THE BEGINNINGS OF THE TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES

CHAPTER X

RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE

The year 799 was witness of a deplorable occurrence, which soon put to the proof the respective stability of the two powers, and afforded an opportunity for determining their mutual relations.

Almost from the first there had been an undercurrent of hostility to Pope Leo. As his most powerful opponents numbered among them some relations of Pope Hadrian, there is good reason to suppose that the opposition was caused by a change, either in the manner of governing, or in the distribution of favors. As early as the end of 798, Arn, the archbishop of Salzburg, who was visiting Rome, remarked a spirit of discord and unreasonable resistance to the Pope’s authority. A plot was set on foot, and culminated on the 25th April 799, the day of the rogations. The Pope was on his way to join the procession, which was to start from the Church of St. Lawrence, in Lucina. He, with his retinue, had already arrived at the new monastery of St. Sylvester, not far from their destination, when he was suddenly attacked by a body of armed men. He was thrown to the ground, and the ringleaders of the riot, the primicerius Pascal and the saccelarius Campulus, seized upon his person. Having failed in their first attempts to scoop out his eyes and tear out his tongue, they dragged him into the convent church, where they set on him anew. The Pope, terribly wounded and half-dead from the effect from blows, was left for some time lying in front of the altar, unconscious and weltering in blood. Finally he was removed at nightfall to the monastery of St. Erasmus, on the Coelian, where he was kept imprisoned.

The traitors were disappointed in the success of their plans, for Leo speedily recovered both sight and speech. Neither did they succeed in keeping him prisoner, for, thanks to the assistance of Albinus, a friendly chamberlain, he managed to escape by night to St. Peter’s. There he was met by Wirundus, a Frankish missus, and Winigis, Duke of Spoleto. They conducted him safely to Spoleto, where he was soon surrounded by a number of loyal Romans.

From Spoleto, Leo proceeded to Paderborn in Saxony, where he was joined by Charles. The latter received him with enthusiasm, and, after detaining him for some time, sent him back to Rome with an escort, consisting of several counts and bishops, Hildebald of Cologne, Arn of Salzburg, and others, all charged to see the Pope reinstated, and to make an enquiry into the circumstances of his maltreatment.

The situation of the Greek empire and of Italy, at that time, was such as to preclude any reliance on outside help. The insurrectionists, therefore, after a few plundering expeditions in the Church territories (domus cultae), resolved to alter their methods, and the revolutionists who had begun by sacrilegious attacks on the Pope’s person, ended by instituting legal proceedings against him.

If we may believe his biographer, Leo was received at Rome on 29th November with a public display of welcome and sympathy. But the Frankish commissioners immediately established themselves at the Lateran, in the beautiful new triclinium, containing the representation of Leo with Charles, and proceeded to institute their enquiry. It was no easy task, and, judging by certain details of the correspondence between Alcuin and the Archbishop Arn, the conspirators had not been altogether without justification for their grievances. The ringleaders, Pascal and Campulus, were sent to appear before the king.

Charles had evidently reserved his judgment in the matter, for no decision had been announced when he arrived at Rome in person, one year after Leo’s return. On 1st December he convened a large assembly at St. Peter’s, including, among others, the two aristocratic sections of Rome, the upper clergy and the nobles. The prince was surrounded by his bishops, abbots, and barons. He expounded the object of his journey, which was to put an end to the existing strife. This was a difficult matter, for, on the one hand, the plaintiffs were abandoning the cause, and even if their grievances were real, there was no one left to confirm them; while on the other hand, the ecclesiastical world was strongly imbued with the notion that no one could presume to judge the Pope. The latter, therefore, remained under an accusation, which no one was qualified either to prove or to refute. Following some rather hazy precedents, he decided to justify himself by swearing a solemn oath, an undertaking which, while implying a certain amount of personal humiliation, involved no principle and repudiated no claim.

As far as the canon law was concerned, there was manifestly no higher ecclesiastical authority than the pontiff. There had never yet been any ecclesiastical tribune to pronounce judgment against a Pope. Three centuries before (in 501) the history of the lawsuit of Symmachus had demonstrated the difficulties of such a situation. But with regard to the civil law, the case was quite different. Crimes against common law, such as homicide, adultery, and high treason, were brought before the ordinary tribunal, whatever the rank of the accused, and, during the whole of the imperial régime, the Pope had formed no exception to the rule. But now the situation was changed. The Pope was a sovereign, and, as such, beyond the pale of judgment.

It would be interesting to know the exact accusa­tion brought against Leo, but unfortunately we are not in a position to judge whether it was a question of what the Roman law calls levia delicia, which being committed against the ecclesiastical law, can be dealt with only by an ecclesiastical tribunal; or of offences against the common law which were formerly amenable to the imperial courts.

There is no doubt, however, that Pope Leo vindicated himself, by swearing a solemn oath before a public assembly at St. Peter’s, to which all the people were bidden (23rd December 800). We still have the text of the declaration which he read from the top of the ambo, proclaiming that he was acting of his own free will, under neither pressure nor constraint, and without claiming to establish a precedent for his successors, in the event of a similar case arising.

But, notwithstanding all these reservations, the fact remained that the Pope had taken the oath, and it was patent to everybody that he had done so because Charles had considered it essential. Indeed, Leo cut but a poor figure by the side of his protector, to whose clemency he clearly owed the continuation of his reign over the Romans.

