After a union of one year Charles
divorced
his Lombard
wife.
wife.
Cambridge Medieval History - v2 - Rise of the Saracens and Foundation of the Western Empire
There were still his growing sons, committed by
him to Pepin's care, but with no rights renounced. Was it in part,
perhaps, to vindicate, for himself or for his sons, these rights of the
elder line that Carloman had now appeared in Francia as advocate of
the Lombard cause? Was his reward, perchance, to be the Lombard's
backing of his own princely claims? In any case, what troubled waters
these for Lombard fishing! Was the Pope himself only a timelier
fisher, and may the reluctance of the Frankish nobles have been due in
some part to friends of Carloman and of the Lombard alliance? All
this is mere conjecture. But certain it is that Pepin made effective
terms with Heaven's spokesman and that the outcome was the papal
unction for himself and for his house. Carloman, sick, perhaps with
disappointment or chagrin, was detained in a Burgundian monastery,
where soon he died. His sons were, like the Merovingians, shorn as
monks. Even the fellow-monks whom he had brought with him from
Italy were held for years in Frankish durance.
And what did Pepin in return assure the Pope? Stephen's
biographer speaks only of an oral promise to obey the Pope and to
restore according to his wish the rights and territories of the Roman
State1. But, when twenty years later the son of Pepin, leaving his
1 "Omnibus eras mandatis et ammonitionibus sese totis nisibus oboedire, et ut
illi placitum fuerit exarchatum Ravennae et reipublicae iura sea loca reddere modis
omnibus. " "Respublica," "respublica Romana," had in Roman usage meant the
Empire in general; but the term, which in the papal letters becomes from this time
forward "respublica Romanorum," was doubtless vague enough to Frankish ears.
Its happy ambiguities and clever use during this period are studied most carefully
by Gundlach, in his Die Entstehung des Kirchentiaates (Breslau, 1899).
## p. 588 (#620) ############################################
588 Donation of Pepin [ru
siege of the Lombard capital, went down to Rome for Easter, there was
laid before him for confirmation, if we may trust the papal biographer
of that later day, a written document, signed at Quierzy during Pope
Stephen's visit by Pepin, his sons, and all the Frankish leaders, which
pledged to St Peter and to the Pope the whole peninsula of Italy from
Parma and Mantua to the borders of Apulia, defining in detail the
northern frontier of the tract, and including by express stipulation, not
only all the Exarchate "as it was of old time" and the provinces of
Venice and Istria, but the island of Corsica and the Lombard duchies
of Spoleto and Benevento1. May we trust this passage of the Vita
Hadriani—not only for the fact of a written promise by Pepin and
of its confirmation by Charles, but for all the startling contents? This
is that "Roman question" about which seas of ink have flowed and
still are flowing. For long it was the wont of ultramontane writers to
assume both the reality of such a promise and confirmation and the
accuracy of this account of it, while with almost equal unanimity those
unfriendly to the Papacy or to its temporal power dismissed the one as
myth, the other as forgery. But in these later years, now that the
temporal power is but a memory, scholars have drawn together1. It
seems established that the passage, however corrupt, is no interpolation,
and that it was written at Rome in 774; and there is a growing faith in
its accuracy, even as to the details of Pepin's promise*. But how to
explain so strange a pact is still a puzzle. Was it, as some have thought,
not the main compact between Pope and king, but a scheme of partition
for use only in case the Frank invasion should perhaps result in the fall
of the Lombard power4? Schemes such as this may well have filled the
Pope's long Gaulish visit; but for aught but guesswork our sources are
1 "Civitates et territoria. . . a Lunis cum insula Corsica, deinde in Suriano, deinde
in moute Bardone, id est in Verceto, deinde in Parma, deinde in Regio; et exinde
in Mantua atque Monte Silicis, simulque et universum exarchatum Ravennantium,
sicut antiquitus erat, atque provincias Venetiarum et Istria; necuon et cunctura
ducatum Spolitinum seu Beneventanum. " It must of course be remembered that
to this barbarous age "seu" meant and quite as often as or, and that, in general, its
Latin is not classical.
2 Especially since, in 1883, Sickel, reinforcing the earlier arguments of Ficker,
established the genuineness of the Pactum Ludovicianum of 817, the oldest surviving
confirmation of the gift, and since, in 1884, SchefFer-Boichorst and Duchesne
demonstrated the contemporaneity of the passage in the Vita Hadriani. Duchesne
two years later made this demonstration more effective by publishing the first
volume of a critical edition of the lAber Pontificals, of which the Vita is of course a
part.
3 The Fragmentum Fantuzzianum, which purports to be Pepin's Promissio itself,
has already been described (see p. 585, note). Its list of the territories promised
differs in several points from that of the Vita Hadriani, though agreeing substantially
as to their extent.
4 This is the solution of Kehr, a scholar long busied with the documents of
the popes, and has met with much acceptance. It has been ably supported by
Hubert.
## p. 589 (#621) ############################################
764-756] The Franks in Italy 589
too scanty and too crude. The clerics who meagrely penned the deeds of
king and Pope were only official scribes, inspired and inspected, who of
the deeper planning of their lords perhaps knew little and betray yet less.
The papal letters, a more solid support, are mute, of course, during
Stephen's visit; and, when they reappear, imperfectly preserved and
uncertainly dated, are often but the mask for a wilier diplomacy by oral
message. And in this day of the eclipse of culture, when the best
trained clerk of convent or of curia groped helplessly for words and for
inflections, one can never be quite sure whether what is written is what
seemed best worth writing or only what seemed possible to write. Nor
may it be forgotten that from the side of Greek or Lombard, great
though their stake in the affairs of Italy, we have in all this period not
a word.
The Frankish host at last, in the late summer of 754 (possibly the
spring of 755), set forth for Italy, taking with it the Pope. Before its
start and yet again during the march a fresh attempt was made to scare
off or buy off the Lombard from his prey. But neither gold nor threats
could move Aistulf from his purpose. Happily for the Franks, the
Alpine passes and their Italian approaches had long been in their hands,
and now, ere their main army began to climb the Mont Cenis, they
learned with joy that Aistulf, routed by their vanguard, whom he had
rashly attacked in the mountain defiles, had abandoned his entrenchments
in the vale of Susa and sought shelter within the walls of his capital.
The Franks, rejoicing in the manifest favour of Heaven, were soon before
Pavia; and Aistulf, disheartened, speedily consented to a peace "between
the Romans, the Franks, and the Lombards. " He acknowledged Pepin
as his overlord, and promised to surrender to the Pope Ravenna with
all his other conquests. The Pope was sent on, under escort, to Rome;
and Pepin, taking hostages, returned to Francia.
But Aistulf soon rued his concessions. Only a single town did
he actually give up, and by midwinter of 755-756 he was again
ravaging before the gates of Rome. The Pope in panic appealed
frantically to his ally. Nay, so great was the emergency that, when the
Franks delayed, St Peter himself addressed to Pepin, Charles, and
Carloman, and to the clergy, the nobles, and all the armies and people
of Francia a startling letter. "I, Peter, apostle of God, who have
adopted you as my sons,11 so runs this strange epistle, duly delivered by
messengers from Rome, "do call and exhort you to the defence of this
Roman city and the people committed to me by God and the home where
after the flesh I repose And with us our Lady, the mother of God, Mary
ever virgin,. . . doth most solemnly adjure, admonish, and command you
Give help, then, with all your might, to your brothers, my Roman
people,. . . that, in turn, I, Peter, apostle called of God, granting you my
protection in this life and in the day of future judgment, may prepare
for you in the kingdom of God tabernacles most bright and glorious and
CH. XVIII.
## p. 590 (#622) ############################################
590 Second Frankish Intervention [756
may reward you with the infinite joys of paradise. . . . Suffer not this my
Roman city and the people therein dwelling to be longer torn by the
Lombard race : so may your bodies and souls not be torn and tortured in
everlasting and unquenchable hell fire Lo, sons most dear, I have
warned you: if ye shall swiftly obey, great shall be your reward, and,
aided by me, ye shall in this life vanquish all your foes and to old age
eat the good things of earth, and shall beyond a doubt enjoy eternal
life; but if, as we will not believe, ye shall delay,. . . know that we, by
authority of the holy Trinity and in virtue of the apostolate given me
by Christ the Lord, do cut you off, for transgression of our appeal, from
the kingdom of God and life eternal1. 1'
The Franks delayed no longer. In May they were again upon the
march. Aistulf hastened from Rome to meet them; but again he
failed to bar their path, and again was shut up in Pavia. It was now,
as Pepin drew near the town, that a Greek envoy, who had tried to
intercept him on his way, at last came up with him. In honeyed words
he claimed for the Empire Ravenna and its Exarchate. But Pepin
answered that for no treasure in the world would he rob St Peter of a
gift once offered, swearing that for no man's favour had he plunged thus
once and again into war, but for love of St Peter and the pardon of his
sins. It is the papal biographer who reports his words.
The siege was short. Aistulf, now a convicted rebel, was glad to
escape with life and realm by payment of a third of his royal hoard,
with pledge of yearly tribute, and by immediate surrender of his
conquests. To Abbot Fulrad, as Pepin's deputy, these forthwith were
handed over, one by one, from Ravenna, with Comacchio, down the
coast to Sinigaglia and over the mountains to Narni; and their keys the
abbot bore to Rome, where with the written deed of their donation by
his king he laid them on St Peter's tomb.
When the Franks went home, the Exarchate, as Aistulf had found
it, was the Pope's. Rome and its duchy, though unnamed by Pepin,
were as surely his. But not contentment. Though his lands now
stretched from Po to Liris and from sea to sea, the redemption of Italy
was but begun. AistulFs robberies won back, why not Liutprand's?
Occasion offered soon. Aistulf was killed by accident while hunting,
and his brother Ratchis, without asking leave of the Pope, left the
monastery to assume the crown. The outraged Stephen stirred
Benevento and Spoleto to revolt, and aided Desiderius, duke of Tuscany,
in a struggle for the throne. But this aid had its price: a sworn
1 To count this letter mere rhetoric, as have some, is much to overrate the
literary spirit of the age, and—what is more serious—to ignore both the pious
fraud so characteristic of the time and the pious credulity on which it safely built
Few scholars now doubt that St Peter's letter was meant to be taken by the Franks
as sober revelation. It is by no means improbable that it was penned by the same
hand as the Donation of Constantino.
## p. 591 (#623) ############################################
757-768] Desiderius King of the Lombards 591
contract bound Desiderius to the surrender of the rest of the towns
seized by the Lombards. Abbot Fulrad, who lingered still at Rome,
was not only witness to the pact, but with his little troop of Franks
took a hand in the enthronement of Desiderius. Perhaps he thought
thereby to plight his royal master to enforce the contract; but, though
the Lombard, once on his throne, yielded only Faenza and Ferrara, and
though Pope Paul, who in that same year (757) succeeded his brother,
could extort no more, and filled the ten years of his pontificate with
piteous appeals to the "patrician of the Romans" for help against
dangers, real or fancied, from Lombard and from Greek, the Frank
refrained from further meddling.
Nor was there need of it. Though Desiderius quelled with firm hand the
rebels in Spoleto and in Benevento and was not to be cajoled into further
"restitutions" to the Pope, and though the Emperor tried intrigue both
with Lombard and with Frank, neither assailed Pope Paul with arms.
