The Power Of The Popes

ary of Louis I. declared all donations of this kind void. But, far from continuing to limit by such restraints the sacerdotal ambition

cclesiastical historians of the ninth century, gave to the young prince the power which the ancient emperors had enjoyed; they add, that with the consent and good will of Louis, Lothaire received from the sovereign pontiff the benediction, the dignity, and the title of emperor; expressions truly remarkable, and of which they have since availed themselves, in order t

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 nat

n 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.72 This prince published, at the same time, a constitution of nine articles,73 in which the auth

d it is also the date of an oath which t

se to be

s Louis and Lot

mised to the pope

ction of a pope

hould be consecr

ce of the emperor

r to that which

by wri

t failed to draw after it arbitrary restrictions: but this

withstanding, 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

ld, claimed a kingdom for this child. She obtained a new partition, 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

one of the four councils makes Consta

has

to judge us; b

man. God has es

and it becomes

. That can belo

ritten, God has

f the gods an

e two powers more clearly laid down than ever it had been;

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 d

of broth

e to the prelates who

itle of *fat

that my chair

ron

heir troops in Alsace; Gregory joins them, and quits the

at of his opponents: compelled to give himself up to his sons, he was dethroned, by the advice of the pope, says Fleury;80 and Gregory returned to Rome, very much afflicted, according to th

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 th

the body of the church, at Metz, he pretended that the deposition of Ebbon, the Archbishop of Rheims, pronounced 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 du

s, makes no mention in it of Gregory IV. and confines himself to saying, that

onnaire once more took up arms against his ever rebellious son, when a mortal fright which an eclipse produced on this emper

i; and to possess themselves of his states, they addressed themselves to the bishops assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle. "Do y

in his pla

receive by divi

it according to

ou to it, we

him sufficiently formidable to treat with, and to co

s of honours and of homage. Louis examined into the election of Sergius, and ratified it in the midst of an assembly 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 assembly took the oath of fidelity to the emp

o 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 space of ei

es 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 o

ace of Attichi some other disaffected prelates, and in conjunction with them pronounced the deposition of the King of France, loosing his subjects from their oaths, and declarin

on," s

in the Church

omised never to

ty, without the

secrated me with

upon which God

have always be

to their paterna

they procee

nd 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

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 r

lly 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 repud

elf 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

erself 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 conside

rother 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 th

Arsena came to compel the King of Lorraine to take back his first wife;87 and to detach him more certainly from Valdrade, this courtezan,

en Valdrade since she left Arsena, conjures the court of Rome not to give the kingdom of Lorraine to one of his rivals: a supplication that may seem to us in the present day as the excess, if no

ect, contain a precious developement of his idea

es to the bishop o

commands obedienc

her those kings r

y act justly, co

their subjects p

ssary to account

ist them. Be su

s says the apostl

od

imately, or tyrants, while the Christian morality requires their obedience of the worst of

omises, and if they were satisfied with his behaviour to his first wi

arn,"

he p

without our pe

e of us; and fur

s, by secure meth

hich we have not

eived from

n another letter to the same monarch,92 he announces that he writes no longer to Lothaire because he has excommunicated him. Lothaire, indeed

e and of queen:-the pontiff would not permit it; he addressed her in a long epistle, in which he

n and independence of the clergy, are to be fou

ou

n," says h

ht n

est or clerk: the

nt of their

the East and the West. He especially had at heart to make Constantinople submit; and his first step was to condemn and depose the patriarch Photius, in defiance of the emperor Michael. He threatened to burn, in the face of the world, an energetic letter which this emperor had

l, and seized upon the throne of Constantinople. Photius, on this occasi

s are poll

ch not the sac

less unjustly, driven from, the patriarchal chair. Adrian II. took advantage from the disgrace of Photius to renew against him

he holy table;-did not hesitate to absolve Valdrade herself, and. contented himself for such great condescension with the King of Lorraine's oaths and promises. The monarch swore he had no connexion with Valdrade while she was under excommunication, and pledged himself never more to see her. Lothaire died at Placenti

