"In the centuries after Gelasius the role of the papacy in temporal affairs was
profoundly modified by the total breakdown of Roman imperial authority in the
West. England fell to the Angles and Saxons, Gaul to the Franks, Spain to the
Visigoths. In Italy itself a brief period of imperial reconquest - directed from
Constantinople by the emperor Justinian (527-65) - was ended in 568 by the
invasion of the Lombards, the last of the Teutonic peoples to ravage Italy.
Thereafter the Byzantine emperors retained control only of south Italy, Sicily,
and a few coastal strongholds like Ravenna. This situation produced two results
of the greatest importance for the future development of church-state relations.
First the popes emerged increasingly as temporal governors of Rome and the
surrounding region. Then they abandoned their old allegiance to the Byzantine
emperors and formed a new alliance with the Frankish kings that led eventually
to the creation of a new empire in the west under papal auspices." (12)
Four different positions on the question of the relations between the Church and
the State were intertwined in Patristic times : Donatism opposed the
interference of the State in the Church and Arianism subordinated the Church to
the State as the `Son' and the `Holy Spirit' to `God the Father', while
Gelasius, who seems to have been of African descent and who, as recalled in
`Heathen Imperialism', insisted that after Christ no man can be at the same time
king and priest, posited, if we are to believe Gratian of Bologna, who cited
Gelasius 600 years later in his `Decretum', that the two pillars of the
Christian society, namely the "holy authority of bishops" and the "royal power",
are both of divine origin and independent, each in its own sphere, irrespective
of the fact that their concerns overlap ; the submission of the emperor, now a
Christian, to the ecclesiastical law was preached by the followers of Ambrose,
whose Patrician origins do not prejudge in any way his racial background. In
390, Ambrose required and obtained that Theodosius pay personal penance for the
retaliatory massacre the latter had ordered in Thessalonica after one of his
generals was murdered there. Theodosius was the first temporal leader in Europe
to let himself be publicly humiliated by a representative of the Church.
By the time of Gregory I (590-604), the pope was de facto the ruler of Rome.
"Gregory claimed to be nothing more than what he was, the most prominent bishop
of a degenerate though not yet utterly corrupted church, and the faithful and
obedient subject of the Eastern Empire. His prompt obedience to the civil power
had a somewhat unseemly manifestation in the obsequious eagerness with which he
transferred his allegiance from the rigorous but upright and magnanimous Maurice
to his murderer the centurion Phocas, and in the strain of unworthy adulation in
which he congratulated the accession, proclaimed the virtues, and anticipated
the long, happy, and benignant reign of that foul and bloodstained usurper.
But this ill-bestowed flattery, however misbecoming the noble character of
Gregory, was profitable to the Roman See. There are not many more painful and
pathetic scenes in history, scenes where savage cruelty is encountered by
sublime resignation, than the slaughter of the Emperor Maurice and his five sons
at Chalcedon (602), followed a few years after by the slaughter of his widow
Constantina and her three daughters on the same spot. Among royal and imperial
monsters there has scarcely appeared one at once more horrible and contemptible
than their murderer Phocas. This meet successor of Caligula, Nero, and
Heliogabalus, is memorable not only as a monster, but as a benefactor of the
Roman See, and holds a somewhat conspicuous place in ecclesiastical history as a
helper and hastener of the papal supremacy. In gratitude for the obsequiousness
of Gregory, and for the devotion of Boniface III., Phocas conferred upon the
latter the title of supreme and universal bishop so fiercely branded by the
former, and formally declared the Roman See the head of Christendom (606). The
bounty of such a patron has been slighted and slurred over by Roman Catholic
writers, while Protestant writers have loudly magnified and keenly enjoyed it.
An impartial historian, however, must needs acknowledge in this concession of
Phocas at once a recognition of prominence and a bestowal of dignity, a
gratification and a provocation of ambition, the first clear, distinct, and
formal step in the conversion of the Roman bishopric into the papal monarchy.
The donation of Constantine is far more respectable, but far less authentic,
than the concession of Phocas ; in the infamous centurion the papacy may claim
an undoubted befriender, and the Roman Church must needs make the best of her
earliest imperial paramour.
The Roman bishops of the seventh century were personally insignificant, and
remain unmemorable... Not a single pontiff occupies the human memory, while Omar
and Ali, Khaled and Amrou fill the imagination, and while Columban, Aidan,
Colman, and Aidan's convert and friend the holy and valiant King Oswald of
Northumberland, still uplift and gladden the souls of men. The singular
reputation of Pope Honorius (626-638), whom the sixth general council of the
Church reckoned among the heretics, has not rendered him interesting to
posterity ; nor have the sufferings of Martini. (649-655), who was slowly done
to death by the manifold cruelties of the Greek Emperor Constans, won him a
conspicuous rank in the army of martyrs. But neither the dubious theology of
Honorius nor the ignominious treatment of Martin stayed the very slow but steady
progress of the Roman See towards the papal monarchy. The thick intellectual
darkness of the time, and the utter bewilderment of Christendom, helped more and
more to raise the Roman bishops into spiritual and ecclesiastical dictators.