Not even the fiercely contested papal election which in 767 followed his
death disturbed the integrity of the Papal State. Pope Stephen III,
who in 768 emerged from the turmoil, however he might date his
charters by the Emperor's regnal years and report his elevation to the
Frank patrician, "his defender next to God," was to all intent as
sovereign as they. That so vigorous a ruler and so capable a soldier
as Constantine V made no armed attempt to save to his Empire the
fair peninsula that gave it birth must doubtless be explained not only
by the nearer cares which kept him busy, but by the potent shadow of
the Frank; and to that shadow was clearly due the inaction of the
Lombard. But the Frank himself, beyond St Peter's gratitude here and
hereafter, asked no other meed.
Yet Francia was not without reward. Through the door which
war had left ajar culture crept in. "I send you," writes Pope Paul,
"all the books which could be found "—and he names the hymn-books
and the school-books of his packet, "all written in the Greek tongue,"
an antiphonal and a responsal, treatises on grammar, geometry, ortho-
graphy, works of Aristotle and of Dionysius. "I send, too," he adds,
"the night-clock "—doubtless an alarm-clock, such as waked the monks
to their matins1. It is but a glimpse at a traffic which must mainly
have found humbler channels. The improving calligraphy of Frankish
scribes shews already Roman influence. Bishop Remedius of Rouen
1 Mr Hodgkin thinks "horologium nocturnum" may mean a clock with an
illuminated face. The suggestion is tempting, and we remember King Alfred's
graduated candles and horn lantern; but the phrase seems to imply something
familiar, while illuminated clocks, as Alfred's invention reminds us, were a thing
as yet unknown. Bilfinger, the most careful student of the history of time-reckoning
and time-pieces, interprets as an alarm-clock the "horologium nocturnum" invented
in the ninth century by a Frankish cleric; and Professor Erben of Innsbruck has
already suggested this explanation for Pepin's night-clock.
## p. 592 (#624) ############################################
592 Pepin's Wars [759-760
imported from Rome a singing-master for his clergy; and, when the
master was called back to head the Roman training-school, sent his
monks thither to complete their musical education. Chrodegang of
Metz, ever in close touch with Rome, inaugurated the most notable
church reform of his day by organising under a discipline akin to the
monastic the clergy of his cathedral city. Among the imperial gifts
from Constantinople came an organ, the first seen in the West. A more
questionable blessing was the advent of Greek theologians: Byzantine
envoys debated with papal, before the king and his synod, as to the
Trinity and the use of images; and, though they lost the verdict, they
must have quickened thought. Nor was the new horizon bounded by
Christian lands. The lord of Barcelona and Gerona, Muslim governor of
north-eastern Spain, strengthened himself against his Moorish sovereign
by acknowledging the Frankish overlordship; and a more distant foe of
the Umayyad court of Cordova, the great Caliph Mansur, from his
new capital of Bagdad, exchanged with Pepin embassies and gifts. It
was the beginning of that connexion between the leading power of the
Christian West and the leading power of the Muslim East which has
proved so perennial, and to the powers of Christian East and Muslim
West so costly.
But all this interest in the world at large meant no sacrifice of
energy at home. It was precisely the years that fell between or
followed the Italian expeditions which saw Pepin most active as a
legislator. In four successive synods of his clergy he perfected the work
begun by Boniface, but made it clear that in the Frankish Church the
crown was still to be supreme. Every spring henceforward all the
bishops should gather to the king for synod, and every autumn at his
seat in Soissons those clad with metropolitan authority should meet
again. Inspection and stern churchly discipline should keep at home
and at religious duties priest and monk and nun. All Christians must
observe the Sunday rest and worship, and all marriage must be public
"Though at the moment our power does not suffice for everything,'" runs
an introductory clause full of significance for the king's whole character,
"yet in some points at least we wish to better what, as we perceive,
impedes the Church of God; if later God shall grant us days of peace
and leisure, we hope then to restore in all their scope the standards of
the saints. '1
Days of peace proved rare. In 759, having freshly scourged the
Saxons to tribute and submission, he "made no campaign, that he
might reform domestic affairs within his realm. " But in 760 began the
task which busied his remaining years—the subjection of Aquitaine.
The broad south-west of Gaul, cut off from Neustria by the wide stream
of the Loire, from Burgundy by the escarpment of the Cevennes, had not
since Roman days fully cast in its fortunes with the rest. When Clovis
won it from the Goths he had not sown it with his Franks; and the
## p. 593 (#625) ############################################
762-768] Conquest of Aquitaine 593
Goths, withdrawing into Spain, had left its folk less touched than any
other in the west of Europe by Germanic blood and ways. To the
chroniclers and even to the laws of Pepin's time they still are "Romans. "
The race of native dukes which under the later Merovingians had made
them almost independent acknowledged Pepin as a suzerain only; and
their boldness in harbouring fugitives from his authority and in taxing
the Aquitanian estates of Prankish churches had already caused friction
and protest when the Frank occupation of Septimania gave rise to war.
That this district, so closely knit to Aquitaine before and since, its
doorway to the Mediterranean and the highway of its commerce, should
pass into the keeping of the Frank was indeed a knell to all their hopes.
Duke Waifar had as early as 752 begun to wrest the region from the
failing grasp of the Moor, and it was perhaps only to escape his clutches
that the Goths of its eastern towns offered themselves to Pepin. This
could be borne; but when, in 759, the taking of Narbonne carried to
the Pyrenees the Frank frontier, the speedy sequel was the war with
Aquitaine.
Pepin did not underrate his foe. Year after year, from 760 to
768, he led against Waifar the whole Prankish host; and, though a
brief peace closed the first campaign, the struggle thereafter was to the
death. With thoroughness and system, wasting no time in raids, from
fortress to fortress, district to district, through Berri, Auvergne, the
Limousin, garrisoning and organising as he went, the king relentlessly
pushed on. Once desertion and famine forced him to a pause; but there
followed a fruitful year—for whose blessings the king, like some
American governor or president of modern days, ordained in the autumn
a general thanksgiving—and the war went on. By the early summer of
768 the land was wholly overrun, and the death of Waifar ended the
brave but hopeless fight. Pepin, himself worn out by the struggle,
lived only long enough to enact the statute which should govern the
new-won province. By this he fused it with the rest of his kingdom, but
left to its people their ancestral laws, guarded them against the extortion
of the royal officials, and provided for a local assembly of their magnates
which in conference with the deputies of the Crown should have final
authority as to all matters, civil and ecclesiastical.
In the palace reared by his son at Ingelheim the fresco devoted to
the memory of Pepin pictured him "granting laws to the Aquitanians. "
It was, indeed, his most lasting work. Though the whole history of
Aquitaine betrays her separateness of blood and speech, though still
"there is no Frenchman south of Loire,'" she has never ceased to form
with Neustria a single realm. All else—the absorption of Brittany, the
conquest of the Saxons, the humbling of Bavaria, whose young duke's
desertion had for a moment crippled the war on Aquitaine—Pepin left
unfinished to his sons. Between the two, after the bad old fashion of
the Franks, he now parted the kingdom. To Charles, the elder, grown
C MED. H. VOL II. CH. XVIII. 38
## p. 594 (#626) ############################################
594 Character of Pepin
a man of twenty-six, fell Australia, most of Neustria, the western half
of Aquitaine—all, that is, to north and west; to the younger, Carloman,
still in his teens, though wedded, all to south and east. Bavaria was
assigned to neither: it must first be won.
At St Denis, home of his childhood and his chosen place of sepulture,
Pepin died, not yet half through his fifties. His life, though short, was
fruitful. Modern scholars are at one in thinking his fame eclipsed
unduly by that of his successor. Nearly everything the son accomplished.
the father had begun. Vigorous, shrewd, persistent, practical, his own
general and his own prime minister, relentless but not cruel, pious but
never blindly so, able to plan but able too to wait, Pepin bequeathed to
Charles more than a kingdom and a policy. Even for his bodily strength
and presence, his power of passion and his length of life, Charlemagne
perhaps owed something to the stainless self-control as husband and as
father which was Pepin's alone of all his line. How the king looked
we have no means of knowing. The legend which caused him in later
centuries to be called "the Short" is baseless fable.
## p. 595 (#627) ############################################
595
CHAPTER XIX.
CONQUESTS AND IMPERIAL CORONATION OF
CHARLES THE GREAT.
The significance of great personalities is nowhere in all history
more evident than in the Carlovingian age. Without the work of the
great men of the eighth century it is impossible to explain the shaping
of the Middle Ages and the theocratic and imperial ideas that governed
life in every department. It was Charles the Great, above all, who for
centuries gave the direction to the historic development. It is true that
imperialism and theocracy in the State were required on general
considerations. But their particular form in the West depended very
largely on particular individuals.
Charles was born 2 April, probably in the year 742, at some place
unknown, and was the eldest son of Pepin the Mayor of the Palace (and
afterwards king), and of his wife Bertrada. Shortly before his death in
September 768, Pepin had divided the kingdom between his two sons.
Charles received Austrasia, Neustria, and half of Aquitania, while
Carloman had Burgundy, Provence, Gothia, Alsace, Alemannia, and the
other half of Aquitania. The young kings were solemnly enthroned and
anointed (9 Oct. ) in their respective halves of the kingdom.
We soon hear of disputes between them. We need not assume that
Carloman wished to supplant his brother because Charles was born before
the marriage of his parents. There is no doubt that Charles was born
in lawful wedlock. Unknown personal grounds caused the dispute.
When the Aquitanians under Hunald rose against the Prankish rule in
the first year of his reign, Carloman refused to help his brother, and
Charles reduced the rising by his own power. Bertrada acted as peace-
maker, and succeeded in reconciling the brothers. She did more. She
passed through Bavaria into Italy to win over the two opponents of the
Frankish kingdom, the Bavarian duke Tassilo and the Lombard king
Desiderius. The daughter of Desiderius was to be married to Charles,
and Gisela the sister of the Frankish kings to the son of the Lombard
king. And as Tassilo had married another daughter of Desiderius, and
as Frankish emissaries of Sturm, the abbot of Fulda, were working in
ch. xix. 38—2
## p. 596 (#628) ############################################
596 Charles and Carloman [768-771
Bavaria on behalf of peace, there seemed to be a real bond of union
between Francia, Bavaria, and Lombardy.
The old traditions of Frankish policy before the alliance with the
Curia seemed to revive. The Pope however had considerable cause for
anxiety. When he heard rumours of the proposed marriages he
addressed to the two Frankish kings a letter full of passionate hatred
against the Lombards and of consternation at a change of Frankish
policy. He warned the Franks against an alliance with the Lombards,
that stinking people, the source of leprosy, a people that were not recog-
nised amongst civilised nations; and he threatened anathemas if the Papal
warnings were disregarded. But when Charles nevertheless brought home
his Lombard bride, the Pope accommodated himself to circumstances.
He was mollified by the restoration of Patrimonies and in overflowing
words besought the blessing of heaven on Charles. Soon the Lombard
party even obtained the upper hand in Rome. Desiderius appeared in
Rome as the friend of the Pope and overthrew the party that was
opposed to the Lombards and friendly to Carloman. In a letter sent to
Francia, Stephen praised the Lombard king as his saviour, "his most
illustrious son," who at last had restored all the prerogatives of St Peter.
