EUGENIUS II.

A.D. 824-827.

 

EMPERORS OF THE EAST.                       EMPEROR OF THE WEST.

Leo VI (the Armenian), 813-820.                 Louis I, the Pious, 814-840.

Michael II (the Stammerer), 820-829.

 

OWING to the uncertainty which attends the date of Paschal’s death, the exact date of the consecration of Eugenius cannot be determined. It took place seemingly some time between February and the second half of the month of May (824), certainly before June 6. For the Council of Mantua (827) is described as being held on June 6, in the fourth year of Pope Eugenius. It is also further certain that he was not elected without trouble.

In Rome, as elsewhere in this age, the nobility were striving to make themselves independent. But in Rome the strife of parties was accentuated by the fact that, whereas elsewhere there was a three-sided contest going on to decide respective rights—a contest between king, nobles, and people—in Rome there was, normally, a four-sided struggle constantly in progress. For there the views and aims of the ecclesiastical nobility were an additional factor. These parties were, of course, often increased in number by subdivision, as one section of the same party would suppose that its interests could be best promoted in one way, and another by some other method. For instance, one faction of the nobility would conclude that independence might best be won for the nobles by adhesion to the Pope, another by submission to a foreign and distant ruler.

At any rate, in the present case, the nobles, whether that faction which had been quashed by Pope Paschal or not, carried the day, and elected one, who, from his father’s name (Boemund), might perhaps have been of foreign descent. Evidently at this juncture the nobles argued that their interests would be best secured by limiting the power of the Pope and by giving greater influence to a foreign prince who would be strong enough to serve as a drag on the authority of the Pope over them, but not enough to prove any practical hindrance to their own designs. In the year 824, therefore, that party prevailed which then first appeared by name in history, and which, by completely gaining the upper hand, was to work so much harm to the papacy in the tenth century, viz., the party of the nobles. “Vincente nobilium parte”,—words worth committing to memory as presaging the history of the papacy in the following age,—the popular candidate was defeated and that of the nobles placed on the chair of Peter. Sometimes, indeed, the Roman nobles over­reached themselves; and from time to time the emperors, by severe practical lessons, taught them that they had a master who was harder to reckon with than a Pope, who was generally one of their own citizens, and always more disposed to an easy and more merciful rule.

Here we cannot do better than translate a few remarks of the Jesuit, Father Lapôtre, on the growth of the influence of the nobility on papal elections, remarks eminently calculated to throw light on many episodes in the history of the popes.

“From being external (i.e. from the Byzantine emperors and from the Lombards), the danger to the papacy had become internal. From the time when the Pope came to hold within his hand all the great dignities of the State as well as those of the Church, when he had become, in a sense, the sole distributor of fortune and power, the lay aristocracy felt the need of taking a more active part in the election of the popes, and of organizing round the Holy See a more energetic defence of its interests. Under the somewhat ambitious title of Roman Senate, all those whom riches, or the exercise of civil offices or military commands, had raised above the common level, formed themselves into a kind of privileged caste, by the side of the clerical order, and often in opposition to it. Masters of the army, the high positions of which they held, and consequently all-powerful with the middle class, the only division of the citizens which was enrolled in the Roman army, they scarcely left to the clergy influence over the proletariate. Thus, by degrees, they succeeded in deciding papal elections (e.g. in the case of Eugenius II and Sergius II); whereas formerly the laity, whether high or low, had in that matter no other right than that of recognizing by their homage the candidate selected by the general assembly of the Roman clergy.

“Woe to the Pope who dared to look outside this aristocratic ring for the chief members of his government; woe especially, if born in a lower sphere, he entered the papal palace accompanied by poor relations, anxious to advance themselves. Placed between the very natural desire of securing the prosperity of his own friends and the fear of discontenting the powerful families, it was hard for him to escape one or other of these dangers, viz., either of putting himself into unsafe hands, of confiding in strangers of doubtful fidelity, or of entrusting the direction of affairs to relations attached to him indeed, but ill fitted for the task.

“The political power of the Holy See was scarcely founded when there already began the melancholy role of certain papal families, of that nepotism from which the papacy has sometimes suffered so much”.

The possession of temporal power by the popes unquestionably brought them difficulties, but it would be utterly erroneous to suppose that the want of it would have freed them from all perils. The absence of it would have left them exposed to more substantial dangers.

