HADRIAN I

AD 772-795

 

Emperors of the East. Constantine (Copronymus), 741-775. Leo IV, 775-780. Constantine VI (Porphyrogenitus), 780-797. Irene, 780-790.

King of the Lombards.  Desiderius, 756-774.

King of the Franks. Charlemagne, 771-800.

 

 

The pontificate of Pope Hadrian is important, not only because it was the longest of any in the Middle Ages, but also because of the momentous events that took place during it, and in which he took a very great share. In his reign, not only was the temporal power of the popes placed on a still firmer basis by the confirmation of Pippin’s deed of gift by his son Charlemagne, but the power of its greatest enemies, the Lombards, was broken for ever. On the one side, too, in the East, the heresy of the Image-breakers was dealt such a blow by the Seventh General Council that it never regained its former strength; and on the other side, in the far West, a new heresy was so promptly attacked that it disappeared not long after the death of the Pope. And that Rome, their dwelling-place, might share in the immortality decreed by our Divine Lord for the popes themselves, might be indeed ‘eternal’, as early imperial coins proclaimed it to be, Hadrian practically rebuilt the city on the seven hills. Its churches he restored, its walls he re-erected, its aqueducts he again caused to flow. And last, but not least, he greatly contributed to the advance of European civilization, by using the influence which he had with Charlemagne in helping that great prince (before whose time, as the old chronicler ingenuously remarks, no attention was paid to the liberal arts in Gaul), both by advice and by gifts of books and masters, in his efforts to light the torch of learning in his vast dominions. All this he did in despite of turbulent officials, both cleric and lay, whom it required all the power of Charlemagne to keep in check.

The author of all these noble deeds, “one of the greatest popes of the eighth century”, writes Hodgkin, was, as is so frequently the case with the doers of great things, himself of noble birth. He was a Roman, and not unworthy of the name. His family, at once noble and powerful, belonging apparently to the new military aristocracy, had their home in the fifth ecclesiastical quarter, that known as the Via Lata. Left an orphan whilst still very young, by the death of both his parents, the little Hadrian was carefully trained by an uncle, one Theodotus, who had formerly held the title of consul and duke, and was then primicerius of the notaries. There is still extant a marble tablet, in the Church of St Angela in Pescheria, which testifies to the piety of Theodotus. It records how, for the good of his soul, and the pardon of his sins, he restored the church whilst primicerius,

Under the care of such a tutor, we need not wonder that his biographer speaks of the hours which Hadrian spent, whilst still a young laic, in the Church of St. Mark, which was near the parental mansion. Not content with prayer, he strove to subdue his passions by fasting and the use of the hair-shirt. To the utmost of his ability also he gave alms to the poor. His good deeds were the talk of Rome. The knowledge of his virtues caused Pope Paul to order him to become a cleric. Paul then named him a regionary notary, and afterwards ordained him subdeacon. By Stephen (III) IV he was made a deacon. The reception of the diaconate made him work harder than ever at preaching the Gospel and the other duties of his office. Being such by birth and training, we can readily believe his biographer when he assures us that Hadrian was as polished and refined in his mind as he was shapely and handsome in body; that he was a firm upholder of his country and the faith, and that he was the father of the poor, and a most reverent observer of ecclesiastical traditions.

Before Pope Stephen was actually dead, the people came together to elect Hadrian, so great was their love for him, and no sooner had he passed away than Hadrian was elected to succeed him (February 3, 772) by the unanimous vote of clergy and people. The anonymous monk of Nonantula gives in full the decree of Hadrian’s election, which, mutatis mutandis, is in the prescribed form which occurs in the Liber Diurnus. This document sets forth that in response to the prayer of all the clergy and people together assembled, the deacon Hadrian was, on account of his exceptional merits, unanimously elected, and that the decree of election was placed in the archives of the Vatican palace.

It would seem not at all unlikely that this prompt action of the Roman people in finding a successor for Stephen was to anticipate any measures on the part of Paul Afiarta to procure a pontiff who might be at the beck of the Lombard. The moment he was elected, Hadrian not only gave a striking proof of his determined character, but showed Paul who was to be master in Rome. The very hour he was elected, he commanded the recall of those whom Paul had banished during the illness of Stephen. Further, in accordance with what was perhaps a custom, he set free those who were in prison for one crime or another. And certainly, in accordance with custom, he drew up a profession of faith, which he sent to “his most reverend brethren and to all the faithful”.  

No sooner was Hadrian consecrated (February 9) than he had to receive a deputation from the Lombard king.

That monarch had evidently made up his mind that it was to be now or never with him if he was to become lord of all Italy. Charlemagne, against whom he was personally enraged, because that prince had repudiated his daughter, he thought he could afford to despise. He was young, was surrounded by enemies, especially the Saxons, against whom he had to struggle for thirty-three years (772-805), and had to fear the chances of a civil war. For when Carlomann died, in December 771, his widow Gilberga, with her two sons and some of his chief nobles, had fled to the court of Desiderius, “for no reason whatever”, says Eginhard. And as these sons of Carlomann were but children, the great bulk of his people had offered his kingdom to Charlemagne, who had thus become sole king of the Franks.

Resolving, however, to try the fox’s skin before the lion’s, Desiderius sent an embassy to Hadrian, hoping to induce him to place his trust in him (Desiderius), and assuring the Pope that he wished to live at peace with him. When, in reply, Hadrian urged the previous bad faith of their king towards Stephen in the affair of Christopher and Sergius, the envoys took an oath that Desiderius would restore to Hadrian the ‘rights’ he had failed to restore to Stephen, and that he would really live in peace with the Pope. Trusting to their oaths, Hadrian dispatched Stephen, a regionary notary and saccellarius (paymaster), and Paul Afiarta to treat with the Lombard king. But they had not got beyond Perugia when they learnt that Desiderius, as usual without any better reason than his desire for the “unification of Italy”, had seized Faventia, the duchy of Ferrara (both of which he had given up in 757), and Commacchio (Comiaclum), had beset Ravenna itself, and was harrying the whole province. A deputation came from Archbishop Leo of Ravenna to implore help from the Pope. Hadrian thereupon ordered his envoys to proceed on their journey to Desiderius, with letters in which, as might be expected, the Pope upbraided the Lombard for his twofold breach of faith. Meanwhile Gilberga and her sons had arrived at the Lombard court, and their cause was at once espoused by the king. “And hence”, says the papal biographer, in one of the rare passages in which, in set terms, he gives us any of the motives that prompted any of the acts he relates, “Desiderius used every art to try and induce the Pope to come and visit him, in order that he (the Pope) might anoint as kings the two sons of Carlomann. For the Lombard was very desirous of bringing about a division in the kingdom of the Franks, a coolness in the friendship between the Pope and Charlemagne, and the subjection of Rome and all Italy to his own sway”. Although Desiderius promised the Pope that he would restore the cities if he would come to him, Hadrian firmly refused to go. When the Pope’s determination became known, Paul Afiarta assured Desiderius that he would see to it that Hadrian complied with the king’s wishes, for, if necessary, he would put a rope round the Pope’s legs and drag him to the Lombard court by the heels. He set off by Arimini to fulfill his engagement. But there was already a rope round the boaster’s own neck.

The punishment of Afiarta,772

When Paul left Rome, men had the courage to let the merit of Pope know that the unfortunate secundicerius Sergius had been dragged forth from his cell in the Lateran and strangled and stabbed in the via Merulana—a street as well known now as in the eighth century—by order of Afiarta. Hadrian made the most careful enquiries into the matter, had the accomplices of Paul arrested, and, in response to the wishes of all the people, handed them over to the prefect of the city to be tried for murder. Death, or exile to Constantinople, was meted out to the culprits.

In accordance with secret instructions conveyed to him from the Pope, Leo, the archbishop of Ravenna, caused Paul to be seized as he passed through Arimini. And when he received from Rome the account of the trial of Paul’s agents, the archbishop went beyond the Pope’s orders. He not only handed Paul over to the secular arm, to the consular of Ravenna, but, despite the strict orders of the Pope to the contrary, and despite every effort the Pope could make to save him, as he only desired exile for the accused, the archbishop had the wretched man put to death. Some days after, however, troubled in mind at his disobedience, Leo wrote to the Pope and begged him to excuse the act, as, after all, the blood of the innocent had been avenged in the death of Paul. But this Hadrian would by no means do; he told the archbishop that he must bear the blame of Paul’s death, for he himself (Hadrian) had, on the contrary, wished to spare the man’s life that he might have had an opportunity to do penance.

Whilst the affair of Paul was in progress, Desiderius was not idle. He marched southward with a large army, laying waste with fire and sword the whole country, from Sinigaglia on the Adriatic to Blera on the borders of Tuscany. The inhabitants of the last mentioned town, supposing that there was peace, were massacred by the Lombards whilst gathering in their harvest, and their town was reduced to ashes. And then “after the manner of his ancestors”, he proceeded to harry the duchy of Rome. Can anyone be astonished that the popes resisted such barbarians by every means in their power?

Before appealing to the Franks, Hadrian tried every expedient. Letter after letter, embassy after embassy, was sent from Rome to the Lombard to induce him to pause in his career of violence, and restore his ill-gotten goods. If Desiderius made any reply, it was only to the effect that the Pope must come and see him. To which request Hadrian always replied that he would certainly do so when Desiderius had restored the cities.

Desiderius marches on Rome, 773

Negotiation was clearly useless. The Lombard was the march for Rome itself with his son Adalgis and the widow and two sons of Carlomann. But Hadrian was equal to the occasion. He not only, compelled by necessity sent messengers by sea to Charlemagne to implore his aid, but he collected troops from all parts, even from the Pentapolis, and hurriedly strengthened the fortifications of the city. He then sent three cardinal-bishops to Desiderius to forbid him, under pain of excommunication, entering the Roman duchy. Whether he had faith enough to fear a papal sentence of excommunication, or policy enough to dread the power of the Franks, certain it is that he fell back in confusion from Viterbo.

Desiderius had not long withdrawn from the papal boundaries ere there arrived in Rome ambassadors from Charlemagne (among whom seems to have been Alcuin), who came to see for themselves whether Desiderius had really made restitution to the Pope, as he had assured the Franks that he had done. Of course they found that anything but restitution had been effected by the false Lombard. Nor could they, though they interviewed Desiderius on their return journey, obtain any concessions from him. In company with ambassadors from the Pope, they returned to their king and told him the state of the case. Urged by the papal envoys to act in behalf of their master, Charlemagne at first tried pacific measures. His envoys were commissioned to offer Desiderius no less than 14,000 gold solidi, if he would give up the territory he had seized. But Desiderius was fanatically obstinate.

Charlemagne now prepared for war. His troops appeared at the passes of the Alps. Whether favored by treachery or not, he successfully accomplished the difficult task of conveying his forces over the Alps. Charlemagne’s secretary and biographer, Eginhard, assures us that had he not been anxious to describe his master’s character, rather than his wars, he would have told us “how great was the toil of the Franks in overcoming the trackless chain of mountains, with peaks towering to the skies, and sharp and perilous rocks”. Desiderius fled to Pavia, and there prepared to stand a siege in that strong city. Adalgis, with the widow and sons of Carlomann, shut themselves up in Verona.

One of the immediate results of the appearance of Charlemagne in Italy was the defection of part of the subjects of Desiderius, viz., the inhabitants of the duchy of Spoleto. Already, before the descent of the Frankish king into Italy, some of the chief men of the Lombard cities of Rieti and Spoleto placed themselves under the Pope, took an oath of fidelity to him, and cut their long hair in the Roman fashion. We have already seen evidences of a desire on the part of the duchy of Spoleto to attach its fortunes to those of Rome and the popes; and on the present occasion the entire people, but for dread of their sovereign, would have been glad to follow the example set them by their principal men. When, however, their countrymen came flying from the North and told them of the forcing of the passes of the Alps, the fear of Desiderius, which had up to this restrained them, disappeared, and they flocked to the Pope and besought him to accept them as his subjects. Hadrian could not but receive them. And in St. Peter’s all swore to be the faithful subjects of the apostle, of his vicar, Pope Hadrian, and of all his successors. After the hair of all had been cut in the Roman style, Hadrian confirmed one Hildeprand, whom they had themselves chosen, as their duke. Certain cities of the exarchate (Fermo, Osimo and Ancona), which had either never been yielded up to the popes, or had again been seized by the Lombards, followed the example of Spoleto. Here, beyond all doubt, we have an example of one way in which temporal power was absolutely thrust into the hands of the popes by the people themselves.

Arrived before Pavia in the autumn (773), Charlemagne resolved to reduce it by starvation, and took measures accordingly by surrounding the city with lines of circumvallation. And that his purpose of staying there till the place was unconditionally surrendered might be clear, he sent for his wife and children. Whilst the blockade was still being maintained, detachments of the Franks were sent in all directions to bring about the reduction of the other cities. Verona surrendered on the mere approach of Charlemagne. After the siege of Pavia had lasted some six months, Charlemagne resolved to gratify his great desire of visiting the tombs of the Apostles, the more so as the festival of Easter was at hand. Taking with him a considerable number of his chief ecclesiastics and nobles, and a large body of troops, he set out with his accustomed speed so as to be in Rome by Holy Saturday (April 2). Astonished and yet delighted at the news of this sudden resolve of the Frankish monarch, Hadrian made haste to receive him with becoming honor.

Some twenty-four miles from Rome, at a place known as ad Novas, the ruins of which are to be seen near Lake Bracciano, Charlemagne was met by the judges with the military standards (bandora). Nearer the city he was received by the ‘trained bands’ and all the school­children bearing palm and olive branches in their hands, and chanting the praises of the Frankish king. There were also sent forth in his honor “the venerable crosses and the sacred banners”, as was wont to be done when, under the old regime, the exarch came to Rome. We are told that when Charlemagne saw the sacred crosses, he descended from his horse, and with his nobles proceeded on foot to St. Peter’s. Arrived there, the king mounted the steps, devoutly kissing each one of them as he ascended. After embracing one another, Hadrian and Charlemagne entered the basilica together, which rang with the antiphon: “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord”. When all present had returned thanks to God at the confession of St. Peter for the victories He had granted to the arms of the Franks, through the intercession of His apostle, Charlemagne assured Hadrian that he and his Franks had undertaken this expedition not for gold or territory, but to secure “the rights of St. Peter”, the Pope’s safety, and the exaltation of God’s Holy Church. He then begged the Pope’s permission to enter Rome that he might pray in the different churches. The fact that before Charlemagne entered the city oaths of mutual good faith were given and taken by Charlemagne and the Pope “is not less demonstrative of the fact that the Pope held the supreme power in Rome, and that his sovereignty over the city was entirely independent of the Frank kings, than it is of the perpetual apprehension of violence and stratagem, which, in those ages of barbarism and constantly-recurring invasion, kept men’s minds on the alert, as in time of war”.