Councils and churches, though far from acknowledging their infallibility, more
frequently consulted and deferred to their opinions. Theological disputes were
settled more and more by their authority and for their advantage." (13)
The first phase of iconoclasm (726-787), coupled with the renewed threat of the
Lombards, provided the papacy the much-awaited opportunity to shift alliances
from Byzantium to the Frankish kingdom. Pope Gregory I, although he acknowledged
alliance to Emperor Leo III, the Syrian, the Iconoclast, defied his will by
demanding that he stop interfering in Church matters ; "... in Italy the
devotion to images was still stronger, and the imperial authority was far
weaker. A man of vigour and ability occupied the Roman chair. In Gregory II. the
popular passion found a powerful exponent, and the imperial iconoclast
encountered a formidable champion of idolatry. Gregory upbraided and resisted
Leo, and at last defied and disowned his unbending sovereign, withheld the
tribute, and withdrew the allegiance of Italy, 728. The Romans clave to their
bishop and their idols ; Rome became practically independent, with her bishop
for her real if not her recognised ruler..." (14) Gregory III - the son of a
Syrian -, who forbad the German Christians to eat horse-flesh, pursued
aggressively the policy of his predecessor toward the Eastern Empire. From that
time, the papacy became a past master at playing off its enemies one against the
other. "For nearly two hundred years it could balance the Lombards against the
representatives of the Greek emperor. Eventually the Lombards became too
powerful in the north, and two Frankish kings were called in to subdue them.
This might have left the papacy weak as against a Frankish emperor who
controlled all north Italy, but the danger was averted by the break-up of the
Frankish. In the eleventh century the Normans captured the greater part of south
Italy and Sicily : here again, pope Nicholas II saw the wisdom of allying with
them, and his successors balanced their new allies against the Greek cities of
the south and the new western empire which centred in Germany." (15) Two more
important factors increased papal prestige and power from the time of Gregory I
: the fact that the Church was then the largest landowner in Italy, and the
pope's missionary work.
« As the Roman bishops had taken no harm from the curtailment of Christendom by
the Arabs towards the East and South, they drew direct and signal benefit from
its extension towards the North. The conversion of nations became more and more
advantageous to them. In attempting the conversion of England, Gregory the Great
mainly sought a spiritual conquest. In the conversion of Germany, more than a
century later, Gregory II. and Gregory III. welcomed a papal acquisition. The
Italian Angustine and his companions, who landed in Kent in 596, were
missionaries from Rome. The English Winifred or Boniface and his countrymen who
about 720 began to preach in Germany, must, notwithstanding many high endowments
and much spiritual fervour, be regarded as emissaries of Rome. From Rome
Boniface sought his commission ; at Rome he swore subjection to Pope Gregory and
his successors ; more than once he renewed the vow, and thrust upon others the
submission professed by himself. He took the style and title of a legate of the
Roman See, and combined the life of a missionary and the death of a martyr with
the part of a Roman champion. The conquests of the Franks in Germany greatly
furthered his work. He followed in the track of Charles Martel, Carloman, and
Pepin, and subjected the regions opened by their victorious arms. Rome waxed
stronger for these combined labours of the Frankish conquerors and the English
missionaries. Boniface holds at once a lofty and an ignoble place in
ecclesiastical history ; the apostle of Germany stands forth as a great and
pernicious innovator in Christendom. By him for the first time obedience to the
Roman bishop was preached as a solemn duty and doctrine as essential as
obedience to Christ. He first carried about with the Gospel the novelty of the
papal supremacy - a novelty by no means at once or even readily admitted in
theory or established in practice, but which slowly made way and grew at last
into the papal monarchy.
"With (the) political triumph over the Byzantine Caesars, and this spiritual
triumph which Boniface won for it in Germany, the first period of the papacy
came to an end, the first act of the papal drama may be said to have closed.
Aggrandised by the fall of the Western Empire and the invasion of the Teutons,
the bishopric of Rome put forth a distinctly papal character about the beginning
of the seventh century at the death of Gregory the Great, who was the last true
Roman pastor. The grant of Phocas, without being in the least exaggerated, may
be fairly taken as the starting-point in the history of the popedom.
"The whole period from the sixth to the middle of the eighth century, from the
destruction of the Western Empire to the severance from the Eastern Empire,
ministered to the aggrandisement of the Roman See, and to the growth of nothing
else save and except Islam." (16) The secular ambitions of the papacy were
coupled with renewed claims for spiritual authority. Gregory I, "as long as he
was able,... strove to establish a foundation for the doctrine of the two
powers, reasserting to his death the power priestly over the political. Included
in the legacy of example and instruction which he left for those who came after
him was a wealth of literature by his own hand. In his Dictatus Papae, a summary
of guideline principles for supporters of the Hildebrandine reform, it is boldly
asserted that the Roman church was founded by God alone, that the Roman pontiff
alone is rightly to be called universal, that he alone may use the imperial
insignia, that he may depose emperors." (17)
Then, a connection began between the Franks and the papacy, to the benefit, the
temporal, material, benefit, of both parties. "Contrary to appearances for
Charles (Martel) Frankish and Christian expansion were two sides of the same
coin. Utilizing the church for political purposes becomes an administrative
practice. Extending the influence of the church effected the improved control of
the newly conquered regions of the realm." (18) The coordination of missionary
activities with political and military eastward expansion of the Frankish power
was already a tenet of the Merovingian policy under Dagobert. The temporal and
temporary community of interests between both powers, evidenced by the fact that
royal monasteries such as Fulda's and Lorsch's became "pillars of economic and
socio-political power with extensive networks…" (19), culminated in the
preparations for the deposition of Childeric III and in its aftermath. Pepin,
the substantial possessor of the Frankish throne, consulted the pope in 749 as
to the disposal of it, nominally occupied by Childeric III. Two years later,
pope Zachary approved of the transfer of the throne and, in 751 (752, according
to other sources. N.T.E.), pope Boniface crossed the Alps to crown and anoint
the new monarch, crowned and anointed again two years later by Zachary. "Almost
at once the papacy had occasion to seek the help of its new ally, for in 753
(754, according to other sources. N.T.E.) the Lombards again threatened Rome.