Even if Charles was but little offended at the Pope's opposition to
Carloman, such intimate friendship with the Lombards cannot have
seemed desirable to him. But all these circumstances were soon radi-
cally changed.
After a union of one year Charles divorced his Lombard
wife. Policy had brought about the marriage, personal wishes of the king,
we may surmise, rent the union sharply asunder. Friendship for the
Lombards was followed by the bitterest enmity.
There was a further cause. The opposition in Rome increased
the estrangement of the royal brothers. Other personal motives may
have co-operated. The alienation was so great that Carloman's people
urged war. But the sudden death of Carloman (4 Dec. 771) made a
complete change in the political situation. Charles seized his brother's
portion of the kingdom. There were, it is true, children of Carloman,
especially a son, Pepin, who had indisputable rights to the inheritance;
but might prevailed over right, and though the enthroning and anoint-
ing of Charles took place "with the consent of all the Franks," while the
court historians praised the Grace of God because Charles' authority was
extended over the whole kingdom without shedding of blood, his disre-
gard of right cannot be denied. Carloman's widow Gerberga had fled
with her children and found refuge with Desiderius, now Charles' mortal
enemy.
The union of the Frankish dominions under one authority was indis-
pensable for their furtherdevelopment. Nottill then did Charles'independ-
ent rule begin. The pre-eminence, and at the same time the ruthlessness,
of the great ruler had already manifested themselves, but until 771 the
softening and restraining influence of his mother had prevailed with him.
## p. 597 (#629) ############################################
752-772] Donation of Constantine 597
Now began the period of vigorous conquest. An empire was founded
that embraced all the West German races and extended over wide
Romance and Slavic regions and Avar territory—an empire that in con-
sideration and extent might be compared with the West Roman Empire.
The real motive in the advance of Carlovingian authority was certainly not
religion. It is the secular ideal and the struggle for power which dominate
men and nations. The Christian idea was but subordinate. It frequently
ennobled, frequently veiled, the desire for power. Later on it had an
essential part in the founding of the Empire that brought to a close the
development of a universal authority in the West.
The first advance accompanied by immediate success was directed
towards Italy for the subjection of the Lombard kingdom. A second
was against the Arabs of the Pyrenean Peninsula. This aimed only at an
unimportant extension of the Empire on the Spanish border and a closer
union of Southern Gaul with the Empire. A third was on the East, in
Bavaria and the territory of the Avars. A fourth was on the North and
North-east in the territory of the Saxons, the Slavs and the Danes.
The political state of Italy was far from settled in the eighth century.
After the collapse of the rule of the Eastern Goths the country had been a
province of East Rome, then conquered from the North by the Lombards,
and the part lying north-west of the Exarchate of Ravenna and Tuscany
was left in possession of the Lombards, and was opposed to the Respublica
Romana, as Lombard Italy to the Province of Italy. When the vigorous
Lombard kingdom, after the time of Liutprand (712-744), aimed at sole
rule over all Italy, winning Ravenna with the Exarchate, and the Duchies
of Spoleto and Benevento were made dependent, this was regarded as an
injury to the Respublica Romana. As holder of this political power for
the Exarchate of Ravenna and for the people of the whole province of Italy
appeared the Roman Bishop. According to law the Eastern Emperor was
still lord of the Roman province, he was still (until 772) honoured as
sovereign in the Papal documents, and so late as 752 Stephen II had turned
to him for help against the Lombards. But political and ecclesiastical
circumstances had led more and more to estrangement, and when the
Roman Duchy and Rome itself were likely to fall before the advance
of Aistulf, Stephen turned to the first Catholic power of the West, to
the Frankish king Pepin.
The donation ascribed to Constantine must have been forged in
Rome at this time, when the Curia was freeing itself politically from
East Rome and as representative of the Respublica Romana in the West
was desirous of winning what had formerly belonged to the Eastern
Empire, and when for this purpose the Curia was obliged to summon
the aid of the Franks. Thus old tendencies and views of the Roman
Curia were invested with the authority of the Great Emperor Con-
tantine. St Peter is represented as the Vicar of Christ in the world and
CH. XIX.
## p. 598 (#630) ############################################
598 The Patriciate [754-774
the Roman bishops as the representatives of the Prince of the Apostles:
therefore the Emperor is made to exalt the Chair of Peter above his own
secular throne, and in order that the Papal dignity may be honoured
with power and glory far above the secular empire, Constantine is made
to have conferred upon the Roman bishop the City of Rome and all the
provinces, places and towns of Italy and of the West, while he himself
removed his capital to the East and erected a residence in Byzantium
"because it is not right that the secular Emperor should have authority
where the Principality of Priests and the Head of the Christian Religion
were established by the Heavenly Emperor. "
In the eighth century the Curia put forward for the first time this
claim of political sovereignty for the highest office in the Church; and ■
this claim has never since been completely forgotten, though often
greatly modified. Pepin satisfied the Curia when Pope Stephen came in
person to visit him in France in 754. Pepin presented him with a
certain document and promised to procure for him the States of the
Church. He twice took the field against the Lombards and won
Lombard districts for the Pope. What he promised to bestow we do
not know, because the document has not been preserved, and subsequent
accounts are not sufficiently circumstantial; but we know that in 754
and 756 Pepin secured for the Curia the possession of the Roman Duchy
of Pentapolis and the Exarchate of Ravenna, and that he regarded his
promise as thus fulfilled. Pepin was appointed Patricius by the Pope
and declared Protector of the Church and her territory. From his
Roman Patriciate Pepin inferred a duty to protect, but not a right to
rule. His son Charles, on the contrary, managed to change the relation
and to transform the obligation of protection into a suzerainty.
After a short vacillation during the first years of the reign of Charles,
the Papal policy, >under Hadrian (774), the successor of Stephen IV,
naturally took its former course of alliance with the Franks and opposi-
tion to the Lombards. Circumstances soon became exceedingly threaten-
ing. The Pope demanded restoration of church property, but Desiderius
marched against Rome, and legates from the Pope hastened over the
Alps to implore Frankish help.
Charles acted cautiously. He sent messengers into Italy to ascertain
the exact position of affairs, and he made reasonable proposals to Desiderius
in order to avoid war. Only when these failed he summoned an Assembly
to Geneva, resolved on war and marched over Mont Cenis into Italy, while
a second division of his army led by his uncle Bernard chose the road over
the Great St Bernard. The defiles of the Italian side had been strongly
fortified by Desiderius. Later legends tell of a Lombard minstrel who
guided the Franks over the mountains into Italy by secret paths. It is
historically certain that Charles caused part of his army to take a cir-
cuitous route, while negotiations with Desiderius were renewed, and that
this caused Desiderius to give up his position in the defile and withdraw
## p. 599 (#631) ############################################
773-774] End of the Lombard Kingdom 599
to Pavia, while his son Adalgis with Carloman's widow Gerberga and
Charles' nephews sought refuge in the fortress of Verona. Probably
about the end of September 773 Charles began the siege of Pavia. An
expedition sent thence against Verona obtained the surrender of
Gerberga and her sons, of whom no more is heard. Adalgis fled to
Constantinople. But Pavia itself held out till the beginning of June
774. The town was ravaged by disease and obliged to surrender.
Desiderius with his wife and daughter were taken prisoners, the royal
treasure was confiscated, and the Lombard kingdom was at an end.
Before this, however, while the Franks were still besieging Pavia,
Charles had taken a journey to Rome. He reached the Eternal City
(2 April) and made such an entry as was usually granted to the Greek
Exarch and Patrician. The Pope awaited the king in the entrance of
St Peter's. Charles approached on foot, kissed each of the steps which
led up to the church, embraced the Pope, and entered the church on
his right. Together they descended to the grave of St Peter and took
an oath of mutual fidelity. After that came an entry into the city itself.
On the succeeding days various solemnities were celebrated, and (6 April)
the important discussion took place in St Peter's. According to the
contemporary Life of Hadrian, the Pope begged and warned Charles to
fulfil the promise that had once been given by King Pepin, Charles,
Carloman, and the Frankish nobles, on the occasion of the Papal visit
to Francia, concerning the bestowal of different towns and districts of the
province of Italy. Hereupon Charles caused the document drawn up at
Quierzy to be read. He and his nobles assented to everything that was
recorded therein and voluntarily and gladly ordered a new document to
be drawn up by his chaplain and notary Hitherius, according to the
pattern of the former one, and in it he promised to confer on St Peter
the same towns and districts within certain limits as described in the
document. The boundary begins at Luni, so that Corsica is included.
It goes on to Suriano, to Mons Bardone, Parma, Reggio, Mantua, and
Monselice. Thus according to the Papal biographer the donation was
the Exarchate of Ravenna in its ancient extent, the provinces of Venetia
and Istria, and the Duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. The document
itself, as he further reports, was attested by Charles with his own hand,
and the names of the nobles present were added. Then Charles and his
nobles laid the deed first upon the altar, then upon the sepulchre of
St Peter, and delivered it to the Pope, taking an oath that they would
fulfil all its conditions. A second copy, also written by Hitherius, the
king laid with his own hands upon the body of St Peter under the
Gospels. , A third copy, prepared by the Roman Chancery, Charles took
with him.
There can no longer be any doubt that the detailed account in the
Vita Hadriani of the events of 6 April 774 is correct in the essential
particulars. In the most solemn manner Charles then renewed his
## p. 600 (#632) ############################################
600 Charles' Donation [774-781
father's promise. But it is not likelv that the contents of the document
are always correctly quoted by the biographer of Hadrian, or that Charles
bestowed such extensive territories. We hear indeed that the Curia was
afterwards not quite satisfied with the performance of the promise of
774, but we never find the Pope asking for so much territory, though we
see his utmost hopes quite clearly in the extant Papal correspondence.
The Popes had no reason modestly to lay aside demands which in point
of law would have had such an excellent foundation as that indicated in
the Vita Hadriani. Again, the later forged donations by the Prankish
rulers in favour of the Curia know absolutely nothing of the immense
extent of the promise of the Vita Hadriani, nor is there ground for
assuming that Charles made a new treaty with the Pope somewhere
about 781 and altered the promise of the document of 774 because it
was too burdensome. The conclusion therefore seems inevitable that
Charles the Great never issued a document of such contents as the Papal
book asserts. We must suppose there has been distortion or falsification.
Whether the author made these erroneous statements consciously or only
through misunderstanding or whether the document was interpolated at
the time, is quite unknown. But it seems certain that the donation
made in the document which Charles deposited in 774 was not so com-
prehensive as we read in the Life of Pope Hadrian.
The political conditions of Italy were not finally settled by the con-
quest of Lombardy. Many difficulties had to be overcome. As early as the
end of 775, the Lombard duke Hrodgaud of Friuli rose. A conspiracy
of wide ramifications, involving Hildebrand of Spoleto, Arichis of
Benevento, and Reginbald of Chiusi, seems to have been threatening.
A Greek army under the leadership of Adalgis, the son of Desiderius,
was, as some hoped and others feared, to master Borne and restore the
ancient Lombard kingdom. But Hrodgaud remained isolated. A quick
campaign of Charles in the winter months of 775-6 crushed the rising,
and Hrodgaud fell in battle.
