SECT. II.]

Bigotry of Charlemagne.

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stained with blood the fetters of slavery. Four thousand five hundred of their principal men, because they refused, on a particular occasion, to give up their celebrated general Witikind, were ordered to be massacred-an instance of severity scarcely to be paralleled in the history of mankind, especially if we consider that the Saxons were not the natural subjects of Charles, but an independent people struggling for freedom. He compelled the Saxons under pain of death, to receive baptism; condemned to the severest punishments the breakers of Lent, and every where substituted force for persuasion.

As the little learning which, at that period, remained among mankind, was monopolized by the clergy, it cannot excite our surprise that they obtained the most signal marks of his favour. He established the payment of tythes, and admitted the clergy into the national assemblies, associating them with the secular nobles in the administration of justice; in return for which, they honoured him with the most marked distinctions, permitting him to sit in councils purely ecclesiastical. Accordingly, in the year 794 we find him seated on a throne in the council of Frankfort, with one of the pope's legates on each hand, and three hundred bishops waiting his nod.

The object of that council was to investigate the sentiments of two Spanish bishops, who, to refute the accusation of Polytheism brought against the Christians by the Jews and Mahommedans, gave up the proper divinity of Jesus Christ, and maintained that he was the Son of God only by adoption. The monarch opened the assembly, and proposed the condemnation of this heresy. The council decided conformably to his will; and in a letter to the churches of Spain, in consequence of that decision, Charles expressed himself in these remarkable words: "You entreat me to judge of myself; I have done so. I have assisted as an auditor and an arbiter in an assembly

of bishops; we have examined and by the grace of God, we have settled what must be believed!"

It was during the reign of Charles the great, that the empress Irené convened the second council of Nice* for the purpose of re-establishing the use of images, which Leo IV, and his son Constantine Copronymus had exerted themselves so much to suppress. That council accordingly decreed that we ought to render to images an honorary worship, but not a real adoration, the latter being due to God alone. Whether designedly or not, but so it was, that in the translation of the Acts of this council, which Pope Adrian sent into France, the meaning of the article which respected images was entirely perverted, for it ran thus: "I receive and honour images according to that adoration which I pay to the Trinity.” Charles was so shocked at this impiety, that in the effervescence of his zeal, and with the aid of the clergy, he drew up a treatise, called the Caroline books, in which he treated the Nicene council with the utmost contempt and abuse. He transmitted his publication to Adrian, desiring him to excommunicate the empress and her son. pope excused himself on the score of images, rectifying the mistake upon which Charles had proceeded, but at the same time insinuated, that he would declare Irené and Constantine heretics, unless they restored some lands which formerly belonged to the church. He also took the opportunity of hinting at certain projects which he had formed for the exaltation of the Romish church, and of the French monarchy. "I cannot" said he, " after what the council of Nice has done, declare Irené and her son hereties; but I shall declare them to be such, if they do not restore to me my patrimony in Sicily."

The

In the year 796 Leo III. who had succeeded Adrian in

See page 532. + Millot's Elements of General History, part ii.

SECT. II.] Rise of the Pope's temporal power.

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the papacy, transmitted to Charles the Roman standard, requesting him to send some person to receive the oath of fidelity from the Romans, an instance of submission with which that monarch was highly flattered. Accordingly in the year 800, we find Charles at Rome, where he passed six days in private conferences with the pope. On Christmas day, as the king assisted at mass in St. Peter's church, in the midst of the ecclesiastical ceremonies, and while upon his knees before the altar, the pope advanced and put an imperial crown upon his head. As soon as the people perceived it, they exclaimed, "Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, crowned by the hand of God! Long live the great and pious emperor of the Romans." The supreme pontiff then conducted him to a magnificent throne, which had been prepared for the occasion, and as soon as he was seated, paid him those honours which his predecessors had been accustomed to pay to the Roman emperors. Leo now presented him with the imperial mantle, on being invested with which, Charles returned to his palace amidst the acclamations of the multitude.

Favors such as these that were conferred by the pontiff on the French monarch, imperiously called for an adequate return, and it is due to Charlmagne to say that he was by no means deficient in gratitude. His name, and those of his successors, are consecrated as the saviours and benefactors of the Roman church. The Greek emperor had abdicated or forfeited his right to the exarchate of Ravenna, and the sword of Pepin, the father of Charles, had no sooner wrested it from the grasp of Astolphus, than he conferred it on the Roman pontiff, as a recompence" for the remission of his sins and the salvation of his soul." The splendid donation was granted in supreme and absolute dominion, and the world then beheld, for the first

time, a Christian bishop invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince; the choice of magistrates, and the exercise of justice, the imposition of taxes, and the wealth of the palace of Ravenna.

Perhaps," says Gibbon," the humility of a Christian priest should have rejected an earthly kingdom which it was not easy for him to govern without renouncing the virtues of his profession." I feel no disposition to controvert the justice of this remark; but humility does not appear to have been a very prominent trait in the characters of the Roman pontiffs; and the profuse liberality of the French kings, at this time, was not much calculated to promote it among them. By their bounty, the antient patrimony of the church, which consisted of farms and houses, was converted into the temporal dominion of cities and provinces. The cities and islands which had formerly been annexed to the exarchate of Ravenna, were now also, by the gratitude of Charles, yielded to the pope, to enlarge the circle of the ecclesiastical state; and the new emperor lived to behold in his ecclesiastical ally, a greatness which, in the cool moments of reflection, he was unable to contemplate without jealousy. But Charles died in the year 814, at Aix-la-Chapelle, his usual residence, in the seventy-second year of his age, and the forty-sixth of his reign. He had previously associated his son Louis with him in the adminstration of government, and, as if this great man had foreseen the approaching usurpations of the church he placed the imperial crown upon the altar, and ordered the prince to put it on his own head, thereby intimating that he held it only of God,

The young prince, though very amiable in his disposition and manners, appears to have been much inferior to his father in strength of mind. I have already had occasion to mention him in the former section as the friend and

SECT. 11.] Character of the Emperor Lewis the Meek. 985

patron of Claude of Turin. His piety and parental fondness are praised by historians, but his abilities were inadequate to the support of so great a weight of empire. He rendered himself odious to the clergy by attempting to reform certain abuses among them, not foreseeing that this powerful body would not pay the same deference to his authority, which had been yielded to the superior capacity of his father. Three years after his accession to the throne, he admitted his eldest son, Lothaire, to a participation of the French and German territories, declared his son Pepin king of Aquitaine, and Louis king of Bavaria. This division gave offence to his nephew, Bernard, at that time king of Italy, who revolted, and levied war against his uncle, in contempt of his imperial authority, to which he was subject-a rebellious conduct, in which he was encouraged by the archbishop of Milan and the bishop of Cremona. Louis, on this occasion, acted with vigour. He raised a powerful army, and was preparing to cross the Alps, when Bernard was abandoned by his troops, and the unfortunate prince, being made prisoner, was condemned to lose his head. His uncle mitigated the sentence to the loss of his eyes, but the unhappy prince died three days after the punishment was inflicted; and Louis, to prevent future troubles, ordered three natural sons of Charlemagne to be shut up in a convent.

In a little time the emperor was seized with keen remorse for his conduct. He accused himself of the murder of his nephew, and of tyrannic cruelty to his brothers. In this melancholy humour he was encouraged by the monks; and it at last grew to such a height, that he impeached himself in an assembly of the states, and requested the bishops to enjoin him public penance. The clergy, now sensible of his weakness, set no bounds to their usurpations. The popes concluded that they might do any thing under so pious a prince. They did not wait for the