| #### 4. THE ROMAN SEE AND THE DISSOLUTION OF THE EMPIRE, 814-900 |

| #### #### The genius of Catholicism continued, then, to transcend the weaknesses of its members even in this dying world. The weaknesses were as evident as in the days of St. Boniface -- ignorant clergy, worldly lords and successful brigands masquerading as prelates, a greedy laity taking every occasion the times offered to lay hands on ecclesiastical property and jurisdiction for their own profit. Nowhere is the struggle that shook the whole Church better seen than in the history of its primatial see, in the story of the development of the Frankish protectorate during the eighty or ninety years that followed Charlemagne's death. It is the story of the ever-increasing hold of the emperor on the papacy, and of the gradual disappearance of the principle of free election. The idea grows that the papacy, a thing eminently profitable, is worth much violence to secure, and at Rome there are soon rival factions traditionally hostile, to whom every vacancy presents an opportunity for fraud, violence, and sacrilege. These factions outlive the empire, and once the strong hand of the emperor has gone the papacy is at their mercy. #### Charlemagne was scarcely dead when the faction which, in 799, had tried to murder Leo III, seized its opportunity. But now the plot was discovered in time, and arrests and executions were the order of the day. Protests went to the emperor. The death penalty, the punishment of the Roman Law for the outrage on the Roman maiestas, seemed to the Franks unnecessarily harsh. And, since the emperor was emperor of the Romans, should he not have been consulted? So Louis the Pious sent a commission to Rome to enquire, and the pope explained himself. The plots continued and the next year, 816, an insurrection broke out. It was suppressed by the Franks -- just in time to save the pope. Then, in June 816, Leo III died. #### The election was made, in conformity with the decree of 769, by the clergy alone. They elected the deacon Stephen, who, like' Leo's predecessor Adrian I, was a noble and therefore qualified to unite the contending parties. He reigned only six months, but in that short time he recalled the exiles of 799 and 814, saw to it that all his people swore allegiance to the emperor, and, in October, 816, solemnly crowned Louis at Rheims. #### With the unexpected death of Stephen IV (January 25, 817) the forces that had ruled during the twenty-one years of Leo III's reign returned to power, in the person of the new pope, Pascal I. The reign was as troubled as that of Leo III. It began with the now customary announcement to the emperor of the pope's election and with a confirmation of the pact of amity between the two powers. The text of the pact of 816 is the earliest that has survived. The emperor guarantees the pope's sovereignty over the Italian territories, which arc specified in detail, and he guarantees also that the papal election shall be free and unhindered. On the other hand, he reserves the right to receive appeals from the pope's subjects. In 822 there was a notable instance of the exercise of this right when Louis' son, Lothair -- whom Louis had himself crowned King of Italy, as he himself had been crowned by Charlemagne -- decided an appeal of the nobility against the pope. The next year there were more serious troubles. Some of the appellants of 822 were murdered, and the pope was accused of being privy to the deed. He protested his innocence and, following the precedent of Leo III, solemnly purged himself by oath. #### Twelve months later the unhappy pope was dead, and the internal dissensions precipitated in a double election. Thanks to the influence of the monk Wala who was Lothair's chief adviser, and who chanced to be in Rome, one party gave way and the archpriest Eugene was unanimously acknowledged -- the candidate of the nobility. The emperor, weary of the endless scandals that resulted from the Roman factions, determined to end them by a careful, systematic and official delimitation of powers. A mission was sent to Rome under the nominal presidency of the young king, Lothair, after whom the pact in which it issued was called the Constitution of Lothair. On the whole the balance of the new arrangement was unfavourable to the pope. The pope, henceforth, must not put to death anyone who enjoyed the emperor's protection, nobles that is to say and dignitaries Romans accused of serious crimes were to have a choice by which law they would be judged, Roman or Frank or Lombard. The magistrates were to be nominated by the emperor, who was now to be represented at Rome by two permanent commissioners, one of them nominated by the pope. They were to make an annual report to the emperor on the papal government, and to receive appeals against its action. Should the pope refuse to do justice to such appeals the commissioners were to send them on to the emperor. Finally, the Constitution regulated the papal election. None but Romans were to take part in the election, and -- a notable reversal of existing law -- the laity were to have a share in it. And the newly-elect was to swear an oath to the emperor in the presence of the commissioners and the people. The history of the next few elections interprets the new arrangement. The emperor is very definitely the overlord of Rome, and the pope is not consecrated until the emperor's representative is satisfied that the election has been made in accordance with the prescribed form. #### Eugene II accepted the Constitution, and in a council of the bishops of the Roman province he promulgated the new regulations