded as a publican: the more elevated the rank,
“the greater the fall. When St. Gregory said, that
“the church ought to fear the sentence of its pastors,
“whether just or unjust, he did not mean to recom−
“mend this fear to the bishops, who do not consti−
“tute the flock, but are the heads and leaders thereof.
“Let us not furnish our enemies with an occasion to
“suppose that the priesthood, which is one in every
“church, be in such sort subject to a sovereign pon−
“tiff that if this pontiff suffer himself to be corrupted
“by money, favor, fear or ignorance, no person can
“hence be a bishop, unless he upholds himself by
“such means. The church has for a rule, the
“Scriptures, the decrees, and the canons of the Holy
“See, when these are conformable to Scripture.”
Driven from Rheims, Gerbert was received by Otho the III., who created
him, first, archbishop of Ravenna, then head of the church in 998. He
died in 1002, after having in this short pontificate, confirmed as far
as in his power, the imperial authority at Rome, and refused the
indications of independence which had agitated her citizens.
We cannot take leave of the 10th centuiy, without lamenting the gross
ignorance into which Europe was plunged. Possessions were regulated by
custom, and transactions pursued by remembrance alone. In the midst of
these people, these nobles, these kings, who knew neither how to read
nor write, the rudest instruction was, in the clergy suffered to put
them in possession of the civil administration.¹³²
¹³¹ Concilior. vol. 9, p. 744. A discourse which Arnoul bishop of
Orleans, pronounced in the Council of Rheims in 991, has been
occasionally cited under the name of Gerbert, which discourse may
be read in the history of this council revised by Gerbert. This
very remarkable document is too long to be inserted here.
¹³² Researches on France, b. 8, c. 13.
“The ecclesiastics, says Pasquier, di−
“vide among themselves the keys as well of reli−
“gion as of letters, altho’ so to speak, they derived
“from these only sufficient provision for their
“cubs.”
They alone could spell ancient writings, and trace some letters. They
assumed the dictating of wills, the regulation of marriages, contracts,
and public acts; they extorted legacies and donations, they freed
themselves from the secular jurisdiction, and endeavoured to subject all
things to a jurisprudence of their own.¹³³
¹³³ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 2, p. 293.
CHAPTER IV. ENTERPRISES OF THE POPES OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY
A SHORT time after the death of Sylvester II. a patrician, consuls,
twelve senators, a prefect, and popular assemblies, were seen to
re-appear at Rome. A second Crescentius, the son perhaps of the first,
filled the prefectorial office. As to the patrician, who was named John,
and who was the principal author of the reestablishment of this civil
magistracy, he is expressly designated to us as son of the first
Crescentius. But in 1013, Henry II. came to Rome: he received from Pope
Benedict VIII. the imperial crown: and the Romans, in spite of their
menaces, lost once more their independence. Baronius¹³⁴ relates a
diploma in which Henry confirms the donations of his predecessors: it is
added that Benedict, before receiving this emperor, made him swear that
he would be faithful to the pope, and regard himself only as the
defender and advocate of the Roman Church. Glaber,¹³⁵ a contemporary
historian, after having related this coronation, says, that it appears
very reasonable, and a thing well established, that no prince could take
the title of emperor, ‘save he whom the pope shall have chosen and
clothed with the insignia of this dignity:’ words which seem much less
to express in this place the sentiment of an individual than an opinion
generally established in his time.
¹³⁴ Ann. Eccles. ad ann. 1014. vol. 9, p. 48.
¹³⁵ Hiclor, 1. l, c. ult.
However Mabillon¹³⁶ and Muratori¹³⁷ deny the authenticity of the
diploma instanced by Baronius; and we see that in 1020, when Benedict
VIII. resorted to Henry in Germany, this prince confirmed the donations
of his predecessors with an express reservation of the imperial
sovereignty.
John XIX. the successor of Benedict, was banished by the Romans, and
restored by the Emperor Conrade, in 1033, whom he had crowned in 1027.
After John, who survived his re-establishment but a short time, his
nephew was elected pope, and took the name of Benedict IX. when he,
according to Glaber,¹³⁸ was but ten years of age.
¹³⁶ Annal. Bened. ann. 1014.
¹³⁷ Annals of Italy, year 1014, vol. 6, p. 45.
¹³⁸ Lib. 4, c. 6,1. 6, c. 6.
The elevation of an infant to the pontifical throne is not probable; but
all circumstances concur in proving that Benedict IX. was in 1033 but a
very young man: he bore to the chair of St. Peter the thoughtlessness
and irregularities of youth; and he was equally reproached for his
robberies and assassinations as for his gallantries. Behold how he is
pouryrayed to us by Victor III. one of his successors and
contemporaries¹³⁹ :
¹³⁹ J Dialo. 1: 3, In app. Chron. Cassin. vol. 1.
“I am horrified to state how shame−
“ful was the life which Benedict led, how dissolute, how
“detestable. Therefore I shall commence my rela−
“tion at the period when God took pity on his holy
“church. After Benedict IX. had wearied the Romans
“with his thefts, his murders, his abominations, the
“excess of his villainy became insupportable; he
“was expelled by the people: and to replace him
“they elected for a stipulated price, in contempt of
“the holy canons, John, Bishop of Sabine, who filled
“the Holy See for three months only, under the
“name of Sylvester in. Benedict IX. who was de−
“scended from the Consuls of Rome, and whom a
“powerful party recalled, wasted the environs of the
“city, and by the aid of his soldiers, compelled
“Sylvester to retire ignominiously to his bishoprick
“of Sabine. Benedict in resuming the tiara, did not
“leave behind him his manners, always hateful to the
“clergy, and to the people, whom his irregularities
“continued to disgust; terrified with the outcry
“raised against his crimes, given up besides to volup−
“tuous pleasures, and more disposed to live as an
“Epicurean than as a pontiff, he adopted the re−
“solution of selling the pontificate to the arch−
“priest John, who paid him a considerable sum
“for it. This John nevertheless passed in the city
“for one of the best of the ecclesiastics; and while
“Benedict took up his abode in houses of pleasure,
“John under the name of Gregory VI. governed the
“church two years and three months, till the arrival
“of Henry III., king of Germany.”
Such is the picture drawn for us by a pope, of the condition of the Holy
See, under three popes, his predecessors, from 1033 to 1046.
It may be proper to observe, that Benedict the VIII. his brother John
XIX. and their nephew, Benedict IX. were of the house of the Alberics
counts of Tusculum. This is one of the first examples of pontifical
nepotism, or of the efforts of a family to perpetuate itself in the Holy
See.
We have seen by the statement of Victor III. that in 1045, there existed
at the same moment three popes; to wit, Benedict IX. who had retired to
his castle; Sylvester III. exiled to his original bishopric; and Gregory
VI. seated at Rome, since 1044. This last pontiff, who had purchased his
place, wished to reap its fruits, and could not behold them without
grief considerably lessened from the loss of many domains, usurped by
seculars from the Holy See. He took up arms to reconquer them, without
neglecting, however, the excommunication of their possessors. These were
the principal acts of his pontifical court. He is represented to us, as
a very ignorant man, even for the age in which he fired; it is doubtful
whether he could read;¹⁴⁰ and history relates, that a coadjutor was
given him to perform the pastoral functions, while he was signalizing
himself by warlike exploits.