Charles' sojourn in the winter of 780-1 simplified the situation in
Italy. Charles' second son Pepin was anointed as King of Italy by
the Pope, and at the same time Ludwig (Lewis), his four-year-old
third son, as King of Aquitania. This step by no means indicates
that Charles renounced his own share in the rule of Italy. On the
contrary, it was merely a formal concession to the special political needs
'of Italy, with a view to a stricter control and a closer approximation of
the Italian to the Frankish government. The separate kingdom of Italy
was not limited to the former Lombard kingdom, for districts were added
to it. Such were Istria, which had been conquered by the Franks before
790, and Venetia and Dalmatia, which surrendered towards the end of
805 and belonged to the Empire of Charles the Great till 810, and also
Corsica, which was repeatedly defended by the Frankish power against
the Saracens in the first twenty years of the ninth century. Outside the
## p. 601 (#633) ############################################
758-787] The Duchy of Benevento 601
Italian kingdom lay the possessions of the Roman Church, Romania as
they were officially called.
Much remained unsettled—the position of the powerful Duchy
of Benevento, and above all the relations with the Greeks, who, pushed
aside by the events of 774, still plotted against the States of the
Church and against the kingdom of the Franks. Sicily, where a Greek
Patricius was in residence, and South Italy, where their possessions
were gradually melting away, gave them a base of operations. Threat-
ened hostilities might still be avoided. The Emperor Leo IV had died
suddenly in 780, leaving the Empire to his son Constantine VI, Porphy-
rogenitus, who was a minor, and for whom the widowed Empress Irene
undertook the regency. Irene wished to restore image-worship, and thus
come nearer to the Roman Church and to western politics generally. By
her command an embassy appeared before Charles to seek the hand of
the king's daughter Rotrud for the young Emperor of the East. The
betrothal does not seem to have led to any distinct settlement in Italy:
on the contrary, the existing conditions were tacitly recognised.
But the continued uncertainty, especially as concerning Benevento, at
last made necessary a definite adjustment. Since 758 Arichis, the son-in-
law of the dethroned Desiderius, had ruled here, and continued to do so in
complete independence after the fall of the Lombard kingdom. With
his highly cultured and ambitious consort he desired to make Benevento
the centre of an advanced civilisation. He called himself Prince of
Benevento, and had himself anointed by the Bishops and set a crown
upon his own head, thus seeking to emphasise his sovereign position.
The Pope was naturally opposed to this proceeding, for the prosperity
and independence of Benevento were a continual danger to him.
Charles also, the heir of the Lombard kingdom, could not suffer the rise
of a great power in South Italy. The so-called Annates Einhardi credibly
reports that Charles on his journey to Italy, 786-7, contemplated from
the first an attack on Benevento, because he wished to gain the remainder
of the Lombard kingdom.
At the beginning of 787, while Charles was waiting in Rome,
Romuald the eldest son of Arichis appeared with presents and assurances
of peace, hoping to hinder the advance of the Franks towards the
South. But the Pope and the Frankish nobles who were present pre-
vailed upon Charles to advance as far as Capua. Arichis, who had shut
himself up in the fortress of Salerno, sent a further embassy to make
new proposals—that Arichis might be excused from appearing before
Charles in person, but that he should give hostages, among them his
second son Grimoald, send rich presents and profess his subjection.
These proposals were accepted, and Arichis as well as his eldest son
Romuald, who had been set at liberty, and the Beneventines took their
oath of allegiance before the plenipotentiaries.
This was doubtless a great success, not lessened by the rupture with
## p. 602 (#634) ############################################
602 Settlement of Italian affairs [774-788
the Greeks that followed and the breaking off of the betrothal of 781.
But difficulties arose when Arichis died (26 Aug. 787) after the death
of his eldest son and heir. Then the Beneventines asked for Grimoald
the second son-of Arichis, whom Charles held as a hostage. But the king
hesitated to comply with their wish. Pope Hadrian especially had a
share in this decision, for he had informed Charles of the plans of the
Greeks to conquer Italy and appoint the duke of Benevento as the
Greek Patricius, accusing Arichis of treachery and hinting at continued
conspiracies of the Beneventines. As a matter of fact there was a Greek
embassy at Benevento at the end of 787, trying to effect a great
alliance. At different ends of the Empire the forces of opposition were
thus arising against Charles at that time. But they did not take con-
certed action. For there is no evidence that the Beneventines entered
into alliance with Tassilo of Bavaria or even with the Avars and Saxons,
and indeed it is quite improbable, for otherwise Charles could not so
easily have overcome his difficulties.
In the spring of 788, in spite of Papal opposition, Charles at last
complied with the wish of the Beneventines and appointed Grimoald
duke, first requiring of him a solemn oath to recognise the Frankish
supremacy, to place Charles'1 name in decrees and on coins, and to forbid
the Lombards to wear beards. When a Greek army landed in Lower
Italy under the Sicilian Patricius, perhaps bringing with him Adalgis,
son of Desiderius, who had been chosen as a Byzantine vassal prince,
the Lombard dukes of Benevento and Spoleto remained faithful to the
Frankish cause, joining a small Frankish army and inflicting on the
Greeks a decisive defeat in Calabria. The Greek danger was finally
removed. No further restoration of Greek rule in Italy was attempted,
and from that time Adalgis lived peaceably in Constantinople as a
Greek Patricius. But the supremacy over Benevento could not be fully
maintained. Grimoald soon made himself independent, and later attacks
by the Franks had no lasting success.
Through the fall of the Lombard kingdom and the subjugation of Italy
by the Franks, the relations of Charles with the Pope necessarily under-
went an essential change. On his Easter visit, 774, Charles had given
the Pope the solemn assurance that he had not come with his army to Italy
to win treasures and make conquests, but to help St Peter to his rights, to
i exalt the Church of God and to make sure the position of the Pope.
But the result of the journey to Rome was that Charles himself laid
claim to the rule of the Lombard kingdom. VvTien, after~the fall of
Pavia, he assumed the title of king uf the Lombards and added it to
that of king of the Franks, he assumed also the obligations which
belonged to his new office. His policy in Italy was the same as that of
the Lombard kings before him and of all great rulers of Italy after him
—the vigorous ruler ol^ a_^art-strMng-fer-the^possession of the whole.
It was on account of this that the Lombards fell into opposition to the
## p. 603 (#635) ############################################
774-787] Charles' relations with the Pope 603
Pope. Though Charles and the Pope avoided serious conflicts and
always worked harmoniously in their endeavour to reduce the Lombard
Duchies and to drive the Greek power out of Italy, this was due to the
peculiar position of the Frankish king. Charles was not only king of
the Lombards but, as Patricius, was protector of the Church and her
possessions.
Hadrian often reminded Charles of his promise of 774 and demanded
its full performance. The Papal claims were only partially satisfied.
Thus in 781 Charles promised to see to the restoration of the Patrimonies
in the Sabina, but the Pope afterwards demanded in vain the evacuation
of the whole territory. So again in 787 a donation of Beneventine towns
was promised, also of several Tuscan towns, especially Populonia and
Rosellae, but the fulfilment did not perfectly correspond with the Pope's
wishes. For when the royal plenipotentiaries handed over to him the
episcopal buildings, the monasteries and fiscal estates, and also the keys
of the towns, but not sovereign power over the inhabitants, Hadrian
complained bitterly. Of what use to him, he asked, was the possession
of the town unless he had power over the inhabitants ? " He must rule
them by royal dispensation, and he was willing to leave them their
freedom. "
Without doubt all these acquisitions meant for the Roman Curia
more than the mere gain of profitable rights. Political rule would
secure constitutional privileges. What clearly appears as the leading
thought in the forged Donation of Constantine was aimed at by the
Popes of the eighth century on a more limited scale—an ecclesiastical
State freed from all secular interference. Hadrian and his successors
never forgot the thought that no earthly power might govern where the
spiritual Head of Christendom had received his seat from the Heavenly
Ruler.
Charles was not only king of the Franks and Lombards but he was
at the same time, as Patricius, protector of the Respublica Romana.
As successor of the Lombard kings he had to accept somewhat narrower
limits, and above all to set absolutely free the districts belonging to
the Pope. But as Patricius he was entitled to exercise a suzerainty
over those territories too. This meant for the Pope and his deputies
the enjoyment of profitable rights and immediate authority over the
subjects, but for himself the supreme political control.
This was not a process of right but of might. The relations changed
gradually. On his first visit in 774, the king asked permission to visit
the city of Rome. Later on, such a request was needless. In matters
of state, Charles felt himself supreme lord of the Pope and of all Papal
possessions. If he asked the Pope to remove abuses which came to light
in the Papal territories, or if he laid upon him a command to expel from
the Exarchate and Pentapolis the Venetians who carried on trade in men,
it was only an application of generally recognised principles. Protection
## p. 604 (#636) ############################################
604 Invasion of Spain [777-778
implies sovereignty, and the Protector of the Church became sovereign of
the protected territory.
Thus did Charles found a lordship over Italy. The different legal
titles which had created it fell more and more into the background, and
even the political prerogatives of the Pope became more like the secular
authority of other great Churches in Gaul and Italy, which received con-
firmations of privileges from the State. The Roman Church appears
endowed with rich possessions, with great revenues, with important state
prerogatives. But over them stood Charles as supreme lord, as the sole
true sovereign.
Charles' power meanwhile stretched further beyond Francia and Italy
and became more absolute. The patriciate raised the protector of the
Church to the position of lord of Christendom and absolute master of
the West. That is of course the patriciate not as the Pope bestowed
it, but as Charles made it. Later on we shall see how the Frankish
monarchy assumed universal and theocratic elements. The Christian
theocratic ideas were to justify as it were the violent conquests of Charles.
The important point was the acquirement of real power. The great
conquests were necessary, if the theocratic Frankish monarchy was to
become the Empire of the West.
It was not the relief of the oppressed Christian Spain or the support
of political allies but the spread of his power which guided Charles in
his wars against the Arabs. At the Diet at Paderborn in 777, Ibn
al Arabi, apparently governor of Barcelona and Gerona, asked help from
Charles against the Umayyad Caliph of Cordova. The Arabian governor
of Barcelona had already in 759 offered to Pepin to recognise Frankish
supremacy, and Pepin had formed alliances with the Abbasids the
enemies of the Umayyads, and in 765 he had sent ambassadors to Bagdad.
The subjugation of Aquitania and Vasconia in the last years of Pepin's
reign afforded the basis for further extension of Frankish dominion
towards the South.
In the spring of 778 an army summoned from all parts of the
Empire marched in two divisions across the Eastern and Western
Pyrenees into Spain. It is significant that Charles' first achievement
was the siege and capture of Pampeluna, which was inhabited by
Christians and belonged to the Christian kingdom of Asturias. No great
military successes were gained. Many fortified places recognised Charles'
supremacy, but the expected great movement against the Umayyad
'Abd-ar-Rahman did not take place. Among the Arab opponents of
the Caliph of Cordova there was no unanimity. Charles saw that
he had been deceived. He advanced as far as Saragossa on the Ebro,
and perhaps took temporary possession of the town. Then he turned
northwards, and Ibn al Arabi, who bore the blame of the failure of the
expedition, was taken back with the army as prisoner. The Christian
## p. 605 (#637) ############################################
778-793] Roncevalles 605
Basques of Spain were treated as enemies, and the fortifications of
Pampeluna were razed. And as the great army passed through the
defiles of the Pyrenees in long columns, unable to open out for any
military manoeuvres, the rearguard was attacked by the hosts of the
Basques and destroyed. In later legends the place is called Roncevalles.
him to Pepin's care, but with no rights renounced. Was it in part,
perhaps, to vindicate, for himself or for his sons, these rights of the
elder line that Carloman had now appeared in Francia as advocate of
the Lombard cause? Was his reward, perchance, to be the Lombard's
backing of his own princely claims? In any case, what troubled waters
these for Lombard fishing! Was the Pope himself only a timelier
fisher, and may the reluctance of the Frankish nobles have been due in
some part to friends of Carloman and of the Lombard alliance? All
this is mere conjecture. But certain it is that Pepin made effective
terms with Heaven's spokesman and that the outcome was the papal
unction for himself and for his house. Carloman, sick, perhaps with
disappointment or chagrin, was detained in a Burgundian monastery,
where soon he died. His sons were, like the Merovingians, shorn as
monks. Even the fellow-monks whom he had brought with him from
Italy were held for years in Frankish durance.
