% i LIBRARY OF THE University of California. Class — Ck '".'.■. *., "St, Ir- -^^^ ^y -r ^I'fr'k^ • ' ■Hi-'<-'v. ^^K->^v ' B-: .-;;:.■ ;5'<--^ ^W ' •;: ■■'-^-•i ■* ■-•i -nc-> WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY AND ONWARD WESTERJN^ EUEOPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY & ONWARD AN AFTERMATH BY THE LATE E. A. FREEMAN, M.A., Hon. D.C.L, REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNR^ERSITY OF OXFORD 19 :> > . ' J * ' ' '. ,' > ^■' 3 ^ J 3 ) , J « J U J o • • LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1904 All riff Jits resei'ved OXFORD : HORACE HART PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY t l t C »t t , It c 1 I , < , I « I t It 1 tlillilltl I I » I I « I i' c • . ' t t I I . t ' I f' PREFACE The present volume consists of portions of courses of lectures given by the late Mr. Freeman as Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. It was known by his friends that he had the intention of writing a history of this period, and when search was made among his papers ample evidence existed that he had already begun upon the task. His plan of work seems to have been simple. When he felt inclined he wrote out completely portions of his subject and prepared for them a more or less complete apparatus of notes and references. In his own mind he had evidently arranged the sequence of his chapters, and it is also clear that he had in- tended, as opportunity occurred, to fill in the narrative with chapters which unfortunately he never lived to write. To those who know the general history of this period the volume will most commend itself. It is a substantial contribution to our knowledge of the West of Europe in the eighth century. The chapters and sections which concern the tenth century belong to the same subject. They all bring before us the development and the safeguarding of the same idea. When the late Professor York Powell undertook to see this volume through the press he was very definite in his opinion that these chapters ought to be published. They answer numerous questions which have occurred to readers and which hitherto have OOOOQ*2 1^ (^ f^ H^ O ^y vi PREFACE. more or less remained unanswered. They offer explanations on dark and obscure actions which are felicitous and generally convincing. Unfortunately Professor York Powell only set to work on the earlier pages of the volume on the fifth century. Beyond sending the MS. to the press he is not responsible for anything in the present volume. Nor has the present editor had anything to guide him. He was not aware of the mind of the late Mr. Freeman, nor had he ever discussed with the late Mr. York Powell his intentions as to these volumes. Beyond some few detached sheets of the MSS. which he was able to recover from among Mr. York Powell's papers, he has only had the rough proofs from the press on which to work. In the notes and references Mr. Freeman had at times only indicated the source of the reference, and it has been the editor's careful endeavour to find the exact reference and to fill in the many side-references which Mr. Freeman had made to earlier chapters and to chapters which he had meant to write but never accomplished. When he undertook the task he did not realize how much of the little time he had to spare the work would demand, and he has done his best to make the notes and references as complete and accurate as possible. Only those who know how vague and meagre is our knowledge of this period can possibly appreciate the excellent work done on this subject by the late Mr. Freeman. In the present volume he has certainly given us some of the best of his historic labours. T. SCOTT HOLMES. TABLE OF CONTENTS [* Sections that are fragmentary.] CHAPTER I. Baltiiild and Ebeoix PAGE CHAPTER II. Charles and Pippin and the Change of Dynasty § 1. The Kingdom without a King * § 2. The last Saracen Wars of Charles Martel §-3. The Appeal of Gregory to Charles Martel * § 4. The last Days of Charles Martel . § 5. The joint Rule of Karlmann and Pippin J". § 6. The first Anointing of Pippin 21 23 28 28 48 49 78 CHAPTER III. The Italian and Saracen Wars of Pippin §1. The War in Septimania § 2. The Negotiations with Pope Stephen § 3. Pope Stephen in Gaul . § 4. The first Italian Expedition of Pippin » § 5. The second Italian Expedition of Pippin § 6. The later dealings of Pippin with Italy § 7. The Taking of Narbonne and the Aquitanian War * § 8. Pippin's last days and death (unwritten) The deposition of Charles and election of Arnulf. Introduction .... 102 103 111 129 163 174 202 217 286 287 Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTEK IV. The Strife of Paris and Laon § 1. Karolingia § 2. The new Kings . * § 3. Odo and Charles * § 3 a. The Events of 936 . § 4. The first Civil War, 939 § 5. The Crowning of Otto, 962 page 297 297 302 320 321 326 348 APPENDIX. 1. The Consulship offered to Charles Martel . 2. SWANAHILD AND GrIFO ..... 3. The Bavarian War of 743 . „ . . 4. The Order of Events in the Year 754 . 5. The Mission of Karlmann .... 6. The Patriciate of Pippin . . . . 7. The Promises and Gifts of Pippin to Pope Stephen 8. The Letter of Constantine to Pippin . 9. The Events of the Year 939 . 355 359 367 371 381 386 404 440 444 INDEX . 457 WESTEEE" EUEOPE IN THE EIGHTH CEN'TUEY. I. BALTHILD AND EBROIN*. NeveFv did any man fail more utterly in an attempt at the aggrandizement of himself, his family, or his party than Grimoald had failed in his attempt to dispossess the royal house before its time. He had done everything which he had most wished not to do. He had fallen from his own great position and had ended both power and life by a premature and cruel death. His son, whom he had striven to make a king and who had a good hope of being one day the guardian of kings, vanishes from the scene, and the male line of the first Pippin vanishes with him. The dreams of Grimoald were to become realities a hundred years later ; all that he had striven for was to come to the lot of his folk and of his kin, but not to the lot of his immediate descendants. That chance his own act had shivered. The East was to assert its dominion over the West ; the Frank who clave to the old heritage of his race was to win the supremacy over the Frank who had come within the spell of Roman influence ; Austrasian mayors were to guide and rule Neustrian kings, and in the end themselves to grow into kings and more than kings. And the men who were to do all this were to be of the blood of the fii'st [* The projected account of the beginnings of the House of the Karlings and of the Mayoralties of Pippin the Elder, Ansgisl and Grimoald was not written. The present piece was to have followed it-] ~i i 3 > ) ^ > 3 3 3 3 J > , 3 J •> , J . •> J ' 2 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Pippin ; it was the rash act of Grimoald himself which had taken away that splendid calling from his own line and the male line of his father. Yet the man who was to begin again the work which Grimoald had cut short was bound to him by a tie which, in the ideas of those times, was hardly less near than the tie which binds a son to his father. The power and place which he had thrown away were to pass in years to come to the son of his sister. After the fall of Grimoald and Childeberht, the repre- sentative of both the great partners in the work of forty ''years back was the common grandson of Saint Arnulf and of the first Pippin, Pippin the son of Ansgisl and Begga. His two grandfathers had lived and worked to one end, and their common descendant had inherited the calling l_of both. Kepresentative by male descent of the saint of Metz, representative by name, by office, and by female descent, of the first of the Pippins, the second bearer of that name inherited a kind of mixed personality from two such renowned forefathers. He was in due time again to take up their work, the work which Grimoald had cut short. Could that work have been taken up at once, the chief actor might well have been Ansgisl rather than his son. But the act of Grimoald had thrust back the hopes both of his folk and of his kin for years. Ansgisl could not so well represent the united house as his son, the grandson of both its chiefs. Pippin then, not his father, was to be the founder of the greatness of the Austrasian Franks and of the mightiest house among them. But thirty years were to pass before the second Pippin could rise to the place of the first, thirty years for the most part of confusion and civil war. Indeed it needed two such intermediate times before the line of the Karl- ings could rise to their full greatness ; a second period of confusion followed the death of the second Pippin. But that was for a far shorter time, and was a direct struggle between the house of Pippin and its enemies. In the earlier part of the present time of strife the house of •^ ' I .1 . 111, I ' BALTHILD AND EBROIN. Pippin has not as yet recovered any standing- ground for a struggle. The career of the first Pippin has established the principle that the King must have a Mayor to guide him ; but that is all. The office, whether of all the three Prankish kingdoms or of one of them only, is open for every man who has enough of daring supported by enough of power to make a stroke for. Down to the revolution wrought by Arnulf and Pippin, the kings themselves strove with their brothers and nephews for any fragment of the Prankish dominion which they sought to add to the territory which had already fallen to them. Now the kings themselves strive no longer ; other men strive in their names for the exercise of their authority. He Avho would govern must be ready with a king of the kingly stock who shall reign while he governs. It becomes harder to remember the kings than it was when we had the living pictures of Chilperic and Guntchramn traced for us by the hand of Gregory. But Gregory himself could not have painted a living picture of the kings with whom we have now to deal ; there were no materials for his pencil. The house of Chlodowig has as yet hardly reached i its lowest degradation ; it is still possible by an effort to distinguish one king from another. Still the effort is needful ; the succession is hard to carry in the head. On the other hand, if the kings are harder to remember, their kingdoms are much easier ; Gaul has settled itself down into '^ an intelligible geography. The names Austria, Neustria, Burgundy, are now fully established as the names of known portions of the earth's surface, with fairly ascer- tained limits. Aquitaine, for a moment the kingdom of Chariberht, is beginning to slip away altogether out of Prankish reckonino's. It is perhaps instructive to pause for a moment more distinctly to compare the state of things in the Prankish kingdoms with the events which were going on in our own island. Britain and the mainland are becominor more and more closely connected, chiefly by ecclesiastical ties. In B 2 4 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. one English kingdom a Frankish prelate holds the Bishop- ^ stool, ^gelberht had made his way from Gaul to Dor- chester ; but it was by way of the island which had sent ^ forth so many teachers to all parts. The coming of so many holy men from Ireland to plant the faith where it still needed planting in Germany, and even in Gaul, had led men of Frankish birth to seek in return in that distant island for a stricter discipline and more perfect teaching than they could find in their own land. So the second Bishop of the West-Saxons had found his way to his diocese by this somewhat roundabout journey, from Gaul to Ireland and from Ireland to Britain ^. Eleven years he abode in Wessex (649-660), and came back four years after the death of Sigeberht and the fall of Grimoald to exchange his bishopric on the Thames for that^ as our Chroniclers point on, of Paris of the Gal-Welsh on the Seine ^. He came back because, as Eaeda tells us, King Cenwealh, weary of his barbarous speech, so divided his diocese as to L remove him from his immediate presence ^. What was the ^ Bseda, iii. 7, p. 140 ; " Venit in provinciam de Hibernia pontifex quidam nomine Agilberctus, natione quidam Gallus, sed tunc legen- darum gratia scripturarum in Hibernia non parvo tempore demoratus." In the English Chronicles, 650, he is " Ji]gelbryht of Galwalum," so distinguished from "Byrine |)am Romaniscan biscop." In the late Canterbury Chronicle he is " ^gebertus se Frencisca." By that the writer most likely meant French in the sense of his day and ours ; " of Galwalum " is simply geographical. ^ Chron. G60 ; " Her ^gelbryht biscop gewat fram Cenwale . . . and . . . onfeng Persa biscopdomes on Galwalum bi Signe." We get a picture of him there in the Life of a Frankish saint clearly written long after (Vita S. Baboleni, Duchesne, i. 638). Audobertus —so his name is written— Bishop of Paris, finds Babolenus praying and weeping in the church of Our Lady, and asks who he is. Babolenus says that he is a stranger from Italy, a scholar of Columban. The Bishop tells him, " et ego sum peregrinus, a transmarinis hue devolutus partibus, et regis Angliee nomine Choinvalte persecutionem cupiens evadere, epi- scopatam urbis reliqui proprise ethane Francorum patriam cum labore adivi olim mihi incognitam." His Frankish birth was now forgotten. ^ Bseda, u. s. ; " Rex, qui Saxonum tantum linguam noverat, pertsesus barbarae loquelse^subintroduxit in provinciam aliam . . . episcopum," (Sic, BALTHILD AND EBROIN. speech which, on the lips of a Frank, sounded barbarous in the ears of a West-Saxon king? The question is of some importance in the history of language in Gaul. Surely such a name as "barbarous" would never be applied to Latin or to any child of Latin, even in the most corrupt form that the tongue of Rome may have put on among either Neustrian Franks or Neustrian Romans. Moreover the epithet comes, not from the West-Saxon king himself, v" but from a reporter in distant Northumberland. iEgelberht, ^ we may suspect, spoke to Cenwealh in his native Frankish. A Roman would either have spoken by an interpreter or have tried to master the English tongue as so many Englishmen succeeded in mastering the Latin. But we may believe that, in the middle of the seventh century, the speech of the Frank had not so far departed from the speech of the Angle or the Saxon but that the speakers of the one might still, by an effort, follow the speakers of the other. But it was only by an effort, and of all efforts none is more painful than that of following a speaker whose words are half understood. Whether Cenwealh \ called the speech of the Frankish bishop " barbarous " — he perhaps, however untruly, said Welsh — or not, we can fully understand that, at the end of eleven years, he had ^- got thoroughly tired of his talk. A little thought enables us to take in the difference in matters of speech between Gaul and Teutonic Britain. On the mainland two languages, the languages of the two great elements of the people, were still spoken as mother -tongues. But both were changing. The speech of the Roman was ' passing away step by step into that Romance speech of which we get our first written example two hundred years later ^. Men strove when they wrote to cleave to a purer Latin than the Roman of their daily speech ; but, till the older and the newer forms had parted further asunder, they found it hard to do so. Meanwhile the Teutonic speech of the Frank was fast putting on those peculiarities of ^ I mean the Oath of Strassburo- in Nithard. 6 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. the later High-Dutch which in the end parted it off so widely from the elder speech of the Saxon. The Saxon himself, whether on the mainland or in the island, had no such difficulties. On the mainland he clave to those elder forms of the common speech from which the Frank was |_ passing away. So he clave in the island also ; but in the island some at least were beginning to adopt by its side the speech of the Roman as the tongue of learning and religion. Learning it as a foreign tongue, they had no such temptation to corrupt — or to develope — it as those with whom it was the speech of daily life. The Roman ^ of Neustria handled his spoken Latin with the rude familiarity of one to whom it was the speech of childhood ; the Saxon of Britain — we shall soon have specially to say the Angle — handled his Latin — his " book Latin," as he emphatically called it ^ — with the distant respect due to the foreign speech of the city which still seemed mistress of the world. In all this we get the same contrast as in everything else. Among the Teutonic settlers in Britain, each folk and its speech, the one folk and the one speech of the land in which it settled, all is still young, fresh, vigorous. Among the Teutonic settlers in Roman Gaul, settled on fairly equal terms among the conquerors, Frank and Roman, dwelling side by side, both elements are abeady decaying. The dates are instructive. Dagobert, friend of the saints, 'had drawfi near the end of his reign, Arnulf had with- drawn to his hermitage, before the West-Saxons first had a Christian king in Cynegils (635). Cenwealh, who wearied of ii^gelberht's foreign speech, was the first founder of the church of Winchester, a seat of the faith new indeed beside L that Paris to which ^gelberht came back. That bishop's place in England was taken by a man of English birth and speech, but who had taken to the ecclesiastical life of Frank- ^ Of the five ton<^ucs of Britain, the Latin " quoe meditatione scripturarum ceeteris omnibus est facta communis" (Ba^da, i. 1, p. 11) becomes, in the oi^ening of the Chronicles, " Boc Leden." BALTHILD AND EBROIN. ish growth ^ Thus far the younger learns of the elder ; but the tables are soon to be turned. The series has already begun of those holy men of Celtic birth, Scots for the most part of the elder Scotland, who felt so strange a call to leave the islands where, one would have thought, there was so much still to do, to seek a missionary field in Germany and even in Gaul. And the Celtic series is presently to be continued in an English series, which supplied the continental Church with some of its greatest names. We are still a good way from the days of West-Saxon Winfrith or Boniface, but Northumbrian Wilfrith will in a few years begin to play a part on Frankish and Frisian as well as on English soil. In the very year that we have reached a man comes to the front in Frankish history, whose name and whose acts are alike perplexing. What ^, manner of man the next famous Mayor was we may discuss ^' presently. For the true form of the name he bore we may go to the English biographer of Wilfrith ^. Never do we more earnestly long for the guidance of the Gregory of a hundred years earlier than when we are striving to come to a fair judgement of the character of Ebroin. He is commonly painted in the blackest colours. He is the tyrant and general oppressor of the land, the special enemy of the Church, rejoicing in the slaughter of her ministers, the general enemy of right and goodness in every shape. It is added, as part of the charge against him, that he was a man of low birth, who sought before all i^ •^ Bseda, iii. 7, p. 140 ; " Alium suae linguse episcopum, vocabulo Vini, et ipsum in Gallia ordinatum." ^ What was the Teutonic word which men clothed in a Latin shape as Ebroinus ? The barbarous tongue of the Frank puzzled Kentish ^ ^dde as well as West-Saxon Cenwealh. The first part of the Mayor's name appears in three different shapes in the Life of Wilfrith. He is Eadefi/r-wine, Efer-ivine, Yver-wini, Eddius, c. 25, 27, 33. The first element is of course Eofer, the boar, the last is one of the most familiar and pleasing in all our nomenclature. The " godless duke," as the English visitor calls him, is so far at least the fellow of the Eadwine and the Godwine of our own history. i^ 8 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. things to pull down the great men of the nation from their places ^. It is clear, not only that this charge may mean a course of action which might be approved or disapproved according to social and political traditions, but it may mean any one of several very different courses of action. It might describe one of the noblest of careers, and it might describe one of the vilest. And there are other descriptions of Ebroin that might incline us to put the more favourable meaning on this one. He is described, according to a formula which becomes almost conventional, but which yet, whenever it is used, is meant to express facts, as the inflexible avenger of wrong-doing of every kind ^. In the phrase of a later line, he " did justice " ; that ^ is, he punished with unflinching severity all disturbers of the public peace. This was a hard task, even in Gregory's day, and it is certainly not likely to have grown easier since his time. The avenger of wrong in those days could not afford to be a man of very delicate scruples. Crime had commonly to be detected and punished by means which in any other state of things would be them- selves set down as crimes. The Frankish kings, the good King Guntchramn himself, had often to meet violence and ^ The bad characters given to Ebroin are endless ; the strongest language about him will naturally be found in the Lives of Saint 1/ Leodgar. In the Life of another Saint, also his victim, Ragnebert ^ (Duchesne, i. 626), he is painted at length; "Ebroinus nomine ex infimo genere ortus, Deo et Sanctis contrarius, in Majoris Dominatus honore fuerat sublimatus. Huic studium erat ut quoscumque ex Francorum genere alta ortos progenie nobilitate vidisset in seculi utilitate proficere, ipsos vel interfectos, aut effugatos, sublatos de medio, tales in eorum honore sublevaret, quos aut moUitie obligates vel sensu debilitatos, aut utilitate aliqua parentelse, non auderent ejus pra^ceptis impiis resultare." A more remarkable description is that in the Life of Saint Praejectus or Prix (i. 673) ; " Ebroinus comes I palatii, alias strenuus vir, sed in nece sacerdotum nimis ferox." '^ This comes out in the Life of Saint Martial of Limoges (Bonnell, 156) ; "Ebroinus omnes nequitias seu iniquitates, qua universa terra fiebant, superbos et iniquos homines super eorum facinoribus [puniens], viriliter supponebat ; pax per omnem terram plena et perfecta adrisit." BALTHILD AND EBROIN. treachery by violence and treachery of their own. If they had had to wait for judges and juries, the criminals would J have been too much for them. We instinctively judge them by the standard of a sultan ; we do not complain of cutting off heads or even of putting out eyes, so long as it is the right men whose heads fall or whose eyes are blinded. But this kind of justice, specially if enforced without favour, against powerful men, would win many enemies for him who enforced it. And it is further plain that ^ any one whose calling it was to assert the kingly authority would have first of all to do all he could to break the overgrown power of the nobles, and in so doing he would / be in some sort the deliverer of other classes of men. And it is plain again that action of this kind on the part of a mere officer of the king, an equal, perhaps by birth an inferior, of those against whom he acted, would, in the eyes of those whom it offended at all, seem ground for greater offence than when it was the action of the king himself. Ebroin may in this way have been the smiter of the nobles '^ and thereby the protector of lesser men ; and yet it may be somewhat dangerous to paint him, with some modern writers ^, as something like a modern Liberal statesman, following a conscious plan for pulling down the nobles and setting up the lesser freemen. The few paiticular actions of Ebroin that are recorded are hard and cruel, and give us the impression of a very different kind of man from Arnulf and Pippin. Yet we must remember that in these strange times, particular crimes, done at the bidding of the policy or passion of the moment, are not inconsistent with many i habitual virtues, and that occasional acts of what we deem cruelty might sometimes be needed to carry out general purposes that were just and humane. It is possible to paint Ebroin in more lights than one, and, like other men who have been long written down, he is perhaps entitled to his ' Something like this, not put perhaps in so distinct a formula, seems the tendency of the quasi-defence of Ebroin in Fauriel (ii. 461, 473 et ah), and Bonnell (155). See Waitz, ii. 695 ; Ricliter, 175, note. j '. 10 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. turn of being written up. The pity is that, great as clearly was the part that he played in his own time, we have such very small materials for writing him either down or up. Far clearer than either the personal character or the political objects of Ebroin is his position as the head of a geographical, we might almost say a national party. The distinction between Austria and Neustria, between the Frank of the East, still cleaving in all points of speech and manners to the heritage of his Teutonic forefathers, and the Frank of the West, brought, more or less, — who shall say exactly how much ? — within the magic of Roman influence, changed, more or less, — who shall say exactly how much? — after the models of Roman life and culture, is growing daily stronger and stronger. We begin dimly to see the land that is to be France and the land that is to be Germany, the people who are one day to be French and the people who are one day to be Germans. It is ominous of what was to come that the name Franci is at this time not uncommonly used to mark off the men of the Western kingdom from the men of the Eastern ^. Nomencla- ture had in this matter to go backwards and forwards, according to the predominance of this or that side of the Frankish kingdom. Arnulf and Pippin had been dis- ' tinctly Austrasian rulers, and Pippin had had to strive, sometimes unsuccessfully, against the Neustrian tendencies of Dagobert. The Neustrian side had gained greatly by the fall of Grimoald. His attempt to set up an East- Frankish king out of his own house had been defeated by ;^ the East-Franks themselves, who had of their own will ^ I should say that this is the common use of the name in the Con- tinuator of Freclegar. It also comes out clearly in the Gesta, 45 ; Duchesne, Script. Franc, i. p. 717 ; " Wulfoaldus per fugam evadit, in Auster reversus, Franci vero Leudesium eligunt." Here it is opposed to "Auster," exactly as it is long after by the Biographer of Louis the Pious. It is less remarkable to find "Franci" opposed to Burgundians, as in the Life of Saint Bathildis (Duchesne, i. G6G) ; " Facti sunt Burgundiones et Franci ex illo tempore uniti." BALTHILD AND EBROIN. 11 sought the Neustrian king to lord. The second Chlodowig ^ ruled in name over all the dominions of the first ; all Francia again for a moment saw its head in its founder's chosen home at Paris. He is king of three kingdoms ; his mayor Erkenwald is mayor of three kingdoms. Neither king nor mayor is able to enjoy his extended power for any long time ; but each was able to pass on its full extent, for a moment at least, to a successor. Chlodowig before his death seems to have lost the small share of understanding which now served for a Merowingian king. He either grew into active madness or sank into helpless ,y idiotcy ^. Some spoke of his end as a punishment for his irreverence in cutting off the arm of Saint Denis, an act which in some cases was alloAved to count as an act of devotion ^. He left three sons, all seemingly mere children. Frankish usage would have given each child his own kingdom, and each kingdom its own mayor. But the Franks, we are told, which most likely means the Neustrian Franks, determined to continue the unity of the kingdom in the eldest of the three boys, Chlotachar by name. He reigned under the guardianship of his English mother and of Erkenwald the mayor. It was a strange state of rela- tionship ; the child-king on the throne ; his mother, once a slave, reigning in his name with queenly rank and authority ^, while the actual exercise of power was in the ^ Fred. Cont. 91 ; *'In extremis vitse annis amens efFectus vita caruit." ^ Gesta, 44, where he gets one of his worst characters ; " Eo tem- pore Chlodovicus brachium beati Dionysii Martyris abscidit, instigante diabolo. Per idem tempus concidit Regnum Francorum casibus pestiferis. . . . De hujus morte et fine nihil dignum historia recoHt. Multi enim scriptores ejus finem condemnant, nescientes finem nequitise ejus in incertum de eo alia pro aliis reddentes et refe- rentes." In the genealogy of the Karlings in Pertz, ii. 311, he is deposed and sent to be a monk at Corby. ^ Gesta, 44 ; " Franci Chlotharium seniorem puerorum ex tribus sibi regem statue runt, cum ipsa regina matre regnaturum." This proves more than the other passages in Waitz, ii. 141, which say only ''regebat palatium" and the like. She signs with her son as his 12 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. hand of the man who had once been her owner. Once his living chattel, she was now his roj^al lady. The light thrown on manners is remarkable. Slavery takes many forms. The exaltation of Balthild could not have taken place among the slave-holding commonwealths of old, nor yet under the Roman Empire, so long as the Emperor was still the first of citizens, bound like other citizens by the law which shut out the freed woman from full Roman marriage. Still less could it happen in the slave-holding kingdoms and commonwealths of modern times, where an impassable physical barrier forbids. But it might well happen when the slave was of a kindred race and speech to her master, and when that master was a king who (Could lift up and set down according to his own will. In the system of a Frankish kingdom the slave-born queen could play, with more of legal sanction, the part often played in Mahometan courts by the mother of the Sultan, son of a slave. Balthild is not our first slave-queen, she is not even our first queen-mother who had risen from bondage ; but she claims special notice, as the first queen- mother who had been bought of the foreign slave-merchant, and that merchant one who had brought his wares from our land. Balthild bears the best of characters, as a just and pious queen, the careful guardian of her children, in all quarters save one ^. And that, strange to say, is an English one. partner in several documents in Pardessus, ii. 106, 115, 116. The style is remarkable ; " Ut hsec prseceptio firmior habeatur, nos et prse- celsa domna et genetrix nostra Batildis regina manus nostras signa- culis subter earn decrevimus adfirmare." There are equivalent phrases in the others. ^ She has a Life of her ovrn as Sancta Bathildis (Duchesne, i. 665) ; but take her character in the Life of another saint, the Abbess Bertila (i. 6G9j ; " Post discessum domini Chlodovei regis, religiosa et optima conjux ejus domina Baltachildis regina, turn parvulo filio rege Chlotario inreprehensibiliter regnum gubernabat Francorum, et ab omnibus pontificibus vel proceribus cunctoque populo regni sui, ejus meritis compellentibus, miro diligebatur affectu." The writer BALTHILD AND EBROIN. 13 What are we to make of the strange tale, recorded by the contemporary biographer of Wilfrith ? We read how Wil- ^' frith, on his first journey to Rome, is entertained by Dalfinus Archbishop of Lyons, who offers him his niece in marriage, together with adoption as a son. Wilfrith declines this offer ; he goes on to Rome ; he comes back to Lyons, and receives the tonsure, in correct Roman fashion, from his friend. But the wicked Jezebel Queen Balthild persecutes the Church and slays nine bishops, of whom Dalfinus is one. The English youth would fain share his martyrdom, but, being known for an English youth and not a Frankish bishop, he is let go ^. — ' Now it is quite certain that Balthild was the very opposite to a Jezebel, that there was no massacre of bishops in her day, and that there never was an archbishop of Lyons call Dalfinus. Yet here is this story in a writer not quite contemporary with the alleged facts, but con- temporary with the person whom those facts so deeply concerned. ^Edde, called in religion Stephen, must have heard some story from Wilfrith which he confused in a wonderful way. But, it is certain that Balthild never ordered the slaughter of nine bishops, it is certain that one very famous bishop not many years after her time was put to death, and it seems to be fairly made out that one bishop, perhaps more than one, was put to death while she goes on with the picture of a g-ood queen, and distinctly claims for Balthild an effective share in the government. Yet a panegyric of her in that character comes very nearly to a panegyric of Ebroin. ^ See Eddius' Life of Wilfrith, c. 4, 5, 6. In the last chapter we read, " Illo tempore malevola regina nomine Baldhild ecclesiam Dei persecuta est. Sicut olim pessima regina Jezabel, quge prophetas Dei occidit, ita ista, exceptis sacerdotibus et diaconibus, novem epi- scopos occidere jussit." See Raine's note, Hist, of York, i. p. 91. The suggestion of a confusion with Branechild is obvious, and it is possible that Eddius, writing long after, confused what Wilfrith told him about Balthild with what he had read about Brunechild. (Not that I believe it would be true of Brunechild either.) We must not forget that the contemporary Thietmar wrote the story of iElfheah under the name of Dunstan. See Norman Conquest, i. 677. 