Pope Stephen appealed to Pepin ; the king agreed to invade Italy and, most
important of all, promised to `return' to the Roman see the lands that he
proposed to conquer from the Lombards. That promise was duly fulfilled in 756,
(755, according to other sources. N.T.E.) and from that year we can date the
beginning of a formal papal claim to sovereignty in central Italy." (20) "Thus
the second French dynasty was enthroned to the double advantage of the Roman
bishops, who got as much by giving as by receiving - they received a
principality and conferred a crown ; they became at once kings and king-makers."
(21) "The popes must have known, however, that their title was insecure so long
as it was not recognized by the imperial authorities at Constantinople and,
moreover, that the emperors there would never willingly acknowledge it. The only
real hope of establishing beyond doubt the legitimacy of the papal claim lay in
the institution of a new Roman emperor in the West on whom the popes could rely
as a friend and protector." (22) Conversely, the Carolingian dynasty and
monarchy "gained legitimacy and focus through its Rome oriented
Christianization... With the support of the papacy the Frankish Christian realm
of the Carolingians could begin turning away from the Greek Christianity of
Byzantium, towards its own Imperium Christianum." (23) In this tit for tat, the
big winner in the long run would be the papacy.
A word needs to be said about the far-reaching implications of the coronation of
Pepin and about the far-reaching implications of his consulting the pope as to
the disposal of the Frankish throne. Whether it was introduced by the mayor of
the palace or by the pope, the ritual anointment "represented an extraordinary
ideological innovation, given that until that time the Frankish kings had risen
to the throne by acclamation, and if consensus was also accompanied by mystical
charisma, this was generally due to the royal blood flowing in their veins. By
having himself anointed with holy oil, Pepin brought into use the ritual
recorded in the Old Testament, in which it is told that Saul took control of the
kingdom by being anointed by the prophet Samuel. After him, David and Solomon
took the throne by being anointed. In the Christian world, a ritual of this kind
had already been introduced by the Visigothic kings of Spain, but by this time
their kingdom had fallen to the Arabs. Pepin was not just the first Frankish
king but also the only Christian king of his times to introduce this sacred
symbolism into his coronation, although the kings of England lost little time in
following his example. Anointment was not simply a matter of attributing an air
of holiness to the king, it also conferred upon him an almost priestly quality,
as with the kings of Israel. Pepin could therefore rightfully claim to have been
`anointed by the Lord' and assert his own authority over the Church as well as
his kingdom, in a manner that he could not have done as a temporal lord who had
only been crowned. For his part, Pope Paul I did not hesitate to speak of him as
a new David chosen by God to protect the Christian people, and he applied to him
the words of the Psalmist, "I have found David my servant ; with my holy oil I
have anointed him." Thus the Franks were again ruled by a priest-king, as in the
time of the reges criniti or long-haired kings, but this time the sacred
charisma was wholly Christian and not pagan as in the case of the Merovingians.
It did not preclude the use of the sword, which the king girded by divine will,
and which he was required to draw in defense of the faith. Charlemagne was soon
to demonstrate the immense advantage that the king of the Franks could gain from
this kind of religious legitimacy." (24)
Zachary's decision was not an act of jurisdiction in temporal matters. Of
course, it was not. "... This consultation created a precedent most dangerous
for the royal power. The head of Christendom gave only counsel, but the faithful
were bound to believe that he spoke in the name of God : from this to disposing
of the crown was not a long step. All the more since, like Samuel among the
Hebrews, he gave holy unction to the king, he made him a sacred personage and
marked him with the priestly sign, implying that monarchy was sacerdotal in
character. Thus the Church found that it had created for the benefit of the
Carolingians a counterfeit of the Jewish kingdom, from which the pagan origin of
the Merovingians had preserved them." (25)
"Another Roman pontiff fell out with another Lombard king ; again the Franks
poured down from the Alps ; the kingdom of the Lombards fell before the mighty
son of Pepin, and Charles the Great and Adrian I. made their triumphant entry
into Rome together in 774. Twenty-six years after, the conqueror of so many
nations, the lord of the West, again descended into Italy, and marched into Rome
as the avenger and restorer of another pontiff, Leo III., accused of enormous
crimes by personal enemies, deposed at the instigation of a rival, and wounded
in the fury of a sedition. The Romans bowed before the will of the mighty
conqueror ; the maimed and slandered pope took oath of his innocence before his
illustrious protector ; and on Christmas day, 800, Leo III. placed the imperial
crown on the head of Charles the Great, and hailed him Emperor of the Romans.