To return to the election of Eugenius, whom, after what has been said, we may well suppose to have been one who was at least expected to sympathize with the nobility. Still, it must not be imagined that he was not a man of character. This may be the more readily believed when it is known that the abbot Wala worked hard to bring about the election of this same Eugenius, in the hope that certain needed reforms would be effected by him. The abbot himself, if an imperialist, was one of the most distinguished men of his age, not only by his birth and talents, but also by his virtue and zeal for reform—the Jeremiah of his time, as he was called. The new Pope was at least a man of a most conciliatory disposition. From the Liber Pontificalis we learn that before he became Pope he had, while in possession of the Church of St. Sabina on the Aventine, long ably fulfilled the duties of archpriest, that he was as learned as he was eloquent and handsome, and that he was generous to the widow and the orphan, and a despiser of the world. Day and night, his only wish was to do what was pleasing to Christ. When he became Pope he was apparently advanced in years, and was then especially distinguished for his humility and his love of peace.

Lothaire’s Concordat, 824

News of the election of Eugenius was sent to Louis by the subdeacon Quirinus. Then, to quote the exact words of Eginhard, our best authority for this period, as he (Louis) was himself “intent on an expedition against Brittany, he determined to send to Rome his son and partner in the empire, Lothaire, that in his stead he might, along with the new Pope and the Roman people, legislate on what the state of the case seemed to require. (Lothaire) accordingly set out for Italy after the middle of August ... and was honorably received by the Pope. When the young emperor had made known his instructions to him, with the benevolent assent of the aforesaid Pontiff, he so reformed the condition of the Roman people, which by the perversity of some of the judges (or nobility) had for some time been in an unsatisfactory state, that all who, owing to the unjust deprivation of their property were in great distress, were greatly consoled by its recovery which, through the grace of God, was brought about by his coming”. That the gist of all this is that the party of the nobility which had been put down by Paschal now regained its property and position, is still clearer from the words of the Astronomer. He tells us that Lothaire complained that of those who were true to the emperor and the Franks, some had been put to death and the others held up to ridicule, and that through the apathy and negligence of some of the popes, and the blind cupidity of the judges, many had been unjustly deprived of their property.

It would seem that some of these judges, i.e. noble functionaries of the opposition party of the late primicerius (Theodore), had been sent into exile in France, no doubt about the time of his murder. The only political notice in the short biography in the Liber Pontificalis is to the effect that “Roman judges, who had been detained as prisoners in France, returned to Rome during the reign of Eugenius, and that he not only allowed them to take possession of their ancestral property, but also helped them himself, as they were almost entirely without resources”.

But it was no part of Lothaire’s idea to leave the nobles supreme in Rome. If he was anxious to have a share in ruling the states of the Church, and so to interfere with the power of the Pope, he was just as determined that no one but the Pope and the emperor should have a voice in the government of Rome. He supported the power of the nobility to the extent above described, that they might act as a check on that of the Pope; but to keep them within bounds he published, with the Pope’s consent, as Eginhard took care to add, a ‘constitution’ in nine articles. If it hampered the Pope somewhat, he readily accepted it; because it would, had it been properly enforced, have effectually stopped the growing encroachments of the nobles. It was a veritable concordat agreed to between the Church and the State for their joint advantage.

It was to the following effect: “We decree, (1) that all who have been received under the protection of the Pope, or under ours, have the full benefit of this protection. And if anyone shall presume to violate it, let him know that his life is in question. For we make this decree that due obedience be paid in all things to the Pope, or to his dukes and judges appointed to administer justice”. (2) The pillage of church property, which had up to this often been practiced on the death of a Pope and sometimes even during his lifetime, was forbidden. (3) Any interference with papal elections on the part of those who had no right to take part in them was prohibited. (4) Every year, commissioners were to be named by the Pope and the emperor, who were to inform the latter how the dukes (the governors of the cities) and judges performed their duties. Failure in this respect was to be corrected by the Pope, or, if he did not do so, by missi sent by the emperor. (5) The whole Roman people were to be asked under which law (the Roman, the Gothic, or the Lombard) each one elected to live, and then to be told that they must live up to or be judged by the law they had selected. (6) The imperial commissioners were to see to the restoration to the Roman Church of that portion of its property which had been usurped by the powerful. (7) Border pillaging was to be put down. (8) When the emperor was in Rome there had to appear before him the dukes, judges, and other officials, that he might know their number and names, and admonish them as to their duty. (9) Finally, “everyone who desires to obtain the favor of God and of us, must yield in all things obedience to the Roman Pontiff”. To ensure the carrying out of this ‘constitution’, we have the authority of the anonymous continuator of Paul the Deacon for stating that Lothaire and the Pope caused the Romans to take oath as follows : “I promise, in the name of God Almighty, by the four Gospels, by this cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the body of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, that from this day forward I will be faithful to our lords the emperors, Louis and Lothaire, all the days of my life, to the utmost of my strength and ability, without guile, saving the fidelity which I have promised to the sovereign Pontiff; that I will not consent that the election of a Pontiff for this See be made otherwise than in accordance with the canons and justice, and that the ‘elect’ shall not be consecrated without taking, in the presence of the emperor’s envoys and of the people, an oath like to the one which Pope Eugenius of his own accord took for the preservation of all”.