14 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. stil] lived. The Church of Lyons reverenced a martyred bishop Annemundus, who is said to have been brother of the local count Dalfinus. It has been ingeniously conjectured that the names of the two brothers have been transposed, and that Annemundus the bishop offered Wilfrith the daughter of Dalfinus the count ^. Of the circumstances of the death of Annemundus nothing seems to survive in the meagre chronicles of the time ; we may safely acquit the Queen of any share in it ; but a foreigner might easily fancy that it must have been done by her authority. And the biographer of Wilfrith casually lets fall one word which may perhaps give us a clue to the real culprit, one who certainly had no scruple as to shedding episcopal blood. The immediate agents in the martyrdom of the Archbishop of Lyons were certain dukes ^. It is not hard to see one of them in the successor of Erkenwald. On his death we are told that the Franks, after much debating and changing to and fro, bestowed the vacant dignity on Ebroin ^. The violent death of a bishop is sure to be looked on as martyrdom by some party; and in those days it was hard to punish any powerful man, however guilty, without some departure from the exact rules of any written law, Roman or Teutonic. Of the grounds for the execution of Anne- mundus we can say nothing ; but an execution which any confusion could connect with the name of Balthild must, if it happened at all, have happened while Balthild still reigned. She held and kept the land in queenly authority for eight years, kept them in peace, we are told, by the counsel of various wise men, among whom we hear specially of Chrodoberht Bishop of Paris, of the famous Saint Ouen of Rouen, and of Ebroin Mayor of the Palace *. But this ^ See Raine's note, p. 13. ^ Eddius, c. vi ; ''Ex quibus [Balthild's victims] unus est iste Dalfinus episcopus, quern duces malignissime ad se venire jusserunt." ■' Fred. Cont. 92 ; " Franci in incerto vacillantes, accepto consilio, Ebroinum in hujus honoris curam ac dignitatem statuunt." So in Gest. Franc. 45, with some change of words. * Vit. S. Bath., Duchesne, i. 666; "Suffragantibus prsecellentissimis BALTHILD AND EBROIN. 15 outwardly happy union of the whole Frankish dominions lasted for only half the time of the reign of Balthild. After four years it was found that the truest union may be sometimes found in separation. The Frankish monarchy was again divided — peacefully, we are assured. The Eastern realm had again its own king, its own queen, its own mayor, distinct from the king, queen, and mayor of Neustria. The king was Childeric, a younger Brother of Chlotachar. As their mother Balthild was to stay with her eldest son in Neustria, the care of the new king and his kingdom was given to Chimnehild the widow of his uncle Sigeberht ; no one as yet thought of sending for her own son Dagoberht from his Irish monastery. The Mayor of Austria was Wulfwald. The arrangement, if not devised, was at least approved, by Balthild ^ ; and we are emphatically told that — now that they were separated — principibus Clirodoberto episcopo Parisiaco et domino Audoeno Rothomagensi seu Ebroino majore domus, cum reliquis senioribus vel ceteris quamplurimis regni honorem quserentibus, ad regimen Fran- corum in pace constituitur." ^ The most emphatic account is that in the Life of Balthikl (p. 666) ; "Austrasii quoque pacifico ordine, faciente domina Bathilda, per consilium quidem seniorum, receperunt filium ejus Chiklericum regem in Austrasiam, factique sunt Burgundiones et Franci ex illo tempore uniti." " Franci " here clearly means Neustrians ; they and the Bur- gundiaus form one kingdom as against the men of the East. The Gesta (45) and the Continuator of Fredegar (93) put off this division till the death of Chlotachar six years later ; but this, we shall see, is against the whole course of the story. But it is from them that we get the name of the Mayor Wulfwald, of whom we shall hear again, and whom the genealogist of the Karlings (Pertz, ii. 311) makes into a king. The Queen appears in several charters as exercising a joint rule with her nephew ; but her name is given with singular variations. A charter of 661 (Pardessus, ii. 118) begins " Childericus rex Fran- corum et Chinechildis regina," and they alone sign. In the next document the Queen is absent. In p. 121, " Hildericus rex" acts "per consilium Emhildae reginee." She is " Hymnechildis " in the Life of Saint Amandus (Duchesne, i. 647). In the Life of Saint Prse- jectua (ib. 673) she is " Hymnichilda," where alone she does any- thing. 16 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. the Frankish kingdoms, hitherto at variance with one another, lived — till the next time of union, we may add — in unbroken peace ^. The division now made lasted only for a short time ; but it became the model for others. We shall presently see that Neu stria and Burgundy did not perfectly agree ; but it is clearly held that an union between them is at least more natural than an union between either of them and Austria. Two hundred years later we should accept the division as one dictated by an obvious difference of language ; we should say that the Romance and the Teutonic lands were parted asunder. One is tempted to think that this distinction existed already, that the Franks of Neustria were by this time more familiar with some form of Latin speech than with the tongue of their fore- , fathers which still lived on Eastern lips. But another question thrusts itself in, all the more strongly because none of the meagre writers of the time give us the slightest help. What had become of Aquitaine during the reign of Chlodowig ? What came of the attempt which was made at his accession (633) again to give to the Eastern king the outlying possessions which so many Eastern kings had held 1 Did Aquitaine at this time obey, or profess to obey, any Frankish king at all? To all these questions history gives us no answer, even legend gives us no answer, for the romance about Bertrand and Eoggis is not legend but deliberate fiction. For eighty-six years (633- 7 1 9), for fifty-nine years from the time that we have now reached, we know absolutely nothing of one of the great divisions of Gaul. It then appears as a powerful and united state, under a prince of its own, practically, perhaps formally, independent. Of the progress of this change we can say nothing ; but, whatever were its details, it must ^ Vit. S. Bath., p. 666; " Et credimus quia Deo gubernante, juxta dominse Bathildis magiiam fidem accidit, ut ipsa tria regna, qute antea dissidebant discordia, tunc inter se tenerent pacis eon- cordiam." BALTHILD AND EBROIN. 17 have been busily at work during all these years. The "i general causes are plain enough ; the rival kings and mayors had enough to do in the more strictly Frankish lands without striving to keep a hold on Aquitaine, if Aquitaine was anxious to escape from their hold. What does strike us is that, at this time at least, there seems no sign or thought of union between Aquitaine and even southern Burgundy. That Aquitaine, still essentially a Eoman land, should strive to throw off the dominion of the Teutonic kings of Austria was only the course of nature. And between Neu stria and Aquitaine there was doubtless, as all later history shows, already a wide differ- • ence in language and everything else. Between Neustria and Aquitaine there was little in common except the Roman element. A Celtic land which had received a large Frankish infusion must have been in a very different case from a land largely Iberian which had received a slight Gothic _^ infusion. But between Aquitaine and Burgundy there seems no such barrier. The Burgundian, as the name of the land shows, must have left more traces of himself east of Rhone and Saone than the Goth had left of himself south of Loire. And while Provence was doubtless even more ^1 Roman than Aquitaine, the northern part of Burgundy must have been less so. Still, on the whole, Burgundy and Aquitaine had much more in common with one another than either had with Neustria. An union of the two at this time might have given Europe another abiding nation. The Romance people of Southern Gaul had in them all the elements of a nation, no less than those of Italy, Spain, and Neustrian Gaul. But history had parted them . asunder. From the first Frankish conquest of Burgundy, that land had always kept a certain separate being. It had often had a king of its own. Aquitaine meanwhile had been parted out between this king and that ; large parts of it had even been held as an outlying possession of the kings of Austria. It had never, in any shape, formed a whole with Aquitaine. And now that the Frankish c 13 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. princes seem ready to let Aquitaine slip away from them without an effort, they are in no way disposed to do the like by Burgundy. That land must be kept at any hazard as part of the Frankish dominion, though it is allowed to be joined to the Western Francia rather than to the Eastern. Somewhat later we shall see signs of a dis- position on the part of at least the southern part of Burgundy to throw off Frankish rule, and to share the lot of Aquitaine. But as yet nothing points that way. The three Frankish kingdoms are in harmony with one another, and Neustria and Burgundy have a common king, a common queen-mother, a common mayor to guide and protect both. Of Aquitaine, its rulers or its people, we hear never a word. [A gap comes here : the intermediate part was never written. It was to have gone on with the history of the mayors of the palace and their rule down to the time when Charles Martel took the office, closing with the battle near Tours, 732, and the events that followed.] [The following Summary will perhaps help to keep the main line of events before the reader and explain allusions and references. Ebroin the Neustrian ruled from 660 to 670, and was then over^^ thrown and sent to a monastery by his foes, the East Frank Mayor, Wulfwald, and Bishop Leodegar the Neustrian. But in 678 Ebroin won back his Mayoralty and had Leodegar put to death, defeated Pippin the younger near Laon, and made good his rule over East Franks, West Franks, and Burgundians alike. But he was assassinated in 681. mmm -The younger Pippin, son of Ansgisl, son of B ishop Arnulf, no'y 1 came fu r waul, and aflei' a fiiicil battteTfear St. Quentin 687, he took I Ib roin's " place and rultJit'Easf-Franks. Wrst-Franks, and Burgundians , I s^.c} >^ aynr"lj| I y 1 1^^^ 'I' tV 1"i's! ' clnvsi there was peace among the Fran^ t****"*" and they made war upon their neighbours. The Frisians under Duke Radbod, the Alamans under Duke Godofred, were made to bow to the Merwing king. The Bavarians were largely converted to the New Faith 696. Irish and English missionaries laboured among the Thuringians, Frisians, Hessians (Hetwaras). Pippin's eldest sons^* ' (Grimwald and Drogo) died before him, but he hoped Grimwald's son, Theudwald, would succeed him. But Theudwald was too young when his grandfather Pippin died, and his bastard uncle, Charles, began a struggle with Pippin's widow, Plectrudis, and Raginfred, the West-Frank Mayor, for his father's place and his father's power. After a victory in the Ardennes in 716, and another near Cambray, 717, over Raginfred and his master, Chilperich, and the successful battle of Soissons 718, Charles lost his master Chlotachar, and he put Chilperich in his place and ruled as his Mayor over East- and West-Franks and Burgundians alike. Eudo of Aquitania was forced to bow to the Merwing king and carry out his Mayor's wishes. And now a fresh danger threatened Francia, the Saracens had overthrown the West Gothic kingdom of Spain, and were advancing upon Gaul. Eudo defeated them heavily at Toulouse, but they had taken and still held Narbonne. The Frisians and Saxons (heathens both) meanwhile occupied Charles. He compelled the obedience of the Swabians and Bavarians, and English missionaries again worked among the unconverted Teutons. C 2 20 WESTEBN EUROPE TN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. ? But Eudo rebelled and caballed with the Moslim and fought as their ally against Charles in^^Sl. Next year, however, Abd-al-Rahman drove Eudo to seek Charles's help, and advanced the Moslim banner to Pnitirx" Charles brought all the might of Francia against him, won a great battle and delivered Eudo's earldom and cleared part of South Gaul from the invaders. The Frisians who cast off or refused the New Faith were then visited and chastised by the great Mayor, and their idols broken.] II. CHARLES AND PIPPIN AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY. 737-753. It is often hard, in fixing the divisions of a historical narrative, to choose between the easy halting-places sug- gested by the deaths of kings or other rulers, and the breaks suggested by marked points in the course of events. Sometimes a change of sovereign is but a formal change ; sometimes there is no point in the course of events so strongly marked as the beginning and ending of the day of power of one of those men who shape the course of events. Assuredly Charles Martel was one of those men by whose personal character and personal will the course of events is largely shaped. And there is a wide difference indeed between his line of policy and the line of policy of those who came after him. Yet the events which marked the reign of his son undoubtedly began in his day. Two great changes in the state of the Frankish realm marked the reign of Pippin. The Merwing was set aside and the Karling sat upon his throne. The king then newly made, in another character yet more novel than his Frankish kingship, presently won a commanding place in the affairs of Italy. The change within and the change without the kingdom were both as strongly opposed, as anything could be to the character and the policy of Charles Martel. Yet both had their beginnings in his day. Charles Martel cared not to become a king. Y^et the thought that he or his descendants might become kings must have been, in his later days, more strongly forced, 22 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. if not on his own mind yet on the minds of others, than it had ever been before. He distinctly refused to take any part in the affairs of Italy. Yet the fact that he was earnestly pressed to do so is the beginning of that long Frankish intervention in Italian aifairs which marks the reigns of his son and grandson. The death of Charles Martel, the accession of his sons, is a marked turning- \ point in the story; but it is not strictly the beginning or ending of any chain of events. The two great features of the time immediately following, the change of dynasty and the intervention in Italy, have their beginnings in the last years of Charles. The feeling that we are drawing near to these two things gives his latter days a different character from the earlier part of his life in which there is no sign that either is drawing near. The two threads of narrative cross one another ; for the two are going on at once, and a number of events of other kinds are going on alongside of them. The strange thing is that the first step to one of our changes is not marked by any event, but by the lack of event. No chronicler has recorded the beginning of the process — the immediate process, as dis- tinguished from the causes which had been Ions: workinor— by -which the kingdoms passed from Merwings to Karlings. It is wholly by the evidence of documents that it is known. For in truth at the moment it made no practical difference to the Frankish people. But the fact that Charles Martel did not become a king at a certain moment is none the less the first step to the kingship of his son. So the fact that Charles Martel did not become a Koman consul at a certain moment was the first step to the Koman patriciate of his son, to the Roman Empire of his grandson. Only the refusal to become consul was an open act that was set down in the annals. The refusal to become king was confined to the working of Charles' own mind. Perhaps it had no place even there ; the thought of kingship may not have struck him. Still it is at the moment when the thought might easily have struck CHARLES AND PIPPIN AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY. 23 him, and when, if it did strike him, he cast it aside, that we must make our present starting-point. § 1. The Kingdomi ivithout a King. 737-751. Charles Martel was still in the midst of his Second Saracen warfare, the longer and more toilsome warfare which has been somewhat overshadowed by the fame of one great day in the earlier strife. He had once beaten the Arabs out of Provence, but they were to come twice again. The year of their second inroad was marked, or it would be truer to say that it was not marked, by a break in the succession of the nominal heads of the Frankish kingdom. The event seemed of so little moment at the time that no chronicler thought it needful to set it down in his annals. Yet there is no doubt that in the year 737 of our reckoning the glorious King of the Franks, Theodoric Fourth of that name, passed out of the world. Nothing is known of him ; not a single action, good or bad, is set down to his account. We infer from the descriptions that we have of Frankish usage that he showed himself yearly on the field of March, that he sat on his throne and spoke such words as the great Mayor of his Palace put into his mouth. We infer that he died in a certain year, because up to that year documents are dated by the years of his reign, while from that year the formula changes, and things are said to be done in such a year after the death of King Theodoric ^ But ^ There are a number of documents in the collection of Pardessus with this formula. See No. 57, vol. ii. p. 459, 61, 62, 63, 64. In 59 the date is " in anno primo post transitum [Theodorici] Carole majore donno [s/c]." There must be some strange corruption in the text of 58, which is dated " anno regnati domino nostro Thedericus regis et Carolo patricio majorem domus palatio Regis." One does not expect much attention to grammar in these documents, but on any con- struing Theodoric and Charles are here brought together in a strange fashion. 24 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. this last formula proves something more than the mere fact of Theodoric's death ; it proves also that he had no successor in his kingly title. No immediate successor that is. For we have still to come to one more mention of the house of the Merwings in narrative history, namely in the great act of fourteen years later when the Mero- wingian house finally ceased to reign even in name. The king who was then set aside was a Childeric and not a Theodoric. But so little it mattered who was king that a chronicler might have written one name for the other without greatly misleading his readers, or Theodoric might have died and Childeric reigned in his stead without any chronicler taking the trouble to record the change. But from narrative history only, such as we have at this time, no one could have been led to think that Theodoric died and that no other king immediately succeeded him, but that for several years the kingdom of the Franks went on without any king at all. This is what the documents teach us, a fact which seems to have struck no one at the time, but which strikes us all the more because it did ^.strike no one at the time. This we may fairly say, but we shall presently find signs that, if the lack of a king did not strike men at the time, it did strike them a little later. We shall perhaps be justified in saying that the fact that Theodoric died and had no immediate successor made no difference whatever to Charles Martel, but that the fact that he had no immediate successor did make a diflference to Charles's sons. '~ To ^Charles personally and to the kingdom which he ruled the death of Theodoric seems truly to have made no difference. Charles went on ruling as before ; men went on speaking of him by titles like duke or prince which in some way set forth his position ; but he still calls him- self by no other style than that of the once domestic office out of which his house had risen to all the power of kings. I He is stiJl Mayor of the Palace, and no more ^. But there ^ His own style is "inluster vir Carolus major domus." See for CHARLES AND PIPPIN AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY. 25 never was a title which more completely expressed a sub- ordinate place, a place conferred by another, the place of one responsible to another, than the one title of the ruler of the Franks. The Mayor of the Palace is on the face of it a servant who has a master ; he is Mayor of somebody else's palace, not of his own. When Theodoric was dead, the question could not fail to arise, if only as a matter for a smile, of whose palace it was that the Hammer of Christendom was Mayor 1 And on the great days of assembly, some change must have taken place in the ac- customed ritual, some change must have taken place in the management of the houses which had no longer a kingly master. It is an exaggeration of a writer a generation later or a wrong inference from his words, to hold that the latest Merwings always dwelled in a single royal villa^ save when they were brought forth once a year to the general instance Pardessus, ii. 334. The "inluster vir" of the mayor is dis- tinguished from the "vir inluster" of the king (" Theodoricus rex Francorum vir inluster" in the opposite page — the arrangement is genuine, though the matter of the document seems to be spurious) by being put before the name instead of after it. It reminds one of the diiference between "Cicero Imperator" and "ImperatorC9esar,"though there the rule is opposite. Other people made more of him than he did of himself, as we see by the very important will of Abbo in p. 370, dated "anno vigesimo primo gubernante inlustrissimo nostro Karolo regna Francorum." Of the titles given to Charles Martel by others, "dux" and "prin- ce^Ds " are so common and so natural that there is no need to collect examples of them. Some others are worth notice. Of the use and force of " patricius " I may have to speak again. It is applied to Charles in a letter of Gregory the Second to Boniface in 724 (JafE, Mon. Mog. 86) ; " Carolo excellentissimo filio nostro patricio." Gregory the Third, in both his letters (Jaffi, Mon, Car. 14, 15), addresses him as " subregulus," the title that Florence gives to Harold. Even in Frankland we have seen him described as "patricius" in a document above quoted (p. 23). These descriptions are natural enough ; it was a grander flight when the historian of St. Wandrille (Gest. Abb. Font. 3, Pertz, ii. 277) speaks of "Carolus, sagacissimus exarchus," and presently (9) dates by "exarchatus Caroli annus Septimus decimus." But this is the grand style. A little way on, Ragenfrith is called "intarka" — the Greek avTapKr]s. k 26 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. gaze of the Frankish nation ^. Like other kings, they moved about from place to place ; they did not, as we are told in the lively picture drawn by an East-Roman hand, always abide at home, though the foreign annalist may be right in implying that, wherever they were, their only business was to eat and drink and do nothing ^. On the day of the March-field, when all the great men of the Franks and the whole host of the Franks came together in warlike guise, ready to do battle wherever battle needed to be done, the royal Avain drawn by its oxen appeared on the field. The king, with his long hair marking his dignity^, with his beard, if he lived to an age to have one, hanging down no less unshorn, was set on his throne to receive the gifts of his people, to listen to the envoys of foreign powers, to make such answers as the Mayor of his Palace bade him, to consent to and to proclaim in some solemn fashion the decrees on which the Mayor and all the people of the Franks agreed without consulting him *. ^ This seems to be the usual inference from the well-known descrip- tion in Einhard, VitaKar. 1. But his words do not really imply constant abiding at one place ; " Quocumque eundum erat, carpento ibat, quod bubus junctis, et bubulco rustico more agente, trahebatur ; sic ad pala- tium, sic ad pubHcum popu]i sui conventum . . . ire, sic domum redire solebat." These words imply occasional visits to other places, and we find even the last Theodoric signing charters in various places. See Bonnell, Anfange, 126 ; Warnkonig and Gerard, i. 137 ; Richter, 207. ^ Theoph. i. 619, ed. Bonn ; edos rju avro'ts [to'is ^pdyyon] t6v Kupinv avTcou, fJTOi tov prjyfi, Kara •ye^•o? ap^^dv, Koi prjBeu npc'iTTeiv t) SioiKelv TTp\v dXoyco? iaOleLv Ka\ TTiveLv, o'lkol re hiaTp'i^dV. ('AXoyMS- would seem to mean "like a beast," the word ciXoyov having hardly settled down on a particular beast.) This kind of king is contrasted with UtTTivos npooiKOS Koi '^^npx^^ "^U^ dLoiKrjaecos tmp oXcoj' Trpayfxdrcov Kal tov TOiv ^payyoiv e6vovs. ^ Theophanes, who mistakes the month for the later May, is most irreverent on the subject of the "rcges criniti"; eXeyouro de (k tov yevovs e/ceiVou Kurayonevoi KpiaTtiTai, o €ppT]V€V€Tai rpi\^opa;^arat' Tpix^s yap elxov fcara tt]s p^x^l^ eKcfivopeias, niam venit." This writer is specially emphatic on Grifo's following ; " plurimi juvenes ex nobili genere Francorum, inconstantia ducti proprium dominum relinquentes." ^ The flight to the Saxons comes in most of the Annals. Our fullest accounts are in the Metz Annals and of the Continuator of Tredegar, who leaves out Grifo and tells us how " Saxones more consueto, fidem quam germano suo promiserant mentiri conati sunt. Qua de causa adunato exercitu, eos prsevenire compulsus est." ^ These names come from the Continuator, 117, "Reges Winidorum seu Frisionum " ; their geography is explained by Hahn, 93, and in a special discourse, 218. I am not concerned with the migrations by which these districts may have got their names. * These "duces gentis asperse Selanorum" are found only in the Metz Annals. I hope they were not suggested by the " Reges Winidorum." CHARLES AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY. 81 of King Sigeberht^. The North Swabians were brought to submission and to baptism ; but Grifo was not among them. His headquarters were at Ordheim on the Ocker, to the south of the present Brunswick. When Pippin pressed to the north, he found his brother, with his Saxon alhes, encamped by the river. The stream was defended by a fortification of some kind, most likely an earthwork like that with which Odilo had defended the banks of the Lech^. When the Frankish army drew near, the Saxons feared that their new defence would be no shelter, and took to flight by night. Grifo escaped, and Pippin passed through the land for forty days destroying the strongholds of the Saxons. The next year we are told that Grifo began to doubt the power of the Saxons to defend him against his brother ; but he seemed to see an opening for himself in the native land of his mother. Duke Odilo of Bavaria was dead. The duchy was now in possession of his widow Chiltrudis, half-sister of Grifo, whole sister of Pippin, in the name of her young son Tassilo ^. Grifo with the Frankish force that still clave to him made a dash on Bavaria, got Chiltrudis and her child into his power, and was seemingly accepted by the Bavarians. We have again two pictures, in one of which all mention of Grifo is left out and in which the movement takes the shape of a mere Bavarian revolt against Frankish supremacy *. The result was much ' This curious bit of geography, though it comes only from Metz, has every sign of genuineness ; " per Turingiam in Saxoniam veniens, fines Saxonum quos Nordosquonos vocant, cum vahda manu intra vit." ^ This is again from Metz, Ann. 748 ; " Saxones vero cum Grippone ex aha ripa erant, ubi maximam inter se et Francos firmitatem statuerunt." ^ This is implied in the account in Ann. Laur. followed b}' Einhard; ** Grifo ... in Bavarian! usque pervenit, ipsum ducatum sibi sub- jugavit, Hiltrudem eum Tassilone conquisivit." This is explained by the words of Metz, " Quorum' dux eo tempore Odilo defunctus erat, cui Tassilo filius ejus successerat. Quem de principatu Grippo abegit." * Cont. Fred. 117; " Quo peracto tempore Bagvarii consilio nefan- dorum, iterum eorum fidem fefellerunt, et contra prsefatum principem G 82 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. the same in either case. Pippin entered Bavaria ; his enemies withdrew beyond the Inn ; he followed them ; he received their submission and their oaths and hostages, and Grifo himself either submitted or was surrendered. And now Pippin did what assuredly Karlmann would not have done. He had released his brother from prison ; he had enriched and promoted him ; and his reward had been a Saxon and a Bavarian campaign, which he might otherwise have been spared. Yet brotherly love was so strong in him that he not only allowed Grifo to go free, but put him in a place of still higher trust than before. Bavaria he restored to his young nephew Tassilo, still under the guardianship of his mother. On Grifo he bestowed a vast possession in the heart of the Frankish dominions, where he perhaps deemed that he might be less dangerous. Twelve counties, with a noble city as their capital, became what we may call the appanage of the twice-pardoned rebel. The seat of Grifo's power was now fixed on the hill of Le Mans, within the Boman walls which girded the elder minster of Saint Julian and the long street of the Old Bome ^. But even this splendid gift could not win over Grifo, while he still had a superior in his brother. He threw up his twelve counties, and betook himself to Duke Waifar in Aquitaine. That prince was not yet an open enemy of the Frankish overlord ; but he was doubtless ready to w^elcome any who were likely to help him in any future stiife with the holders of a superiority which was hateful to every feeling of himself and his people. As far as Ave can see, if Grifo could have kept quiet, the whole Frankish dominions and their neighbour-lands would have kept quiet also. We have gone through two years eorum fidem mentiti sunt." So he tells the whole story without a word of Grifo. * Ann. Laur. 748 ; "Grifonem vero partibus Niustriae misit, et dedit ei 12 comitatos." The special mention of " Cinomannica urbs" comes from Metz. CHARLES AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY. 83 of strife which seems to have been wholly strife of Grifo's making. The Saxons and Bavarians were doubtless glad of his coming, as giving an excuse and an opportunity for a rising, but it was his coming which actually caused them to rise. They were now quelled for a season ; Waifar, we must suppose, was not ready for immediate action ; so it is now that we come to the unusual entry of two years of perfect peace. For those two years the Frankish realm has no recorded history (749-750). It has no history at least of the kind which makes up most of the history of those ages. The Marchfield must have been gathered ; King Childeric must have taken his place among his people ; but whatever words the Mayor of his palace put into his mouth, he dictated no order for the Frankish host to march to battle with any enemy. Nor do the next events that we have to record take the shape of wars and fightings. A great change, we might say, a great revolu- tion takes place; but it takes place without shedding a drop of blood. We have come to that epoch in Frankish history when King Childeric and his house were to pass away for ever, and when Pippin, mayor, duke, prince, consul, exarch, was to exchange all these titles for a higher one. We must not think that the years during which the annals have nothing to tell us were really years in which nothing happened. The Duke and Prince of the Franks, Mayor of the Palace under the glorious King his master, might indeed, as far as wars and fightings were concerned, rest for a season in quiet possession of the dominion which he had won. But the English-born apostle of Germany still had his hands full in his own special line of duty; nor could the Duke and Prince of the Franks himself afford to be wholly idle. The sword of the warrior was for a moment laid aside ; if no host needed to be called forth, if war needed to be declared against no man, yet measures had to be taken for the peace of the Frankish G 2, 84 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY realm, for the order of the Frankish Church. Boniface was writing and receiving letters from Pope Zachary about his newly founded house of Fulda\ about his newly granted powers as Metropolitan of Mainz ^, letters in which he speaks with tenderness of the help which Karlmann, sometime Prince, had given to his work ^. Pippin too was signing deeds on behalf of his favourite monasteries. In the eighth year of the most glorious King Childeric (749), he sets forth how to him, Pippin, Mayor of the Palace, the Lord had given the care of reigning, how the great men of the realm, apostolic fathers, dukes, and counts, had gathered around him in what, by a rather daring stretch, be calls his palace of Attigny, where he sat with them to judge between Fulrad, Abbot of his beloved Saint Denis, and a rival prelate, as he sits again in the next year to defend the rights of the same church against a hostile abbess *. To Saint Wandrille too he makes a grant of precious privileges, which the historian of that house speaks of as a grant of Pippin the glorious King, though its date shows that it was still the simple Mayor who granted it ^. 1 See the letters of Boniface and Zachary, JafFe, Mon. Mog. 218, 229. 