¹⁴⁰ Amolice Angerius de Viti Pontificum, p. 340.
At the moment of Henry’s arrival, at Rome, the three popes were there,
Benedict IX. at the palace of the Lateran, Sylvester III. at the
Vatican, and Gregory VI. or John his coadjutor, at Saint-Mary-Major.
Henry deposed the whole three without any difficulty, and caused a
fourth to be elected, Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who took the name of
Clement II. To this Clement succeeded Damasius II.
Leo IX. and Victor II. all like himself, the creatures of Henry III. The
ten years of this emperor’s reign, are one of the epochs during which
the Romans and the popes have been most decidedly subject to the
imperial power.
Leo IX. the relative and subject of Henry, indemnified himself for that
obedience which he could not refuse to this emperor, by acts of
authority against other sovereigns. He held a council at Rheims in
defiance of the King of France, Henry I. proclaimed in it the pontifical
supremacy, and deposed and excommunicated prelates and seculars. In a
council at Rome, he decreed that the females whom the priests should
abuse in the bosom of this city, should remain slaves of the palace of
the Lateran.¹⁴¹ This pontiff, whom they have placed in the catalogue of
saints, should rather have obtained a place in the rank of warriors. He
led an army against the Normans, who defeated him, and kept him prisoner
at Beneventum. His ponticate is memorable from the completion of the
schism of the Greek church; but the religious discussions which belong
to the history of this schism, exceed the limits of our subject: the
principal political result of this division was, to extinguish the
already very feeble influence of the Emperors of the East over the
affairs of Italy.
¹⁴¹ Fleury’s Eccles. Hist 1. 59, n. 75.
’Tis under Leo IX. that Hildebrand begins to be distinguished, a man the
most celebrated of his age. Born in Tuscany, where his father, they say,
was a carpenter, he studied in France, embraced the monastic rule there,
and returned into Italy to give counsel to Leo IX. Nicholas II. and
Alexander II. and finally to succeed them in the pontifical throne. The
idea of a universal theocracy had assumed in his fiery and iron soul the
character of a passion; all his life was devoted to the undertaking. To
assure the empire of the priesthood over the rest of mankind, he saw the
necessity of reforming their manners and concentrating their relations,
to isolate them more strictly, and to form them into one great family,
the members of which should no longer recollect having belonged to a
secular one. Ecclesiastical celibacy was as yet but a general practice,
introduced into and renewed in almost every church, but in almost all,
nevertheless, modified by exceptions or transgressions. Hildebrand
resolved to reduce it to a rigorous law: at his instigation, Stephen IX.
in 1058 declared marriage incompatible with the priesthood; treated as
concubines all the priest’s wives; and excommunicated both them and
their husbands, if the union was not instantly divided. The clergy made
some resistance; the priests of Milan, especially, objected the
permission granted them by St. Ambrose to marry, but in first nuptials
only, and provided it was with a virgin.¹⁴² Hildebrand to cut these
remonstrances short, classed in the number of heretics the obstinate
gain-sayers.¹⁴³
¹⁴² Landolph Senior. Hist Mediol. 1. 3. et 4;—Rer. Italic. t. 4, p.
96, See.—Cocio. Hist, of Milan, pa. 1, b. 6, &C.
¹⁴³ Baron. Ann. Leoies. ad ann. 1069.
Under Nicholas II. Hildebrand changed the mode of electing the popes.
Until his time, all the Romans, clergy, nobles, and people, had assisted
in these elections. It was ruled that for the future they should be
selected by the cardinal bishops alone, to whom the cardinal clerks
should afterwards be united, and they were to close the matter by
demanding the approbation of the rest of the clergy, and even that of
the body of the faithful. The cardinal bishops are no others than the
seven bishops of the Roman territory: Nicholas, in the same decree calls
them his fellow countrymen, “comprovinciales episcopi.¹⁴⁴ With respect
to the cardinal priests or clerks, it was those who administered the
offices of the twenty-eight principal churches of the city of Rome. Long
before Nicholas, these twenty-eight priests and these bishops, had been
designated by the appellation of ‘cardinals’; but now for the first
time, behold them invested with the exclusive and determinate privilege
of nominating the new popes: the rest of the clergy and the people
preserve no more than the power of rejecting the proposed. Such was the
origin of the Electoral College of Cardinals; a college, however, which
received subsequently, and by degrees, its present organization. It had,
as we see, for its first founder, Nicholas II. or rather Hildebrand. Let
us not omit the clause which terminates this decree:¹⁴⁵
¹⁴⁴ Mabillon. Mus. Italic, v. 2. p. 114.—Fra. Pagi. Breviar. Pontif.
Roman, vol. 2, p. 374.—Thomassin. Dicipl. vet. et nor. 1.2, c.
lid, 116.—Muratori. de origine Cardinalatus. Ant Ital. v. 6. p.
156.
¹⁴⁵ Concilior. tom. 9. p. 11,36.—Fleury Hiat.Eccles. 1.60 n 31.
‘saving the honour and respect due to king Henry,
‘future emperor, to whom the Apostolic See has given
‘the personal privilege of concurring in the election
‘by consent.’
The rights of the emperor were as yet too firmly founded to permit being
silent on them: they satisfy themselves by misrepresenting them, and by
referring to them as a concession granted by the Holy See, as a personal
privilege with which it was pleased to gratify Henry.
In founding ecclesiastical benefices, kings and nobles had reserved to
themselves the right of appointing to them; none could possess them
until after they had been invested by the donor or his heirs. It was a
simple application of the feudal system to ecclesiastical domains; but
the Court of Rome complained of the bad selection to which this system
led, and especially of the bargains which were driven between the
patrons and the candidates. A vast number of benefices were disposed of
no doubt: but this traffic has subsisted under every regime; the
question never has been other than that of knowing for whose benefit it
should be earned on. Hildebrand armed himself with a sanctified zeal
against this abuse: to extinquish it, he ventured to dictate for
Nicholas II. a decree, which prohibited the acceptance of a benefice
from a layman, even gratuitously.¹⁴⁶ This decree, published in 1059, in
the same council which confined to the cardinals the election of the
popes, presented itself under the form of a special rule against simony.
Little attention was at first given to it, it was rarely carried into
effect; but we are bound to point it out here as the prelude to the
quarrels about investitures.
¹⁴⁶ Baronins. Ann. ecclea. ad. ann. 1069, 5,32,34.