Admitting the authenticity of this formula, it is clear that the fidelity which the Romans promised to the emperors was subordinate to that which they had to preserve to the Pope as their supreme lord. The oath to be taken by the Pope was the ordinary oath to rule justly which is taken by sovereigns at their coronation; or, as Doellinger thinks, it was to express “his desire to show to the emperor the honor which was due to him as protector of the Church”. When he had thus established for himself a position in the government of Rome, Lothaire took his departure.

Before he left, however, he witnessed the presentation by the Pope of a pallium to Adalramm, archbishop of Salzburg. As the full signification of the giving of the pallium is brought out by the letter of the emperor Louis asking Eugenius to bestow it, that letter is worth quoting. “Our faithful servant, Adalramm, the archbishop of the Church of Salzburg”, writes the emperor, “has earnestly asked us to grant him permission to visit the shrine of the blessed apostles, and to commend him to your Holiness. To his just request we have assented; and we beg you to give him a gracious reception and to bestow upon him the pallium of your sacred authority. For his predecessors have been wont to receive from yours the pallium of apostolic authority. And so, strengthened by your Holiness’s blessing and authority, he may be able to raise his people to a higher spiritual level”.

Affairs of the East

Probably whilst Lothaire was still in Rome, there arrived envoys as well from the emperor Louis as from the Greeks on the interminable image question. In the beginning of his reign the emperor Michael II, known as the Stammerer and the Armorian, though always an iconoclast, showed himself tolerant. The Studite returned to Constantinople. Under the pretense of bringing about a settlement of the difficulties respecting images, Michael endeavored to bring about a joint synod of the iconoclasts and the orthodox (821). But the latter knew the character of the man with whom they were dealing, and declared that they could not sit in synod on equal terms with heretics already condemned; and that, if there was a point which the emperor did not consider had been properly cleared up by the patriarchs, he should submit it to the decision of old Rome, for such was the most ancient custom. “That Church was the head of all the churches of God. It had had Peter for its first bishop, to whom the Lord had said, 'Thou art Peter”,  etc. (S. Matt. xvi. 18).

The Studite, in a letter to the treasurer Leo, pointed out the proper conditions under which any such assembly could be held. “If there is a wish to put an end to the division, the patriarch Nicephorus must be re-established in the See of Constantinople. He must then assemble those who have along with him fought for the truth; and there must come together, if possible, deputies from the other patriarchs, or at least from the patriarch of the West (i.e. of course the bishop of Rome), who gives authority to an ecumenical council; and if that is impossible, everything could be settled by synodical letters which our patriarch could send to the first See (Rome). If the emperor does not agree to this, it is necessary to send to Rome, and thence receive the certain decision of the faith”.

Failing in his attempt to win over the Catholics, Michael showed himself directly hostile to them; and when his overthrow of the pretender Thomas (823) left him freer to turn his attention to matters of dogma, he pursued them with severity. Many fled to Rome. To prevent them from finding a home there, he endeavored to induce the emperor Louis to act along with him. He accordingly dispatched an embassy to Louis with a long letter, addressed, to flatter him, “to our dear brother”:  “Michael and Theophilus, emperors of the Romans, to our dear and honored brother Louis, king of the Franks and Lombards, and called their emperor”. After giving a false account of his accession to the throne, and stating his desire for peace with Louis, Michael asserts his wish to promote religious unity among his subjects, some of whom have gone astray from the traditions of the apostles. He says that they have replaced the Holy Cross by images, and that they burn incense before them, and practice all manner of superstitious rites in connection with them. Later on in his letter, utterly blind to his inconsistency in venerating the cross and relics, and not holy images, he declares that he venerates relics—and this whilst professing his orthodoxy to the Frank. He wants Louis to drive out of Rome those of his (Michael’s) image-worshipping subjects who have fled thither. Finally, seeking the honor of the Church of Christ, he assures Louis that, by the hands of the same ambassadors whom he has sent to him, he has forwarded a letter to the Pope, and as an offering to the Church of Peter, Prince of the Apostles, a copy of the Gospels and a chalice and paten of pure gold, enriched with precious stones. In conclusion, the emperor is asked to give the Greek ambassadors an honorable safe-conduct to Rome.