That same Saturday, and until the following Wednesday, the minds and the time of the Pope and Charlemagne were taken up with the different religious services in the great basilicas. But on the last-mentioned day, Hadrian, with his chief clergy and nobility, had a conference with Charlemagne on secular affairs in St. Peter’s. As what follows is of the first importance in connection with the temporal power of the Pope, we will closely adhere to the narrative in the Book of the Popes. Hadrian, we are there told, begged Charlemagne to fulfill in every particular the details of the donation which his father Pippin, as well as he himself and his brother Carlomann, had made to Blessed Peter and to his vicar Pope Stephen (II) III, on the occasion of that Pope’s visit to the land of the Franks. This donation, continues the papal biographer, involved “the concession of various cities and territories in this province of Italy to Blessed Peter and to his successors, to be possessed by them for ever”. When the said donation, which had been drawn up at Kiersey (or Quiercy-sur-Oise) had been read, Charlemagne ordered his chaplain and notary, Etherius, to draw up another donation, like the former. In it he granted the same cities and territories to Blessed Peter and the Pope, according to the description set forth in the donation.

The donation of Charlemagne

Before proceeding further with the narrative in the Liber Pontificalis, it is worth pausing to note that Hadrian’s biographer, who was perfectly familiar with the actual deed of donation, makes the gift of Charlemagne no more than a confirmation of the original donation of Pippin to Stephen III at Kiersey. Strictly speaking, therefore, Charlemagne did not augment his father’s gift. But his donation was doubtless an increase of Aistulf’s, with which the popes had hitherto been contented. There seems never to have been an attempt to enforce the ‘Kiersey treaty’. To judge of this document by the “donation of Charlemagne”, which is represented as nothing more than its renewal, it would seem that Pippin and his Franks had determined, if need be, to limit the Lombards to the territory first conquered and directly held by Alboin, their first king who ruled in Italy. The other parts of Italy, which the Lombards acquired later, or which were only imperfectly subject to the rule of their kings, such as the duchies of Spoleto and Beneventum, were to have been handed over, by the terms of the Kiersey compact, to the Pope. This clipping of the Lombards’ wings, by forming a powerful state under the Pope all round them, had not up to this time been put into effect. Aistulf’s donation of the exarchate had been temporarily accepted. Now that the Lombard kingdom was to be extinguished, it was only natural that there should be a reversion to the original deed of gift.

Charlemagne’s diploma, signed by him and his chief men, both of Church and State, was placed in the confession of St. Peter. A copy of the same deed, which they had all sworn to observe, was taken away with them by the Franks.

By this donation of Charlemagne there were made over to the popes, besides the full exarchate of Ravenna, the duchies of Spoleto and Beneventum, the provinces of Venetia and Istria, the island of Corsica, and, arguing from the towns mentioned, viz., Luna (Sarzana), Parma, Reggio, etc., what, in addition to the exarchate, would make the larger portion of modern Emilia. By the province of Venetia would be meant that part on the mainland which was subject to the Lombard sway. Later writers, such as Leo Ostiensis (eleventh century); Cardinal Deusdedit, in his collection of canons (eleventh century); and Cencius Camerarius (Lib. Censuum) thirteenth century, all, from earlier documents, e.g., the Book of the Popes, describe the donation in more or less the same terms.

The originals of these charters have unfortunately been lost. And there are not wanting modern historians who in call in question, if not the fact that Charlemagne gave a donation at all, at least that it had the extent that the papal biographer gives it. These critics urge that it is not likely that the Frank monarch would give such extensive territory to the Holy See; and that, de facto, dominion over many of the districts mentioned in the donation was never held by the popes, nay, was not even in the hands of Charlemagne, much less of Pippin, when the donations were made.

That there are difficulties in the matter of these deeds should not surprise us, when only abridgments of them have come down to us. But the criterion for the authenticity of ancient documents is not what certain modern critics may or may not 'think likely'. Documents cannot be rejected because there are obscurities connected with them, or because their contents seem ‘unlikely’ to this or that historian, but only on very solid grounds. And certainly, with regard to the passage in the life of Hadrian regarding the donation of Charlemagne, there is no more real reason to doubt its authenticity than there is to doubt of the passage in the life of Stephen (III) III concerning that of Charlemagne’s father Pippin. And if to disprove the authenticity of the grant of Pippin it would be neces­sary to disprove the authenticity of a great many other accepted documents, notably of many of the letters of Pope Paul in the Caroline Code, so also to disprove the grant of Charlemagne it would be needful to show the unauthenticity of many of the letters of Hadrian (or Leo III) in the same Code which seem to support the text in the Liber Pontificalis.

The territory—nearly two-thirds of Italy—which, according to the text in the Book of the Popes, was made over to the popes by the donations of Pippin and Charlemagne, stretched as far to the south as did the boundaries of the duchy of Beneventum, and in the north to a line drawn from Sarzana (Luna, close to the Gulf of Spezzia) northwards along the river Magra, across the Apennines at the Cisa Pass, touching Berceto, Parma, Reggio, Mantua, and Monselice, and then turning so as to embrace Venetia and Istria. To this tract of country must be added the isle of Corsica.

Now, in the first place it is not denied that the popes never actually held possession of all the country included within the limits just named. But we shall proceed to show that after the donation of Charlemagne, the extant acknowledged authentic documents prove that the sovereign pontiffs passed into actual possession, or at least proved their right to so much of the territory marked out in the donation, as given in the Liber Pontificalis, as to make it only reasonable to suppose that that donation really represents the gift of Charlemagne. The evidence which will be adduced to establish this point will also go to furnish us with a reason why the donation was never actually carried out. The evidence will show us that the Frankish ruler was not powerful enough to bring much of the territory mentioned in the famous passage under his absolute sway.

One extract from a letter of Hadrian to Charlemagne will suffice to make it plain that that king did make a donation to St. Peter, and that it was similar to that made by his father. “Deign”, writes the Pope, “to accomplish what your father and you yourself promised to Blessed Peter, and what afterwards, on the occasion of your visit to the shrine of the Apostles, you yourself confirmed, making the same donation to the same Apostle in your own person and with your own hands”.

And to establish the fact that the donation involved a grant of territory, and of regal jurisdiction over it, and not merely of patrimonies, i.e., revenues or estates, it will be enough to note that Hadrian often distinguishes in his letters to Charlemagne between the latter’s gifts of patrimonies on the one hand and on the other of territory over which he (the Pope) was to exercise sovereign powers. And so on one occasion Hadrian had to complain to Charlemagne that, in connection with certain cities in the Beneventan territory —de civitatibus partibus Beneventanis— the king’s missi would only hand over to him “the bishops’ houses, monasteries and the public buildings, along with the keys of the cities, but not the men. They are left free to come and go as they list. And how can we hold the cities without the men, if their inhabitants can plot against them? We desire, therefore, to have full power over them and to rule and govern them as we do in the case of the cities in Tuscany which you have given us”. The difficulty of giving the exact sense of this passage, though its general drift is clear enough, makes one heartily wish that either Hadrian, his secretaries, or their copyists had written clearer and better Latin.

There is further, we hold, solid reason to believe not merely that Charlemagne made to Hadrian a donation, but that the text under discussion in the Liber Pontificalis gives us the substance of that donation. To begin with, one might be tempted to think that it was not likely that the island of Corsica should be given to the popes. And yet a letter of Pope Leo III shows that the popes did actually possess Corsica, and that, too, by virtue of Charlemagne’s donation. For that his “donation might remain intact”, Leo III “entrusts the affairs of Corsica” to the king.

Then, too, no matter how unlikely it may seem that the duchy of Spoleto should be granted to the bishops of Rome, there can be no doubt that it was included in the grant. For Hadrian could confidently write to his royal friend : “Moreover, you yourself in your own person, through our Insignificance, offered to Blessed Peter, your protector, the duchy of Spoleto for the welfare of your soul”. Nor need we remind the reader that the Spoletans had already placed themselves under the Pope, and that, in testimony thereof, their duke, Hildeprand, who had sworn allegiance to the Pope, dated his documents “in the times of the thrice blessed and angelic lord, Hadrian, pontiff and universal Pope”.

But what of Lombard Tuscany, i.e., the country between Luna and the boundary of the duchy of Rome? Well, again the letters of Hadrian to Charlemagne show that at least half of it was sooner or later in the hands of that pontiff. For not only does he mention as his the southern towns of Suana, Tuscana (Tuscanella), Viterbo and Balneoregis (Bagnorea), etc., but others as far as Rosellae, Populonium and Castrum Felicitatis; unless, indeed, in the case of Populonium and Rosellae there was not merely question of patrimonies.

However, whether or not Hadrian ever possessed the whole of Lombard Tuscany, it is certain, at any rate, that he never held the whole of the duchy of Beneventum. But that does not make it certain that it was never given to him. On the contrary, we know, on the one hand, that he actually did become the lord of a part of it; and, on the other hand, a fragment of a report of Charlemagne’s missi (envoys), which has come down to us, shows that the authority of the Frankish monarch was not strong enough there to enable him to put Hadrian in possession of the duchy. Besides, it is the less wonderful that Beneventum should have been included in the donation, when it is remembered that the Beneventans had com­mended themselves to Pippin through Pope Stephen (II) III.

Finally, there is a passage in a letter of Stephen (III) IV (768-772) to John of Grado, which would seem to allude to the donation of Pippin (and hence to that of Charlemagne, which does but confirm that of his father), and to the conferring of power on the Pope over even Istria and Venetia. “In the general treaty which was drawn up between the Romans, Franks and Lombards”, writes the Pope, “your province of Istria and that of Venetia were included. Hence let your holiness trust in God, that as the men of Blessed Peter engaged on oath to be true to the interests of the Prince of the Apostles and to his vicars, who will sit in this See to the end of time, they also engaged in writing ever to defend your province from the oppression of enemies, just as this our province of the Romans and the exarchate of Ravenna”. The import of the passage is certainly not too clear, nor do I know whether it refers to the marriage treaty of 770 arranged between Charlemagne and Desiderius by Bertrada, or to some other. But as Stephen IV quotes the example of his predecessor Stephen (II) III’s interest in Istria, it would appear that rights over it conceded to Stephen III were asserted by Stephen IV.

In a period when the records of history are as scant as they are at the close of the eighth century, it would be difficult to find an historical text better supported by supplementary documents than is the donation passage in the biography of Hadrian I.

With evidence, then, such as this before us, we can­not doubt that Charlemagne, by a fresh donation, confirmed that of his father, and that both donations included other territories besides that of the exarchate, viz., those mentioned in the disputed text. On the other hand, it is also certain, as has been said, that those additional territories did not all come under the power of the popes immediately after they had been granted to them. And, in fact, dominion over some of them, such as Istria, etc., was never acquired by the popes at all. This is to be accounted for to some extent by the fact that both Pippin and Charlemagne promised to give that of which they were not actually possessed. And when Charlemagne afterwards obtained more or less complete control over the whole of the districts enumerated in his donation, one cause and another—perhaps a certain unwillingness to part with what he had won only with considerable cost; but certainly, still more, because his hold on some of the conquered provinces was not too firm—stood in the way of his fully carrying his donation to completion. And though it is no part of the duty of the defenders of the authenticity of the donation text to be able to state why a promise made was not kept, it may be suggested, with Duchesne, that Charlemagne's promise of 774 was, with the consent of the Pope, restricted as useless and incapable of fulfillment on the occasion of the king’s visit to Rome in 781. And if the popes never had full jurisdiction over all the lands named in the donation they certainly received fresh rights over them and additional revenues from them. And by the end of the year 787, Pope Hadrian was the actual ruler not only of the duchy of Rome and the exarchate, but also of various cities in Lombard Tuscany, as Suana (Sovana), Tuscana (Toscanella), Viterbo, etc., and in the duchy of Beneventum, as Sora, Arpinum, Aquino, Capua, etc.

Hitherto in connection with our account of the donations of Pippin and Charlemagne no mention has been made of the famous so-called ‘Fantuzzian Fragment’. In the year 1500 the Venetian Government made a collection of some 270 of the more important documents which concerned their relations with various popes and princes. The original collection is now lost. Two faulty copies of it, however, still exist. From one of these Fantuzzi published the ‘fragment’ which bears his name. The document purports to give a detailed account of the transactions between Pippin and Stephen (II) III at Quiercy. It begins by asserting that, bitterly oppressed by the Lombards, Stephen asked and obtained leave of the Greek emperor to apply to the Franks for aid. It then states that, with the consent of all his chief men, Pippin undertook, if God should grant him to become conqueror of the Lombards, to bestow for the good of his soul on Blessed Peter, the “keybearer of the heavenly kingdom”, and on the Pope, his vicar, Corsica and the other territories, already mentioned from the Book of the Popes. To which, in this fragment, Naples seems to be added.

The writer of this document, from his mention of the emperor Leo IV, would seem to have lived at the close of the eighth century.

This document has had its authenticity as stoutly attacked as defended. Without going into the pros and cons of the matter, we may sum up the pros with Jungmann. “The style of the fragment, with its barbarous Latinity, points to its origin in Lombard times. The accuracy of various minute details given in the document, and the way in which it squares with the lives of Stephen III and Hadrian, as we know them in the Liber Pontificalis, are enough to show the fragment is really authentic”. Were it so, it would, of course, afford a strong confirmation of what we have already said with regard to the extent of Charlemagne’s donation.

But no great weight can be attached to a document concerning which there are cons not a few, and which is regarded as spurious by many distinguished scholars. In the first place, the Fragment, which is drawn up as though it proceeded from Pippin, is addressed to Pope Gregory! “Pippinus .... Gregorio apostolica sublimitate fulgenti”. But both before and after that expression there is always question of Pope Stephen, so that the introduc­tion of ‘Gregory’ cannot be said to tell seriously against the authenticity of the document. Then Stephen is represented as asking, not Constantine Copronymus, who was the emperor during his reign, but Leo (IV) to allow him to turn to the Franks for aid against the Lombards. Here again there is an answer. It is pointed out that, as early as the year 751, Leo was associated with his father in the Empire. And if, as is supposed by various authors, the fragment was composed during the sole reign of Leo IV (775-780), there is obvious reason why his was the name selected for mention. The greatest difficulty in the way of allowing the genuineness of the document seems to be that the emperor of Constantinople is represented as authorizing the appeal of the Pope to the Franks for their support and patronage against the Lombards. But even this seems far from an insuperable objection. To play off one foe against another was a very common policy of the rulers of Constantinople, especially from the days of Justinian; and, it may well have been thought at this time in the capital of the Empire, that, if the Franks broke the power of the Lombards and gave most of their territory to the popes, the latter would prove a foe which could be much more easily overcome by the imperial troops than the fierce Lombard. Hence their ready consent to the Pope’s request. As nothing depends upon the authenticity of this document of Fantuzzi, we may be pardoned for referring the reader elsewhere for further information with regard to it.

