Читать книгу Crises in the History of the Papacy - Joseph McCabe - Страница 8

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Two centuries after the death of Gregory the Great we still find an occasional prelate of rare piety, such as Alcuin, scanning the horizon for signs of the approaching dissolution. Vice and violence had so far triumphed that it seemed as if God must soon lower the curtain on the human tragedy. But the successors of Gregory in the chair of Peter were far from entertaining such feelings. From the heart of the threatening north, another Constantine had come to espouse their cause, to confound their enemies, and to invest the Papacy with a power that it had never known before. The story of the Popes as temporal sovereigns had begun.

Once more we must say that the development was an almost inevitable issue of the circumstances. The Byzantine rule in Italy had never been strong enough to restrain the Lombards, and the rise of the Mohammedans in the farther East now made Constantinople less competent than ever to administer and to defend its trans-Adriatic province. First the city, then the duchy, of Rome fell under the care of the Popes, from sheer lack of other administrators and defenders. We saw this in the Pontificate of Gregory. Beyond the Roman duchy were the scattered patrimonies, the estates given or bequeathed to the Papacy, and these were often towns, or included towns. Here again the lack of secular authority put all government in the hands of the Pope's agents. Then the Eastern court successively adopted two heresies, Monothelitism and Iconoclasm, and the dwindling respect of Rome for the Greeks passed into bitter hostility. Imperial troops sacked the Lateran, dragged a Pope (Martin I.) ignominiously to the East, and induced another Pope (Honorius I.) to "subvert the immaculate faith" or, at least, to "allow the immaculate to be stained."113 On the whole, however, the Pontiffs who succeeded Gregory were firm and worthy men. Rome began to shudder between the fierce Lombard and the heretical Greek, and there slowly grew in the Lateran Palace the design of winning independence of the erratic counsels of kings.

At this juncture, the name of Charles Martel blazed through the Christian world, and Gregory III. and the people of Rome implored him to take them under his protection. The Lombards were, however, auxiliaries of Charles, and, as Duchesne suggests, Charles probably resented Gregory's interference in secular affairs; the Pope had recently encouraged the Lombard dukes who were in rebellion against their king, and Liutprand had, in revenge, seized four frontier towns of the Roman duchy. Gregory failed, but his amiable and diplomatic successor, Pope Zachary, changed the Roman policy and made progress. He lent Liutprand the use of the little Papal army to aid in suppressing his dukes, and received the four towns and other "patrimonies." A little later, the Exarch and the Archbishop of Ravenna asked Zachary to intercede for them, and the genial Pope again saw and disarmed the Lombard. The language of the Liber Pontificalis is, at this important stage, so barbarous—a sad reflection of Roman culture, for it must have been written in the Lateran—that one often despairs of catching its exact meaning, but it seems to me clear that it represents Liutprand as giving the district of Cesena to the Papacy, and restoring the exarchate of Ravenna to the city of Ravenna. Presently, however, we shall find the Popes claiming the exarchate.

The next step was the famous intervention of Rome in the affairs of the Franks. Pippin, Mayor of the Palace, aspired to the throne of Childeric III., and consulted the Papacy as to the moral aspect of his design. The astute Pontiff went far beyond the terms of the request, and "ordered" the Franks to make Pippin their monarch: an act which founded the lucrative claim of Rome that she had conferred the kingdom on the father of Charlemagne. Zachary's successor, Stephen II.,114 completed the work. He was hard pressed by the Lombard King Aistulph, and, after a fruitless appeal to Constantinople, he went to France in 753 and implored Pippin to "take up the cause of the Blessed Peter and the Republic of the Romans." This broke the last link with the East, and Stephen secured the gratitude of Pippin and his dynasty by anointing the King and his sons and pronouncing a dire anathema—which he had assuredly no right to pronounce—on any who should ever dare to displace the family of Pippin from the throne. And so Pippin swore a mighty oath that he would take up the cause of the Blessed Peter, but what he precisely engaged to do is one of the great controversies of history.