For a long period, kings and nobles had invested prelates in presenting
them with a switch or branch, as is practised in the investiture of
counts and knights. But the clergy, from the tenth century, had more
than once thought to deprive the patrons of benefices of their
privileges, by proceeding without delay to the election and consecration
of the prelate. It seemed allowed on all sides, that the consecration
rendered the election irrevocable: and if the patron layman had been
advertised of neither one nor the other, he lost the opportunity of
bestowing or selling the dignity. To escape this stratagem, the
sovereigns decreed that, immediately after the death of a prelate, the
ring and crozier should be transferred to his successor only in
investing him. Adam de Breme¹⁴⁷ refers to the reign of Louis le
Débonnaire this form of investiture: but it is infinitely more probable,
that it was not introduced until under Otho the Great, after the middle
of the tenth century: it was almost universally established in the
eleventh.¹⁴⁸ Hildebrand promised to himself its abolition, firstly,
because it secured to laymen the right of nomination or of sale, and
further, as it caused two symbols of the ecclesiastical power to pass
through the hands of the profane.
¹⁴⁷ Hist, eccles. 1.1. n. 2.
¹⁴⁸ Humbert 1.3. contra Simonaicus c. 7 et 11.
Far from reconciling himself to the continuance of a ceremony, in which
the secular authority seemed to confer sacerdotal offices, he pretended,
on the contrary, to erect the head of the church into the supreme
dispenser of temporal crowns. From the year 1059, he made, in the name
of Nicholas II. the first essay of this system. Nicholas received the
homage of the Romans, and created one of their chiefs Duke of Apulia
Calabria and Sicily, on condition that as vassal of the Apostolic See,
this chief, named Robert Guiscard, should take to the Roman Church the
oath of fidelity, pledge himself in the same character to pay it an
annual tribute, and enter into the same engagement for his
successors.¹⁴⁹ Such was the origin of the kingdom of Naples; and this
strange concession stripped the emperors of Constantinople of every
remnant of sovereignty over Grecia Major. Nicholas II. died in 1063; and
to elect and instal his successor Alexander II. the imperial consent was
in no way sought for. The court of Henry IV. then a minor, was offended,
and caused another to be nominated pope, Cadaloo, who named himself
Honorous II. Cadaloo defeated the army of Alexander, and succeeded in
fixing himself in the Vatican; but the duke of Tuscany drove him thence:
Alexander was recognised as the true pontiff, and Hildebrand continued
to reign.
¹⁴⁹ Baronins. Ann. eccles. ad ann. 1060.—Muratori’s Annals of Italy
vol. 6. p. 106.
Hildebrand did not sit in person in St. Peter’s chair until 1073. We may
be surprised he did not sooner occupy it; some authors think the pride
and inflexibility of his character indisposed the electors towards him:
to us it appears more than probable that he in fact did not aspire to
become pope, provided the pope became the sovereign of kings; for were
he ambitious of the tiara, if he had desired, as he was capable of
desiring it, how easily had he triumphed, since the year 1061, or even
previously, over some feeble resistance. It was to the unlimited
aggrandizement of the pontifical power, much rather than to his personal
elevation, his opinions and character impelled him. We perceive in his
conduct none of the manœuvering which private interest suggests: it
evinces all the outlines of an inflexible system, the integrity of which
is never permitted to be compromised by concession or compliance. His
zeal, which was not merely active but daring, obstinate and
inconsiderate, proceeded from an incurable persuasion. Hildebrand would
have been the martyr of theocracy, if circumstances had called for it;
and they were little short of it. Like all rigid enthusiasts, he
considered himself disinterested, and became without remorse, the
scourge of the world. Without doubt, interest is the spring of human
actions: but the success of an opinion is an interest too; and to
sacrifice thereto every other, has been in all ages the destiny of some.
There are those who, cautious of troubling their neighbours, compromise
only their own happiness; these are the more excusable, as it is perhaps
to truth they offer so pure and so modest a sacrifice. Others, like
Hildebrand, think to acquire by the privations they impose upon
themselves, the privilege of terrifying and tormenting nations: and
their melancholy errors cost the world a train of misfortunes.
There are attributed to Gregory VII. the papal name of Hildebrand,
twenty seven maxims which compose a complete declaration of the temporal
and spiritual supremacy of the Roman Pontiff,¹⁵⁰ comprising in it the
right of dethroning princes, disposing of crowns, and reforming all
laws. It is not very certain whether or not he really drew up or
dictated these articles; but the substance of them and their
developement will be found in his authenticated letters: they may be
entitled “The Spirit of Hildebrand;” they were the rule of his conduct,
the creed which he professed, and would have wished to impose on
Christendom. In them it is expressly stated that the pope has never
erred, and that he never can fall into any error; that he alone can
nominate bishops, convoke councils, preside over them, dissolve them;
that princes should stoop and kiss his feet; that by him subjects may be
loosed from their oaths of fidelity; and in a word that there is no name
upon earth but that of the pope.
¹⁵⁰ Dictalus Papæ. Concilior vol. 10 p. 110—Baron. Ann. eccles. ad
ann. 1076, sec. 24. De Marca. 1.7, c. 26.8. 9.
With reason has it been remarked how very much circumstances favoured
the designs of Hildebrand. Since the death of Otho the Great, the German
Empire had done nothing but weaken itself; Italy was divided into petty
states; a young king governed France; the Moors ravaged Spain; the
Normans had just conquered England; the northern kingdoms, newly
converted, were ignorant of the bounds of the pontifical authority, and
were to set the example of docility.
When Gregory VII. saw William the Conqueror established in England, he
did not hesitate prescribing to him to render homage for his kingdom to
the Apostolic See.¹⁵¹ This strange proposition had for its pretext, the
alms which the English had paid for about two centuries to the Roman
Church, and which was called Peter’s pence. The Conqueror, replied that
perhaps the alms would be continued, but it therefore did not follow,
that homage should be demanded of those from whom he received charity.
William at the same time forbad the English from going to Rome, and
prohibited them acknowledging any other pope than him whom he should
approve. This trifling affair had no other consequence; and we only
mention it in this place as it evinces better than any other, that
Gregory knew not how to fix any bounds to the pretensions of the Holy
See. Perhaps he imagined that the newness of William’s power in England
might incline him to wish for the protection of Rome, and make him
willing to purchase it by an act of vassalage: but it was evincing a
very false idea of the state of this conqueror’s affairs, his power, his
character, and his ascendancy over his new subjects. The least
reflection would have diverted Gregory from so ridiculous a step,
shameful because useless.
¹⁵¹ Fleury Hist. Ecclea. 1. 62, n. 63.
Sardinia, Dalmatia, Russia, were in Gregory’s eyes but fiefs which
ornamented the tiara. “On behalf of St. Peter,” thus he writes to
Demetrius the Russian prince, “we have given your crown to your son, who
receives it from our hands in taking the oath of fidelity to us.” We
must mention the names of all the princes who reigned in this pope’s
time, in order to fill up the catalogue of those whom he threatened or
struck with his excommunications: Nicephoros Bonotiate, the Greek
emperor, whom he enjoined to abdicate his crown¹⁵² ; Boleslaus, king of
Poland, whom he declared deprived of his authority, and added that
Poland should be no longer a king-dom¹⁵³ ; Solomon, king of Hungary,
whom he sent to learn from the old men of his country, that it belonged
to the Roman church¹⁵⁴ ; the Princes of Spain, to whom he stated that
St. Peter was supreme and sovereign lord of their states and domains,
and that it would be preferable that Spain should fall into the hands of
the Saracens, than cease to render homage to the vicar of Jesus
Christ¹⁵⁵ ; Robert Guiscard, his vassal, whose slightest neglect he
punished with anathemas¹⁵⁶ ; the Duke of Bohemia, of whom he exacted a
tribute of a hundred marks of silver: Philip I. king of France, whom he
affected to subject to similar exactions, and whom he denounced to the
French bishops as a tyrant plunged into infamy and crime, who deserved
not the name of a monarch, and of whom they would render themselves the
accomplices, if they did not rigorously resist him.
