81

emperors who stemmed the torrent were exasperated and punished by the public hatred. After the death of Theophi lus, the final victory of the images was achieved by a second female, his widow Theodora, whom he left the guardian of the empire. Her measures were bold and decisive. The fiction of a tardy repentance absolved the fame and the soul of her deceased husband; the sentence of the Iconoclast patriarch was commuted from the loss of his eyes to a whipping of two hundred lashes: the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the festival of orthodoxy preserves the annual memory of the triumph of the images. A single question yet remained, whether they are endowed with any proper and inherent sanctity; it was agitated by the Greeks of the eleventh century; and as this opinion has the strongest recommendation of absurdity, I am surprised that it was not more explicitly decided in the affirmative. In the West, Pope Adrian the First accepted and announced the decrees of the Nicene assembly, which is now revered by the Catholics as the seventh in rank of the general councils. Rome and Italy were docile to the voice of their father; but the greatest part of the Latin Christians were far behind in the race of superstition. The churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain, steered a middle course between the adoration and the destruction of images, which they admitted into their temples, not as objects of worship, but as lively and useful memorials of faith and history. An angry book of controversy was composed and published in the name of Charlemagne : 82 under his authority a synod of three hundred bishops was assembled at Frankfort: 83 they blamed the fury of the Iconoclasts, but they pronounced a more severe cen

81 See an account of this controversy in the Alexius of Anna Comnena, (1. v. p. 129,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 371, 372.) 82 The Libri Carolini, (Spanheim, p. 443-529,) composed in the palace or winter quarters of Charlemagne, at Worms, A. D. 790, and sent by Engebert to Pope Hadrian I., who answered them by a grandis et verbosa epistola, (Concil. tom. viii. p. 1553.) The Carolines propr se 120 objections against the Nicene synod, and such words as these are the flowers of their rhetoric-Dementiam . . . . priscæ Gentilitatis obsoletum errorem . . . . argumenta insanissima et absurdissima.... lerisione dignas nænias, &c., &c.

83 The assemblies of Charlemagne were political, as well as ecclesi astical; and the three hundred members, (Nat. Alexander, sec. viii. p. 58,) who sat and voted at Frankfort, must include not only the shops but the ahhots, and even the principal la men

sure against the superstition of the Greeks, and the decrees of their pretended council, which was long despised by the Barbarians of the West.84 Among them the worship of images advanced with a silent and insensible progress; but a large atonement is made for their hesitation and delay, by the gross idolatry of the ages which precede the reformation, and of the countries, both in Europe and America, which are still mmersed in the gloom of superstition.

It was after the Nycene synod, and under the reign of the pious Irene, that the popes consummated the separation. of Rome and Italy, by the translation of the empire to the less orthodox Charlemagne. They were compelled to choose between the rival nations: religion was not the sole motive of their choice; and while they dissembled the failings of their friends, they beheld, with reluctance and suspicion, the Catholic virtues of their foes. The difference of language and manners had perpetuated the enmity of the two capitals; and they were alienated from each other by the hostile opposition of seventy years. In that schism the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes of sovereignty: their submission would have exposed them to the revenge of a jealous tyrant; and the revolution of Italy had betrayed the impotence, as well as the tyranny, of the Byzantine court. The Greek emperors had restored the images, but they had not restored the Calabrian estates and the Illyrian diocese, which the Icono

85

86

84 Qui supra sanctissima patres nostri (episcopi et sacerdotes) omnimodis servitium et adorationem imaginum renuentes contempserunt, atque consentientes condemnaverunt, (Concil. tom. ix. p. 101, Canon. ii. Franckfurd.) A polemic must be hard-hearted indeed, who does not pity the efforts of Baronius, Pagi, Alexander, Maimbourg, &c., to elude this unlucky sentence.

