600

Charles' Donation

[774-781 father's promise. But it is not likely 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 Frankish 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 conquest 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 Rome 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

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. Threatened hostilities might still be avoided. The Emperor Leo IV had died suddenly in 780, leaving the Empire to his son Constantine VI, Porphyrogenitus, 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-inlaw 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 Annales 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 prevailed 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

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 concerted 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' 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 underwent 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 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. When, after the fall of Pavia, he assumed the title of king of 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 of a part striving for the possession of the whole. It was on account of this that the Lombards fell into opposition to the

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

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 confirmations 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 pedition, was taken back with the army as prisoner. The Christian