The foundation of the Holy Roman Empire marks an epoch in medieval theory, though much less in medieval practice. The Middle Ages were peculiarly addicted to legal fictions, and until this time the fiction had persisted that the Western provinces of the former Roman Empire were still subject, de jure, to the Emperor in Constantinople, who was regarded as the sole source of legal authority. Charlemagne, an adept in legal fictions, maintained that the throne of the Empire was vacant, because the reigning Eastern sovereign Irene (who called herself emperor, not empress) was a usurper, since no woman could be emperor. Charles derived his claim to legitimacy from the Pope. There was thus, from the first, a curious interdependence of pope and emperor. No one could be emperor unless crowned by the Pope in Rome; on the other hand, for some centuries, every strong emperor claimed the right to appoint or depose popes. The medieval theory of legitimate power depended upon both emperor
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and pope; their mutual dependence was galling to both, but for centuries inescapable. There was constant friction, with advantage now to one side, now to the other. At last, in the thirteenth century, the conflict became irreconcilable. The Pope was victorious, but lost moral authority shortly afterwards. The Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor both survived, the Pope to the present day, the Emperor to the time of Napoleon. But the elaborate medieval theory that had been built up concerning their respective powers ceased to be effective during the fifteenth century. The unity of Christendom, which it maintained, was destroyed by the power of the French, Spanish, and English monarchies in the secular sphere, and by the Reformation in the sphere of religion.
The character of Charles the Great and his entourage is thus summed up by Dr. Gerhard
Seeliger: *
Vigorous life was developed at Charles’s court. We see there magnificence and genius, but morality also. For Charles was not particular about the people he drew round him. He himself was no model, and he suffered the greatest licence in those whom he liked and found useful. As «Holy Emperor» he was addressed, though his life exhibited little holiness. He is so addressed by Alcuin, who also praises the Emperor’s beautiful daughter Rotrud as distinguished for her virtues in spite of her having borne a son to Count Roderic of Maine, though not his wife. Charles would not be separated from his daughters, he would not allow their marriage, and he was therefore obliged to accept the consequences. The other daughter, Bertha, also had two sons by the pious Abbot Angilbert of St. Riquier. In fact the court of Charles was a centre of very loose life.
Charlemagne was a vigorous barbarian, politically in alliance with the Church, but not unduly burdened with personal piety. He could not read or write, but he inaugurated a literary renaissance. He was dissolute in his life, and unduly fond of his daughters, but he did all in his power to promote holy living among his subjects. He, like his father Pepin, made skilful use of the zeal of missionaries to promote his influence in Germany, but he saw to it that popes obeyed his orders. They did this the more willingly, because Rome had become a barbarous city, in which the person of the Pope was not safe without
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* In Cambridge Medieval History, II, 663.
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external protection, and papal elections had degenerated into disorderly faction fights, In 799, local enemies seized the Pope, imprisoned him, and threatened to blind him. During Charles’s lifetime, it seemed as if a new order would be inaugurated; but after his death little survived except a theory.
The gains of the Church, and more particularly of the papacy, were more solid than those of the Western Empire. England had been converted by a monastic mission under the orders of Gregory the Great, and remained much more subjectto Rome than were the countries with bishops accustomed to local autonomy. The conversion of Germany was largely the work of Saint Boniface ( 680-754), an English missionary, who was a friend of Charles Martel and Pepin, and completely faithful to the Pope. Boniface founded many monasteries in Germany; his friend Saint Gall founded the Swiss monastery which bears his name. According to some authorities, Boniface anointed Pepin as king with a ritual taken from the First Book of Kings.