2 lb. 227. ^ lb. 219. Boniface says that he has been able to found his monastery of rulda*'per viros religiosos et deum timentes, maxime Carlmannum quondam principem Francorum." * See the charter in Pardessus, ii. 414. I have referred to some of its formulje already. See above, p. 49. Pippin is made to describe himself in a somewhat kingly style ; " Cum nos in Dei nomine una cum optimatibus vel pontificibus apostolicis patribus seu et inlustribus viris ducibus atque comitibus Attiniaco villa, in palatio nostro, ad universorum causas audiendas vel recto judicio terminandas residere- mus." In the next charter Pippin is spoken of in the third person. " Cum resedisset inluster vir Pippinus majorem domus Attiniaco in palacio publico." " Publicus," I need hardly say, means royal. Does Pippin mean in the former document to claim the palace where he was Mayor as his own or had the King and the Mayor each a palace at Attigny ? ^ Gest. Abb. Font. 14 (Pertz, ii. 289). The grant is made by *'gloriosus rex Pippinus"; the gift itself is " privilegium quoddam sacrse suse auctoritatis." But the date is "anno dominicae incarna- CHARLES AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY. 85 And besides these more private acts, there must have been some more public decrees which King Childeric's Mayor had to teach his sovereign to utter in the Marchfield of the peaceful year (750) which ended the first half of the eighth century. It was still the duty of the King when he met his people to receive the envo3'S of foreign powers and to make answers to them with all kingly state. It may therefore be that he gave some formal assent when envoys were sent from his realm to foreign powers, in the name of the Frankish king and nation. But during- the days of peace one matter of great moment was thought over, one embassy was sent to confer on that matter in another land, on the sending of which King Childeric could hardly have been even formally consulted, and the answer to which must have startled even the listless soul of the successor of Chlodowig. For the hour had come for the last formal step, the thought of which must often have passed across men's minds^ though it may never have been put into a formal shape since the second Pippin rose to power. It had been ruled that the Frankish realm needed a successor of Chlodowig as its head. The question was now raised, and it had to be settled, whether the needful successor of Chlodowig need be the lineal heir of Chlodowig. Men had to make up their minds whether, now that the substance of power had passed away from the house of Chlodowig to the house of Arnulf and Pippin, the mere name and title ought not to follow the substance. How that question was debated, where, by whom, or in what form, we are not told ; but we are told that, in some way or other, the Frankish nation came to the conclusion that so to do would be for the good of the Frankish realm. But the proposed step was strange and new ; it was in the nature of a case of conscience ; and as a case of conscience the Frankish nation, by the mouth of its envoys, laid it tionis 750 die 8 Idum Januariarum. Vernaria, palatio regio," which is given as the year of Pippin's first unction. There is a casual mention of an " exactor reipublicse gentis Francorum." 86 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. before the power whose voice carried w^ith it the highest moral weight of any voice on earth ^. There is nothing directly to show at what moment the thought of displacing the shadow of a king who sat on the Frankish throne came, as an immediate practical question, into the mind of the man who could be called to fill it the moment it should be declared vacant. Pippin's accession to sole power by the retirement of Karlmann, the success of his arms as single ruler, the peace of the land under his rule, might all suggest more and more strongly that it was only in the fitness of things that he in whose hands was the substance of power should also receive its formal titles and honours. That Pippin wished for the name and the formal honours of kingship is likely enough ; most men are well pleased with any names or formal honours which come in their way; if, as we have ^ Most of the larger annals mention the anointing of Pippin as done by authority of Pope Zachary, "ex auctoritate" or the like. The Annales Laurissenses, 719, give the best account, which is followed by Einhard. Burhland and Folred are sent to Zachary, " interrogando de regibusinFrancia qui illis temporibus non habentesregalem potestatem si bene fuisset an non, Et Zacharias papa mandavit Pippino ut melius esset ilium regem vocari qui potestatem haberet, quam ilium qui sine regali potestate manebat, ut non conturbaretur orclo, per auctoritatem apostolicam jussit Pippinum regem fieri." One sees the general, but not the exact meaning of the words in italics. The Annales Laur. Minores (750) take the opportunity to describe the whole position of the last Merwings ; " Mittit Pippinus legates Romam ad Zachariam papam, ut interrogarent de regibus Francorum . . . Zacharias igitur papa secundum auctoritatem apostolicam ad interrogationem eorum re- spondit, melius atque utilius sibi videri, ut ille rex nominaretur et esset, qui potestatem in regno habebat, quam ille qui falso rex appellabatur." The account goes on, "Mandavit itaque praefatus pontifex regi et populo Francorum." (Was there really a counsel of perfection given to Hilderic to consent to his own deposition ?) This account makes as much as it can of the Pope ; on the other hand, the Continuator of Fredegar, the best authority when he speaks at all, while not leaving out the Pope enlarges on the popular side of the act ; " Una cum consilio et consensu omnium Francorum, missa relatione, a sede apostolica auctoritate percepta, prsecelsus Pippinus electione totius Francia)." CHARLES AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY, 87 seen reason to think, Charles Martel paid no heed to names and titles, either for himself or for any other, he represented a small minority among mankind. But in Pippin's case it was assuredly not a mere longing after titles and gewgaws. What was sought for was that facts should be looked in the face, and that names and forms should be adapted to the facts. It was sought to put aside a meaningless survival, the absurdity of which men could have endured only through long habit, and to set a living reality in its place. The taking of the kingly title by the Austrasian Mayor was like the putting on of kingly state and kingly ornaments by the Illyrian Emperor. Neither Diocletian nor Pippin were men to care more for such things than all mankind, save a few like Charles Martel, naturally cares. Titles and ornaments were not the objects, but the instruments of their policy. Diocletian felt that he was really the master of an Empii-e and not the magistrate of a commonwealth, and he set forth the fact in outward guise to be seen of all men. Pippin, in the like sort, felt that the time had come when it was due both to himself and to the Frankish nation to put an end to a mere pretence, and to make the name of power go along with the substance. It has been well said that a vizier ruling in the name of a nominal king might be endured among the despotisms of the East, but that it was utterly inconsistent with the first principles of Teutonic kingship. It might be added that it was no less inconsistent with the first principles of Imperial rule at Rome, Old or New. Both Teutonic and Roman sovereignty implied personal action on the part of the ruler. The Teutonic king, the embodiment, as his name speaks, of the national being, the head and representative of his people ^, was bound to be, himself in his own person, and not by the voice or the hand of another, their j udge in peace and their leader in war. A Roman Emperor— * See Norman Conquest, i. 593. 88 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. and a prince who reigned over the Roman lands of Gaul was in some sort the successor of Emperors — who had united in his own person all the great magistracies of the commonwealth, to whom the Roman people was held to have transferred, by a solemn act, all its rights and powers ^, was, if possible, even more bound to personal action than the Teutonic king. Holding his power, in legal theory at least, by no right of birth, but by a com- mission special and personal to itself, he was, if unable or unwilling to discharge in his own person the manifold duties entrusted to him, yet more manifestly out of place than a king whose personal unfitness might be in some measure veiled by the reverence due to kingly and even divine descent. The Franks had carried further than any other Teutonic people that reverence for the kingly kin which among no Teutonic people was wholly lacking. They had, while the house of the Merwings was still far other than it had come to be in the days of the last Childeric, gone far beyond any rule of choosing the king from the kinglj^ house, far beyond any rule of hereditary succession which gives the kingship of the people, irrespec- tive of their choice, to some particular member of the kingly house. jThey had accepted the doctrine that every member of the kingly house was by birth a king and entitled to some share in the exercise of kingly power. The outcome of all this had been the division of the kingdom, the degradation of the kings, beyond the example of any other people. And, while the kingly house was sinking into nothingness, while the kings, kings only by virtue of their birth, were falling lower and lower in each generation, a new house had arisen by their side, a house of leaders of men, called to rule because they were worthy to rule, who, without bearing the name of kings, had for seventy years done all that kings were meant to do. ^ I refer of course to the famous Lex Regia of the lawyers, none the less valuable as the setting forth of a theory because there was no Lex Regia. CHARLES AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY. 89 There is no more striking difference in all history than the contrast between the Merwings and the Karlings, between the Frankish dominion under the one house and under the other. The change from the one to the other, a change which of course begins when the power of the Austrasian house is fully established under the second Pippin, seems like a change of centuries. The whole Mero- wingian dynasty is a kind of survival. In its latest days of shadowy kingship it of course becomes so in an obvious sense ; but there is a sense in which it was so from the beginning. The kingship of the Merwings seems through- out something out of place in the world into which it had thrust itself, in a way in which the kingship of other reigning Teutonic houses was not out of place. It kept an old-world character about it, in no way changed by either the Koman or the Christian influences which were brought to bear upon everything around it. Chlotochar and Chilperic were baptized Christians ; they ruled over a Roman people ; Chilperic, lawyer, poet, and divine, made no small profession of Roman learning. But their kingship is still the old untouched heathen kingship ; it seems to keep all that is bad in the elder state of things, heightened perhaps a little in its badness by contact with the new. The Merwing seems another kind of creature from the Gothic, the English, or even the Lombard king. One thing is that the doctrine of the kingliness of the whole kin, the right of every Merwing to be a king, really destroyed the best feature of the old Teutonic kingship. Through the endless divisions and civil wars which were the necessary consequence of this doctrine, the^erowingian king had ceased to be the leader of a people ; he had sunk to be the owner of part of a divided family estate, of as large a part of it as he could get for himself by despoiling or murdering his brothers or nephews. As Chlodowig began, so his descendants went on. Surely never did any kingly house, or any house, sink, as a house, into such utter moral degradation of every kind. The grotesque feebleness of 90 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. the later generations is the fitting punishment of the active wickedness of the earlier generations. We have gone through their story ; we know their deeds and their ways ; good King Guntchramn is perhaps the most instructive commentary on his whole family; we feel that among Merwings he really deserved his epithet, but that he would have won it anywhere else but among Merwings. Never was there such a record of crime and vice and lawlessness of every kind as that of the Merowingian reigns ; it is, as far as the kings are concerned, a story of men given up to purely personal objects, to the pursuit of their own power, their own pleasure ; set to be rulers of men, they show not the slightest sign of any feeling of public duty. Of the line of Arnulf and Pippin we have another tale to tell. Sprung of the blood of saints and heroes, the line of the Karlings — one can hardly keep from giving them the name before the time — never became altogether unworthy of its origin. This last is a most important point to insist on, because popular belief conceives the Karlings to have ended in a whole series of incapable kings like the last Merwings^. No belief ever was further from the truth. The later Karlings were undoubtedly, as a house, a falling off from the earlier ; after the line had reached its highest point, it sank ; but it sank only to the level of other kingly houses ; it never, like the Merwings, sank below that level. As the political position of the later Karlings was wholly unlike that of the later Merwings^ so was their personal character wholly unlike theirs. Down to the end in the later years of the tenth century, if the Karolingian stock put forth some weak shoots, it also put forth some very vigorous ones. But the early generations of the house, from the saint at Metz to the Emperor at Aachen, form a mighty line indeed. We have seen their acts ; they are the acts of men who have their faults like other men, but in ^ Even Lord Macaulay fell into this common mistake. The other side was strongly put out by Sir Francis Palgrave in his England and Normandy. CHARLES AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY. 91 whom we can see, what we cannot see in any stage of the earlier kingly house, a distinct sense of public duty. ^We i^ \ see in them men who, finding themselves set in a great place — believing that, in their own words, the Lord has given them the care of reigning — feel that they must act as becomes the place in which they are set, that they must do their duty in that state of life to which God had called them. They had restored the Frankish power to its former greatness ; they had judged in peace ; they had led in war ; they had been the true shepherds of the people, while the once kingly house had brought on itself the woe denounced on the shepherd that leaveth the flock ^. Above all, they had done that great duty of Christian rulers which the Merwings had ever left undone ; sprung of a stock of saints, they had been the aiders and abettors of the saints in bringing the whole Frankish realm and its dependencies under the obedience of the faith. Leaders and judges of the nation, nursing-fathers of the Church, champions of Christendom and Europe, far more truly the Church's eldest sons than the first Merwing baptized at Rheims, the house of Arnulf and the Pippins, the house of Charles the Hammer, stood forth as the model of a kingly house alongside of the children of the gods who had passed away, who for so many generations had done , nought to call forth either love on the part of their people or fear on the part of their enemies. The time was come for the shadow to give wa}^ to the substance, for a line of puppets to give way to a line of warriors and lawgivers. Mayor, Duke, Prince, the leader of the Franks, already in deed, if not in name, was ready to claim the place and title of which his deeds and the deeds of his fathers had made him worthy. The house of Arnulf and Pippin had indeed done much towards changing the face of the world. They were far ^ See the warning of the earlier Zacharias, xi. 17. 92 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. from being the only agents, but they had been very active agents in the change which makes the striking difference between the age of the Karlings and the age of the Merwings. The Karolingian age is in truth a very modern period ; it has far more in common with quite late times than it has with the times which immediately followed it. Europe was presently again to split up into a system of small states ; but the age of the Karlings was an age of great powers, just like our own age. "When the second Pippin fully established the Austrasian superiority in the Frankish realm, the world of our history was pretty well made up of the Empire, the Gothic, Lombard, and Frankish kingdoms, and the terrible Saracen power which threatened all, the power which in the days between the second Pippin and the third, had swept away the Gothic power in Spain and Septimania and which had been beaten back from Aqui- taine and Francia by the hammer of Charles. Perhaps to our list we ought to add the Bulgarian kingdom against which the mighty Emperors of this time had to wage as hard a strife in Europe as they had to wage against the Saracen in Asia. Alongside of these great powers we can hardly say that there are any smaller ones, except those states in Italy, Gaul, and Germany, such as Beneventum, Spoleto, Aquitaine, Bavaria, which stood in some relation of dependence to their greater neighbours. We ourselves still remain in our island world, our alter orbis, still split up into many kingdoms, still making our way against the older folk of the land, having our own history, our own national growth, but rarely influencing other lands, rarely influenced by them. We seldom so much as took a wife from the mainland or sent over a daughter thither. The Scandinavian lands, before long to send forth conquerors and settlers to every coast, as yet abide more thoroughly in the background than ourselves. Roman^ Goth, Frank, Lombard, were the great powers of Christendom, and of these the Frank was fast placing himself on a level with the Roman. The Austrasian Ma} or was as clearly the mightiest CHARLES AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY. 93 ruler of the West as the Emperor himself was in the East. In an age like this international dealings are on a large scale, quite unlike the state of things in a later age, when we have to speak of Normandy, Anjou, and Flanders, as powers of at least equal strength, if of lesser dignity, with the kingdom which still represented the Western Franks. The warfare which Charles waged to defend, not only Gaul but Christendom, the diplomacy which Pippin carried on with the Roman Bishop and the Roman Emperor, are events on an oecumenical scale, events which influenced all later history. And the men of the time are men on the same scale as the events ; Emperors, Popes, Mayors, Kings, of the Lombards, and presently Kings of the Franks too, are men who have a great part to play, and who know how to play it. They seem far more like the men of later times than the men of either an earlier or a later time ; we better enter into their thoughts and their policy than we do into those either of a Merwing King or of an early King of the House of Paris. And the Austrasian Mayors had dis- tinctly played no small part in giving — or keeping for — their age the character of which we so speak. It was they who raised the divided and degenerate realm of the Mer- wings into the mighty power which was now keeping its short sabbath under the peaceful rule of the third Pippin. Already had the message of Gregory to Charles pointed to the Prankish kingdom as in fact, if not in name, an Empire of the West, to which the elder Rome might be willing to transfer her allegiance from the Emperor who had his seat in the younger. In that generation that thought was premature ; but it was to become more than a thought before the century was out. And it was no small step to that accomplishment when the son of the Mayor, the father of the Emperor, first thought of claiming the royal title for himself. And among these wider aspects of the case there is another, smaller but at the time very practical, which must not be forgotten. It was not simply that the Karling 94 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. was more worthy to reign than the Merwing ; it was not simply that it was an anomaly and an absurdity that the name and badges of kingship should be held by one man while the real power was exercised by another ; besides all this, as long as the name and the thing were kept apart, there was a real and immediate danger. That an able and vigorous Merwing should arise was most unlikely ; but such a thing might happen, and, if it did, there would be, to say the least, differences hard to settle between the vigorous Merwing and the probably still more vigorous Karling. Or, what was far more likely, the King's name might be made use of, even within the Frankish kingdom, and still more likely within the dependent states, by some prince or some party who wished for a decent pretext for throwing off the authority of the Mayor. If the change of dynasty fell in with the personal interests of Pippin and his house, it fell in no less with the manifest public interests of the Frankish state. The Frankish nation thus made up its mind to change the line of its kings. We should like to know whether the wish for the change was equally strong in every part of the Frankish dominions. The Mayors of the house of Arnulf had finally risen to power as heads of one part of the Frankish nation in opposition to another part. Austrasian Pippin was as distinctly a German conqueror of the Pboman lands as Salian Chlodowig. And what the second Pippin had done, the first Charles had to do again. Neustria and Burgundy were conquered lands. But they did not long remain so. When they had once become heads of the whole Frankish nation, the Austrasian Mayors ceased, as far as we can see, to favour one part of their dominions at the expense of another. The warfare of Charles, calling the Franks of every corner of Francia to do battle in the cause of all Francia and of more than all Francia, must have done much to bind together all the bearers of the Frankish name, all the immediate CHARLES AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY. 95 subjects of the Frankish crown. Austria and Neustria alike had sent their sons to fight for Christendom. They, and men of other nations with them, had stood side by side, under the wide style of " Europeans," to beat back the attacks of Africa and Asia. Pippin had made himself no less at home in Neustria than in Austria. The chosen object of his devotion and bounty was the great abbey of Saint Denis, and the friend of the abbey of Saint Denis was the friend of the city of Paris ^. Under Pippin Paris seems to have had, what it lost again under his son, one of those many chances of headship which had been so often dangled before its eyes from the days of Julian on- wards. We shall soon see that in the greatest act of his life Pippin showed a special regard to the Neustrian lands. The men of those lands were not likely to have opposed an act which was accomplished among themselves. The change of the kingly houses was therefore to be made ; but how ? Certainly not in any hasty or violent fashion ; that would have been altogether unlike Pippin's temper and most unsuited to Pippin's policy. The Franks had long ago boasted that they did not, like the Goths, daily depose and murder their kings ^. The change that was to be made must be made openly and solemnly, and with the highest sanction that could be had. In earlier days the voice of the Frankish nation, the counsel of the elders, the shout and the clash of weapons of the armed people on their Marchfield, might have been deemed law enough for any change. The kingship of the Merwings, a pure survival of the Teutonic kingship of heathen times, was a salt which, throuo^h the chancre of reliction, had lost its heathen savour, and which had never been sweetened ^ See the charter quoted in Appendix, Note 4. ^ Greg. Tur, iii. 30 ; " Sumpserant enim Gothi hanc detestabilem consuetudinem, ut, si quis eis de regibus non placuisset, gladio eum adpeterent et qui libuisset animo, hunc sibi statuerunt regem." 96 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. with any Christian sweetness. The Church and her ministers, as a body of men apart from the rest of the nation, had never had any part or lot in the making of Frankish kings. The king either succeeded without cere- mony to his division of the family estate ; or, if it was thought right to make the succession of any particular king more marked and impressive than usual, he was heaved on the shield as the chosen captain of his armed folk. The unction of the Old Law, long familiar in the inauguration of Emperors, practised of later years in the inauguration of Gothic kings, had never been poured on the head of any son of Merwing and Chlodowig ; the holy oil of Ptheims was the oil of baptism, not the oil of royal consecration. And, if the Franks, in the making of their kings, sought for no ecclesiastical rite, for no ecclesiastical sanction, from the Church of their own land, still less did they seek for the sanction of any power out of their own land. But things had changed since those older days ; they had largely changed within living memory through the action of a single stranger. English Winfrith, changed into Roman Boniface, had, before all men, taught the Franks and all the nations of the central mainland to look in many things beyond the bounds of their own land. The power and the influence of the Roman Bishop had made vast strides, not only since the days of Chlodowig, but in the few years since the death of Pippin's father. In Chlodowig's day a Bishop of Rheims was enough to do all that could be needed in receiving the king and people of the Franks within the Christian fold, and assuredly the whole history of the Merwings contains no case in which the Frankish king or people deemed it needful to seek the approval of the Bishop of Rome for any political act. If it came into the head of Charles Martel to consult any ghostly adviser as to the case of conscience whether it was right for the Mayor of the Palace to reign without a king over or under him, he was satisfied with such counsel as he could get within the bounds of the CHARLES AND PIPPIN AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY. 97 Frankish realm. When Gregory the Third had prayed him to come to the help of the Roman Church against the Lombard, he put him off with gifts and solemn embassies. But Pippin and Zachary were on quite other terms (747). ^^^ Whatever might be the technical extent of the Pope's formal authority within the Frankish Church, he was at least consulted in all religious and moral questions as the power which could speak with most weight in all religious and moral questions. Almost at the moment of the abdica- tion of Karlmann, Pippin had consulted Zachary on a crowd of ecclesiastical questions, and had received his answer in the shape of a letter of no small length^. It was a further step to consult the Roman Bishop on a matter so purely political as the change from one royal house to another. But political questions are commonly moral questions as well. It does not appear that the Prince and people of the Franks at all acknowledged any right in the Pope to a voice in the disposal of the Frankish crown. The application was made strictly as a case of conscience. Could they, without sin, make the great and, to many minds doubtless, strange change which they proposed to make ? To say nothing of any wrong which the change might be held to do to Childeric and his house, if the accession of the present king had been accompanied by the swearing of any oaths to him on the part of Pippin or any other man, that of itself brought the matter within the bounds of the jurisdiction which the Church claimed over the souls of men. It is strange throughout those ages to compare the light way in which oaths were both taken and broken, with the deep importance which at other times is attached to an oath, sometimes perhaps only because it was convenient, but sometimes also because the conscience was really touched. The oddest shape of the feeling is the superstitious one which leads to the formal and literal fulfilment of an oath in some way quite alien ^ See the letter in Mon. Car. 18. Zachary addresses Pippin simply as Major-domus. H 98 WESTEBN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. to its real spirit^. We must suppose that both Pippin and many others had bound himself by oaths to Childeric. If they had taken such oaths lightly, they were at least resolved not to break them lightly. The act which was formally to place the great Austrasian house, the house of Arnulf and the Pippins, at the head of the whole Prankish nation, was done on Neustrian ground. That so it was far less a badge of the victory won by the Eastern Franks over the Western than a sio^n of the union of both branches of the nation under the newly chosen dynasty. The place chosen for the act was one round which the earliest memories of Prankish dominion in Gaul gathered close and thick. The last seat of Roman power on Gaulish soil, the first seat of Prankish power since the Prank came out of his marches to take a part in the wider affairs of Gaul and Europe, was chosen for the inauguration of the new line of Prankish kings. Soissons, home of Syagrius, first home of Chlodowig, was chosen as the spot whereon to carry into act the change which the nation had decreed and which the Pontiff* had ruled might be done lawfully. At Soissons the ecdesia of the bishops, within the walls on the left bank of the Aisne, had already begun to be overshadowed by more than one basilica both flanking it and fronting it. The abbey of Our Lady, the foundation of Leutrada, wife of the famous Ebroin, had risen within the walls, to be the home of a succession of abbesses of kingly and noble birth. But, greater and more ancient, be^^ond the walls of the city, on the further bank of the river, hard by the dwelling-place of the kings, the abbey of Saint Medard, the foundation of the first Chlota- char, had grown into the foremost holy places of the Prankish realm. Pew indeed are the fragments surrounded by and embedded in modern buildings which remain to mark the site of either abbey or palace. But we can call up the minster of those days and the royal house beside, ^ I have given some instances of this in Norman Conquest, iii. 251. CHARLES AND PIPPIN AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY. 99 while a wide open space between the city and the house of Saint Medard was well suited for the gathering of a great assembly. In the autumn then of the year 751 the Frankish people, with the national conscience fully at ease as to the nature of its act, came together a second time by the banks of the Aisne to do what had been pro- visionally decreed at the meeting of the Marchfield. We would gladly have the acts of such an assembly in the minutest detail. We should specially like to know whether the dethroning of the Merovingian king was accompanied by any symbolic act. Did he come in usual form, in his wain, to be placed on the throne, to hear, among any other mes- sages from foreign powers, the judgement of the Pope that approved of his own deposition? Did he listen to the shout of the assembly, to the clash of the weapons, which announced the vote of the nation that Childeric should be no more a king and that the mayor of his palace should take his place ? Was he then, by force or by persuasion, formally removed from the throne which was no longer to be his but another's ? On points like these, which would indeed give life to the story, our meagre annals tell us nothing. We know only that Childeric ceased to be king, that his long hair was shorn from his head. Such a shear- ing would be of necessity involved in the monastic pro- fession to which he was destined ; but are we to suppose something more, that the act which made Childeric no longer a " rex crinitus," was done in the siofht of all men as the outward sign of the change which came upon him ? One king was set aside and another king had to be made. Again we have no distinct record of the ceremony. We hear nothing of any crowning strictly so called, nothing of setting the cynehelmi on the head or the rod of rule in the hand ; the orb of Empire was not for Pippin but for Pippin's son. Such ceremonies are very ancient ; we should certainly have looked for them ; we can hardly, in the meagreness of our narratives, venture to say that they were not gone through. But what impressed men's H 2 100 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. minds at the time was the union of the older and the newer, we might say the heathen and the Christian, by that day certainly the Teutonic and the Roman fashion, of making a king. The Karling, like the Merwings his predecessors, was heaved on the shield beneath the canopy of heaven, amid the shouts of the armed gathering that filled the plain by the river side. That was enough to clothe the chosen King of the Franks with every right and power of Teutonic kingship. But something more was needed for the inauguration of a prince who was the nursing-father of the Church, the friend of the saints, the close ally of the spiritual head of Western Christendom. Pippin, " Rex Christianissimus," as he is so pointedly called, was further to go through a ceremony of which no Mer- wing had ever been thought worthy, a ceremony which was to give the new-made King another and a Christian form of sanctity instead of that elder form of sanctity which could not be transferred from the old kingly kin to a man of another stock. Pippin was no child of heathen gods ; but, already the chosen of the nation, he was to become further the anointed of the Lord. The unction of the old Law, now in use for some ages in the case of the Emperors, more lately extended to the kings of that Gothic kingdom which had now passed away, was now for the first time bestowed on a Frankish king. Heaved on the shield in the open air at the hands of the Frankish folk acting as the Frankish folk, he was now to receive his anointing within the walls of the minster, at the hands of the chiefs of the Christian priesthood, with the consent and applause of the Christian flock of his realm. Within the walls of Saint Medard he was chosen and admitted to the leadership of his people in peace and war ; within his walls he was found worthy to be made partaker of an ecclesiastical sacrament which in those days was held to be no mere form or symbol, but a true means of grace. And the new rite, a rite conferring character rather than office, was one in which another might share with him. CHARLES AND PIPPIN AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY. 101 Fredeguncl and Brunechild had had no share — they could have no share — in the admission of their husbands to kingly power, nor were they admitted to queenly rank by any rites other than the ordinary sacrament of marriage. But in the unction of Pippin, Bertrada had a share also ; as he became a Christian king, she became a Christian queen by his side. One question only remains, By whose hands was the holy oil poured on the heads of the royal pair ^ ? ' Here the MS. ends abruptly. J 5 l-> ni. