The Holy Roman Empire. Viscount James Bryce

The Holy Roman Empire

of the West, now sorely bested by domestic foes.

Italy: the Lombards.

Since the invasion of Alboin, Italy had groaned under a complication of evils. The Lombards who had entered along with that chief in A.D. 568 had settled in considerable numbers in the valley of the Po, and founded the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, leaving the rest of the country to be governed by the exarch of Ravenna as viceroy of the Eastern crown. This subjection was, however, little better than nominal. Although too few to occupy the whole peninsula, the invaders were yet strong enough to harass every part of it by inroads which met with no resistance from a population unused to arms, and without the spirit to use them in self-defence. More cruel and repulsive, if we may believe the evidence of their enemies, than any other of the Northern tribes, the Lombards were certainly singular in their aversion to the clergy, never admitting them to the national councils. Tormented by their repeated attacks, Rome sought help in vain from Byzantium, whose forces, scarce able to repel from their walls the Avars and Saracens, could give no support to the distant exarch of Ravenna.

The Popes.

The Popes were the Emperor's subjects; they awaited his confirmation, like other bishops; they had more than once been the victims of his anger38. But as the city became more accustomed in independence, and the Pope rose to a predominance, real if not yet legal, his tone grew bolder than that of the Eastern patriarchs. In the controversies that had raged in the Church, he had had the wisdom or good fortune to espouse (though not always from the first) the orthodox side: it was now by another quarrel of religion that his deliverance from an unwelcome yoke was accomplished39.

Iconoclastic controversy.

The Emperor Leo, born among the Isaurian mountains, where a purer faith may yet have lingered, and stung by the Mohammedan taunt of idolatry, determined to abolish the worship of images, which seemed fast obscuring the more spiritual part of Christianity. An attempt sufficient to cause tumults among the submissive Greeks, excited in Italy a fiercer commotion. The populace rose with one heart in defence of what had become to them more than a symbol: the exarch was slain: the Pope, though unwilling to sever himself from the lawful head and protector of the Church, must yet excommunicate the prince whom he could not reclaim from so hateful a heresy. Liudprand, king of the Lombards, improved his opportunity: falling on the exarchate as the champion of images, on Rome as the minister of the Greek Emperor, he overran the one, and all but succeeded in capturing the other. The Pope escaped for the moment, but saw his peril; placed between a heretic and a robber, he turned his gaze beyond the Alps, to a Catholic chief who had just achieved a signal deliverance for Christendom on the field of Poitiers. Gregory II had already opened communications with Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, and virtual ruler of the Frankish realm40. As the crisis becomes more pressing, Gregory III finds in the same quarter his only hope, and appeals to him, in urgent letters, to haste to the succour of Holy Church41.

The Popes appeal to the Franks.

Some accounts add that Charles was offered, in the name of the Roman people, the office of consul and patrician. It is at least certain that here begins the connection of the old imperial seat with the rising German power: here first the pontiff leads a political movement, and shakes off the ties that bound him to his legitimate sovereign. Charles died before he could obey the call; but his son Pipin (surnamed the Short) made good use of the new friendship with Rome. He was the third of his family who had ruled the Franks with a monarch's full power: it seemed time to abolish the pageant of Merovingian royalty; yet a departure from the ancient line might shock the feelings of the people. A course was taken whose dangers no one then foresaw: the Holy See, now for the first time invoked as an international power, pronounced the deposition of Childeric, and gave to the royal office of his successor Pipin a sanctity hitherto unknown; adding to the old Frankish election, which consisted in raising the chief on a shield amid the clash of arms, the Roman diadem and the Hebrew rite of anointing. The compact between the chair of Peter and the Teutonic throne was hardly sealed, when the latter was summoned to discharge its share of the duties. Twice did Aistulf the Lombard assail Rome, twice did Pipin descend to the rescue: the second time at the bidding of a letter written in the name of St. Peter himself42.

Pipin patrician of the Romans, A.D. 754.

Aistulf could make no resistance; and the Frank bestowed on the Papal chair all that belonged to the exarchate in North Italy, receiving as the meed of his services the title of Patrician43.

Import of this title.