These envoys came before Louis at Rouen at the close of the year, said they had been sent for the sake of confirming the peace between the two empires, and put forth “certain points concerning the veneration of images, in connection with which they declared that they had to go to Rome to consult the bishop of the apostolic See”. Thither, in accordance with their wishes, Louis caused the Greeks to be escorted. But, before acceding to their desires in the affair of the images, he wished to have the consent of the Pope. Hence with the Greeks he dispatched two of his own bishops to ask Eugenius to allow the Frank bishops to search out, in the writings of the Fathers, passages to meet the case which the Greek envoys had come to have settled. The leave was granted, and Louis ordered an assembly of divines to meet at Paris, 825.

Influenced by the Greeks, but still more by recollections of the Council of Frankfort (794) and the Caroline Books, the committee of bishops, for it was not a synod, came together in Paris (November 1, 825). They not only made a collection of extracts from the ‘Fathers’, which they believed tended to show that images should be neither destroyed on the one hand, nor honored on the other, but they also drew up drafts of two letters which were to be sent, one in the name of the emperor Louis to the Pope, and the other in the Pope’s name to the Greek emperor. The Paris assembly showed itself as ignorant of the real teaching of the seventh General Council as had the Council of Frankfort. ‘Your advocates’, as the committee style themselves in their introductory address to the emperors Louis and Lothaire, proceeded to approve the letter of Pope Hadrian to Constantine and Irene on the image question, in so far as it condemned the breaking of images, and to reject it in so far as it countenanced their “superstitious adoration”. They next treated the seventh General Council in the same way, condemning it for teaching that images were not only to be reverenced and adored, but called holy and acknowledged as a source of sanctification. And with that supreme self-confidence, of which ignorance is the sole progenitor, they assured Louis that Hadrian, in his reply to certain strictures on the seventh General Council sent him by Charlemagne “to be corrected by his judgment and authority”, had said, “what he chose, and not what he ought”. This remark, they were good enough to say, they made without the slightest intention of asserting anything derogatory to the Pope’s authority. For, by professing his intention of standing by the doctrine of Pope Gregory the Great, Hadrian had made it clear that he erred only through ignorance. From the report of the envoys of Louis, who had conducted the Greek ambassadors to Rome, they had learnt how deeply rooted the ‘image superstition’ had there become. They acknowledge the difficulty of correcting that church (viz., the Church of Rome) whose right it is to keep others in the true path, from which up to this it has never itself wandered. But they think that the emperor’s plan of getting leave from that authority itself to make a selection of suitable passages from scripture and the Fathers, would, when completed, compel it, nolens volens, to yield to the truth—viz., as taught by the most blessed Pope Gregory. The collection of texts which they have made, they present to the emperor to select such as he should consider pertinent. They add, with perfect truth, that the collection might have been better; but point out that they have only had a short time to prepare it, and that one of their number was prevented by ill-health from joining them.

The collection which they give is divided into two parts, one, much the smaller, is directed against the image-breakers; the longer part is directed against what were supposed by the committee to be the tenets of the image-worshippers. Such an assemblage of texts as is contained in the second part of the collection could indeed only have been drawn up by men who were in a blind hurry, or who had either wholly forgotten, or had never understood, what they were trying to prove. Many of the texts are not in the least ad rem, and some even clearly prove the opposite of that for which the committee were contending, e.g. the passages from St. Basil (p. 1326). To throw light on the seventh General Council, they lay down what that council had already done, i.e. that the worship of ‘atria’ (absolute worship) was to be given to God alone. And with curious inconsistency they grant an honor to the “cross of Christ” which they deny to His image.

In that portion of the scheme of the letter to be sent by Louis to the Pope which has come down to us—for many portions of the committee’s report are wanting—the position of the Pope as Head of the Church is set forth, and he is reminded of the permission he had given in the matter of the collection.

