The 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.

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

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.

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."

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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."

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."

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.

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 man?uvre 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.

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.

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.

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

"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