It is clear that Pippin was made "Patrician" of Rome. This had long been the official title of the Byzantine Exarch in Italy, and it has no definite meaning when it is transferred to Pippin and Charlemagne. Probably this vagueness was part of the Roman plan. The Pope wanted Pippin's army without his suzerainty. Moreover, in conferring on Pippin the title which had belonged to the Exarch, it was probably implied that the exarchate became part of "the cause of the Blessed Peter." In point of fact, the Liber Pontificalis goes on to say that Pippin swore to win for Rome "the exarchate of Ravenna" as well as other "rights and territories of the Republic." Later, in recording the life of Hadrian I., the Liber Pontificalis says that Stephen asked for "divers cities and territories of the province of Italy, and the grant of them to the Blessed Peter and his Vicars for ever." This part of the work is, it is true, under grave suspicion of interpolation, but the sentence I have quoted may pass. Pippin swore to secure for the Popes, not only the Roman duchy, and "divers cities and territories" which they claimed as "patrimonies," but also the exarchate of Ravenna, to which they had no right whatever. As Hadrian I. repeatedly refers, in his letters to Charlemagne, to this "Donation of Pippin," and in one letter (xcviii.) says that it was put into writing, it is idle to contest it.115

Pippin crossed the Alps and forced Aistulph to yield, but as soon as the Franks returned to their country the Lombard refused to fulfil his obligations and again devastated Italy. No answer to the Pope's desperate appeals for aid came from France and, in 756, when Rome was gravely threatened, Stephen sent a very curious letter to Pippin.116 It is written in the name of St. Peter, and historians are divided in opinion as to whether or no the Pope wished to impose on the superstition of the French monarch and to induce him to think that it was a miraculous appeal from the apostle himself. There is grave reason to think that this was Stephen's design. The letter does not identify the Pope with Peter, as apologists suggest; it speaks of Stephen as a personality distinct from the apostolic writer, insists that it is the disembodied spirit of Peter in heaven that addresses the King, and threatens him with eternal damnation unless he comes to Rome and saves "my body" and "my church" and "its bishop." As Pippin, who had ignored the Pope's appeals so long, at once hurried to Italy on receiving this letter, we may assume that he regarded it as miraculous. However that may be, he crushed Aistulph and forced him to sign a deed abandoning twenty-three cities—the exarchate, the adjacent Pentapolis, Comacchio, and Narni—to the Roman See.117 The representatives of the Eastern court had hurried to Italy and had claimed this territory, but Pippin bluntly told them that he had taken the trouble to crush Aistulph only "on behalf of the Blessed Peter." Byzantine rule in Italy was henceforth confined to Calabria in the south and Venetia and Istria in the north. The Pope succeeded the Eastern Emperor by right of gift from Pippin; and Pippin would, no doubt, claim that the provinces were his to give by right of the sword. In point of fact, however, the Papacy had claimed the exarchate on some previous title, and that title is unsound.

We may now pass speedily to the Pontificate of Hadrian. Aistulph died in 756; Stephen III. in 757. The ten years' Pontificate of Paul I. was absorbed in a tiresome effort to wring the new rights of Rome from the new Lombard King, Didier, and the struggle led to the severance of the Romans into Frank and Lombard factions: one of the gravest and most enduring results of the secular policy of the Papacy. When Paul died, the Lombard faction, under two high Papal officials named Christopher and Sergius, led Lombard troops upon the opposing faction (who had elected a Pope), crushed them in a brutal and bloody struggle, and elected Stephen IV. Stephen was, however, not the Lombard King's candidate, and Didier intrigued at Rome against the power of Christopher and Sergius. He bribed the Papal chamberlain, Paul Afiarta, and it is enough to say that before long Christopher and Sergius were put in prison and deprived of their eyes. This was done at the Pope's command; it was the price of the restoration by Didier of the cities he still withheld.118

Rome was still under the shadow of this brutal quarrel when, in the year 772, Hadrian became Pope. He came of a noble Roman family, and, having been left an orphan in tender years, he had been reared by a pious uncle. Culture at Rome in the eighth century had sunk to its lowest depth, and the letters of Hadrian, like all documents of the time, are full of the grossest grammatical errors. In the school of virtue and asceticism, however, he was a willing pupil. His fasts and his hair-shirt attracted attention in his youth, and he was so favourably known to all at the time of Stephen's death that he was at once and unanimously elected.