As a foreshadowing of the higher dignity that was to follow, this title requires a passing notice. Introduced by Constantine at a time when its original meaning had been long forgotten, it was designed to be, and for awhile remained, the name not of an office but of a rank, the highest after those of emperor and consul. As such, it was usually conferred upon provincial governors of the first class, and in time also upon barbarian potentates whose vanity the Roman court might wish to flatter. Thus Odoacer, Theodoric, the Burgundian king Sigismund, Clovis himself, had all received it from the Eastern emperor; so too in still later times it was given to Saracenic and Bulgarian princes44. In the sixth and seventh centuries an invariable practice seems to have attached it to the Byzantine viceroys of Italy, and thus, as we may conjecture, a natural confusion of ideas had made men take it to be, in some sense, an official title, conveying an extensive though undefined authority, and implying in particular the duty of overseeing the Church and promoting her temporal interests. It was doubtless with such a meaning that the Romans and their bishop bestowed it upon the Frankish kings, acting quite without legal right, for it could emanate from the emperor alone, but choosing it as the title which bound its possessor to render to the Church support and defence against her Lombard foes. Hence the phrase is always 'Patricius Romanorum;' not, as in former times, 'Patricius' alone: hence it is usually associated with the terms 'defensor' and 'protector.' And since 'defence' implies a corresponding measure of obedience on the part of those who profit by it, there must have been conceded to the new patrician more or less of the positive authority in Rome, although not such as to extinguish the supremacy of the Emperor.

Extinction of the Lombard kingdom by Charles king of the Franks.

A.D. 774.

So long indeed as the Franks were separated by a hostile kingdom from their new allies, this control remained little better than nominal. But when on Pipin's death the restless Lombards again took up arms and menaced the possessions of the Church, Pipin's son Charles or Charlemagne swept down like a whirlwind from the Alps at the call of Pope Hadrian, seized king Desiderius in his capital, assumed himself the Lombard crown, and made northern Italy thenceforward an integral part of the Frankish empire. Proceeding to Rome at the head of his victorious army, the first of a long line of Teutonic kings who were to find her love more deadly than her hate, he was received by Hadrian with distinguished honours, and welcomed by the people as their leader and deliverer. Yet even then, whether out of policy or from that sentiment of reverence to which his ambitious mind did not refuse to bow, he was moderate in claims of jurisdiction, he yielded to the pontiff the place of honour in processions, and renewed, although in the guise of a lord and conqueror, the gift of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, which Pipin had made to the Roman Church twenty years before.

Charles and Hadrian.

It is with a strange sense, half of sadness, half of amusement, that in watching the progress of this grand historical drama, we recognise the meaner motives by which its chief actors were influenced. The Frankish king and the Roman pontiff were for the time the two most powerful forces that urged the movement of the world, leading it on by swift steps to a mighty crisis of its fate, themselves guided, as it might well seem, by the purest zeal for its spiritual welfare. Their words and acts, their whole character and bearing in the sight of expectant Christendom, were worthy of men destined to leave an indelible impress on their own and many succeeding ages. Nevertheless in them too appears the

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38

Martin, as in earlier times Sylverius.

39

A singular account of the origin of the separation of the Greeks and Latins occurs in the treatise of Radulfus de Columna (Ralph Colonna, or, as some think, de Coloumelle), De translatione Imperii Romani (circ. 1300). 'The tyranny of Heraclius,' says he, 'provoked a revolt of the Eastern nations. They could not be reduced, because the Greeks at the same time began to disobey the Roman Pontiff, receding, like Jeroboam, from the true faith. Others among these schismatics (apparently with the view of strengthening their political revolt) carried their heresy further and founded Mohammedanism.' Similarly, the Franciscan Marsilius of Padua (circa 1324) says that Mohammed, 'a rich Persian,' invented his religion to keep the East from returning to allegiance to Rome. It is worth remarking that few, if any, of the earlier historians (from the tenth to the fifteenth century) refer to the Emperors of the West from Constantine to Augustulus: the very existence of this Western line seems to have been even in the eighth or ninth century altogether forgotten.

40

Anastasius, Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum i. ap. Muratori.

41

Letter in Codex Carolinus, in Muratori's Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, vol. iii. (part 2nd), addressed 'Subregulo Carolo.'

42

Letter in Cod. Carol. (Mur. R. S. I. iii. [2.] p. 96), a strange mixture of earnest adjurations, dexterous appeals to Frankish pride, and long scriptural quotations: 'Declaratum quippe est quod super omnes gentes vestra Francorum gens prona mihi Apostolo Dei Petro exstitit, et ideo ecclesiam quam mihi Dominus tradidit vobis per manus Vicarii mei commendavi.'

43

The exact date when Pipin received the title cannot be made out. Pope Stephen's next letter (p. 96 of Mur. iii.) is addressed 'Pipino, Carolo et Carolomanno patriciis.' And so the Chronicon Casinense (Mur. iv. 273) says it was first given to Pipin. Gibbon can hardly be right in attributing it to Charles Martel, although one or two documents may be quoted in which it is used of him. As one of these is a letter of Pope Gregory II's, the explanation may be that the title was offered or intended to be offered to him, although never accepted by him.

44

The title of Patrician appears even in the remote West: it stands in a charter of Ina the West Saxon king, and in one given by Richard of Normandy in A.D. 1015. Ducange, s. v.