A Short History of Italy (476-1900)

CHAPTER III

THE LOMBARD INVASION (568)

The Imperial dominion over all Italy had lasted scarce a dozen years before another Barbarian nation, the Lombards, came and repeated the experiment in which the Goths had failed. The period of Lombard dominion lasted two hundred years (568-774). It is rather an uninteresting time; nevertheless, like most history, it has a dramatic side. It makes a play for four characters. The Lombards occupy the larger part of the stage, but the protagonist is the Papacy. The Empire is the third character. Finally, the Franks come in and dispossess the Lombards. The plot, though it must spread over several chapters, is simple.

The scene of the play was pitiful. For nearly twenty years (535-553) Italy had been one perpetual battlefield; whichever side won, the unfortunate natives had to lodge and feed a foreign army, and endure all the insolence of a brutal soldiery. Plague, pestilence, and famine followed. The ordinary business of life came to a stop. Houses, churches, aqueducts went to ruin; roads were left unmended, rivers undiked. Great tracts of fertile land were abandoned. Cattle roamed without herdsmen, harvests withered up, grapes shrivelled on the vines. From lack of food came the pest. Mothers abandoned sick babies, sons left their fathers' bodies unburied. The inhabitants of the cities fared no better. Rome, for instance, had been captured five times. Before the war her population had been 250,000; at its close not one tenth was left. It is said that in one period every living thing deserted the city, and for forty days the ancient mistress of the world lay like a city of the dead. With peace came some respite; but the frightful squeeze of Byzantine taxation was as bad as Barbarian conquest. Italy sank into ignorance and misery. The Latin inhabitants hardly cared who their masters were. They never had spirit enough to take arms and fight, but meekly bowed their heads. Such was the scene on which these three great actors, the Lombards, the Papacy, and the Empire, played their parts. It is now time to describe the actors. We give precedence to the Empire, as is its due.

This remnant of the Roman Empire, with its capital on the confines of Europe and Asia, was an anomalous thing. It is a wonder that it continued to exist at all. In fact, there is no better evidence of the immense solidity of Roman political organization than the prolonged life of the Eastern Empire. The countries under its sway, Thrace, Illyria, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, had no bond to hold them together, except common submission to one central authority. By the end of the sixth century, the Roman Empire was really Greek. The Greek language was spoken almost exclusively in Constantinople, Latin having dropped even from official use. Yet the Empire was still regarded as the Roman Empire, and was looked up to by the young Barbarian kingdoms of Europe with the respect which they deemed due to the Empire of Augustus and Trajan. For instance, a king of the Franks addresses the Emperor thus: "Glorious, pious, perpetual, renowned, triumphant Lord, ever Augustus, my father Maurice, Imperator," and is content to be called in return, "Childipert, glorious man, king of the Franks." Yet it must be remembered that Constantinople at this time was the chief city of Europe. Greek thought and Greek art lingered there. Justinian had just built St. Sophia. In fact, Constantinople continued for centuries to be the most civilized city in the world.

The Imperial government was an autocracy; all the reins, civil, military, ecclesiastical, were gathered into the hands of the Emperor. Its foreign policy was to repel its enemies, Persians to the east, Avars to the north, Arabs to the south; its domestic policy was to hold its provinces together and to extort money. The Emperors, many of whom were able men, usually spent such time as could be spared from questions of national defence and of finance in the study of theology, for at Constantinople the problems of government were in great measure religious. Next to the actual physical needs of life, the main interest of the people was religion. A statesman who sought to preserve the Empire whole, of necessity endeavoured to hold together its incohesive parts by means of religious unity. This political need of religious unity is the explanation, in the main, of the frequent theological edicts and enactments.

The Emperors governed Italy, after the reconquest, by an Imperial lieutenant, the Exarch, who resided at Ravenna, under a system of administration preserved in mutilated form from times prior to the fall of Romulus Augustulus. An attempt was made to keep civil and military affairs separate, but the pressure of constant war threw all the power into military hands. The peninsula, or such part of it as remained Imperial after the Lombard invasion, was divided for administrative and military purposes into dukedoms and counties, which were governed by dukes and generals. The Byzantine officials were usually Greeks, bred in Constantinople and trained in the Imperial system; they regarded themselves as foreigners, and had neither the will nor the skill to be of use to Italy. Their public business was to raise money for the Empire, their private business to raise money for themselves.

In spite of these oppressions the Latin people preferred the Greeks to the Lombards, partly because of their common Greco-Roman civilization, partly because the Empire was still the Roman Empire; and this popular support stood the Empire in good stead in the long war which it waged with the Lombards. The Latin people did not fight, but they gave food and information. The Empire, however, was ill prepared for a contest. The recall of Narses removed from Italy the last bulwark against Barbarian invasion. The Imperial army was weak, cities were poorly garrisoned, fortifications badly constructed; and, but for the control of the sea which enabled the Empire to hold the towns on the sea-coast, the whole of Italy would have fallen, like a ripe apple, into the hands of the invaders. The Empire, in fact, was exhausted by the effort of reconquest and had neither moral nor material strength to spare from its home needs.

