The Historians' History of the World 08

Stephen III enjoyed his honours about four years, and then left them to be possessed by Adrian I. The Lombards still pressed close upon the boundaries of Rome. It was at this period, moreover, that the controversy with the iconoclasts approached its highest degree of virulence; and Adrian had to employ all the prudence of which he was master to meet the dangers in which it involved him. The measures pursued by the empress Irene were as unfavourable to his views as they were in themselves violent and unjust. The iconoclasts were as odious to him as to her; they were as opposed to the system which it was his object to establish, as they were to her usurpations and tyranny. While he expressed his doubts, therefore, as to the propriety of the new patriarch’s consecration, and showed considerable backwardness in recognising the Second Council of Nicæa, he attempted no vigorous resistance to the invasion of those rules which were violated in her proceedings. The establishment of image-worship promised effects more favourable to his general interests than the assumption of authority by Tiresias, and his patroness was offensive to his immediate feelings. But the church was now to receive the support of a prince whose character and circumstances were equally calculated to mark him for her champion.c

CHARLEMAGNE AND THE POPE

[775-776 A.D.]

Einhardl (Eginhard), the biographer of Charlemagne, informs us that the strictest friendship subsisted between that monarch and Pope Adrian I. In the still extant correspondence between them, we find the freest communication of opinion and feeling both upon political and ecclesiastical affairs. In exact conformity with the policy of his predecessors, Adrian regarded the Frankish monarch as the covenanted protector of the holy see and its possessions, and in that capacity bound to recover for her every debt the pope might see fit to claim as her “righteous due.” Thus when Leo, archbishop of Ravenna, refused to relinquish his metropolitan rights over certain districts alleged to form part of the donation of Charlemagne, the pope expressed his anxiety for the presence and support of his friend and protector. Adrian, moreover, suspected the royal missi, or commissioners, of collusion with the vassal dukes of Benevento and Spoleto, to the injury of the holy see; and, whether from authentic information or with a view to alarm his correspondent for the safety of his Italian conquests, he magnified the transactions complained of into a criminal conspiracy against the crown. He told the king that the outbreak was actually fixed to take place in the month of March then next following (776 A.D.); that Adelchis (Adalgis), the son of Desiderius, the captive king of the Lombards, was to appear on the coast with a Greek fleet; that Rome was to be assailed both by sea and land, the churches were to be plundered, the pope was to be carried into captivity, and the Lombard dynasty to be reinstated.

Other motives were not wanting to induce Charlemagne to pay a second military visit to his newly acquired dominions in Italy. It had become necessary to take immediate steps for the dissolution of a long-suspected plot between his disaffected subject, Duke Tassilo of Bavaria, and the partisans of the late dynasty. In the winter, therefore, of the year 776, he crossed the Alps at the head of a numerous army; the duke of Friuli, who appears to have taken a principal part in the conspiracy, was expelled from his duchy; and in a short time the presence of the conqueror appears to have dispelled all apprehensions of further danger either to church or state. The pope professed himself satisfied with the result, and returned thanks for the protection afforded with great apparent warmth and cordiality.

THE DONATION FROM CONSTANTINE

[776-780 A.D.]

Yet all had not, it seems, been done for the satisfaction of the papal claims. Another and a different title to an almost imperial power is brought to light. Now, for the first time after the lapse of four centuries and a half, it is discovered that all which Pepin or Charlemagne had conferred on the church of Rome was an insignificant instalment of that more extensive dominion originally granted to the chair of Peter by “the pious emperor Constantine.”