The Power Of The Popes Part 3

Some officers in the service of Lothaire having been put to death in the Lateran palace, the holy fathers, accused of having ordered the commission of the crime, hastened to send nuncios to Louis to do away such suspicion. Louis received the nuncios coldly, and dispatched commissioners to Rome, before whom Pascal cleared himself by oath. He constantly, however, evaded delivering up the murderers, 'because they were of the family of St. Peter', that is, of the pope's house.

Louis-le-Debonnaire followed his natural love of clemency, says Fleury7 and notwithstanding his wish to punish this action, he consented, not to follow up a proceeding, the first acts of which prove, at least, that he was recognized in 823, as sovereign of Rome, and judge of the Roman Pontiff.

7 Hist Eccles. 1.46. n. 57.

Eugene II. after the example of his predecessor Pascal, dispensed with having his election confirmed by the emperor. Lothaire complained loudly of it, and came to fill at Rome the functions of the sovereign authority. He tried a suit between the pope and the abbot of Farfa, of whom the court of Rome exacted an annual tribute-Not only was the abbey exempted from this tribute, but the pope was obliged to restore the property which the Roman Church had _unjustly deprived it of_: these are the terms of a charter of Lothaire.7 This prince published, at the same time, a const.i.tution of nine articles,7 in which the authority of the pope is indeed formally established, yet subordinate to that of the emperor. It is there stated, that complaints against the judges and other officers shall first be taken before the pontiff, who shall apply an immediate remedy, or inform the sovereign thereof, in order that he may provide for it.

This const.i.tution is of the year 824, and it is also the date of an oath which the Romans took in the following terms:74

7 S. Marc. Ab. Hist Italy, vol. 1. p. 469.

7 Ibid. p. 472.

74 Ibid. p. 473.

"I promise to be faithful "to the emperors Louis and Lothaire, saving the "faith I have promised to the pope, and not to con- "sent to the election of a pope uncanonically, not "that the pope should be consecrated before he has "taken, in presence of the emperor's commissioners, "an oath similar to that which Pope Eugene has "made by writing."

The clause, "saving the faith promised to the pope," has not failed to draw after it arbitrary restrictions: but this formula expressed decisively the sovereignty of the emperor.

We also see Gregory IV. in 827, solicit the emperor to confirm his election;75 which proves, as we have already observed, that Louis had not renounced this right in 819. If the prince, said De Morca,76 had left to the people and the clergy the power of electing the popes, their consecration was, notwithstanding, to be deferred till the sovereign had consented to it. In defiance of this preliminary, the pontificate of Gregory IV. is, nevertheless, one of the most memorable for the humiliations of the imperial dignity. It is true, they were caused by the weakness of the prince as much as by the ambition of the pontiff.

The first error of Louis-le-Debonaire was the part.i.tion of his states, in 817, amongst his three sons: a.s.sociating Lothaire in the empire, he gave Aquitaine to Pepin, and Bavaria to Louis; and by these arrangements he especially dissatisfied his nephew Bernard, King of Italy.

75 Lpco illius (scil. Valentini) Gregorius presbyter t.i.tuli Sancti Marci electus est, dilatu consecratione ejus ad consulterai imperatorh. Quo annuente et electionem cleri et populi probante, ordinatus est in looo prions.-Vit. Ludov. Pii. kq mn.

827.-Gregorius presbyter non prius ordinatus est, quam legatus imperatoris Romam veneret et electionem populi ex-aminaret-Eginhard. ad ann. 827.