for the election of the pope. Then, only a few months later, in August, 827, he too died. His successor, Valentine, lived for a few weeks only. The next effective pope was Gregory IV, elected in October, 827, but not consecrated until after the imperial commissioners, six months later, had come to Rome and confirmed the election. The new system was an established fact, and the nobility had been given a new hold on the papacy, a hold which tended, from the first, so to increase that the clergy's part in elections was, often enough, to be by comparison a very secondary affair indeed. #### Gregory IV was an exceptionally long-lived pope. His sixteen years' pontificate saw the beginning of the disastrous civil wars between Louis the Pious and his sons, in which the pope in the interests of unity and peace opposed the emperor's schemes of partition. It saw, too, the establishment of the Mohammedans in Sicily and the beginning of their attacks on Italy itself. The duchy of Benevento was at this time disputed between rival claimants, both of whom called in bands of Saracens as auxiliaries. In every new event the end of the Carolingian peace was already beginning to be proclaimed when, in the beginning of 844, Gregory died. #### The election of his successor showed once more the reality of the new imperial suzerainty. As in 824, there was a double election. The candidate of the nobility, Sergius, managed to expel his rival from the Lateran and was himself, thereupon, consecrated and enthroned. The emperor, Lothair, had not been consulted, and to maintain his right, now sent his son, the future emperor, Louis II, with an army, to examine into the election. There was an enquiry, much questioning of all who took part, and finally Sergius was recognised as pope. He proceeded, thereupon, to consecrate the young king and to swear fidelity to the emperor his father. Furthermore, it was again carefully stipulated that no one was to be consecrated pope without the sanction of the emperor or his representative. #### Sergius II was elderly, gouty, and lacking entirely in the gift of ruling. His one title to consideration was his noble birth, that he came from the family that had given Eugene II to the Church, and was later to give Adrian II too. The pope's brother, Benedict, a nobleman of shifty ways and dissolute life, was soon installed as Bishop of Albano and his chief adviser. Soon it was known that the one thing necessary under the regime was money. Offices, benefices, appointments and favours of every sort, were on sale; and to supplement where these means fell short, the pope and his brother set themselves to pillage the monasteries. Then, a divinely appointed chastisement, men said, for the election of so worthless a pope, on August 23, 846, the Mohammedans landed at Ostia and making their way along the Tiber sacked and pillaged the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul. Against Rome itself they were powerless; the old walls were an obstacle such an expedition could not hope to force. But the whole of the Christian West shivered at the sacrilege, and the emperor was moved by the general indignation to raise funds to fortify the basilica of St. Peter, and to organise an expedition and drive the Saracens from Italy. The miserable old pope did not long survive the indignity He died in January, 847. #### In his place the Romans elected Leo, the priest of the church of the Four Crowned Martyrs. With the money which the imperial tax brought him, with offerings from all over Christendom, and with taxes on his own domains he fortified the district round St. Peter's -- the district called ever since, in memory of him, the Leonine City. It was no luxury of building, for the Mohammedans continued to molest the coast and the districts at the mouth of the Tiber during all the rest of the reign. Leo IV's relations with the emperor never attained to cordiality. He had been consecrated without the emperor's permission -- though this had been put right by a declaration that the pope in no way denied the emperor's rights -- and when, in 850, the young Louis II, associated now with his father as emperor, came to live in Italy as its king the delicacy of the situation was greatly increased The pope complained of the emperor's representative at Rome and the emperor seems to have supported discontented papal functionaries against the pope. Leo IV, from the point of view of imperial policy, fell very short indeed of perfection as pope. The emperor began to make plans for the future. A new departure was at hand. The emperor, at the next vacancy, would have his own candidate and, an imperialist pope elected, harmony would reign between the two powers. #### The priest Anastasius on whom, for this dubiously honourable promotion, Louis II cast his eyes was a mall of no small distinction. He was the son of the Bishop of Orte, [ ] a strong imperialist, whom the emperor had more or less compelled the pope to choose as the papal member of the commission of superintendence. Anastasius was unusually well educated. In addition to a wide knowledge of ecclesiastical literature, for example, he had a good command of Greek. Now he suddenly disappeared from Rome and the next news was that he was living in the neighbourhood of the imperial court. The pope, suspecting an understanding with the emperor, and fearing perhaps a schism, ordered him to return. He refused, and thereupon, after a succession of warnings, the pope excommunicated him and specifically deprived him of any right to be elected pope in the future, laying an excommunication on whoever should presume to