Later Relations

his Northern costume, and put on the tunic, the chlamys, and the sandals of the Roman. When he came to of Charlemagne leave Rome, and Leo III. exchanged kisses with and the Pope him, and he was lost to sight behind the hills of the Champagne, Europe entered on a new career. The Northern empire was to strengthen and protect the papacy in every emergency. On the other hand, the papacy must give its spiritual approval to the empire. Beautiful as this management appeared, it had its dangers. Each was slave to the other. The papacy could only be upheld by imperial arms. The empire would be in constant danger of strifes of succession without the participation and coronation of the papacy. The time came, later, when it would have been convenient for both parties if Charlemagne had never seen Rome, and no pope had put upon his head the crown of the Cæsars.

CHAPTER III

CHURCH AND STATE UNDER THE LATER CAROLINGIAN RULERS

THE example of Charlemagne was on the side of imperial predominance. He never meant the least surrender to the

Example

pope of absolute control over the Church. He Charlemagne's knew the ancient power of the Roman emperors over the religious affairs of the State, and adhered to his notions of theocratic responsibility. It was convenient to have a pope crown him, but the august ceremony produced no restraints. He regarded himself the full suzerain of Rome, and of Rome's pope. How little importance Charlemagne attached to the papal coronation may be seen in the fact that, in 813, when he wanted to associate his son Louis with him, in the government of the empire, he, with his own hands, placed the crown upon the young man's head.

The Carolingian successors to Charlemagne were a group of steadily dissolving lights. The family intellect diminished to a lamentable degree. But there was no relaxing of imperial claims. Each ruler asserted his sovereignty over the religious functions of Europe. All the Carolingians adhered to the ap

pointment of bishops, as their father and his predecessors had done. The civil rulers frequently sold the episcoSuccessors of pal office to the highest bidder. The Council of Charlemagne Orleans, in 549, and that of Paris, in 557, had protested against such methods. But the evil continued. Dagobert I., in 631, appointed his treasurer, a layman, to the see of Cahors. All the barbaric rulers ignored the authority of the Roman bishop. Even Boniface was made Archbishop of Mainz by royal hands. Charles Martel rewarded his soldiers with the best sees in his realm. The brightest dream of many a bronzed warrior was to spend his last years with the peaceful crosier in his scarred hand. As the Carolingian line continued there was a rise of papal prerogative. No exception was taken to Charlemagne's appointments, because of his prestige and of his service to the Church. But his weaker descendants had no such claims, and were regarded with no such awe. The result of the imperial appointment of Church officers was that the incumbents should feel that, their authority coming from the civil ruler, they were not directly subIndependent ject to papal mandate. The trend was to create an Episcopacy independent episcopacy. This was of the greatest concern to the popes. The bishops would not obey orders. They had direct contact with the people, and the matter must be changed. The popes, during the later Carolingian rulers, succeeded in good measure in getting the episcopal appointments dependent on Rome rather than on the civil ruler. The effect was to strengthen the papacy at the expense of the empire. Why not? No Charlemagne now wore the crown.

The government of the Church was, under the Carolingians, a part of the general machinery of the State. Under both Pepin and Charlemagne the body which legislated for the State did the same for the Church. The clergy were represented, but they only served ornamental purposes, just as the bishops now do in the British Parliament. Charlemagne divided his general legislative assembly into three bodiesbishops, abbots, and counts. The first two attended to ecclesiastical matters, while the last regulated political affairs. The showing was fair. There was the appearance of political liberty. The fact was, the emperor controlled all three orders. Charlemagne required the bishops and abbots to furnish a contingent of soldiers for his armies in proportion to the amount

of property which they held officially. In 801 he forbade the clergy all direct participation in military life.

The extinction of the Carolingians was simultaneous with the complete ascendency of the papacy. For about a century The Extinction there had been pleasant understandings, which of the were of great mutual advantage. Charles the Fat Carolingians was a slender shadow of the great Pepin and the greater Charlemagne. In 855 we find the Neustrian bishops. declaring to Louis the German that they were not obliged to do homage, or swear fidelity, to their sovereign. Synods, councils, and popes were now growing clamorous for the primitive mode of electing bishops. By the time the last descendants of the great Charles were spending their closing days as mere weak functionaries in the palace of Laon, the Church found herself proprietor of more than all her old prerogatives, and holding her new territory with a grasp which only relaxed when she reached farther for a larger slice. She paid back the princely gift of land from Pepin and Charlemagne by an independence and haughtiness quite new even on the bank of the Tiber.