Saint Boniface was a native of Devonshire, educated at Exeter and Winchester. He went to Frisia in 716, but soon had to return. In 717 he went to Rome, and in 719 Pope Gregory II sent him to Germany to convert the Germans and to combat the influence of the Irish missionaries (who, it will be remembered, erred as to the date of Easter and the shape of the tonsure). After considerable successes, he returned to Rome in 722, where he was made bishop by Gregory II, to whom he took an oath of obedience. The Pope gave him a letter to Charles Marcel, and charged him to suppress heresy in addition to converting the heathen. In 732 he became archbishop; in 738 he visited Rome a third time. In 741 Pope Zacharias made him legate, and charged him to reform the Frankish Church. He founded the abbey of Fulda, to which he gave a rule stricter than the Benedictine. Then he had a controversy with an Irish bishop of Salzburg, named Virgil, who maintained that there are other worlds than ours, but was nevertheless canonized. In 754, after returning to Frisia, Boniface and his companions were massacred by the heathen. It was owing to him that German Christianity was papal, not Irish.
English monasteries, particularly those of Yorkshire, were of great importance at this time. Such civilization as had existed in Roman Britain had disappeared, and the new civilization introduced by Christian missionaries centred almost entirely round the Benedictine
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abbeys, which owed everything directly to Rome. The Venerable Bede was a monk at Jarrow. His pupil Ecgbert, first archbishop of York, founded a cathedral school, where Alcuin was educated.
Alcuin is an important figure in the culture of the time. He went to Rome in 780, and in the course of his journey met Charlemagne at Parma. The Emperor employed him to teach Latin to the Franks and to educate the royal family. He spent a considerable part of his life at the court of Charlemagne, engaged in teaching and in founding schools. At the end of his life he was abbot of St. Martin’s at Tours. He wrote a number of books, including a verse history of the church at York. The emperor, though uneducated, had a considerable belief in the value of culture, and for a brief period diminished the darkness of the dark ages. But his work in this direction was ephemeral. The culture of Yorkshire was for a time destroyed by the Danes, that of France was damaged by the Normans. The Saracens raided Southern Italy, conquered Sicily, and in 846 even attacked Rome. On the whole, the tenth century was, in Western Christendom, about the darkest epoch; for the ninth is redeemed by the English ecclesiastics and by the astonishing figure of Johannes Scotus, as to whom I shall have more to say presently.
The decay of Carolingian power after the death of Charlemagne and the division of his empire redounded, at first, to the advantage of the papacy. Pope Nicholas I ( 858-867) raised papal power to a far greater height than it had ever attained before. He quarrelled with the Emperors of the East and the West, with King Charles the Bald of France and King Lothar II of Lorraine, and with the episcopate of nearly every Christian country; but in almost all his quarrels he was successful. The clergy in many regions had become dependent on the local princes, and he set to work to remedy this state of affairs. His two greatest controversies concerned the divorce of Lothar II and the uncanonical deposition of Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople. The power of the Church, throughout the Middle Ages, had a great deal to do with royal divorces. Kings were men of headstrong passions, who felt that the indissolubility of marriage was a doctrine for subjects only. The Church, however, could alone solemnize a marriage, and if the Church declared a marriage invalid, a disputed succession and a dynastic war were very likely to result. The Church, therefore, was in a very strong position in opposing royal divorces
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and irregular marriages. In England, it lost this position under Henry VIII, but recovered it under Edward VIII.
When Lothar II demanded a divorce, the clergy of his kingdom agreed. Pope Nicholas, however, deposed the bishops who had acquiesced, and totally refused to admit the king’s plea for divorce. Lothar’s brother, the Emperor Louis II, thereupon marched on Rome with the intention of overawing the Pope; but superstitious terrors prevailed, and he retired. In the end, the Pope’s will was victorious.
The business of the Patriarch Ignatius was interesting, as showing that the Pope could still assert himself in the East. Ignatius, who was obnoxious to the Regent Bardas, was deposed, and Photius, hitherto a layman, was elevated to his place. The Byzantine government asked the Pope to sanction this proceeding. He sent two legates to inquire into the matter; when they arrived in Constantinople, they were terrorized, and gave their assent. For some time, the facts were concealed from the Pope, but when he came to know them, he took a high line. He summoned a council in Rome to consider the
