Chapter 2 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.

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

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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;

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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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."

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.

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."

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."

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.