¹⁵² Concil. Rom. ann. 1078.
¹⁵³ Dngloss. Hist. Polon. 1. 3. 295.
¹⁵⁴ Gregor. Epist 1. 2, ep. 13, 23.—Fleury Hist. Ecoles* L62,n. 9.
¹⁵⁵ Fleury Hist eccles. 1. 62. a 9.
¹⁵⁶ Greg. Epist 1. 1, 26, 26, 62, 67.—Fleury, 1. 62. n. 9.
“Imitate, says he to them, the Roman Church your mother; sepa−
“rate yourselves from the service and communion of
“Philip, if he remain obstinate; let the celebration of
“the holy offices be interdicted throughout all France;
“and know that, by God’s assistance, we shall deliver
“this kingdom from such an oppressor.”
But of all the sovereigns of Europe, the emperor Henry IV. who had the
principal influence in Italian affairs, was, on this account, the most
exposed to the thunderbolts of Hildebrand.¹⁵⁷
¹⁵⁷ Greg. Epist. 1. 2. ep. 6.—Fleury 1. 62. n. 16.
Against so many potentates, and especially against Henry IV. Gregory had
no other support, no other ally, than an Italian princess, with little
talent, but much devotion, this was Matilda, countess of Tuscany. She
possessed for him a generous and tender friendship; he addressed to her
also, as a spiritual director, extremely affectionate letters; she lived
unhappily with Godfrey-le-Bossu, her first husband: from this
circumstance, and others, rash inductions have been drawn not supported
by any positive fact.¹⁵⁸ It is not the tender passions we can reproach
Hildebrand with; and the ascertained consequences of the connexion with
Matilda, belong only to the history of the pontifical ambition.
This princess gave all her possessions to the Holy See, and three
distinct monuments have been cited of this famous liberality. The first
act, subscribed by her in 1077, has not been found. The second, which
she signed twenty-five years later, when Hildebrand no longer lived, is
preserved at Rome;¹⁵⁹ and a will is also spoken of, which is not
forthcoming, but which they say, confirms the two preceding donations.
There exist indeed some difficulties, respecting these three acts: why
has the first been allowed to go astray? wherefore do historians say, it
was signed at Canossa, while it is referred to in the second, as having
been subscribed at Rome? And this second deed itself, which so
completely divests the giver, which reserves to her only some life
enjoyments, how reconcile it with the extensive domains with which she
continued to enrich monks and canons, from the year 1102, to 1115? Why
not publish her will, which had, perhaps, explained these apparent
contradictions? To all these questions we shall reply, that the act of
1102 subsists; that it expressly renews that of 1077; and that of all
the donations of which the Holy See hath availed itself, that of Matilda
is undoubtedly the best authenticated as well as the richest.
¹⁵⁸ Apud omnes sanum aliquid sapientes luce clarius con-stabat falsa
esse quae dicebantur. Nam et papa tam ésimié tamqne apostolicè
vitam instituebat, ut nec minimum sinistri rumoris maculum
conversations ejus sublimitas admitteret; et illâ in urbe
celiberrimâ atque in tantâ obsequentium fire-quentiâ, obscœnum
aliquid perpetrans, latere nequaquam potu-isset. Signa etiam et
prodigia quae per orationes papœ frequen-tiùs fiebant, et zelus
ejus ferventissimus linguas communie bant.—Lambert Schafur. ad
ann. 1177. This chronicler attributes, as we see, to Gregory, the
gift of miracles, and concludes from it that his commerce with
Matilda was irreproachable. “Nevertheless, says the Jesuit
Maimbourg, as the world, from a certain malignity attached to it,
has a greater ’penchant’ for believing the evil than the good,
especially with persons of some reputation for virtue, this
commerce failed not to be of bad effect, and tended to blacken his
character of Gregory at this period.”
¹⁵⁹ Diss. of St Marc. p. 1231. 1316 of v. 4. of Ab. Hist, of Italy.
In truth, the emperor Henry V. the heir of this Countess, made himself
master of all she had been possessed of, and which reverted at a later
period to the Court of Rome; but, with time, the popes have secured a
part of this inheritance, and have termed it the Patrimony of St. Peter:
they are indebted for it to the cares of Gregory VII.
Heniy IV. had obtained a victory over the Saxons, when he was addressed
by two legates, who communicated to him the order, to appear at Rome, in
order to reply to the accusations brought against him: it related to
investitures granted by him, ‘by the cross and ring;’ it was requisite
to obtain pardon, or submit to an excommunication¹⁶⁰ Henry, although he
despised the menace, thought proper to give the pope some trouble in the
city of Rome: a tumult took place, and Gregory was seized, struck,
imprisoned, and ransomed. The effect of this ill-treatment was to cast
an interest on the person of the pontiff, and to prepare him against a
more serious vengeance. The emperor in a council at Worms, deposed
Gregory, who, too confident of the inefficacy of such a decree, replied
to it by the following:¹⁶¹
“On the part of the Almighty God, and of my full
“authority, I forbid Henry, the son of Henry, to
“govern the kingdom of the Teutons and Italy:
“I absolve all Christians from the oaths they have
“taken, or shall hereafter take to him; and all per−
“sons are forbidden to render him services as a “king.”
¹⁶⁰ Lamb. Schaf. ad ann. 1074.—Life of Gregory VII. ap. Bell. t. 17.
p. 148.
¹⁶¹ Concilior. vol. 10. p. 366. Here is, according to Otho of
Freisingen, the first example of the deposition of a king by a
pope. Lego et relego Roma norum regum et imperatorum gestu, èt
nusquam invenio quemquam eorum ante hune à Romano pontifice
excommunicatum vel regno privatum. Otho. Fies. Chron. 1. 6, c.
35.— Quanta autem mala, quotbella, bellorumque discriminia, inde
subsecuta sunt? Quoties misere Eoma obscessa, capta rastata? Ibid.
c. 36.
We would willingly discredit it, but it is proved that these extravagant
words, snatched from the monarch the fruit of all his victories. The
civil war was again kindled in the centre of Germany; an army of
confederates was assembled near Spires, surrounded Henry, opposed to him
the sentence of the pope, and made him pledge himself to forbear the
exercise of his power, until the decision, to be pronounced at
Augsburgh, between him and the pope, in a council over which the latter
was to preside.