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 752-757. The change of dynasty was made, and the Franks had again a king to go before them. It may be, as an admir- ing chronicler puts it, that the fame of King Pippin's power and the fear of his valour went forth into all lands ^. It is certain that the moment the kingly name and the kingly power were again brought together in the hands of one man, the kingdom itself began to grow. We spring, as by a sudden bound, from the generation represented by Charles Martel, its conservative warfare and defensive policy, if not to the generation represented by the far-reaching policy, the oecumenical policy and dominion of Charles the Great, yet to a time when the deeds of the father begin to make ready the path for the Imperial throne of the son. The arms and the influence of Pippin the King at once reach into the regions from which Charles Martel had pur- posely stood aloof, and in which Pippin the Mayor had not been called on to act. The King is now distinctly called on ; he does not set forth of himself ; he is sought for as a sovereign, as a mediator, a deliverer. Not bearing the Imperial name, but hallowed with the Imperial unction, the new King of the Franks is prayed on every side to act as the leader of Christendom in the Western lands. ' Ann. Mett. 750 ; " Unde rumor potentiae ejus et timor virtutis transiit in universas terras." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 103 Warfare with the heathen on the northern frontier, warfare which might or might not take the shape of conversion, was a necessary part of the duty of a Frankish king as such. That Pippin had to wage a Saxon campaign might almost have been taken for granted (753), even if no chronicler had recorded the fact ^ So had his father and his brother before him ; so had his son after him. The action of Pippin in other quarters shows him and the power that he wielded in lights that are wholly new. We seem to be reading records of our own time when Christians under the Mussulman yoke cry to the Christian champion to come as their deliverer. From the point of view of analogy, as one link in a chain that is long indeed, his warfare in Septi- mania is perhaps the most attractive side of the whole life of Pippin. More striking in his own day, more important in European history in the way of cause and effect, was the action of the new King of the Franks in Italy. It was a new thing, such as earlier times had never seen, when the Poman Bishop came in person to crave the help of the Frank, when the Koman Emperor, perhaps formally, certainly practically, resigned to the Frank the duty of de- fending alike the Church and the Republic in his elder capital. § 1. The War in Septimania. 752. It is a curious commentary in the nature of our autho- rities, so rich, full, and trustworthy on many points, and yet so strangely piecemeal, that what we may fairly call the crusade of Pippin's day in the old Gothic lands of Gaul is wholly left out in most of the narratives of his reign. ^ The Saxon campaign is recorded in most of the annals, with the notice of the death of Hildegar Bishop of Koln, "in castro [or ' monte '] quod dicitur Juherg.'' The Continuator of Fredegar describes the harrowing which reached as far as the Weser, and the Metz annalist adds that they received Christian preachers, and many of them received baptism, and further agreed to pay a tribute of 300 horses. 104 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Yet no appeal was ever more honourable to any prince or people than when the Goth rose against his Mussulman lord and called in the Frank as his protector and sove- reign. It needs an effort — perhaps it needs a special effort to those who have a personal knowledge of those lands — fully to take in that Nimes and Narbonne and Carcassonne are among the cities which the Christian has won back again from the Mussulman invader, that they rank along- side of Palermo and Syracuse in the eleventh century, of Cordova and Seville in the thirteenth, of Athens, Belgrade, and Sofia in our own day. The work of Pippin against the Saracen, both what he did himself and what others did in his name, is of quite another kind from the work of his father. There is nothing in the Saracen warfare of Pippin, there is nothing in any part of the career of Pippin, on the same vast and impressive scale as the great fight and victory of his father. If that fight had gone otherwise, the whole future fate of the world might have been otherwise. Whether Pippin did or did not take Nar- bonne was not an event of the same oecumenical import- ance ; if he had not taken it, some one else would before long. Still Charles simply defended and won back ; Pippin advanced. Charles saved Francia and saved Christendom ; Pippin enlarged them. Charles won his great battle ; he drove the Saracen out of Provence ; he entered the Saracen territory ; he threatened Narbonne itself But his deeds in Septimania were merely military operations to weaken a power that threatened the Prankish dominions. He in no way enlarged these dominions. He left the Saracen in possession of lands and cities far north of the Pyrenees ; he left the Christians of part of Gaul under the yoke of the misbeliever. Pippin swept away all traces of Mussulman dominion in the lands, and he received the homage of Mussulman rulers within the bounds of Spain. That the great peninsula of south-western Europe was once under Mussulman bondao^e is a fact familiar to all. That of the great peninsula of south-eastern Europe part THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 105 still abides in Mussulman bondage, that another part has been delivered from Mussulman bondage in our own day, are things which our own eyes have looked upon. When we go a httle further to the north on either side, the facts become a little less clear. It needs an effort to take in that part of Gaul once was for a while as so large a part of Spain was for a much longer while, that the more part of Hungary was for a while as no small part of Romania is still. The Turk ruled over a larger territory in Hungary than the Saracen ever ruled over in Gaul, and he ruled it for a longer time. It is therefore not quite so hard to conceive Budapest Turkish as to conceive Narbonne Saracen. Yet the Saracen at Narbonne, the Turk at Budapest, have something yet more strange about them than the Saracen at Cordova and the Turk at Constantinople. The Saracen occupation of Septi mania was short, yet there was time enough for more than one generation of Mussulman masters, for more than one generation of Christian bondmen, to grow up. That there are few material monuments of the Saracen left in Septi- mania is largely to be accounted for by the early date both of his cominor in and of his drivino^ out. If we have few Saracen monuments of those times we have as few Gothic or Frankish. The amphitheatre of Aries has its outline varied b}^ towers, which some say were built by the Sara- cens, which some say were built as a defence against them. Some smaller changes in the amphitheatre of Nimes belong most likely to a later day than the Saracen. But what seems to be an authentic Saracen tower rises above the earlier Gothic, the later French, defence of Carcassonne. But there is nothing like the great remains which keep up the memory of the Saracen in Southern Spain ; there is nothing like the occasional fragments of his actual work, the abidino^ influence of his art on later buildino^s which keep up his memory in Sicily. No Cassaro or Calsa pro- claim at Nimes or Beziers that the tono^ue of the Arab was once spoken there. Yet it is an essential part of our story, it is an essential part of the story of the world, that the 106 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURA. law of the Prophet was once the law of men who went in and out of the gate of Augustus at Nemausus, and who dwelled around the Square House and the baths of Diana ; that the muezzin once called to prayer in the vanished mosque of Narbo Martins, doubtless on the spot where now the vast unfinished church and the palace of the departed Primates still rear themselves. In the year then that followed the royal unction of King Pippin (752), the Christian people of Septimania, under the leadership of the Goth Ansemund, rose up against their Mussulman masters^ and commended themselves to the King of the Franks. Nimes, Maguelone, Agde, and Beziers, became Prankish tei-ritory ^. A Prankish army, but seem- ingly not under the King's own command, came to the support of his new subjects. Narbonne was attacked, but in vain. For seven years the Saracen capital held out. As far as we can see, Prankish attacks on Narbonne went on ; but there is no need to conceive a reojular sie^e lastinor all that time ^. This is really all that we know ; and never should we be better pleased to have some further details. Nimes, Agde, and Beziers are the towns where Charles Martel, not many years before, had destroyed the walls, as a piece of damage done to their Saracen owners. In what state were those cities now? It is certain that the walls of Nimes were no more altogether swept away than the amphitheatre was ; the Roman gates are there to speak for themselves. Of course it was not needful for Charles' pur- pose to pull down every yard of wall ; a wide breach here and there would be quite enough. But we do wish to know the exact state of the city at the moment. Were the walls rebuilt? And what were the exact relations be- tween Christians and Saracens at Nimes when the Goth ^ These most valuable entries come as a sort of afterthought in the Moissac Annals after the Italian war, but with the jDroper dates. Under 752 we read, " Ansemundus Gotus Nemauso civitatem, Magda- lonam, Agathen, Biterris, Pippino regi Francorum tradidit." ^ lb, ; "Ex eo die Franci Narbonam infestant." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 107 Ansemund could be said to hand over the city to the Frankish king ? So too we wish to call up the exact state of Greek Agathe, low down by its river, with its small domestic volcano in the near distance, and, now at least, with its buildino^s of the volcanic stone like the tribute of ^tna at Catania or of the elder mount of fire at the Arver- nian Clermont. Gaulish Biterris again, looking down on its stream, looking up at the distant mountains, are we to suppose that it had stood on its height, utterly without defence, since its harrying at the hands of Charles Martel ? If so, his policy had answered well; if he had not at- tempted conquest himself, he had opened a path by which his son might enter without conquest. There were other towns in Gothic Gaul of which we hear nothing. At Car- cassonne Charles had assuredly destroyed no walls. We are not told whether the Gothic defences served to shelter the Saracen from the Frank after Nimes and Beziers had passed under his power. Carcassonne must have yielded, either now or when Narbonne was won back for Christen- dom ; but that is all that we can say. The southern towns in what is now Roussillon and Cerdagne, Roscino and Helena, perhaps remained to the Saracen for the present to share the future destinies of the Spanish March. But above all things at this stage we crave to know how matters stood in the city once so great and which has now so fallen from its greatness. There is something very striking in the language which our meagre record uses with regard to Narbonne. For seven years the city stood, perhaps the only point of Gothia still held by the Saracens. Its inhabitants, however, were not wholly Mus- sulman. A notice a little later shows that there were Goths within the city, seemingly left in the enjoyment of their own law, and able in the end to overcome the local Mussulmans. We need not suppose that the word Goth is used with any special reference to nationality. By the time the Gothic kingdom was overthrown, all its subjects 108 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. would count for Goths as opposed to Saracens or to Franks, just as the Eomans of Neustria now passed for Franks, though in Aquitaine we have seen that they still kept the Roman name ^. The city, with its mixed population, was the object of ceaseless Frankish attacks, of the exact nature of which we hear nothing, but which could not have amounted to a regular siege. In one year, otherwise of perfect peace, we hear of the guards that were sent to Narbonne, guards whose watch must have been kept out- side the city and not within it ^. One may easily conceive endless forays and skirmishes, endless attacks on each side to seize the supplies of the other and to cut off detached parties. All this is common to all such warfare from the days of Ilios onwards. But one point is strongly suggested by this long and desultory warfare. What were the rela- tions of land and water at Narbonne just at this time 1 Ages earher, Narbo Martius had been a haven of the sea, the Roman rival of Greek Massalia. From modern Narbonne the sea has passed away, and the loss of its haven has been the loss of its prosperity. To which state of things did the Narbona, the Saracen Arbune, of the eighth century come nearest 1 The tale of the seven years' war- fare suggests that in the days of Pippin the sea was still open to the Saracen capital, that the Franks had no effective ^ See above, p. 58. ^ In the Annales Guelferbytani and Nazariani we have under 756 (perhaps 757) the entry " Franci quieverunt, excepto custodes directos ad Arhonam" that is of course iVarbonam. It is not till 759 that we read " Franci Narbonam obsident." It seems impossible to accept the story in the Metz Annals, 752, which makes Pippin go in person and unsuccessfully besiege Narbonne ; "Pippinus rex exercitum auxit in Gothiam, Narbonamque civitatem, in qua adhuc Sarraceni latitabant, obsedit. Temptatis itaque plurimis argumentis, muni- tissimam civitatem capere non potuit, Custodia tamen ibi derelicta, cottidianis irniptionibus illos cives afflixit." He makes this state of things last three years only, but Narbonne was certainly not taken till 759, and Pippin was not there in 756. The date that he himself gives is 752. There is clearly some confusion with Pippin's seeming presence in 759. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 109 naval force, that, under such circumstances, a strict blockade by land would have been useless, and that the Franks confined themselves to a systematic harrying and harassing, in the hopes of at last wearing out the patience of the besieged, if besieged we can call them. We shall see that in the end Narbonne was not taken by any opera- tion of war from without. As it had held out against Charles, it held out for longer against Pippin. One longs for a glimpse of the Narbona of those days ; but as usual, we have relics of earlier and relics of later times, but of the days when the Goth yielded to the Arab and the Arab to the Frank we have nothing. In the story of the Eternal Question the winning back of Gothia from the Saracen has no mean place. And in the making of the states of modern Europe something was done by a change which, if it did not make the whole course of the Pyrenees a boundary line, at least advanced the frontier of the Frankish power to what remained the frontier of modern France far into the seventeenth cen- tury. But in the eyes of those days, the advance of the Frankish power, even the victory of Christendom over Islam, must have seemed a small matter alongside of the mighty drama of diplomacy and war in which the King of the Franks was called on to play his part in the central peninsula of Europe. To that stage we have not quite reached ; but it is strange how we can find our way to it, and how every part of our story is tied together, through the adventures of the restless Grifo. We have seen that, deeming it a light thing to be lord of Le Mans and of twelve counties, he had fled to the Duke of Aquitaine to stir up strife against his brother ^ The advance of the Frankish power in Septimania could not fail to be of deep interest to Waifar, and some dealings took place between him and the new King about this time. An attempt of the Aquitanian Duke on Septimania itself seems to belong to ■■ See above, p. 82. 110 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. a later time ^ ; but we hear vaguely of demands of sub- mission — one is tempted to say homage — which the King makes and the Duke refuses ^, and we hear more definitely of a demand made by the King for the surrender of Grifo ^. A singular tale follows. Grifo, finding Waifar no longer able to protect him, attempts * to flee to Aistulf King of the Lombards. He must still have had a considerable following. Some Franks were still with him ; some Aqui- tanians may have joined him. As he tried to make his way to the Alps, he was met in arms by two Counts of the Bur- gundian land, Theodo or Theodwin of Vienne, and Frederic of the land beyond Jura, the Romance-speaking Switzer- land of modern days ^. Grifo had with him a force, doubtless not such as could have met the Heriban of the Frankish king, but such as could strive on equal terms with such local forces as two counts could get together at a pinch. A drawn battle followed, the fierceness of the ^ The entry m the Moissac Annals, " Waifarius, princeps Aquitaniae, Narbonam clepraedat," comes just before tlie commendation of the Septimanian towns by Ansemmid, that is, it is really meant to come later and is coupled with the deaths of the Lombard Aistulf and of Pope Stephen. ^ Moissac mentions this seemingly in connexion with the warfare at Narbonne, 752; "Waifarium, principem Aquitaniae, Pippinus prose- quitur, eo quod nollet se ditioni illius dare, sicut Eudo fecerat Karolo patri ejus." ^ The demand comes from Metz, 750. Waifar "pravo consilio inito, facere contempsit." ^ This is in the Moissac Annals, 752, which might do for any time between 752 and 759, but one is tempted to connect it with the story of Grifo. The flight of Grifo into Aquitaine is recorded by the Con- tinuator of Fredegar and the Annales Laurisenses, as well as more fully in Metz. '' The best account is in the Continuator, 118 ; "Nuntius veniens ad jDrsefatum regem ex partibus Burgundise, quod germanus ipsius regis, nomine Grifo, qui dudum in Wasconiam ad Waifarium principem confugium fecerat, a Theodone [ah Thoudoeno] comite Viennense, seu et Frederico Ultrajurano comite, dum partes Langobardiae peteret, et insidias contra ipsum praedictum regem pararet, apud Mauriennam urbem super fluvium Arboris interfectus est. Nam et ipsi super- scripti comites in eo praelio pariter interfecti sunt." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. Ill fighting in which seems to be witnessed by the deaths of all three chiefs, Theodwin, Frederic, and Grifo himself \ The Frankish realm clearly lost two stout and trustworthy captains ; but their deaths secured the object of the war. When the news was brought to King Pippin at Bonn, on his return from the Saxon war ^, even he who had so often forgiven his Avayward brother must have felt that the loss of his faithful officers was fully outweighed by the further news that his brother Grifo was dead also. ^ 2. The Negotiations with Pope Stephen. 752-753. That Grifo was killed in an attempt to make his way to the Lombards marks the course of the story. Things had changed since Pippin had gone to be shorn as a son by Liudprand. The mere choice of Lombardy by Grifo as a place of shelter would of itself show that the relations between Franks and Lombards were not as they had been then. Grifo would assuredly go nowhere but where enmit}^ against his brother was either already in being or could be easily stirred up. The King went on ; he crossed the Rhine ; he passed through the wood of Ardennes, and sat down to rest after his toils in the royal house by the Mosel now known in the rival tongues of Pippin's dominions as Thionville and as Diedenhofer. There another piece of news was brought him which concerned the relations of Franks and Lombards yet more deeply than the attempted flight of Grifo to the court of Aistulf. A suppliant had come to claim the help of Pippin against Aistulf, a visitor such as Gaul and the whole Frankish dominions had never seen before. Pope Stephen, second of the name, was on ^ Continuator, 118; "Nam et ipsi superscripti comites in eo prselio pariter interfecti sunt." ^ lb. ; " Rex Pippinus, Christo propitio, cum magno triumpho. iterum ad Rhenum ad castrum, cujus est nomen Bonna, veniens." 112 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. his way to plead for the Church and the Republic of Rome afyainst the enemies who threatened to devour them ^. From the Frankish annals we should hardly have found out that the Pope's visit was fully expected, and was the result of long and complicated negotiations in various quarters. We have to deal with new actors, with that group of actors of whom Pippin himself is far from the least. As the ruler of the Franks has changed, so have the rulers of the Romans and the Lombards. The Empire is held by Constantine, called of his enemies Kopronymos, as fierce an Iconoclast and as mighty a warrior as his father Leo. The Lombard kingdom, ruled, in name at least, by Liudprand and Hildebrand in common, was held only a few months by Hildebrand after the death of his renowned uncle. He was deposed, and Duke Ratchis of Forum Julii was chosen in his place ^. He had too, like Karlmann, withdrawn from the world, and sought the same shelter as Karlmann at Monte Casino. After him came his brother Aistulf, the prince who first spread the Lombard power further than it had ever been spread before, and in whose hands it first gave way before the advance of the Franks, to become tributary in his days and to pass under a foreign king in the days of his successor. It was against Aistulf, a more threatening enemy even than Liudprand, that Pope Stephen came to crave the help of the Franks and their King (March 26, 752). A Roman by birth, a Roman of the Roman city, he had lately succeeded the Greek Zachary and the Syrian Gregory, and it was as a Roman of the Old Rome that he was ready to play his part. And that part he played with consummate subtlety. He had a plan of ^ Cont. Fred, 119; " Per Arduennam silvam cum ipse rex veniens, et Theudone villa publica super Mosella resedisset, nuntius ad eum veniens dixit, quod Stephanus jjapa de partibus Romge cum magno apparatu et multis muneribus, jam monte Jovis transmeato, ad ejus properaret adventum." '^ See the Continuatio Romana of Paul the Deacon, Scriptt. Rer. Lang. 200. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 113 his own to carry out, and he knew how to make the chief princes of the world his instruments in carrying it out. He would have Rome practically independent of the Emperor and of all other princes. He would have the Bishop of Rome, whether under any formal title, the prac- tical head of that independent Rome. To that end it was needful to secure Rome alike against her own Emperor and against the Lombard king, and so to do it was needful to call in the help of some prince who was likely to be less dangerous than they. But Stephen worked warily ; he shrank from the extreme measures of his predecessor Gregory ; he saw that his schemes did not call for any formal casting aside of the Imperial authority ; he saw his wa}^ to letting the Emperor drop out of sight without any open revolt against him. By discreet appeals adapted in turn to each of those to whom they were made, by the skilful use of words of doubtful meaning, he proved too subtle for both the Emperor and the King of the Franks, and used both of them to serve his purposes. To that end he did what no Pope had ever done before, he took a journey in person into a foreign land to crave help of a foreign prince. Gregory had only sent letters to Charles Martel ; Stephen went to speak with Pippin face to face in his own land. While there he did, as it were casually, a stroke of no small moment for the future of his own see. He came into Francia to ask the Frankish king to come to his help in Italy, and to come in the character of a Roman patrician. While in the Frankish land, he confirmed the Frankish king in his kingship by a personal act. Zachary had not taken on himself to transfer the Frankish crown from Childeric to Pippin. He had simply, as the shepherd of thair souls, told the Franks that they would do no sin if they so transferred it. But when Stephen anointed afresh the king who had been already anointed by the bishops of his own land, he went many steps further. It seemed now^ as if a national act needed the confirmation of a foreign power ; and the power which is applied to to confirm an act I 114 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. is likely before long to take on itself to act in the first instance. We must now try to follow the tangled thread of nego- tiations which went on in Italy before Stephen made his way in person to the Frankish court. Aistulf was pressing hard on the Imperial dominions in Italy ; he had occupied Ravenna and the other towns of the Exarchate (750) ; the line of the successors of Narses had passed away ; the seat of Emperors, kings, and exarchs, had passed into the hands of the Lombard^. And he who held Ravenna was threatening Rome. Aistulf had a fairer hope than any king since the great Theodoric of becoming king over all Italy. Nothing stood more in the way of all Stephen's schemes, of all the possible schemes of any possible Pope, than the fear of a Lombard master, that is, a neighbouring and a powerful master, a master who might possibly keep his court in Rome itself. The Emperor, heretic as he might be, was far better than the most orthodox king in such •^ The exact course of Aistulf s advance is carefully traced by Oelsner, 117, and his first Excurs. His chronological inferences from Lombard documents are most valuable, though I am hardly con- cerned to follow them in detail, but it is something to see the Lombard king dating " Ravennse in palatio," and I find it hard to put so much trust as Oelsner seems to put in the wonderful Benedict! Sancti Andreae Monachi Chronicon, printed in Pertz, iii. 695. It may possibly contain some fragments of genuine tradition, but a great deal is made up from very obvious sources, and many of the thoughts and expressions belong to the writer's own time— that, according to his editor, of Otto the Third. Are we for instance to believe that Aistulf had Roman partisans ? Oelsner quotes the passage in c. 17, p. 703; "Tunc surrexerunt viri Romani scelerati et intimaverunt Astulfu regi, ut venirent et possiderent Tuscise finibus et Rommium imperium. iisurparetit." This is quite possible, and the words in italics would in a contemporary writer be of great importance, 'bf^t the authority seems weak. And in the same chapter we have "^ medi- tation put into the mouth of Pope Stephen which bears the stami' of Otto's day rather than Pippin's ; " Si ad Groecorum genera regnum Italicum et Romanum imperium devolberet et si a Francis in Italia ingredi deberet. Sed melius est a nobis a Francis que a Graecis dominis illorum subjaceret." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 115 a case as this. And herein comes the policy of Stephen. He will, if he can, get rid of both Lombard and Emperor ; but, if he has to choose, he will cleave to the Emperor. At this moment, the Emperor and the Pope are on friendly terms, and there seems to be no open breach of friendship between them during the whole of Stephen's life. Neither in Stephen's letters nor in his official biography do we find anything of that systematic reviling of the Emperor to which we are used earlier and later. Once only, towards the end of his life, in a letter which was most likely meant for the eyes of King Pippin only, does he fall into some strong language about the Greeks and their evil-doings ^. At this moment Emperor and Pope have a common cause against the Lom- bard ; the Frank is not thought of as a helper till the Pope finds the Emperor fail him in that character, and then he is called in, there is every reason to think, by the Pope, but with the full consent of the Emperor. The story begins in the third month of the pontificate of Stephen (June, 752). Aistulf is attacking or making ready to attack Rome and the neighbouring towns ^. The Pope sends an embassy to him, his own brother the Deacon Paul, afterwards his successor, and Ambrose, Prhnicerius of the Church of Rome. They take with them many gifts to win over the mind of the Lombard, and he agrees to a peace for forty years ^. This of course merely concerns Rome and the Roman duchy ; there is nothing touching Ravenna ; the Pope is not taking on himself the functions of the Emperor ; he is simply acting to ward off an immediate attack, like the Roman Senate dealing with ^ Mon. Car. 65, 66. This is Stephen's last' letter in 757 with reference to the Imperial Embassy which came to Pipjpin in that year. ^ Our main authority now for some while is the Life of Stephen under the name of Anastatius Muratori, vol. iii. part i. p. 166. We hear of the "Magna Persecutio a Longobardorum rege Aestulfo in hac Romange urbe vel subjuventibus ei civitatibus." ^ lb. ; " In quadraginta annorum spatia pacis foedus cum eo ordi- nantes confirmaverunt." I 2 116 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Alaric or his own predecessor Leo dealing with Attila. The treaty was one of those many treaties which, in the words of our own Chronicles, " stand no while." In four months (October, 752), so the Roman wi^iter says, Aistulf broke the eno^asfement which was to have bound him for forty years. The language used is so vague that we do not clearly see whether he actually invaded the immediate Roman territory ; in any case he put forth threats which were not a little frightful. He claimed Rome and the neighbouring towns as belonging to his jurisdiction ; he threatened to come and extort a gold solidus as tribute from every inhabitant of Rome^. Two abbots, both of them his own subjects, Optatus who watched over Karlians and Ratchis at Monte Casino, and the Abbot of Saint Vincent on the Vulturus -, were sent by the Pope to remind him of the treaty and pray that he would leave the people of God in peace ^. Aistulf, the Roman says, met the venerable men with scorn, refused them leave to go back to the Pope, and sent them to monasteries in his own dominion. From the point of view of the Lombard they were most likely looked on as traitors. The Pope at the moment could do nothing more than betake himself to prayer. Meanwhile Rome was not wholly forgotten by her distant sovereign. An envoy from the Emperor Constantine, John the Silentiary, came to Rome from the Imperial court on an errand both to the Pope and to the King of the Lombards. To the Pope, his own subject, his message is naturally spoken of as a command ; to the Lombard king, assuredly not his subject, but in Imperial eyes perhaps little better than a rebel, the style used oddly mixes com- ' Vit. Steph. 166; "Peruniim quodque scilicet caput singulos auri solidos annue inferre inhiabat." ^ They are described as " venerabiles monasteriorum sanctorum Vincentii et Benedicti religiosi abbates." Of" abbatus " we shall hear again. ' lb. ; " Postulans pacis foedera et quietem utrarumque partium populi Dei obtinere confirmandum." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 117 mand and exhortation ^. The message to Aistulf bade him give up to the Emperor's possession those lands of the Kepublic which he had usurped by the malice and instiga- tion of the Devil ^. What the Republic meant in the mouth of the Emperor who claimed dominion over its lands there is no need to ask. The message to the Pope is not given ; it would seem to have been an order to Stephen to do his best to bring Aistulf to submit to the Imperial demand. This made Stephen s position a little difficult ; no one was more anxious than he to get Aistulf out of Ravenna ; no one was more anxious than he to have Ravenna restored to the Republic. He was doubtless not anxious to have it so restored to the RepubUc as to be again occupied by Imperial officers, though he might be willing to accept such a state of things as a less evil than its occupation by the Lombard. But at the moment there was nothing to be done but to work in concert with the Emperor. The Pope's brother Paul was again employed. With some other envoys of the Pope, as it would seem, he accompanied the Silentiary to the presence of Aistulf, who was then at Ravenna ^. None of them had any effect on his mind ; his answer was vague and meaningless "^. The Silentiary went back to Constantinople in company with a Lombard envoy, no less a child of the Devil, we are told, than his master ^. The Pope's envoys came back only to tell him that they had done nothing^. Then the Pope felt that there was nothing to be done, for the present at least, but to throw in his lot unreservedly with the Emperor. ^ Vit. Steph. 166 ; " Deferens aedem sanctissimo pontifici regiam jussionem simulque et aliam ad nomen praedicti regis impii detuHt adhortationis annexam jussionem." 2 lb. ; " Ut reipublicae loca diabolico ab eo usurpata ingenio pro- prio restitueret dominio." 3 lb. * lb. ' lb. " Ad eundem misit nequissimum iEstulfum Ravennam." " Cum inani eos absolvet response." "Quemdam proprise gentis nefarium virum diabolicis im- butum consiUis." * lb.; " Enarraverunt ei nihil se egisse." 