The Lombards, if inferior in dignity to the Empire, played a far more active part in this historic drama. They came originally from the mysterious North, and after wandering about eastern Europe had at last settled near the Danube, where part of them were converted to Arian Christianity. Discontented with their habitation, and pressed by wilder Barbarians behind them, they were glad to take advantage of the defenceless condition of Italy. They knew how pleasant a land it was, for many of them had served as mercenaries under Narses. The whole nation, with a motley following from various tribes, amounted to about two or three hundred thousand persons. They crossed the Alps in 568.

There were many points of difference between these invaders and the Goths. The Lombards had had little intercourse with the Empire, and were far less civilized than their predecessors, and far inferior in both military and administrative capacity. Their leader, Alboin, cannot be compared in any respect with Theodoric. Moreover, Theodoric came, nominally at least, as lieutenant of the Emperor, and affected to deem his sovereignty the continuation of Imperial rule; whereas the Lombards regarded only the title of the sword and invariably fought the Empire as an enemy.

The invaders met little active resistance; if they had had control of the sea, they would readily have conquered the whole peninsula. They overran the North and strips of territory down the centre within a few years, and afterwards gradually spread little by little; but they never conquered the South, the duchy of Rome, or the Adriatic coast. For the greater part of the two hundred years during which the Lombard dominion existed, the map of Italy bore the following aspect: the Empire retained the little peninsula of Istria; the long strip of coast from the lowlands of Venetia to Ancona, protected by its maritime cities, Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, Sinigaglia; and the duchy of Rome, which spread along the Tyrrhene shore from Civita Vecchia to Gaeta; Naples and Amalfi; the territories of the heel and toe; and also Sicily and Sardinia. The boundaries were never fixed. Of the Lombard kingdom all one need remember is that it was a loose confederation of three dozen duchies; and that of these duchies, Spoleto, a little north of Rome, and Benevento, a little northeast of Naples, were the most important, as well as the most detached from the kingdom. In fact, these two were independent duchies, and rarely if ever took commands from Pavia, the king's capital, except upon compulsion.

At the time of the invasion the Lombards were barbarians; and they did not make rapid progress in civilization. Fond of their native ways, of hunting and brawling, they were loath to adopt the arts of peace, and left most forms of craft and industry to the conquered Latins. Nevertheless, it was impossible to avoid the consequences of daily contact with a far more developed people, and their manners became more civilized with each generation. The royal house affords an indication of the change which was wrought during the two hundred years. Alboin, the original invader (died 573), killed another Barbarian king, married his daughter, and forced her to drink from a cup made of her father's skull. The last Lombard king, Desiderius (died about 780), cultivated the society of scholars, and his daughter learned by heart "the golden maxims of philosophy and the gems of poetry." Each advance of the Lombards in civilization was a gain to the Latins, who, especially in the country where they worked on farms, were little better than serfs. The two races drew together slowly. The conversion of the Lombards from Arian to Catholic Christianity (600-700) diminished the distance between them. Intermarriage must soon have begun; but not until the conquest by the Franks does there seem to have been any real blending of the races.

The most conspicuous trait in the Lombard character was political incompetence. It would have required but a little steadiness of purpose, a little political foresight, a little spurt of energy, to conquer Ravenna, Rome, Naples and the other cities held by the Byzantines, and make Italy into one kingdom. Failure was due to the weakness of the central government, which was unable to weld the petty dukedoms together. This cutting up of Italy into many divisions left deep scars. Each city, with the territory immediately around it, began to regard itself as a separate state, with no sense of duty towards a common country; each cultivated individuality and jealousy of its neighbours, until these qualities, gradually growing during two hundred years, presented insuperable difficulties to the formation of an Italian national kingdom.

In spite of their political incompetence the Lombards left their mark on Italy, especially on Lombardy and the regions occupied by the strong duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. For centuries Lombard blood appears in men of vigorous character; and Lombard names, softened to suit Italian ears, linger on among the nobility. In fact, the aristocracy of Italy from Milan to Naples was mainly Teutonic, and the principal element of the Teutonic strain was Lombard.

CHAPTER IV

THE CHURCH (568-700)