Didier pressed for the new Pope's friendship. Charlemagne had already tired of his daughter, or no longer needed her dowry (the Lombard alliance), and had ignominiously restored her to her father's court and ventured upon a third matrimonial experiment. We do not find Hadrian rebuking the Frank King, but he sent his chamberlain Afiarta to the Lombard court, to arrange for the restoration of the cities ceded to Rome and, presumably form an alliance with Didier. While Afiarta was away, however, two things occurred which caused him to change his policy. Carlomann died in France, and his share of the kingdom was annexed by Charlemagne. Carlomann's widow then fled to the Lombard court, and Didier pressed Hadrian to anoint her sons in defiance of Charlemagne. When Hadrian hesitated, Didier invaded the Papal territory and took several towns; while Afiarta, the Pope heard, was boasting that he would bring Hadrian to Pavia with a rope round his neck. Meantime, however, Afiarta's rivals at Rome informed the Pope that Afiarta had had the blind prisoner Sergius murdered, and Hadrian was shocked. He ordered the arrest of his chamberlain, and, in defiance of his more lenient instructions, Afiarta was delivered to the secular authorities at Ravenna and executed.

Didier now set his forces in motion. Hadrian, hurriedly gathering his troops for the defence of the duchy, appealed to Charlemagne and threatened Didier with excommunication. It seems also that he made efforts to secure other parts of Italy for the Papacy. Some professed representatives of Spoleto, which was subject to Didier, came to Rome to ask that their duchy might be incorporated in the Papal territory, and their long Lombard hair was solemnly cropped in Roman fashion. We shall find grave reason to doubt whether these men had an authentic right to represent Spoleto, but from that moment the Popes claimed it as part of their temporal dominion, Didier seems to have underrated the power of the young French monarch. Both Hadrian and Charlemagne (who offered Didier 14,000 gold solidi if he would yield the disputed cities) endeavoured to negotiate peacefully with him, but he refused all overtures, and the Franks crossed the Alps and besieged him in Pavia.

Charlemagne remained before Pavia throughout the winter of 773-774, and, when Holy Week came round, he went to Rome for the celebration of Easter. Hadrian hurriedly arranged to meet his guest with honour, though the account of his ceremonies makes us smile when we recall how imperial Rome would have received such a monarch. Thirty miles from Rome the civic and military officials, with the standards of the Roman militia, met the conqueror; a mile from the city the various "schools" of the militia, and groups of children with branches of palm and olive, streamed out to meet the Franks, and accompanied them to St. Peter's. The awe with which Charlemagne approached the old capital of the world, and the feeling of the Romans when they gazed on the gigantic young Frank, in his short silver-bordered tunic and blue cloak, with a shower of golden curls falling over his broad shoulders, are left to our imagination by the chronicler.119 His one aim is to show how the famous donation of temporal power was the natural culmination of the piety of the Frankish monarch. He tells us how Charlemagne walked on foot the last mile to St. Peter's: how, when he reached the great church on Holy Saturday, he went on his knees and kissed each step before he embraced the delighted Pope: how Frank bishops and warriors mingled with the Romans, and how the vast crowd was thrilled by the emotions of that historic occasion. He describes how Charlemagne humbly asked permission to enter Rome, and spent three days in paying reverence at its many shrines; and how, on the Wednesday, Pope and King met in the presence of the body of Peter to discuss the question of the Papal territory.

In a famous passage, which has inspired a small library of controversial writing, this writer of the life of Hadrian in the Liber Pontificalis affirms that Charlemagne assigned to St. Peter and his successors for ever the greater part of Italy: in modern terms, the whole of Italy except Lombardy in the north, which was left to the Lombards, and Naples and Calabria in the south, where the Greeks still lingered. The duchies of Beneventum and Spoleto, the provinces of Venetia and Istria, and the island of Corsica, which were not at the disposal of Charlemagne, are expressly included; and it is said that one copy of the deed, signed by Charlemagne and his nobles and bishops, was put into the tomb of St. Peter, and another copy was taken to France. This is the basis of the claim of later Popes to the greater part of Italy.