118 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. He had often sent letters to him before ; he now sent another by trusty envoys. The Iconoclast was now prayed, of his clemency, to come in person at the head of an army to defend these parts of Italy. Let him by all means come, to deliver the city of Eome and the whole province of Italy out of the jaws of the children of unrighteousness ^. This letter must sound a little startling to those who think of the Eastern Rome and its relations to Italy as men are commonly taught to think. The devout Pope Stephen, no Greek or Syrian thrust in by an Exarch, but a Roman of the Romans, the choice of Rome, calls on the impious Kopronymos, the breaker of images, the foe and defiler of all holy things, to come in his own person to the defence of Rome! The coming of Constantine to the orthodox capital might have been a more dangerous risk than even the coming of Constans eighty years before. What havoc might he not have wrought among the holiest forms wrought in the abiding mosaic on the walls of the basilicas of Rome ! On the other hand, when Rome was so straitly threatened, it would have been something to be guarded by the mighty captain who, on his white charger, so often led the hosts of the Eastern Rome to battle with the heathen of Bulgaria ^. The letter was sent ; but it did not bring Constantine to Italy ; for a while it remained without an answer. With such foes as he had to strive against by Hgemus and Taurus, the lord of both Romes might be forgiven if he placed the safety of the Eastern Rome before that of the Western. But, while the heretical deliverer came not, the orthodox enemy was waxing fiercer and fiercer. Aistulf, if we may believe the Roman story, sent messages threatening to slay all the Roman people with a single sword, if they did not at once submit to his ^ Vit. Steph. 166; "Doprecans Imperialem clementiam, ut juxta quod ei saepius scripserat, cum exercitu ad tuendas has Italiae partes, modis omnibus adveniret, et de iniquilatis fiUi morsibus Romanam banc urbem, vel cunctara Italiam provinciam liberaret." ^ Gibbon, cap. xliii. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 119 dominion ^. The Pope had no temporal arms ; he could but pray and exhort ; he could but lead a sad and solemn procession to the basilica of Our Lady on the Esquiline, and there hang on the very crucifix the treaty broken by the Lombard ^. Yet he tried more than once by gifts and embassies to move the strong heart of Aistulf to give him back his flock in Ravenna and the neio^hbourinsf cities thereof ^. All was in vain. The Lombard was unmoved ; the Emperor stirred not. Stephen at last made up his mind to seek help elsewhere. No hope was left — perhaps he had none from the beginning — of help coming from his own sovereign *. He must try what a foreign power could do for him. There was one foreign power above all which was bound to the Roman see by the nearest ties. The Franks had never failed in orthodoxy ; of late years their dealings with the Roman bishops had become more and more fre- quent, more and more friendly. If the father of the present king had refused the prayer of Pope Gregory, it was with the approval of Pope Zachary, specially consulted on that deep case of conscience, that the present king himself had become a king. It was to the Franks, of all the powers of the world, that an oppressed and threatened Pope must flee for help. He had the means at hand. A Prankish pilgrim was at Rome. Such pilgrims were common there ; but this one must have been marked in some special way. His name is not given ; but he was clearly a man who could be trusted ; he was most likely a man of some mark in the Prankish kingdom. To him the Pope gave a letter •^ Vit. Steph. 166 ; " Asserens omnes uno gladio jugulari." ^ lb. ; " Alligans connectensque adorandae cruci dei nostri pactum illud, quod nefandus Rex Longobardorum disrupit." ^ lb. 167 ; " Jam fatum pestiferum Longobardorum Regem im- mensis vicibus innumerabilia tribuens munera deprecaretur pro gregibus sibi a Deo commissis, et perditis ovibus." The lost sheep are explained to be " Universus exercitus Ravennge atque cunctus istius Italiae provinciae populus." * lb. ; " Cernens prsesertim et ab Imperiali jDotentia nullum esse subveniendi auxilium." 120 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. to King Pippin (March, 753), setting forth all the wrongs that the Roman province was undergoing at the hands of the wicked folk of the Lombards, and praying the King of the Franks to come and help him against his oppressors ^. The King of the Franks was asked in the Pope's letter to send an envoy of his own to Rome (June, 753) ; and the envoy presently came in the person of Droctegang, Abbot of the great Neustrian house of Jumieges, then in its elder day of prosperity^. He came unlooked for in a moment of utter distress, when the Lombards were pressing the whole Roman duchy hard ^ ; and he came, according to the Roman account, bearing promises from the Frankish king to do all that the Pope asked of him *. So wide an engage- ment passes all belief ; if Pippin really promised help at so early a stage, it must have been with many conditions and qualifications. There were many good reasons which must have pleaded on the Lombard side with Pippin him- self, and a king of the Franks had his armed people to win over. At all events, he was not disposed to take to arms till he had done a good deal more in the way of negotiation. . Abbot Droctegang went back (July, 753), charged with two letters from the Pope, one for the King, the other to the great men, of the Franks ^ There is really ■^ Vit. Steph. 167; "Clam per quendam peregrinum suas misit Hteras Pipino Regi Francorum nimio dolore huic provincioe inliserenti conscriptas." 2 The name of this abbot gets spelled in many ways and is not unnaturally confounded with that of Bishop Chrodegang. There seems no reasonable doubt that this is Droctegang of Jumieges and not of Gorzia near Metz. See the article Dructegangus in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, only Normandy is called into being before its time. ^ Vit. Steph. 167 ; " Dum valide ab eodem Longobardorum rege civitates et provincia ista Romanorum opprimerentur subito conjunxit missus jam fati Regis." Another "missus " whose name is not given presently followed. * lb. ; " Per quern misit in responsis omnem voluntatem ac peti- tionem prcedicti Sanctissimi Papse se adimplere." ^ The letters are the fourth and fifth in the Codex Carolinus. The THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 121 very little in them, no statement of any definite facts ; Abbot Droctegang is to do most of the business by word of mouth \ The elders of the Franks are appealed to by all the hopes and fears that were at the disposal of the bearer of the heavenly keys. Saint Peter is as usual spoken of as being almost at the beck and call of his earthly vicar ^. The King is prayed to send other envoys, and with them to send back a certain John, seemingly a monk, a trustworthy man and his own subject who goes in Droctegang's company ^. The Frankish embassies were going to and fro, and all the towns and villages of the Roman territor}^ were hard pressed by the Lombards, when at last there came, if not help from beyond Hadria, yet at least a voice from that quarter which could not fail to tell in all the questions now to be settled. John the Silentiary came again to Rome (September, 753) with a commission from the Emperor Constantine, and with him came the envoys whom the Pope himself had sent to the Imperial court. No army came ; the Emperor said nothing about coming himself ; but John and his companions brought with them the materials for a good deal of work in the way of diplomacy. They brouo'ht with them the letters which Aistulf had written to the Emperor^ and which the Lombard envoy had taken to Constantinople in the company of the Silentiary *. They second is addressed " viris gloriosis nostrisque fiUis omnibus ducibus gentis Francorum." ^ Jaffe, Mon. Car. 32 ; " Per eum tuae subHmissimse bonitati, in ore ponentes, remisimus responsum." ^ lb. 33 ; " Pro certo tenentes quod per certamen, quod in ejus sanctam ecclesiam vestram spiritalem matrem feceritis, ab ipso principe apostolorum vestra dimittantur peccata," &c. Saint Peter is not used in the letter to the King. ^ lb. 32 ; " Hunc Johannem virum religiosum cum eis mittere jubeas. Fidelis enim tuus est et prudenter reportat responsa." * Vit. Steph. 167; " Illico at regia urbe conjunxit ssepe fatus Joannes imperialis silentiarius cum missis ipsius sanctissimi Pontificis deferens secum et quae deportaverat iniqui Longobardorum Regis missus." See above, p. 116. 122 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. brought also an order from the Emperor to the Pope, bidding the Pope go in person to the Lombard king and demand the restoration of Ravenna and the other towns ^. We may beheve that Stephen was not specially eager to go on such an errand ; but he did not propose to disobey his sovereign ; he delayed only while he sent to Aistulf, asking for a safe-conduct for himself and for those who might come with him ^. The document came back speedily, and about the same time (Sept -Oct. 753) came King Pippins two new envoys. One was a duke called Autchar ; the other was one of the most famous churchmen of the age, Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz, presently to be Archbishop, by virtue, not of the dignity of his see, but of his own personal merits^. They came with orders to bring the Pope to their own master * ; and they found him on the eve of setting forth on his dangerous journey to the Lombard court on behalf of his lost sheep ^. Here were ^ Vit. Steph. 167 ; " Simul et jussionem imperialem in qua inerat insertum ad Longobardorum regem eundem sanctissimum Papam esse properaturum ob recipiendum Ravennatium urbem et civitates ei pertinentes." ^ lb. ; "Direxit ad eundem blasphemum regem suum missum pro sua et qui cum eo ituri erant indemnitate." " lb. ; " Ipsoque reverse extemplo et missi jam fati Pipini Regis Francorum conjunxerunt." There is no authority for the odd story which makes Chrodegang a nephew of Pippin. ■* lb.; "Quatenus prsedictum sanctissimum Papam juxta quod petendo miserat ad suum Francite regem deducerent." I am surprised not to find a various reading for the most unusual phrase " Francise Rex." So Paul the Deacon, in the Gesta Ep. Mett. (Pertz, ii. 268), speaks of Chrodegang's mission ; " A Pippino rege omnique Francorum coetu singularibus electus, Romam directus est, Stephanumque venerabilem papam, ut cunctorum vota cmhelahant, ad Gallias evocavit." Waitz (iii. 70) has some remarks on this which I do not quite understand, as if the words in italics had some reference to the anointing of Pippin. They may have ; there may even be the constant confusion between the anointing under the authority of Zachary and the anointing at the hands of Stephen. But Paul says nothing about the anointing ; he does not necessarily mean more than Waitz's summary of the Life of Stephen, "dass er [Chrodegang] dem Papst nur in Gallien als Begleiter gegeben." ^ lb.; " Pro recolligendis universis dominicis perditis ovibus." Yet THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 123 materials for an European conference indeed. The envoys of the Emperor and the King of the Franks were at Rome ; the Pope was starting for Pavia ; let them all go to the Lombard court together^ and, if anything could be done in this world by the power of talking, there would surely be the finest opportunity ever known for doing it. They either did set out for the Lombard court together, or else they soon met there in the very nick of time (October 14, 753). The Roman writer has naturally most to say about the setting forth of the Pope, how a crowd of the people of Rome and the neighbouring towns pressed around him, weeping and wailing, and strove to hinder his going ^. He set forth by the gate of Saint Peter, and took with him a large body of the Roman clergy and laity, of whom George, Bishop of Ostia, Wilchar, Bishop of Nomentum, and the Primicerius Ambrose, are men of whom we have heard already or shall hear again ^. That the Silentiary and the Prankish envoys went with him our Roman informant does not say in so many words. But Duke Autchar at least was his companion during part of the journey, and the Silentiary shows himself at Pavia very soon after the Pope gets there. Whether they all travelled together matters very little ; they all went on one errand, and the Pope and the Silentiary went by one commission. The Roman writer does not deny, though he clearly does not wish to enlarge on the fact, that Pope Stephen went to the Lombard court as joint -envoy with John the Silentiary. if we are to believe the Chronicle of Benedict, this blaspheming king had just been holding a synod with the immediate shepherd of these lost sheep, Valerius Archbishop of Ravenna, and a crowd of other bishops and nobles, and had been making capitularies and edicts just as properly as Pippin himself. •■■ Vit. Steph. 167 ; " Flentes ululantesque nequaquam eum penitus ambulare sinebant." ^ lb. At this point the Biographer merely mentions " sacerdotes," "proceres" (" barones" in one text) and "militiae optimates." We get the names in the text and several others when he leaves Pavia for Gaul. 124 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Each alike went by the order of their common sovereign the Emperor Constantine. They had fair weather on their journey. And on a night when they had travelled about forty miles, and had reached the Lombard border, they saw a sign from heaven which they looked on as a good omen. A ball of fire was seen to pass with a southward course from the parts of Gaul to the parts of the Lombards ^. Such a sign was not hard to interpret ; it seems to have stirred up those who came from the parts of Gaul to quicker action. Duke Autchar hastened on to Pavia, to make matters ready for the Pope's coming ^. As the Pope drew near to Pavia, he was met by envoys from Aistulf, who warned him beforehand that their master would not listen to a word about giving up Ravenna or any part of the Exarchate. Words were added which might seem to imply that the demands of the Emperor went a good deal further. He would not give up any of the territory which former kings of the Lombards had taken from the Republic ^. Here at least there could be no doubt as to the meaning of the word Republic. Every inch of territory which the Lombards had occupied since the day when Alboin came down from the Alps had been territory taken from the Roman Republic in the sense in which Constantine would use the word ; there was very little of it which could be said to have been taken from any Roman Republic in the new sense which was beginning to creep in on papal lips. Aistulf 's mind was fixed to give up nothing, be its posses- ^ Vit. Steph. 167 ; "In una noctium signum in ccbIo magnum apparuit, quasi globus igneus ad partem australem declinans a Gallite partibus in Longobardorum partes," '^ lb. 1G8; " Itaque unus ex eisdem Francorum missis, scilicet Autcharius Dux, quantocyus prsecedens Ticinum eum prsestolatus est." •^ lb.; "Obtestans cum nulla pcnitus ratione audere verbum illi dicere petendi Ravennatium civitatem, et Exarchatum ei pertinentem vel de reliquis reipublica? locis quus ipse velejus predecessores Longo- bardorum reges invaserant." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 125 sion older or newer. The Pope made answer that no fears or threats should force him to silence ; he would still come and demand what he had to demand ^. One would like to have his words more in full ; they might easily be so chosen that the Silentiary might take them in one meaning and a zealous votary of Saint Peter in another. At last the Pope reached Pavia. We can only tell the story as our Roman guide gives it. The Pope and the King meet ; the Pope makes the King many gifts ; with tears in his eyes he calls on the King to give back the Lord's sheep whom he has taken away, and to restore all things to their true owners ^. These last words may cover a good deal. It throws some light on their meaning when we read that the Silentiary was there too, and that, though he perhaps did not talk about the Lord's sheep, yet, what- ever was the substance of the Pope's demand^ he made the same demand in the name of the Emperor, and presented the Imperial letter to the Lombard king ^. Nothing surely can be plainer than that the Pope and the Silentiary are acting together ; they are alike sent in the name of the Emperor to demand the restoration of the lands of the Empire. That last was what John was sent to demand. Stephen and John demanded the same thing. Aistulf would yield nothing to any man, Pope, Silentiary, or any one else. At this stage John drops for a season out of the story ; but we shall meet him again, sent, under quite new circumstances, to make the same demand of Pippin which he now makes of Aistulf. That he drops out of the story and that he appears in it again is an important part of the story. The Prankish envoys, of whom we have not heard while the Imperial envoys, Pope ^ Yit. Steph. 168; " Asserens quod nullius trepidationis terrore sileret hujuscemodi petendi causain." ^ lb. ; " Ut dominicas quas abstulerat redderet oves et propria pro- priis restitueret." ^ lb. ; " Imperialis missus simili modo petiit et imperiales litteras illi tribuit et nil obtinere potuit." 126 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. and Silentiary, were pleading with the Lombard king, now step forward. Their mission, it will be remembered, was to take the Pope to the Frankish king. They now de- manded of Aistulf in a high tone that Stephen should be allowed to go on his journey \ The King sent for the Pope and asked if he wished to go. The Pope ^ said that he did, on which the King gnashed his teeth like a lion ^. He seems to have made no formal answer ; but he more than once privily sent his officers and chief men to the Pope to dissuade him from his purpose of going*. At last Aistulf and Stephen had another interview in the presence of Bishop Chrodegang. The King then finally asked the Pope if he wished to go into Frankland. The Pope answered ; ' If it is your will to let me go ; it is certainly mine to make the journey." Then Aistulf gave him the needful leave to set out^, and his memorable journey to the Prankish court began. In reading this whole account, we have not the slightest reason to doubt a single fact that is set down by Stephen's biographer. We only doubt whether he has always told every fact, and whether he has not thrown a certain colouring of his own over the whole story. We specially wish to know what happened between the Pope and the Silentiary after the failure of their joint appeal to Aistulf. They had seemingly gone together to Pa via ; they cer- tainly acted together there ; but at Pavia they must have parted. Stephen, we know, went on into Frankland ; in default of any hint to the contrary, we must suppose that John went back to Constantinople. Only on what terms did they part after their joint efforts had failed? Let ^ Vit. Steph. 168; " Imminebant fortitus apud eundem Aistulfum ut prefatum sanctissimam papam in Franciam pergere relaxarat." ^ lb. ; " Ad hoec convocans jamdictum beatissimum virum." ^ lb. ; " Ut leo dentibus fremebat." * lb. ; " Satellites [al. optimates] ad eum clam misit." * lb. ; " Quod si tua voluntas est me relaxandi, mea omnino est ambulandi. Tunc absolutus est ab eo." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 127 us look back to the whole story. In a short summary it stands thus. The Pope, threatened by Aistulf, tries in vain to turn away his wrath. The Emperor sends his officer John with a mission to demand the lost lands from Aistulf, and ordering the Pope to do what he can to help. The Pope obeys, but the mission fails. John goes back to Constantinople with a Lombard envoy, and the Pope pre- sently sends thither a petition to the Emperor, praying him to come with an army and deliver him and Rome. The Emperor delays ; the Lombard threatens ; the Pope again pleads in vain. At last he appeals to the King of the Franks to come and help him. An answer is sent with promises of some kind. The Pope sends a more earnest letter to Pippin. Then comes John the Silentiary from Constantinople with an order from the Emperor, bidding the Pope go to the King of the Lombards in person, and demand again the restoration of the lost lands. He sends first for a safe-conduct. Then come the Frankish envoys with orders to bring the Pope to their own king. Then all, Pope, Silentiary, Frankish envoys, go to Pavia, or at any rate meet there. The two Imperial envoys, the Pope and the Silentiary, demand in vain that Aistulf should restore the lost lands. Of the Silentiary we hear no more till he comes again to demand those same lands of Pippin. The Pope with the Frankish envoys goes on to the Frankish king. Nothing can be plainer or more trustworthy than this whole story in everything that it tells us. The relations between the Pope and the Emperor are as clear as can be. In every outward aspect the Pope is the loyal subject of the Emperor ; towards the end of the story the Pope acts in person as the Emperor's trusted minister. It is simply the conventional way of thinking of an Emperor of the eighth century, strengthened somewhat by the really different state of things which was a little earlier and a little later, which makes it hard to take this in. But the facts are plain. Constantine has lost part of his 128 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY, dominions at the hands of Aistulf ; he calls on Aistulf to restore what he has taken ; he twice orders the Pope to help to carry out his purpose ; and the Pope both times obeys, first sending his brother and then going himself. The points which are not clear are, in what relation the appeal of the Pope to the Emperor stood to his appeal to the King of the Franks, in what relation the Prankish and Imperial envoys stood to one another in the nego- tiations at Pa via, and whether the Pope's journey into the Prankish dominions was known and approved by the Emperor or his representative. This last question will easily swell into one yet deeper and harder, whether the Pope, in what he did on Prankish soil, was in any sort acting by Imperial authority, whether, in short, in leaving Pavia, he left behind him the character of an Imperial envoy. We want to fill up the gap in our story which there is on the Imperial side between the mission of John the Silentiary in which Stephen and he demanded that Aistulf should restore Ravenna to the Emperor and the later mission in which John demanded that restoration of Pippin and Pippin refused it. And the filling up of that gap involves the question. What did Pippin understand when he undertook to recover the lands of the Roman Republic, and what did he understand when he accepted the title of Roman Patrician ? The answers to these questions are of no small moment even to general history. It may be well to put off our attempts to answer them till we have gained whatever light we can gain from the story of Pope Stephen^s journey in Gaul. Only in tracing that story it will be well to bear in mind, what is so commonly put altogether out of sight, the real relations between the Pope and the Emperor at this moment, and the important part which the Imperial diplomacy has just played in the story, and which before long it will begin to play again. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 129 § 3. Fope Stephen in Gaul. 753-754. The Pope and his companions set forth from Pavia (November 15, 753). We are told that the Lombard king still strove in some undescribed way to hinder his going ^. He therefore went with all speed to the Frankish border, choosing for his point of crossing the Alps the pass where Saint Bernard has in later times displaced Jupiter^. By this road, going by Ivrea and Aosta, he would be in Frankish territory sooner than by any other. Susa and Aosta were both Frankish ; but the Frankish border on the side of Aosta came a little nearer to Pavia than it did on the side of Susa. His first stopping-place after his passage was in the deep dale which was already beginning to bear names which have grown into their present form of Wallis and Valais ^, at the famous abbey which sheltered the memory and the relics of the holy warrior Maurice and his comrades of the Theban legend * There he rested for a while after the toils of a journey which seems to have been utterly distasteful to him. That the mountain travelling, with its cold and snow, did not suit him is not wonderful ; but he also brings in as a more general charge against the land of Gaul that it was wide and distant, that it had great rivers and was liable to floods, and further that it was subject to heat as well as to cold^. While he was ^ Vit. Steph. 168 ; " Post ejus absolutionem adhuc nitebatur supra- scriptus Longobardorum Rex a preedicto itinere eum deviare, quod minime ipsum sanctissimum virum latuit." 2 The Biographer says ; '* Cum nimia celeritate Deo prsevio ad Francorum conjunxit clusas." One might have thought that this meant by way of Susa, but we see from the Continuator what " Fran- corum clusae " are meant. Pippin hears at Thionville " quod Stephanus papa de partibus Romae cum magno apparatu et multis muneribus, jam monte Joris trausmeato, ad ejus properaret adventum." ^ It is " comitatus Vallisorum " in the next century in the division of the Empire, 839 ; Pertz, i. 434 ; Legg. i. 373. * lb. ; " Coeptum gradiens ita ad venerabile monasterium sancti Christi martyris Mauricii pervenit." ^ His great complaint on this score comes somewhat later in his K 130 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. at Saint Maurice, one of his companions, the Primicerius Ambrose, died, and his extant epitaph in the crypt of Saint Peter's at Rome shows that the Pope's stay lasted into the month of December^. During that stay he was met by two of the chief men of the Frankish realm sent immediately from the presence of the King. Pippin, as we have seen, had heard at Thionville that the Pope had crossed the moimtains. He began to make preparations to receive so memorable a guest with all honour. For the place of meeting he chose Ponthion in the Gaulish Campania, not far from the right bank of the Marne, a little south of the Catalaunian city ^. To greet the Pope at Saint Maurice he sent a duke named Rothard, and his constant counsellor Abbot Fulrad of Saint Denis, with the mission of bringing the holy stranger to his own presence. They must have skirted the northern shore of the Leman Lake, and Stephen is said to have made a second sojourn in another famous monastery of the Burgundian realm, that vene- rable house of Romainmotier in the land of Yaud, where work still stands which he may possibly have looked on, and which is said to have taken its distinctive name of Rmnan from his visit. King Pippin meanwhile, with letter to Pippin in 755, Mon. Car. 88 ; " Tradiclimus enim corpus et animam nostram in magnis laboribus in tarn spatiosam et longinquam provintiam ; valde fisi in vestra fide, per Dei nutum illuc profecti sumus, adflicti in nive et frigore, sestu et aquarum inundatione atque validis fluminibus et atrocissimis montibus seu diversis periculia." ^ The inscription is quoted by Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, ii, 311 : Seine barbarische Grabschrift — " Ex hac urbe processit suo secutus pastorem. In Roma salvanda utrique petebant regno tendentes Francorum Sancta perveniens loca B.Mauritii aulse secus fluvii Rhodani Litus ubi vita noviliter ductus finivit mense Decemb." ^ Pontico, Pontigo, in several spelhngs, is mentioned more than once by Gregory of Tours, as iv. 28, " apud Ponticonem villam," and in the Liber de MiracuHs S. Martini, iv. 41, it appears as " Domus Pon- ticonensis." See more in Longnon, 405. In our time the Continuator calls it " Pontem Ugone, villa publica." One does not quite see what Pontico is, but this form looks rather like an unlucky attempt at etymology. There is an intermediate form " Pontegune." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 131 • Queen Bertrada and their two sons and a crowd of the princes and elders of the Franks, awaited the coming of the Pontiff at Ponthion. But Pope Stephen was to be met on his road by one greater than Bishop Chrodegang and Duke Autchar, than Abbot Fulrad and Duke Rothard. Of the two sons of Pippin and Bertrada, the elder, still a boy, perhaps a child, perhaps of the age of twelve years, perhaps only of that of seven, was he who stands forth among all the ages as the mightiest of his nation^ the man who, like Alexander and like Ceesar, fixed the course of the world's history through all the years that were to follow, the first of Teutonic kings on whom history has for ever bestowed the name of Great, and to whom leofend has done the further honour of entwining greatness into his very name. The Charles of history, the Charlemagne of fable, the Teutonic Karl who gathered together in himself all that Teutonic manhood deemed most its own, as yet perhaps undistinguished from any other boy of kingly birth, was sent, with a goodly company of the great men of the Franks, to go before his father, and to be the first of the new kingly house to welcome the Roman Bishop on Frankish soil. No detail of the interview has been pre- served ; but it would seem to have taken place at some point about half-way between Ponthion and Romainmotier, somewhere in the land between Besan9on and Langres^ There the Bishop of Rome, subject, perhaps still envoy, of the Emperor reigning at Constantinople, first looked on him whom, forty-six years later, a successor of his was to crown wuth an Imperial diadem, to mark that the Old Rome again asserted her rights as the equal of the New, and, in the language of the time, that the Frank and not the Greek was the nation chosen to wield the Romaa power. ^ " Centum millia " say some texts of the Life of Stephen ; others only "non pauca milha." The Continuator (121) says only "fiho suo Carolo ei obviam ire prsecepit." K 2, 132 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. We are thus brought, suddenly, prematurely, unex- pectedly, into the presence of the foremost man of the world's history. But the boy who was sent to meet Pope Stephen is for years to come overshadowed by the fame of his father. To us, who look back on the course of eleven hundred years, Pippin may seem small beside Charles ; yet Pippin's path to kingship, to dominion beyond the Alps, was a first and needful step to his son's path to Empire, to dominion on the Elbe, the Ebro and the Theiss. We in no way take from the honour of the son^ if we do justice to the great deeds of the father. The true glory of the Austrasian house is that it could go from strength to strength, each generation building for itself on the work of the generation that went before it. The young son of Pippin is before long to be again brought in in a still more illustrious pageant ; but the fate of the world was fixed in councils in which the voice even of Charles the Great could as yet have been at most heard in some formal sentence of approval. As yet his will could have had no share in ruling the course of events. The kingly bairn, with the warriors and elders who surrounded him, led the Pope, with all worship, to a spot at the distance of three miles from the royal seat of Ponthion, where the son could hand over the illustrious guest to the keeping of his father. A great company was there gathered, the King of the Franks, his Queen Bertrada, their younger son the child Karlmann, and a crowd of the great men of the Frankish realm. Pippin deemed it no lowering of his earthly kingship to come down from his horse, to bow himself to the ground before his ghostly father, to take on himself the duties of the strator, to lead the bridle of Stephen's horse till they reached the royal house of Ponthion ^ No Frankish king before him had ever had such a guest to welcome. The coming of Stephen plainly ^ Vit. Steph. 168; "Ad fere trium millium spatium clescendens de equo 8U0 . . . papam suscepit, cui et vice stratoris usque ad aliquantum locum juxta ejus sellarem properavit." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN 133 stamped the new kingly house of the Franks as at once mightier and hoJier than the old. The presence of Stephen was a witness to its might ; it was the formal beginning of its holiness. The Pope sought the help of the King of the Franks as the mightiest of protectors, when he found that his own sovereign could give him no help. He came to offer him honours, to lay on him duties, which would make him yet higher and mightier, and he came to crown all by a spiritual rite which might seem to put him on a level with Augustus himself. And the day was worthy of the guest and of the host ; it was the day of the Epiphany, the day of the Kings, the day on which it fell to the lot of the King of the West to bow to the Vicar of Him to whom the Kings of the East had once been privileged to bow in His bodily presence ^ With shouts of joy and singing of hymns, the King led the holy stranger to rest for a while in his own royal house. The rejoicings and the religious enthusiasm with which Pippin and his people received Pope Stephen were doubt- less heartfelt. A tribute was indeed paid to them, a mark of confidence was placed in them, such as had never been paid to any other prince and people. More than one Pope had crossed the sea against his will at the command of his lord the Emperor ; no Pope before Stephen had crossed the mountains of his own free will at the invitation of a foreign but friendly king. Yet some searching of heart on the part of Pippin and his wise men must have made themselves felt when they could for a while free themselves from the enthusiasm of the moment, and could look calmly at the wholly new state of things in which they were called on to take a share and the leading share. Pippin was called on to forsake the policy of his father, to do that very thing which his father had utterly refused to do. He was called on to step in as a mediator, in all likelihood as ^ Vit. Steph. 168; " Sexta Januarii mensis die in apparitionis Domini et salvatoris nostri lesu Cliristi sacratissima soleninitate." Here we have a Latin rendering of the Greek Theophania. 