86

Theophanes (p. 343) specifies those of Sicily and Calabria, which yielded an annual rent of three talents and a half of gold, (perhaps 70007. sterling.) Liutprand more pompously enumerates the patrimo nies of the Roman church in Greece, Judæa, Persia, Mesopotamia Babylonia, Egypt, and Libya, which were detained by the injustice of the Greek emperor, (Legat. ad Nicephorum, in Script. Rerum Italica rum, tom. ii. pars i. p. 481.)

86 The great diocese of the Eastern Illyricum, with Apulia, Cali bria, and Sicily, (Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 145: by the confession of the Greeks, the patriarch of Constantinople had detached from Rome the metropolitans of Thessalonica, Athens Corinth, Nicopolis, and Patræ, (Luc. Holsten. Geograph. Sacra, p 22) and his spiritual conquests extended to Naples and Amalphi (Gannone, Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. i. p 517-524, Pagi, A. D 180, No. 11.)

ciasts had torn away from the successors of St. Peter, and Pope Adrian threatens them with a sentence of excommunication unless they speedily abjure this practical heresy." The Greeks were now orthodox; but their religion might be tainted by the breath of the reigning monarch: the Franks were now contumacious; but a discerning eye might discern their approaching conversion, from the use, to the adoration, of images. The name of Charlemagne was stained by the polemic acrimony of his scribes; but the conqueror himself conformed, with the temper of a statesman, to the various practice of France and Italy. In his four pilgrimages or visits to the Vatican, he embraced the popes in the communion of friendship and piety; knelt before the tomb, and consequently before the image, of the apostle; and joined, without scruple, in all the prayers and processions of the Roman liturgy. Would prudence or gratitude allow the pontiffs to renounce their benefactor? Had they a right to alienate his gift of the Exarchate? Had they power to abolish his government of Rome? The title of patrician was below the merit and greatness of Charlemagne; and it was only by reviving the Western empire that they could pay their obligations or secure their establishment. By this decisive measure they would finally eradicate the claims of the Greeks; from the debasement of a provincial town, the majesty of Rome would be restored: the Latin Christians would be united, under a supreme head, in their ancient metropolis; and the conquerors of the West would receive their crown from the successors of St. Peter. The Roman church would acquire a zealous and respectable advocate; and, under the shadow of the Carlovingian power, the bishop might exercise, with honor and safety, the government of the city.

88

87 In hoc ostenditur, quia ex uno capitulo ab errore reversis, in aliis duobus, in eodem (was it the same?) permaneant errore . . de diocessi S. R. E. seu de patrimoniis iterum increpantes commonemus, ut si ea restituere noluerit hereticum eum pro hujusmodi errore perseverantiâ decernemus, (Epist. Hadrian. Papæ ad Carolum Magnum, in Concil. tom. viii. p. 1598;) to which he adds a reason, most directly opposite to his conduct, that he preferred the salvation of souls and rule of faith to the goods of this transitory world.

39 Fontanini considers the emperors as no more than the advocates of the church, (advocatus et defensor S. R. E. See Ducange, Gloss Lat. tom. i. p. 297.) His antagonist Muratori reduces the popes to be no more than the exarchs of the emperor. In the more eqi itable view of Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 264, 265,) they held orug

89

Before the ruin of Paganism in Rome, the competition for a wealthy bishopric had often been productive of tumult and bloodshed. The people was less numerous, but the times were more savage, the prize more important, and the chair of St. Peter was fiercely disputed by the leading ecclesiastics who aspired to the rank of sovereign. The reign of Adriar the First " surpasses the measure of past or succeeding ages;" the walls of Rome, the sacred patrimony, the ruin of the Lombards, and the friendship of Charlemagne, were the trophies of his fame: he secretly edified the throne of his successors, and displayed in a narrow space the virtues of a great prince. His memory was revered; but in the next election, a priest of the Lateran, Leo the Third, was preferred to the nephew and the favorite of Adrian, whom he had promoted to the first dignities of the church. Their acquiescence or repentance disguised, above four years, the blackest intention of revenge, till the day of a procession, when a furious band of conspirators dispersed the unarmed multitude, and assaulted with blows and wounds the sacred person of the pope. But their enterprise on his life or liberty was disappointed, perhaps by their own confusion and remorse. Leo was left for dead on the ground: on his revival from the swoon, the effect of his loss of blood, he recovered his speech and sight; and this natural event was improved to the miraculous restoration of his eyes and tongue, of which he had been deprived, twice deprived, by the knife of the assassins.o1 From his prison he

under the empire as the most honorable species of fief or beneficepremuntur nocte caliginosâ !