And what did Pepin in return assure the Pope? Stephen's
biographer speaks only of an oral promise to obey the Pope and to
restore according to his wish the rights and territories of the Roman
State1. But, when twenty years later the son of Pepin, leaving his
1 "Omnibus eras mandatis et ammonitionibus sese totis nisibus oboedire, et ut
illi placitum fuerit exarchatum Ravennae et reipublicae iura sea loca reddere modis
omnibus. " "Respublica," "respublica Romana," had in Roman usage meant the
Empire in general; but the term, which in the papal letters becomes from this time
forward "respublica Romanorum," was doubtless vague enough to Frankish ears.
Its happy ambiguities and clever use during this period are studied most carefully
by Gundlach, in his Die Entstehung des Kirchentiaates (Breslau, 1899).
## p. 588 (#620) ############################################
588 Donation of Pepin [ru
siege of the Lombard capital, went down to Rome for Easter, there was
laid before him for confirmation, if we may trust the papal biographer
of that later day, a written document, signed at Quierzy during Pope
Stephen's visit by Pepin, his sons, and all the Frankish leaders, which
pledged to St Peter and to the Pope the whole peninsula of Italy from
Parma and Mantua to the borders of Apulia, defining in detail the
northern frontier of the tract, and including by express stipulation, not
only all the Exarchate "as it was of old time" and the provinces of
Venice and Istria, but the island of Corsica and the Lombard duchies
of Spoleto and Benevento1. May we trust this passage of the Vita
Hadriani—not only for the fact of a written promise by Pepin and
of its confirmation by Charles, but for all the startling contents? This
is that "Roman question" about which seas of ink have flowed and
still are flowing. For long it was the wont of ultramontane writers to
assume both the reality of such a promise and confirmation and the
accuracy of this account of it, while with almost equal unanimity those
unfriendly to the Papacy or to its temporal power dismissed the one as
myth, the other as forgery. But in these later years, now that the
temporal power is but a memory, scholars have drawn together1. It
seems established that the passage, however corrupt, is no interpolation,
and that it was written at Rome in 774; and there is a growing faith in
its accuracy, even as to the details of Pepin's promise*. But how to
explain so strange a pact is still a puzzle. Was it, as some have thought,
not the main compact between Pope and king, but a scheme of partition
for use only in case the Frank invasion should perhaps result in the fall
of the Lombard power4? Schemes such as this may well have filled the
Pope's long Gaulish visit; but for aught but guesswork our sources are
1 "Civitates et territoria. . . a Lunis cum insula Corsica, deinde in Suriano, deinde
in moute Bardone, id est in Verceto, deinde in Parma, deinde in Regio; et exinde
in Mantua atque Monte Silicis, simulque et universum exarchatum Ravennantium,
sicut antiquitus erat, atque provincias Venetiarum et Istria; necuon et cunctura
ducatum Spolitinum seu Beneventanum. " It must of course be remembered that
to this barbarous age "seu" meant and quite as often as or, and that, in general, its
Latin is not classical.
2 Especially since, in 1883, Sickel, reinforcing the earlier arguments of Ficker,
established the genuineness of the Pactum Ludovicianum of 817, the oldest surviving
confirmation of the gift, and since, in 1884, SchefFer-Boichorst and Duchesne
demonstrated the contemporaneity of the passage in the Vita Hadriani. Duchesne
two years later made this demonstration more effective by publishing the first
volume of a critical edition of the lAber Pontificals, of which the Vita is of course a
part.
3 The Fragmentum Fantuzzianum, which purports to be Pepin's Promissio itself,
has already been described (see p. 585, note). Its list of the territories promised
differs in several points from that of the Vita Hadriani, though agreeing substantially
as to their extent.
4 This is the solution of Kehr, a scholar long busied with the documents of
the popes, and has met with much acceptance. It has been ably supported by
Hubert.
## p. 589 (#621) ############################################
764-756] The Franks in Italy 589
too scanty and too crude. The clerics who meagrely penned the deeds of
king and Pope were only official scribes, inspired and inspected, who of
the deeper planning of their lords perhaps knew little and betray yet less.
The papal letters, a more solid support, are mute, of course, during
Stephen's visit; and, when they reappear, imperfectly preserved and
uncertainly dated, are often but the mask for a wilier diplomacy by oral
message. And in this day of the eclipse of culture, when the best
trained clerk of convent or of curia groped helplessly for words and for
inflections, one can never be quite sure whether what is written is what
seemed best worth writing or only what seemed possible to write. Nor
may it be forgotten that from the side of Greek or Lombard, great
though their stake in the affairs of Italy, we have in all this period not
a word.
The Frankish host at last, in the late summer of 754 (possibly the
spring of 755), set forth for Italy, taking with it the Pope. Before its
start and yet again during the march a fresh attempt was made to scare
off or buy off the Lombard from his prey. But neither gold nor threats
could move Aistulf from his purpose. Happily for the Franks, the
Alpine passes and their Italian approaches had long been in their hands,
and now, ere their main army began to climb the Mont Cenis, they
learned with joy that Aistulf, routed by their vanguard, whom he had
rashly attacked in the mountain defiles, had abandoned his entrenchments
in the vale of Susa and sought shelter within the walls of his capital.
The Franks, rejoicing in the manifest favour of Heaven, were soon before
Pavia; and Aistulf, disheartened, speedily consented to a peace "between
the Romans, the Franks, and the Lombards. " He acknowledged Pepin
as his overlord, and promised to surrender to the Pope Ravenna with
all his other conquests. The Pope was sent on, under escort, to Rome;
and Pepin, taking hostages, returned to Francia.
But Aistulf soon rued his concessions. Only a single town did
he actually give up, and by midwinter of 755-756 he was again
ravaging before the gates of Rome. The Pope in panic appealed
frantically to his ally. Nay, so great was the emergency that, when the
Franks delayed, St Peter himself addressed to Pepin, Charles, and
Carloman, and to the clergy, the nobles, and all the armies and people
of Francia a startling letter. "I, Peter, apostle of God, who have
adopted you as my sons,11 so runs this strange epistle, duly delivered by
messengers from Rome, "do call and exhort you to the defence of this
Roman city and the people committed to me by God and the home where
after the flesh I repose And with us our Lady, the mother of God, Mary
ever virgin,. . . doth most solemnly adjure, admonish, and command you
Give help, then, with all your might, to your brothers, my Roman
people,. . . that, in turn, I, Peter, apostle called of God, granting you my
protection in this life and in the day of future judgment, may prepare
for you in the kingdom of God tabernacles most bright and glorious and
CH. XVIII.
## p. 590 (#622) ############################################
590 Second Frankish Intervention [756
may reward you with the infinite joys of paradise. . . . Suffer not this my
Roman city and the people therein dwelling to be longer torn by the
Lombard race : so may your bodies and souls not be torn and tortured in
everlasting and unquenchable hell fire Lo, sons most dear, I have
warned you: if ye shall swiftly obey, great shall be your reward, and,
aided by me, ye shall in this life vanquish all your foes and to old age
eat the good things of earth, and shall beyond a doubt enjoy eternal
life; but if, as we will not believe, ye shall delay,. . . know that we, by
authority of the holy Trinity and in virtue of the apostolate given me
by Christ the Lord, do cut you off, for transgression of our appeal, from
the kingdom of God and life eternal1. 1'
The Franks delayed no longer. In May they were again upon the
march. Aistulf hastened from Rome to meet them; but again he
failed to bar their path, and again was shut up in Pavia. It was now,
as Pepin drew near the town, that a Greek envoy, who had tried to
intercept him on his way, at last came up with him. In honeyed words
he claimed for the Empire Ravenna and its Exarchate. But Pepin
answered that for no treasure in the world would he rob St Peter of a
gift once offered, swearing that for no man's favour had he plunged thus
once and again into war, but for love of St Peter and the pardon of his
sins. It is the papal biographer who reports his words.
The siege was short. Aistulf, now a convicted rebel, was glad to
escape with life and realm by payment of a third of his royal hoard,
with pledge of yearly tribute, and by immediate surrender of his
conquests. To Abbot Fulrad, as Pepin's deputy, these forthwith were
handed over, one by one, from Ravenna, with Comacchio, down the
coast to Sinigaglia and over the mountains to Narni; and their keys the
abbot bore to Rome, where with the written deed of their donation by
his king he laid them on St Peter's tomb.
When the Franks went home, the Exarchate, as Aistulf had found
it, was the Pope's. Rome and its duchy, though unnamed by Pepin,
were as surely his. But not contentment. Though his lands now
stretched from Po to Liris and from sea to sea, the redemption of Italy
was but begun. AistulFs robberies won back, why not Liutprand's?
Occasion offered soon. Aistulf was killed by accident while hunting,
and his brother Ratchis, without asking leave of the Pope, left the
monastery to assume the crown. The outraged Stephen stirred
Benevento and Spoleto to revolt, and aided Desiderius, duke of Tuscany,
in a struggle for the throne. But this aid had its price: a sworn
1 To count this letter mere rhetoric, as have some, is much to overrate the
literary spirit of the age, and—what is more serious—to ignore both the pious
fraud so characteristic of the time and the pious credulity on which it safely built
Few scholars now doubt that St Peter's letter was meant to be taken by the Franks
as sober revelation. It is by no means improbable that it was penned by the same
hand as the Donation of Constantino.
## p. 591 (#623) ############################################
757-768] Desiderius King of the Lombards 591
contract bound Desiderius to the surrender of the rest of the towns
seized by the Lombards. Abbot Fulrad, who lingered still at Rome,
was not only witness to the pact, but with his little troop of Franks
took a hand in the enthronement of Desiderius. Perhaps he thought
thereby to plight his royal master to enforce the contract; but, though
the Lombard, once on his throne, yielded only Faenza and Ferrara, and
though Pope Paul, who in that same year (757) succeeded his brother,
could extort no more, and filled the ten years of his pontificate with
piteous appeals to the "patrician of the Romans" for help against
dangers, real or fancied, from Lombard and from Greek, the Frank
refrained from further meddling.
Nor was there need of it. Though Desiderius quelled with firm hand the
rebels in Spoleto and in Benevento and was not to be cajoled into further
"restitutions" to the Pope, and though the Emperor tried intrigue both
with Lombard and with Frank, neither assailed Pope Paul with arms.