One great political effect of the Lombard conquest was the opportunity which it gave the Papacy, while Lombard and Byzantine were buffeting each other, to grow strong and independent. Had Italy remained a Greek province the Pope would have been a mere provincial bishop, barely taking ceremonial precedence of the metropolitans of Ravenna, Aquileia, and Milan; had Italy become a Lombard kingdom, the Pope would have been a royal appointee; but with the Lombard kings fighting the Byzantine Exarchs, each side needing papal aid and sometimes bidding for it, the Pope was enabled to become master of the city and of the duchy of Rome, and the real head of the Latin people as well as of the Latin clergy. In fact, the growth of the Roman Catholic Church is the most interesting development in this period. The Lombards gave it the opportunity to grow strong and independent, but the power to take advantage of the opportunity came from within. This power was compact of many elements, secular and spiritual. From the ills of the world men betook themselves with southern impulsiveness to things religious; they sought refuge, order, security in the Church. In the greater interests of life among the Latins the rising ecclesiastical fabric had no competitor. Paganism had vanished before Christianity, philosophy before theology. Literature, art, science had perished. Italy had ceased to be a country. The ancient Empire of Rome had faded into a far-away memory. The wreck of the old nobility left the ecclesiastical hierarchy without a rival. In the midst of the general ruin of Roman civilization the Church stood stable, offering peace to the timid, comfort to the afflicted, refinement to the gentle, a home to the homeless, a career to the ambitious, power to the strong. By a hundred strings the Church drew men to her; in a hundred modes she sowed the prolific seeds of ecclesiastical patriotism. She was essentially Roman, and gathered to herself whatever was left of life and vigour in the Roman people. With a structure and organization framed on the Imperial pattern, she slowly assumed in men's minds an Imperial image; and Rome, a provincial town whose civil magistrates busied themselves with sewers and aqueducts, again began to inspire men with a strange confidence in a new Imperial power.

In addition to the strength derived from her immense moral and spiritual services, the Church had the support of two potent forces, ignorance and superstition. The general break-up of the old order had lowered the common level of knowledge. Everybody was ignorant, everybody was superstitious. The laws of nature were wholly unknown. Every ill that happened, whether a man tripped over his threshold, or a thunderbolt hit his roof, was ascribed to diabolic agencies. The old pagan personification of natural forces, without its poetry, was revived. The only help lay in the priest, a kind of magical protector, who with beads, relics, bones, incense, and incantation defended poor humanity from the assaults of devils. Thus, while all civil society suffered from ignorance, while every individual suffered from the awful daily, hourly, presence of fear, the Church profited by both.

Beside these intangible resources, the Church, or to speak more precisely the Papacy, had others of a material kind. For centuries pious men, especially when death drew near, had made great gifts of land to the bishops of Rome, until these bishops had become the greatest landed proprietors in Italy. Most of their estates were in Sicily, but others were scattered all over Italy, and even in Gaul, Illyria, Sardinia, and Corsica. In extent they covered as much as eighteen hundred square miles, and yielded an enormous income. This income enabled the Popes to maintain churches and monasteries, schools and missionaries, to buy off raiding armies of Lombards, and also to equip soldiers of their own. These estates the Church owned as a mere private landlord. During the Gothic dominion and the restoration of Imperial rule, she had no rights of sovereignty. But later on, during the disturbed period of border war between Lombards and Greeks, we find the Popes actually ruling the duchy of Rome.

The corner-stone of the great papal power, however, was laid by the genius of one man, who organized the monastic sentiment of the sixth century and put it to the support of the Papacy. There had been monks in Italy long before St. Benedict (480-544), but as civil society disintegrated, men in ever greater numbers fled from the world, and sought peace in solitude and in monastic communities. St. Benedict perceived that the monastic rules and customs derived from the East were ill suited to the West; so he devised a monastic system, and formulated his celebrated Rule, which became the pattern for all other monastic rules in Europe. He founded a monastery at Subiaco, a little village near Rome, and afterwards the famous abbey on Monte Cassino, a high hill midway between Rome and Naples, which became the mother of all Benedictine monasteries and shone like a light in the Dark Ages. Benedict's ideal was to help men shut themselves off from the temptations of life and realize, as far as they could, the prayer "Thy kingdom come ... on earth as it is in Heaven." He ordained community of property, and required a novitiate. Most strictly he forbade idleness, and with special insistence exhorted his brethren to till the ground with their own hands. Intellectual interests followed; and Benedictine monks became the teachers not only of agriculture, but of handicraft, of art and learning. His Order spread fast over Italy and Gaul, and in time over Spain, England, and Germany. Its communities, like the old castra romana, upheld the authority of Rome and enforced her dominion.

The attractions of the monastic life at Monte Cassino are well set out in a letter written (after St. Benedict's day) to one of the abbots, by a man of the world who had once lived there: "Though great spaces separate me from your company, I am bound to you by a clinging affection that can never be loosed, nor are these short pages enough to tell you of the love that torments me all the time for you, for the superiors and for the brethren. So much so that when I think about those leisure days spent in holy duties, the pleasant rest in my cell, your sweet religious affection, and the blessed company of those soldiers of Christ, bent on holy worship, each brother setting a shining example of a different virtue, and the gracious talks on the perfections of our heavenly home, I am overcome, all my strength goes, and I cannot keep tears from mingling with the sighs that burst from me. Here I go about among Catholics, men devoted to Christian worship; everybody receives me well, everybody is kind to me from love of our father Benedict, and for the sake of your merits; but compared with your monastery the palace is a prison; compared with the quiet there this life is a tempest."[4]