The Western Empire reappeared." (26) The pontiff and the emperor "stood side by
side, most strangely and confusedly bound together, each depending upon the
other, each at once the master and the servant of the other, the pope a subject
of the emperor whom he had made, the emperor the sovereign of his own creator.
The Roman bishop rebelled against his Byzantine master, and made himself a
Teutonic master, professed to transfer all the rights, powers, and dignities of
the emperor of the Romans, including sovereignty over himself, from the direct
successor of Julius Caesar, that dwelt at Constantinople, to a German king, took
into his own hands the bestowal of that Roman Empire which came into being about
the same time as that Christian Church into the topmost place whereof he had
thrust himself, and professed to consecrate the dignity which he transferred...
It was meet and right" (27) for the bishop of Rome "to become a giver and taker
of earthly thrones, to covet and to confer the kingdoms of this world, with all
the power and glory of them, to yield to the allurements and assume the
prerogatives of that very tempter whom the heavenly King, whose vicar he
professed himself, overcame in the wilderness… It was essential to heighten and
perfect the worldliness of the kingdom which called itself not of this world,
that it should confer the imperial crown and receive an Italian principality. An
overseer of Christ's flock claimed at once to represent Christ and to create
Caesar, to be a great spiritual prince and a small earthly prince, to be a king
and a king-maker. 'The kingdom of our God and of His Christ hath become a
kingdom of this world, and it shall last for so long.'" (28)
Charlemagne's coronation (29), a momentous event which very few contemporary
sources relayed, marked a turning point in the growing tension between the
Church and the State.
It is true that "Charlemagne was in nowise a dependant of the papacy. The
principality which he rebestowed was the grant of a sovereign to a subject ; he
was the real ruler of Rome, and the veritable master of the priest who had
crowned him Caesar. He brooked no independent power in the vast dominion which
his genius and valour had gathered together ; he did not even render to the
pontiff absolute spiritual obedience" (30) ; it is also true that "On the other
hand, Charles, although devotedly attached to the church and the pope, was too
absolute a monarch to recognize a sovereignty within his sovereignty." (31) Yet,
the very act that had made him the supreme, unchallenged political leader of the
then western Europe enabled the pope to re-establish his ascendance over the
temporal power : "By one brilliant gesture Pope Leo established the precedent,
adhered to throughout the Middle Ages, that papal coronation was essential to
the making of an emperor, and thereby implanted the germ of the later idea that
the empire itself was a gift to be bestowed by the papacy." (32) As argued by P.
Schaff "The pope, by voluntarily conferring the imperial crown upon Charles,
might claim that the empire was his gift, and that the right of crowning implied
the right of discrowning. And this right was exercised by popes at a later
period, who wielded the secular as well as the spiritual sword and absolved
nations of their oath of allegiance. A mosaic picture in the triclinium of Leo
III. in the Lateran (from the ninth century) represents St. Peter in glory,
bestowing upon Leo kneeling at his right hand the priestly stole, and upon
Charles kneeling at his left, the standard of Rome. This is the mediaeval
hierarchical theory, which derives all power from God through Peter as the head
of the church. Gregory VII compared the church to the sun, the state to the moon
who derives her light from the sun. The popes will always maintain the principle
of the absolute supremacy of the church over the state, and support or oppose a
government - whether it be an empire or a kingdom or a republic - according to
the degree of its subserviency to the interests of the hierarchy." (33)
"Charlemagne did not believe that he held the Empire from the pope who had
crowned him and he himself passed the crown on to his son without the
participation of the Holy See. The Roman people had acclaimed him, but he did
not regard this action as an election ; the coronation was for him only the
consecration of his possession of the State. It is none the less true that the
initiative had the appearance of coming from the pope, and while the latter only
imitated, perhaps by order, the patriarch of Constantinople the act appeared to
Christendom as that of a dispenser of crowns. In any case in the middle of the
800 s the imperial dignity was regarded as having its source in the consecration
and coronation by the pope ; the latter did not even feel under an obligation to
take the emperors from the Carolingian house." (34)
The first period of the struggle between the Empire and the Church was aptly
encapsulated by J. Evola in this way :
"During the early centuries of the Christianized empire and during the Byzantine
period, the Church still appeared to be subordinated to imperial authority ; at
Church councils the bishops left the last word to the ruler not only in
disciplinary but also in doctrinal matters. Gradually, a shift occurred to the
belief in the equality of the two powers of Church and empire ; both
institutions came to be regarded as enjoying a supernatural authority and a
divine origin. With the passage of time we find in the Carolingian ideal the
principle according to which the king is supposed to rule over both clergy and
the people on the one hand, while on the other hand the idea was developed
according to which the royal function was compared to that of the body and the
priestly function to that of the soul ; thereby the idea of the equality of the
two powers was implicitly abandoned, thus preparing the way for the real
inversion of relations." (35)
Both the `spiritual power' and the `temporal authority' of the popes advanced,
and were greatly furthered by a series of pious frauds and forgeries, of which
the Donation of Constantine, the Donation of Charlemagne, the Pseudo-Decretals
of Isidore, etc. The latter "appeared early in the ninth century. This
collection, falsely ascribed to the famous bishop of Seville, and consisting of
decrees falsely ascribed to the early bishops of Rome, loudly proclaimed the
power of the priesthood, and elaborately asserted the monarchy of the popes.