Charlemagne’s Donation

It would be neither possible nor desirable to discuss here all the different theories that have, on more or less strong grounds, been broached in connection with this donation. But in concluding our remarks on this subject, it may be useful to call attention to the truth that the dominion of a sovereign prince over a country does not necessarily imply his personal ownership of it, nor, vice versa, does ownership of a district imply supreme rule over it, but that in practice the overlord will probably possess more or less of the land of which he is the suzerain. And so it would not result, as a matter of course, that the popes were the supreme rulers of the districts where the ‘patrimonies’ of the Roman Church were situated; nor, on the other hand, because we find patrimonies in certain regions being given to them, would it follow that they were or were not already supreme rulers of those regions. The patrimonies were, so to speak, the State property, the “crown lands” of the Roman Church and the popes. They were the private property of the Roman See, and were situated both where the said See had supreme dominion and where it had not Charlemagne then, it would seem, to all practical purposes increased both the private property of the Church, i.e., its patrimonies at least, by restoring in various districts its ‘rights’, which the Lombards had usurped, and its dominion, by rendering real a control which in some localities had, up to this date, existed only in a sealed parchment.

After he left Rome, Charlemagne returned to Pavia, which was forced to surrender unconditionally (June 774). Desiderius and his wife were taken by Charlemagne with him into France, where Desiderius is said to have died a holy death in the monastery of Corbie. And thus, in the words of an ancient writer: “Here was finished the kingdom of the Langobardi, and began the kingdom of Italy, by the most glorious Charles, king of the Franks, who, as helper and defender of lord Peter, the prince of the Apostles, had gone to demand justice for him from Italy. For no desire of gain caused him to wander”. After he had, as king of the Lombards, received the homage of the chief men of the conquered country, and placed garrisons in Pavia and a few of the frontier cities, Charlemagne returned to France.

Except that he had an overlord of a different nationality, the Lombard was left by Charlemagne well-nigh as free as he found him. But, after an inglorious existence of over two hundred years, inglorious in peace, for it produced no great man, and in war, for it never subdued all Italy, the kingdom of the Lombard now passed away for ever from before the eyes of the popes—another of the many kingdoms which the undying line of the Roman pontiffs has seen born and die! In the South of Italy, however, the dukes of Beneventum, who from this time forth assumed the title of prince, and whose territory comprised perhaps most of what was afterwards the kingdom of Naples, preserved more or less of independence for their Lombard countrymen.

No sooner had Charlemagne left Italy than Hadrian was beset by political difficulties of all kinds. Difficulties incidental to the establishment of a new order of things; difficulties from within and difficulties from without. Hadrian’s first trouble after the departure of Charlemagne was from those “of his own household”. We have seen Leo of Ravenna acting independently of the Pope in the affair of Paul Afiarta. Power must have proved sweet to him. No sooner had Charlemagne crossed the Alps than the archbishop seized various cities of Emilia, expelled the papal officials and appointed his own, and tempted the loyalty of the citizens of the Pentapolis. But these latter remained firm in their allegiance to Hadrian, as they had done to Stephen (II) III, “to whom”, writes the Pope to Charlemagne, “your father and yourself gave the exarchate... And so the enemies of both of us are now striving to take away from us the power we exercised even in Lombard times”. To gain over the Frank monarch to his side, Leo betook himself to Francia. He, however, obtained no satisfaction from Charlemagne, who assured the Pope that he would see that his donation was carried into effect. But, convinced that the Frankish king was too occupied with the Saxons (against whom Charlemagne had to be in arms off and on from 773-804) to be able to interfere with him, Leo, on his return from Francia, gave out that the cities of Imola and Bologna had been given to him and not to the Pope, and continued to act as before.

So that, for instance, when the Pope sent his treasurer Gregory to the aforesaid cities to bring thence to him their magistrates, and to receive the oaths of fidelity from all the people, Leo would not suffer the Pope’s functionary to approach the cities. In like manner, when, by a formal official document, Hadrian had appointed a certain Dominicus count of the little city of Gabellum, the rebellious archbishop sent a body of troops to seize the new count. This they did, and at the time (November 775) when the Pope wrote the letter which furnishes us with all these particulars, Dominicus was a prisoner at Ravenna,

Disloyal to the Pope, Leo, not unnaturally, seems to have been disloyal to Charlemagne also. He doubtless realized that when the Frankish king had a free hand he would have to render him an account of his rebellious conduct towards the Pope. Accordingly he seems to have lent his support to those who were desirous of ousting the Franks from Italy. At any rate this is the conclusion that, in common with Hadrian, we draw from the action of Leo, narrated by the Pope to Charlemagne in a letter 1 of October 27, 775. Hadrian had received a most important letter from John, the patriarch of Grado—so important that neither Hadrian himself nor his secretary ate or drank till they had sent it off to Charlemagne along with a letter from the Pope. This document of John, which, with great probability, has been supposed to have had reference to the rebellion of Rodgausus (Hrodgaud) of Friuli, which broke out a month or two after this, had been confiscated on its way through Ravenna by Leo. The archbishop broke the seals, made himself acquainted with the contents of the letter, and only then sent it on to Hadrian. Fully warranted by the circumstances seems the conclusion of the Pope—that Leo communicated the intelligence he had acquired by his arbitrary conduct “to Arichis, Duke of Beneventum, and to the rest of our and your enemies”.

How many troubles would have been spared the popes if they could have made up their minds centuries earlier than they did to govern their dominions in a less paternal but more practical manner. If the people of our own century and country even require sometimes to be kept in order, how much more did the still semi-barbarian races which were in possession of Europe in the eighth century.

However, as after this Hadrian never again alludes to any difficulties with Leo, we may conclude that Charlemagne’s ambassadors, whom the Pope was then expecting, restored his rule in the exarchate and Emilia.

These same ambassadors, Bishop Possessor and Abbot Radigaud, caused Hadrian no little anxiety, not merely because they did not arrive when he expected them, but because, “when they reached Perugia, instead of continuing their journey hither, as your Excellency (Charlemagne) had ordered them, and as we gathered they would from your letters, setting us at naught, they directed their steps to Duke Hildeprand at Spoleto, and sent word to us by our missi that when they had had some converse with Hildeprand they would, according to their orders, join them (Hadrian’s envoys) at our palace”. Then, what was worse, despite the Pope’s urgent request that they would come to him at least before they went to Beneventum, they again made no account of his wishes but went immediately from Spoleto to Beneventum, thereby, as Hadrian imagined, disgracing him and unduly elating the Spoletans. His apprehensions were, however, entirely groundless. The king’s missi had not been unfaithful to their sovereign's directions: still less had Charles himself been unmindful of the Pope’s interests. This Hadrian discovered when the missi, at the close of the year (775), had at length presented themselves to him : “We beg to inform your Excellency concerning your most faithful missi, that (as we had already discovered and had by letter notified your royal power), when they had been presented to us, we found them true to your patron, St. Peter, as well as to us and to you. Hence we beg you receive them well”.

Intrigues of Lombards

Next year (776) Hadrian had to ask Charlemagne to remove from Tuscany Reginald, Duke of Clusium (Chiusi), for invading our city Castellum Felicitatis, which is generally supposed to be the same as the ancient Tifernum, destroyed by Totila, and the modern Citta di Castello, close to the left bank of the Tiber near its sources.

In the early part of this same year (776) Hadrian was brought face to face with a serious danger. Arichis, duke or prince of Beneventum, naturally full of Lombard sympathies, put himself at the head of a movement, the aim of which was to restore the Lombard supremacy in Italy. A conspiracy was formed between himself, Hildeprand, Duke of Spoleto (who was anxious to escape from any real subjection to Pope or Frank), Rodgausus (Hrodgaud), Duke of Friuli, and Reginald of Clusium, to combine in the March of 776 or 777 with Adalgis or Athalgisis, the son of Desiderius, who was expected then to land in Italy with a Greek force from Constantinople (whither he had fled on the fall of the Lombard kingdom), and to restore the said kingdom. For the time being, the marvelous activity of Charlemagne dealt the conspiracy a serious blow. He swooped down upon Friuli, and Rodgausus had lost both his duchy and his life before the Easter of this very year (776).

Throughout the greater portion of his reign Hadrian had ever to be on the watch against the intrigues of the Lombards. As long as Arichis remained unsubdued, it was only to be expected that the Lombards would rally round him and strive to regain their supremacy in Italy. But in Hadrian they met their match. His untiring watchfulness frustrated their plans. Charlemagne was kept well informed of their doings, and before they were completely matured they were invariably crushed by that equally unwearied and strong sovereign. Again, another powerful combination was formed in Italy. What made these designs all the more formidable was the fact that they had the support of Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria, who, like Arichis, had married a daughter of Desiderius. The Beneventans formed an alliance with the Greeks of Terracina and Gaeta, where the patrician of Sicily was then residing, with the immediate object of subjecting certain of the papal cities of Campania to the Patricius (777). But a force sent by Hadrian checked their plots by the capture of Terracina. The effect of this was to make the Greeks at first wishful for peace; but, backed up by Arichis, who was daily expecting Adalgis from Constantinople with a Greek army, and aided by the Neapolitans, they recovered Terracina (780). In informing Charlemagne of these occurrences, Hadrian assures him that he asks his aid not on account of the loss of Terracina, but lest the Beneventans should succeed in throwing off the Frankish yoke altogether. Convinced of the magnitude of the danger, Charlemagne again set out for Rome, taking with him his wife and two of his sons. One of these, Carlomann, the Pope baptized, giving him the name of Pippin. Both of them he anointed as kings. Pippin was named king of Italy, and Louis, king of Aquitaine. By the joint exertions of ambassadors from the Pope and Charlemagne, Tassilo submitted. The difficulty with the Greeks seemed to be put in a fair way to being finally settled, as, in consequence of a request from Irene, who was now ruling in the East, Charlemagne’s daughter was espoused to the empress’s young son (781). Trusting that a peace of permanent duration had now been secured, Charlemagne again set out for France, after having put the Pope in actual possession of the Sabine territory— viz., the territory about Rieti.

Apart from the letters between Hadrian and Charlemagne regarding the Sabine territory, very little of their correspondence between the years 781-6 has come down to us. A curious fragment, however, of the king’s instructions to his missi, as to how they should behave towards the Pope, has escaped the destroying hand of time, and belongs to this interval.

The ambassadors are told to begin by offering to the Pope the respects of his son King Charles, of his daughter Fastrada, “our queen”, of all his family, and the whole nation of the Franks. The Pope is to be thanked for informing the king of his health. For the king is happy when he hears of the safety of the Pope or of “your people”. Hadrian is also to be thanked for his holy prayers, for which the king would be glad to make a suitable return. Through these same prayers and the mercy of God, the king and all his are well.

When the king’s letter is presented to the Pope, the missi are to ask his gracious reception of it, and of the presents—such as Charlemagne could get in Saxony—which they are to show to Hadrian at his good pleasure. More valuable presents will be sent as soon as procurable.

For some years, indeed, there was peace in S. Italy, but in 786 the restless Arichis, for some cause or other at war with the Greeks, received a defeat from the Neapolitans when attacking one of their cities (Amalfi). But mutual dread and dislike of Charlemagne once more united these enemies. The unfaithful Tassilo was again induced to join against the common foe, and he in turn endeavored to secure the aid of the barbarian hordes on his frontier. The breaking off of the engagement between Rotruda and the young Constantine was followed by a hearty cooperation of the ambitious Irene in the alliance against the Frank monarch (787).

But, as before, Charlemagne was at Rome in the very center of his enemies before their schemes were ripe. After careful deliberation with the Pope and with the Frank leaders, it was decided to commence operations by crushing Arichis. When the duke heard that the dreaded Frank was already at Capua, he sent to offer his submission; and, as evidence of it, his sons as hostages, and money. Charlemagne, “having more re­gard for what was for the welfare of the people than for the man’s obstinacy, granted his request, accepted the hostages he had sent; and for a large sum of money excused him from personal attendance. Only the younger son (Grimwald) was detained as a hostage. The elder (Romuald) was sent back to his father”.

Charlemagne next turned his attention to Tassilo. That faithless prince, to gain time, sent ambassadors to induce the Pope to act as mediator between his offended suzerain and himself. Hadrian had no difficulty in soothing Charlemagne’s anger against Tassilo. But when the Pope discovered that he was simply being made a tool of, he sent to let the Bavarian know that he would excommunicate him if, after all the promises he (Tassilo) had made, he did not submit; and that he would throw on him all the guilt of the spilling of Christian blood which obstinate perseverance in rebellion on his part would cause. This further introduction of excommunication as a factor in politics is noteworthy. Tassilo, a Catholic prince, had been guilty of perjury and calling in to his aid pagan barbarians, a course of action most inimical to the welfare of Christendom. As the recognized Head of the Church, which all Christendom then believed that they were bound to ‘hear’, Hadrian had a right to judge of the public crimes of Christian princes. “Excommunication” was the natural punishment to be inflicted on Catholics obstinately guilty of grave offences against the Church. But since, as yet, by the public law of Christendom, no tangible temporal penalties were attached to excommunication, the threat of it would have fallen to no purpose on the ears of Tassilo, had they not soon after heard the clang of the approach of Charlemagne’s army. Then, again, he was all submission. And once again, on his giving hostages, was he pardoned by the magnanimous Frank (October 787).

Kindness was, however, thrown away on both Arichis and Tassilo. Both were soon again plotting against the rule of their generous enemy. The rapidity of Charlemagne’s movements in 787 had anticipated the arrival of any assistance for them from Constantinople. But Adalgis had never ceased laboring to get a Greek force with which to make an attempt to recover his father’s throne. At length word was sent to the allies that he had obtained his end and was setting sail with a considerable force from Constantinople (788). He landed in Calabria, as the toe of Italy was then called, to find that Arichis (787) and his eldest son, Romuald, were dead. At the request of the Beneventans, but against the advice of Hadrian, whose advice was justified not by the immediate acts of Grimwald but by his later, Charlemagne had sent back Grimwald to be the new duke of Beneventum. To begin with, Grimwald was faithful and cooperated with Charlemagne’s generals. For on this occasion, though he struck in again before his opponents were ready, Charle­magne himself did not go into Italy, but turned his attention to the more formidable danger and summoned Tassilo to him. Not powerful enough to disobey, Tassilo came, was condemned, and confined to a monastery. His dukedom was divided among various Frank counts (788).

In Italy, supported by the dukes of Beneventum and Spoleto, Charlemagne’s troops were completely victorious over the Greeks about the middle of 788; and Adalgis is said by some to have died on the field of battle. “Legend has enshrined the memory of this champion of Lombard independence”. This conflict practically put an end to Hadrian’s troubles and fears from Lombard intrigue, and enabled him to pass the remainder of his days in comparative quiet.  

However, before leaving the subject of Italian intrigues, for the purpose of showing more at large into what details of Italian politics the letters of Hadrian give us view, it may be worthwhile to draw out from that source account therein given of the negotiations connected with the surrender of Capua to the popes. That the story will be incomplete will only prove that it depends upon the Caroline Code.