76 De Concordia sacerdotii et imperii. 1;8. c. 14. n.8.

Bernard revolted: it became necessary to subdue and punish him. In commuting the punishment of death p.r.o.nounced against him, Louis had nevertheless caused his eyes to be put out; and this cruel punishment cost the patient his life. Louis reproached himself with this cruelty, and evincing still less moderation in his repentance than in his crime, he claimed public penance. To add to his difficulties, Judith, his second wife, becoming the mother of Charles the Bald, claimed a kingdom for this child. She obtained a new part.i.tion, which, however, interfered with the first, and caused the three, who were portioned in 817, to rebel. They leagued against their father: Vala, abbot of Corbia, a factious but revered monk, encouraged their rebellion: like them, he heaped invectives on the emperor, his wife Judith, and his minister Bernard. Easily disconcerted by such an outcry, Louis convoked four councils, to which he referred the examination of his conduct and the complaints it occasioned. These synods favoured but little the pretensions of the revolted; but in them was professed a doctrine on the privileges of the clergy and the duties of princes, which, at a period so near to that of the unbounded power of Charlemagne, would seem incredible, if the purport itself of these a.s.semblies77 did not suffice, to justify and explain the idea which they had formed of their supreme authority.

77 Concil. Grail, vol. 1.

We will here transcribe a speech which one of the four councils makes Constantine the Great address to the bishops:

"G.o.d has given "you the powers to judge us; but you cannot be "judged by any man. G.o.d has established you as "G.o.ds over us, and it becomes not men to be the "judges of G.o.ds. That can belong to him alone "of whom it is written, G.o.d has seated himself in "the temple of the G.o.ds and judges them."

Here, then, we certainly behold the question respecting the two powers more clearly laid down than ever it had been; for they could not be more decisively reduced to one only.

While councils were giving Louis these lessons; while he was sending Judith into the bosom of a cloister, and was thinking of a.s.suming himself the monastic gown; his sons and the abbot Vala strove to compel him to do so, and would have succeeded, if another monk, in sowing discord among the three brothers, had not restored to their father some moments of repose and vigour. He recalled Judith, exiled Vala, deprived Lothaire of the t.i.tle of emperor, and, incapable of prudence, abandoned himself in such degree to the counsels of his ambitious and vindictive wife, that he disinherited Pepin in favor of Charles, and even alienated the minister Bernard. Immediately the revolt revived; and here commences the part which Gregory IV. played in these disgraceful scenes. The pope allied himself with the three princes: he entered France with Lo-thaire-entered it without the permission of his sovereign, what none of his predecessors had done. At the first report of the anathema he was about to thunder against the emperor, some French prelates had the courage to say, that if Gregory was come to excommunicate, he should return excommunicated himself;78 but Agobard, bishop of Lyons, and many of his colleagues, said, that the pope must be obeyed. Gregory, on his part, addressed to the partisans of Louis a memorable letter, in which the secular power is, without any ambiguity, subjected to the Holy See.7?

"The term of brother savours "of equality," said he to the prelates who had so addressed him; "it is the t.i.tle of *father* which you "owe me: know that my chair is above Lewis's "throne."

In the mean time Lothario and his two brothers collect their troops in Alsace; Gregory joins them, and quits them only to appear in Louis's camp in quality of mediator.

78 Si excoiwmunicaturua adveniret, excommunicatus abiret, c.u.m aliter se haberet antiquorum canonum autoritas.-Vit. hud. Pii. in Coll.

of Hist, of France, vol. 6. p. 113.

7? Agobardi Oper. vol. p. p. 53.

What the pope did we know not; but the same night on which he took leave of the emperor, the troops of the latter disbanded themselves. This desertion dissolved Louis's army, and doubled that of his opponents: compelled to give himself up to his sons, he was dethroned, _by the advice of the pope_, says Fleury;8 and Gregory returned to Rome, very much afflicted, according to the same historian, at the triumph of the unnatural children whom he had served. The plain where he had negociated, between Strasburg and Basle, is called to this day the 'Field of falsehood.'