What Benedict did for the monastic orders, another great man, St. Gregory (540-604), did for the Papacy itself. Gregory the Great, the most commanding figure in the history of Europe between Theodoric and Charlemagne, was a Roman, made of the same stuff as Scipio and Cato, and presented the interesting character of a Christian and an antique Roman combined. Born of a noble Roman family, Gregory was educated in Rome, and entered the service of the state, in which he rose to the high office of prefect of the city; but, dissatisfied with civil life, he abandoned it and became a monk. He wanted to give himself up wholly to a monastic life, but deemed it his duty to accept office in the papal service, and filled the distinguished position of papal ambassador (to use a modern term) at the Imperial court at Constantinople. In 590 he was elected Pope, half against his will, for he desired to be either a monk or a missionary; but he felt that the hopes of civilization and the future of religion lay in the Papacy, and he applied himself with energy to his new task. This task was as complex and multifarious as possible. It concerned all Europe, from Sicily to England. Rome itself was in a deplorable condition, left undefended by the Exarch, and threatened by the Lombards of Spoleto, who harried the country to the very gates, murdering some Romans and carrying others off as slaves. Gregory had to take complete control of the city, military and civil. He wrote: "I do not know any more whether I now fill the office of priest or of temporal prince; I must look to our defence and everything else. I am paymaster of the soldiers." He kept up the courage of the Romans, and tried to draw spiritual good out of their plight. It was impossible for a contemporary eye to see that under present wretchedness lay germinating the seeds of empire; yet Gregory acted as if he beheld them. In spite of apprehensions of the end of the world he organized the Church to endure for centuries. Both at home and abroad he displayed a tireless activity.

Among the foreign events of his pontificate are the conversion of England by Augustine (597) and the ministry of St. Columbanus (543-615) among the Franks, Alemanni, and Lombards. It was Gregory who saw the handsome fairhaired boys from England standing in the market-place and said, "Non Angli sed angeli." He had the true imperial instinct, and always encouraged the clergy in distant parts of Europe to visit Rome and to apply to Rome for counsel and aid. The respect in which he was held may be inferred from the titles given him by Columbanus: "To the holy lord and father in Christ, the most comely ornament of the Roman Church, the most august flower, so to speak, of all this languishing Europe, the illustrious overseer, to him who is skilled to inquire into the theory of the Divine causality, I, a mean dove (Columbanus), send Greeting in Christ." Gregory also maintained close relations with the clergy in Africa, and received homage from the Spanish bishops, for Spain had recently been converted from Arianism to Catholicism. He was by no means content to confine his dealings to the clergy, but was in frequent correspondence with kings and queens of western Europe, as well as with the Emperor and Empress in Constantinople. His immense energy made itself felt everywhere. He made rules for the liturgy; and mass is still celebrated partly according to his directions. He reformed church music and founded schools for the Gregorian chant. He administered the papal revenues, superintending the management of farms, stables, and orchards. He founded monasteries, he supported hospitals and asylums.

Benedict and Gregory are the two great figures of this period, and, though no worthy successor followed for several generations, they did their work so well that the Papacy, like a great growing oak, continued to spread its power conspicuously in the eyes of the world, and also, out of sight, in the hearts and habits of men.

The relations between the Papacy and the Empire were difficult. The Popes were subjects of the Emperor. The whole ecclesiastical organization throughout the Empire was subject to the Imperial will, just as the civil or military service was. The Papacy did not like this position of subordination and resented any interference in papal affairs. Though Odoacer, Theodoric, and Justinian had always asserted their right to exercise a supervision over papal elections, the Popes had never acquiesced willingly, and even in those early days showed a marked disposition to take exclusive control of what they deemed their own affairs. It might be supposed that the Papacy, mindful of the great danger of a Lombard conquest of Rome, would have clung to the Empire; but after the Lombards had become Catholics the gap between the Romans and the Greco-Oriental Empire was nearly as wide as that between them and the Lombards. There was a fundamental difference between the Greek mind, floating over metaphysics and speculative theology, and the Roman mind, bound to political conceptions and practical ends. A theology which would satisfy a congregation in St. Sophia would not suit the worshippers in St. Peter's. The Empire, obliged to adapt theological niceties to political necessities, favoured any creed of compromise, which should promote political concord and unity. Rome, with its despotic, imperial instincts, felt that orthodoxy was its strength, and maintained an inflexible creed. The two were an ill-yoked pair, and quarrels were inevitable.

The relations between the Papacy and the Lombards were more simple. They varied between war, and friendship real or feigned. In the beginning, and even, as we have seen, in Gregory's time, there was war; but then began the conversion of the Lombards to Christianity, and intervals of peace followed, during which the Lombard king saluted the Pope as "Most Holy Father," and the Pope replied "My well-beloved Son."

FOOTNOTE:

CHAPTER V

THE COMING OF THE FRANKS (726-768)

We now come to the separation of the Latin world from the Greek world in both political and ecclesiastical affairs, and to the reconstruction of Europe by the alliance of the Franks and the Papacy. The plot continues to be very simple. The Empire, pressed by dangerous enemies, tried once more to gain political strength by ecclesiastical legislation; the effect of this legislation on the Imperial provinces in Italy was to cause rebellion. The Papacy broke the ties that bound it to the Empire; then, finding itself defenceless before the Lombards, made an alliance with the Franks, who invaded Italy and overthrew the Lombards.