To prevent this last decision, Henry determined to seek pardon of
Hildebrand; he found him in the fortress of Canossa, where the pontiff
was shut up with his countess Matilda. The prince presented himself
without guard, and without retinue: stopped in the second enclosure, he
suffered himself to be stripped of his vestments and clothed in
sackcloth. With naked feet, in the month of January 1077, he awaited in
the midst of the court the Holy Father’s reply. This reply was, that he
should fast three days before he could be permitted to kiss Hildebrand’s
feet; and at the end of three days, they would be willing to absolve and
receive him, under the promise of a perfect submission to the
forthcoming decision of Augsburgh. Gregory might have foreseen that this
excess of pride and tyranny would disgust the Italians, by whom he was
already detested. His power had this disadvantage in their eyed, that it
was not beheld at a sufficient distance. Lombardy armed itself in behalf
of Henry, whom the Germans deserted; and while Germany elected another
emperor Italy chose another pope.¹⁶²
Rodolphus duke of Swabia having been nominated emperor, Gregory
excommunicated Henry once more. “I take the crown from him he said, and
give the Teutonic kingdom to Rodolph.” He even made a present to the
latter of a crown, round which was to be seen an indifferent latin
verse, of which here follows a translation. “La Pierre a donne a Pierre,
et Pierre donne a Rodolphe le diademe.”¹⁶³ Peter, a stone, has given to
Peter, and Peter gives to Rodolph a diadem. At the same time Henry
elevated to the papacy Guibert the archbishop of Ravenna, and assembled
an army against Rodolph. In vain Gregory prophesied that Heniy would be
vanquished, would be exterminated before St. Peter: it was Rodolph who
fell; he was killed in a skirmish by Godfrey of Bouillon, nephew of
Matilda. Henry marched down on Rome: after a long seige, he took it by
assault; and Gregory shut up in the mole of Adrian, continued to
excommunicate the conqueror.
¹⁶² Henry’s Eccles. Hist. 1074, 1080, 1. 62 and 63.
¹⁶³ Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rodolpho.
It will be perceived that the pun is perfect only in the French, the
English is wholly incapable of it.
The commotions which were prolonged in Germany, compelled Henry to make
frequent journies. During the siege of Rome, and after his entrance into
this capital, he quitted it more than once. Robert Guiscard took
advantage of one of these occasions to deliver Gregory, but still more
to ravage and pillage the city: he burned one quarter, which has since
remained almost deserted, that between St. John de Lateran and the
Coliseum, and reduced to slavery a great number of the inhabitants. This
was the most memorable result to the Romans, and the most lasting to
this pontificate¹⁶⁴
Hildebrand, borne away by the Normans to Salerno, terminated his career
there the 24th of May, 1085, excommunicating Henry to the last, with the
antipope Guibert, and their adherents¹⁶⁵ So lived and so died Gregory
VII., whose name, under Gregory XIII., was inscribed in the Roman
martyrology, to whom Paul V. decreed the honours of an annual
festival¹⁶⁶ and for whom Benedict XIII. in the 18th century, challenged
the homage of all Christendom: but we shall see the parliaments of
France oppose this design with an efficacious resistance.
¹⁶⁴ Vita Greg. 7, édita à Card. Arrag. p. 313.—Landulph Sen. I. 3, c.
3, p. 120.—Rer. Jtal. vol. 5, p. 587.
¹⁶⁵ Pauli. Beruried. Vit. Greg. VII. c. 110, p. 348.—Sigeb. Chron.
ann. 1085.
¹⁶⁶ Fleury’s Eccles. Hist. 1. 63, a. 25.—Act. Sonet. Bell. 25. maii.
It is deserving of greater reprehension than Gregory himself merited,
the canonization, after five hundred years of study and experience, of
his deplorable wanderings. For the excuse cannot be alleged in favour of
his panegyrists that his enterprises may find in his enthusiasm, his
ignorance, and the thick darkness of his age. Pasquier,¹⁶⁷ with too
much reason describes him as:
“one of the boldest
“combatants for the Roman See, who forgot nothing,
“whether of arms, of the pen, or by censures, of what
“he conceived to tend to the advantage of the Papacy
“or disadvantage of Sovereigns.”
The audacious Gregory VII. had a timid successor in Victor III. It is
from him we have borrowed the words at the commencement of this chapter,
to depict some of the preceding popes. Victor III. filled scarcely for a
year the pontifical chair. He confirmed, however, in a council at
Beneventum, the decrees passed against investitures.
¹⁶⁷ Researches on France, 1. 3. c. 7.
Urban II. who succeeded him, was during ten years a more worthy
successor of Hildebrand: he instigated against Henry, Conrade, the
eldest son of this emperor, encouraged this ungrateful son to calumniate
his father, and recompensed him by crowning him king of Italy.
Christendom was then divided between Urban II. and Guibert, who had
taken the name of Clement III. and whom Henry IV. re-established in Rome
in 1091. Urban till 1096 travelled in France and Northern Italy. Philip,
king of France, repudiating his Queen Bertha, had married Bertrade:
Philip was excommunicated in his own States by Urban, his born subject,
to whom he had given an asylum¹⁶⁸ But these journies of the pontiff are
especially celebrated by the preaching up of the first crusade.
Hildebrand had conceived¹⁶⁹ the earliest idea of these distant
expeditions, which were, in aggrandizing the church, to diminish the
power of the Greek emperors, or compel them to return under the
domination of the Holy See. He beheld in them an opportunity of
regulating at once all the movements of the Christian princes, of
establishing himself judge of all the quarrels which might arise among
them, to divert them from the Government of their States, and to augment
by their absence the habitual influence of the clergy over all kinds of
affairs. The pilgrimages to the Holy Land became under Gregory VII. more
frequent than they had previously been: the recitals of the pilgrims
were one day to provoke a general movement. This day did not arrive till
Urban’s time: a man named Cucupietre, called Peter the Hermit, made to
the pope a lamentable recital of the vexations which the Christians
experienced in Palestine; he implored on their behalf powerful succours
against the Musselmans. Urban dispatched Peter to all the princes and
churches of Italy, France, and Germany; and after leaving the preacher
time sufficient to spread his enthusiasm among the people of these
countries, the crusade was finally proposed in a council or assembly at
which the pope presided, in an open plain not far from Placentia. There
were collected upwards of thirty thousand laics alone, independent of
prelates and priests: the expedition projected was universally
applauded, but it was applauded alone; no one as yet assumed the cross.
Urban had better success in France; the crusade was resolved on at
Clermont, in an assembly at which he presided and harangued. They
exclaimed “’Tis the will of God;” and these words became the device of
the crusaders, the number of whom encreased beyond measure. The military
history of this expedition does not concern us: we have only to observe,
that the first act of this army was to re-establish ‘en-passant’ pope
Urban, in the city of Rome, at the end of the year 1096. Henry, driven
from Italy by the troops of the Countess Matilda, retired to Germany.
Urban did not die till 1099; and the pontificate of his successor Pascal
II. belongs principally to the twelfth century.
¹⁶⁸ Velly’s Hist, of France, v. 2, p. 493.
¹⁶⁹ Fleury. Hist. Eccles. 1. 62. n. 14.