It would be too painful to retrace here the details so well known of the humiliations of Louis I.; how Ebbon, his creature8 and other bishops, condemned him to a public penance; how the son of Charlemagne shewed himself almost worthy of the infamy by his submission; how, on his knees before these prelates, he publicly recited a confession of his crimes, in the number of which they had inserted the marching of his troops during Lent, and the convocation of a parliament on Holy Thursday; how, dragged from cloister to cloister, to Compagne, to Soissons, to Aix-la-Chapelle, to Paris, to St. Denis, he seemed destined to terminate his days there, when the excess of his misfortunes provoked the public pity, and produced against his already divided enemies the indignation of the n.o.bles and of the people. The great lords came to offer him homage as their sovereign, but Louis dared not recognize himself such until he was canonically absolved: he did not resume, he said, the belt, but in virtue of the judgment and authority of the bishops.

8 Hist. Eccles. 1.47. n.39.

8 Ebbon a contemporary historian thus speaks of it: Elegerunt tunc unum impudic.u.m et crudelissimum, qui dice* batur Hebo, Rexnansis episcopug; qui erat ex originalium servorum stirpe......Abstulerunt ei gladium de femore suo, judicio servorum suorum, induentes c.u.m cilicio. Tunc im-pletum est eloquium Jeremiae prophet dicentis: Servi domi-nati sunt nostri. O qualem remuneratkmem reddidisti ei! Fecit te liberum, non n.o.bilem, quod impossibile est post liber-tatem: vestivit te purpurio et pallio, tu induisti c.u.m cilicio. Hie pertraxit te immeritum ad culipen pontificate, tu c.u.m falso judicio voluigti expellere a solio patrum suorum....Patres tui fuerunt pastores caprarum, non copsiliarii principum, &c. Thegon. de gettis budov. Pit tom. 45.

On this occasion he invited Hilduin, the monk, to compose a life of St.

Denis, a legend since become so famous, and which would suffice to characterize the reign of Louis I. or rather the empire of gross superst.i.tion which he permitted to rule in his place. At Thionville an a.s.sembly was held, half parliament, half council, which replaced him on his throne. Solemnly reestablished in the body of the church, at Metz, he pretended that the deposition of Ebbon, the Archbishop of Rheims, p.r.o.nounced at Thionville, had need to be confirmed by the pope. Many prelates, accomplices of Ebbon, fled to Italy, under the protection of Lothaire and of Gregory; others, almost as shameless in confessing the crime as in commiting it, were pardoned:-none suffered the punishment due to such wicked attempts. Louis carried his good nature so far as to re-establish Agobard in the see of Lyons, and placed no bounds to the respectful deference which the pope exacted of him. Baronius even pretends, that it was by the pope's authority the king remounted his throne: but Bossuet8 has victoriously refuted this a.s.sertion, which is unsupported by any contemporary witness.

8 Def. Cler. Gall, vol.2. b. 6. ch.21.

Maria.n.u.s Sectus, the Chronicle writer of the twelfth.century, cited by Baronius, makes no mention in it of Gregory IV. and confines himself to saying, that in the year 835, Pepin and Louis restored to their father the sovereign power.

In the mean time the death of Lothaire gave occasion for a new part.i.tion, and a new revolt of Louis of Bavaria. Louis-le-Debonnaire once more took up arms against his ever rebellious son, when a mortal fright which an eclipse produced on this emperor, whose astronomical knowledge is boasted of, terminated in the year 840 his lamentable reign, worthy of such termination.

The ambition of Lothaire having united against him the King of Bavaria and Charles the Bold, they subdued him at Fontenai; and to possess themselves of his states, they addressed themselves to the bishops a.s.sembled at Aix-la-Chapelle. "Do you promise," said these bishops, "to govern better than Lothaire has done?" the princes promised; and the prelates added:

"Reign then in his place, we allow "you so to do; receive by divine authority the "kingdom; govern it according to the will of G.o.d; "we exhort you to it, we command you."

But Lothaire did not permit it, and his brother found him sufficiently formidable to treat with, and to continue to him the name of emperor, with certain states.

