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The history of the next twenty years showed how seriously the
complication of the Papacy's new political importance could distract
the popes from the task of their spiritual rulership. It showed, also,
that if they had escaped subjection to the barbarian Lombards, they had
by no means escaped the need to fight for their independence. Finally
it introduced a new element into the ecclesiastical life of the
greatest of sees. Worldly-minded clerics, ambitious for honours, had
always been a possible source of trouble at Rome. Now that the Bishop
of Rome was in every sense a sovereign prince, there was added the new
danger that the office would be coveted by men who were not clerics at
all. To the semi-brigand nobility of the little Papal State there was
offered -- at the risk of a riot, a few murders, and the as yet but
faintly possible intervention of the distant Franks -- a prize that
might from the mere lordship of some petty rock-fortress, transform
them into kings. That temptation endured, to be for the next three
centuries a constant factor in papal history.
The temptation was nourished by the new hostility between the two
bodies who made up the notabilities of the new State -- the clergy and
the military aristocracy. In the last years of Byzantine rule the
clergy, through their head the pope, had supplied the brains, and even
the more material means, by which the Lombards had been warded off. Now
they were in every sense rulers, and the military nobles -- no longer,
even nominally, their fellow-subjects under the distant emperor -- were
simply the officers and chiefs of the clergy's army. Had clergy and
nobility alike been guided by nothing except the ideals of the religion
they professed, humility, obedience, a passion for serving, the
situation would have presented no danger. As it was, the new State, and
eventually the Papacy itself, became a stage where presently a
half-regenerate humanity strove and struggled in all its primitive
unpleasantness.
There was, from the very beginning, in the very pope in whom the State
was founded, Stephen II, the tendency and the desire to end, once and
for all, the external menace to papal independence by making the pope
master of all Italy. The event showed that neither he nor his
successor, his brother Paul (756-767), whom the same ambition drove,
was strong enough to achieve it. It was evident that the new State
could not even survive, unless protected by the Frankish power that had
created it. The Lombard without, and the lay nobility within, were more
than these first papal kings could cope with. Hence a continual appeal
to the Franks, and finally a war in which, just twenty years after the
first intervention of Pepin, Charlemagne, Pepin's son, destroyed the
Lombard power for ever and made himself King of Lombardy. This victory
made St. Peter's protector the near neighbour of St. Peter's successor,
and the protector tended, by reason of the frequent appeals for his
intervention, to become something of an adviser, of a judge, of a
suzerain even. The problem that drove the popes to ally themselves with
the Franks had by no means been solved: it had merely changed its form.
In one form or another it continued to worry the popes through the next
twelve hundred years, to 1870 and to 1929; it is a problem they can
never neglect, and their preoccupation with it is bound, not
infrequently, to distract their attention from more directly spiritual
affairs.
The history of the Papal State between its foundation and Charlemagne's
conquest of Lombardy (754-774) can be told very briefly. It is in
miniature what, from one aspect, Papal History will tend to be for the
next thousand years. Aistulf, in 756, had pledged himself to restore
what he himself had captured. The spoil of earlier wars, Bologna, for
example, Osimo, was left untouched by the settlement of that year.
Aistulf's death, and the appearance of rivals to dispute the
succession, one of them seeking aid at Rome, seemed an obvious occasion
for the pope to extend his territory (757). A treaty was signed; the
pope did his part; the candidate he favoured succeeded; and he made
over something, but only something, of the extensive restoration he had
promised.
Pope Stephen had died before he learnt how the Lombard had deceived
him. It was left to his successor, Paul, to avenge it. The negotiations
now opened with Pepin were complicated by the fact that the pope had
lately intervened to secure Pepin's patronage for the Dukes of Spoleto
and Benevento, who were the Lombard king's subjects. Pepin was far from
enthusiastic. He refused the pope's offer of the protectorate and he
refused also to support the pope's plans of territorial expansion.
Whereupon the Lombard king marched against his rebellious dukes,
overcame them, and then turned to Rome. Pope Paul demanded the
fulfilment of the promises made before his accession. The king promised
a part, conditionally on the pope's securing from Pepin the return of
the hostages taken in 754. Paul promised this and wrote to Pepin as the
king desired. He also sent another letter, to explain that the first
was mere formality. Would Pepin send an army and compel the Lombard to
fulfil to the letter his first promises? Pepin sent, not an army, but
two commissaries; the disputes were settled by a confirmation of
existing arrangements, and the pope was advised to cultivate the
friendship of the Lombard king.
This was all the more advisable in that the emperor, Constantine V,
powerless to punish the pope directly for his share in the events that
had made him politically free of the empire, master of Rome, and, what
mattered more at Constantinople, of Ravenna too -- was now endeavouring
to build up with the Lombard an anti-papal alliance. Nor was this the
end of Byzantine diplomacy. It crossed the Alps and, on the basis of a
common feeling in the matter of the devotional use of images, sought to
draw Pepin, too, into an anti-papal combination. But Pepin refused; as
he also refused to be moved, by the pope, from his friendly relations
with the Lombards. So things remained for the rest of the pontificate
of Paul r. He died in 767 (June 28) and his death was the occasion for
the domestic dissensions in the new State to reveal themselves in all
their vigour.