But the suspicions of historians are naturally awakened when they learn that both copies of this priceless document have disappeared: that the only description of its terms is this passage of the Liber Pontificalis, which was presumably written in the Papal chancellery: and that the art of forging documents was extensively cultivated in the eighth century. The famous "Donation of Constantine," a document which makes the first Christian Emperor, when he leaves Rome, entrust the whole Western Empire to Pope Silvester, is a flagrant forgery of the time; indeed, most historians now conclude that it was fabricated at Rome during the Pontificate of Hadrian. Certainly the Pope seems to refer to it when, in 777, he writes to Charlemagne: "Just as in the time of the Blessed Silvester, Bishop of Rome, the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church was elevated and exalted by the most pious Emperor Constantine the Great, of holy memory, and he deigned to bestow on it power in these western regions."120

The equally mendacious Acta S. Silvestri was certainly known to Hadrian, and we do not trace it earlier; and it is probable enough that one or both of these documents were shown to Charlemagne. Some historians believe that the "Fantuzzian Fragment" (a similarly false account of the Donation of Pippin) belongs to the same inventive period, and this is not unlikely.

It cannot be questioned that Charlemagne renewed and enlarged his father's donation, since Hadrian's letters to him repeatedly affirm this. Immediately after his return to France, Hadrian reminds him that he has confirmed Pippin's gift of the exarchate,121 and, a little later, he recalls that, when he was in Rome, he granted the duchy of Spoleto to the Blessed Peter.122 Spoleto did not, in point of fact, pass under Papal rule, but we must conclude from the Pope's words that Charlemagne in some way approved the action of Hadrian in annexing the duchy, and in this sense enlarged the donation made by his father. Beyond this single instance of Spoleto, however, the letters of Hadrian do not confirm the writer of his life in the Liber Pontificalis in his description of the extent of Charlemagne's gift,123 and their silence supports the critical view. While he complains of outrages in Istria and Venetia, while he occupies himself in a long series of letters with the affairs of Beneventum, he makes no claim that these provinces were given to him by Charlemagne. The whole story of the Papacy during the life of Charlemagne is inconsistent with any but the more modest estimate of the donation: that it was a vague sanction of the Spoletan proceeding, in addition to confirming the Donation of Pippin.

The learned editor of the Liber Pontificalis, Duchesne, is convinced that the first part of the life of Hadrian, which culminates in this donation, was written by a contemporary cleric and must be regarded as genuine. He suggests that, when Hadrian perceived the impracticability of Charlemagne winning two thirds of Italy for the Roman See, he released the monarch from his oath. This is inconsistent alike with the character of Hadrian and the terms of his correspondence, and recent historians generally regard the range ascribed to Charlemagne's donation in the Liber Pontificalis as either fictitious or enlarged by later interpolations. The first part of Duchesne's study—the proof that the early chapters of the life of Hadrian were written by a contemporary—is convincing: the second part—that the Pope sacrificed five or six great provinces because it was difficult at the time to get them—has not even the most feeble documentary basis and is unlikely in the last degree, to judge by the known facts. Either some later writer during the Pontificate of Leo III. (or later) rounded the narrative of the early years of Hadrian with this grandiose forgery, or the passage which specifies the extent of the donation was interpolated in the narrative. For either supposition we have ample analogy in the life of the eighth century: for a Papal surrender of whole provinces we have no analogy whatever, and there is not the faintest allusion to it in Hadrian's forty-five extant letters to Charlemagne.124

The life of Hadrian in the Liber Pontificalis consists, as will already have been realized, of two very distinct parts. The first is a consecutive and circumstantial narrative of events up to the departure of Charlemagne from Rome in the spring of 774. This seems to have been written by an eye-witness, possibly a clerk in the Papal service; and it seems equally probable that this contemporary narrative was rounded by a later hand with a fictitious account of Charlemagne's conduct on the Wednesday. Immediately afterwards, Charlemagne returned to Pavia, conquered Didier, and carried him off to a French monastery. This occurred in the second year of Hadrian's Pontificate, yet in the Liber Pontificalis, the remaining twenty years are crushed into a few chaotic paragraphs, and these are chiefly concerned with his lavish decoration of the Roman churches. We turn to his letters, and from these we can construct a satisfactory narrative and can obtain a good idea of the writer's personality.