Towards the close of the year 787 Charlemagne sent two embassies into Italy to arrange about the succession to the duchy of Beneventum (owing to the death of its duke Arichis and his eldest son in the summer) and the surrender to Hadrian of certain cities in the Beneventan territory. The deacon Atto, and Goteramnus, ‘the magnificent Gate-keeper’, belonged to the first embassy. The second was composed of Maginarius, abbot of St. Denis, Joseph, a deacon, and Count Liuderic—both embassies thus exemplifying the king’s general custom of combining clerical and lay officials as his missi.

The second son of Arichis, viz., Grimwald, was in the hands of Charlemagne, and Hadrian used every effort to keep him there. “Know for certain”, wrote the Pope to the Frankish monarch, “that if you send Grimwald to Beneventum, you will never be able to keep Italy free from disturbances”. It was equally the aim, on the contrary, of the widowed Adelperga and the Beneventans to secure the succession of Grimwald to their dukedom.

Before his death Arichis had endeavored to strengthen his position by forming an alliance with Constantine (V) VI and Adalgis (Adelchis), who was at his court. To arrange the terms of the alliance, two imperial envoys landed in Lucania and proceeded to Salerno, where they had an interview with Adelperga (January 20, 788), finding, of course, that Arichis was no more. As their negotiations for the return of Grimwald were still pending, the Beneventans advised the imperial agents to betake themselves in the interim to Naples. This they did, and were received with all honors—with banners and images —by the Neapolitans.

Not all the Beneventans, however, were anxious for the rule of Grimwald. A strong party in Capua were desirous of being governed by Hadrian, and a deputation had early in January waited upon the Pope to make their wishes known to him. Hadrian at once wrote to Charlemagne’s missi, who had left Rome for the Beneventan territory, to know what steps he had better take. He pointed out to the king’s messengers that at least one benefit would result if he acceded to the wishes of the deputation, and that would be that two parties would in this way be formed among the Capuans. Thus divided, they would the easier be brought to fall in with his views and those of the king. Acting on the strength of this sound conclusion, he had caused the members of the deputation to swear fealty in the “confession” of St. Peter “to that apostle, to us, and to the king of the Franks”.

Meanwhile the missi of Charlemagne had experienced a variety of adventures after their departure from Rome for Beneventum about new-year’s day (788). The lateness of the arrival of Count Liuderic caused the two embassies to get separated, though Hadrian had expressed his wish to them that they should keep together, Atto and Goteramnus, passing through Valva, in the duchy of Spoleto (Castro Valve, some ten miles east of Lago di Fucino), arrived at Beneventum a few days before Maginarius and his party, who were by arrangement following the course of the river Sangro. Of this embassy there is extant the report which Maginarius sent to his master, and which we have cited before. On account of its interest we will let the report speak for itself.

“When we (i.e., Maginarius and his two colleagues) learnt that the men of Beneventum were not disposed (towards you) as they ought to have been, we notified this to the other embassy, and asked them, if they judged it best, not to go on to Salerno before we arrived at Beneventum.

“When we reached the borders of the Beneventan duchy we found there was no sort of loyalty towards your Excellency. Accordingly we dispatched a second letter to Atto and party to await us at Beneventum, that, as the Apostolic lord (Hadrian) had advised, we might act together; and if on our arrival at Beneventum we were all convinced of the loyalty of its people, we might proceed to Salerno. But if not, we might there together discuss the Pope’s interests and yours, as you had ordered.

“We had been informed that they (Atto, etc.) would await our coming ... But when, after journeying through a disloyal population—against whom may God be opposed—we reached Beneventum, we found that they had left for Salerno the day before.

“This distressed us very much, both because we had not our companions with us, and because those faithful to you assured us that, if we proceeded on our journey, the men of Salerno would detain us until they knew what you intended doing with Grimwald and their envoys. They, moreover, added that unless we could assure them at Salerno that you would let Grimwald be their duke, and give back to them the cities you had granted to St. Peter and the Pope, they would not fulfill your orders, but would keep us prisoners...

“Thereupon I, Maginarius, feigned to be ill, and said that I could not possibly go on to Salerno. Then, with a view of getting our friends back, I wrote to Adelperga and others of the Beneventan nobility, to the effect that I wished to send on Joseph and Liuderic to them, but that they were unwilling to go without me. Hence that it would be well for them to send Atto and Goteramnus back to us, with twelve or so of the Beneventan nobility, to whom we might unfold our commission. And then, if my health permitted, I would go on to Salerno with the others; and if not, that my four companions at least would make their way thither.

“Adelperga would, however, only send back Goteramnus. And though, when we had discussed the disloyalty of the Beneventans, he wished to return to Salerno on account of Atto, we decided it was better for one to be kept a prisoner than two. And then, at cock-crow, we fled secretly, and with difficulty reached the territory of Spoleto (at Valva)”.

To the information contained in this mutilated letter of Maginarius, further particulars may be added from the letters of Hadrian. The story went, says the Pope, that Atto, hearing of the flight of his companions, betook himself to a church for sanctuary. But the Beneventans soothed his fears and sent him off to you (Charlemagne), continues the Pope, with a feigned offer of submission. Hadrian also assured the Frankish king that he had it on the authority of the priest Gregory, who was one of the leaders of the party that wished for the surrender of Capua to the Pope, that his ambassadors were the more anxious to escape from the city of Beneventum, because it had come to their ears that they were to be treacherously murdered if they returned to Salerno.

Whether there was any solid foundation for this assertion of Gregory, the whole history of this embassy shows how weak was the hold of Charlemagne on the duchy of Beneventum. It may have been consciousness of this weakness which induced Charlemagne to yield to the violence of the Beneventans, and to let them have Grimwald to rule them, to the great chagrin of the Pope and the ultimate disadvantage of the Frankish supremacy.

About Gregory and his party at Capua, the extant documents of the time say no more. From the donation of Louis the Pious, however, it may be safely concluded that a slice, at any rate, of the duchy of Beneventum was made over to Hadrian, inclusive of Capua.

Hence it may be noted that, before his death, Hadrian was the ruler not only of the exarchate and the Pentapolis, but of the duchy of Rome, which we must now think of as stretching from Grosseto (Rosellse) on the Ombrone to Capua on the Vulturno, and including Sora, Arpino, Arce, on the left bank of the Garigliano (Liris), and Aquino, Teano, Capua, which lay between the Vulturno and the Garigliano, and of the territories of Amelia, Todi and Perugia, which connected his Roman dominions with those on the Adriatic. Whether or not he had given up claims to them, he certainly was not the ruler of the duchies of Spoleto or Beneventum, of Venetia or Istria.

The Adoptionist heresy

Even whilst engaged in these political struggles, Hadrian had also to cope with religious difficulties of no mean order. He had to deal with a new heresy, or, rather, with a new phase of an old one, viz., Adoptionism, and with one which had for some sixty years been disturbing the peace of the Church, especially in the East, i.e., Iconoclasm.

The beginnings of Adoptionism are wrapped in some obscurity; but they are thought to have sprung from some controversies with the little-known doctrines of a certain Migetius. Among other rather wild doctrines, he taught that in the Blessed Trinity were three corporeal persons, that David was God the Father incarnate; Our Lord, born of the Blessed Virgin, was the second person, and that St. Paul was the third person of the Blessed Trinity. His errors were condemned in a council at Seville (782), and by the Pope. The heresy of Migetius would not demand our attention were it not the occasion of Adoptionism. The principal opponent in Spain of the doctrines of Migetius was Elipandus, Archbishop of Toledo. In arguing against his errors on the subject of the ‘corporeal persons’ of the Blessed Trinity, Elipandus went to the other extreme, and denied that the second person of the Blessed Trinity had a real human nature at all. He held that the human nature of God the Son was only an ‘adopted’ nature; and hence that Jesus Christ was not the true Son of God, but only His ‘adopted’ son. He thus practically revived the heresy of Nestorius. For the inference from the teaching of Nestorius, that was so fatal to that heresiarch in the eyes of the people of Ephesus, viz., that Our Lady was not the Mother of God, was equally applicable to the doctrine of Elipandus. It was further maintained, by at least some of the followers of Elipandus, that the second person ‘adopted’ the man Christ at the time of the baptism in the Jordan, and that consequently from that moment Jesus Christ was the Son of God by ‘adoption’.

One of the first and ablest of the supporters of Elipandus was Felix, Bishop of Urgel in the Spanish March, i.e., in that part of the north-east of Spain which was under the power of Charlemagne. By the year 785 controversy on the subject ran high; and Spaniards in the far Asturias wrote in opposition to Elipandus. Speedily informed of what was going on, Hadrian wrote a long letter “to all the orthodox bishops of Spain” this same year (785). He reminds them that the Roman Church is the head of the Churches throughout the world, and that whoever severs himself from that Church is out of the Christian religion; and says he has heard that certain bishops in Spain, setting at naught the doctrine of the Apostolic See, have introduced various new heresies. They, however, must strive to keep intact the doctrine which their predecessors received from “our holy Catholic and Apostolic See”; and hence must not allow to creep in among them the poisonous doctrines of Elipandus and his followers, “who do not blush to affirm that the Son of God is an adopted son, a blasphemy which no other heretic has dared to enun­ciate, except Nestorius, who made out that the Son of God was a mere man”. The Pope next establishes the orthodox faith by proofs drawn from the New Testament and from the Fathers.

This letter produced no effect. The heresy continued to spread. By the command of Charlemagne a synod was assembled at Ratisbon in 792. Here the doctrine of the Adoptionists was condemned. Felix retracted and was sent to Rome to Pope Hadrian. In St. Peter’s, in presence of the Pope, Felix again abjured his heresy. He solemnly placed one written profession of faith on the Sacred Species, and another on the tomb of St. Peter; and engaged on oath to believe and to teach that Jesus Christ was the true Son of God and not His adopted son.

The Council of Frankfort, 794

Returned to Spain, he returned to his errors; and, that he might be free to propagate his views, he withdrew into a part of Spain that was under the sway of the Moors. Charlemagne now began to take energetic measures to combat the advances made by the new heresy. His first step was to recall his trusty counselor, Alcuin, from England: “Heresy is spreading in our lands; make haste thou to help us”. Finding, however, all his efforts to move Felix, to whom he was personally attached, quite unavailing, Alcuin advised Charlemagne to summon another council to discuss the affair. The Frankish king, who had been asked by certain of the Spanish bishops, quite in the usual style of heretics who always appeal to the civil power, to decide the controversy himself, sent their communications to the Pope, begged his advice, and assembled a council at Frankfort in the beginning of the summer of 794, “by apostolic authority”. Bishops, how many is not exactly known, came from all parts of Charlemagne’s dominions. Two came to represent the Pope. Adoptionism was again condemned. Two refutations of it were drawn up and approved by the council. Among the decrees drawn up by this council, as we shall have occasion to mention more in detail presently, there was one (the second) which condemned the Seventh General Council of Nice for teachings in reference to holy images, which were never enunciated by that Council. Hadrian also condemned the Adoptionist documents, which Charlemagne had sent him, in a letter addressed to the bishops of Gaul and Spain. “As it is a question of the faith”, writes the Pope, “we have been obliged to reply to the letter of the Spaniards in writing and with the authority of the Apostolic See”. This letter of the Pope, and the two refutations of Adoptionism, drawn up by the Italian and Frankish bishops respectively, were sent by Charlemagne to Elipandus and the other bishops of Spain, along with a letter from himself. The king of the Franks opens his letter with ardent words in praise of the blessings of unity. His warrior nature displays itself in the comparisons he uses. “As the ordered array of an army and the united bravery of the soldiers strikes terror into the enemy”—doubtless Charlemagne was thinking of the effect his disciplined forces produced on the unorganized courage of the Saxons —“so the peaceful union of the sons of our holy Mother the Church within the wall of the Catholic faith is terrible to the powers of darkness”. He exhorts them to humbly search after the truth: “for it is better to be a learner of the truth than a teacher of falsehood ... The faith of all Christians must be one ... That the Spaniards are under the yoke of the infidel is pitiful, but that they should fall under the sway of unbelief or schism would be more so” ... To bring them back to the unity of the faith, he had summoned a council, and “on this new invention had three or four times sent embassies to the most blessed pontiff of the Apostolic See, to learn what answer to these questions would be given by the Holy Roman Church, taught as it was by the traditions of the Apostles”. As for himself, he unites himself to the great numbers and authority of the fathers of the council, to the Apostolic See, and to the ancient Catholic traditions that have come down from the early Church, rather than to the small number of Spaniards who have put forth a new doctrine. He entreats the Spaniards to do likewise, to remain with him firmly attached to the profession of the one Catholic faith, and not to consider themselves wiser than the Universal Church; and he reminds them that if they will not heed the apostolic authority and the unanimous voice of the synod, they must be accounted heretics, with whom he must not be in communion. Charlemagne concludes this letter, so full of the truest Catholic spirit, with a profession of faith drawn from the Nicene and Athanasian creeds.

This action on the part of the Frankish monarch did not, unfortunately, put an end to the heresy it was directed against. Even after the death of Hadrian, controversy on the subject was still brisk. Fresh apologies for his doctrine poured from the pen of Felix. These Charlemagne sent to Rome, and in response to the wishes of the king, Leo III held a council of 157 bishops in St Peter’s (799). Here the doctrines of the Adoptionists were once more condemned. More effective than this, however, in putting an end to the Adoptionist heresy, was a mission which Charlemagne sent into the province of Urgel, to explain the true faith to the people. Besides bringing back thousands to the faith, they induced Felix again to present himself before a council. In the autumn of 799, at a council convened by Charlemagne, overcome by the logic of Alcuin, Felix once again renounced his errors. A second mission sent by Charlemagne to Urgel, the death of Elipandus —and Adoptionism died the death.