vote for him. The relations of pope and emperor were in this state when, July 17, 855, Leo IV died. #### The sequel to the emperor's plans was curious. Anastasius was of course still absent from Rome, and unanimously the Romans elected Benedict, the priest of St. Cecilia. This election the emperor refused to ratify. His commissioners appeared at Rome with an escort and with them came Anastasius, the emperor's candidate. The number of their partisans increased as they journeyed, Benedict was arrested, and Anastasius took possession of the papal palace. But the clergy held firm. Anastasius lay under sentence of deposition and by Church Law no deposed ecclesiastic could receive promotion. The commissioners had to yield; and in a solemn assembly at St. Mary Major's, Benedict, released now, was re-elected and the election confirmed. #### The sentences against Anastasius were renewed. He was reduced to the lay state and made Abbot of Sta. Maria in Trastevere. There, in studious retirement, he remained, preparing himself for the next office to which the emperor destined him, that of permanent imperial commissioner at Rome charged to keep watch on the pope. His father still held office as the papal nominee on the Commission, and so Anastasius would triumph, despite Pope Benedict's re-election ! But before the scheme matured Benedict III died (April 17, 858). This time the emperor himself assisted at the election. He did not repeat the mistake of 855 and suggest an ineligible candidate, but proposed, and succeeded in carrying, the election of a very distinguished man indeed. This was St. Nicholas I, the greatest pope between St. Gregory and Hildebrand, one of the three popes whom alone of the two hundred and sixty posterity has agreed to call "the Great. " He owed his election, none the less, to Louis II, for the Roman clergy had had another in view. #### The new pope managed to keep on good terms with the emperor. Anastasius he disarmed by making him, to use a modern term, his secretary of state, in which capacity the forthcoming schism of Photius and the struggle with Hincmar of Rheims, soon gave him ample scope to show himself one of the great defenders of papal rights. When Louis II demanded the reinstatement of the Archbishop of Ravenna, excommunicated for his misgovernment, the pope held firm despite the emperor's personal intervention; and, carrying the war into the other camp, he renewed the decree of 769 forbidding non- Romans -- the emperor's envoys for example -- to interfere in papal elections. Nicholas was no mere statesman, but a man of saintly life, and his natural courage was reinforced by the invincible prestige of personal holiness. The emperor withdrew his support from the excommunicated prelate, while the pope descended on Ravenna and saw personally to the restoration of order. Finally the archbishop submitted. #### This dispute was but a preliminary skirmish. In 863 a battle royal developed between pope and emperor. The cause was the annulment of the marriage of the emperor's brother, Lothair II of Lorraine, and his re-marriage. The bishops of Lorraine had sanctioned the re-marriage twice in synod. It was once more sanctioned in a great council at Metz, presided over by the pope's legates and then, in the October of the same year, the pope quashed the decisions of the councils, and since both the law and the facts were so evident that no honest man could be in doubt, deposed the Archbishops of Cologne and Treves for their share in the scandal and recalled his legates to take their trial. The decision was a signal for all the discontented to combine: the King of Lorraine of course, the emperor, still sore over the Ravenna defeat, the Archbishop of Ravenna, -- even the schismatic Photius, in distant Constantinople, was approached. Presently a great army, led by the brother sovereigns, moved on Rome. The pope gave himself to prayer. Processions filled the streets, the people prayed and fasted. For two whole days the pope prayed before the tomb of St. Peter. Then the tide began to turn. The emperor fell ill. He asked nothing better than a reconciliation. The great combination broke up and the affair ended with the pope stronger than ever. #### Nicholas I died, all too soon, after a reign of only nine years (858-867). His successor, Adrian II, elected without difficulty, was again not consecrated until Louis II had approved. He was soon involved in serious difficulties with the family of Anastasius. Adrian, to begin with, without reversing the decisions of his predecessor, tended towards a policy of leniency to some of the malcontents of the late reign. Anastasius persisted in the contrary sense, and in the end had his way. Between the son, who thus dominated the spiritual administration, and his father the aged Arsenius who controlled the temporal, the papacy, with a weak pope, was very much what this family chose to make it. And behind them was the emperor. A new manoeuvre which would have extended their power still further failed however. It ended in a fearful crime - - symptomatic of the more sinister tendencies of the time and prophetic of the future -- and this ruined all. Adrian II, while as yet in minor orders, had married and his wife and daughter were still alive at the time of his election. Arsenius now planned a marriage between the pope's daughter and his own younger son Eleutherius. But the pope had other views. As in other states, so in the papal state, a matrimonial alliance could be of high political importance. This new, and unecclesiastical, novelty, had shown itself already when Adrian's two predecessors, Benedict