Paul I, thanks to Pepin, had enjoyed peace abroad; and, thanks to his
own firm, not to say harsh, government, peace at home also. The
dispossessed military aristocracy had in this pope a master whom they
feared. The prisons were never empty; death sentences were by no means
unknown; taxes were heavy. It only required the news of the pope's
illness to set in motion a whole world of discontent. The nobles saw
their chance to regain what they had lost. They did not propose to
restore the emperor, nor dared they have planned to laicize the State.
Pepin, St. Peter's protector, was still very much alive. It was simpler
to force one of themselves upon the Church as Paul’s successor. The
leader in the conspiracy was the duke Toto, the pope-to-be was the
duke's brother Constantine, a layman like himself. The conspirators
first tried to make sure that the pope would not recover and then,
foiled in this, called in their retainers. By the time the pope died
(June 28) the nobles held the city. They found their way into the
Lateran and there proclaimed Constantine, who, in the course of the
next few days, received in rapid succession the tonsure, minor and
major orders, and consecration as Bishop of Rome.
All had gone according to plan. The opposition was mute save for one
man. This was the primicerius Christopher. He had been the power behind
the throne in the late reign, and in the reign of Stephen too. He it
was, apparently, who had planned and carried through the diplomatic
strategy which had established the papal State. More recently, he had
foiled Toto's attempt to hasten the death of Paul I; and, on Toto's
army entering the city, he had brought that warrior to promise solemnly
not to interfere with the election. Now he refused to acknowledge
Toto's tool and realising himself to be marked for destruction -- one
of his supporters, the duke Gregory, had already been murdered -- he
soon fled, with his children, to St. Peter's. There he remained until
Constantine promised to spare their lives. In return they pledged
themselves to enter a monastery by Easter, 768, and until then to
remain quiet. Easter came, they chose their monastery-at Rieti, in the
duchy of Spoleto -- and were set free. But once safely across the
frontier it was to the Lombard king that they made their way. He was
only too happy to use the opportunity; and presently (July, 768) the
exiles were at the gates of Rome with a Lombard army in support.
Friends within opened the gates and, after two centuries of vain
effort, the Lombards were at last in possession of the city of St.
Gregory. In the fight Toto was slain, stabbed from behind, and
Constantine fled, to be discovered skulking in a corner of the Lateran.
Christopher himself had not yet arrived. In his absence the Lombard
priest, Wildepest, who led the expedition, held an election and
proclaimed as pope an aged priest, Philip. The feast that crowned the
election was barely over, and the elect not yet consecrated, when, that
same day (July 1), Christopher returned. Philip's election was quashed,
and he was taken to his monastery by the hero who had murdered Toto.
The following day an election took place in the customary form,
Christopher presiding. The choice of the assembly clergy, nobles and
people -- fell upon Stephen, a priest of holy life who, from
Christopher's point of view, had the further advantage that he was weak
in character and utterly without experience of affairs. It only
remained to punish, or to wreak vengeance on, the survivors of the
election of 767 -- Constantine and his fellow-prisoners. Their eyes
were poked out and they were thrust into prison, Constantine after a
trial and sentence of deprivation. Along with these unfortunates,
Wildepest, guilty of the election of Philip, was likewise blinded, and
so roughly was the operation performed in his case that he died of it.
Pepin had died this same year (768) and it was to his successors,
Charlemagne and Carloman, that Stephen III's envoys brought the news of
the events which had resulted in his election. The envoys asked for a
deputation of bishops to assist at a coming council where measures
would be taken to guard against any repetition of the scandal of
Constantine's election. Thirteen prelates were chosen, and at Easter,
769, the council opened in the Lateran. Constantine was cited, and the
poor blind wretch, bidden defend himself, was treated with insults and
blows and sentenced to life imprisonment in a monastery. The new pope
and his electors then, on their knees, besought the pardon of the
council for having during twelve months acknowledged Constantine as
pope. Next, a witness to the growing barbarism of thought no less than
of manners, all Constantine's ordinations were declared invalid -- a
decree that went back on the teaching traditional at Rome since the
beginning of things, and that repudiated the principle in whose name
the pope of a bygone time had threatened to depose St. Cyprian. Finally
it was enacted that, for the future, only cardinal-priests or
cardinal-deacons should be eligible as candidates for the papacy, and
that in the election none but clerics should take part. The laity's
share was reduced to the opportunity of cheering the newly-elected pope
and of signing the acta of the election in testimony of agreement.
Stephen III survived the council of 769 barely three years. He
continued to rule as weakly as he had begun, and the only event of
importance was the disgrace and the murder of the men who had made him
pope, Christopher and his son Sergius. The pope, in fact, tired of his
creators; and he found an ally in the Lombard king, offended mortally
by Christopher's rejection in 768 of his candidate Philip, and by the.
murder of Wildepest. In 771 the Lombard marched on Rome. It was Lent
and he came on his soul’s business. But Christopher filled the town
with troops and locked the gates against him. The pope, however, went
out to St. Peter's to meet the king, and Christopher and Sergius
received orders to follow. Their supporters, seeing the tide begin to
turn, forced them out and left them to the Lombards. They were dragged
from the tomb of the Apostle and, at the bridge of St. Angelo, had
their eyes torn out. Christopher died. Sergius, less lucky, survived
for a year in the prisons of the Lateran and then, half strangled, was
buried alive close by. Nor did the Lombard king keep his promises to
the pope.
This tale of petty insurrection, treachery, outrage and murder is worth
some detail in its recital, not only because it witnesses very
graphically to the general advance of barbarism within Christianity
since the days of St. Gregory and St. Leo, but because it marks the
beginning of barbarism's conquest of their very see.
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