In order to elaborate this plot, we must begin with the great Asiatic movement of the seventh century; for this movement acted as a cause of causes to split the Latins from the Greeks, to exalt the Papacy, and to form the Holy Roman Empire. In one of the tribes of Arabia, without heralding, appeared a man, who at the age of forty became a religious prophet, and by the force of genius constructed one of the great religions of the world. Mohammed's religion worked on the ardent Arabian temperament like magic, and engendered a fierce passion for conquest and proselytizing. Tribes cohered, became both a sect and a nation, and swept like wildfire over the west of Asia and the north of Africa. Mohammed died in 632, but his successors, the Caliphs, carried on his work; under the inspiration of the slogan, "Before you is Paradise, behind you the devil and the fire of hell," they advanced from conquest to conquest. Cities and provinces were torn from the Empire. Damascus, Syria, Jerusalem, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Egypt, Rhodes fell in rapid succession; next Africa, bit by bit. Persia was beaten to her knees. Sicily was raided. Twice Constantinople had to fight for life.

Naturally Byzantine statesmen felt that some radical step must be taken, or all the remnants of the Empire would be reduced to slavery. A vigorous Emperor, Leo the Isaurian (717-741), took the radical step. It was necessarily religious, for, in Constantinople, political action always took a religious complexion. Leo issued a decree forbidding the use of images in churches and in Christian worship (726). Those in place he ordered broken. He acted no doubt from high motives, thinking to ennoble religion and to arouse patriotism; but his people disagreed with him. In the East riots and civil war broke out. These were suppressed, but discontent and persistent opposition remained. In Italy also the excitement was intense. The country had already been irritated by severe taxation, and when the decree of iconoclasm was published, the image-loving Italians rose in a body. The Pope, as most hurt in conscience by the decree, and in pocket by the taxation, was the natural head of resistance. The Exarch attempted to arrest him, but both Latins and Lombards rallied to his defence. In some places open revolt broke out, and a plot was started to set up another Emperor in place of the wicked iconoclast who polluted the Imperial throne. But the Pope, Gregory II (715-731), was a prudent man, and was not ready to take a step which would deprive Rome of its single defence from the Lombards. He opposed the rebellious plan, but in the matter of maintaining the images he stood like a rock. His successor, Gregory III (731-741), went farther, and took decisive action. He convoked a synod, which expelled every image-breaker from the Church (731). This was tantamount to a direct excommunication of the Emperor, and a declaration of papal independence. The Emperor was powerless to compel obedience. Thus began the great split between the Papacy and the Byzantine Empire, between western and eastern Europe, between the Latin Church and the Greek. Some of the western provinces, Calabria, Sicily, and Illyria, which were practically Greek, remained faithful to the Empire and shared its fortunes for several hundred years more. Ecclesiastically they were removed from the jurisdiction of the Popes to that of the Patriarchs of Constantinople.

This breach between the Papacy and the Empire led inevitably to an alliance between the Papacy and the Franks, which is of such great historical consequence that it must be recounted in some detail. While the Empire and the Papacy were quarrelling over ecclesiastical matters, western Europe had been changing. The Frankish kingdom had been established in what is now Belgium, Holland, and large parts of France and Germany, and was the one great Christian power in Europe. Therefore, when the Papacy had cut loose from the Empire and saw itself defenceless against the Lombards, it had no alternative but to seek help from the Franks. There were also two special reasons for friendship between the Franks and the Papacy. First, the Franks, alone of Barbarians, had been converted to Catholic Christianity. Secondly, in their endeavours to enlarge their eastern borders, the Franks had been greatly assisted by the missionaries, who—in the normal course, missionaries, merchants, soldiers—had prepared the way for Frankish conquest, and had strengthened the Frankish power when established. These missionaries were absolutely devoted to the Roman See; they spread papal loyalty wherever they went, and wrought a strong bond of union between the Frankish kingdom and the Papacy. This union of sympathy and interest was an excellent basis for a political union; and the time soon came for such a development.

When the iconoclastic revolts occurred in Italy, and the Popes broke with the Empire, the Lombard kings thought that their opportunity to conquer all Italy had come. But instead of making one bold campaign against Rome and the South, they merely laid hands on a few border cities. The Popes turned with frantic appeals for help to the only power that could help them, the Franks. Every time the Lombard king made a hostile move, the Pope cried aloud for aid. For some time the Franks deemed that the balance of political considerations was against intervention and refused to take part in Italian affairs. Charles Martel, mayor of the palace and ruler of the Franks in all but name, stood firm on the policy of non-interference; but his son and successor, Pippin the Short, took a different view. Pippin judged that the time had come to depose the royal Merovingian family and to exalt his own, the Carlovingian, in its stead. As the Merovingians had reigned for two hundred and fifty years, the step was revolutionary, and Pippin wished to strengthen his position by the support of the Papacy. He sent messengers to the Pope, Zacharias, to ask advice; and the Pope, according to the chronicler, "in the exercise of his apostolical authority replied to their question, that it seemed to him better and more expedient that the man who held power in the kingdom should be called king and be king, rather than he who falsely bore that name. Therefore the Pope commanded the king and the people of the Franks, that Pippin, who was using royal power, should be called king and should be settled on the throne." The last Merovingian, therefore, was tonsured and stowed away in a monastery, and Pippin became king of the Franks (751). Without accepting the monkish chronicler's statement, that the Pope commanded Pippin to be king, there can be little doubt that the papal sanction was of very real value to Pippin, and that Pippin let it appear that he was acting rather in conformity with the Pope's will than with his own.