Enormous assumptions were thrust into the mouths of venerable saints, simple
pastors were made to prate about pontifical omnipotence, and the companion of
St. Paul was made to talk like the crowner of Charlemagne. The forgery was
clumsy and stupid as it was audacious, amusingly defied history, recklessly set
at nought chronology, and unblushingly garbled and misquoted Scripture ; but it
came out in a congenial time ; though not altogether unchallenged and
unassailed, it prevailed with the darkness and grossness of the age, and
accomplished its purpose of aggrandising the papacy. This production, in
admirable harmony with the presidency of Peter and the donation of Constantine,
completed the fortification of falsehood and forgery in which the popedom had
intrenched itself, drawing its temporal power from a donation never made,
grounding its spiritual power on a presidency never exercised, and supporting
the same by decrees whereof their alleged authors were altogether innocent, and
their alleged collector utterly unconscious." (36) The ghostly Donation of
Pepin, by which the French king was supposed to have granted the pope in writing
rights over the lands of central Italy conquered by the Lombards, thus providing
the legal basis for the temporal power of the pope "it is true, the States of
the Church Catholic Encyclopedia confesses, has not been preserved in the
authentic version, but a number of citations, quoted from it during the decades
immediately following, indicate its contents" ; less coyly, in the article
`Donations' in his `Philosophical Dictionary', Voltaire writes that "the deed of
this donation has never been seen ; and what is still stronger, the fabrication
of a false was not even dared." (37)
Indeed, the Pseudo-Decretals of Isidore, the presidency of Peter and the
donation of Constantine are three pieces of the same puzzle : "When under
Constantine the Christian Church was framing her organization on the model of
the state which protected her, the bishop of the metropolis perceived and
improved the analogy between himself and the head of the civil government. The
notion that the chair of Peter was the imperial throne of the Church had dawned
upon the Popes very early in their history, and grew stronger every century
under the operation of causes already specified. Even before the Empire of the
West had fallen, St. Leo the Great could boast that to Rome, exalted by the
preaching of the chief of the Apostles to be a holy nation, a chosen people, a
priestly and royal city, there had been appointed a spiritual dominion wider
than her earthly sway. In A.D. 476 Rome ceased to be the political capital of
the Western countries, and the Papacy, inheriting no small part of the Emperor's
power, drew to herself the reverence which the name of the city still commanded,
until by the middle of the eighth, or, at latest, of the ninth century she had
perfected in theory a scheme which made her the exact counterpart of the
departed despotism, the centre of the hierarchy, absolute mistress of the
Christian world. The character of that scheme is best set forth in the singular
document, most stupendous of all the medieval forgeries, which under the name of
the Donation of Constantine commanded for seven centuries the unquestioning
belief of mankind. Itself a portentous falsehood, it is the most unimpeachable
evidence of the thoughts and beliefs of the priesthood which framed it, some
time between the middle of the eighth and the middle of the tenth century. It
tells how Constantine the Great, cured of his leprosy by the prayers of
Sylvester, resolved, on the fourth day from his baptism, to forsake the ancient
seat for a new capital on the Bosphorus, lest the continuance of the secular
government should cramp the freedom of the spiritual, and how he bestowed
therewith upon the Pope and his successors the sovereignty over Italy and the
countries of the West. But this is not all, although this is what historians, in
admiration of its splendid audacity, have chiefly dwelt upon. The edict proceeds
to grant to the Roman pontiff and his clergy a series of dignities and
privileges, all of them enjoyed by the Emperor and his senate, all of them
shewing the same desire to make the pontifical a copy of the imperial office.
The Pope is to inhabit the Lateran palace, to wear the diadem, the collar, the
purple cloak, to carry the sceptre, and to be attended by a body of
chamberlains. Similarly his clergy are to ride on white horses and receive the
honours and immunities of the senate and patricians. » (38) All of this is
further proof that the Imperium Christianum, while being to a certain extent a
continuation of the Semitic and cosmopolitan late Roman empire, was a parody of
the actual Roman empire.
"Throughout the half-century (768-814) during which Charlemagne was the foremost
man in the world, the popes, like the other conspicuous persons therein, must be
reckoned among his dependants. On the death of the mighty monarch in 814, the
dominion of the West passed to the feeble and impairing grasp of his son Louis,
known at once as Louis the Kindly and Louis the Pious, whose kindliness
degenerated into heedless facility, and his piety into superstitious weakness.
The indulger and the victim of his wife, his children, and his priests, he was
more than once delivered from their oppression and reinstated on the throne
through the reverence of his people for the memory of his father, and their
respectful pity for his own amiable and devout helplessness. Under such a
sovereign the pontiffs meddled with much vigour and some effect, now upheld the
parent against the children, now stirred up the children against the parent, and
contributed not a little to the disorder of the empire of their own hallowing.