Of the fifty-five extant letters of Hadrian no less than forty-five are addressed to Charlemagne, and they are overwhelmingly concerned with his temporal possessions. He is rather a King-Pope than a Pope-King. For twenty years he assails Charlemagne with querulous, petulant, or violent petitions to protect the rights of the Blessed Peter, and it is not illiberally suspected that the lost replies of Charlemagne contained expressions of impatience. The Pope's letters, with their unceasing references to the Blessed Peter and all that he has done for Charlemagne, are not pleasant reading, and the Frank King, whose Italian policy seems to baffle his biographers, must have realized that his position as suzerain of the Blessed Peter was delicate and difficult. Hadrian on the other hand, found that the temporal rights of his See left comparatively little time for spiritual duties and laid a strain on his piety. Once in a few years he smites a heretic or arraigns some delinquent prelate, but the almost unvarying theme of his letters is a complaint that the Blessed Peter is defrauded of his rights, and he is at times drawn into political intrigues which do not adorn his character. We may recognize that his ambition was as impersonal as that of Gregory the Great, yet the spectacle of his plaints and manœuvres is not one on which we can dwell with admiration.

Charlemagne had scarcely returned to France when he received from Hadrian a bitter complaint that Leo, Archbishop of Ravenna, had seized the cities of the exarchate and was endeavouring to win those of the Pentapolis.125 Charlemagne did not respond; indeed Leo went in person to the Frank court, and it is significant that after his return he was, Hadrian says, more insolent and ambitious than ever. He cast out the officials sent from Rome and, by the aid of his troops, took over the rule of the exarchate. Charlemagne was busy with his Saxon war, and he paid no attention to the Pope's piteous appeals.126 Leo died in 777, however, and his successor seems to have submitted to Rome. Charlemagne had meantime visited Italy and may have intervened.

The business which brought Charlemagne to Italy in 776 was more serious. Arichis, Duke of Beneventum, one of the ablest and most cultivated of the Lombards, who was married to a daughter of Didier, was an independent sovereign. Hildeprand, Duke of Spoleto, who had—in spite of the supposed annexation of Spoleto—chosen to regard Charlemagne rather than Hadrian as his suzerain, was on good terms with Arichis, and the Pope looked on their friendship with gloomy suspicion. He reported to Charlemagne that they were conspiring against his authority. Charlemagne's envoys were due at Rome, and Hadrian bitterly complained to him that they had gone first to Spoleto and had "greatly increased the insolence of the Spoletans," and had then, in spite of all the Pope's protests, proceeded to Beneventum.127 It is clear that there was in Italy a strong feeling against the Papal expansion, and that the occasional appeals for incorporation in the Roman territory came from clerics. Spoleto remained independent, in spite of Hadrian's claim that it had been promised to him; in fact, it was clearly the policy of Charlemagne to leave these matters to local option, and he can scarcely have made a definite promise to include Spoleto in his "donation."

In the following year, Hadrian sent more alarming news. Adelchis, a son of Didier, had fled to the Greeks and was pressing them to assist in overthrowing the Frank-Roman system. Hadrian said that Arichis and Hildeprand, as well as Hrodgaud of Friuli and Reginald of Clusium, had conspired with the Greeks, and he implored the King "by the living God" to come at once. Charlemagne came, and chastised Hrodgaud, but he does not seem to have found serious ground for the charges against the Dukes of Spoleto and Beneventum. Presently, however, Hadrian was able to announce more definitely a conspiracy against his rule; the Beneventans and Greeks had captured some of his Campanian towns, and Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria (son-in-law of Didier), had joined them. It is true that Charlemagne was, at the time, busy in Saxony, but it is equally clear that he was angry with the Pope and resented his efforts to secure the two duchies. In 777, Hadrian wrote that he rejoiced to hear that Charlemagne was at length coming; he sent him a long list, from the Roman archives, of all the territories to which Rome laid claim, and invited the Frank to be a second Constantine.128 But Charlemagne came not, and in his next letter Hadrian has to lament that the Frank has committed the "unprecedented act" of arresting the Papal Legate for insolence, and the Lombards are openly exulting in his humiliation.129