Not even the fiercely contested papal election which in 767 followed his
death disturbed the integrity of the Papal State. Pope Stephen III,
who in 768 emerged from the turmoil, however he might date his
charters by the Emperor's regnal years and report his elevation to the
Frank patrician, "his defender next to God," was to all intent as
sovereign as they. That so vigorous a ruler and so capable a soldier
as Constantine V made no armed attempt to save to his Empire the
fair peninsula that gave it birth must doubtless be explained not only
by the nearer cares which kept him busy, but by the potent shadow of
the Frank; and to that shadow was clearly due the inaction of the
Lombard. But the Frank himself, beyond St Peter's gratitude here and
hereafter, asked no other meed.
Yet Francia was not without reward. Through the door which
war had left ajar culture crept in. "I send you," writes Pope Paul,
"all the books which could be found "—and he names the hymn-books
and the school-books of his packet, "all written in the Greek tongue,"
an antiphonal and a responsal, treatises on grammar, geometry, ortho-
graphy, works of Aristotle and of Dionysius. "I send, too," he adds,
"the night-clock "—doubtless an alarm-clock, such as waked the monks
to their matins1. It is but a glimpse at a traffic which must mainly
have found humbler channels. The improving calligraphy of Frankish
scribes shews already Roman influence. Bishop Remedius of Rouen
1 Mr Hodgkin thinks "horologium nocturnum" may mean a clock with an
illuminated face. The suggestion is tempting, and we remember King Alfred's
graduated candles and horn lantern; but the phrase seems to imply something
familiar, while illuminated clocks, as Alfred's invention reminds us, were a thing
as yet unknown. Bilfinger, the most careful student of the history of time-reckoning
and time-pieces, interprets as an alarm-clock the "horologium nocturnum" invented
in the ninth century by a Frankish cleric; and Professor Erben of Innsbruck has
already suggested this explanation for Pepin's night-clock.
## p. 592 (#624) ############################################
592 Pepin's Wars [759-760
imported from Rome a singing-master for his clergy; and, when the
master was called back to head the Roman training-school, sent his
monks thither to complete their musical education. Chrodegang of
Metz, ever in close touch with Rome, inaugurated the most notable
church reform of his day by organising under a discipline akin to the
monastic the clergy of his cathedral city. Among the imperial gifts
from Constantinople came an organ, the first seen in the West. A more
questionable blessing was the advent of Greek theologians: Byzantine
envoys debated with papal, before the king and his synod, as to the
Trinity and the use of images; and, though they lost the verdict, they
must have quickened thought. Nor was the new horizon bounded by
Christian lands. The lord of Barcelona and Gerona, Muslim governor of
north-eastern Spain, strengthened himself against his Moorish sovereign
by acknowledging the Frankish overlordship; and a more distant foe of
the Umayyad court of Cordova, the great Caliph Mansur, from his
new capital of Bagdad, exchanged with Pepin embassies and gifts. It
was the beginning of that connexion between the leading power of the
Christian West and the leading power of the Muslim East which has
proved so perennial, and to the powers of Christian East and Muslim
West so costly.
But all this interest in the world at large meant no sacrifice of
energy at home. It was precisely the years that fell between or
followed the Italian expeditions which saw Pepin most active as a
legislator. In four successive synods of his clergy he perfected the work
begun by Boniface, but made it clear that in the Frankish Church the
crown was still to be supreme. Every spring henceforward all the
bishops should gather to the king for synod, and every autumn at his
seat in Soissons those clad with metropolitan authority should meet
again. Inspection and stern churchly discipline should keep at home
and at religious duties priest and monk and nun. All Christians must
observe the Sunday rest and worship, and all marriage must be public
"Though at the moment our power does not suffice for everything,'" runs
an introductory clause full of significance for the king's whole character,
"yet in some points at least we wish to better what, as we perceive,
impedes the Church of God; if later God shall grant us days of peace
and leisure, we hope then to restore in all their scope the standards of
the saints. '1
Days of peace proved rare. In 759, having freshly scourged the
Saxons to tribute and submission, he "made no campaign, that he
might reform domestic affairs within his realm. " But in 760 began the
task which busied his remaining years—the subjection of Aquitaine.
The broad south-west of Gaul, cut off from Neustria by the wide stream
of the Loire, from Burgundy by the escarpment of the Cevennes, had not
since Roman days fully cast in its fortunes with the rest. When Clovis
won it from the Goths he had not sown it with his Franks; and the
## p. 593 (#625) ############################################
762-768] Conquest of Aquitaine 593
Goths, withdrawing into Spain, had left its folk less touched than any
other in the west of Europe by Germanic blood and ways. To the
chroniclers and even to the laws of Pepin's time they still are "Romans. "
The race of native dukes which under the later Merovingians had made
them almost independent acknowledged Pepin as a suzerain only; and
their boldness in harbouring fugitives from his authority and in taxing
the Aquitanian estates of Prankish churches had already caused friction
and protest when the Frank occupation of Septimania gave rise to war.
That this district, so closely knit to Aquitaine before and since, its
doorway to the Mediterranean and the highway of its commerce, should
pass into the keeping of the Frank was indeed a knell to all their hopes.
Duke Waifar had as early as 752 begun to wrest the region from the
failing grasp of the Moor, and it was perhaps only to escape his clutches
that the Goths of its eastern towns offered themselves to Pepin. This
could be borne; but when, in 759, the taking of Narbonne carried to
the Pyrenees the Frank frontier, the speedy sequel was the war with
Aquitaine.
Pepin did not underrate his foe. Year after year, from 760 to
768, he led against Waifar the whole Prankish host; and, though a
brief peace closed the first campaign, the struggle thereafter was to the
death. With thoroughness and system, wasting no time in raids, from
fortress to fortress, district to district, through Berri, Auvergne, the
Limousin, garrisoning and organising as he went, the king relentlessly
pushed on. Once desertion and famine forced him to a pause; but there
followed a fruitful year—for whose blessings the king, like some
American governor or president of modern days, ordained in the autumn
a general thanksgiving—and the war went on. By the early summer of
768 the land was wholly overrun, and the death of Waifar ended the
brave but hopeless fight. Pepin, himself worn out by the struggle,
lived only long enough to enact the statute which should govern the
new-won province. By this he fused it with the rest of his kingdom, but
left to its people their ancestral laws, guarded them against the extortion
of the royal officials, and provided for a local assembly of their magnates
which in conference with the deputies of the Crown should have final
authority as to all matters, civil and ecclesiastical.
In the palace reared by his son at Ingelheim the fresco devoted to
the memory of Pepin pictured him "granting laws to the Aquitanians. "
It was, indeed, his most lasting work. Though the whole history of
Aquitaine betrays her separateness of blood and speech, though still
"there is no Frenchman south of Loire,'" she has never ceased to form
with Neustria a single realm. All else—the absorption of Brittany, the
conquest of the Saxons, the humbling of Bavaria, whose young duke's
desertion had for a moment crippled the war on Aquitaine—Pepin left
unfinished to his sons. Between the two, after the bad old fashion of
the Franks, he now parted the kingdom. To Charles, the elder, grown
C MED. H. VOL II. CH. XVIII. 38
## p. 594 (#626) ############################################
594 Character of Pepin
a man of twenty-six, fell Australia, most of Neustria, the western half
of Aquitaine—all, that is, to north and west; to the younger, Carloman,
still in his teens, though wedded, all to south and east. Bavaria was
assigned to neither: it must first be won.
At St Denis, home of his childhood and his chosen place of sepulture,
Pepin died, not yet half through his fifties. His life, though short, was
fruitful. Modern scholars are at one in thinking his fame eclipsed
unduly by that of his successor. Nearly everything the son accomplished.
the father had begun. Vigorous, shrewd, persistent, practical, his own
general and his own prime minister, relentless but not cruel, pious but
never blindly so, able to plan but able too to wait, Pepin bequeathed to
Charles more than a kingdom and a policy. Even for his bodily strength
and presence, his power of passion and his length of life, Charlemagne
perhaps owed something to the stainless self-control as husband and as
father which was Pepin's alone of all his line. How the king looked
we have no means of knowing. The legend which caused him in later
centuries to be called "the Short" is baseless fable.
## p. 595 (#627) ############################################
595
CHAPTER XIX.
CONQUESTS AND IMPERIAL CORONATION OF
CHARLES THE GREAT.
The significance of great personalities is nowhere in all history
more evident than in the Carlovingian age. Without the work of the
great men of the eighth century it is impossible to explain the shaping
of the Middle Ages and the theocratic and imperial ideas that governed
life in every department. It was Charles the Great, above all, who for
centuries gave the direction to the historic development. It is true that
imperialism and theocracy in the State were required on general
considerations. But their particular form in the West depended very
largely on particular individuals.
Charles was born 2 April, probably in the year 742, at some place
unknown, and was the eldest son of Pepin the Mayor of the Palace (and
afterwards king), and of his wife Bertrada. Shortly before his death in
September 768, Pepin had divided the kingdom between his two sons.
Charles received Austrasia, Neustria, and half of Aquitania, while
Carloman had Burgundy, Provence, Gothia, Alsace, Alemannia, and the
other half of Aquitania. The young kings were solemnly enthroned and
anointed (9 Oct. ) in their respective halves of the kingdom.
We soon hear of disputes between them. We need not assume that
Carloman wished to supplant his brother because Charles was born before
the marriage of his parents. There is no doubt that Charles was born
in lawful wedlock. Unknown personal grounds caused the dispute.
When the Aquitanians under Hunald rose against the Prankish rule in
the first year of his reign, Carloman refused to help his brother, and
Charles reduced the rising by his own power. Bertrada acted as peace-
maker, and succeeded in reconciling the brothers. She did more. She
passed through Bavaria into Italy to win over the two opponents of the
Frankish kingdom, the Bavarian duke Tassilo and the Lombard king
Desiderius. The daughter of Desiderius was to be married to Charles,
and Gisela the sister of the Frankish kings to the son of the Lombard
king. And as Tassilo had married another daughter of Desiderius, and
as Frankish emissaries of Sturm, the abbot of Fulda, were working in
ch. xix. 38—2
## p. 596 (#628) ############################################
596 Charles and Carloman [768-771
Bavaria on behalf of peace, there seemed to be a real bond of union
between Francia, Bavaria, and Lombardy.
The old traditions of Frankish policy before the alliance with the
Curia seemed to revive. The Pope however had considerable cause for
anxiety. When he heard rumours of the proposed marriages he
addressed to the two Frankish kings a letter full of passionate hatred
against the Lombards and of consternation at a change of Frankish
policy. He warned the Franks against an alliance with the Lombards,
that stinking people, the source of leprosy, a people that were not recog-
nised amongst civilised nations; and he threatened anathemas if the Papal
warnings were disregarded. But when Charles nevertheless brought home
his Lombard bride, the Pope accommodated himself to circumstances.
He was mollified by the restoration of Patrimonies and in overflowing
words besought the blessing of heaven on Charles. Soon the Lombard
party even obtained the upper hand in Rome. Desiderius appeared in
Rome as the friend of the Pope and overthrew the party that was
opposed to the Lombards and friendly to Carloman. In a letter sent to
Francia, Stephen praised the Lombard king as his saviour, "his most
illustrious son," who at last had restored all the prerogatives of St Peter.
Even if Charles was but little offended at the Pope's opposition to
Carloman, such intimate friendship with the Lombards cannot have
seemed desirable to him. But all these circumstances were soon radi-
cally changed.