The dominion of the West, got together and so firmly grasped by his mighty
father, but so feebly and loosely holden by himself, fell to pieces in the hands
of his sons, of whom Louis became king of Germany, and Charles the Bald became
king of France, while Italy and the dignity of Roman emperor remained with
Lothaire, the eldest, and passed on to his son Louis II., and other members of
the race of Charlemagne. The relations of the popedom with the empire still
exhibited the same singular mixture of subjection and supremacy, with a
predominance of the former, even under these degenerate descendants of Charles
the Great. As no one was held to be a proper and perfect emperor until crowned
by the pope, so no one was held to be a proper and perfect pope until approved
by the emperor. An energetic emperor asserted the imperial supremacy, an
energetic pope asserted the papal supremacy... Louis II., the great-grandson of
Charlemagne, vigorously bestirred himself to enlarge his authority over the
Roman city and the Roman bishop ; Pope Nicholas I. (858-867) dealt in a lordly
fashion with the State, and maintained the absolute power of the papacy over the
Church. He made ample use of the forged Decretals, and sought to hasten their
theory of the papal monarchy into a fact. He bowed reluctant monarchs and
recalcitrant prelates to his will, forced Lothaire, king of Lorraine, and
brother of... Louis II., to take back, for a while at least, the wife whom he
had put away, and to repudiate the mistress whom he had married, and constrained
Hinkmar, archbishop of Rheims, the first writer, the most powerful churchman,
and the master spirit of the age, to restore a bishop whom he had got deposed.
But Nicholas was not ambitious and encroaching only in the West ; he assumed a
lordly tone towards the Byzantine Caesars, and sought to establish his supremacy
over the Greek Church." (39)
"According to that strange and mysterious sympathy of fortune between the
popedom and the empire, so constantly manifested throughout the middle ages, the
fall of the Carolingian empire in Italy, about 888, weakened the papacy and
threw it into the hands of the petty princes who started up everywhere..." (40)
"The Holy Roman Empire, which had fallen very low under the descendants of
Charlemagne, became a power again under its great Saxon chiefs, and, singularly
enough, undertook the reform of the papacy which had hallowed it." (41)
The six first decades of the tenth century, later called the "saeculum obscurum"
or "Römisches Hurenregiment", were not a period of glory for the papacy. It was
in the hands of the Roman aristocracy, or rather pornocracy, particularly in the
seasoned ones of the Theophylactes family, whose troika, Theodora the Old one
and her two daughters Theodora and Marozia, among other things, made and unmade
puppet popes. When Otto left North Germany, where, among other things, he was
busy destroying heathen temples and cutting down nut-trees, to come to the aid
of John XII, who, troubled by hostile neighbours, had asked him for assistance.
"In 962, Otho descended from the Alps, put down the petty tyrants of Italy,
received the imperial crown from the pope, and bound the Roman clergy and people
not to elect a bishop without the emperor's leave." (42) "Otto might seem to
have now reached a position loftier and firmer than that of any of his
predecessors. Within little more than a year from his arrival in Rome, he had
exercised powers greater than those of Charles himself, ordering the
dethronement of one pontiff and the installation of another, forcing a reluctant
people to bend themselves to his will. The submission involved in his oath to
protect the Holy See was more than compensated by the oath of allegiance to his
crown which the Pope and the Romans had taken, and by their solemn engagement
not to elect nor ordain any future pontiff without the Emperor's consent. But he
had yet to learn what this obedience and these oaths were worth... Otto regarded
the pontiff as no more than the first of his subjects, the creature of his own
will, the depositary of an authority which must be exercised according to the
discretion of his sovereign." (43)
"This restored Empire, which professed itself a continuation of the Carolingian,
was in many respects different. It was less wide, including, if we reckon
strictly, only Germany proper and two-thirds of Italy ; or counting in subject
but separate kingdoms, Burgundy, Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Denmark, perhaps
Hungary. Its character was less ecclesiastical. Otto exalted indeed the
spiritual potentates of his realm, and was earnest in spreading Christianity
among the heathen : he was master of the Pope and Defender of the Holy Roman
Church. But religion held a less important place in his mind and his
administration : he made fewer wars for its sake, held no councils, and did not,
like his predecessor, criticize the discourses of bishops." This did not prevent
him, a few days after his coronation and anointment, from confirming formally
the legitimacy of the Papal States and even from extending their boundaries. At
home, whilst his father Henry I had tended to keep the Church at arm's length,
Otto's main issue was "to regain control over the royal demesnes within the
duchy ; to break the duke's control over the church in his land, reaffirm the
direct connection between the crown and the church, and thus to make the church,
as it had been in Carolingian times a pillar and support of the monarchy." (44)
"But the result of royal reliance on the church was that the lay aristocracy,
given little share in the work of government, tended more and more to withdraw
into isolation and concentrate on building up its own estates. And though it is
certainly true that no king in the tenth century could have foreseen the later
demands for a church free from royal control, the fact remains that exclusive
reliance on the church was dangerous, particularly as the higher ranks of the
clergy were still essentially aristocratic. Bishops and abbots were regularly
selected from the great noble families, and there was no guarantee that they
would continue for all time to side with the monarchy against the aristocracy.