The age which we have passed over, ought to remain for ever famous in
the history of the popes. If they are not yet recognized as sovereigns,
if their temporal power has not yet been declared independent, it in
effect rivals and threatens the throne which ought to govern it. Already
the Two Sicilies had become fiefs of the Holy See; the donations of
Matilda have extended, over almost all Middle Italy, the rights or
pretensions of the court of Rome. But what signify the limits and the
nature of these temporal possessions, when the spiritual authority no
longer recognizes restriction, when the gospel ministry transforms
itself into a universal theocracy, which brands, curses, deposes kings,
and disposes of their crowns. One man alone, it is true, had fully
conceived this tremendous system; but the opinions, of which the
ignorance of this man, as well as his contemporaries, was composed,
encouraged his undertakings, however monstrous, and political
circumstances promised him success from them. New dynasties had arisen
in France, England, and other countries: the French emperors, threatened
in their own palaces, had lost every remnant of authority in Italy: it
was sufficient to humble the Emperor of the West; he alone
counterbalanced in Europe the weight of the Holy See. In attacking him
one might reckon on the support or neutrality of other monarchs; they
were jealous of his preponderance: Rome in humiliating them, disposed
them to reconcile themselves to it by the spectacle of more serious
outrages reserved for their head; they childishly rejoiced in the great
share he should have in the common humiliation. They turn, in the mean
time, against him, the old or new factions which troubled Germany; they
redouble their insolence and their power by the thunder of the anathemas
with which they struck him; and if so many efforts did not overthrow
him, at least, they staggered and weakened him. Such was the war waged
by Hildebrand, against Heniy IV. the first at the period, or as we may
term him, the only representative of the civil power in the West. In
bequeathing this war to his successors, Hildebrand vanquished as he was,
had pointed out the object, traced the plan, and tempered the arms.¹⁷⁰
There had needed to complete his work, perhaps, in the course of the
following century, but two or three successors of his inflexible
enthusiasm. Giannone accuses him of having forged the Donations of
Constantine, Pepin, Charlemagne, and Louis-le-Debonnaire. We have seen
the first of these donations adduced in the eighth century;¹⁷¹ the rest
are mentioned by writers anterior to the eleventh: all these acts were
spoken of before Gregory’s time: at the most he could only have arranged
the texts more categorically, and more favourable to his pretensions. It
is certain, that no means adopted for the establishment of pontifical
tyranny would have alarmed his conscience: the most efficacious,
therefore, appeared to him the most laudable; and, if some of his
proceedings, judged of after the events, seem to us equally imprudent
and violent, we should reflect that so enormous an enterprise could only
be accomplished by audacity in the extreme.
¹⁷⁰ Giannone’s Hist, of Italy. 1.10, c. 6.
¹⁷¹ Ibid. p. 12.
CHAPTER V. CONTESTS BETWEEN THE POPES AND THE SOVEREIGNS OF THE TWELFTH
CENTURY
WITH the pontifical power, such as Hildebrand would have it, not to gain
a great deal was to lose a little. Now under the popes of the twelfth
century it was not much extended: they knew not how to reap the fruits
of the labours of Gregory VII. Pascal II. however, who reigned near
twenty years, from 1099 to 1118, very earnestly aspired to universal
monarchy; but his designs, opposed by circumstances, were still more so
by the weakness of his character. The antipope Guibert, who died in
1100, had for a long period for his successors, an Albert, a Theodoric,
a Maginulph: obscure persons, whose pretensions, nevertheless, though
weakly supported by a small Dumber of partisans, sufficed to intimidate
Pascal. He did not press the excommunication of Henry king of England,
when in 1101, the war of investitures was kindled between this monarch
and Anselm archbishop of Canterbury. If he evinced greater boldness
against Philip, king of France, it was, doubtless, because Urban II. had
commenced the quarrel, and that the notoriety, the censures with which
this prince had been struck, admitted of no retraction. Pascal II.
therefore, ventured to send legates into France, who were to
excommunicate king Philip anew, but still on account of his divorce.
Indignant at the attempts of these priests, William, count of Poitou,
and Duke of Aquitain, did himself honour under these circumstances, by a
courage, that Philip, however, did not imitate.—. Philip demanded
absolution of the pope, and obtained it, on swearing to renounce
Bertrade. He came with bare feet in the depth of winter to take, in a
council at Paris an oath which he did not observe.—We know of no
authentic act, which re-established the marriage of Bertrade with
Philip; but they continued to live together without being disturbed by
the church: the states and rights of their children were never called in
question.
At the same period that Matilda renewed her donation, Pascal II.
confirmed the anathemas of his predecessors against Henry IV.¹⁷² and
raised him an enemy in an ambitious and ungrateful son.
¹⁷² He writes in these terms to Robert, Count of Flanders: “Pursue
every where with all your power, Henry, the chief of heretics, and
his abettors. You can offer to God no more acceptable sacrifice
than to combat him who has raised himself against God; who
endeavours to deprive the church of the kingdom, and who has been
banished by the decree of the Holy Ghost, which the prince of the
apostles has pronounced. We appoint this undertaking to you, and
also to your vassals for the remission of your sins, and as a
means of arriving at the celestial Jerusalem.”
In vain did a paternal letter invite this son to repentance:¹⁷³ it was
replied, that an excommunicated person was not acknowledged as father,
or as king.
¹⁷³ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 2, p. 480.
Loosed from his oaths, and from his duties, by the sovereign pontiff,
the youthful Henry took up arms, and had himself elected emperor in a
diet held at Mayence. Henry the elder, retired to the castle of
Ingelheim: there the archbishops, sent by the Diet, came to summon him
to surrender to them the crown and other insignia of his power:
“Thou
“hast rent the church of God, said they to him,
“thou hast sold the bishopricks, the abbeys, every
“ecclesiastical dignity; thou hast in no case res−
“pected the sacred canons: for all these causes, it
“has pleased the pope and the German princes to
“expel thee from the throne as from the church.”
“I adjure you,” replied the monarch,
“you archbi−
“shop of Cologne, and you of Mayence, who
“hold of me your rich prelacies, to declare, what
“was the price at which you purchased them of
“me. Oh! if I only exacted from you the oath of fide−
“lity to me, wherefore do you become the accom−
“plices, the chiefs of my enemies? Could you
“not wait the termination of a life which so many
“misfortunes might abridge, and at least, permit
“my own hands to place the crown on the head of “my beloved son.”
But Henry was not speaking to fathers; he addressed himself to
inflexible prelates:
“Is it not to us, cried one of them, the privilege
“belongs to create kings, and to dethrone them
“when we have made a bad choice?”
At these words, the three archbishops fell on their sovereign; they tore
the imperial crown from his head; and while he assured them, that if he
suffered at this moment for the sins of his youth, they would not escape
the punishment due to their sacrilegious disloyalty, they smiled at his
menace, and to secure impunity for their crime by consummating it
speedily, they hastened to Mayence, to consecrate and bless in the name
of God the parricide Henry V.¹⁷⁴
Heniy IV. shut up in Louvain, saw an army of faithful subjects assemble
around him. At their head he obtained a victory over the rebels; but,
vanquished without resource, in a second combat, he fell into the hands
of his enemies, who loaded him with insults. “The hatred of the popes,”
writes this unhappy sovereign to Henry the I. King of France,¹⁷⁵
¹⁷⁴ Otho Friging. Chron. 1. 7, c. 8, 12.—Abb. Ursperg. Chron. p.