After a union of one year Charles divorced his Lombard
wife. Policy had brought about the marriage, personal wishes of the king,
we may surmise, rent the union sharply asunder. Friendship for the
Lombards was followed by the bitterest enmity.
There was a further cause. The opposition in Rome increased
the estrangement of the royal brothers. Other personal motives may
have co-operated. The alienation was so great that Carloman's people
urged war. But the sudden death of Carloman (4 Dec. 771) made a
complete change in the political situation. Charles seized his brother's
portion of the kingdom. There were, it is true, children of Carloman,
especially a son, Pepin, who had indisputable rights to the inheritance;
but might prevailed over right, and though the enthroning and anoint-
ing of Charles took place "with the consent of all the Franks," while the
court historians praised the Grace of God because Charles' authority was
extended over the whole kingdom without shedding of blood, his disre-
gard of right cannot be denied. Carloman's widow Gerberga had fled
with her children and found refuge with Desiderius, now Charles' mortal
enemy.
The union of the Frankish dominions under one authority was indis-
pensable for their furtherdevelopment. Nottill then did Charles'independ-
ent rule begin. The pre-eminence, and at the same time the ruthlessness,
of the great ruler had already manifested themselves, but until 771 the
softening and restraining influence of his mother had prevailed with him.
## p. 597 (#629) ############################################
752-772] Donation of Constantine 597
Now began the period of vigorous conquest. An empire was founded
that embraced all the West German races and extended over wide
Romance and Slavic regions and Avar territory—an empire that in con-
sideration and extent might be compared with the West Roman Empire.
The real motive in the advance of Carlovingian authority was certainly not
religion. It is the secular ideal and the struggle for power which dominate
men and nations. The Christian idea was but subordinate. It frequently
ennobled, frequently veiled, the desire for power. Later on it had an
essential part in the founding of the Empire that brought to a close the
development of a universal authority in the West.
The first advance accompanied by immediate success was directed
towards Italy for the subjection of the Lombard kingdom. A second
was against the Arabs of the Pyrenean Peninsula. This aimed only at an
unimportant extension of the Empire on the Spanish border and a closer
union of Southern Gaul with the Empire. A third was on the East, in
Bavaria and the territory of the Avars. A fourth was on the North and
North-east in the territory of the Saxons, the Slavs and the Danes.
The political state of Italy was far from settled in the eighth century.
After the collapse of the rule of the Eastern Goths the country had been a
province of East Rome, then conquered from the North by the Lombards,
and the part lying north-west of the Exarchate of Ravenna and Tuscany
was left in possession of the Lombards, and was opposed to the Respublica
Romana, as Lombard Italy to the Province of Italy. When the vigorous
Lombard kingdom, after the time of Liutprand (712-744), aimed at sole
rule over all Italy, winning Ravenna with the Exarchate, and the Duchies
of Spoleto and Benevento were made dependent, this was regarded as an
injury to the Respublica Romana. As holder of this political power for
the Exarchate of Ravenna and for the people of the whole province of Italy
appeared the Roman Bishop. According to law the Eastern Emperor was
still lord of the Roman province, he was still (until 772) honoured as
sovereign in the Papal documents, and so late as 752 Stephen II had turned
to him for help against the Lombards. But political and ecclesiastical
circumstances had led more and more to estrangement, and when the
Roman Duchy and Rome itself were likely to fall before the advance
of Aistulf, Stephen turned to the first Catholic power of the West, to
the Frankish king Pepin.
The donation ascribed to Constantine must have been forged in
Rome at this time, when the Curia was freeing itself politically from
East Rome and as representative of the Respublica Romana in the West
was desirous of winning what had formerly belonged to the Eastern
Empire, and when for this purpose the Curia was obliged to summon
the aid of the Franks. Thus old tendencies and views of the Roman
Curia were invested with the authority of the Great Emperor Con-
tantine. St Peter is represented as the Vicar of Christ in the world and
CH. XIX.
## p. 598 (#630) ############################################
598 The Patriciate [754-774
the Roman bishops as the representatives of the Prince of the Apostles:
therefore the Emperor is made to exalt the Chair of Peter above his own
secular throne, and in order that the Papal dignity may be honoured
with power and glory far above the secular empire, Constantine is made
to have conferred upon the Roman bishop the City of Rome and all the
provinces, places and towns of Italy and of the West, while he himself
removed his capital to the East and erected a residence in Byzantium
"because it is not right that the secular Emperor should have authority
where the Principality of Priests and the Head of the Christian Religion
were established by the Heavenly Emperor. "
In the eighth century the Curia put forward for the first time this
claim of political sovereignty for the highest office in the Church; and ■
this claim has never since been completely forgotten, though often
greatly modified. Pepin satisfied the Curia when Pope Stephen came in
person to visit him in France in 754. Pepin presented him with a
certain document and promised to procure for him the States of the
Church. He twice took the field against the Lombards and won
Lombard districts for the Pope. What he promised to bestow we do
not know, because the document has not been preserved, and subsequent
accounts are not sufficiently circumstantial; but we know that in 754
and 756 Pepin secured for the Curia the possession of the Roman Duchy
of Pentapolis and the Exarchate of Ravenna, and that he regarded his
promise as thus fulfilled. Pepin was appointed Patricius by the Pope
and declared Protector of the Church and her territory. From his
Roman Patriciate Pepin inferred a duty to protect, but not a right to
rule. His son Charles, on the contrary, managed to change the relation
and to transform the obligation of protection into a suzerainty.
After a short vacillation during the first years of the reign of Charles,
the Papal policy, >under Hadrian (774), the successor of Stephen IV,
naturally took its former course of alliance with the Franks and opposi-
tion to the Lombards. Circumstances soon became exceedingly threaten-
ing. The Pope demanded restoration of church property, but Desiderius
marched against Rome, and legates from the Pope hastened over the
Alps to implore Frankish help.
Charles acted cautiously. He sent messengers into Italy to ascertain
the exact position of affairs, and he made reasonable proposals to Desiderius
in order to avoid war. Only when these failed he summoned an Assembly
to Geneva, resolved on war and marched over Mont Cenis into Italy, while
a second division of his army led by his uncle Bernard chose the road over
the Great St Bernard. The defiles of the Italian side had been strongly
fortified by Desiderius. Later legends tell of a Lombard minstrel who
guided the Franks over the mountains into Italy by secret paths. It is
historically certain that Charles caused part of his army to take a cir-
cuitous route, while negotiations with Desiderius were renewed, and that
this caused Desiderius to give up his position in the defile and withdraw
## p. 599 (#631) ############################################
773-774] End of the Lombard Kingdom 599
to Pavia, while his son Adalgis with Carloman's widow Gerberga and
Charles' nephews sought refuge in the fortress of Verona. Probably
about the end of September 773 Charles began the siege of Pavia. An
expedition sent thence against Verona obtained the surrender of
Gerberga and her sons, of whom no more is heard. Adalgis fled to
Constantinople. But Pavia itself held out till the beginning of June
774. The town was ravaged by disease and obliged to surrender.
Desiderius with his wife and daughter were taken prisoners, the royal
treasure was confiscated, and the Lombard kingdom was at an end.
Before this, however, while the Franks were still besieging Pavia,
Charles had taken a journey to Rome. He reached the Eternal City
(2 April) and made such an entry as was usually granted to the Greek
Exarch and Patrician. The Pope awaited the king in the entrance of
St Peter's. Charles approached on foot, kissed each of the steps which
led up to the church, embraced the Pope, and entered the church on
his right. Together they descended to the grave of St Peter and took
an oath of mutual fidelity. After that came an entry into the city itself.
On the succeeding days various solemnities were celebrated, and (6 April)
the important discussion took place in St Peter's. According to the
contemporary Life of Hadrian, the Pope begged and warned Charles to
fulfil the promise that had once been given by King Pepin, Charles,
Carloman, and the Frankish nobles, on the occasion of the Papal visit
to Francia, concerning the bestowal of different towns and districts of the
province of Italy. Hereupon Charles caused the document drawn up at
Quierzy to be read. He and his nobles assented to everything that was
recorded therein and voluntarily and gladly ordered a new document to
be drawn up by his chaplain and notary Hitherius, according to the
pattern of the former one, and in it he promised to confer on St Peter
the same towns and districts within certain limits as described in the
document. The boundary begins at Luni, so that Corsica is included.
It goes on to Suriano, to Mons Bardone, Parma, Reggio, Mantua, and
Monselice. Thus according to the Papal biographer the donation was
the Exarchate of Ravenna in its ancient extent, the provinces of Venetia
and Istria, and the Duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. The document
itself, as he further reports, was attested by Charles with his own hand,
and the names of the nobles present were added. Then Charles and his
nobles laid the deed first upon the altar, then upon the sepulchre of
St Peter, and delivered it to the Pope, taking an oath that they would
fulfil all its conditions. A second copy, also written by Hitherius, the
king laid with his own hands upon the body of St Peter under the
Gospels. , A third copy, prepared by the Roman Chancery, Charles took
with him.
There can no longer be any doubt that the detailed account in the
Vita Hadriani of the events of 6 April 774 is correct in the essential
particulars. In the most solemn manner Charles then renewed his
## p. 600 (#632) ############################################
600 Charles' Donation [774-781
father's promise. But it is not likelv that the contents of the document
are always correctly quoted by the biographer of Hadrian, or that Charles
bestowed such extensive territories. We hear indeed that the Curia was
afterwards not quite satisfied with the performance of the promise of
774, but we never find the Pope asking for so much territory, though we
see his utmost hopes quite clearly in the extant Papal correspondence.
The Popes had no reason modestly to lay aside demands which in point
of law would have had such an excellent foundation as that indicated in
the Vita Hadriani. Again, the later forged donations by the Prankish
rulers in favour of the Curia know absolutely nothing of the immense
extent of the promise of the Vita Hadriani, nor is there ground for
assuming that Charles made a new treaty with the Pope somewhere
about 781 and altered the promise of the document of 774 because it
was too burdensome. The conclusion therefore seems inevitable that
Charles the Great never issued a document of such contents as the Papal
book asserts. We must suppose there has been distortion or falsification.
Whether the author made these erroneous statements consciously or only
through misunderstanding or whether the document was interpolated at
the time, is quite unknown. But it seems certain that the donation
made in the document which Charles deposited in 774 was not so com-
prehensive as we read in the Life of Pope Hadrian.
The political conditions of Italy were not finally settled by the con-
quest of Lombardy. Many difficulties had to be overcome. As early as the
end of 775, the Lombard duke Hrodgaud of Friuli rose. A conspiracy
of wide ramifications, involving Hildebrand of Spoleto, Arichis of
Benevento, and Reginbald of Chiusi, seems to have been threatening.
A Greek army under the leadership of Adalgis, the son of Desiderius,
was, as some hoped and others feared, to master Borne and restore the
ancient Lombard kingdom. But Hrodgaud remained isolated. A quick
campaign of Charles in the winter months of 775-6 crushed the rising,
and Hrodgaud fell in battle.