134 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. an armed mediator, in lands beyond the bounds of Frankish dominion or Frankish superiority in the widest sense. He was called on, perhaps to enlarge the Frankish kingdom, certainly to enlarge the range of Frankish influence. And he was called on to do all this at the cost of the power which had been for some generations the closest ally of the Frankish kingdom. He was not indeed asked to make war on the king who had made him his adopted son ; but he was asked to threaten, if need be to make war on, the successor of that king and his people. And he was called on to do all this without any of the usual motives which lead kings to go forth to battle. Aistulf and his people had done no wrong to Pippin and his people ; they had in no sort fallen away from the friendship which had bound together Liudprand and Charles. If anything, the Frank was still in the debt of the Lombard for active and useful help given on a day of danger. An attack on Lombardy by Pippin would be the most shameless of unprovoked aggressions, unless it could be coloured by some motive that might take away somewhat of its native ugliness. Such a motive the coming of the Pope supplied. Pippin was bidden to go forth, as a pious crusader, not to redress any wrongs either of himself or of his people, but to redress the wrongs of something greater than they. He was to come to the help of the Republic of Rome, of the Prince of the Apostles himself^. The call was one which could not be lightly refused, neither could it be lightly obeyed. The time was, even after the negotiations of the last year, pre- eminently a time to pause and think. But small time for thought was allowed to the King or his counsellors. The rest of the day on which Stephen came was given up to the ceremonies of his welcome, and to the acceptance of the gifts which the illustrious stranger brought for his royal host and the great men of his realm. The next day an appeal was made to the King ' Vit. Stepli. 1G8 ; "Deprecatus est ut per pacis fcedera causani beati Petri et reipubUcai Romanorum disponeret." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 135 personally which it would have been hard to refuse. Did King and Pope sit side by side in the royal chapel of Ponthion, as kings and prelates so often did in other times and places \ and did the Pope, with tears in his eyes, then make his petition to the King ? Or shall we believe that the Pope with his attendant clergy came before the King, his sons and his great men. in sackcloth and ashes, that the Pope threw himself at the King's feet, that he vowed not to rise till he had received a promise that all that he prayed for should be granted ; that with the good will of all present, the King and his sons stretched forth their hands and lifted the holy guest from the earth with a promise to do all he asked ? The one is the Roman, the other the Frankish tale. We may suspect a prudent silence in the one, we may suspect a proud exaggeration in the other ; the practical result is the same in either case. Before King and Pope parted, the King had promised — perhaps with some reservation of the rights of his people — to do all that the Pope asked him. He promised, he swore, to undertake the cause of Saint Peter and of the Roman Republic, and to restore to the Roman Republic the Exarchate of Ravenna and whatever else the King of the Lombards had taken from it ^. What was the meaning of such a promise? We must again insist on the fact that, in the ordinary language of the time, the words Roman Republic meant simply the same thing as the words Roman Empire. Such was the sense which the words commonly bore both at Constanti- ^ For tlie details of the first interview between Pippin and Stephen and the different accounts that we have of them, see Appendix, Note 4. But m any case the Roman writer has surely run the events of two days into one. The Moissac chronicler with far more likelihood makes the Pope come to Ponthion one day and enter on business the next. ^ According to the Biographer, Pippin " de presenti jurejurando eidem beatissimo Papse satisfecit. Omnibus mandatis ejus et ad- monitionibus sese totis nisibus obedire, et ut illi placitum fuerit, Exarchatum Ravennee, et reipublicse jura, seu loca reddere modis omnibus." 136 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. nople and in Italy ; such was the sense in which they were used in other lands by writers who followed the usage of Constantinople and Italy. Setting aside the mention of Saint Peter, the first and obvious meaning of Pippin's promise was to restore the Exarchate and the other lost lands to the dominions of the one Emperor of the Komans, Constantine Augustus. Such was the meaning which the words Roman Republic had borne in the message sent by Gregory the Third to Charles Martel ; such is the meaning in which we shall see that they were taken only a little later by the Emperor Constantine himself. And we may go further ; when we remember how lately the Pope was acting as an Imperial envoy, how lately he had gone in his masters name to demand of the Lombard king the restora- tion of the lands of the Republic to the Emperor of the Republic, it is hard to believe that he had, in bidding farewell to his colleague at Pavia, wholly cast aside the character which he and John the Silentiary had in the negotiations at Pavia borne in common. We cannot get rid of the notion that, as the tale w^ould have been told at Constantinople, Pope Stephen went to the Frankish king with a full Imperial sanction, that he bore a com- mission from his own sovereign to call on the King of the Franks to come to the help of the Roman Republic — as the Emperor understood that phrase — and to offer him the highest honours of the Roman Republic as his reward. When we see the Pope, the Silentiary, and the Frankish ambassadors all acting together at the Lombard court, when we see that the object of the joint mission of Pope and Silentiary was undoubtedly the recovery of Ravenna and the other cities by the Emperor, it is very hard to avoid the belief that the journey into Gaul was simply the sequel of the journey to Pavia, that it was arranged by common consent that, if Aistulf could not be got to yield, the Pope should go on and ask the help of Pippin. As the interview at Ponthion would be understood at Constanti- nople, the Pope, in the name of the Emperor Constantine, THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 137 called on the King of the Franks to come and win back the Exarchate for the Roman Republic and the Emperor Constantine its head, and the King of the Franks promised so to do. But if such was the Pope's commission as understood by the Emperor, if such was the issue of his negotiations as understood by the Emperor, it by no means follows that such was the sense in which the Frankish king understood them, or that such was the sense in which the Pope meant the Frankish king to understand them. We at least know that when the King and the Emperor came to what diplomatists call an "interchange of ideas," they found that their ideas about the whole matter had been quite different through- out. The King had done one thing when the Emperor had expected him to do another. In other words, to speak the plain truth, the Pope had taken in both the King and the Emperor. Sent on a commission to do one thing, he had in words done what he was bidden ; in truth he had done something different and actually opposite. He had taken advantage of an ambiguous phrase, the phrase of Roman Republic. As to the meaning of those words there would be no doubt at Constantinople ; but they were words on which it was clearly possible to put another meaning ; it may be that another meaning w^as growing up ; it may well be that the Pope purposely used words of a doubtful meaning, words which the King and the Emperor were likely not to understand in exactly the same way, and which he might keep to himself, if he thought good, the right to understand in yet a third way. It would not be very hard to argue that it was somewhat of a forced construction by which the words Roman Republic were used to express the absolute dominion of an Emperor reigning at Constantinople, an Emperor whom the needs of warfare might carry to the foot of Hsemus and Taurus, but who never showed himself on the seven hills of the Old Rome. Would it not be a more natural use of the w^ords if they took up again a meaning nearer to that 138 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. which they had borne in ages now long past ? They might with ease be taken to mean, in some shape or another, the elder Rome itself and the immediate Roman lands. With those lands the Roman Bishop might be brought in as standing in a special relation to them. That relation need not be that of a direct temporal ruler ; it might be that of a spiritual leader protected by some fleshly arm whose protection might be more effectual and less irksome than that of the Iconoclast Emperor. And all this might come without either formally denying or emphatically asserting the right of the absent sovereign to some vague and unpractical superiority. The Emperor and his authority need not be solemnly cast off, but they might, within the Italian lands of the Empire, be brought down to something like what Childeric and his authority had been in the Frankish lands three years before. There would indeed be the wide practical difference that the Merwing could be treated as a being having no practical existence, while the Isaurian, however low he might be brought in Italy, would still remain the mighty ruler of the lands beyond Hadria. Constantine might have to be dealt with in a way in which Childeric could never have to be dealt with. But, if so, he would have to be dealt with as practically a foreign prince ; within the Italian lands themselves the process might be nearly the same, that of withdrawing all real authority from a prince who was still acknowledoed in name. There would be no more need for Stephen to set forth all this to the King than there was to set it all forth to the Emperor. The cue of the Pope was to keep the Imperial rights in the background, and to work on the mind of the King by vague and ambiguous phrases. The peculiar glory of the Roman Church, its boasted connexion with the Prince of the Apostles, might bo brought in, effectually, if somewhat vaguely, to throw a charm over the prospect of delivering his special city from the ungodly foes who threatened it. Words cleverly handled might leave no clear distinction THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN 139 between the Koman Church and the Roman Republic, and no clear distinction between either of them and the Apostle who watched over both. As in after days Saint Mark and his Republic were names and thoughts which could not be kept asunder, so it was beginning to be with Saint Peter and the Church and Republic which claimed to be in the like sort his. The tie might even be stronger between Saint Peter and the city where he w^as held to have dwelled as a mortal bishop than it could be between Saint Mark and the city which had adopted him after death as a heavenly patron. Republic, Church, Apostle, might be skilfully blended together in a threefold cord which could not lightly be broken. Something like all this, the Pope and the Frankish king each in his place, with an Emperor hardly acknowledged but never formally cast off, was, as we know, the actual result for full forty years of Stephen's journey to Ponthion. It is surely no unjustifiable surmise that something of the kind was akeady in his thoughts when he w^ent thither. At the state of King Pippin's mind, at the exact measure of his intentions, it might be harder to guess ; indeed the whole subject supplies an endless field for guesses, likely and unlikely. Beside the promises made by the King in favour of the Republic, there is the further question of that lofty title of the Republic which was presently bestowed upon the King. Was the Patriciate, so solemnly conferred on Pippin a few months later, spoken of in this first interview at Ponthion ? If so, by what authority did Stephen bestow it? In what sense did Pippin accept it ? These again are hard questions ; it may be better to keep our attempt at answering them till we come to the stage when the Patriciate is actually mentioned in our story. At present we have to deal with the first promise made by Pippin, the promise at Ponthion. When Pippin bound himself to restore the Exarchate of Ravenna and the other lost rights and territories of the Roman Republic, what did he bind himself to do ? To whom did he bind himself to restore them ? We may, 140 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. I think, without attempting to explain everything, lay down three positions without much fear of being mistaken in them. First, Pippin did not hold himself bound to restore the Exarchate and the other lands conquered by Aistulf to the immediate dominion of the Emperor. Secondly, he did not hold himself to be, in anything that he did, acting a hostile part towards the Emperor. Thirdly, neither Pope Stephen nor his successors for forty years even foi*mally cast aside their allegiance to Constantine and his successors. It is of the first moment to insist on all these points, because the relations of all parties to the Empire and the place held by the Empire in the eyes of all parties is the side of the story which modern readers find it hardest to understand. Stephen and his successors had no love for Constantine and his successors ; but they could neither deny their existence nor get rid of the fact of their existence in the politics of the time. But by dexterous subtlety, by the discreet choice of words, by neither acknow- ledging the Emperor nor formally denying him, but by keeping him carefully out of sight, the objects of the Pope might be carried out. The Eastern and the Western poten- tate alike might be successfully hoodwinked. Constantine might be led to believe that Pippin was coming to his help, while Pippin was led to believe that, in doing some- thing altogether against the wishes of Constantine, he was in no way wronging a friendly potentate. The first promise then was made at the first interview at Ponthion, but as yet no decisive step could be taken. An army could not come together and begin its march in January, and it was not yet absolutely certain that any army would be needed. And yet more, a king of the Franks, above all a king of the Franks in the special position of Pippin, could not act in so great a matter with- out the consent of his kingdom. The voice of that king- dom might speak in less than two months in the Marchfield, but it could not speak till then. Meanwhile a more fitting THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 141 place than any royal house had to be found for the holy stranger and his following. Pope Stephen and his com- panions were quartered for the present in the monastery of Saint Denis. The choice of that house, the house of Pip- pin's special affection, the spiritual home of his childhood, might pass as a special mark of the King's friendship for the Pope, as well as a special honour done to Abbot Fulrad, who had doubtless already w^on the Pope's favour on this journey. With them the Pope was to abide till the day of the national meeting. There he presently fell sick. The long and distant journey had been too much for him. The mountains, the rivers, the changes of the weather, the heat, the cold, the floods, all had worn him out. Both his own attendants and the Franks held him to be sick unto death ; one morniDg the King came to the Pope's quarters fully expecting to find only his dead body. He was re- joiced and thankful to find that, by God's mercy, his health had been strangely and speedily restored ^. Meanwhile the King made a last effort to see whether the object which Pope and King now both sought could be gained without a resort to arms. One more embassy was sent to Aistulf, warning him by his reverence for the apostles Peter and Paul not to march in hostile guise against the Roman territory. This is a clear message enough ; it is less easy to understand the meaning of a warning not to do or to compel the Romans to do certain superstitious and ungodly things, contrary to all good law and order ^. One might understand such a message to one of the heathen or even heretical predecessors of the Lombard kings ; but surely Aistulf, with all his alleged crimes, was, ^ The sojourn at St. Denis is mentioned by all the three chief authorities, the Continuator, Moissac, and the Biographer. But it is the last only that records the Pope's sickness, p. 168; "Prse nimio labore itineris, atque temporis insequalitate fortiter infirmatus est." The legendary version of his healing by Saint Denis himself will be found in the "Revelatio," Bouquet, v. 591. ^ On the message to Aistulf see Appendix, Note 4, p. 373. 142 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. in point of dogma and ceremony, not less orthodox than Liudprand or than Pippin himself. The message, whatever its nature, had no effect. Aistulf hardened his heart, and the Frankish envoys came back empty. But either their mission or the course of events before their mission led to the appearance on Gaulish soil of an advocate of the Lombard cause whom we should hardly have looked for. Karlmann, once Mayor of the Palace, Duke of the Franks, nursing-father of the Church and conqueror of the Alamans, now the humble and holy monk of Monte Casino, came to the court of his brother to pray his brother to grant no help to Pope Stephen against the Lombard king. He came to argue before the King and people of the Franks, to use all his skill and all the authority of his name on behalf of the Lombard, and to answer all that Pope Stephen might say against him ^. There is something strange in the sight of one who had gone to Rome and her Bishop to be delivered from the bondage of the world coming back again into the world to argue against the cause of Rome as pleaded by her Bishop. At a later time Karlmann was said to have come against his will ", but he came at the bid- ding of those who were now his immediate superiors, ghostly and worldly. The monastery of Monte Casino stood within the borders of the Beneventum duchy; that is, it was within the dominions, or at least under the supremacy, of the Lombard king at Pavia. Moreover, the Lombard king had at that moment a special means of con- trolling the chief of the house. Abbot Optatus, it will be remembered, had gone to Aistulf on the Pope's errand, and had not been allowed to go back to him who sent him ^. It does not follow that he was imprisoned or kept under further restraint ; he may well enough have gone back to Monte Casino ; but the King would doubtless keep his eye ^ On the mission of Karloman see Appendix, Note 5. ^ So Einhard, 753. See Appendix, Note 5. ^ See above, p. 11 G. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WAES OF PIPPIN. 143 on him. So now Aistulf made known his will to his sub- ject Abbot Optatus, and Abbot Optatus made known his will to his ghostly son the monk Karlmann, that he should go and play the part of advocate of the Lombard king at the court of the kino- who was his brother according; to the flesh. One is curious to know the exact feelings both of Optatus and of Karlmann. That the Abbot went on an embassy to ask Aistulf to fulfil a treaty and to spare Rome would not at all prove that he would wish to bring a Frankish army into Italy. He might very well do what the King bade him with perfect good v/ill. As for Karl- mann, if he brought himself to think once more of earthly affairs, he would remember that Frankish interference in Italy, Frankish action against the Lombard ally of the Franks, was the very thing in which his father had refused to take any part. That he came unwillingly is merely one of those surmises which do not amount to statements of fact. The whole course of the story, the way in which Karlmann is spoken of and the way in which he is treated, all look as if, whether his coming was actually willing or unwilling, his mission was at least one which he could without scruple discharge to the best of his power. At any rate he set forth at the joint bidding of monastic obedience and of worldly loyalty to discharge the strange duty he thus laid upon him. Other monks of Monte Casino went with him as his comrades -. We have no details of his mission, but he clearly discharged it faithfully. It must have been with strange feelings that Karlmann passed in his new guise through the land where he had once been so might}^ to the home and throne of the younger brother who, since he became a monk, had grown into a king. Stranger still would it be if the former Mayor and Duke showed himself in the Marchfield in his double character of monk and foreign envoy, if he was allowed to speak to the assembled Franks in the name of his Lombard master, and •■ This appears from a passage in the letters of Stephen to Pippin (JafFe, Mon. Car. p. 61;, to which we shall come again. 144 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. if, as the envoy of a foreign king, he received from the mouth of King Pippin the royal answer to his message, such as he had himself been used to dictate to King Chil- deric. With almost greater curiosity than in the case of Karlmann, we ask whether the Pope himself appeared to plead his cause in person before the assembled Franks. Karlmann, advocatus diaholi as he would seem in papal eyes, would at least have the advantage that he could win the hearts of the German warriors by stirring words in their own tongue, while the Pope would be a barbarian to the men of Austria and a speaker of needlessly refined book-- Latin to the men of Neustria and Burgundy. On the whole it does seem most likely that the two strangely matched disputants, the Bishop of Rome and the monk of Monte Casino, did actually appear, each to maintain his own argument, when the assembly that had to judge be- tween them, the assembly of the whole Frankish nation, came together. That was on the first day of March (754) by the old royal house of Eerny in the land of Soissons, by the Cotia Silva, hard by the joining of the streams of Aine and Oise ^. It was surely before that great gathering that the monk Karlmann, at the bidding of the wicked tyrant Aistulf, strove earnestly and with all his might to overthrow the cause of the holy Church of God^. So says the Roman teller of the tale, who adds that all his pleadings could not move the strong heart of the most Christian King Pippin, who saw through the whole craft of the ungodly Lombard. We must suppose that what Karlmann said in his own tongue Stephen answered through an interpreter. He could not have lacked interpreters and advocates, the King himself first among them. Whatever might be the strength of Karlmann' s arguments, they did not convince Pippin, and the King carried with him at least the more part of the assembly. The King publicly re- newed the promise which he had made to the Pope, and the ^ Berny, not Braisne. 2 On all these details, see Appendix, Note 5. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 145 decree of the Frankish nation was to give him all help in the work. Yet there is good reason to believe that this decree was not passed without strong opposition on the part of some of the chief men of the Franks. Some of Pippin's special counsellors, whose mind he was accus- tomed to ask, were either convinced by the pleadings of Karlmann or found arguments on his side spring up in their own minds. They strongly opposed the King's will ; they ever threatened to stand apart and take no share in an expedition decreed for such an end ^. Nor is it in anyway wonderful if many in the assembl}^ would gladly have done as Karlmann would have had them. An old comrade of Charles the Hammer, who had fought against the Saracen in true fellowship with Lombard helpers, who remembered how his victorious prince had declined alike to undertake wars and to receive honours be^'ond the bounds of the Frankish realm and of immediate Frankish interests — such an one mioiit well deem that wisdom was on the side of the elder brother, when he warned the younger to cleave to the safe policy of their father. But the will of the King, the charm and wonder of the new position, did their work. The Franks were ready to jeopard their lives for the rights of Saint Peter and the Roman Republic, whatever mean- ing they may have attached to the latter name. The King carried the mass of the nation with him in a vote to do for the Pope all that he had come to ask of them. The Frank- ish host was to march to chastise the King of the Lombards ^ This comes from Einhard, Vita Karoli, 6; "Bellum contra Lan- gobardos . . . Stephano papa supplicante, cum magna difficultate susceptum est, quia quidam e primoribus Francorum cum quibus con- sultare solebat [Pippinus], adeo voluntati ejus remisi sunt ut se regem deserturos domumque redituros, libera voce proclamarent." Einhard is not contemporary with the coming of Karhnann and Stephen, and we may suspect that he has somewhat mixed together opposition in the Assembly with a threat to desert on the march. But the story of opposition to the Italian expedition is one which he must have got from some genuine tradition. He could never have invented or dreamed it, while writers at the time would be very likely to leave it out. L 146 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. and to win back from him all that he had wrongfully seized. Never was there an assembly of which we should better wish to know the formal acts. We ask above all^ Was the coming Patriciate of the King spoken of? Was the name of the Emperor uttered ? We know only the result. The Lombard war was agreed on, and thereby the first step was taken in that interference of the Frankish power in the affairs of Italy which was presently to change the face of the world. The war was decreed; but the full Frankish power was not ready to move for several months. The King kept his Easter at Quierzy. It has been commonly held that it was there that the promises made at Ponthion and at Berny were put into a written shape, and that Stephen then and there received from the King's hands the famous grant, the gift of Pippin. But there is really no evidence to show that any such grant was at that time made in a written form. It is plain that such a grant, a grant of territories which Pippin did not possess, could at most have taken the shape of a promise conditional on success, and that much had already been given both by the King at Pont- hion and by the nation at Berny. The evidence really goes to show that, whether the King's mere promise was set down in writing or not, the first formal document that could be called a grant was drawn up at a later time, when Pippin had come nearer to the real possession of what he granted^. Several months, of whose events we have no detail, must have been taken up in warlike pre- parations, as the Frankish march for Italy did not actually begin till August ^ ; and when the King and his host did set forth, they were fresh from an august ceremony indeed. We miglit have deemed that all that could be needed to make Pippin king over the whole Frankish nation had been done in the great rite of Soissons three years before. ^ See Appendix, Note 4. ^ See Appendix, Note 6. THE ITALTAy AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 147 He had been chosen to kingship b}^ the voice of the nation ; he had been admitted to the kingly office alike in the older and the newer fashion ; the King of the Franks had been heaved on the shield amid the shouts of the Frankish warriors, and the fathers of the Frankish Church had poured the holy oil on the head of the Lord's Anointed. What could be lacking in such an act either on the spiritual or on the temporal side ? Sut it was after all only an act of the Frankish Church and nation ; and with the new nations that were spreading abroad it might seem that an act of the Frankish Church and nation would gain further strength if it were confirmed by the act of him whom men were beo-innina: to look on as the common shepherd of all Churches and nations. Moreover it might be held that the unction of Soissons was per- sonal to Pippin himself. He had himself become a king, but it had not been expressly declared that his whole line had become kingly. The Merwings had vanished into monas- teries; Childeric at least was dead; but it had just been shown that a monastery was not necessarily a tomb that closed for ever over its inmates. The elder brother of the King had shown himself as one risen from the dead, if not as the enemy of his brother, yet at least as the oppo- nent of his brother's policy. The monk of Monte Casino, even though he had come back into the world in the character of a Lombard envoy, was not likely himself to disturb the kingship of his brother^. But the monk of Monte Casino had left a son or sons behind him in the Frankish land ; they, Ka.rlings, ArnuMngs, no less than, the King and his sons, representatives of tjie elder line of the great Mayors, might some day set up a claim to some share in the kingship of the Frankish people^, if not against the reigning King, yet against the sons whom he might leave behind him. It was well to take advantage of so excep- ^ I cannot believe, with Krosta (p. 15), that Karlmann had any designs on the kingdom for himself; but it was clearly expedient from Pippin's side to shut out all chances of his sons. L 2 148 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. tional a state of things as the presence of the Pope as the guest of the Frankish king and nation, to have every question settled, to have every right confirmed, by an authority which none would venture to dispute. A second anointing of the King by the hands of the Pope, an anoint- ing which should bestow the full grace of kingship, not only on the King himself but on all his sons who should come after him, was appointed to take place immediately before the host should begin its march (July 28, 754). The place chosen for the rite was the house which Pippin honoured above all others, the house in which Stephen had found a home during his Frankish sojourn, the house which was beginning to be looked on as the ecclesiastical home of Frankish kingship. It was in the minster of Saint Denis that the rite of Soissons was to be repeated with yet greater authority. When the kingship of the Franks was for a while lost in the Western Empire of Rome, when again a fragment of it came forth in the shape of the local kingdom, first of Karolingia, then of modern France, other crowning-places were chosen, and Rheims, seat of the baptism of Chlodowig, became, before all other spots, the spiritual home of the kings of the new stock and the new kingdom. But if Rheims became the crowning-place of the kings, Saint Denis became their burying-place ; and, when, after more than a thousand years, a Pope of Rome again came on Gaulish soil to take his part in the crowning of the master of a dominion as great as that of Pippin or of Pippin's son, it was not indeed Saint Denis itself, but the now metropolitan church of the neighbouring city which was chosen for that amazing rite. Again a new dj^nasty had to be inaugurated, and the first days of the Karlings were assuredly not forgotten in the first days of the Buonapartes. Saint Denis was so near to Paris that acts done there are sometimes spoken of as done at Paris, just as acts done at Westminster are spoken of as done at London. Paris at this moment came very near to being the head city of all Gaul and Germany. It was perhaps only the THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 149 personal tastes of the next Frankish king which kept it from fully becoming so. It was then in the minster of Saint Denis, the holy place of the apostle of Gaul, the martyr of Aurelian's day whose personality became merged in that of the convert of Mars' Hill, that the King of the Franks, his Queen, and his sons, came to receive this specially solemn unction at the hands of the Pontiff. Further than the mere fact of the unction we have no details ; we are not told the exact nature of the ceremony or how far the ritual followed by the Pope was the same as that which came into use somewhat later for the crowning and anointing of kings ^ As at the first unction of Pippin, there is no mention of any ceremony at the unction, no placing of a crown on the head, no delivery of the sceptre. The heaving needed not to be repeated, the Pope had not come to renew old Frankish and heathen usages, but to give the new kingship a special Christian hallowing. That he gave in the form of a second unction ; now, as at the earlier time, we are left uncertain whether the crowning is taken for granted or whether there was no crowning. The opposite omission is just as remarkable when we come to the Imperial crowning of Charles, a crowning, it would seem, unaccom- panied by a second unction. Yet the repetition of a royal unction was no sacrilege. In this very case the King and Queen were anointed for the second time ; it was only for their sons that the ceremony had the charm of perfect newness. But that the boys Charles and Karlmann shared in the unction of their parents was in truth the most impor- tant part of the ceremony ; it was most likely the reason why the ceremony was gone through at all. At the age, it may be, of twelve years, perhaps at an age earlier still, Charles the Great became in name at least a king ; his younger brother, hardly above five years old, shared his kingship with him. And not only did both the sons of Pippin become kings, but the Pope warned the whole ^ See Norman Conquest, iii. 626. 