243.—Sigon. de Regno Italico. 1. 19.
¹⁷⁵ Sigeb. Gemblac. apud Stras, vol. 1, p. 866.—Otho Fris. Chron. 1.
7, c. 12.—Fleury’s eccles. Hist. vol. 66, n. 42.
“the hatred of the popes, has carried
“them so far as to violate the laws of nature; they
“have armed my son against me; this son, in con−
“tempt of the fidelity he had sworn to me as my
“subject, comes to invade my kingdom; and what
“I would I could conceal, he has even practised “on my life.”
Escaped from prison, but plunged into extreme misery, the old emperor
was reduced to solicit in a church, formerly built by his cures, a
subaltern employment, which he did not obtain. He died; they disinterred
him; Pascal II. would not allow an excommunicated corpse to repose in
peace; five years, the remains of an emperor who had distinguished
himself in sixty-six battles, remained without burial; the clergy of
liege, who ventured to collect them, was punished for it by anathemas,
and almost in our own days, a Jesuit named Longueval¹⁷⁶ has adjudged
the fidelity and boldness of this clergy to have been inexcusable.
¹⁷⁶ Hist, of the Gall. Church, vol. 8, p. 187.
The best authenticated history has almost the air of a moral fiction,
when after 1106, it represents Henry V. and Pascal occupied in avenging
one upon the other, their common outrages on the rights and repose of
Henry IV. Henry V. came to Rome, kissed the pope’s feet, and desired to
be crowned emperor. Pascal deemed the conjuncture a favourable one for
regaining a formal renunciation of the investitures, which he had just
condemned in a council held at Troyes. But he had hardly mentioned this
pretension, when he was arrested, carried off to the Sabine, and
confined in a fortress. There such a terror seized the Holy Father, that
he, with sixteen cardinals; signed a treaty, in which he secures to the
emperor, the right of investiture, provided he mingles with it no
simony; he did more, he bound himself never to excommunicate Henry V.
and consented to the inhumation of Henry IV. To seal this compact on the
faith of the most awful mysteries, a host is divided between the pope
and the emperor: “As these are divided into two parts, said the pontiff,
so may he be separated from the kingdom of Jesus Christ, who shall
violate this treaty.” Such was the oath which Pascal took, and which he
renewed after he had recovered his liberty.
From this period he had no resource from the reproaches addressed to him
by the Roman clergy, and which were redoubled in proportion as the
emperor and his army removed from Rome. Behold, then, the head of the
church, who permits himself to be taxed with prevarication, who retires
to Terracina to weep his error, who suffers cardinals to annul his
decrees and his promises! he was about, he said, to abdicate the tiara;
happily they opposed this design; and such is the docility of the holy
pontiff, that he constrains himself to preserve power, in order to make
a better use of it. Finally, he revokes, in a council, the treaty he had
the misfortune to subscribe; he declines, however, to excommunicate
Henry him-himself, so scrupulous is he still of violating his
engagement! It was the Cardinals who pronounced this anathema in the
presence of Pascal II. Not only did this Council condemn investitures,
but furthermore, it termed all those heretics who did not condemn them.
Henry V. conceived little danger from it. He came into Italy in 1116, to
take possession of the rich inheritance bequeathed by Matilda to St.
Peter. She had not transferred either sovereign rights or prerogatives,
nor yet fiefs, but merely landed property, which the Roman Church was to
enjoy as the proprietor, ‘jure proprietario’.¹⁷⁷ It matters not—the
emperor pretends that the countess had no power, even on these grounds,
to dispose of those domains; and during the whole of the 12th century,
the popes remained deprived of this inheritance. After having taken
possession, Henry advanced towards Rome; a sedition had burst out there
against Pascal, whose long pontificate displeased the great, and whose
person every one. While the pope fled to Monte Cas-sino, and shut
himself up in Beneventum, the excommunicated monarch entered Rome, as if
in triumph, and there received the imperial crown from the hands of
Bourdin, archbishop of Bruges. Pascal excommunicated Bourdin,
endeavoured to raise up against Henry, now France, now the Normans
established in Lower Italy, and, finally, terminated his career, rather
ingloriously, in the month of January, 1118.
¹⁷⁷ Chartula comittissæ Matbildia super concessione bono-rum suorum,
Roman, eccles. vol. 6, p. 384. Script, rer. Italic.
His partisans gave him for successor, Gelasius II. whom the Frangipani,
a family devoted to the emperor, were unwilling to recognize. Gelasius,
arrested, released, and pursued, took the determination to fly to Gaeta,
his country, from the time he was aware that Henry approached Rome.
Henry had Bourdin raised to the papacy, who, having taken the name of
Gregory VIII. crowned the new emperor. But the moment the latter quitted
Rome, Gelasius entered it secretly. Driven out by the Frangipani he
fled, returned, fled again, retired into Provence, and died at Cluni. He
had reigned but one year, if, indeed, it can be said he reigned at all.
From the time of Gregory VII. to Gelasius II. inclusive, almost all the
popes, drawn from the shade of the cloister, had borne to the throne the
obstinacy and asperity of the monastic spirit. Calixtus II. who replaced
Gelasius, sprung from the house of the counts of Burgundy. The relative
of the emperor, and of many other monarchs, he possessed at least some
idea of the art of governing, and of reconciling great interests. He had
the honour of terminating the disputes about investitures. A diet at
Worms ruled, that for the future the prelates should be elected only in
the presence of the emperor, or of his lieutenants:—that in case of
misunderstanding, the matter should be referred to the emperor, who
should take the opinion of the bishops: that, finally, the emperor
should bestow investiture by the sceptre, and not by the crozier and
ring¹⁷⁸ Calixtus ratified this treaty in the midst of the general
Lateran Council of 1123. We may also applaud this pontiff for saving the
life of his rival Bourdin; he contented himself with exposing him to the
jests of the populace, consigning him for ever to the depths of a
dungeon, and with causing himself to be represented trampling this
antipope under his feet.¹⁷⁹ Such was the generosity of this friend!
Calixtus pressed the king of England to restore a deposed bishop. ‘I
have sworn,’ replied the king, ‘never to suffer him to re-ascend his
seat.’ ‘You have sworn,’ said Calixtus, ‘very well, I am pope, and I
release you from your oath.’ ‘How, replied the monarch, ‘shall I çonfide
in this bishop’s oaths, or in your’s, if your will alone is necessary to
cancel them.’
¹⁷⁸ Concilior. vol. 10, p. 883.—Abb. Ursperg. Chron. p. 204.
—Muratori’s Antiquities of Italy, med. ævi. vol. 6, p. 72.
—Schill. de libertate eccles. German. 1. 4, c. 4, p. 545.