In the longer letter which the committee proposed that the Pope should send to the Greek emperors, he was to establish what it proclaimed to be, the true doctrine, viz., that images were neither to be adored nor honored, but at each one’s pleasure to be kept as souvenirs or means of instruction.

As a matter of fact, however, Louis did not fully carry out the recommendations of the Paris assembly. He instructed Jeremiah, archbishop of Sens, and Jonas, bishop of Orleans, who were to convey to the Pope the results of the deliberations at Paris, to make suitable extracts from the Parisian document, and with modesty to try to win the Pope over to their views. Further, in a letter of his own composing he assured Eugenius that he had no intention, in sending him what his bishops had put together, of teaching him, but only of helping him, as in duty bound.

Here, as far as the records of history go, the affair ends. Probably convinced that, in the matter of image-worship, things were really on the right lines in France, Eugenius, in imitation of the conduct of Pope Hadrian on a similar occasion, did not pursue the question. Equally probably, too, the more accurate translation of the Acts of the seventh General Council, published by the librarian Anastasius under John VIII (872-882), prevented an­thing more being heard of the subject in that country.

Fortunatus of Grado, 824.

With the ambassadors of Michael to Louis, in 824, there came Fortunatus, the patriarch of Grado, part of whose chequered career has been already noticed. The events of this the last year of his life are interesting as showing the good understanding between Louis and the Pope. Elected patriarch in 803 as successor to the murdered John who was his relation, Fortunatus had to flee from the vengeance of the Doge of Venice, also called John, against whom he was accused of plotting to avenge his relative. He fled to Charlemagne, through whose influence he returned to Italy (806), and to his church a year later. As he had been restored through the interest of the Franks, he thought it better to take refuge amongst them when a powerful Greek fleet under Nicetas came into the Venetian waters. When that danger was passed, he again returned, only to have to flee again. This time he was accused of treachery to the Franks and with favoring the Duke of Lower Pannonia, Liudevitus, who had rebelled against the emperor. Unable, or unwilling, to stand his trial, he fled to the court of the Eastern emperor. Thence he came to Louis with the ambassadors of Michael in 824. He had no doubt obtained some kind of a promise of the good offices of the Greeks. However, we are expressly told by Einhard that the ambassadors “did not say a word for Fortunatus”. After Louis had examined him as to his conduct and flight to Constantinople, he refrained from passing sentence on him one way or another, but sent him to Rome to be tried by the Pope. This would seem to imply that though Fortunatus was guilty, Louis respected his episcopal character, and consequently would not condemn him himself. How the intriguing patriarch would have fared at the hands of Eugenius is known to God alone. For it pleased Him to call Fortunatus to His own judgment seat before he had quitted France.

Next year (826) we read of a serious illness of the Pope, and of embassies passing to and fro between him and Louis. It may be that the backward state of education in Italy was one of the subjects dealt with by these envoys. However that may be, the secular and ecclesiastical authorities in Italy, about this time, made serious efforts to improve the standard of education throughout the country. The barbarous ignorance of the Lombards had swamped learning in their own dominions, and their constant wars had prevented its pursuit in the adjoining countries. Hence, about this year, the emperor Lothaire, from Cortelona, some twelve miles from Pavia, issued a decree, in which the masters he has constituted in the different cities, which he enumerates, are urged to do their best for learning, which, “in every direction, is wholly extinct”. The emperor also provided suitable places where instruction could be imparted. With the action of the emperor we have no further concern here than to point out that in the list of cities there are, of course, none mentioned that belonged to the jurisdiction of the Pope, or, indeed, to that of the Duke of Beneventum.

But, towards the close of this year, Eugenius presided over a council of some sixty bishops, his immediate suffragans, in Rome, November 15, 826. Whether or not he was too ill to compose and read an opening address, the introductory harangue of this council was the same as the one given at the Roman Council of 721, and was read by a deacon in the Pope’s name. Among the thirty-eight canons there passed, which dealt for the most part with the reformation of ecclesiastical discipline, the fourth ordains that ignorant bishops or priests be suspended till they have acquired sufficient knowledge to be able to perform their sacred functions; and the thirty-fourth canon states that in some places there are neither masters nor zeal for learning, and that consequently, where there is need, masters are to be attached to the episcopal palaces, cathedral churches, and other places, to give instruction in sacred and polite literature. From the Pope’s decree it would certainly seem that if, as in the kingdom of Lombardy, learning was not in great demand, it was nothing like so backward in the papal dominions as in the kingdom of Italy. If what is stated by Cardinal Deusdedit be the fact, viz., that this council occupied itself with papal elections “a sacerdotibus seu primatibus, nobilibus seu cuncto concilio Roman Ecclesiae”, then we may be sure that it was summoned to deliberate, among other matters, on the Constitution of 824. How it viewed it we have unfortunately no means of ascertaining.