There seems then to have been a long period without correspondence between the two courts, or else it has not been thought judicious to preserve the letters. In 781, however, Charlemagne came to Rome. Tassilo was disarmed, and, as Charlemagne's daughter was betrothed to the son of the Eastern Empress Irene, the Greeks must have been pacified. The six years of peace which followed were, no doubt, used by Hadrian in that princely decoration of the Roman churches of which I will speak later and in some attention to ecclesiastical affairs. We find him writing, in 785, to the bishops of Spain; though he seems to have had little influence on the Spanish heresy which he denounced, and it was left to the more vigorous attacks of Charlemagne.130 In 786 he extended his pastoral care to England, which had not seen a Roman envoy since the days of Gregory. His Legates were received with honour, but they reported that the English Church was in a deplorable condition.131 King Offa made a princely gift for the maintenance of lamps in St. Peter's (a euphemism of the Roman court) and for the poor, and it is curious to read that Hadrian consented, at the King's request, to make Lichfield a metropolitan see.

The peace was broken in 787 by an active alliance of Arichis, Tassilo, and the Greeks, and Charlemagne again set out for Italy. Arichis was forced to pay the Franks a heavy annual tribute and give his sons as hostages. The elder son and Arichis himself died soon afterwards, and Hadrian again made lamentable efforts to secure the duchy. The accomplished widow of Arichis, Adelperga, besought Charlemagne to bestow it on her younger son, Romwald, and Hadrian begged him not to comply. He trusted Charlemagne would not suspect him of coveting the duchy himself132; but he refrained from suggesting an alternative to the son of Arichis, and at length he boldly warned Charlemagne not to "prefer Romwald to the Blessed Peter."133 Other indications of the building of the temporal power are not more edifying. We read that representative inhabitants of Capua and other Beneventan cities have sought incorporation in the Roman "republic"; and then we read that the cities have been handed over to the Papacy without inhabitants—a clear sign of the wishes of the majority—and that Romwald is assuring his subjects, on the authority of Charlemagne, that they need not pass under the authority of Rome unless they will.

Charlemagne again ignored the Pope's efforts, and soon had the Spoletan and Beneventan troops co-operating with his own against the Greeks. Hadrian obtained no control over Spoleto and Beneventum, and the fact that he does not charge Charlemagne with failing to keep faith with the Blessed Peter casts further discredit on the supposed donation. In Venetia and Istria he had no influence whatever, and his agents were barbarously treated.134 Corsica never enters his correspondence. His power was confined to the Roman duchy, the exarchate, and the Pentapolis; and even there it was much assailed. It is true that in an hour of resolution he forbade Charlemagne to interfere in an ecclesiastical election at Ravenna, and it was as master of Ravenna that he gave Charlemagne the marbles and mosaics of the old palace. But he complained bitterly that Charlemagne listened to his critics in Ravenna,135 and he had repeatedly to appeal to Frank authority to enforce his sentences. To the end his letters to Charlemagne were querulous and exacting. A few years before his death he heard that Offa of England was proposing to Charlemagne to depose him, and he protested, with more petulance than dignity, that he had been elected, not by men, but by Jesus Christ.136

This demoralizing concern for his temporal rights seems to have warped Hadrian's religious temperament and to have left him little time for purely spiritual duties. A single lengthy letter to Spain and a legation to England are all that we have as yet related, and there is little to add. His third exercise of jurisdiction was unfortunate. Irene had restored the worship of images in the East and was eager for a reconciliation with Western Christendom. She invited Hadrian to preside at an Ecumenical Council. His reply was admirable in doctrinal respects, but he annoyed the Greeks by at once claiming all his patrimonies in the East and protesting against the title used by Archbishop Tarasius. They retorted by suppressing part of his letter to the Council of Nicæa (787), at which his Legates presided, and ignored both his requests.