¹⁷⁹ Art of verifying dates, vol. i. p. 283, 284.
Honorius II. who filled the Holy See from 1124 to 1180, is only
remarkable for his disputes with Roger, Count of Sicily, whom he wished
to prevent uniting Apulia and Calabria, an inheritance left him by
William II. his father, to his States. The pope fearing that Roger might
become powerful enough to invade the Ecclesiastical States, sent an army
against him, which was defeated. The king of France, Louis le Gros, was
then exposed to the censures of the bishops of his own kingdom: the
seditious conduct of the bishop of Paris having required repressive
measures, this prelate, whose temporalities were seized, dared to place
his own diocese, and the possessions of the king, under interdict. The
most praiseworthy action of Honorius is the removal of this interdict,
and the having coldly seconded the ardent zeal of St. Bernard, when this
pious abbot, treating his king as an infidel, a persecutor, a second
Herod, solicited the pope to bring this affair before the Holy See.
Louis was indebted for the tranquillity of the last ten years of his
reign; to the prudence of Honorius, whom St, Bernard accused of
weak-ness.¹⁸⁰
It was in the pontificate of this Honorius, that the two factions, the
imperial and the papal, originating as we have seen, in the tenth
centuiy,¹⁸¹ took, in a more decided form, the distinctions of Guelphs
and Ghibeli-. nes. These two appellations are the names of two German
houses, which in 1125, when Henry V. died, disputed the imperial crown.
One of these families, sometimes called* Salique, sometimes Guiebelinga
or Waiblinge, reigned in Franconia, and had furnished the four last
emperors; it was distinguished by its long disputes with the Church: the
other family, originally of Allfort, possessed Bavaria; and many of its
heads, devoted to the popes, had borne the name of Welf or Guelpho.
¹⁸⁰ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. iii. p. 73, 74.
¹⁸¹ Ibid. p. 88, 89.
The duke of Saxony, Lothaire, chosen at Mayence, as successor to Henry,
was impatient to manifest his attachment to the house of Guelph, by
espousing the heiress of Henry duke of Bavaria. The duke of Franconia,
Conrade, was then in Palestine; he hastened to combat Lothaire,
re-animated the partisans of the house of Ghibeline, and caused himself
to be crowned emperor, by the archbishop of Milan, while Honorius II.
declared himself in favour of the confederate of the house of Guelph.¹⁸²
¹⁸² Otto Frising. Chron. 1. 7, c. 17.—De Gestis. Fred. 1. 2, c.
2.—Mase. Comment, de rebus imperii sub Lothario ET. 1. 1, 8. 1. 9.
23; sub Conrade III. 1. 3, p. 141.—Chron. Weingen-tense de Guelfi
principibus, apurt Leibnitz, v. 1, p. 781.
At Rome, another powerful family, the Frangipani, had for rivals the
children of a Jew named Leo, who, opulent, and a convert, had become,
under these two qualifications, as formidable as famous. Peter de Leon,
the son of this Jew, sought, under the name of Anaclet, to succeed
Honorius II. to whom the Frangipani gave for a successor, Innocent IT.
The two popes were enthroned and consecrated at the same time in Rome:
but Anaclet proved the strongest there; Innocent took refuge in France,
where St. Bernard had him acknowledged, and held many councils up to the
year 1133. Returned to Rome, he crowned the Guelph, Lothaire, emperor,
in ceding to him the usufruct of Matilda’s domains. Anaclet died; his
successor Victor abdicated the tiara; the schism was extinguished; and
Pope Innocent II. considered himself sufficiently firm upon the
pontifical throne, to menace Count Robert, and the king of France, Louis
the Young. Roger defeated the troops of Innocent, who, fallen into the
hands of the conqueror, saw himself compelled to confirm the title of
king, given to Roger by Anaclet. Louis VII. defended himself with less
success: exercising the right which all his predecessors had exercised,
he had refused to ratify the election of an archbishop of Bourges.
Innocent received the pretended archbishop, consecrated him, and sent
him to take possession, spoke of the king as of a young man whom it was
necessary to instruct, that it was not proper he should in anywise
accustom himself to meddle in the affairs of the church,—and, enraged
with the opposition of this prince, he laid his kingdom under an
interdict: a sentence then so much the more terrible, as, echoed by the
French prelates supported by St. Bernard, it presented to Thibault,
Count of Champagne, a turbulent and hypocritical vassal, the opportunity
of exciting a. civil war. Louis armed himself against Thibault, entered
Vetry, and tarnished his victory by delivering thirteen hundred of its
unfortunate inhabitants to the flames. This excess was subsequently
expiated by a crusade which had itself needed expiation.
Celestine III. the successor of Innocent II. took off the interdict laid
on France, refused to confirm the treaties entered into by his
predecessors with Roger, king of Sicily, and declared himself against
Stephen, who had taken possession of the English throne. The pontificate
of Çelestine II. and that of Lucius II. who followed him, scarcely
completed two years; but these are memorable from the disturbances which
agitated the city and environs of Rome.
Arnauld of Brescia, an austere monk, but eloquent and seditious, had
denounced the ambition and the despotism of the clergy. To maxims of
independence, which were qualified political heresies, he united certain
less intelligible errors, which he adopted of Abelard, his master and
his friend. From 1139, Arnauld, condemned by the second Lateran council,
had left Italy, and had taken refuge in the territory of Zurich. During
his exile the Romans, discontented with Innocent II. restored some
semblance of their former liberty; and these attempts, more bold under
Çelestine II. became, under Louis, serious undertakings. They created a
patrician, popular magistrate, and president of a senate composed of
fifty-six members. The patrician was a brother of the antipope Anaclet;
the thirteen districts of Rome concurred in the choice of these
fifty-six senators. Deputies were sent by this senate to Conrade III.
whom the death of Lothaire had left in full possession of the empire.
The Romans invited Conrade to come and take in the midst of their city
the imperial crown:
“Let your wisdom, said they to
“him, call to mind the attempts undertaken by the
“popes against your august predecessors. The
“popes, their partisans, and the Sicilians, at the pre−
“sent time in league with them, prepare for you
“still greater outrages. But the senate is restored,
“the people have resumed their vigour; this
“people and this senate, by which Constantine,
“Theodosius, and Justinian governed the world,
“and whose vows, prayers and exertions, call you
“to a similar degree of power and glory.”
Conrade was perfectly aware of the projects of independence which this
language harboured, and did not think it prudent to imitate Lucius, who
also had addressed an epistle to him. Bold against enemies whom Conrade
had abandoned, and whom Roger threatened, Lucius advanced towards the
capital; he marched surrounded by priests and soldiers. This parade of
all his temporal and spiritual arms, however, was useless; a shower of
stones crushed the double army of the pope, and he himself received a
mortal wound. His party very hastily gave him a successor; but this
person, who was named Eugenius III. hastened to quit Rome, lest he
should see himself compelled to ratify the re-establishment of the
popular magistracy¹⁸³
¹⁸³ Otho. Frising. Chron. 1. 7. c. 22,27,31.—De Gest. Frid. re
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