Charles' sojourn in the winter of 780-1 simplified the situation in
Italy. Charles' second son Pepin was anointed as King of Italy by
the Pope, and at the same time Ludwig (Lewis), his four-year-old
third son, as King of Aquitania. This step by no means indicates
that Charles renounced his own share in the rule of Italy. On the
contrary, it was merely a formal concession to the special political needs
'of Italy, with a view to a stricter control and a closer approximation of
the Italian to the Frankish government. The separate kingdom of Italy
was not limited to the former Lombard kingdom, for districts were added
to it. Such were Istria, which had been conquered by the Franks before
790, and Venetia and Dalmatia, which surrendered towards the end of
805 and belonged to the Empire of Charles the Great till 810, and also
Corsica, which was repeatedly defended by the Frankish power against
the Saracens in the first twenty years of the ninth century. Outside the
## p. 601 (#633) ############################################
758-787] The Duchy of Benevento 601
Italian kingdom lay the possessions of the Roman Church, Romania as
they were officially called.
Much remained unsettled—the position of the powerful Duchy
of Benevento, and above all the relations with the Greeks, who, pushed
aside by the events of 774, still plotted against the States of the
Church and against the kingdom of the Franks. Sicily, where a Greek
Patricius was in residence, and South Italy, where their possessions
were gradually melting away, gave them a base of operations. Threat-
ened hostilities might still be avoided. The Emperor Leo IV had died
suddenly in 780, leaving the Empire to his son Constantine VI, Porphy-
rogenitus, who was a minor, and for whom the widowed Empress Irene
undertook the regency. Irene wished to restore image-worship, and thus
come nearer to the Roman Church and to western politics generally. By
her command an embassy appeared before Charles to seek the hand of
the king's daughter Rotrud for the young Emperor of the East. The
betrothal does not seem to have led to any distinct settlement in Italy:
on the contrary, the existing conditions were tacitly recognised.
But the continued uncertainty, especially as concerning Benevento, at
last made necessary a definite adjustment. Since 758 Arichis, the son-in-
law of the dethroned Desiderius, had ruled here, and continued to do so in
complete independence after the fall of the Lombard kingdom. With
his highly cultured and ambitious consort he desired to make Benevento
the centre of an advanced civilisation. He called himself Prince of
Benevento, and had himself anointed by the Bishops and set a crown
upon his own head, thus seeking to emphasise his sovereign position.
The Pope was naturally opposed to this proceeding, for the prosperity
and independence of Benevento were a continual danger to him.
Charles also, the heir of the Lombard kingdom, could not suffer the rise
of a great power in South Italy. The so-called Annates Einhardi credibly
reports that Charles on his journey to Italy, 786-7, contemplated from
the first an attack on Benevento, because he wished to gain the remainder
of the Lombard kingdom.
At the beginning of 787, while Charles was waiting in Rome,
Romuald the eldest son of Arichis appeared with presents and assurances
of peace, hoping to hinder the advance of the Franks towards the
South. But the Pope and the Frankish nobles who were present pre-
vailed upon Charles to advance as far as Capua. Arichis, who had shut
himself up in the fortress of Salerno, sent a further embassy to make
new proposals—that Arichis might be excused from appearing before
Charles in person, but that he should give hostages, among them his
second son Grimoald, send rich presents and profess his subjection.
These proposals were accepted, and Arichis as well as his eldest son
Romuald, who had been set at liberty, and the Beneventines took their
oath of allegiance before the plenipotentiaries.
This was doubtless a great success, not lessened by the rupture with
## p. 602 (#634) ############################################
602 Settlement of Italian affairs [774-788
the Greeks that followed and the breaking off of the betrothal of 781.
But difficulties arose when Arichis died (26 Aug. 787) after the death
of his eldest son and heir. Then the Beneventines asked for Grimoald
the second son-of Arichis, whom Charles held as a hostage. But the king
hesitated to comply with their wish. Pope Hadrian especially had a
share in this decision, for he had informed Charles of the plans of the
Greeks to conquer Italy and appoint the duke of Benevento as the
Greek Patricius, accusing Arichis of treachery and hinting at continued
conspiracies of the Beneventines. As a matter of fact there was a Greek
embassy at Benevento at the end of 787, trying to effect a great
alliance. At different ends of the Empire the forces of opposition were
thus arising against Charles at that time. But they did not take con-
certed action. For there is no evidence that the Beneventines entered
into alliance with Tassilo of Bavaria or even with the Avars and Saxons,
and indeed it is quite improbable, for otherwise Charles could not so
easily have overcome his difficulties.
In the spring of 788, in spite of Papal opposition, Charles at last
complied with the wish of the Beneventines and appointed Grimoald
duke, first requiring of him a solemn oath to recognise the Frankish
supremacy, to place Charles'1 name in decrees and on coins, and to forbid
the Lombards to wear beards. When a Greek army landed in Lower
Italy under the Sicilian Patricius, perhaps bringing with him Adalgis,
son of Desiderius, who had been chosen as a Byzantine vassal prince,
the Lombard dukes of Benevento and Spoleto remained faithful to the
Frankish cause, joining a small Frankish army and inflicting on the
Greeks a decisive defeat in Calabria. The Greek danger was finally
removed. No further restoration of Greek rule in Italy was attempted,
and from that time Adalgis lived peaceably in Constantinople as a
Greek Patricius. But the supremacy over Benevento could not be fully
maintained. Grimoald soon made himself independent, and later attacks
by the Franks had no lasting success.
Through the fall of the Lombard kingdom and the subjugation of Italy
by the Franks, the relations of Charles with the Pope necessarily under-
went an essential change. On his Easter visit, 774, Charles had given
the Pope the solemn assurance that he had not come with his army to Italy
to win treasures and make conquests, but to help St Peter to his rights, to
i exalt the Church of God and to make sure the position of the Pope.
But the result of the journey to Rome was that Charles himself laid
claim to the rule of the Lombard kingdom. VvTien, after~the fall of
Pavia, he assumed the title of king uf the Lombards and added it to
that of king of the Franks, he assumed also the obligations which
belonged to his new office. His policy in Italy was the same as that of
the Lombard kings before him and of all great rulers of Italy after him
—the vigorous ruler ol^ a_^art-strMng-fer-the^possession of the whole.
It was on account of this that the Lombards fell into opposition to the
## p. 603 (#635) ############################################
774-787] Charles' relations with the Pope 603
Pope. Though Charles and the Pope avoided serious conflicts and
always worked harmoniously in their endeavour to reduce the Lombard
Duchies and to drive the Greek power out of Italy, this was due to the
peculiar position of the Frankish king. Charles was not only king of
the Lombards but, as Patricius, was protector of the Church and her
possessions.
Hadrian often reminded Charles of his promise of 774 and demanded
its full performance. The Papal claims were only partially satisfied.
Thus in 781 Charles promised to see to the restoration of the Patrimonies
in the Sabina, but the Pope afterwards demanded in vain the evacuation
of the whole territory. So again in 787 a donation of Beneventine towns
was promised, also of several Tuscan towns, especially Populonia and
Rosellae, but the fulfilment did not perfectly correspond with the Pope's
wishes. For when the royal plenipotentiaries handed over to him the
episcopal buildings, the monasteries and fiscal estates, and also the keys
of the towns, but not sovereign power over the inhabitants, Hadrian
complained bitterly. Of what use to him, he asked, was the possession
of the town unless he had power over the inhabitants ? " He must rule
them by royal dispensation, and he was willing to leave them their
freedom. "
Without doubt all these acquisitions meant for the Roman Curia
more than the mere gain of profitable rights. Political rule would
secure constitutional privileges. What clearly appears as the leading
thought in the forged Donation of Constantine was aimed at by the
Popes of the eighth century on a more limited scale—an ecclesiastical
State freed from all secular interference. Hadrian and his successors
never forgot the thought that no earthly power might govern where the
spiritual Head of Christendom had received his seat from the Heavenly
Ruler.
Charles was not only king of the Franks and Lombards but he was
at the same time, as Patricius, protector of the Respublica Romana.
As successor of the Lombard kings he had to accept somewhat narrower
limits, and above all to set absolutely free the districts belonging to
the Pope. But as Patricius he was entitled to exercise a suzerainty
over those territories too. This meant for the Pope and his deputies
the enjoyment of profitable rights and immediate authority over the
subjects, but for himself the supreme political control.
This was not a process of right but of might. The relations changed
gradually. On his first visit in 774, the king asked permission to visit
the city of Rome. Later on, such a request was needless. In matters
of state, Charles felt himself supreme lord of the Pope and of all Papal
possessions. If he asked the Pope to remove abuses which came to light
in the Papal territories, or if he laid upon him a command to expel from
the Exarchate and Pentapolis the Venetians who carried on trade in men,
it was only an application of generally recognised principles. Protection
## p. 604 (#636) ############################################
604 Invasion of Spain [777-778
implies sovereignty, and the Protector of the Church became sovereign of
the protected territory.
Thus did Charles found a lordship over Italy. The different legal
titles which had created it fell more and more into the background, and
even the political prerogatives of the Pope became more like the secular
authority of other great Churches in Gaul and Italy, which received con-
firmations of privileges from the State. The Roman Church appears
endowed with rich possessions, with great revenues, with important state
prerogatives. But over them stood Charles as supreme lord, as the sole
true sovereign.
Charles' power meanwhile stretched further beyond Francia and Italy
and became more absolute. The patriciate raised the protector of the
Church to the position of lord of Christendom and absolute master of
the West. That is of course the patriciate not as the Pope bestowed
it, but as Charles made it. Later on we shall see how the Frankish
monarchy assumed universal and theocratic elements. The Christian
theocratic ideas were to justify as it were the violent conquests of Charles.
The important point was the acquirement of real power. The great
conquests were necessary, if the theocratic Frankish monarchy was to
become the Empire of the West.
It was not the relief of the oppressed Christian Spain or the support
of political allies but the spread of his power which guided Charles in
his wars against the Arabs. At the Diet at Paderborn in 777, Ibn
al Arabi, apparently governor of Barcelona and Gerona, asked help from
Charles against the Umayyad Caliph of Cordova. The Arabian governor
of Barcelona had already in 759 offered to Pepin to recognise Frankish
supremacy, and Pepin had formed alliances with the Abbasids the
enemies of the Umayyads, and in 765 he had sent ambassadors to Bagdad.
The subjugation of Aquitania and Vasconia in the last years of Pepin's
reign afforded the basis for further extension of Frankish dominion
towards the South.
In the spring of 778 an army summoned from all parts of the
Empire marched in two divisions across the Eastern and Western
Pyrenees into Spain. It is significant that Charles' first achievement
was the siege and capture of Pampeluna, which was inhabited by
Christians and belonged to the Christian kingdom of Asturias. No great
military successes were gained. Many fortified places recognised Charles'
supremacy, but the expected great movement against the Umayyad
'Abd-ar-Rahman did not take place. Among the Arab opponents of
the Caliph of Cordova there was no unanimity. Charles saw that
he had been deceived. He advanced as far as Saragossa on the Ebro,
and perhaps took temporary possession of the town. Then he turned
northwards, and Ibn al Arabi, who bore the blame of the failure of the
expedition, was taken back with the army as prisoner. The Christian
## p. 605 (#637) ############################################
778-793] Roncevalles 605
Basques of Spain were treated as enemies, and the fortifications of
Pampeluna were razed. And as the great army passed through the
defiles of the Pyrenees in long columns, unable to open out for any
military manoeuvres, the rearguard was attacked by the hosts of the
Basques and destroyed. In later legends the place is called Roncevalles.