Iconoclasm and the Seventh General Council

Whilst combating a new heresy in the West, Hadrian was helping to deal a severe blow at another in the East. The life of one hundred and twenty years of the Iconoclast controversy may be conveniently divided into three periods. In the first, from the publication of Leo III’s first decree against the images (726) to the death of his grandson Leo IV (780), the Iconoclasts were masters of the situation. From that event (780) to the accession of Leo V the Armenian (813), especially whilst power was in the hands of the Athenian Irene, the orthodox party were in the ascendant; but under Leo V, Michael II and Theophilus, Iconoclasm was again rampant, till it was finally suppressed under Theodore (842). In 755 died miserably the tyrant Constantine Copronymus, crying out, according to Theophanes, that he was already tasting of the fire which is never to be extinguished. His son Leo IV, whose attention was fully occupied by the Saracens, and whose reign was but short (775-780), only began to prove himself a persecutor a few months before his death (October 780). The supreme power now fell into the hands of Leo’s wife, the beautiful but ambitious Irene, as regent for her young son Constantine VI Porphyrogenitus. Under Irene the ‘worship’ of images was tolerated at once. And in compliance with the exhortations of Pope Hadrian, she decided to take measures for the restoration of the images and of communion with the West. Wars with the Saracens and Slavs prevented any active steps being taken for a few years, but at length matters were brought to a head, after a cessation of those wars, by the resignation of the patriarch Paul (August 784). On leaving his See he expressed his regret to the empress and her son that he had ever “sat in the sacerdotal throne of Constantinople, inasmuch as that Church was tyrannized over, and cut off by the other thrones from communion with them”. And to the nobles he added: “Unless you assemble a general council and put an end to your errors, there is no hope of salvation for you”. By the empress and people Tarasius, a layman and imperial secretary, was selected to succeed Paul. Tarasius, however, after pointing out that the Church of Constantinople was anathematized as well by the other Churches of the East as by the West, and that there was need in the Church of one faith, one baptism, and concord and agreement in other ecclesiastical matters, declared that he would only accept their choice of him if the rulers would bring about a general council. After some demur on the part of the partisans of Iconoclasm, the condition was agreed to, and Tarasius was consecrated on Christmas Day, 784. He at once wrote to the Oriental patriarchs and to the Pope, requesting them to send delegates to assist at a General Council. Irene also wrote to Hadrian a letter which is found prefixed to the Acts of the Seventh General Council (August 785), in the different collections of the Councils. Saluting Hadrian as “the most holy head”, who had received from Our Lord the highest dignity among the priests, as he has given us (viz., Constantine and Irene) the chief power in the State, she says that, with the advice of her priests and people, she has decreed the holding of an ecumenical council; and begs the Pope to come in person to it “as the true first priest and the one who presides in the place and See of St Peter’s”. If the Pope cannot come in person, he is entreated to send venerable and learned men with letters from him to represent him.

In his reply to the empress (October 785), which was read in the second session of the Seventh General Council, Hadrian rejoices in her intention to restore the orthodox faith by the restoration of the images, “Blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, left to his successors, who were for ever to sit in his Sacred See, the chief power of the Apostolate, just as he had himself received it from Our Saviour. And it is by their tradition that we venerate the images of Our Lord, His Blessed Mother and the Saints”. The Pope then at some length defends a rational use of images from the testimony of the Sacred Scriptures and the Fathers, and bewails the folly of those who would forbid the honoring of images, “in which are contained the histories of Our Lord and the Saints”. If an ecu­menical council had to be held, the pseudo-synod (of 753 or 754), held without the sanction of the Apostolic See, must be anathematized, and a safe conduct for the Pope’s legates and a declaration of impartiality must be tendered by the rulers. Hadrian also asked for the restoration of the ‘patrimonies’ and his patriarchal rights, which had been taken away by Leo the Isaurian, and expressed his astonishment that the “title of universal patriarch” had in her letter been given to Tarasius by the empress. The title ought not to be employed, as it would seem to imply that the patriarch of Constantinople had the primacy which had been given by Our Lord to the Roman Church through Peter. Had it not been for his orthodoxy, the Pope could not have consented to the uncanonical election of Tarasius. To Tarasius himself, quite in the same strain, the Pope wrote another letter, which was also read in the second session of the Council.

No direct answer to the letter of Tarasius came from the Oriental patriarchs themselves, for the simple reason that, owing to the hostility of the Saracens, it never reached them. An answer, however, came from certain ‘archiereis of the East’, as they style themselves, i.e., as is clear from the context and the present use of the word among the Greeks, superiors of monasteries. By the advice of these men, the messengers of Tarasius did not proceed on their journey to the Oriental patriarchs, for fear of stirring up the Mohammedans against the whole body of Christians under their rule. But they (the messengers) returned with John and Thomas, syncelli, or chaplains, of the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria respectively, who were commissioned to testify to ‘the apostolic tradition of the East’, which they knew well.  “Should you wish to hold a synod”, the letter continues, “be not concerned at the absence of the three patriarchs and of the bishops under them; for this is due to the threats of their temporal rulers (the Saracens), and not to their own wish”. Their absence did not interfere with the authority of the Sixth General Council, especially as the Pope of Rome gave his assent to it ... “To give weight to our letter, we send the synodical letter which Theodore, patriarch of Jerusalem, once sent to the patriarchs Cosmas of Alexandria and Theodore of Antioch; and which called forth responsive letters from them to him”.

An attempt to hold the council in Constantinople (August 786) failed owing to the violence of the imperial bodyguard, a band of men full, of course, of the views of Constantine and Leo. Next year, however, after Irene had disbanded the old bodyguard and formed a new one, the bishops again met, to the number of some 350, at Nicaea, and held their first session in September, 787. Though Tarasius directed the work of the synod, the Pope’s legates held the first place in the assembly, as the acts, which they always sign first, show. The enemies of the holy images were anathematized, and the Council, at the end of the seventh session, decreed that “images of Our Lord, of our immaculate Mother, and of the Saints in any material might be placed anywhere. The oftener one looked on these representations, the more would the onlooker be stirred to the remembrance of the originals, to imitate them, and to offer his greeting and his reverence to them, not the actual worship of ‘latria’, which belonged to the Godhead alone; but that he should offer, as to the figure of the cross, the books of the holy Gospels, and to the other sacred things, incense and lights in their honor, as this had been the sacred custom 'with the ancients; for the honor which is shown to the figure passes over to the original, and whoever does reverence to an image does reverence to the person represented by it”.

At an eighth session, held in Constantinople, the decree was signed by Irene and Constantine. It is interesting to note that “the scene is represented in a Greek MS., now in the Vatican, and the young emperor (the empress is omitted) is the most conspicuous personage. In the foreground is a prostrate figure, which seems to represent the spirit of Iconoclasm that was now overthrown”. On the termination of the Council, Tarasius wrote to the Pope (788), whom he speaks of as adorned with the high priesthood and as hastening to destroy error with the sword of the Spirit, to inform him of what had been done at the Council, how they had all embraced the confession of the truth which the Pope had sent; and how the emperors had re-erected the images both in the Churches and in the palaces. The Pope’s legates returned with letters from Irene and with the Acts of the Council in Greek, bearing the autograph signatures of the empress and her son. Thus, for a time at least, the image question was at rest in the East.

But in the West it was quite the reverse. Where there had been peace on the image question there was now war. Though Hadrian did not send a formal confirmation of the Council to Irene, because his just demands, in connection with the restoration of the patrimonies and of his jurisdiction in the diocese of Illyricum, had not been attended to, he nevertheless received the Council, and ordered its acts to be translated into Latin. His orders were obeyed indeed; but so bad a translation was made that Anastasius, the librarian, who again translated the acts, assured  Pope John VIII that the first inter­preters had employed such a slavish word for word translation that the sense of the original could scarcely ever be discovered. Up to this the Franks entertained the same rational views with regard to the use of images as was entertained then in the other countries of the West, and as is entertained now in the Catholic Church. Even to this day the use of images is not so great in the West as in the East. Reflecting on this fact, and that Charlemagne was annoyed at Irene for breaking off the engagement between her son and his daughter, it need cause no great surprise that the arrival, among the Franks, of a bad translation of the Acts of the Seventh General Council caused considerable disturbances in their country. And in combating what they supposed to be the blasphemous idolatry of the Greeks, they, at least to some extent, left the ‘via media’ in which they had previously been, and denied that any, even relative, honor was, in practice at any rate, to be paid to the sacred images.

The Caroline Books

In 790 appeared the famous Caroline Books, which, issued under the name of Charlemagne, are often groundlessly attributed to Alcuin. These books (four in number) condemned alike the Council of Constantinople (753 or 754) for ordering the destruction of images, which the books consider useful, and the Council of Nice for ordering their adoration. Throughout, the Caroline Books, ignoring the plain distinction between adoring images absolutely, and adoring them relatively, a distinction which the Council of Nice had made clear by the use of the words ‘latria’ on the one hand and ‘proskunesis’ on the other, speak as though the Seventh General Council had placed the ‘adoration’ or worship to be offered to the Blessed Trinity and to images on the same level. Hence, at the close of the preface of the first book, its authors say that “they hold to the orthodox doctrine, according to which images must serve only to ornament the churches and to recall past events, while God alone must be adored, and His saints only honored with the veneration which is their due; and hence they neither break the images with the one synod, nor adore them with the other”. Throughout these books also there is displayed a great want of accuracy, and the animus of their authors against the Eastern rulers is displayed by the absurd points which they endeavor to make against them—e.g., their arrogance in giving to their letters the name of ‘Divalia’. Other matters not at all to the point are discussed in these ‘books’, such as the ‘procession’ of the Holy Ghost in the beginning of the third book; and some of the arguments for the worship of images, which had been adduced by some of the more simple Fathers of the Nicene Council, are crushed with pitiless logic. But in some cases the authors of the Caroline books, either in bad faith, or misled by the wretched translation that had fallen into their hands, erected men of straw for themselves, and then triumphantly demolished them. Smartly do they attack the Nicene bishops for putting images and the Blessed Eucharist on the same level. The Council of Nice, however, so far from doing anything of the sort, would not even have the ‘unbloody sacrifice’ called the ‘image of Christ’; for, of course, it was in their eyes Christ Himself, and not an image of any kind. Again, the Caroline books find no difficulty in annihilating the Seventh Council for approving of the language of Constantine, Bishop of Constantia, in Cyprus, who had the courage to give voice to what the rest of the council thought, and to say boldly that he paid the same homage to images as he paid to the Blessed Trinity. Constantine, as a matter of fact, had said: “I embrace with honor the holy and venerable images, but true adoration I offer to the Holy Trinity alone”. There is no doubt that the supposed utterance of Constantine was what most put the Franks on the wrong tack in their estimation of the work of the Seventh General Council. And so, as we shall see presently, they were the very words singled out for condemnation by the Council of Frankfort. With glorious inconsistency, too, the Libri assert “Whilst in the matter of images we despise nothing except the ‘adoration’ of them, they (the Fathers of the Council) place all their faith in them; though we venerate the saints in their bodies, or rather in the relics of their bodies, and in their vestments, according to the tradition of the ancient Fathers!”

Of one thing in their reckless attack on the seventh synod the authors of the Libri were careful; and that was to show their loyalty to the Holy See. Anxious lest, whilst attacking a council presided over by the Pope’s legates, they might be thought wanting in respect to the See of Rome, they take an early opportunity of setting forth “how much the Roman Church has been raised by Our Lord above the other churches, and how it must be consulted by the faithful”. Only those texts of Scripture are to be recognized which are taken from the books acknowledged by her to be canonical, and only those Fathers are to be considered as authorities who have been acknowledged by the Roman pontiffs. As the apostles were above the other disciples, and Peter preeminent over the apostles, so the apostolic Sees are above the other Sees, and the Roman See above the other apostolic Sees ... After Christ, to obtain help to strengthen their faith, all must turn to her, who has no spot or blemish, who crushes heresy and strengthens the faithful in their faith”. Hence, with that Church, the authors of the Libri would be one even in matters not of faith, as in modes of worship and singing.

Whether the Caroline Books were presented to the Fathers of the Council of Frankfort or not, it is certain that the question of the decision of the Second Council of Nice was discussed by them. For among the fifty-six chapters which they drew up, the second declared that the Greek synod, held at Constantinople (the last session of the Second Council of Nice was held in the imperial city), had condemned those who would not render to images the ‘adoration’ they rendered to the Blessed Trinity. All the bishops here present have refused to give ‘adoration’ to images, and have rejected the synod. It is quite plain that the bishops at Frank­fort were under a completely wrong impression as to what the Seventh General Council had really decided.

Either in 792 or 794 the Caroline Books were sent to the Pope; or, rather, probably some abridgment of them. At any rate, it is quite certain from Hadrian’s reply to them, that they were not sent to him in the form in which we now have them. The objectionable proposi­tions were sent to the Pope, “to be corrected in accordance with his judgment”. A very lengthy reply was sent by the Pope either in 794 or 795. Hadrian reminds Charlemagne that the care of the Church was given by Our Lord to St. Peter and his successors, and says that in replying to the king’s communication, point by point, he will hold to the tradition of the holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church. Hadrian then proceeds to reply to a great number of points which are by no means exactly those of the Caroline books, as we have them today. In unfolding the tradition of the Roman Church, Hadrian declares that time would fail him were he to attempt to enumerate the churches his predecessors have built and adorned with statues and paintings, and to set forth the veneration they have paid them. The Seventh Council, he said, decided, in accordance with the teaching of St. Gregory I and his own, that honor was to be given to holy images, but true worship only to the Divine nature. Hence he concludes: “We accept the council. For if we did not, and men returned to the vomit of their error, who would be responsible on the great accounting day for the loss of so many thou­sand Christian souls but we ourselves? … We are more concerned for the salvation of souls and the preservation of the true faith than for the possession of the world”. This was said by Hadrian in reference to the claim he had made to the Greek emperor for the restoration of the confiscated patrimonies.

With this, the image-difficulty was for the time settled among the Franks. The images remained in their churches; they still continued to honor the cross, the book of the Gospels, etc., and, beyond all doubt, the images themselves, though perhaps with less demonstration than the cross, relics and the rest. Up to this day has image-worship been practiced in France through the long-succession of the centuries. And as the traveler makes his way from village to village, and from town to town, throughout the length and breadth of sunny France, his mind is constantly raised to the thought of higher things by the frequently-recurring sight of the sign of our redemption or of the image of Our Lady or some Saint. Material objects indeed are they; but none so calculated to make us less material.

Before, however, leaving this question, we may be permitted to quote here a letter to the Pope from our countryman Alcuin, which many think was called forth by this image controversy. The letter is assigned to the July or August of 794. Alcuin opens his letter by imploring the prayers of that “venerable man, who was illustrious throughout the whole world for his goodness”, and who was “the heir of that wondrous power” of binding and losing in heaven and on earth. He confesses himself a miserable sinner (for opposing the Pope at the Council of Frankfort on the matter of the images), and prays Hadrian to absolve him from his sins. He begs God long to preserve the life “of such a pastor”.

In view especially of certain utterly baseless theories that many are endeavoring to have accepted in this country, the account of Hadrian’s dealings with England will doubtless be more interesting to Englishmen than the Iconoclast controversy. In 773 the Pope granted the pallium to Ethelbert of York and in 780 we read in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that King Alfwold sent to him for the pallium for Eanbald, the successor of Ethelbert. A little later (786), understanding that things were not as they should be in England, Hadrian sent over to this country two special legates, George, Bishop of Ostia, and Theophylact, Bishop of Todi, “to renew the faith and peace which St Gregory had sent us by Augustine, the bishop, and they were worshipfully received and sent away in peace”. There also came along with the bishops one Wighod, an ambassador from Charlemagne. What the legates did we can best learn from the letter of George to the Pope. He says that by the aid of the Pope’s prayers, they at length reached England, and at once proceeded to the palace of Offa, king of the Mercians. “Owing to his reverence for Blessed Peter and your apostleship, he received with great joy both us and the sacred letters we had brought from the supreme See”. They then went into Northumbria, where they found matters in a bad state, “as they were the first Roman priests who had been sent there since the time of Blessed Austin”. In a council (probably at Corbridge-on-Tyne), in presence of King Alfwold, the Pope’s letters to the Northumbrians were read, and various canons (some twenty in number) were proposed to the king and his prelates and nobles for their acceptance. These canons had reference to the frequent holding of synods; the careful teaching of the faith “as it had been handed down to them by the Holy Roman Church”; the election of kings; the respecting of privileges granted to churches by Rome; the abstaining from violence on the part of all such as would keep “in communion with the Holy Roman Church and St. Peter”; the abolition of the practice of tattooing, of cruelty to horses, and eating their flesh, etc. All engaged to keep these decrees, with the aid of divine grace, to the best of their ability, and the leading men confirmed the decrees by placing their hands in the hands of the legates, as representatives of the Pope, and making the sign of the cross on the copy of the canons.