After the circ.u.mstances which had so humbled the imperial power, we are not astonished to see Sergius II. succeed Gregory IV. without waiting for the Emperor Lothaire's consent. Yet this prince was so irritated at it, that he sent his son Louis into Italy at the head of an army. The terrified pontiff endeavoured to appease the young prince by means of honours and of homage. Louis examined into the election of Sergius, and ratified it in the midst of an a.s.sembly in which Sergius was judicially interrogated. His premature consecration was held valid only on condition that they should act more regularly for the future. The pope and the rest of the a.s.sembly took the oath of fidelity to the emperor.8 This firmness of Lothaire upheld for a while the civil power, even in the states of Charles the Bald. This prince held a parliament at Epernai, in 846, to which the bishops were not admitted; in it were reprobated the canons which limited the rights of the king and of the lords, and measures were taken against the abuse of excommunications;

8 Anast Bibl. de vit. Roman. Pontif. p. 352.

In 847, Leo IV. was also consecrated before the emperor had confirmed the election; but they protested, that the ravages of the Saracens in the neighbourhood of Rome obliged them to act thus; and that nothing was meant derogatory to the fealty due to the head of the empire. Besides Leo IV. was the most venerated pontiff of the ninth century. He fortified Rome, built the part which bears the name of the Leonine city; and, without desiring to disturb other states, he laboured for the s.p.a.ce of eight years, for the prosperity of that which he governed. The same praise cannot be bestowed on Nicholas I. who filled the chair of St.

Peter from the year 858 to 867; but he was the pope of that century, which extended most the pontifical authority.

Elected in the presence, and by the influence of Lothaires's son, the Emperor Louis, he received from this prince a devotion unknown before: Louis seems to have thought he might honor without danger a creature of his own. The emperor then was seen to walk on foot before the pontiff act as his equery, lead his horse by the bridle, and thus realize, if not surpa.s.s, one of the directions of Constantine's pretended 'deed of gift,' Such ceremonies could not remain without effect, and Nicholas delayed not to discover occasions of availing himself of them. The power of Charlemagne was at that time divided among his numerous descendants: there were sons of the Emperor Lothaire, to wit, Louis, the heir to the empire, Charles, King of Provence, and Lothaire, King of Lorraine. Their uncles Louis and Charles reigned, the one in Germany, the other in France; while the son of Pepin, king of Aquitaine, fallen from the throne of their father, resumed it but to descend from it once more. All these princes, almost equally deprived of information and of energy, weak in the first place by their numbers, became still more so by their discord: each of them employed against the other the princ.i.p.al part of his limited power; it remained for Nicholas only to declare himself their master, in order to become so, and he failed not to do it.

An archbishop of Sens, named Venilon,. loaded with benefits by Charles the Bald, but stimulated to rebel against this monarch by Louis, King of Germany, had collected in the palace of Attichi some other disaffected prelates, and in conjunction with them p.r.o.nounced the deposition of the King of France, loosing his subjects from their oaths, and declaring his crown to have devolved to his brother. This attempt had but one remarkable consequence; this was, the strange complaint made of it in 857 to a council held at Savonnieres,84

"Venloon," said he, "consecrated me in the Church of St. Croix in "Orleans; he promised never to depose me from "the royal dignity, without the concurrence of the "bishops who consecrated me with him: the bishops "are the thrones upon which G.o.d sits to promulgate "his decrees; I have always been, I am still in "clined to submit to their paternal corrections, but "only when they proceed regularly."

84 Libellas proclamationis adrersus Venilonem. Concil. vol. 8. p.79.

In order to confirm this enormous authority of the clergy, Charles the Bald resorted to it against Louis. He caused the French prelates to a.s.semble at Metz: these signified to the German monarch, that he had incurred excommunication, and presented the terms to which his forgiveness was attached. Thus, by the avowal of the King of France, bishops had, of themselves, the right to depose, and even to excommunicate, a foreign sovereign. One day these bishops contracted a solemn engagement at Savonnieres, to remain united, in order to correct sovereigns, n.o.bles, and people; and Charles heard and received these expressions with all the humility which should have been the portion of those who held them.