This, however, was only the beginning of fresh and grave trouble with Charlemagne. The Greeks had annoyed him by cancelling the betrothal of Constantine with his daughter Rotrud, and there is reason to suspect that he already contemplated assuming the title of Emperor. There was, at all events, a sore feeling in France, and when the findings of the Council of Nicæa reached that country, they were treated with disdain and insult. Hadrian had, in his annoyance with the Greeks, refused to give a formal sanction to their findings, but he had so far accepted them as to issue from the Papal chancellery a Latin translation of the acta of the Council. We can readily believe that the translation would be crude and inaccurate, but the quarrel was not based on these fine shades of meaning. The French conception of the use of images differed not only from that of the Greeks, but from that of Hadrian. The northern prelates held that images were to be regarded only as ornaments and as reminders of the saints they represented. In this sense Charlemagne issued, in his own name (though we justly suspect the authorship of Alcuin), the large work which is commonly known as The Caroline Books. It scathingly attacked the Greek canons which had been accepted by the Pope; it took no notice of Hadrian's doctrinal letter to the Council; and, in defiance of the familiar Roman custom, it denounced as sinful the practice of burning lights before statues or paying them any kind or degree of worship. It contained assurances of its loyalty to the Apostolic See, but Hadrian must have felt, when at length some version or other of the work was sent to him (three or four years after its publication), that it was an outrage on his spiritual authority. But the book bore the name of Charlemagne, and in his lengthy reply Hadrian prudently concealed his annoyance.137 In the same year (794) the Frank bishops held a synod at Frankfort and resolutely maintained their position. Whether this synod followed or preceded Hadrian's letter we cannot say, but the Franks continued for years to reject the Roman doctrine.138

Hadrian's biographer discreetly ignores these failures of his attempts to assert his authority, and almost confines himself to the record of his work in Rome itself. He restored and extended the walls, and added no less than four hundred towers to their defences. He repaired four aqueducts, and rebuilt, on a grander scale, the colonnade which ran from the Tiber to St. Peter's. The interior of St. Peter's he decorated with a splendour that must have seemed to the degenerate Romans imperial. The choir was adorned with silver-plated doors, and, in part, a silver pavement; while a great silver chandelier, of 1345 lights, was suspended from its ceiling. Large statues of gold and silver were placed on the altars, and the walls were enriched with purple hangings and mosaics. Vestments of the finest silk, shining with gold and precious stones, were provided for the clergy. To other churches, also, Hadrian made liberal gifts of gold and silver statues, Tyrian curtains, gorgeous vestments, and mosaics. The long hostility to images and image-makers in the East had driven large numbers of Greek artists to Italy, and the vast sums which the new temporal dominions sent to Rome enabled Hadrian to employ them. After a long and profound degeneration "the fine arts began slowly to revive."139 For literary culture, however, Hadrian did nothing; the attempt of some writers to associate him with Charlemagne's efforts to relieve the gross illiteracy of Europe is without foundation.

In charity, too, the Pope was distinguished. He founded new deaconries for the care of the poor, and at times of flood and fire he was one of the first to visit and relieve the sufferers. But both his artistic and his philanthropic work was almost restricted to Rome. He added a few farms to those which his predecessors had planted on the desolate Campagna, but the great and increasing resources of the Papacy were chiefly used in laying the foundations of the material splendour which would one day daze the eyes of Europe, and in paying soldiers to protect it against his political rivals. It must be added that he was one of the early founders of the Roman tradition of nepotism. He appointed his nephew Paschalis to one of the chief Papal offices, and the brutality of the man, which will appear presently, shows that the promotion was not made on the ground of merit.

His long Pontificate came to an end on December 25th (or 26th) in the year 795, and it is an indication of the new position of the Papacy that his successor at once sent to Charlemagne the keys of Rome and of the tomb of St. Peter. We have the assurance of Eginhard that the Frank monarch wept as one weeps who has lost a dear son or brother, and he afterwards sent to Rome a most honouring epitaph of Hadrian, cut in gold letters on black marble. The character of Charlemagne and his inmost attitude toward the new Papacy he had created do not seem to me to be sufficiently elucidated by any of his biographers, but with that we are not concerned. He had deep regard for Hadrian, in spite of the Pope's failings. The new royal state was too heavy a burden for Hadrian I. to bear with dignity. One cannot doubt the sincerity of his religion, his humanity, and his impersonal devotion to what he conceived to be his duty. But it is equally plain that in the first Pope-King the cares of earthly dominion enfeebled the sense of spiritual duty and at times warped his character. It needed a great man to pass without scathe through such a transformation. Hadrian I. was not a great man.