The letter then goes on to relate that the legates after­wards returned to Mercia; and, at a council at Calcuith (which Lingard supposes to be Chelsey), before Offa and Jaenbyret (Lambert), Archbishop of Canterbury, read, both in Latin and Teutonic that all might understand them, the decrees that had been approved of by the council in Northumberland. “All with one accord, grateful for the admonitions of your apostleship”, promised to stand by the canons. In this synod King Offa, partly from hostility to the men of Kent and to their archbishop, and partly from motives of pride, tried to obtain from the council the recog­nition of Lichfield as a metropolitan See. As might have been expected, there was a stormy discussion. But Offa was determined, and he gained the bishops to his views. Lichfield was acknowledged as the archiepiscopal See of the country between the Thames and the Humber, Jaenbyret’s possessions within the borders of Mercia were seized by the king. Offa even managed to obtain the consent of Pope Hadrian to his wishes. “From Pope Hadrian”, says William of Malmesbury, “whom he had wearied with plausible assertions for a long time, as many things not to be granted may be gradually drawn and artfully wrested from minds intent on other occupa­tions, he obtained (788) that there should be a bishopric of the Mercians at Lichfield”. The Pope is even said, but wrongly, to have sent the pallium to the successor of the new archbishop, Higebert. It is interesting also to note that at this council Offa gave into the hands of the legates a deed by which he engaged that he and his successors should each year give to St Peter’s at Rome 365 mancuses (a mancus = 30 pennies) to supply oil for the lamps and for the support of poor pilgrims.

Pope Hadrian was also called upon to adjudicate—with what result history does not inform us—between Offa and some of his political opponents, who had fled to the court of Charlemagne. In response to the repeated request of Offa to have them delivered up to him, Charlemagne sent them to Rome to have them tried before the Pope and “your archbishop”. “For what”, wrote the Frank to Offa, “can be more satisfactory than that the apostolic authority should decide cases in which there is difference of opinion?” What bloodshed would be avoided if this conduct of Charlemagne were imitated by the great ones of today! And the Frankish monarch had every reason to believe that such a course could not be unacceptable to Offa, as Hadrian had assured him that Offa’s predecessors “had ever been subject in obedience and faithful love to the Pope’s holy predecessors”.

Other passages in the letter just quoted are not without interest as showing that the idea of having a Pope of Frankish origin, and so presumably subservient to their king, came into the fertile imaginations of the Gauls before the days of Philip the Fair or Napoleon I. “You write”, says the Pope, “that it has been reported to you that we have been informed that Offa has written to suggest to you that you should drive us from Our See and install therein one of your own nation. You have further written”, continues Hadrian, “to assure me that no such suggestion was ever made by Offa, whose only wish is that my paternity should be spared to govern the Church of God to the advantage of all Christians”. However, the Pope goes on to assure Charlemagne, he has not heard any such reports about Offa, who could not, had he been a pagan, have conceived such ideas; and, moreover, had he heard them, he would not have believed them. And in any case: “The Lord is my helper: I will not fear what man can do unto me” (Ps. CXVII. 6).

It will not be out of place here to dwell at some little length on some other of the relations between Hadrian and Charlemagne.

The Case of Abbot Potho

About a ‘thousand paces' from the source of the Vulturno the traveler may behold the ruins of one of the most famous monasteries in Italy during the Middle Ages. Famous even in the eighth century, the monastery of St. Vincent, on the Vulturno, was at the time of which we are now writing in a most flourishing condition. Founded in the midst of what was then a most wild country, by the advice of that pious hermit, Thomas of Morienna (who had been the originator of the equally famous abbey of Farfa), and destined to be plundered over and over again by the Saracens in the following century, it was in the reign of Hadrian full of monks. We can easily understand how, in their hours of recreation, the monks must have discussed the great changes which were taking place in the government of Italy. A letter of Hadrian, which tells us of a commotion in this abbey, is in many ways the most interesting document of his age, as it lets us see what men were thinking and saying with regard to what was going on around them. A charge of treason against the abbot of St. Vincent's (one Potho) had been brought to the notice of Charlemagne. However, in accordance with the requirements of the canons, as the case concerned an ecclesiastic, the king referred the matter to Hadrian. The parties were duly summoned before a court at Rome, at which, with the Pope, there sat as assessors, archbishop Possessor the missus of Charlemagne, the abbot of Farfa, and three other abbots, Hildeprand, Duke of Spoleto, and various officials of the papal court), such as the librarian Theophylactus, Stephen the treasurer, Duke Theodore, the Pope’s nephew, and many others. One of the monks, Rodicausus (Rothgaud), stepped forward and said : “My lord, when we had finished Sext, and, according to custom, were singing the psalm—‘Save me, O God, by Thy name’—for the king and his family, the abbot suddenly stood up and refused to sing. On another occasion, when we were walking together, the abbot asked me: ‘What is your opinion of our cause? I have been expecting a sign in connection with it and have been disappointed. If it were not for the monastery and its Beneventan lands, I would count him (Charlemagne) as a dog ... Would that there were no more Franks left than I could carry on my shoulder”. To all this Potho indignantly retorted : “Our congregation always prays for the king’s Excellency and for his children. And on the occasion referred to, I rose, suddenly indeed, but merely to attend to some business concerning the monastery. As for what was said during our walk, it was simply this : If it would not seem like desertion of the monastery and its interests, I would go to some place where I should not have to look after anybody. Finally, with regard to the Franks, I said nothing of what he alleges against me”. Rodicausus could not bring forward any confirmatory evidence of his allegations, and his charges were further discounted when it was shown that he had been anything but an exemplary character. After a most careful investigation, the abbot was at length acquitted on his own oath, and that of ten ‘compurgators (five Franks by birth and five Lombards), that he had never been “unfaithful' to the king”.

The words of Rodicausus, if unjustly placed by him in the mouth of Potho, are an index of the independent spirit that was abroad at this period in the Samnite duchy, which was evidently too little in the power of Charlemagne for him to have handed it over to the Pope in its entirety, however much he may have wished to do so. It was, in practice, as much distinguished from the kingdom of Italy as the duchy of Rome and the Pentapolis.

As we have already seen, Charlemagne not only confirmed the Pope’s supreme dominion over various parts of Italy, but also restored to him the various patrimonies which belonged to the Holy See, and had been seized by the Lombards, But it was one thing for Charlemagne to decree that these estates should be given back to the popes, and another for the popes to be able to get them back from those who were in possession of them. Hence Hadrian had a great deal of writing to do before he could come into his rights in connection with some of them. In five letters of the Caroline Code do we find negotiations between the Pope and the Frank king relative to the full restoration of the Sabine patrimony. Sometimes perverse and wicked men prevented even the envoys of Charle­magne from being able to carry out their sovereign’s orders. Three years elapsed before the restoration of that patrimony was completely effected. There are also extant, at least, three letters that treat of the full restora­tion of the patrimonies of Rosellae, near the modern Grosseto, and Populonium, a maritime city, on the Aurelian Way, which had belonged ‘of old’ to the Holy See. For thus trying to regain his just rights, the charge of avarice has often been glibly thrown at Hadrian. But there is an avarice which is no avarice. It is idle to accuse of avarice a man who looks well after his own. And, as we shall see, no man ever made a better use of the money that came to him from the possessions of the Church than Hadrian, On one occasion we find him indignantly denying that he acted “from any avaricious desire of acquiring even the cities which Charlemagne had given to Blessed Peter and to him”.

The donation of Constantine

Other writers, again, accuse Hadrian of appealing to the “donation of Constantine” in order to substantiate his claims to dominion and patrimonies. This document may be found in the principal collections of the councils. It was received into the collection of the ‘False Decretals’, made by one calling himself Isidore, which appeared in France about the middle of the ninth century. In it we read that Constantine made over to the Pope not only the city of Rome and the whole of Italy, but all the provinces of the West, and gave to the Roman clergy a great many privileges of honor. It is, of course, now admitted on all hands that the donation document is a forgery. But who was the author of the forgery, or when exactly it first saw the light, are questions which, if the truth be told, cannot be completely answered. Those who are not well disposed towards the popes give as early a date as pos­sible to the composition of the donation, to insinuate, at least, that it was by producing a forgery to the Frank monarchs that the Roman pontiffs acquired their temporal power. This action of writers hostile to the popes causes authors who are attached to them to be desirous of putting the date as late as possible. However, of one thing we feel sure; no one who has attentively followed the history of the growth of the temporal power of the popes can believe that the so-called ‘donation’, produced, at the earliest, in the second half of the eighth century, had anything to do with the acquisition of sovereign power by the popes in that century. The donation of Constantine no more gave a rood of territory to the popes than the False Decretals gave them a title of spiritual power or ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In theory or on paper the donation gave the Pope temporal authority enough; but in point of fact it certainly cannot be shown that it was the means of adding anything to the practical jurisdiction of the popes. What gave the popes their temporal sway in the eighth century was the previous march of great events over which they had no control, and not a trumpery piece of forged parchment And, as a matter of fact, when the popes’ already existing temporal authority was extended by Pippin or confirmed by Charlemagne, where do we find any mention of the donation? It is indeed said that Pope Hadrian himself appeals to it. That the reader may judge for himself whether Hadrian did or did not cite the donation, we will translate the whole passage which is supposed to contain the allusion. Hadrian, after asking Charlemagne to see to the fulfillment of all that he had promised to the Church, continues as follows : “And as, in the times of Blessed Sylvester, the Roman pontiff, the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church of God was exalted by the most pious emperor of blessed memory, Constantine the Great, and power was given to it in these Western parts, so in your and our most happy times may the Holy Church of God, i.e., of Blessed Peter the Apostle, exult .... because a new most Christian emperor Constantine has arisen in these times, through whom God has deigned to bestow everything on his Holy Church of Blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. Moreover, may there be restored in your day all the other things which have been granted to Blessed Peter and the Roman Church by divers emperors, patricians and other God-fearing men for the good of their souls and the pardon of their sins, in Tuscany, Spoleto, Beneventum, Corsica and the Sabine patrimony, and which have been in the course of time filched away by the unspeakable Lombards. We have sent, for the satisfaction of your Most Christian Majesty many of the donations which we have in our archives in the Lateran”. In this passage, misled either by the so-called ‘Acts of Pope Sylvester’, or, perchance, too highly estimating the elevated position in the Western world which the recognition of Christianity by Constantine must have given to the See of Peter, Hadrian may have exaggerated what Constantine effected for the Holy See. But there cannot have been question here of the donation of Constantine. There would have been no need, with such a donation (even if we limit it to Italy), to send to Charlemagne ‘donations’ of ‘other emperors’ of patrimonies in Tuscany, Spoleto, etc. It is plain that throughout this whole letter Hadrian is speaking of donations of money, landed property and the like, i.e., of the patrimonies of the Roman See and not of its newly-acquired regal sway over certain territories.

The donation, then, was not cited by a Pope before the year 1054, when Leo IX quoted it in writing to the patriarch Michael Cerularius. And we may say with Fleury, and others, that the first writer who cites it was Aeneas, Bishop of Paris, in a treatise that he composed against the Greeks, apparently about the year 867. Hincmar of Rheims, and his contemporary Ado of Vienne, are the next authors who mention the ‘donation’. From this time forth, throughout the whole of the Middle Ages to the fifteenth century, it was regarded as authentic by both Greeks and Latins. Looking now at facts only, it appears, in the first place, that most of the MSS. of the ‘donation’ are of Gallic origin, as also are the most ancient of them. Fresh examination of the MSS. has apparently proved that the oldest copy of the deed, which is in the Bibliothéque Nationale of France, was written in the ninth century, and in the monastery of St. Denis. Further, though it would have been very useful to such popes as Nicholas I and Hadrian II in their controversies with Photius, it was not cited by the Roman pontiffs till after the middle of the eleventh century. But it was quoted by Gallic authors of the ninth century. Why, then, should we not conclude that it was forged among the Franks? A Frank would forge it as a means of defending the institution of the Frankish Empire against the diatribes of the Greeks. If Constantine made Pope Sylvester supreme in the West, then the popes could make over their rights to Charlemagne and his descendants.

Whoever was the author of the donation (very likely, as Grauert conjectures, a monk of St. Denis, near Paris, in the first half of the ninth century), it may perhaps be said that there is no convincing reason for believing that it saw the light before the ninth century, or anywhere else than in France. We may allow, however, with many modern critics, that it may have been forged about the year 774 in the Lateran itself, and that it may have proved useful in later times to the popes by furnishing them with a ready and handy weapon for defending their rights to power they had previously acquired. Still it assuredly cannot be shown that they were ever able to add by its means to the territory they already had—a remark equally applicable to the False Decretals in the domain of the spiritual power of the popes. As a matter of fact, too, the false donation was a document not much used by the popes; and it certainly cannot be shown that it affected public opinion either in Rome or elsewhere in the eighth century.

But not only in his temporal difficulties did Hadrian confidently turn to Charlemagne for help. It had come to the Pope's knowledge that various Lombard bishops were in the habit of interfering with one another’s jurisdiction, and that certain monks and nuns among the Lom­bards had thrown off their monastic habits and contracted illicit marriages. He therefore wrote to Charlemagne to beg him to cooperate with him, that such disorders “might be canonically corrected in our and your times, among the whole Christian people committed by God to our (the Pope's) care”. In a word, then, it may be said that these two master minds of their age, Hadrian and Charlemagne, always worked together in harmony.

This view, founded, it was believed, on a careful study of the extant documents, from which it was possible to judge of the intercourse of the Frankish king and the Roman pope, had been written down long before the publication of Dr. Hodgkin’s last volume of his most interesting Italy and her Invaders. When, however, the author of this view read therein: “The history of Italy during the quarter of a century before us (the last quarter of the eighth) is almost entirely the history of the strained relations between the two men, Charles and Hadrian, who had sworn eternal friendship over the corpse of St. Peter”—when he read this, he not unnaturally wondered whether prejudice had been at work and quite distorted his vision. He is content, however, to stand by his opinion, as he finds that Mr. Davis, the latest student in this country of the career of Charlemagne, has no hesitation in writing that the estrangements between the monarch and the Pope were but “temporary .... were ripples on the surface; they did not affect the broad stream of Frankish policy”. For in Hadrian’s own words, “it is my practice to try to oblige you, as it is yours to endeavor to gratify me”; and in Charlemagne’s,” your interests are ours, and ours are yours”.