III and Nicholas I, had been careful to marry off their nieces to important members of the local nobility as a means to secure their loyalty. Adrian had made similar plans for his daughter. Eleutherius, however, would take no denial, and finally kidnapped both mother and daughter. #### The pope appealed to the emperor and presently the imperial officers were hot in pursuit. Eleutherius, surrounded, murdered both the girl and her mother. He was taken and himself put to death. Meanwhile the pope denounced Anastasius as the author of the plot and, in his anger, renewed against him all the old sentences of twenty years before and deprived him of the post of librarian (868). Later he managed to prove his innocence and Adrian reinstated him. The incident is yet another instance of the speed with which the papacy was being forced along the road of secularisation, and of what it had to fear from the brutal Roman nobility against whom the emperor was its sole defence. #### On April 12, 875, the emperor Louis II died, the last effective ruler to hold undisputed sway in Italy. Adrian II had predeceased him by three years. In his stead ruled yet a fourth nominee of Louis II. This was John VIII, and to him there now fell the delicate task of deciding, since Louis II had no male heirs, to which of his uncles, Charles the Bald of France or Louis the German of Germany, the imperial title should now descend. For the first time there was a France and a Germany between which the papal diplomacy must needs choose. For the first time it depended 011 the pope whether a King of France or a King of Germany should be the dominant force in Italian politics. The emperor, for the last fifty years, had chosen the popes. Now it was for the pope to choose the emperor. Whichever prince he chose, the empire of Charlemagne was beyond all possibility Of r salvation. The imperial title, already, was become a mere decoration. #### The pope chose the King of France -- the weaker of the two brothers, but the ruler of the more civilised kingdom, an intellectual, and a prince devoted to the fortunes of the Church. The choice was the signal for his rival to put all possible obstacles in his way; Louis the German and his three sons took the field. Charles, partly by arms, partly by diplomacy, circumvented them, and on Christmas Day, 875, just three-quarters of a century after the first coronation that had founded the empire in his grandfather, he too was crowned at St. Peter's. Then, disregarding the pope's appeal for aid in the holy war against the Mohammedans, he hurried back to defend his own realm against his brother and nephews. #### While, beyond the Alps, the new civil war continued -- the death of Louis the German in 876 only providing an occasion for new quarrels -- the pope was occupied once more with the problem of the Mohammedans, and with the chronic discontent of his own factious subjects. From Bari and Tarentum the Saracens had been lately expelled by the fleet of the eastern emperor -- the beginning of a Byzantine restoration in southern Italy that was to last for another two hundred years -- but they now found new employ in the service of the rival petty princes. Soon there was a Mohammedan garrison at Naples, another at Gaeta. The Campagna was never free from their raids and Rome itself was menaced now from the land. The pope, a man of unusual vigour and invincible spirit, organised a fleet in addition to his army. He turned admiral, and successfully: defeating the Saracens several times, destroying a fleet, and liberating hundreds of Christian captives. Also he fortified St. Paul’s as Leo IV had fortified St. Peter's. #### In Rome itself there was a strong faction which viewed the policies of John VIII with deep misgiving -- the high officials whom the influence of the late emperor had forced upon the popes of the last twenty years. With the death of Louis II the opportunity had come to the pope to be rid of them. They preferred flight to the risk of what possibly awaited them, in that time where the unsuccessful politician so frequently ended his career blinded and lacking a tongue. Whereupon the pope, after in vain exhorting them to return, solemnly condemned them. Among these eminent fugitives one at least, Formosus, the Bishop of Porto, was a man of real distinction and great austerity of life. Nicholas I had employed him on a mission to Bulgaria, and the Bulgarians had wished to keep him as their primate. This the pope -- Adrian II, by this time -- refused, whereupon the disgusted Bulgarians had turned to Constantinople. As Adrian neared his end there was talk of Formosus as his successor. But another school of thought had prevailed, and the distinguished Bishop of Porto could hardly hope for favours from the candidate it succeeded in electing -- John VIII. #### At this juncture, while the exiles, returning with an army, invested Rome, Charles the Bald suddenly died (October 6, 877) and the pope, for the second time in two years, had to choose an emperor and a protector. While he hesitated, his enemies took the Leonine City and held him prisoner for thirty days, using all possible pressure to induce him to name Carloman, the senior prince of the German branch of the family. But the pope held his ground, refusing to make a decision, and finally they made off. #### Next, in despair, the pope made peace with the Mohammedans and sought to arrange a league of perpetual peace between the warring Carolingians. But nothing came of his great scheme; the dislocation of the ancient empire went on apace; each of the princes had more than he could successfully accomplish