Thus the Pope laid Pippin under a great obligation; it now remained for Pippin to discharge that obligation. It was not long before the time came.

The Lombard king felt that his opportunity was slipping by, and acted with some vigour. He captured Ravenna and threatened Rome. The Pope hurried across the Alps. He anointed and crowned Pippin; he likewise anointed and blessed his son Charles (Charlemagne), and forbade the Franks under pain of excommunication ever to choose their king from any other family. These three great favours, the transfer of the royal title, the coronation rite, and the perpetual confirmation of the Carlovingian sovereignty, called for a great return. Pippin promised that the Adriatic provinces, taken by the Lombards from the Byzantines, should be ceded by the Lombards to the Pope. This promise Pippin fulfilled. He crossed the Alps, defeated the Lombard king, and forced him to cede the Exarchate of Ravenna and the five cities below it on the coast, to the Pope, who thereby became an actual sovereign. Thus Pippin discharged his obligation to the Papacy.

This beginning of the Papal monarchy is so important that the theoretic origin may as well be mentioned here. There was a legend, universally believed, that an early Pope, Silvester (314-335) healed the Emperor Constantine of leprosy, and that the Emperor, in gratitude, made a great grant of territory to the Pope. The fact appears to have been that Constantine, although not cured of the leprosy, did give to Silvester the Lateran palace and a plot of ground around it. This little donation grew in legend like a grain of mustard seed, and served the purpose of the Roman clergy. No good Roman would have been content with a title derived from the Lombards or the Franks. In Roman eyes these Barbarians never had any title to Italian territory; they could give none. The only possible source of legal title was the Empire. In the gift by Constantine to Silvester papal adherents had a foundation of fact. That was enough. It is quite unnecessary to imagine false dealing. People in those days believed that what they wished true was true. This legend was accepted and embodied in concrete form in a document known as the Donation of Constantine, which is so important in explaining the attitude of the Papacy throughout the Middle Ages, that it may be quoted:—

"In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Emperor Cæsar Flavius Constantine ... to the most holy and blessed Father of Fathers, Silvester, bishop of Rome and Pope, and to all his successors in the seat of St. Peter to the end of the world...." Here comes, interspersed with snatches of Christian dogma, a rambling narrative of his leprosy, of the advice of his physicians to bathe in a font on the Capitol filled with the warm blood of babies; how he refused, how Peter and Paul appeared in a dream and sent him to Silvester, how he then abjured paganism, accepted the creed, was baptized and healed, and how he then recognized that heathen gods were demons and that Peter and his successors had all power on earth and in heaven. After this long preamble comes the grant:

"We, together with all our Satraps and the whole Senate, Nobles and People ... have thought it desirable that even as St. Peter is on earth the appointed Vicar of God, so also the Pontiffs his viceregents should receive from us and from our Empire, power and principality greater than belongs to us ... and to the extent of our earthly Imperial power we decree that the Sacrosanct Church of Rome shall be honoured and venerated, and that higher than our terrestrial throne shall the most sacred seat of St. Peter be gloriously exalted.

"Let him who for the time shall be pontiff over the holy Church of Rome ... be sovereign of all the priests in the whole world; and by his judgment let all things which pertain to the worship of God or the faith of Christians be regulated.... We hand over and relinquish our palace, the city of Rome, and all the provinces, places, and cities of Italy and the western regions, to the most blessed Pontiff and universal Pope, Silvester; and we ordain by our pragmatic constitution that they shall be governed by him and his successors, and we grant that they shall remain under the authority of the holy Roman Church."[5]

The date of this document and many statements in it are anachronisms and errors. It was composed about the time of Pippin's Donation, probably by somebody connected with the papal chancery, and may be considered to be a pious forgery representing the facts as the writer deemed they were or else should be. It was officially referred to for the first time in 777, but did not receive its full celebrity until the eleventh century, when the relations of the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire became the centre of European history.