And finally, the very success of the king in his dealings with the dukes created
new problems, for in a country the size of Germany intermediate authorities to
help the crown in the task of government were needed, and it was precisely these
authorities that Otto I had weakened", (45) - along Carolingian lines. "In the
eleventh century a full half of the land and wealth of the country, and no small
part of its military strength, was in the hands of Churchmen : their influence
predominated in the Diet ; the arch-chancellorship of the Empire, highest of all
offices, was held by, and eventually came to belong of right to, the Archbishop
of Mentz, as primate of Germany. It was by Otto, who in resuming the attitude
must repeat the policy of Charles, that the greatness of the clergy was thus
advanced. He is commonly said to have wished to weaken the aristocracy by
raising up rivals to them in the hierarchy. It may have been so, and the measure
was at any rate a disastrous one, for the clergy soon approved themselves not
less rebellious than those whom they were to restrain." (46)
What was dubbed later as the alliance of the throne and altar, the hallmark of
the period in the political field, marked the disintegration of the traditional
Germanic world, especially the Saxon world. In old Saxony, the members of the
second caste (frilingi) and those of the third caste (the lazzi) took part in
political life along with the edhilingui, the representatives of the nobility.
According to the very few sources available to us, there were some social
tensions between them, which were only exacerbated by the Christianisation,
since the frilingi and the lazzi seem to have seen Christian missionaries as a
threat, not only to their ancestral religion, but also to their political power.
Indeed, in the aftermath of the massacre in Verden (47), Charles "abolished the
Old Saxon administration under chieftains and implemented the
grafschaftsverfassung (system of countships) common to the rest of the Frankish
kingdoms. This new administration placed Saxony under the governance of comites
selected from the Saxon nobilissimi." (48) "In return for accepting baptism and
his overlordship, Charlemagne gave the edhilingui what they had previously
lacked : a monopoly of power vis-a-vis the frilingi and the lazzi." (49) In
addition, he "enriched the crown and his faithful bishops, abbots, counts, and
other potentates with confiscated Saxon lands", (50) thus precipitating
"important changes in Saxon landownership through the importation of Frankish
practices, which probably worsened the economic and material condition of the
lower two castes." (51), as the royal and ecclesiastical profits from
landlordship increased. Even more importantly, Saxony, as well as Frisia and
various other parts of Germany, fell under the yoke of Judeo-Christianity
through the enactment in 782 of the Saxon capitulary, "a blueprint for the
comprehensive and ruthless Christianization of a conquered society. It was not
simply that the sanctions were of an extreme harshness. It was also that the
measures to be adopted in Christianization would destabilize and dislocate the
social texture of Saxon life at the most intimate levels of family existence,
touching birth, marriage and death. To the degree that such tactics had never
before been essayed in a Christian missionary context, it seems reasonable to
infer that this tearing apart of Saxon society was deliberately intended ; and
that the measures were framed by persons who knew how to inflict the maximum
damage." (52)
Through a chain reaction, the alliance between the throne and altar had two
further consequences, which, from a truly imperial European standpoint, were as
devastating for whatever remained of the spirit, of the soul, and of the body of
the Roman empire in the tenth century as they are seen as positive by the author
of the following lines, who, giving in to the Marxist sirens of the
class-struggle theory and to the populist exaltation of the people conceived of
as `demos', does not realise that the objective opposition he describes between
wealthy and tyrannical nobles and the oppressed and impoverished people in
Ottonian Saxony was to a great extent the result of the social, political and
spiritual upheaval brought about by the common policy of the Carolingians and of
the papacy, under the impetus of which more than a few had risen from below to
hold the highest positions, while more than a few had been forced into serfdom :
"Town-life there was none, till Henry the Fowler forced his forest-loving people
to dwell in fortresses that might repel the Hungarian invaders ; and the burgher
class thus beginning to form was too small to be a power in the state. But
popular freedom, as it expired, bequeathed to the monarch such of its rights as
could be saved from the grasp of the nobles ; and the crown thus became what it
has been wherever an aristocracy presses upon both, the ally, though as yet the
tacit ally, of the people. More, too, than the royal could have done, did the
imperial name invite the sympathy of the commons. For in all, however ignorant
of its history, however unable to comprehend its functions, there yet lived a
feeling that it was in some mysterious way consecrated to Christian brotherhood
and equality, to peace and law, to the restraint of the strong and the defence
of the helpless." (53) The first of these disastrous consequences was that the
monarchy let down the `old nobility' as soon as its alliance with the papacy was
established firmly. The second, partly highlighted by the author, is that, no
matter how deeply the imperial name invited by proxy the sympathy of the
commons, the commons were always more influenced and instrumentalised by the
papacy than by emperors or kings.
Besides being an expert at playing off its opponents against each other, the
papacy's record was second to none when it came to use its enemies' power to
defeat them while strengthening its own potential. The timing and the
circumstances of the imperial coronation played a huge part in this : "What
Christendom saw was that Charles was crowned by the Pope's hands, and undertook
as his principal duty the protection and advancement of the Holy Roman Church.