150 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Frankish nation, under the most solemn anathemas of the Church, never again to choose a king from any other stock but that of the direct descendants of Pippin^. A most important point was thus gained. The kingliness of the whole kin was asserted ; the heathen sanctity of the Mer- wings passed away for ever before the Christian sanctity of the Karlings, the house chosen of the Lord, the house of which every living member, down well nigh to babes and sucklings, was declared to be for ever kingly and was hallowed with holy oil to the actual possession of the kingly office. We have said Karlings; yet just now the truer name would be Pippinings; there were Karlings in the land, perhaps present in the church of Saint Denis, whom the ban of Pope Stephen cut off from all hopes of kingship no less than the fallen Merwings. The eldest branch of the house of Charles the Hammer was cast aside. It was felt that that branch had become dangerous ; the course taken by Karlmann had brought suspicion upon both himself and his sons. He himself was at least care- fully watched ; as for his sons, the second unction of Pippin had an accompaniment like that of the first. As then the last Merwings were shorn and sent into monasteries, so now such Karlings as were likely to stand in the way of the reigning branch, Drogo and his brother or brothers, were doomed to the same fate. It is a short but pithy entry in one of the Frankish annals that " Pope Stephen came from the city of Home into Francia, and Karlmann after him, and his sons were shorn ^." Thus the house of Pippin and Arnulf, or at least one ^ This comes from the famous Clausula at the end of Gregory of Tours, De Gloria Confessorum ; " Et tali omnes interdictu et excom- municationis lege constrinxit, et mmquam de alterius lumbis regem in sevo prsBSumant eligere ; sed ex ipsorum, quos et divina pietas exaltare dignata est, et sanctorum apostolorum intercessionibus per manus vicarii ipsorum beatissimi pontificis confirmare et consecrare disposuit." The Clausula is printed at p. 4G5 of Arndt and Krusch's edition of Gregory. '^ Annales Petaviani, 753. See Appendix, Note 4. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 151 branch of it, was definitely established as the kingly house of the Franks, instead of the elder house of Chlodowig. The main point is that the unction of the two sons of Pippin as well as their father declared the kingliness of the whole house. Every Karling now — it is hard to speak of Pipiyinings, and the two names came presently to mean the same — as every Merwing at an earlier time, was in some sort born a king. Not only one son, but all the sons, had a right to become actual reigning kings, at all events at the death of their father, and sooner, if their father thought good to make them reigning kings in his life- time. That is to say, the same evil was brought in again along with the new dynasty which had broken the kingdom in pieces in the time of the old. Tlie joint mayoralty of Karlmann and Pippin had shown, perhaps more than any joint kingship could show, how deeply this notion of the right of all sons to a share in their father's inheritance had made its way into the mind of the Frankish nation. Pippin, by this act, consulted the interests of his family rather than the interests of his kingdom. But, whatever we say of his treatment of his nephews, we can hardly blame him for wishing to establish the kingly right of all his sons. The worst that can be said of him on this score is that he did not see further than other men, that he did not fully take in the evils to which the custom of divided kingship was sure to lead. The endless partitions of the Frankish kingdom among the sons of the kings fitted in with tendencies to division of other kinds, tendencies founded on differences of race, language, and geography to bring about the final break-up of that vast fabric of Frankish dominion which Pippin began to build up, and which his more renowned son finished. If the unity of the kingdom was an object, that would have been better sought even by leaving the succession in the chaotic state in which it was left among Goths and Lombards. The Gothic and the Lombard kingdoms each kept together as long as they lasted ; they were overthrown by foreign 152 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. conquerors ; they did not fall to pieces of themselves. The occasional murder of a king, even by his own brother, caused less of disunion, less of bloodshed, than came when the sons of Lewis the Pious meted out their father's realm by the sword. But another title, another office, was bestowed in the same ceremony at Saint Denis. Pippin and his sons with him were made, not- only Prankish kings (and Pippin was king before), but Poman patricians. The two titles, the two offices, are brought into a strange connexion with one another, as if they were bestowed by a single act. Yet no two titles, no two offices, could be more distinct, more utterly, in idea, unlike one another. The kingship of the Franks could come from no source but the gift of the Prankish nation ; the papal unction could but hallow with the blessing of the Church an act which the Prankish nation had already done. The Poman patriciate, according to all earlier precedent, could be the gift of none but the Roman Emperor. While the King of the Franks knew no superior on earth — some kings of the Franks had thought it somewhat strange that they should have a superior in Heaven ^ — a Roman patrician was, in the very nature of things, the subject and servant of the master who made him. The name in strictness implied simple rank and dignity rather than office. The highest rank and the highest offices would naturally go together. The Exarchs of Italy and Africa, the Prsetor of Sicily, were pretty certain to be men of patrician rank ; but the not un- common phrase of " Patrician of Sicily," the phrase used, I believe, only once before this time, of " Patrician of the Romans "," are both mere descriptions of the officers spoken of. The use of the name is like the use of such names as ^ See the story of the last words of the first Chlotachar, Greg. Tur. iv. 21. ^ Paul the Deacon (iv. 60) once applies the words "Patricius Roinanoruin " to the Exarch Gregory, but this is merely a description, THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN 153 Duke, Prince^ Under-king, this very title of Patrician \ to mark the positions of those officers of the Prankish realm who called themselves simply Mayors of the Palace. But from the dav of the unction in Saint Denis, " Patrician of the Romans " does become a formal title, and is used as such by the Prankish kings till the Patrician is merged in the Emperor who could make patricians. In the case of a Prankish king some such definition might be specially needed. In the Burgundian part of the Prankish dominion the title of Patrician Imd long lingered on from the days of Roman rule, as it revived again when Burgundy had once more kings of its own -. It was needful to distinguish the Roman patriciate about to be bestowed on the King from this purely local patriciate which might be held by his own subjects. He was to be King of the Pranks and Patrician of the Romans,, to mark at once that his patriciate lay altogether outside the Prankish dominions and that his kingship lay altogether within them. But we are now brought to look the question in the face to which the whole course of our story has been leading us step by step. In what sense, and by what authority, was it that the Prankish king and his two sons became not a formal title. So in Fredegar (60) the Exarch Isaac — we have his tomb at Ravenna— appears as "patricius Romanorum," and so does the last Exarch Eutychios in the Chronicle of Salerno (Pertz, iii. 471) ; but this is not earlier than the second half of the tenth century. It was doubtless suggested by the application of the title to the Frankish kings. One might have thought that by that time the name might have been forgotten ; only there is (see Ducange in Patricius, and Gregorovius, ii. 275) a very elaborate form for the creation of a patri- cian which seems to belong to the time of Otto the Third. We find the " patricius Sicilise " in a letter of Hadrian to Charles (Mon. Car. 202) in 778, and the " patricius de Sicilia " in Einhard, Ann. 799. In 788 he has more accurately, " Theodorus patricius, Siciliae prse- fectus." ^ As by Gregory the Second, writing to Boniface ; Jaffe, Mon. Mog. 86. ^ There is a Burgundian patrician as late as 642 ; Fred. 89. Ducange (in voc.) traces the title much later, and helps us to a patrician in the revived Burgundy of Boso. 154 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Patricians of the Romans ? Different answers to that question would likely enough have been given by persons all of whom had an interest in the matter. We must again call to mind the main facts of the story which we have gone through, the facts which are essential to the under- standing of the case, but which are commonly passed by as if they were of no moment. We must again remember that up to the moment of Stephen's setting forth from Pavia, King, Pope, and Emperor had all been in full outward friendship. The Pope had gone to Pavia as himself an Imperial representative, to work with an Im- perial Silentiary, and seemingly with the Frankish envoys who were also there, in bringing a joint diplomatic action to bear on the mind of the Lombard king. We cannot doubt that Stephen took his journey into Gaul with the full knowledge and consent of the Emperor or his trusted representative. And it seems most natural to go on to infer that, when the Pope took upon himself to bestow a title which hitherto only the Emperors had bestowed, he did so with the Emperor''s knowledge and consent ; the Emperor at least w^ould have said that he did so by his authority as his representative. Casting aside all pre- possessions and looking simply at the recorded facts which we have gone through, the strong likelihood seems to be that Pippin was made Patrician with the good will of Constantine, and that Constantino at least held that he W'as made Patrician by his authority. But it does not necessarily follow that King, Pope, and Emperor would understand the act in the same sense. There is no hint of the presence of any Imperial representative at the Frankish court at this time, except so far as the Pope himself might count as an Imperial representative. The Pope had things very much in his own power ; he could shape his acts and choose his words in a way which might bear one meaning for himself, while it might bear quite different meanings to both King and Emperor. From the Imperial side there would be nothing the least THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WABS OF PIPPIN. 155 amazino- even in a formal commission authorizing the Kino^ of the Franks, in the name of the Emperor, as a Roman officer, with the rank of Patrician, to act against the Kiog of the Lombards, for the recovery of the lost lands of the Empire. Those last words could, as should be convenient, either be confined to the Exarchate or be extended to the whole Lombard kingdom. Such a com- mission, such a patriciate, in the hands of Pippin would have much in common with the commissions granted first to Odowakar and then to Theodoric ^. It had more in common with the commission g-ranted to Tiieodoric. In the case of Odowakar the Emperor simply recognized an existing fact. The barbarian king — it is hard to find any more exact title for him — was already master of Italy ; the Emperor simply gave his position a legal confirmation. But Theodoric was actually sent against Odowakar, exactly as Pippin was sent against Aistulf. Precedents could even be found among earlier Prankish kiogs. We have seen lonsj affo that there is strong^ reason to believe that Childeric and Chlodowig first appeared in Poman Gaul as Poman officers, and the consulship of Chlodowig was a direct precedent for the patriciate of Pippin. In all these cases the Imperial policy is obvious ; wherever it seems doubtful whether the substance of power can for the moment be kept, it is well to keep at least the shadow, in the hope that, as sometimes happens in human afiairs, the keeping of the shadow may help towards the winning back of the substance. A people that gives up the slightest form which savours of freedom, a prince who gives up the slightest form which savours of authority, is doing damage to his own cause. By grants and commissions of this kind, the Emperors could lose nothing and they might gain something. It was better for Constantino's purposes that Pippin should reign in the Exarchate or in Rome itself than that Aistulf should. Pippin was a friend and Aistulf ^ I see that this analogy has also occurred to Gregorovius, ii. 286, Bk. iv. cap. ii. § 3. 156 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. was an enemy ; it was possible that Pippin might acknow- ledge some kind of supremacy in the Empire ; it was certain that Aistnlf would acknowledge none. Aistulf might possibly go on to attack those parts of Italy which were still under direct Imperial rule. Pippin, as an officer, or even as an ally, of the Empire, was not dangerous in those parts. We shall see presently that Constantine believed, or at least officiallj^ professed to believe, that Pippin would give up his Italian conquests to him. That was the meaning which he put on the phrase of recovering lands for the Roman Republic. But when the Emperor found that Pippin put another meaning on those words, that — perhaps without denying some outward overlordship — Pippin had bestowed the immediate possession elsewhere, he did not make that any ground of quarrel with the Frankish king. All this seems to show that Constantine was playing very much the same part as his predecessors in the like case. He was ready for all chances ; he felt that by favouring Frankish intervention in Italy, by making the Frankish king, in name at least, an Imperial officer, nothing could possibly be lost, while something might conceivably be gained. But, if these were the views of the Emperor, it was not in the least likely that the Pope would set them thus clearly before the King. We may be quite sure that Stephen did not say anything to Pippin, as Gregory the Third had said to Pippin's father, about openly throwing off the authority of the Emperor and putting that of the ruler of the Franks in its stead. We may be sure that he said nothing tending to any open hostility with the Empire. Stephen, if pressed, could not have denied that Constantine was his sovereign, while to Pippin, besides the vague majesty of the Empire, Constantine was at any rate a foreign prince with whom he was on friendly terms. The policy of the Pope was to put all questions about the Empire and its rights as far as possible out of sight, neither to deny them nor to insist upon them. He could THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 157 hardly directly deny that the patriciate was an Imperial gift ; but he would say as little as he could about it from that side, and he would say as much as he could about it on the side of the duties to which he held that it called the Frankish king, the defence of the Roman Republic in his sense, the people, the Church, the Bishop, of the elder Rome. And if the Emperor might have his pre- cedents, the Pope might find his much more modern precedents, he might find them in Pippin's own land, in his own house, in his own life. What Stephen was aiming at was to cut down the Imperial authority in Italy to the smallest possible measure of real power without formally casting it aside. That is, he was aiming at putting the prince whom he did not deny to be his sovereign in much the same position in which a prince who w^as not denied to be the sovereign of the Franks had been a few years before. That Frankish precedent may well have been before his eyes; the policy of statesmen shifts according to the change of time, place, and circumstance^ and it might suit Stephen's purposes, it might even suit those of Pippin, to set up in Italy the same state of things which Zachary had so lately helped Pippin to sweep away in Gaul and Germany. But an Emperor cut down to the measure of authority of the Merowingian king must have, like a Merowingian king, some one to take his place, some one to speak and act, perhaps not on his behalf, but perhaps in his name, at any rate in his stead. The Mayor of the Palace could hardly have a place found for him in an Italy which was ruled, even in form, from Constantinople ; but the title and rank of the patriciate stood ready, well fitted, alike in its dignity and in its vagueness, to mark one who was to hold the substance of power w^hile its name was to be left to another. Earlier Emperors had had their patricians, patricians sometimes mightier than themselves, patricians who had set Emperors up and who had put them down again. This time there was to be no formal setting up or putting down ; there was to be 158 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. a quiet setting aside ; the Patrician was not to be the master of a present Emperor, but the substitute — we can hardly say the lieutenant- — of an absent one. And the man of all others fitted for the post was close at hand. Pippin, used to the part of Mayor of the Palace under a nominal king, was called before all other men to play the part of Patrician under a nominal Emperor. Pippin was indeed now a king, the mightiest of Christian kings, the one alone who, in extent of dominion, might pass for a rival of the Emperor himself. Yet even to the King of the Franks, the place of Patrician of the Romans — Advocate, to bring in a later word — of the Poman Church, could be no lessening of dignity. And the Pope would not forget that, as Pome was so much further from Compiegne and Berny than it was from Ravenna, the independence of his own Church and city would be distinctly increased. The Patrician would never be able to wield the same practical power which the Exarchs had wielded ; he would never be able to play the part of a master towards the special see of the Apostle in the way in which mayors and kings could play it towards either ancient Rheims or new-born Mainz. To invest Pippin with the patriciate would suit the objects both of the Pope and the Emperor ; only they would look on him as being invested with it in two dif- ferent senses ; they would above all look on him as being bound by its acceptance to two quite different courses with regard to Ravenna and the other lands which formed the last Lombard conquest. Pippin meanwhile, we may believe, accepted the patri- ciate with somewhat vague notions as to what he was accepting. But we may be sure that he felt that it bound him to do something for the Pope and that it did not bind him to do anything against the Emperor. Yet the very way in whicli the bestowal of the patriciate was mixed up with the kingly unction would tend to put out of sight the character of the patriciate as a mere rank under the Emperor. The consul Chlodowig had been hailed as THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN 159 Augustus and had with his consulship put on something of Imperial pomp ^ The patrician Pippin never reached that height of glory. But the close union of Prankish kingship and Roman patriciate in one person, the call on the King and Patrician to play the first part in the affairs of Italy, was a distinct step towards the time when patri- ciate should merge in Empire and when kingship should be held as a secondary place alongside of Empire. The position taken by Pippin was a kind of inferior degree, the rank of a bachelor, an esquire, a deacon, before the full dignity that was to come hereafter. And we must not forget that one was there who was to o'o throuo-h all deoTees O O O o in his own person. The boy Charles, who, perhaps hardly knowing what the names meant, became that day King and Patrician within the minster of Saint Denis, lived, six and forty years later, to hear, echoing through the thick-set columns of the old Saint Peter's, the shout which hailed him as a patrician, more than king, as Charles Augustus, crowned by God, the great and peace-giving Emperor of the Eomans. So Pippin and his two boys, a triple cord, were Kings of the Franks and Patricians of the Romans. Eertrada, twice anointed Queen, could not share in the Roman honours of her husband and her sons. What those Roman honours really meant was left carefully undefined. It is perhaps not irreverent to say that Pope Stephen took in both the King and the Emperor. He gained his immediate object, Frankish help against the Lombard. Like the Emperor, he could not lose, and he might gain. In the end he gained largely, that is, if it was a gain for the Bishops of Rome to be numbered, first practically, then formally, among the princes of the world. The Emperor assuredly did not gain ; but we can hardly say that he directly lost. His case in Italy after Pippin's coming was not worse than it had been immediately before. We may even doubt whether the Empire really lost in the long ^ Greg. Tur. ii, 38. 160 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. run. The loss of the Latin provinces, like the loss of the Eastern province, cut the bounds of the Empire short, but we can well believe that its real life and strength were quickened by the loss of limbs which had no true oneness with the main body. As the Roman Empire came more and more nearly to mean the lands occupied by the artificial Greek nation, it began, unwittingly we may be sure, to put on something of national feeling and national strength. And towards this process the Italian campaigns of Pippin helped not a little. They were the beginnings of the Empire of his son, and the Empire of his son of course implied that the last formal traces of allegiance on the part of Latin Italy to the Emperors reigning at Constantinople were altogether cast aside. Pippin in short set forth, not well knowing whither he went. In truth he went to begin a, work which presently led to what a later time spoke of as the translation of the Empire from the Greeks to the Franks ; he went to win a position for himself, his house, and his people, which grew by easy steps into the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The action of Pope Zachary in approving the first election and anointing of Pippin, and the personal action of Pope Stephen in Pippin's second unction, were events which had so much in common that they were sure to be confounded by Avriters who were at all removed from the scene either by time or place. Our one East- Roman account, one to which we have already referred, comes from Theophanes, who was contemporary or nearly so, dying sixty-three years after Pippin's second unction. His graphic picture of the last Merwings is given in a narrative in which Pope Stephen, fleeing from Aistulf, seeks shelter in Gaul with Pippin Mayor of the Palace, whom he presently ordains king ^5 having absolved Pippin ^ Theoph. Chron. 619, ed. Bonn ; 6 fih ovu ^ricjmvos rrj w^otvitl tov ' AarTov}<(pov fiuiaOels Kal d^ovXia. iifia de Koi eniTpanels nap" avTov THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 161 and all the Franks from their oaths to his predecessor ^, who is accordingly shorn and sent into a monastery. More remarkably still, Pippin is confounded with his father, and comes in for the credit of his great exploit. It was he who led the Franks to meet the great host of the Arabs who had conquered Spain. It was he who slew their leader Abd-al-Rahman, with the multitude of his following that could not be numbered, by the banks of a river which he somewhat strangely speaks of as Eridanos ^. King Pippin had two sons, whose names appear in their Greek form as Karoulos and Karoulomagnos — the latter a form to be remembered ^. On the other hand, a Frankish writer of the next age has a tale to tell which, though purely mythical in its statement of events, still sets forth with great life and truth the real state of the case as touching^ the chano^e from the old dynasty to the new *. Before Pippin became king, Pope Stephen came into the land of the Franks to ask of him, as their prince, to help him against the Lorn- bard king Aistulf, who had seized the cities and lands of Saint Peter ^. The prince makes answer to the Pope, " I aireXOe'iv es ^ payyiKrjV, Koi TroiTJcrai 6 av bvvrjrai, i\6(iiv x^LpoTovel tov YIlttIvov^ avdpa ro TrjvLKavra Xiav €v86klp,ou, npoiaTafiePov ap.a kol tcov npa- yndrcov ano tov prjyos. There is a sad confusion in the story of Theo- phanes between the action of Zachary and the action of Gregory, but it is most singular that he should have preserved such a bit of detail as the consent of Aistulf to Stephen's journey (see above, p. 126).. John the Silentiary must have left a tradition of it at Constantinople. ^ It is curious that this point should have been noticed only by the Greek writer Heseyn (p. 620) ; Xvaavros avrov rris eiriopKias tt^s irpbs TOV prjya tov avTOV "STecfidvov. lb. ; (Tvvavaipe'i be Kal nXrjdos ovk (vapidprjTov napa tov ^Hpi8av6v TTOTapov. Here is a double confusion. The battle of Tours is mixed up with Charles' warfare at Aries and Avignon, and Rhodanos is further confounded with Eridanos. ^ oi'Tos 6 HiTilvoi dvo vlovs eax^p KapovXov kol Kapo\6p.ayvov tov dd€X(puv avTov. ■* See Erchamberti Breviarium, Pertz, ii. 328. "" "Pipinus namque antequam ad regem sublimaretur, venit papa de Roma nomine Stephanus ad fines Francorum, ut praedictum prin- M 162 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. have the king for my lord ; I know not what he may decide in this matter \" The Pope goes and makes the same petition to the King in the same words. The King answers, "Do you not see, Pope, that I have no possession of kingly dignity or power 1 How can I do any of these things ^ 1 " " True," says the Pope, " this is just as it should be, because you are not worthy of any such honour." He goes back to the prince Pippin and says, " I command you by the authority of Saint Peter, shear this man and send him into a monastery ; why should he cumber the earth, for he is of no use to himself or to any one else^." The King is shorn and sent into a monastery. Then the Pope says to the Prince, " The Lord and the authority of Saint Peter have chosen you that you should be prince and king over the Franks^." So he at once ordained and blessed him to king, and hallowed also to kings his two young sons, Charles and Karlmann. And King Pippin promised that he would do in all things as seemed good to the Pope, as he presently did ^. We need not stay to point out the confusion of this story, as regards times and actors ; but it is after all nothing more than what really happened thrown into a dramatic form. cipem peteret quatenus ei causa auxiHi fuisset apud Haistolfum regera Longobardorum, quia de sancto Petro tarn civitates quam cetera et fines habuisset possesses." •^ " Habeo dominum regem ; ignoro quid inde vellet definire." It is a little hard to translate " dominum regem " in this sentence. ^ " Videsne, papa, quod dignitatis regise ac potestatis non fungor." ^ "Ex auctoritate sancti Petri tibi prsecipio ; tonde hunc et destina in monasterium ; at quid terram occupat ? nee sibi nee aliis utilis est." * " Statim tonso et in monasterium retruso, tunc papa ad principem, Te elegit Dominus et auctoritas sancti Petri, ut sis princeps et rex super Francos." " " Ille Pipinus rex se omnia facturum spopondit, sicut illi com- plaeuisset ; sicut et postea fecit." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 163 i^ § 4. The First Italian Expedition of Pippin. 754. And now the King of the Franks and Patrician of the Romans was to go forth, fresh from his anointing in Saint Denis, to fulfil the duties which, as he was taught, specially belonged to him in his Roman character. The host set forth, Pope Stephen going in the company of his chosen defender. With them went Queen Bertrada — her two boys, now themselves kings and patricians, are not spoken of — and Pippin's brother the monk Karlmann, the last no doubt under some measure of restraint. The army marched to Lyons, and thence to the rival metropolis of Vienne. In the city of the AUobroges two of the travellers were left, one who could take no personal share in the expedition, another who wished it no good will. Bertrada was left behind, to remain at least comparatively near to the seat of war ; with her was left Karlmann, already sick, sick at heart we may believe, at the failure of his journey and his pleadings. Where the Queen was quartered at Vienne we are not told ; for Karlmann a home was found in one of its monasteries ^. The city in those days lacked neither palaces nor abbeys. In the days when Vienne had been a seat of Emperors, their august dwelling had stood in the northern part of the city, not far from the foot of the fortified hills of Sospolium and Pompeianum,in later nomen- clature of Solesmes and of Arnould ^, nearer to the small ^ In the Life of Stephen the disposal of Karlmann becomes a subject of deep counsel between the Pope and the King. " Papa cum denominato Francorum rege consilio inito juxta id quod prae- fatus Carolomannus Deo se devoverat monachicam degere vitam in monasterio eum Viennae in Francia collocaverunt " (Muratori, iii. Pt. 1, p. 169. The best reading as usual is to be found in the note). The Annales Laurissenses (755) have "Carlomannus monachus Vienna civitate remansit una cum Bertraclane Regina infirmus languebat dies multos et obiit in pace." ^ For the topography of Vienne see " Recherches sur les Anti- quites de la Ville de Vienne," par Nicolas Chorier [Vienne, 1846]. He has a good deal to say about the singular names of the hills. Of the M 2 164 WESTEBN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. stream of the Gare than to the mighty Khone itself. The Prsetorian palace, afterwards a home of the Burgundian kings, stood nearer to the great river, nearer to the metropolitan minster of Saint Maurice, the church of the Primate of Primates ; but nearest of all to the abiding temple of Augustus and Livia, the church of Our Lady of Life. Here we may conceive that the Frankish Queen waited for the return of her husband from beyond the mountains. Of the many monasteries within and around the walls of Vienne^ we should be best pleased to place him in the abbey of Saint Peter, whose ancient church may well date from a time even as old as his day. There, or elsewhere in Vienne, the sick man passed the short remnant of his days. He was perhaps comforted by the company of the monks of Monte Casino who had come with him. Perhaps, as they were themselves clearly under suspicion, they were kept apart from him and from one another. It is certain that they were kept in some measure of restraint within the Frankish dominions. For three years later (785) Pope Stephen, at the request of Abbot Optatus, writes to Pippin about their release^. As for Karlmann himself, as he did not die till the next year had begun ^ he must have many monasteries of Vienne the clioice would seem to He between Saint Peter and Saint Andrew the Low. The early Romanesque work of Saint Peter might seem to give it the preference. ^ In his last letter to Pippin (JafFe, Mon. Car. 67), Stephen writes, "Petiit nobis Optatus religiosus abba venerandi monasterii sancti Benedicti pro monachis suis qui cum tuo germano profecti sunt, ut eos absolvere jubeas. Sed qualiter tua fuerit voluntas, ita de eis exponere jubeas." 2 The date in the Life of Stephen, p. 169, seems exact ; " Post ali- quantos dies divina vocatione de hac luce migravit anno Domini 755." Einhard must therefore have been led astray when he says, "Prius- quam rex de Italia reverteretur febre corroptus diem obiit." This comes of his putting the whole expedition in 755. He adds, "cujus corpus jussu Regis ad monasterium sancti Benedicti in quo monati- cum habitum susceperat relatum est." The Moissac Chronicler gives his death the right date, and speaks of him with great respect ; " Eodem anno (that in which disputes again arose between Stephen THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN 165 seen, or at least heard of, bis brother's victorious return from his Italian warfare. At that brother's bidding the body of the Duke of the Franks, the monk of Monte Casino, the eldest son of Charles the Hammer, was sent in a richly adorned coffin to the holy home of his last choice, where his memory was long cherished by the brotherhood of Saint Benedict and the strange tale of his life was adorned with many legends. Yet another son of Charles Martel was with the army, one of those sons of an unknown mother who was not deemed dangerous like Grifo and Karlmann himself ^ This was Jerome, a man of whom we hear little, but who was clearly high in his brother's favour and trust. We know not whether he was sent on any of the repeated embassies which still went to Aistulf at the special request of the Pope^ who was eager to hinder the shedding of Christian blood. The Pope's own letters went with them, once more calling on the Lombard king to restore the rights of the Church of God and the Kepublic of the Romans. We long for a Lombard teller of the tale ; none could have told it better than Paul the Deacon ; but his mouth was stopped by his later duty to his Prankish masters, and his pen dropped from his hand when he had drawn his picture of that King Liudprand who was ever at peace with the Franks^. In our Roman account — our Prankish guide keeps himself chiefly to matters of war — and Aistulf, that is 755) beatae memorise Carlomannus monachus migravit ad dominum." ^ The presence of Hieronymus and Jerome will appear a little later. Hahn has an Appendix about him (p. 154). He was not a churchman as one might have thought from his name, but had a wife and three sons, two of whom became abbots, and one of whom bore the name of Fulrad, most likely after his present companion. "^ The missions and letters are recorded in the Life of Stephen (169). In the Pope's last letter Aistulf is adjured in the most solemn way " ut pacifice sine ulla sanguinis effusione propria sanctas Dei ecclesise et reipublicsB Romanorum redderet jura." ^ See the very last words of Paul's History. Liudprand was *•' maxima semper cura Francorum Avarumque pacem custodiens." 