Christianity in Moravia

Throughout the period of the Carolingian Empire, Christianity continued to be propagated among the Slays and Scandinavians, eastwards and northwards, where these peoples came in contact with it. Among the various Slavic tribes the faith of Christ was introduced along with the conquering armies of Charlemagne and his successors, and at this time had made some little progress among the Moravians. This Slavic people took their name from the Morava (March), a tributary of the Danube, the valley of which they had occupied since the year 534. During the reign of Eugenius, and for some time after, they were subject to the empire, and had not acquired that extent of territory which was afterwards theirs. In ancient times, before Christianity in those regions had been swept away by the ravages of the Huns or Avars, Noricum and the adjoining parts were ecclesiastically subject to the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Laureacum, or Lorch, on the Danube, according to the arrangement of Pope Symmachus. Word of the spread of Christianity in Moravia was brought to Rome (about 825) by Urolf, bishop of Passau; and it is sometimes said that Eugenius, by a bull which is still extant, and which is addressed to the four bishops who were to be his suffragans, to two dukes, and to the nobles, army, and people of “Hunnia and Moravia”, restored the archiepiscopal See of Lorch; named Urolf, its first arch­bishop and his vicar; and gave him the pallium. Nobles and commoners were alike exhorted by the Pope to obey their new archbishop, “not as a man, but as in the place of God”. But even supposing that the document is genuine, either because the state of Christianity among the Moravians was not sufficiently satisfactory to allow of the decree of Eugenius coming into operation, or because no successor of Urolf’s zeal was immediately forthcoming, it is certain that after his death (c. 837), we hear no more of the archdiocese of Lorch. It was reserved for SS. Cyril and Methodius really to convert the Moravian nation, and for another Pope, a century later (Leo VII, c. 937), to re-erect the metropolitan See of Lorch. At any rate, although the bull of Eugenius is apocryphal, there is no reason to doubt that the conversion of the Slavs, which was the work of the ninth century, was making headway whilst he occupied the See of Peter.

Scandinavia and Ansgar.

The noble mission of imparting the truths of Christianity to the Scandinavians, a people allied in blood, language, and religion to the Germans, and who at this period held Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, we have seen taken up personally by Ebbo, archbishop of Rheims, and then abandoned by him. The work thus laid down by him was resumed by Ansgar, a monk first of old Corbie, in Picardy, and then of the new Corbie, in Saxony, near Hoexter on the Weser. He was soon deservedly known as the Apostle of the North. The baptism of Heriold, or Harald, king of Denmark, or rather of part of it, at Ingelheim, near Mayence, in 826, once more directed attention to the advancement of Christianity in that country. Harald, who had been driven from his kingdom in this year, resolved, when restored to his power by the aid of Louis, to whom he did homage, to establish Christianity throughout the land. It was with him that Ansgar, who had been recommended to the emperor by Wala, went into Denmark, and it was “Ansgar and his companions” whom Pope Eugenius “commended to all the sons of the Catholic Church”. This must have been at the close of 826 or the beginning of 827, as it was in the latter year that Ansgar started for Denmark.

Some interesting details of the work of Harald and Ansgar are to be found in Saxo Grammaticus, who, though he lived long after these events (c. 1150, d. after 1208), is always deserving of attention. “Trusting in these (viz., his Saxon auxiliaries), Harald built a temple in the land of Sleswik with much care and cost, to be hallowed to God. Thus he borrowed a pattern of the most holy way from the worship of Rome. He unhallowed the error of misbelievers, pulled down the shrines, outlawed the sacrificers, abolished the (heathen) priesthood, and was the first to introduce the religion of Christianity to his uncouth country ... But he began with more piety than success. For Ragnar (Lodbrog, or Shaggy-Breech) came up and outraged the holy rites he had brought in ... As for Harald, he deserted and cast in his lot with sacrilege”. Though drawn from one of the mythical books of Saxo’s work, the account is no doubt substantially accurate. And if the apostasy of Harald is called in question, it seems established that another expulsion of Harald (828) put a stop to the good work that Ansgar had commenced in Schleswig. He had to earn his title of Apostle of the North from work that he was destined to accomplish in the northern Scandinavian peninsula.