CHAPTER IV

THE FICTITIOUS ISIDORE

[AUTHORITIES.-See the article by Wasserschleben, Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, in Schaff-Herzog Encyclopædia; Newman, Essays, Crit. and Hist., vol. ii., pp. 271-275, 320-335. Mr. William Frederick Hunter, in his article Canon Law, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th edition, holds that the Decretals were compiled by a single author, a Frankish ecclesiastic, between 840 and 860, that they included many authentic Decretals, while others embody the traditional contents of actual but lost Decretals, that the old idea that they were fabricated by the author's brain for the purposes of papal aggrandizement is now exploded, that the compilation was produced for the benefit of the bishops, and that their influence in the subsequent develop. ment of the papacy has been greatly overrated.]

EVERY period of religious ferment exhibits a disposition to fortify the opinions of the present by an appeal to the past. The tendency applies to the evil as well as the good. During the first period of the Middle Ages there prevailed in the whole of Latin Christendom a calm and subdued desire for

to the Past

papal elevation, which, notwithstanding the outward fraternity between emperor and pope, was preparing to Papal Appeal assert itself whenever the right hour struck. The papacy had advantages over the imperial rule of a family. The son might be a poor and weak successor to his father; but no man could seat himself on the episcopal chair of Rome without at least some measure of ability. There was a division within the narrow rule of the ecclesiastical government. The metropolitan bishops were appointed by the emperor, but the bishops in general were supposed to be appointed by the pope. The classes were thus arrayed against each other. By a shrewd manipulation of public sentiment the episcopal and papal interests received a strong support in a skilful forgery.

Pseudo

A Spanish archbishop of the seventh century, Isidore of Hispalis, performed for the German Church the distinguished service of making it acquainted with a number of imIsidorean portant classical and patristic works. He died in 636, Decretals and left behind a name of great repute for mental and moral endowments. His services and fame were used as authority for a forgery, in favor of Roman authority as against the political ruler. The entire Church was deceived. But it was a most welcome deception. The secret lay concealed long enough to fortify every branch of ecclesiastical authority, to make political rulers tremble, and to make Rome ready, when the Carolingians ran out, to extend her spiritual sceptre over all rulers.

The pseudo-Isidorean Decretals combined all the qualities of a perfect deception. They represented a class, and yet were the best of their order. A collection of canons and epistles of Dionysius Exiguus, for example, had been generally used in the West. Isidore of Hispalis had written a collection of important canons not found in that of Dionysius Exiguus, and by his work had contributed greatly to the centralization of ecclesiastical authority in Rome. How could this same work be carried further, now that the Carolingian empire had gained such great prestige and threatened to eclipse the Roman bishop, and had been implored to come and help him fight his battles against the Lombards? Isidore, now in his grave, was, therefore, used to build up this endangered cause. It was pretended that he had left behind a

set of Decretals-the doings of former councils-which had never seen the light. Now, thanks to good-fortune, they had been discovered. They were soon scattered as widely as rapid copyists could multiply them. No compiler had dared to go back further than the authority of Siricius, whose pontificate extended from A.D. 384 to 398. But this forger was no timid character. He boldly rushed back to alleged decrees of unknown councils, and to letters claiming to be written by Clement and Anacletus-bishops of Rome contemporary with the Apostles-and by nearly thirty of the apostolic fathers themselves.

Contents of

The contents of the forged work were enough to condemn it. It was divided into three parts. The first contained, in addition to the authentic fifty apostolical canons, the Decretals fifty-nine spurious decretal writings of Roman bishops from Clement I. to Melchiades, or from the end of the first century to the beginning of the fourth. Even the reputed donation of territory by Constantine to the papacy-a thing which never took place-was brought in to help the common interest. The second part comprised only authentic synodal canons. The third presented some real Decretals, but, besides these, there were thirty-five spurious ones, which were held to have been written at various times from Pope Sylvester I., who died in 335, to Gregory II., who died in 731. The one purpose pervading the entire work was to prove, by early authority, the independence of the bishop. The Church must protect herself and her priesthood. The bishop must be made independent of his metropolitan. When a bishop is tried, it must not be before a metropolitan or a secular tribunal, but before the pope alone. Even a clerk must be tried before an ecclesiastical court. An offence against a priest is an offence against God himself, for a priest is very dear to God, the very apple of his eye. No charge against a bishop can be declared sustained unless supported by seventy-two witnesses. The court must consist of twelve other bishops. Only the pope can convene provincial synods, and his approval is necessary for the efficiency of their de

crees.

The former opinion that the Decretals were intended to prop up the primacy of Rome is now abandoned by the majority of scholars. The opinion is at present divided between two