Of course it is only to be expected that for their own ends some would endeavor to disturb this harmony, and that during their long intercourse some slight differences of opinion or disagreements might arise between the Pope and his powerful protector. The letters of the Caroline Code prove that all this did really take place.

Two powerful officials of Ravenna, who had perpetrated divers excesses, and in consequence were in dread of the Pope’s resentment, fled secretly to Charlemagne trusting to make good their case by endeavoring to breed distrust between the Pope and the king. Hadrian, however, writing to Charlemagne and assuring him that he does not think that anyone can sever their close friend­ship, asks him not to show favor to these two wicked men, but to send them to him in disgrace, that they may be tried and punished, and so that the offering, i.e., the donation, “made by your father Pippin and confirmed by yourself, may remain intact”.

On another occasion, when a similar course had been pursued by others of his Ravennese subjects, Hadrian found it necessary to write in very plain terms to Charlemagne. After pointing out that if honor is due to the king’s patriciate so is it also due to ‘that of St Peter’—a form of speech used on this occasion only by the Pope, Hadrian affirms that the ‘donation’ of Pippin, which he here calls a holocaust, must be rigidly observed. And if Charlemagne does not object to ‘his men’, bishops, counts or others, coming to the Pope, either to obey the Pope’s orders or from their own free will; so neither does the Pope object to his men going to the king, either to pay him their respects or to seek justice. But as the king’s men do not come “to the threshold of the apostles” without the king’s permission, the Pope’s men ought not to be suffered to approach the king without the Pope’s permission. And he begs the king to exhort those of the Pope’s men who come to him to remain subject to the Pope, as he (the Pope) always exhorts those who come to him from the king to remain steadfast in their loyalty to their sovereign.

Strongly, too, had the Pope to protest against the detention of one of his legates (a certain Anastasius, the Pop’s chamberlain) by Charlemagne. The legate had made use of some language which the king could not brook, and had in consequence been thrown into prison. Hadrian pointed out that the Lombards were boasting that such conduct on the part of Charlemagne showed that the friendship between the king and the Pope was at an end, that such action was indeed wholly unheard of, and that the legate ought to be sent back at once to the Pope, to be punished by him according to his deserts.

On the death of Gratiosus, Archbishop of Ravenna (778), ambassadors of Charlemagne were present at the  election of his successor. Against this Hadrian protested as an uncanonical proceeding.

But, in general, as we have already insisted, there was complete harmony of action and unbroken friendship between the Pope and the king. At the request of the latter, we find Hadrian ordering the archbishop of Ravenna to expel all Venetian traders from the Pope’s territories in those parts; granting him marbles and mosaics from the exarch’s old palace at Ravenna, for his church at Aix-la-Chapelle, and sending him a copy of the Sacramentary of St. Gregory, mathematical and other masters, and cantors to teach the Roman chant.

These books and masters were wanted by Charlemagne as aids for the furtherance of that literary Renaissance, which, with the assistance of the practical Northumbrian Alcuin, who showed himself a skilled organizer, the enlightened monarch was much more anxious to promote among his subjects than he was to extend his regal sway over kingdoms. Feeling deeply, and complaining in his capitularies  that the neglect of his predecessors had well-nigh resulted in the extinction of learning, he made every effort to revive it. He realized that there could be no civilization without religion and learning. In all this the Church, the Pope, went before and along with the King. Charlemagne proclaimed to the world that his first capitulary was issued at the instigation of the Pope. Of his legislative enactments, even those “dealing with commerce, education, the administration of justice, seem to be inspired by contact with Rome”, says his latest English biographer. “Each visit to Italy was followed by important reforms in Church or State. Sometimes the king returns with artists, teachers, theologians in his train; more often we discern that the general sense of responsibility as the custodian of a great Christian society is quickened in him, by the lofty ideas which Hadrian, greater in his words than in his acts, communicated to the patrician of the Holy See”.

If what the Frankish monarch accomplished in advancing the cause of learning were to be estimated by any modern standard of actual results, it might be thought he effected but little. But if it be measured, as it should be, by what his labors afterwards made possible, then the debt which European learning owes to him can scarcely be overrated. He revived sound principles and ideas on the subject of learning. It was again placed by him on a pedestal, as something to be admired and imitated. He proclaimed it the star by which men who would rise to eminence in Church or State must be guided.

And if the learning which Charlemagne encouraged was a culture which had reference for the most part directly to the service of religion, it was at the time none the less important. Nay, it was then on that very account but the more important. The Teutonic rulers of Europe, at that time still rather wildly independent, had an instinctive reverence indeed—as the Germans markedly have to this day—for religion and its ministers, but for little else besides. Civilization and learning they could be only got to esteem, in so far as it was connected with religion. However, it is no part of our plan to go into the general question of the Carolingian Renaissance. Still less is it our business to enter into details on the subject. But as the Annals of Lorsch and John the Deacon, the biographer of Gregory the Great, give us very lively details on the subject of the Roman Cantors taken to Francia by Charlemagne, one is the less prepared to pass them over in silence, as they show in what light the Frankish ruler regarded Rome.

The Gallic and Roman Cantors

On the occasion of Charlemagne’s third visit to Rome (787), the services at Easter time brought out the proverbial jealousy of musicians. The Franks declared that their singing was more tuneful than that of the Romans. The latter retorted that they rendered with great exactness the Gregorian chants, which the Franks simply murdered. When the dispute was brought before Charlemagne it grew hot. “Relying on the presence of their sovereign, the Franks loudly jeered the Romans, who, trusting to their superior knowledge, promptly dubbed their opponents fools and asses, and reckoned that the teaching of St. Gregory was a rather better guide than Gallic stupidity. To bring this sort of aimless bickering to a point, Charlemagne asked his cantors which was better and purer, the fountain-head or the streams which flow at a distance from it. The fountain-head, was the unanimous answer. Do you return then to the fount of St. Gregory, for you have clearly corrupted the music of the Church”, was the order of their king. Accordingly when he returned to Frankland, he took with him two Roman cantors as well as two Gregorian antiphonaries, which had been presented to him by the Pope. Although, on account of what John, the deacon, calls ‘Gallic levity’, it took some time to reform the chant of the Franks, it was at length accomplished through the zeal of the Roman tutors (who also taught the Franks the organ), and through the capitularies of the Frankish king. But, at the same time, if the national prejudice of the Roman deacon could be trusted, the result of these combined efforts cannot have been very gratifying, if the ‘beery throats’ of the Franks were only made capable of producing noises “like the sound of wagons rumbling over the stones”

Also at Charlemagne’s request we find the Pope bestow­ing the pallium on Ermenbert, Bishop of Bourges, and on Tilpin, Archbishop of Rheims; and ordering a three-days’ prayer of thanksgiving for the conversion of the Saxons throughout his dominions. And in return we find Charlemagne constantly doing favors for the Pope and sending him presents of all kinds— crosses, horses, strong and shapely; wood and metal for the church repairs that Hadrian was carrying on, and money.

Their friendship for one another was further shown by that especial sign of mutual esteem—the frequent interchange of verses of their own composition. Some of those of Hadrian to Charlemagne have already been quoted. Among those of Charlemagne to Hadrian mention may be made of the dedicatory lines accompanying a present of a copy of the Psalter in golden letters, which Charlemagne had had prepared for the Pope. The king begs the Pope’s acceptance of his present, for it contains the sweet songs of David. He gives it to him that he may think of him when he touches it, and pray for him. In turn he prays that the Pope may live long to rule the Church by his dogmatic skill.

 

Hoc vobis ideo munus pie dado sacerdos,

Filius ut mentem Patris adire queam.

Ac memorare mei precibus sanctisque piisque,

Hoc donum exiguum saepe tenendo manu.

Et quamquam modico niteat splendore libellus,

Davidis placeat celsa camaena tibi.

Rivulus iste meus teneatur flumine vestro,

Floriferumque nemus floscula nostra petant.

Incolumis vigeas, rector, per tempera longa

Ecclesiamque Dei dogmatis arte regas.

 

There is no need to pause to observe that this interchange of poetical presents, besides being an indication of the mutual friendship of Pope and king, is a sign of no little value of the expanding literary aspirations of the times.

Charlemagne’s love for the Pope came out in strong light on the death of the latter (December 25 or 26, 795). “He wept for him”, says his biographer, Eginhard, “as if he had lost the son or brother that was dearest to him. And after he had ceased his mourning for him, he begged prayers to be offered for him, and many times sent alms to other countries for his benefit”, adds an old monastic chronicle. Of this holy thought of Charlemagne we have an interesting example in a letter which he wrote to our King Offa. In it he says that he has sent presents to various episcopal Sees of England “as an almsgiving on account of our apostolic lord Hadrian, earnestly begging that you would order him to be prayed for; not as doubting that his blessed soul is at rest, but to show our esteem and regard for our dearest friend”. Just before Hadrian died, Charlemagne was preparing to send him a large share of the spoils he had taken from the last stronghold of the robber Avars. He was going to send it, as he told Pope Leo, to whom it was afterwards sent, that “the greatness of the gift might show the strength of his love for Hadrian, and that the steadfastness of their sweet familiar intercourse might be made manifest to the eyes of many”. He also, perhaps with the aid of Alcuin, wrote the Pope’s epitaph, which he caused to be inscribed in letters of gold on black marble, and sent to Rome, where it may still be read. The epitaph begins: “Here the Father of the Church, the glory of Rome, the illustrious author, Hadrian, the blessed Pope, has his rest. ... Born of noble parents, he was nobler by his virtues ... The Church he enriched with his gifts, the people with his holy teaching ...  Rome, chief city of the world, he re-erected thy walls ... You were my dear love, you do I now mourn. I join our names together, Hadrian and Charles. I, the King; you, the Father.... With the Saints of God may your dear soul rejoice”.

The prosperity and the long peace which Hadrian enjoyed enabled him to turn his attention to the needs of his city itself. And to judge from the long list, given in the Book of the Popes, of what he accomplished in that direction it was evidently well that he did take up the work, or the city would have fallen into ruin. In what he accomplished as a builder he was quite a rival of the fame of his great namesake, the Roman emperor.

He began first, it would seem, on the walls, which he completely renovated. As he left them, they were of even greater extent than the walls of the emperor Aurelian. For the accomplishment of the work, the Pope brought together men from the whole patrimony of the Church, from Tuscany, Campania and the districts around Rome. These, with the Romans themselves, encircled the city with a strong wall defended by some four hundred towers. This work costed the Pope a hundred pounds weight of gold.

We have not space here to relate all that Hadrian, Churches, whom his biographer calls “a lover of the Churches”, did in the way of rebuilding, repairing, redecorating and refurnishing churches and cemeteries. The curious in this matter will find the detailed account in the Book of the Popes, or copious particulars in Miley or Gregorovius. Among the many offerings which Hadrian made to various churches for their decoration, we may instance as illustrative of much that has gone before, a crown which he hung (774) before the tomb of St. Peter. He caused it to be inscribed with some dozen verses, which set forth that Our Lord, in His care for Church and State, gave His sheep to Peter to tend, and he in turn handed them over to Hadrian. The Roman patriciate He gave to His faithful servants— to Charlemagne, who received it from the bounty of Peter. It was for the king’s prosperity that this crown was offered.

To carry out his works, Hadrian spared no expense. As the portico to St. Peter’s running along the river from the gate of the same name was too narrow for the convenience of the people, the Pope resolved to build a new one. Over twelve thousand blocks of travertine were laid as a foundation in the bed of the river for the new colonnade. Similar colonnades were constructed by the Pope between the gates and the Churches of St. Lawrence and St. Paul, both outside the walls. “Very great indeed”, is said by his biographer, “to have been the number of workmen employed by the Pope”.

Aqueducts.

But of all the things most useful for the inhabitants of a large city, there is nothing to equal abundant supply of pure water. The Lombards, however, when they besieged Rome in 756, under Aistulf, had done their best to deprive the Romans of that priceless boon. The aqueducts were in ruins. One of the first works undertaken by the Pope, after the fall of the Lombard kingdom, was to repair (776) the Trajana aqueduct, known in Hadrian’s time as the Sabatina from the fact that it conveyed the water of the Sabatine Lake (Lago di Bracciano) to the Janiculum. The words of the Pope’s biographer tell his work in the matter of this aqueduct with some detail. “For some twenty years (from the siege of 756) the aqueduct—known as the Sabatina—and the leaden duct (centenarium) that conveyed its waters to the atrium of St. Peter’s, and to the baths close by (where our brethren, the poor of Christ, come to receive alms and to be washed at Paschal time), and by which the mills on the Janiculum hill were worked, had been in ruins. And as a hundred arches, and those of great height, had been destroyed, there seemed to be no hope of the repair of the aqueduct. The Pope, however, gathering together a great many men, undertook the repair of the aqueduct; and such care did he expend upon it, and the renewing of the leaden duct, that by the blessing of God the water again flowed abundantly as it had done of old”. Under the name of the Acqua Paola, this aqueduct still supplies water to the same mills and to the famous fountain of Paul V. The aqueduct, which bore the name of Jobia, and which had also been destroyed at the same time as the Sabatina, was in like manner renovated by the Pope. His vigorous hands also restored the Claudia, which supplied the Lateran basilica, among other places, with its water. With the aid of a great host of men from Campania, the Claudia, the ruins of which still form one of the most striking features of the Campagna near Rome, again refreshed the city with its waters. Nor did the good Pope relax his efforts till, by the restoration of the Aqua Virgo, still in use, “he had supplied almost the whole city with water by means of that aqueduct”.

 In every age the popes and the Catholic Church have ever gone on with courage, ever fresh, erecting buildings to the honor and glory of God, and for the benefit of mankind. And if a country is dotted throughout its length and breadth with ruins of such buildings, they have certainly not been destroyed by Pope or priest.

Another effort made by the Pope for ameliorating the condition of the people consisted in an attempt to improve the cultivation of the Campagna. He continued the work begun by Pope Zachary in founding “domus cultae” or farm colonies. The Liber Pontificalis gives us the history of the foundation of six such institutions. The one of them in which the Pope took the greatest interest was called “Capracorum”. It was situated apparently in the old territory of Veii, and was some fifteen miles from Rome. The Pope had there inherited an estate; and, after he had added to it very considerably by purchasing various properties adjoining it, he formed the whole into a farm colony. An extant inscription shows that its people took part in the building of the walls of the Leonine City under Leo IV. Broken up in the eleventh century, its name still survives in Monte di Capricoro and in the plain of Crepacore, near the river Treia and the village of Campagnano. Its produce the Pope assigned under pain of anathema to the perpetual use of “our brethren the poor of Christ”. For the use of the farm people, he built and “dedicated to God his Maker, under the name of St. Peter”, a Church, to which, with the greatest ceremony, attended by his court and by the Roman senate, he brought a great many relics of the saints. With the profits of this colony, the Pope ordained that at least one hundred poor persons should be fed in the portico of the Lateran, where were depicted on the walls various pictures illustrative of alms given to the poor. Each person received a loaf of bread, two glasses of wine, and polenta.