thaire to the emperor, who had not as yet claimed them; enjoined Charles and Louis, under the usual penalties of ecclesiastical censure, to

enser of the crowns of Europe; that France never received her masters from the pope's hands; that wild anathemas, launched forth from mere political motives, could not alarm a king of France; that, until Nicholas, the popes had never w

rch; he knew that another Hincmar, bishop of Laon, and nephew of the archbishop of Rheims, had taken part with Carloman, and carried his rashness so far as to excommunicate the king. Adri

t step," sa

contrary to

do not wish th

nes of the king

heir o

his apostolic power, to send the parties to Rome to await their judgment there. In the vigorous reply of Charles, he protests that the

m, in fine,"

future he mi

a nature toward

should be oblige

f the bishop of Laon, and said no more about the partition made of the states of Lothaire. He wrote the king a letter so full of professions of regard, of praises, and of promises, th

, when this emperor, having been reconciled to Photius, wished to replace this prelate in the patriarchal chair of Constantinople, which the death of Ignatius had left vacant. John, by his legates and lett

than one opportunity to John VIII. to constitute himself arbiter, in return for the

nce. He consecrated him emperor during the festival of Christmas. "We have adjudged him," said he, "worthy of the imperial sceptre: we have raised him to the dignify and-power of the empire; we have adorned him with the title of Augustus." Charles dearly repaid the ceremony of this coronation. He consented to date from this day all the charters he should henceforward subscribe: and, according to appearances, John must have obta

n solicited from the sovereign pontiff by several competitors. This time John confined himself to promising it, in order to hold it for the highest price: for three years there was no Emperor of the West: none of those who were ambitious of the title were powerful enough to assert it without the aid of the court of Rome. Louis the Stammerer, son of Charles t

al influence, through the medium of a legate of the Holy See; already even he had clothed with this title Angesius, archbishop of Sens: but this novelty was not pleasing to the other prelates, nor too much so to the monarch. Hincmair, especially, opposed it earnestly: he wrote a treatise to shew how pernicious it mu

onstrances of his brother Athanasius, bishop of Naples. Athanasius took the resolution to tear out Sergius's eyes, and proclaim hims

ecept of the gospel, 'plucked out the eye' that scandalized him. This barbarous, and almost ludicrous, application of a sacred text, opens to our view the character of John VII

who in 884 became king of France, by the death of Louis III. and of Carlo-man, son of Louis the Stammerer. The names of th

not you

he church; but

chose you to go

n of observi

the daring enterprizes of Adrian II. It seemed decreed that the monarch should have for his master, either the nation

emperor in 887, was pronounced, not by the ecclesiastical authority, but by an assembly of the German and French nobles;104 that Formosus, in interfering in a dispute between Eudes and Charles the Simple, spoke at least a language more evangelical, and less haughty, than in similar circumstances had been held by Nicholas II. Adrian II. and John VIII. Formosus crowned two emper

ed the title of Emperor. The pope held, on this occasion, a council at Ravenna, in which the sovereignty of the Western

ng that on

pontiff, the Chu

disorders, whe

hout the privity

ting for his com

prevent the out

generally attend

for the future t

ishops and cler

nate and the peo

lemnly and publ

e him in presen

mperor; and, tha

under any pret

her promises or

ave been sanct

the church may

ury, and that th

y receive n

cted, in 899, a son of Arnulf, named Louis, and solicited the pope to confirm this election, excusing themselves for having made it without his approbation, in consequence of the pagans, that is the Hungarians, having cut off the pas

nnaire, and in the subsequent subdivisions of these states, the principal cause of the degradation

," say

prises of th

emselves as the

they were only t

the cloak of a

dispose soverei

rmous power of

roned the father a

, believed thems

or depose their

r warriors than

read, much les

as well from the

, as Pasquier exp

carelessly with,

h they had usurpe

Hence these alm

hat the monks est

some years befor

the grounds whic

ndoned t

lf as creating them, since he dared to speak of their dignity as a favour for which they were indebted to him, he doubtless had the means of placing limits to that obedience which they might be desirous of exacting from him. Far from imposing laws on him in his own states, they often a