89 His merits and hopes are summed up in an epitaph of thirtyeight-verses, of which Charlemagne declares himself the author, (Con eil. tom. viii. p. 520.)

Post patrem lacrymans Carolus hæc carmina scripsi.
Tu mihi dulcis amor, te modo plango pater...
Nomina jungo simul titulis, clarissime, nostra
Adrianus, Carolus, rex ego, tuque pater.

The poetry might be supplied by Alcuin; but the tears, the most glo rious tribute, can only belong to Charlemagne.

90

Every new pope is admonished-" Sancte Pater, non videbis annos Petri," twenty-five years. On the whole series the average is abou eight years-a short hope for an ambitious cardinal.

66

91 The assurance of Anastasius (tom. iii. pars i. p. 197, 198) is sup ported by the credulity of some French annalists; but Eginhard, and other writers of the same age, are more natural and sincere. Unus ei oculus paullulur est læsus," says John the deacon of Naples, (Vit. Episcop. Napol. in Scriptores Muratori, tom. i. pars ii p. 312.) Theo

his

escaped to the Vatican: the duke of Spoleto hastered
rescue, Charlemagne sympathized in his injury, and in his
camp of Paderborn in Westphalia accepted, or solicited, a
visit from the Roman pontiff. Leo repassed the Alps with a
commission of counts and bishops, the guards of his safety
and the judges of his innocence; and it was not without re-
luctance, that the conqueror of the Saxons delayed till the
ensuing year the personal discharge of this pious office. In
his fourth and last pilgrimage, he was received at Rome with
the due honors of king and patrician: Leo was permitted to
purge himself by oath of the crimes imputed to his charge:
his enemies were silenced, and the sacrilegious attempt against
his life was punished by the mild and insufficient penalty of
exile. On the festival of Christmas, the last year of the eighth
century, Charlemagne appeared in the church of St. Peter;
and, to gratify the vanity of Rome, he had exchanged the
simple dress of his country for the habit of a patrician." Af-
ter the celebration of the holy mysteries, Leo suddenly placed
a precious crown on his head," and the dome resounded with
the acclamations of the people, "Long life and victory to
Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God the great
and pacific emperor of the Romans!" The head and body
of Charlemagne were consecrated by the royal unction: after
the example of the Cæsars, he was saluted or adored by the
pontiff: his coronation oath represents a promise to maintain
the faith and privileges of the church; and the first-fruits
were paid in his rich offerings to the shrine of his apostle.
In his familiar conversation, the emperor protested the igno-
rance of the intentions of Leo, which he would have disap-
pointed by his absence on that memorable day. But the
dolphus, a contemporary bishop of Orleans, observes with prudence
(1. iii. carm. 3,)

Reddita sunt? mirum est: mirum est auferre nequisse.
Est tamen in dubio, hinc mirer an inde magis.

2 Twice, at the request of Hadrian and Leo, he appeared at Rome -longâ tunicâ et chlamyde amictus, et calceamentis quoque Romano more formatis. Eginhard (c. xxiii. p. 109-113) describes, like Suetonius the simplicity of his dress, so popular in the nation, that when Charles the Bald returned to France in a foreign habit, the patri tic dogs barked at the apostate (Gaillard, Vie de Charlemagne, tom. 1v. p. 109.)

93 See Anastasius (p. 199) and Eginhard, (c. xxviii. p. 124-128.) The unction is mentioned by Theophanes, (p. 399,) the oath by Sigonius, (from the Ordo Romanus,) and the Pope's adoration more antiquerum principum, by the Annales Bertiniani, (Script. Murator. tom Il pars ii. p. 505.)