The circumstances of Otto the Great's coronation gave an even more favourable
opening to sacerdotal claims, for it was a Pope who summoned him to Rome and a
Pope who received from him an oath of fidelity and aid. In the conflict of three
powers, the Emperor, the pontiff, and the people - represented by their senate
and consuls, or by the demagogue of the hour - the most steady, prudent, and
far-sighted was sure eventually to prevail. The Popedom had no minorities, as
yet few disputed successions, few revolts within its own army - the host of
churchmen through Europe. Boniface's conversion of Germany under its direct
sanction, gave it a hold on the rising hierarchy of the greatest European state
; the extension of the rule of Charles and Otto diffused in the same measure its
emissaries and pretensions. The first disputes turned on the right of the prince
to confirm the elected pontiff, which was afterwards supposed to have been
granted by Hadrian I to Charles, in the decree quoted as 'Hadrianus Papa.' This
'ius eligendi et ordinandi summum pontificem,' which Lewis I appears as yielding
by the 'Ego Ludovicus,' was claimed by the Carolingians whenever they felt
themselves strong enough, and having fallen into desuetude in the troublous
times of the Italian Emperors, was formally renewed to Otto the Great by his
nominee Leo VIII. We have seen it used, and used in the purest spirit, by Otto
himself, by his grandson Otto III, last of all, and most despotically, by Henry
III. Along with it there had grown up a bold counter-assumption of the Papal
chair to be itself the source of the imperial dignity. In submitting to a fresh
coronation, Lewis the Pious admitted the invalidity of his former self-performed
one : Charles the Bald did not scout the arrogant declaration of John VIII, that
to him alone the Emperor owed his crown ; and the council of Pavia, when it
chose him king of Italy, repeated the assertion. Subsequent Popes knew better
than to apply to the chiefs of Saxon and Franconian chivalry language which the
feeble Neustrian had not resented ; but the precedent remained, the weapon was
only hid behind the pontifical robe to be flashed out with effect when the
moment should come. There were also two other great steps which papal power had
taken. By the invention and adoption of the False Decretals it had provided
itself with a legal system suited to any emergency, and which gave it unlimited
authority through the Christian world in causes spiritual and over persons
ecclesiastical. Canonistical ingenuity found it easy in one way or another to
make this include all causes and persons whatsoever : for crime is always and
wrong is often sin, nor can aught be anywhere done which may not affect the
clergy. On the gift of Pipin and Charles, repeated and confirmed by Lewis I,
Charles II, Otto I and III, and now made to rest on the more venerable authority
of the first Christian Emperor, it could found claims to the sovereignty of
Rome, Tuscany, and all else that had belonged to the exarchate. Indefinite in
their terms, these grants were never meant by the donors to convey full dominion
over the districts - that belonged to the head of the Empire - but only as in
the case of other church estates, a sort of perpetual usufruct, a beneficial
enjoyment which had nothing to do with sovereignty. They were, in fact, mere
endowments. Nor had the gifts been ever actually reduced into possession : the
Pope had been hitherto the victim, not the lord, of the neighbouring barons.
They were not, however, denied, and might be made a formidable engine of attack
: appealing to them, the Pope could brand his opponents as unjust and impious ;
and could summon nobles and cities to defend him as their liege lord, just as,
with no better original right, he invoked the help of the Norman conquerors of
Naples and Sicily." (54)
On the death of Henry II. (1024), for whom humility was the foundation for all
virtues, who strengthened the Church of Germany and who confirmed and renewed
the donations his predecessors had made to the Holy See as soon as he was
crowned and anointed emperor, the empire passed to Conrad II of Franconia, an
energetic and successful prince. "At the election of King Otto I., the clergy
had taken no part ; now they had the chief voice. So far had the favor of the
Saxon kings advanced them. The clergy had not only become princes with temporal
power ; they far surpassed in influence the temporal dukes. " (55) "... Otto the
Great and his successors filled bishoprics, certain collegiate foundations, and
important imperial monasteries with individuals of their own choosing, whom they
personally invested with the symbols of office - bishop's crosier or abbot's
staff - and to whose institutions they granted valuable sylvan, toll, market,
and mintage rights, even whole countries, as well as legal and economic
immunity. In return these men were required to provide servitium Regis, a broad
range of administrative, military, and economic services to the king, in
addition to praying for the kingdom's well-being and the ruler's salvation...
For a king, who was - in spite of the sacral nature of his office - the very
embodiment of secular authority, to invest a high cleric with his office clearly
violated canon law, but legal norms and actual legal practice were two very
different things... as long as people found ways to resolve or to accommodate
the inherent contradictions of the "system", it did work. In the early tenth
century, one pope even voiced his approval of the arrangement." (56) The system
was later termed by scholars the "imperial church system". Conrad II took it
over, ruling the clergy with an iron fist and using the Church to build up his
royal powers. No king in the eleventh century could have foreseen the later
demands for a church free from royal control, nor the later claims of, or rather
made in the name of, the `people', as a result of their emancipation. If Conrad
II correctly "… saw that a policy which relied for its support on the
aristocracy alone, and neglected or abandoned the people, was hurtful to the
crown as well as to the nation", (57) he made the opposite mistake of thinking
that "the head of the empire could retain power only relying on the lower
classes, on the people, and by not merely protecting but extending the rights of
the lower nobility and the people." (58)