in the task of keeping order within the kingdom nominally subject to him; and the pope's final decision to crown as emperor Charles the Fat, the senior surviving member of the German branch of the imperial house [ ] (February 12, 881), did nothing to strengthen his own position in Rome. There his enemies were finally too much for him and on December 15, 882, they made away with him, battering him to death when the poison acted too slowly. John VIII is the first pope whom history records to have been murdered. In the next eighty years he was to have, in the manner of his death, not a few successors. The event was yet another proof how speedily the Carolingian civilisation was falling back into barbarism, proof too of what the Roman nobility were capable. #### John VIII's successors -- the short lived Marinus (882-884) and Adrian III (884-885) -- recalled the exiles, and with them Formosus, absolved now from the censures laid on him and from the oath he had sworn never to return to Rome. With Stephen V (885-891) the political problem of the empire returned for, in X87, Charles the Fat was deposed, to die a few months later. Three candidates disputed the succession to his title of emperor-Arnulf the Carolingian King of Germany; Berengar, another Carolingian who ruled Italy; and Guy, the powerful anti-imperialist Duke of Spoleto in whom the old anti- Roman, anti-papal tradition of the Lombards came to life again. Guy defeated Berengar, and Stephen V, without the safeguard of any treaty, without any guarantees for the future of the papal State, had perforce to crown him emperor (891). #### The papacy's real hopes centered in Arnulf, a safer protector because more distant; and for the next five years all the Roman diplomacy was directed to induce Arnulf to invade Italy and dispossess Guy. It was a dangerous game, but one that Stephen's successor, too, continued to play. This was no other than Formosus himself (891-896). Arnulf, however, was kept in the north by the problem of Germany. Not until 896 did he come, and on February 22 of that year he was solemnly crowned emperor by Formosus, who had already crowned his rival Guy and, on Guy's death in 894, Lambert his son. It only remained for Arnulf to conquer Lambert and then, the papacy freed from the new political slavery, to retire to Germany. The campaign had hardly opened however when paralysis struck down Arnulf, as it had stricken his father Carloman. The papacy was once more at the mercy of an emperor from whose inevitable vindictiveness no mercy could be hoped. The shock of the news was too much for Formosus and, just seven weeks after his coronation of Arnulf, he died (April 4, 896). #### While Arnulf was slowly carried into Germany, Lambert marched to his triumph. By the end of the year he had taken i Rome. Formosus was no longer alive, but there yet remained ways to inflict exemplary punishment. The new pope -- Stephen VI -- was bidden to try the dead pope for the alleged ecclesiastical, irregularities of his election, and, that the ceremony might lack nothing, the corpse of Formosus was disinterred and, vested in the pontifical robes, set before the assembled bishops. He was condemned, and according to the ritual the body was stripped of all its insignia. Underneath the splendour they found a hair shirt. Finally they threw the remains into a disused grave, whence the mob next took them to tip them into the Tiber. #### Stephen had himself been consecrated bishop by Formosus, the most serious irregularity urged against whom had been his own previous occupancy of the see of Porto. As the law then stood, no bishop could pass from one see to another. Stephen VI, then, suffered from the same irregularity as the man he now condemned. He solved the difficulty by declaring that the ordinations performed by Formosus were all null and void-including therefore his own -- since Formosus was not pope but a usurper. #### Stephen VI, too, had his enemies, or perhaps his share in the frightful horror of the recent trial pointed him out as the most appropriate scapegoat once the city had come back to its senses. Be that as it may, an insurrection soon dispossessed him. In his turn he, too, was degraded and thrown into prison where, in a short time, he was strangled. Romanus, who followed him in the chair of St. Peter, lasted for four months only; Theodore II, who came next, for only twenty days. Formosus, or rather his remains, no-v reappeared, thrown up by the river. Theodore, with all possible ceremony, restored them to their original resting place in St. Peter's; and, so it is said, as the body was borne in, the images of the saints placed there by the dead pope bent in reverence before him. Theodore also restored all the clerics whom Stephen had deposed. #### But if Theodore made amends for the sacrileges of his predecessor, he did not live anything like long enough to lay the old spirit of faction. When he died there was once more a double election. The party of Formosus elected John IX, their opponents Sergius III. The emperor intervened in favour of the first and Sergius, for the moment, retired. #### John IX (898-900) was a reformer. The acts of Stephen VI were once more annulled. It was decreed that never, for the future, were corpses to be digged up for trial, and, a kind of recognition of the apparent truth that without the emperor there was small chance of order, the imperial rights in the matter of papal elections were again solemnly confirmed. How the new alliance would have worked it is impossible to say, but within two years Lambert had died without heirs and John IX was dead too. ####  |