The Historians' History of the World 08

On the other hand, Charlemagne and his subjects did not concern themselves with any curious inquiry into the origin of the powers which the imperial crown brought along with it. Yet, in conformity with their general notion of government, they believed that Rome and her pontiff had taken upon them the relation of subjects to the emperor whom they had crowned and anointed. It is certain that Charlemagne regarded himself as the sovereign of Rome, if not of the pope; he was emperor in his own right as fully as if he had placed the crown upon his own head. In conformity with the opinion and practice of his age, he grounded that right upon possession. In the mind of the warrior there was no place for any other derivation of title; and Charlemagne and his successors took as little distinction between the possession and the sovereignty of Rome and its appurtenant territories as they did in the case of his newly acquired dominions in Germany, Lombardy, or Spain.

A few days after the coronation of Charlemagne, he directed the persons implicated in the plot of the preceding year against the life and government of the pope to be brought before him for judgment; and, as supreme judge, he condemned them to the death of traitors. This exercise of supreme criminal judicature indicates at least the assumption of a power understood in that age to be a distinguishing attribute of sovereign authority. The condemned criminals were indeed respited at the intercession of the pope, and their punishment was commuted for exile; but nothing occurred to indicate any jealous feeling on the part of the pontiff; and throughout the winter of the year 801 Charlemagne continued to exercise every prerogative of imperial power in Rome with as free a hand as when he set up his migratory throne upon the banks of the Seine, the Rhine, or the Elbe.

In the year 806 he executed a provisional settlement of the succession to his vast dominions among his then surviving sons. During the whole course of his life Charlemagne was anxious to invest his more important acts with the sanction of religion. The settlement of 806, though provisional only, was solemnly enacted and sworn to by his sons and the estates of the realm assembled in diet at Thionville; and was soon afterwards sent by the hand of the emperor’s secretary to Rome for the approval and signature of the pope—a step which lay open to a construction probably far beyond the intent of Charlemagne.d

PAPAL AMBITION AFTER CHARLEMAGNE

Almost immediately after Charlemagne’s death, Leo assumed to himself a degree of authority which could not be exercised without equal injury to the state and to the sacerdotal character. Stephen IV, his successor, took the oath of allegiance, together with the whole of the people, as soon as he ascended the pontifical throne; and announced to the monarch, Louis the Pious, that he would attend him at whatever place he should appoint. But the Christian meekness of the pontiff was exceeded by that of the sovereign, who, on receiving his visit at Rheims, prostrated himself three times at his feet. There is evidence, however, to prove that it still required a man of equally powerful and ambitious mind to take full advantage of the means of aggrandisement afforded by the present position of the church. During the short reigns of several successive popes, we see the power of the emperor distinctly at work, and his right acknowledged, in the management of ecclesiastical affairs.

[824-847 A.D.]

In the year 824, and under the pontificate of Eugenius I, Louis sent his son Lothair to Rome, to inquire into the truth of the complaints made by the citizens against their sacerdotal chiefs; and when Gregory IV visited France, for the purpose of effecting a reconciliation between Louis and his son, the bishops of France, whom he appears to have threatened with his censures, proudly dared him to a trial of his power, by informing him that if he did aught against the canons, he should himself be excommunicated or deposed. The pernicious counsel of one of his advisers taught him to answer this intimation by fresh assertions of authority, and he dared to commence the practice, which subsequently proved such a fruitful source of disorder and scandal in Christendom, of declaring the sovereign deposed because of his quarrel with the ruler of the Roman church. The emperor Lothair was sufficiently tenacious of his authority to issue especial orders, on the election of Sergius II without his being consulted, that for the future no candidate for the papal throne should be consecrated till he had given his assent to the election.

An Extract from Beza’s Testament of The Gospel of St. Luke