Nicholas cautiously avoided repressing these enterprises of the clergy; on the contrary, he was pleased to behold the advancement of their power, provided it continued in subjection to his. The quarrels which arose among these prelates, gave him an open for exercising his supremacy; and those in whose favor he exerted it supported it with ardour. Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, had deprived of his dignity Rotade, bishop of Soissons, and Charles the Bald executed the decrees of a council, which, in defiance of this Rotade's appeal to the Holy See, had condemned him for contumacy. Nicholas cancelled these decrees, threatened Hincmar, and reestablished the bishop of Soissons. The king never thought of supporting Hincmar: on the contrary, he protected the nominated Vulfede, deposed by the Archbishop of Rheims, in another council, the sentence of which, also, Nicholas annulled. To such length had the 'False Decretals' extended the jurisdiction of the Holy See.

But the affair in which Nicholas made the most solemn display of his power, was that of the king of Lorraine, Lothaire, who after having repudiated and taken back his wife Theutberga, wished finally to part with her in order to marry Valdrade. The opposition of the popes to the divorces of princes has been often since renewed, but this is the first example: we have seen Charlemagne repudiate Imiltrade, as also Ermengarde or Desiderate, without any opposition on the part of the Roman pontiff; but he was Charlemagne, and his great-grandson neither inherited his genius nor his power.

Marriage is a civil act, which from its nature can be subject only to the regulations of the civil law. The religious rules or maxims which relate to it have no exterior force, no absolute efficacy, but inasmuch as they are inserted into the national code: they are not so inserted in those of the 9th century, and, consequently, the ecclesiastical ministry should have confined itself to recommending, in secret and without scandal, the observance, purely voluntary, of these maxims. But this wisdom, though so natural, was already foreign to the manners of a clergy, whose ministry the False Decretals had erected into authority; and neither kings nor people were capable of that degree of attention, necessary to acquire specific ideas of their civil rights and their religious duties. While Lothaire continued the husband of Theutberga, and had Valdrade but as a concubine, the pope and the bishops abstained from requiring him to give an example of a more regular and decent life: but from the time he thought of conferring upon Valdrade the rights of a lawful wife, Nicholas was earnest to apply to this project of reform the pontifical veto.

In truth, Lothaire himself provoked the intervention of the clergy, by causing Theutberga to appear before a tribunal of bishops, in order to undergo their indelicate interrogatories. Twice she confessed herself guilty of incest; and when the office of these Lorraine priests extended itself to extorting from her public avowals of the same, Nicholas whom they acknowledged as their supreme head, might consider himself authorised to revise so strong a proceeding. He therefore annulled the decision p.r.o.nounced against Theutberga by the councils of Aix-la-Chapelle and of Metz; he degraded two prelates, Gonthier and

Theutgaud, whom the latter of these councils had thought proper to depute to him. These prelates condemned in plain terms the Pope's sentence; they a.s.serted, that Nicholas wished to make himself monarch of the world.85 The Emperor Louis seemed to believe so in part; he came to Rome resolved to support his brother Lothaire again at Nicholas. But a fast and processions ordained by the pope, a tumult which he did not prevent, profanations about which he made a great noise, the sudden death of a soldier accused of having mutilated a miraculous cross; so many unlucky omens terrified Louis to that degree that it threw him into a fever. Furthermore, while Louis had been endeavouring to protect Lothaire, Charles the Bald, having declared against the latter, had received Theutberga. Hincmar himself composed a treatise respecting this divorce, which occupied all Europe, far from favourable to the interests of Valdiade.86

It was then enjoined by Nicholas, that Lothaire should give up the idea of a second marriage under pain of excommunication. A legate named a.r.s.ena came to compel the King of Lorraine to take back his first wife;87 and to detach him more certainly from Valdrade, this courtezan, so she was styled by the Holy See, was borne off by the legate, who would have taken her to Rome if she had not made her escape by the way.