Two days afterwards, the Romans and their Frankish friends assembled at St, Peter’s for the Christmas celebrations. As the king rose from his prostrations before the confession, the Pope placed a crown on his head, and the congregation, who had been prepared for this, acclaimed him with the words: “To Charles Augustus, crowned of God, great and peaceable emperor of the Romans, life and victory!”. Then the assembly burst forth into the imperial laudes, while the Pope anointed with chrism the forehead, not of the new emperor, who had long been consecrated, but of his young son Charles, who had accompanied him to Rome, and was standing by his side.

The Frankish king, then, emerged from this Christmas mass with the title of Roman emperor. But, according to Eginhard, a competent witness, he was ill pleased at the turn affairs had taken. To judge from the general opinion of contemporary informants, Charles seemed to have had no personal objection to this change, which, indeed, was in consonance with certain tendencies of western opinion. But he probably had his own ideas as to the best ways and means of bringing it about. At that time the imperial throne of Constantinople was occupied by the Empress Irene, a woman of marriageable estate. This alliance (afterwards sought when too late) was perhaps the means desired by the Frankish king. It may also be reasonably conjectured that the Pope’s idea of an improvised coronation ceremony was hardly in harmony with Charles’s conception of the form in which the new dignity should have been transmitted. There is no doubt that, as his end was approaching, he himself crowned and proclaimed his son Louis as his successor to the empire.

But the deed was done, and a precedent established. Charlemagne was emperor, and it was the Pope who had crowned him. That Christmas day, the first day of a new century, inaugurated an era in the history of the West, and of Rome in particular.

As far as the West was concerned, it was, at first, merely a question of title and ceremonial, and no change occurred in the internal politics of the Frankish and Lombard kingdoms. Externally, it is true, there were efforts made to get Constantinople to recognize this Frankish revival of the old Roman empire. But this only slightly affected the Italian questions.

At Rome, the transformation of the patrician into the emperor, gave him a more clearly defined position. No one quite knew what were the exact rights attached to this title of patricius Romanorum, conceived by Pope Stephen II and his advisers. On the other hand, there could be no mistaking the meaning of the title Imperator. History, tradition, and written law all shed a clear enough light upon it. The emperor was monarch of Rome, and every one, the Pope not excepted, stood to him in the relation of subject. As administrator, judge, and military chief, his authority was paramount. Only in the domain of religion did he yield to another, following the example of his predecessors.

We must, nevertheless, remember that this conception of imperial rights was hardly as clear to the Romans in the year 800 as it is to us today. They were imbued with the traditional idea of the Pope’s supremacy in the domain of local polities. Memoirs of St. Gregory and Honorius in the far past, and of Gregory II, Zachary, Paul, and Hadrian, of more recent date, arose and confronted the Justinian code with a commentary, out of harmony with the text, it is true, but for all that, irresistible.

Moreover, a great impression had been produced by the form of the coronation, and as the memory of the circumstances became fainter, there finally remained in men’s minds only the significant picture of Leo III placing the imperial crown on the head of the kneeling Charlemagne. At Constantinople this was a frequent sight, for it was the patriarch who crowned the emperor. But, still more in evidence was the fact, that the patriarch was but the humble servant of the emperor, one might almost say his domestic chaplain. His right of occasionally placing the imperial crown upon his sovereign’s head was really of no more consequence than the superior part which he played in the ordinary liturgical ceremonies.

At Rome it was different. Such a sight as that of an emperor being crowned by a Pope had never been seen before. The basilica of St. Peter was henceforth regarded as the cradle of the empire, which owed its rebirth to the Apostolic Vicar, the Pope. Charlemagne had inaugurated the custom, and who was greater than he? What tradition could take the place of his?

There was, at first, no definite arrangement, no written agreement. The empire was restored without any decided plans having been made. But the false donation of Constantine, which occurred at least twenty-five years earlier, expresses clearly the conception of the new imperial régime which the Romans (and in particular the Roman clergy) adopted more and more definitely as time went on. What they desired was a benevolent and gracious protective sovereign, who would leave Rome to the Pope, and take up his own abode as far away as possible. The faithful successor of Constantine might set up his throne at Aix-la-Chapelle, or anywhere else, provided that it was at a safe distance from Rome, and that he did not interfere with the heir of St. Sylvester. At the same time he would be expected to come to the help of the Romans in the event of any special difficulty,

The donation of Constantine had already offered in 800 (for the few who accepted it at that time) an excellent judicial foundation for the Pope’s intervention. According to the ideas which prevailed later, the emperor had rights over the whole of the West, holding them from his consecrator the Pope. But from whom did the Pope hold them? The donation tells us from Constantine, who had yielded to St. Sylvester, omnes Italiae seu occidentalium regionum provincias loca et civitates. He was thus in a position to do what he liked with them.

Far be it from me to imply that Leo III made such use of the donation as to infer from it his right to restore the empire and its constitutional theory. By most of the critics this document is dated back to the beginning of the year 744; it was manufactured at Rome, probably at the Lateran, the very palace where Leo was, at that time, beginning his career in the administration of the sacristy. It is more than likely, therefore, that there was something in common between the idea with which it is inspired and the conceptions of the Pope and his party with regard to the theoretical, or, at least, desirable, relations between the two powers (800). As may readily be imagined, such notions were not calculated to please Charlemagne. It is doubtful whether he had any very definite idea of the extent of the ancient imperial power. Times were changed, and not even so mighty a king as himself, not even the Byzantine successors of the true empire, could lay claim to an authority as absolute as that of a Trajan or a Constantine. In the West, especially, the military aristocracy—
the forerunners of the feudal system—were a force to be reckoned with.

In short, Christmas Day, 800, had been witness of a great and remarkable event, the full importance of which was not understood at the time. And this is not an isolated instance of the kind.