The last of the six colonies was that of St. Leucius, which Mastalus, the primicerius, left to the Pope for the poor out of his hereditary estates, “for the good of his soul”. This colony was situated on the Flaminian road, about five miles from Rome.

The Book of the Popes also tells of various Deaconries for the relief of the poor which Hadrian founded and endowed or improved in various parts of the city. By his work in this direction, the number of these charitable institutions was brought up to eighteen. And as to the titular churches (in Hadrian’s time twenty-two) there were already attached cardinal priests, so, later on (towards the close of the eleventh century), cardinal deacons were attached to the eighteen deaconries. We can have no difficulty in believing the Pope’s biographer when he assures us that Hadrian “arranged everything usefully for the benefit of the poor”.

Whatever conclusions are come to with regard to the alleged coining of money by popes Gregory III and Zachary, no one doubts that Hadrian I at any rate caused coins to be struck. Several specimens of his silver denarius of unquestioned authenticity are to be found in the Vatican collection and elsewhere. The series of papal silver money begins with Hadrian. The extant examples of his denarius show two types. The rarer type, may be said to correspond to the coins (?) of Gregory III. and Zachary, even though its examples are round and of silver. For as with the coin of Gregory III, Hadrian’s coin of the rarer type bears on the obverse a cross and the words Hadrianus Papa, and on the reverse, divided by bars, the words Sci Petri. This striking similarity goes far to support the arguments for the genuineness of the coins of Hadrian’s predecessors. The coins of the other style were evidently modeled on the type of money current in Italy at the time. On the obverse is a bust of the Pope, show­ing, according to some, the head uncovered, with a crown of hair (i.e., the crown of the tonsure), but no beard. However, to the uninitiated, at least, it seems as if the head were surmounted by headgear of some sort. On either side of the bust there are the letters I B, of which no one apparently knows the meaning. The words D N Adrianus P P (Dominus noster Adrianus Papa) complete the one side of the coin. The centre of the reverse is taken up with a cross above two steps, and with the letters R M (Roma), one on each side of it. Round the edge are the words Victoria D N N (Domini Nostri), which refer to Our Lord Jesus Christ. Below the cross are the letters C O N O B, the meaning of which is so much disputed. The best signification, perhaps, which has been given to these letters is the following, taken from Cedrenus :— Civitates Omnes Nostrae Obediunt Benerationi.

These denarii are often spoken of as ‘grossos’ (said to be so called because they are equivalent in value to a number of smaller coins), and are worth five’ bajocchi’, or about threepence. They were the most valuable coins then in common circulation in Rome. They are of the size of our sixpence, but somewhat thinner.

Hadrian was buried in the Church he had done so much for—the basilica of St, Peter’s—on the day after his death, i.e., on December 26, 795,

After the eloquent facts we have narrated of the life of Hadrian, there will surely be no need of expending many words in setting forth in express terms the character of this pontiff, one of the greatest who have adorned the chair of Peter.

For does not, for instance, the plain declaration of his rights, whether spiritual or temporal, before prince or bishop, proclaim the calm courage of the man? No one will fail to have noted that he was not slow in standing out for his temporal rights as well with Charlemagne as with Constantine and Irene. In matters of spiritual jurisdiction, too, he was certainly no less firm. He would not have Charlemagne interfere in the election of the archbishops of Ravenna, and in set terms explained his position among the bishops of the world to the Frankish monarch. “There is no one but knows how great authority has been granted to Blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and to his most Holy See, so that it has the right of giving authoritative decisions in every case; and no one has any right to override its sentences. The See of Blessed Peter has the right of loosening whatever may be bound by the decisions of any bishops at all, through whom the care of the Universal Church is referred to the one See of Peter, and every member is kept joined to the Head”. Mullinger, indeed, thinks this passage is an interpolation, as it is too papal in tone! No further notice will be taken of this groundless thought than to observe that such conjectures are equally competent to do away with the whole Codex Carolinus, and then to support the said passage by a second from another letter of Pope Hadrian published by Hampe. The letter is addressed to Maginarius, the abbot of St. Denis, to whom the Pope had granted some privilege (no doubt as a recog­nition of his services when acting as one of Charlemagne’s missi to Rome), which had been attacked, among others, by the powerful bishops of Milan and Aquileia.  “It is plain, from the tradition of the Fathers, that it (the Holy Roman Church) holds the chief place (principatum) in the world. This position, obtained by the word of the Lord, the Blessed Apostle Peter has ever held and still holds, and it is acknowledged to be his by the Church (ecclesia nihilhominus — sic — subsequente). If, then, the Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch are subject to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church—the more that it was by the consent of the same Roman Church that the Church of Constantinople obtained the second rank, and that the Churches of Alexandria and Antioch, which had previously been above the Church of Constantinople, did not presume to resist after the Roman Church, their head, had given its assent—what are those unhappy and wretched pseudo-bishops going to do, who, resisting the privileges of the Holy See, as your holinesses have done, rob themselves?” Whether this letter seems papal in tone or not, its editor, Hampe, assures us that its authenticity has been demon­strated, and that, as his references show, its substance was, after all, proclaimed by Pope Gelasius I in 495.

What need to say Hadrian was charitable? His was a charity that would stand test. For he was not content with giving alms to the poor, which to a rich man may be no great sacrifice, but he gave his personal services, which to people in position costs a great deal more. Was the city of Rome devastated by an extraordinary flood of the Tiber (December 791)? The Pope was not content with praying for its cessation, prostrate on the ground, but he took provisions in boats to those who, by reason of the depth of the water, could not leave their homes. And when the flood had subsided, the Pope went to visit in their houses those who had suffered most, to console them. Did he hear of a fire in the city, he was there, though it were first thing in the morning, working away endeavoring to extinguish the flames. When we recall his prompt restoration of law and order in Rome on his accession, his successful struggle with the Lombards, and with heresy in the East and West, his gigantic works undertaken for the renovation of the city, his coining of money, and generally his labors in the direction of fixing the extent of papal rule in Italy and of settling its system of government in more or less newly-acquired territory, what necessity can there be to dilate on his vigor, energy and promptness of action? And his zeal was in accordance with both knowledge and prudence. His piety was of the solid kind that “prays as though everything depended on God, and works as though everything depended on oneself”. His amiability was such that he was as much the friend of the great Frankish sovereign as of the poor of Rome. In an age when it is the fashion with many to consider that all in the Middle Ages were superstitious, it may be well to note that Hadrian writes to praise Charlemagne for holding of no account the visions of a certain monk of the name of John. “In talent and education” he was “the foremost man in Rome”. To Charlemagne’s poetical letters he “sometimes replied in verse; and specimens of these poetic effusions still remain. Written in acrostics, they are neither in expression nor metre below the level of their time”.

The Popes of the eighth century

Looking back for a moment at the popes of the eighth century, we have to gladden our sight the lives not only eighth of good men, but even of men at once good and great. Gregory II, “one of the brightest characters of modern history”, Zachary, and Hadrian were men who stand out in beautiful relief in the history of the age in which they lived. The true greatness of Hadrian was not dimmed even by the glory of Charlemagne, perhaps the only really great lay sovereign of the age. The non-Catholic author last quoted says of the popes of this period that they "”appear to have merited their elevation by their virtues; and, deserted by the feeble court of Constantinople, the Romans withdrew their respect and confidence from the emperors to repose their obedience on nearer protectors”.

The last proposition of the preceding quotation naturally leads us to emphasize the acquisition of temporal power by the popes as the event of the most far-reaching consequence of their history. After two centuries of what we may describe as anarchy in Italy, the popes emerge as rulers of a very considerable part of it. The powerlessness and tyranny of the exarchs and the eastern emperors, and the lust of territory on the part of the savage Lombard, on the one hand, and the beneficent conduct of the popes on the other, were the true cause of the acquisition of sovereign power in temporals by the popes. And here we cannot refrain from quoting in this connection a few eloquent words from Diehl. In his Justinien, a work as attractive and instructive from the number and beauty of its carefully selected illustrations as valuable from the excellence of its matter and the grace of its style, he writes thus of the popes of the sixth century: “In everyday life it was the Church which, from the products of its rich and admirably-managed estates, supported the city: by the hospitals which it built, by the works of charity which it multiplied, by its daily and inexhaustible beneficence, it was the Church which reanimated and consoled the wretched; and so, in that Rome which it defended and kept alive, slowly did it prepare and legitimatize the authority it was one day to exercise therein. Under the rule of Justinian, indeed, it had cruel experience of the rigor of imperial despotism; but the day was to come when the Roman pontiff would (for ever) free himself from the grasp of the Caesaro-papism of Byzantium”. Even before the close of the sixth century that day had already dawned. The first Pope of whom we have written, the great Gregory, was already practically independent of Constantinople Hadrian, with Charlemagne as his protector, was, in right and in fact, lord and master both at Rome and Ravenna. It was no longer Ravenna that sent to Rome its civil and military officials, its judices, magistri militum, and its dukes. But it was the Pope who set over Ravenna its archbishop as its ruler in temporal as in spiritual concerns, who sent thither his dukes and his counts, his judices and his actores, who there with authority settled all matters which came up for consideration. Equally absolute was the civil juris­diction of Hadrian within the City of Rome, It is true that there were to be found therein the most notable of the institutions of antiquity. But it was rather that their names were heard on the lips of men than that their power and influence really survived. If the greatest of the Goths (Theodoric) infused new life and honor into the Senate, it was extinguished in the blood of the senatorial families by a revengeful successor, who felt that his nation was being crushed forever by the Roman general Narses. Hence have we already heard the great Gregory bewailing its disappearance. And if from time to time in this history we have come across the senate, it can only have been at most a kind of municipal council, and it was probably, during the two centuries of which we have written, only a name for the class of the nobles.

In the same way, during the pontificate of Gregory I, as during that of Hadrian, we encounter the prefect of the City. But before the days of Gregory, Boethius could lament that in his time the prefect was but an empty name. In the days of Hadrian his jurisdiction was limited by the ruling authorities among both the clergy and the military, by the primicerius, secundicerius and the others, soon to be known as the judices de clero or the palatine judges, on the one hand, and by the magistri militum and the dukes on the other; and was apparently confined to dealing with criminals who did not belong to either the clerical or military circles.

Though, then, for the time, the popes at the close of the eighth century were free from all external control, whether in the city or out of it, they were not free from trouble. It is with the popes as with us all, we get rid of one trouble only to be assailed by another. Their difficulties were henceforth for many ages to spring largely from within, from the aristocracy. Now that the popes had extensive temporal sovereignty, it was only natural that the great families of Rome should use every means to get the power of the Papacy into their own hands and to keep it there. And they did! The violent action of Duke Toto on the death of Paul I is only an earnest of much worse to come. Still, even with the certain assurance of bringing fresh difficulties upon themselves, it was only to be expected that the popes would not tamely endure the oppression of Pavia and Constantinople.

Submission to the Lombards was not to be thought of. If the Italians instinctively hated the Goths, “the most enlightened of the barbarians”, they and the Romans especially abhorred and detested the Lombards. They were an altogether impossible nation for a people with ever so little civilization to live under. Up to the very end of their sway in Italy they waged war with as much barbarity as they did when they first descended upon the peninsula. The binding obligation of an oath they never understood. Such improvement as had taken place among them was, of course, due to the teachings of Chris­tianity, which seems to have been adopted by the nation at large during this century. The Christian influence brought to bear by the popes on their legislation, and on that of other Western peoples, is an argument of the beneficent power of the Papacy, at once as striking and irrefragable as free from declamation. In reforming the marriage laws, Liutprand avers: “This ordinance have we made because, as God is our witness, the Pope of the city of Rome, who is the head of the Churches of God and of the priests in the whole world, has exhorted us by his epistles in nowise to allow such marriage (with a first cousin’s widow) to take place”.

It has been truly said that the temporal power of the popes is the only example in history of the acquisition of such power without arms, and of its preservation without violence. Well was it for the world that Rome was not overcome by the Lombards, and that it passed from under the sway of the tyrannical East to the paternal, often too paternal, rule of the popes. With the conquest of Rome by the Lombards, civilization and Christianity, in the West at least, would have been, if not quite destroyed, yet certainly retarded for many a decade of years. For if Italy and Rome, even in that age a source of light to the West, had been reduced to the direst extremity by the Gothic wars; if “to bend the rigid minds of the Goths” the wretched remnant of the Italian people had been brought to the verge of financial ruin, still, no doubt, even under a Greek exarch, matters would have gradually improved. For, on the close of the Gothic war, Justinian not merely boasted that he had freed Italy from the tyranny, had restored to it perfect peace, and had taken all the needful steps to repair its disasters, but he erected such monuments in Ravenna and other places as to furnish models calculated to raise the standard of art. But to “the extraordinary decadence in all Art”, which had begun during the Gothic campaigns, the Lombard conquest “immensely contributed”. One result of the victories of Belisarius and Narses had been the introduction, along with Greek influences generally, of Byzantine Art. And with the distress caused by the Lombards, Italy and Rome had to be content with the poorest productions of that Art. For there was nothing there at this period to tempt the Greek artist to leave Constantinople; on the contrary, there was every reason to make him keep away from it, “because Italy was then a synonym for land accursed and desolate; Italians for miserable impoverished slaves, and their rulers for ignorant, avaricious, cruel barbarians, destructive of the very elements of civilization”. The famous letter of Agatho to Constantine Pogonatus shows how much the popes regretted this decay in the arts and sciences of civilized life. All that men could do to arrest it, that they did. What is the Book of the Popes but a list of works undertaken by the popes in every department of art? From the days of Gregory to those of Hadrian I they sent forth books and masters to the whole West; and to Rome, in search of all that a zeal for increased civilization could make men desire, came monks and princes from the furthest bounds of what was then called “the parts of the Hesperiae”. Civilization in the West would have been dealt a fatal blow had the Eternal City fallen beneath the sway of the ferocious Lombard.

And had Rome remained under the control of the despots of Constantinople, its patriarchs, the popes, the great upholders of liberty of conscience, would have been as much ecclesiastical puppets as the patriarchs of Constantinople. And, humanly speaking, there would, moreover, have been in the Chair of Peter, as there were in the See of Constantinople, patriarchs as ready, at the will of a proud or ignorant emperor, to do all that lay in their power to play fast and loose with the sacred doctrines of the Blessed Trinity and the Incarnation, as to smash images. But, by the decrees of God, Who watches over His Church, “the snares were broken” and the popes were freed. Freed as well from the Lombard as from the tyrants at Constantinople.