The ordeal by cold water

In a very old document belonging to the Church of  Rheims, and thought by Mabillon, who discovered it, to date from the ninth century, there was found a rite for conducting the ordeal by cold water, as prescribed by Eugenius. So strongly were many ancient peoples, and especially the Germans, attached to “trial by ordeal”, or to submitting the decision of legal cases to what they were pleased to call the judgments of God, that, to begin with, neither Pope, emperor, nor king could suppress this objectionable practice. Liutprand, the Lombard law­making king, whilst pointing out the futility of trial by battle, had to acknowledge that the custom of his nation prevented him from doing away with the impious habit. And so even Louis the Pious, who, in his capitularies, first approves and then condemns the ordeal by cold water, continued to allow difficulties which could not be settled by the testimony of witnesses to be settled by shields and clubs.

But the Church endeavored to minimize the evils which resulted from trial by ordeal. She strove to abolish such as were very dangerous to life; to substitute “compurgation”; and, by taking the conduct of the ordeals into her hands, to see at least that they were accompanied with solemnity and fairness. Trial by battle, indeed, the Church never tolerated. And in this ninth century we find it denounced by bishop, council, and Pope alike. Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, in a letter (c. 817) to the emperor Louis urges that, “as combats of this kind are quite contrary to Christian simplicity and piety, and utterly opposed to the teaching of the Gospel, no Christian ought to seek to avoid the difficulties, or seek to obtain the joys of this world by trial by battle”. The Council of Valence (can. 12, an. 855) not only decrees that those who die in such judicial combats be deprived of prayers and Christian burial, but calls upon the emperor to confirm its decree, and himself by public law to abolish this great evil. And among the decrees attributed to Nicholas I is one which declares that single combat is illegal; and that those who pin their faith to such judgments of God “are simply tempting Him”. However, as the Church could not do away with them all at once, it was found necessary for a time, as we have seen, to tolerate some kinds of them.

A very early form of ordeal was that by cold water. The person whose innocence was to be tested was fast bound, and then immersed in water. If he did not sink he was guilty. It is in connection with this particular ordeal that we have a regulation of Eugenius II prescribing the form to be observed when it was put in practice—the Mass to be sung; the solemn adjuration to be addressed to the accused at the Communion; the giving to him of the body of Our Lord, with the words, “May the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ be to you as a trial this day” ; and the oath to be taken by the accused.

The MS. concluded by stating that the form just given by it was ordered by Eugenius. That this form was really his work is denied by some authors, as the authority of this anonymous MS. is not thought by them sufficiently weighty.

A year after the death of Eugenius, the emperor Louis made (829) a vain attempt to abolish trial by cold water. It was finally condemned by Innocent III at the fourth Lateran Council (1215).

Hilduin.

We cannot bring to a close the life of Eugenius without saying a word or two in connection with his relations with the abbot Hilduin, one of the most important Franks of his day. It is the more interesting to say something about him, because we have quoted his Areopagitica, or life of St. Denis, or really the apocryphal letter of the emperor Louis to him prefixed to that work, as an authority for the vision of Pope Stephen (II) III in the Church of St. Denis (754). The abbot, besides being archchaplain of the emperor Louis, and abbot of St. Denis in Paris, had been also named abbot of St. Germain-des-Pres in the same city, and abbot of St. Medard in Soissons. He accompanied the young Lothaire to Rome in 824, and seems to have won the affection and esteem of the Pope. For, at his request, Eugenius not merely confirmed in its possessions the Church of St. Peter’s at Rouen, but even gave him the body of the great martyr, St. Sebastian, which Hilduin placed in his abbey of St. Medard. And we are assured by Einhard, that whilst the relics of the saint were there exposed, so many and such extraordinary miracles were worked as would exceed our power of belief, did we not know that Our Lord, for whom the saint died, can do all things, as all things are subject to Him.

Eugenius died in the month of August (827), as we are informed by Einhard. It is supposed that, in accordance with the custom of this period, his body was buried in St. Peter’s, for no mention of his burial-place occurs in the Liber Pontificalis, nor is any tomb in the old basilica marked as his in the elaborate plan of it published by Alfarano in 1589.