FOOTNOTE:

CHAPTER VI

CHARLEMAGNE (768-814)

The papal theory embodied in the Donation of Constantine was obviously crammed with seeds of future strife; for the present, however, the fortunes of the House of Pippin and of the Papacy were bound together in amity. The constant accession of strength to the former and of prestige to the latter made them the central figures of European politics. The new political form to which their union gave birth slowly shaped itself. In Italy the first step was to get rid of the Lombards. On the death of the Lombard King, Aistulf, there were two claimants for the throne. One of the two, Desiderius, secured the Pope's help by the promise of ceding more cities, and became king. The Pope, writing to Pippin, says: "Now that Aistulf, that disciple of the devil, that devourer of Christian blood is dead; and that by your aid and that of the Franks [a complimentary phrase, for Pippin seems to have done nothing] he is succeeded by Desiderius, a most gentle and good man, we pray you to urge him to continue in the right way." But the "most gentle and good" Desiderius strayed from the right way, and did not cede the promised cities. So the Pope besought Pippin to use force; but Pippin thought that he had done enough, and the Pope was obliged to rest content. Pippin died in 768. One can imagine the consternation at Rome on Pippin's death to learn that the dowager queen of the Franks was arranging a marriage between her son Charlemagne and a daughter of Desiderius, and another marriage between her daughter and a son of Desiderius. The Pope wrote in terror that the plan was of the devil, and forbade it under the pains of everlasting damnation; nevertheless, Charlemagne married the daughter of Desiderius (770).

The Pope's anticipations, however, were not justified; the horrible union of the House of Pippin with the "unspeakable" Lombards came to an abrupt end. Charlemagne, probably from personal dislike, put away his wife, and sent her ignominiously back to her father. Desiderius, angry at the insult, rushed upon his fate; he not only intrigued in Frankish affairs against Charlemagne, but he also seized many of the cities given to the Pope by the Donation of Pippin. He invaded the duchy of Rome, and advanced within fifty miles of the city. This time Charlemagne acted in conformity with the papal entreaties. He crossed the Alps, routed the Lombard army, captured Pavia, took Desiderius prisoner and assumed the title of King of the Lombards (773-774). He went on to Rome, and solemnly confirmed the Donation of Pippin, and also made a further Donation. This latter Donation, which led to disputes between the Papacy and Charlemagne's successors, is a matter of great uncertainty. Subsequent papal advocates claimed that it embraced two thirds of Italy. Probably Charlemagne only intended to restore to the Papacy its private property scattered throughout northern and central Italy, which had been seized by the Lombards.

Charlemagne, having disposed of the Lombards, continued his conquests; across the Pyrenees he annexed the Spanish March, in North Germany he subdued the Saxons and pushed his frontier to the Elbe, to the southeast he subjugated the country as far as the upper Danube. His monarchy now included Franks, Celts, Visigoths, Burgundians, Saxons, Lombards, Romans. How were such widespread territories and such diverse peoples to be united in permanent union? The far-seeing Papacy, in answer to this question, propounded the revival of the Roman Empire of the Cæsars. Reasons were numerous. The Frankish monarchy, with its conquests, in bulk at least was not unworthy to succeed to Imperial Rome. Throughout this wide territory there was a great network of ligaments; from Gascony to Bavaria, from Lombardy to Frisia, divine service was celebrated in the Latin tongue and with the Roman ritual; bishops, priests, monks, and missionaries acknowledged their dependence upon the Pope and looked to Rome, with its holy basilicas and apostolic tradition, as the centre of Christendom. This Christian unity was a constant argument for political unity. A second argument was the still vigorous Roman tradition. The idea of nationality was as yet undeveloped; Europe had known no other political system than common subjection to the Roman Empire, and all notions of civilization were of a civilization on the Roman pattern. When the Roman Empire in the West had decayed, the Church had adopted the Imperial organization and kept remembrance of the old system fresh in men's minds. The old Empire, moreover, had early lost the notion of dependence on the city of Rome, for the seat of government had been set at Constantinople, at Milan, and at Ravenna; and since the days of the early Cæsars, it had not been necessary for an Emperor to be a native Roman. There was no theoretical difficulty to bar a Frank from the Imperial throne or forbid the seat of government to a Frankish city. In fact, nobody could conceive of the Empire as other than Roman, and the Frankish kingdom could only become an empire by becoming the Roman Empire.

The Papacy had special reasons for these views. Under the Empire Christianity had grown up; under the Empire it had obtained power and dominion, and had become the state religion. The Church might quarrel with Emperors, but it regarded the Empire—the source of secular law and order—as its joint tenant in the world. The one represented religious unity, the other represented civil unity. In addition to these large arguments, local reasons affected the Papacy. Shortly before the expulsion of the Lombards from Italy, the lack of a strong government had been wofully felt. One usurper and then another had been put in St. Peter's chair in riot and bloodshed. It had become plain as day that the Papacy of itself, without the support of a potent secular power, was not able to maintain its dignity, nor even to enforce order in the very city of Rome. The Papacy could not endure without the Empire. The very titles which the Frankish kings had gradually received led up to the Imperial title. Gregory II had called Charles Martel "Patrician," a vague title of honour held by the Exarchs; Gregory III had offered to him the titles both of Patrician and of Consul; Stephen II bestowed upon Pippin the title of Patrician of the Romans; Charlemagne's own titles were King of the Franks, King of the Lombards, Patrician of the Romans; and his son had been crowned by the Pope, King of Italy (781). The title next in order was undoubtedly Emperor of the Romans. Charlemagne himself was a man of gigantic stature and great strength, indefatigable in action, and delighting in hunting, swimming, and martial exercise. His mind also was mighty, restlessly pondering questions of state, of church, of war, of social improvement. He was the greatest of Barbarians, cast by Nature in an imperial mould.

On the other hand there was one conspicuous difficulty in the way of reviving the Roman Empire; this difficulty was that the Roman Empire still existed, and that there was a living Emperor, the legitimate successor of Cæsar Augustus. But that Empire was virtually Greek, and the Emperor no more like Cæsar Augustus than like Hercules. The city by the Tiber had as good title to be the Imperial city as her younger rival by the Bosphorus; the Roman Republic (whatever that ill-defined title may mean), represented by the Pope, had as fair a claim to elect the Emperor, as the army and office-holders at Constantinople. In fact, to Papal and Roman eyes, the rights of Rome were much greater than those of Constantinople.

To us, as we look back, nothing seems more natural than that the great Frankish king, after the conquest of Italy, should have brushed aside the theoretical difficulty of an existing Roman Empire and assumed the Imperial title, Emperor of the Romans. History moves more slowly. Charlemagne was a Frank, accustomed to Frankish usages and ideas; he hesitated to adopt formally a wholly different conception of sovereignty and society. His nobles probably agreed with the advice given by Pope Zacharias to Pippin, that the man who held the power should receive the corresponding title, but being Franks they thought the dignity of Frankish king sufficient. So matters stood with nothing between Charlemagne and the Imperial crown but a theoretic difficulty, and a certain reluctance. Unexpectedly and in quick succession, events in Constantinople swept away the theoretic difficulty, and events in Rome gave the Pope sufficient energy to overcome the reluctance.

At Constantinople, the dowager Empress blinded and deposed her son the Emperor (797), and assumed to rule as sole Augusta. This wickedness, and the ancient doctrine that, though a woman might lawfully share the Imperial throne, she might not reign alone, combined to render plausible a theory readily adopted in the West, that the Imperial throne had become vacant. The event in Rome was this. A savage gang of nobles and ecclesiasts attacked Pope Leo III in the street, beat him, half-blinded him, cut his tongue, and imprisoned him in a monastery (799). He escaped and fled to Charlemagne in Germany. His enemies followed and charged him with various crimes. Charlemagne sent him back to Rome in the company of some great nobles, who were commissioned to investigate the charges, and went himself also. There, in St. Peter's basilica, in the presence of Frankish nobles and Roman ecclesiasts, with Charlemagne presiding, the Pope took a solemn oath of innocence (December 4, 800). Such an oath according to the jurisprudence of the time was necessarily followed by acquittal; and the Pope's innocence necessarily proved the guilt of his accusers, who were punished.

Such crimes, east and west, were insufferable. Something had to be done. Everybody looked to Charlemagne. His position as head of Christendom was acknowledged even beyond the bounds of western Europe. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, a subject of the Caliph Haroun al Raschid, sent to Charlemagne the keys of Calvary and of the Holy Sepulchre and the banner of the Holy City. Obviously it was time for the Imperial dignity to be added to Imperial power.

On Christmas day in the year 800, Charlemagne and a great procession of Frankish nobles and Roman citizens made their way through the streets of Rome towards the basilica of St. Peter's, whose gilt bronze roof, taken from a pagan temple, shone conspicuous on the Vatican hill. They walked through the Aurelian gate and across the bridge over the Tiber, then turning to the left, followed the colonnade which extended all the way from Hadrian's Mausoleum to the atrium of the basilica. There they mounted the broad flight of marble steps, at the top of which the Pope and his court awaited the king. Then Pope and king, followed by the procession, crossed the great atrium paved with white marble, past the fir-cone fountain and papal tombs, to the central door of the basilica, which swung its thousand-weight of silver open wide; then, up the long nave, screened by rows of antique columns from double aisles on either side, all rich with tapestries of purple and gold, they proceeded with slow and solemn steps to the tomb of the apostle. Thirteen hundred and seventy candles in the great candelabrum glowed on the silver floor of the shrine, and glittered on the gold and silver statues around it. In the great apse behind the high altar sat the clergy, row upon row, beneath the Pontiff's throne; above, the Byzantine mosaics looked down in sad severity. Here Charlemagne knelt at the tomb, and prayed. As he rose from his knees, the Pope lifted an Imperial crown of gold and placed it on his head, while all the congregation shouted, "Life and Victory to Charles, Augustus, crowned by God, the great and peaceful Emperor!"

Thus was accomplished that restoration of the Roman Empire, which by its attempt to combine Teuton and Roman in political union so powerfully affected the history of mediæval Europe. Charlemagne is reported to have said that the Imperial coronation took him by surprise. However that may be, this great enterprise of a Christian Empire must be regarded, in its final completion, as the joint work of Frankish king and Roman Pope.