166 IVESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. the deaf adder of Pa via remains deaf to all charmers ; sometimes he answers to never a word, sometimes he answers, but with scorn ^. He will let the Pope go in safety back to Rome; that shall be all. At last the army reached Maurienne, with its church of Saint John Baptist whose name still cleaves to the name of the city. At this point, the last city of the Frankish dominions on the Gaulish side of the Alps, we may well stop to remember how the frontier between the dominions of Pippin and of Aistulf was then drawn. Ever since the days of good King Guntchramn those Kings of the Franks who reigned in Burgundy reigned on both sides of the Alps^. Both the vale of Susa and the vale of Aosta were Frankish territory, and that of Aosta remains to this day, in speech and in architecture, Burgundian and not Italian. It is just at this moment that this piece of geography becomes of most practical importance. The distinction died out in after ages when the princes of Savoy ruled on both sides of the mountains, and when it no longer mattered whether this or that fief v^hich they held of the Empire belonged in strictness to the Italian or to the Burgundian kingdom. Just now the fact that Pippin's kingdom took in Susa was of no small moment. Aistulf, with all his aggressive dis- position, had kept within his own territories ; he had not gone beyond the pass east of Susa which parted the two kingdoms ^. It was perhaps from Maurienne that Pippin and Stephen made their last attempt to move the heart of ^ Chron. Moissac, Pertz, i. 293; " Haistulphus in superbia elatus convitia etiam in pra^fatum pontificem per inepta verba imponens nihil ei se facere promittens nisi viam se prsebere quatenus ad propria remearet." Pippin sent his message, according- to this writer, " Alpes transiens," that is, we may suppose, when he was drawing near to them. As the Biographer seems to imply three messages, they may well have gone from Lyons, Vienne, and Maurienne. The Biographer does not attend much to Gaulish geography. ^ See on Aosta, Historical and Architectural Sketches, p. 305. ^ This is, I think, clear from the two accounts in the Biographer and the Continuator, as we shall see presently. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 167 Aistulf ^ ; at any rate the church of Saint John was made the scene of solemn rites and special prayers, in which Aistulf was not forgotten. Pippin had, at some stage of the negotiation, promised gifts to the King of the Lombards, doubtless on condition of his submitting to carry out the cessions demanded of him. Now that all such hopes were found vain, the gifts which should have gone to Aistulf were, as the King's offering, in Saint John's church, handed over by Pippin to the Pope, to be disposed of at his good pleasure ^. Meanwhile the King of the Lombards was making ready to withstand the invasion that threatened him. Our Frankish guide seems seized with a Roman spirit when he tells us how Aistulf made every military preparation, how he got together weapons and engines with the wicked purpose of defending the fruits of his own wicked aggres- sions against the Republic and the Apostolic See of Rome ^. Before Pippin set forth from Maurienne, Aistulf had marched to the frontier, and there stood ready to defend the pass which parted the vale of Susa from his dominions*. But it was no light matter for the Frankish army to reach that extreme point of the Frankish territory. Mont Cenis lay between, and Mont Cenis was hard to be crossed. A chosen band under some of the chief men of the Franks was sent in advance to occupy Susa and its valley, while the King with the body of the army crossed the mountain ^. Aistulf, ^ This would be one recorded by the Biographer, p. 169 (col. 2) ; but the various readings make the arrangement a little hard. ^ Vit. Steph. 169 ; " Munera quae Aistulfo per missos sues dare pro- miserat Deo ofFerens prge mauibus sui viri dispersanda tribuit." This comes from the reading in the note. ^ Cont. Fred. 120; "Cum telis et machinis et multo apparatu quod nequiter contra rempublicam et sedem Romanam apostolicam admiserat nefaria nitebatur defendere." * So I understand the Continuator, 120 ; " Usque ad Clusas quae cognominatur Valle Sausana venicns, ibi cum omni exercitu suo cas- trametatus est." This is outside the vale of Susa, just within his own territory, as appears from what follows. ^ Vit. Steph. u. s. ; "Praemittens ante suum occursum aliquos ex 168 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. thinking their small numbers would make them an easy prey, made an immediate attack through the pass ^. We have no Lombard picture ; but we read how . the pious Franks, putting their trust, not in their own strength, but in the help of God and Saint Peter, and calling on the name of the Apostle whose rights they were marching to defend, met the far greater numbers of the Lombards with all daring ^. The fight was hard, but presently the Lom- bards gave way ; their King fled, leaving most of the chief men of his realm_, his dukes and counts and elders, dead among the mountains, while he himself, it is said, escaped only by slipping down a steep rock ^. With a small party only and unarmed Aistulf made his way to Pa via ^ ; the hardest part of King Pippin's work was done before King Pippin himself had come up to have a hand in it. Meanwhile the King and the main body of the Prankish army crossed the mountains, and made their way to the Lombard camp, pitched on the Lombard side of the passes. suis proceribus, et cum eis exercituales viros ad custodiendum pro- prias Francorum clusas." What exact place is meant is clear from the Continuator, who has more to say about the difficulty of crossing the mountain, but tells us how in the end " usque in valle Sausana pervenerunt." The Frankish detachment was inside the vale of Susa ; the Lombards just outside. ^ Vit. Steph. u. s. ; " Audiens . . . parvos fuisse Francos illos qui ad custodiam propriarum venerant clusarum, Mens in sua ferocitate, subito aperiens clusas." The small numbers of the Franks are referred to several times in Stephen's letters to Pippin. See Mon. Car. p. 39 (Ep. 7), and specially in the mouth of Saint Peter himself, p. 59 (Ep. 10). "^ The Continuator, 120, here waxes eloquent ; " Non suis auxiliis nee suis viribus liberare se putabant, set Deum invocant et beatum Petrum apostolum adjutorem rogant." Saint Peter himself speaks of the help he gave them ; " In omnibus vestris necessitatibus, dum me deprecati estis, auxiliatus sum ; et victoriam per Dei virtutem vobi& de inimicis vestris tribui " (Mon. Car. p. 59, Ep. 10). ^ Cont. Fred. u. s, ; "Duces, comites, vel omnes majores natu gentis Langobardorum, in eo prselio omnes aniisit, et ipse quodam morte rupis vix lapsus evasit." * "Cum paucis," says the Continuator, "cum aliquantis," the Biographer. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 169 There they found the tents of the King and his army full of rich spoils, gold and silver and other goodly things which the defeated army had left behind in its flight^. They then marched, harrying and burning as they went, till they came near to Pavia. There they pitched their camp and laid siege to the royal city. The siege was not long ; Aistulf, seeing that he had no hope of resistance, sought for peace through some of the clergy and leaders of the Franks, and the Pope, wishing, as before, to avoid bloodshed, was earnest with the King, as far as might be, to spare the suppliant ^. The most Christian King Pippin listened ; this one epithet or title, among the many super- latives of the Biographer^ lived on to become the standing epithet of the kings who in after-days ruled over a part of Pippin's kingdom. Our Prankish guide records, seemingly with a little amazement, that Pippin, the merciful king, of his great mercy, allowed Aistulf to live and reign ^. Pippin was certainly not disposed to harshness, and he had never pressed harshness to the length of bloodshed. Moreover the Patrician of the Romans, the champion of the Roman Republic, may possibly have known that it was not the manner of the Romans in old times to bring down any land to the form of a province, or to deliver its king to death on the day of triumph, till at least a revolt and ■^ Vit. Steph. U.S.; "Ipsi vero Franci introientes clusas cunctum fossatum Longobardorum post peractam csedera abstulerant, spolia multa auferentes." (It is a little later that the Continuator describes the plunder of the camp, and the " multos thesauros tarn auri et argenti vel alia ornamenta quam plurima " ; but he must mean the same time.) That is, the main body of the Frankish army passes through the vale of Susa, and finds the forsaken Lombard camp just beyond it. ^ The Continuator brings out the action of the "sacerdotes et optimates Francorum " ; the Biographer is strong on the intercession of the Pope. ^ The King is " Christianissimus " and " benignissimus " ; but then the Pope is " beatissimus " and "coangelicus (la-aTrdcrToXos)." The Continuator is more really emphatic ; " Rex Pippinus, clemens ut erat, misericordia motus, vitam et regnum ei concessit." 170 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. a second conquest had proved and avenged their disloyalty. A treaty was drawn up, a treaty, we are told, between Romans, Franks, and Lombards^. Never should we be better pleased to have the exact text of the document, above all to know in what words the Roman party to the treaty was described. Did the new titles of the Patrician find their way into the instrument, and what place did he take in his Roman character ? Did his name appear along- side or instead of that of the old Imperial head of the Republic, and how did he stand with regard to its now swiftly growing papal head ? But however matters stood between Romans and Lombards, between Romans and Franks, it is certain that between Franks and Lombards the treaty was not a treaty on equal terms ; it was what the old Roman jurisprudence called a foedus iniquum. The Lombard had to respect the majesty of the Frank ^. King Aistulf bound himself to restore what he had taken, to make good all wrongs done to the Roman Church and the apostolic see. He bound himself both by a written document — a clause no doubt of the treaty — and by the most solemn oaths to give up Ravenna and other cities. He bound himself never again to do any hostile acts against the apostolic see of Rome or the Republic ^. He paid, it is said in one account, to King Pippin a sum of thirty thousand solidi *. All this might have been done without giving up his position as an independent sovereign. But Aistulf did more. We may remember that Frankish diplo- macy had always kept alive some dim tradition that the King of the Lombards was in some way bound to tribute or service to the King of the Franks. These vague claims ^ " Inter Romanos, Francos, et Longobardos," says the Biographer. See Appendix, Note 7. ^ In the old Roman formula, "Majestatem populi Romani comiter colunto." ^ See Appendix, Note 7. * The sum comes from the Moissac Annals. The Continuator mentions only " multa munera " both to the King and to his great men. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 171 were now put into a definite shape. Aistulf formally acknowledged the Frankish superiority. By oaths and by hostages — forty of the chief men of Lombardy — he bound himself never to depart from his Frankish allegiance, perhaps even to pay a yearly tribute of five thousand solidi ^. So the Roman and Frankish writers tell us. We again ask, more earnestly than ever, Why has the Lombard Deacon failed us at such a moment ? It is at this stage that we can first say for certain that Pippin did something, that he put his hand to something in writing, which could be spoken of as a gift to the see of Rome. That he did so in a fuller way at a later stage, when he could be more truly said to give, there is no doubt. But there is evidence that he did something of the kind now, while there is no evidence that he did anything of the kind at Quierzy or elsewhere in Gaul. He may have issued a separate document ; but the words of our single notice of the fact would seem to be satisfied by Pippin's assent to the clause by which Aistulf had bound himself to give up the disputed cities. To give, in the strictest sense, was not yet in Pippin's power. Pope Stephen, in his letters, seems to delight in bringing in words directly implying a gift ^ ; but the soberer language of his Biographer describes Pippin as merely giving orders that the treaty should be drawn up in terms which should satisfy the Pope ^. And again, to whom did he give ? The ^ Cont. Fred. u. s. ; " Sacramenta et obsides ibidem docet. ut nun- quam a Francorum ditione se abstraheret." All the numbers come from Moissac. The Continuator does not mention the tribute till after the second campaign. Dahn (Urgeschichte, iii. 890) throws some doubts on this vassalage of Aistulf, on the ground that, among all the hard things afterwards said against him, he is never charged with breach of faith to his overlord. ^ See Appendix, Note 7. ^ " Pipinus rex audiens eos paci inhiantes, atque in scripto foedere pactum promittentes, dixit summo pontifici, Fiat secundum praeceptum tuum, benignissime pater." This is from the reading in the note in the Life of Stephen. 172 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Biographer seems carefully to avoid committing himself on this head ; the Pope, in his letters, goes on as before with ambiguous phrases about Saint Peter, the Roman Church, and the Roman Republic^. And we must yet again remember that, after the treaty between Romans, Franks, and Lombards, the Emperor Constantine still held that Ravenna and the other cities ought to be restored to himself. Again we ask, What were the actual words of the treaty ? Surely something which the King was taught to take in one meaning, while the Emperor took it in another. Pippin had marched into Italy; but he went no further than Pa via or whatever spots the immediate needs of war- fare may have carried him to during the siege. At Pavia he parted from his late guest Stephen and from his new vassal Aistulf, who made many gifts, not onl}^ to the King but to the other chief men of the Franks. He himself went home with his great men and his army, bearing much treasure with him as the lower rewards of his pious enter- prise^. He must have found Bertrada and Karlmann at Vienne. The Queen doubtless went with her husband ; the defeated monk was left in his cell for the short space of life that was left to him. But Pippin left behind him in Italy those whose commission it was, as the repre- sentatives of the King and Patrician, to lead the Pope with all worship to his own city. These were his half-brother Jerome, and the Pope's former host Abbot Fulrad of Saint Denis ^. On the field of Nero the returning Pontiff was met by crowds of the Roman clergy and people, men and women, bearing crosses and singing hymns and shouting ^ See Appendix, Note 7. ^ Cont. Fred. u. s. ; " Pippinus rex cum exercitu suo vel multis thesauris ac multis muueribus Deo adjuvante reversus est ad pro- pria." " This comes again from the reading in the note in Stephen's Life ; " Pippinus rex fratrem suum Hieronymum et Fulradum abbatem cum nonnulHs aliis suis missis misit, qui domnum aposto- licum ad sedem propriam . . . ducerent." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 173 a welcome to their shepherd, their safety next after the Lord^. But the Patrician himself never saw the imme- diate home of his new dignity. A legend of later days told how he went thither only to pray, but was received with the honours of a triumph or ovation^, and that the local Romans welcomed him with a special hymn. The fellow-citizens of the apostles, the servants of Gods house- hold, had come that day, bringing peace and light to the land, to give peace to the nations and to set free the people of the Lord ^. And it is added, in words which must have some meaning, which would have more meaning in the days of Pippin than in the days of the writer, that the King and Patrician soon went back into his own land, to avoid the envy of them of Rome — to speak more truly, the writer adds, of them of Constantinople *. It is not perfectly clear whether Pippin took any secu- rity for the carrying out of the treaty beyond the oaths and hostages of Aistulf. He who had placed overmuch faith in his rebellious brother might possibly place over- much faith also in the vassal whom he had made such at the point of the sword. On the one hand we find the Pope very soon complaining that Aistulf had not given up a hand's breadth of the lands that he had promised to give up ^, while on the other hand he complains some- what later, and his biographer complains with him, that Aistulf had again seized the stronghold of Narni which he ^ " Venit pastor noster et post Dominus salus nostra." ^ This wild story comes from the Monk of Saint Gallen, ii. 15 (Mon. Car. 689). ' Where did he get his hymn, " Gives apostolorum," &c. ? He adds, " cujus vim carminis et originem quidam ignorantes, hoc in nataliciis apostolorum canere consueverunt." ^ " Ipse vero, invidiam Romanorum, immo ut verius loquar Con- stantinopolitanorum, declinans, mox in Franciam revertitur." These are very remarkable words, which, notwithstanding the legendary quarter in which they are found, must have some real meaning. Pippin certainly never was at Rome. Did the Patrician shrink from putting himself in too close a competition with the Emperor? ^ See below, p. 176. 174 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. had before given over to the commissioners of the Frankish king^. The two complaints sound contradictory. But Narni was a special case standing apart from the case of Ravenna and the other cities of the Exarchate and the Pentapolis ; "Where girt with towers The fortress of Nequinum lowers O'er the pale waves of Nar." The castle on the height, by the broken bridge of Augus- tus, was more directly threatening to Rome than any of the more distant and more recent acquisitions of the Lom- bards. It was a conquest of Liudprand not of Aistulf ^, an accession to the duchy of Spoleto rather than to the immediate Lombard kingdom. It may well have been the subject of a special clause in the treaty, requiring its imme- diate surrender to the representatives of the Frankish king. There is no sign that any such security was taken with regard to Aistulf's own conquests. The oath and the hostages seem to have been looked upon as motives strong enough to bind him. § 5. The Second Italian Expedition of Pippin. 756. The Italian war was over. The Roman Patrician doubt- less deemed that he had done all that he was called on to do, and the Frankish king looked to have some time to give to the affairs of his own kingdom. The year after the campaign of Susa (755) was a year of peace for the Frankish dominions, a year of legislation civil and eccle- siastical. The Marchfield was held, and the appearance of. ^ Again from the notes in the Life of Stephen ; " Castrum illud Narnienses, quod pridem reddiderat misso Francorum jure beati Petri abstulit." So in Mon. Car. 45, 51 (Ep. 8), Stephen speaks of Narni as " quam beato Petro concessistis," " quam beato Petro tua Christianitas concessit." '^ Paul. Diac. vi. 48. TBE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 175 one of the vassal princes is specially noticed. Chiltrudis, the sister of the King, the widowed mother of the young Duke Tassilo of Bavaria, was dead\ and the rule of the duchy passed, formally at least, from her hands into those of her son. He could not have been above thirteen years old ; but he had now to play his part in affairs, like his cousins the young kings and patricians, and without either parent to guide him. He came to the Marchfield, clearly to seek his admission to the duchy at his uncle's hands ^. The meeting of this year seems to have been the last Marchfield that was held ; most likely in this year, cer- tainly within a few years from this time, the time of the assembly was changed, and the Franks hereafter came together on the first day of May. The change had some advantages. If an expedition w^as decreed, the armed nation, or a large part of it, could march at once. They seem to have done so the very next year, the first time that the assembly met on the newly fixed day. And that march was again a march into Italy (756) to defend the Church and Kepublic of Rome against the new vassal of the Frankish realm, King Aistulf of Pa via. The year between the two Italian expeditions (755) was, besides the change from Marchfield to Mayfield, marked by a memorable ecclesiastical gathering at Verneuil. But it seems also to have seen some important temporal decrees, which may be spoken of more fully elsewhere, but which show how Pippin was disposed to look to the afi"airs of his kingdom when neither popes nor revolted vassals called him elsewhere. He legislates about tolls with special regard to those who went to Rome in God's honour, about the coinage, about the administration of justice, about exemptions, chiefly perhaps ecclesiastical, from the ordinary authorities of the realm ^. But the ^ Her death is recorded in Ann. Petav, and Lauriss. 2 Ann. Mosch. (Pertz, xvi. 495); "Venit Daccillo ad Marcis campiim, et mutaverunt Marcam in mense Madio." ^ See the decrees, Pertz, Leg. i. 31, and Richter's note. 176 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. historic interest of the time, that which makes it, peaceful as it actually was, a part of the history of Pippin's Italian warfare, lies in the letters which during this year, and the early part of the next, the King received from Pope Stephen. His answers, if he sent any, have not been pre- served, and the Pope's passionate appeals were slow in working the effect on the King's mind which their writer hoped for and in the end attained. Abbot Fulrad, who- had led back the Pope to Rome, came back in the course of the year with a letter from the Pope to his master and his master's sons, the contents of which he and his com- panions, the King's brother Jerome doubtless among them, were to enforce with their own mouths ^ The letter is written in the usual style of such letters, but amidst a mass of words the main facts of the case stand forth. Aistulf had, from the very day that the King of the Franks and the Pope had parted, never ceased to afflict the Pope and the Church ^ ; according to a phrase so familiar to papal rhetoric that it had long before this time found its way into ready-written formulae, " the stones, if they had a voice, would cry out against the wrong- doings of the King of the Lombards "." But as yet those wrong-doings seem to have been wholly negative ; Aistulf had done nothing of what he had promised ; he had given up nothing of what the King of the Franks by his written act, by his deed of gift — that is most likely by the ' Cod. Car., JafFe, Ep. .vi. 37 ; " Fohadus filius noster, vester con- siHarius, enarrent vobis." The letter is addressed to all the kings and patricians, Charles and Karlmann as well as Pippin. ^ lb. 35 ; ''A die illo a quo ab invicem separati sumus, nos affligere et in magna ignominia sanctam Dei ecclesiam habere conatus est." ^ lb. ; " Ipsi lapides, si dici potest, tribulation em nostram magno ululatu flerent." The stones come again in other letters ; their most curious appearance is in the formula by which the death of a pope was announced to the Exarch ( Liber Diurnus, lix. p. 109, ed. Roziere). The dead man was to be described as " sanctissimus noster pontifex, cujus cuncti vero, si dicendum est, etiam lapides ipsi flevimus exitum." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 177 treaty — had confirmed to the blessed Peter ^. He had not restored a single inch of ground to the blessed Peter, to the holy Church of God or to the Republic of the Romans ; the last two phrases now begin to be joined together as if they meant the same thing ^. All Christian men had be- lieved that the wonderful victory of the Prankish king would have given the apostle his rights ^ ; yet he the Pope had gone and come back to his own flock without the rights of Saint Peter gaining anything *. The King had put too much faith in the promises and oaths of the Lombard, who had done nothing but mock him. He had listened to Aistulf rather than to the Pope ; that is, we must suppose, the Pope had warned him not to trust to the oath of Aistulf, but to take the same security for the surrender of the more distant cities which he had taken in the case of Narni ^. It may be that some communication had since then passed between Pippin and Aistulf, and that Pippin was still inclined — just as in the case of Grifo — to put more faith in the Lombard king than at all suited the Pope ^. But now Aistulf 's falsehood was fully found out ; ^ See Appendix, Note 7. "^ Cod. Car., JafFe, Ep. vi. 35 ; " Nee unius enim palmi terrse spatium beato Petro sanctaeque Dei ecclesiae rei publicee Romanorum reddere passus est.' ^ lb. ; " Omnes Christiani ita firmiter credebant, quod Petrus princeps apostolorum nunc per vestruni fortissimum brachium suam percepisset justitiam." * lb. ; " Sine effectu justitiae beati Petri ad proprium ovile et populum nobis commissum sumus reversi." ^ lb. ; " Lugeo cur verba nostrse infehcitatis non audientes men- datium plus quam veritatem comedere voluistis, inludentes vos et inridentes." The Latin is hopeless, but it must be Aistulf and Pippin who did the " inlusio " and "inrisus." "Nostra infelicitas" simply = " nos." So afterwards " credentes eidem iniquo regi, quod per vinculum sacramenti poUicitus est, . . . loca restituenda con- firmastis." All this points to Pippin's too great trust in Aistulf at the time of the treaty. ^ lb. 36 ; " Nequaquam jam ipsius nequissimi regis vel ejus judicum seductuosa verba et illusionis mendacia credentes." I do not know that these words positively prove that Aistulf had sent an embassy to N 178 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Pippin could believe him no longer^. The Pope calls on the King in the most solemn way to come and do what he had promised, and take care that Saint Peter really got what his own writ had given him ^. When his letter was written, Aistulf had simply kept Ravenna and the other cities which he had sworn to restore. He had not gone on to any active measure of hostility against the Pope. A second letter sent during the same year by the hands of Wilchar Bishop of Nomen- tanum, describes matters as getting worse. From with- holding what he ought to have given up to Saint Peter he had gone on to do mischief to the possessions in which Saint Peter had not yet been disturbed ^. The Pope now appeals yet more fervently and solemnly than before to the three kings and patricians. It is now that he gives his lively description of the wretchedness of a journey through Gaul in December * ; he reminds the kings of their promise at Quierzy, but says not a word of any written document being issued there ^. He reminds them of the wonderful victory of the few over the many, of the votaries of Saint Peter over his enemies ^, and speaks more strongly than Pippin before the writing of this letter ; but it looks like it. The word "judices"' is a little odd in this connexion. Who were these " judges " ? ^ Cod. Car. p. 36 ; " Ecce patefactum est ejus mendacium, ut nequa- quam ulterius vires credendi habere possit, sed magis, cognito ejus iniquo ingenio et iniqua voluntate, ejus fraudentur insidise." ^ lb. ; " Quod semel beato Petro polliciti estis et per donationem vestram manum firmatam, pro mercede animse vestrse beato Petro reddere et contradere festinate." ^ lb. 40 ; " Non enim quia jam reddere, ut constituit, propria beati Petri voluit, sed etiam scamaras atque depraedationes seu devasta- tiones in civitatibus et locis beati Petri facere sua imperatione nee cessavit nee cessat." See Ducange in Scarnares, Scamarce. The word is as old as Eugippius and Jordanis, and is also found in Greek. * See above, p. 129. ^ See Appendix, Note 7. ^ Cod. Car., Jaft'e, Ep. vii. 39 ; "Ininiici Dei . . . super brevem numerum populi vestri inruerunt, et ita per manum beati Petri omnipoiens Dominus victoriam vobis largiri dignatus est, ut illi qui innumerabiles existabant a paucis hominibus fuissent interemti." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 179 ever of the trust which had been given to the false words of Aistulf rather than to the true words of the Pope^ The same tale is told again as before, in nearly the same words and with the same appeal to the very stones ^. Fulrad and his companions can tell them all ; only he seems to imply the possible doubt whether Fulrad and his companions will tell them all ^. He then speaks of the damage done by Aistulf to the towns and villages of the Apostle, and asks whether a man who has so openly cast away the Christian faith ought to be believed of any man '^. Yet, as Liudprand, deemed so ungodly at Rome, seemed among his own people the very model, not only of Lom- bard kings but of Christian men ^, so his successor seems to have been on the best terms with the clergy of his own kingdom and was at this very time largely occupied in granting charters of gifts to its chief churches ^. The Pope then goes on to enlarge on the power of Saint Peter, how strict he will be in requiring the fulfilment of all promises made to him, how dangerous will be their case at the last ■^ Cod. Car. vii. 29 ; " Videns suam deceptionem Haistolfus rex, cum suis Deo destructis judicibus per blandos sermones et suasiones atque sacramenta inluserunt prudentiam vestram, et plus illis falsa dicentibus quam nobis veritatem asserentibus credidistis." We again wisb to know more about these judges, who would seem to have been over- thrown somewhere. It must be remembered that this letter is addressed to Charles and Karlmann as well as to Pippin. The words therefore, taken strictly, would imply that the two boys were at Pavia, which there is no reason to think that they were. This bears on another point. ^ But the " magnus ululatus " expected from the stones in the last letter is now left out ; it is enough if they simply " flerent." ^ lb. 40 ; " Omnia vester conciliarius Folradus presbyter et abbas, una cum suis sociis, si Deum prce oculis habent, omnia vobis enarrare possunt." * lb. ; " Oblitus quippe est Deum qui fecit eum, et fidem Chris- tianam transgressus est. Quomodo ulterius credendus est sive ipse sive ejus consentanei ? " ^ See the end of the History of Paul the Deacon. ^ See the instances in Oelsner, pp. 257, 446. N 2 180 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. day if the Prince of the Apostles should complain before the just Judge that the treaty to which their names were set was still unfulfilled ^ The people of the Roman Re- public ^ were sharing in his sorrows and tears ; they grieved that he had taken his long and painful journey for nothing; all mankind had looked to see Saint Peter restored to his rights by the Frankish arms, but it had not been so^. Bishop Wilhar, in whom they might put full trust, would tell them more ^. Then come two letters, written late in the February of the next year (Feb. 24, 756) ^. They are in truth the same letter, with certain differences. The matter and, to a great extent, the words are the same in both ; but there is some difference in the form, and there is a notable difference in the address. In one the Pope and the whole people of Rome address the three Kings and the whole people of the Franks ^ ; in the other Pope Stephen by him- ^ Stephen goes on (Mon. Car. p. 40) at some length about the " fortis exactor isdem princeps apostolorum beatus Petrus " ; the most remark- able expressions are those about the treaty ; " Et necesse est, ut ipsum cyrograj^hum expleatis ; ne, dum Justus Judex ad judicandum vivos et mortuos et sseculum per ignem advenerit in futuro judicio, isdem princeps apostolorum idem ci/rogt-aphicm demonstrans nullam habere firmitatem, districtas cum eo faciatis rationes." ^ lb. 42 ; " Noster populus rei puplice Romanorum." ' lb. ; " Et factum non est ; et in magno cordis stupore de hoc omnes evenerunt." * lb. ; " Cui in omnibus credere jubeatis, et exitum bonum in causa beati Petri ponere." ^ The exact date of February 24 is fixed by the letter itself. The siege began (p. 44) on the Kalends of January ; it had lasted fifty-five days (p. 45) when the letter was written. ^ lb. 43. It is addressed to the three kings and patricians ("tribua regibus et nostris Romanorum patriciis "), also " omnibus episcopis, abbatibus, presbiteris et monachis, seu gloriosis ducibus, comitibus, vel cuncto exercitui regni et provincie Francorum." The senders are ' Stephanus papa et omnes episcopi presbiteri diacones seu duces cartularii comites tribunantes et universus populus et exercitus Romanorum, omnes in afflictione positi." On "cartularii" [xaprov- Xapioi) see Ducange in voc. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 181 self addresses Pippin King and Patrician by himself ^ One might think that one was meant to be read openly in the Marchfield or Mayfield, while the other was meant for the King only ; but in the one which is addressed to Pippin only, there is nothing at all secret, nothing beyond a few personal allusions at all different from the contents of the public letter. The Pope tells the King and his people of the new state of things which had begun with the new year. Its first day had been marked by a general gather- ing: of the Lombard forces from all sides for the actual sieere of Kome. Advancing from three points, they had hemmed in the city and all its gates. The Tuscan division had encamped before the gates on the right bank of the Tiber. There was no Leonine city yet ; the Vatican hill lay open ; the basilica of the Prince of the Apostles was not yet within the walls of Rome. The Lombards sat down before the gate of Saint Peter, as well as before the gates of the Transtiberian city, that of Saint Pancras, once the Aurelian gate and that which still kept the name of the Haven — Portus, supplanter of Ostia — to which it led ^. The King of the Lombards himself, advancing from the Spoletine duchy on the other side of the river, encamped on the most his- toric soil in the whole circuit. Aistulf in person held the ground over which Hannibal had marched to turn away from the Colline gate of Rome, the ground over which Pon- tius of Telesia had marched to that fight with Lucius Sulla which ruled, when the question arose in its last and most dangerous shape, that Rome should be the head of Italy. ^ Mon. Car. p. 48 ; " Domino excellentissimo filio et nostro spiritali compatri Pippino regi Francorum et patricio Romanorum Steplianus papa." This relation of " compater " is strongly insisted on in this copy (53), not of course in the one whose heading is more general. Bertrada too is " tua dulcissima conjux, excellentissima regina, spiri- talis nostra commater." Their sons are " tui meique dulcissimi filii." Had the Pope been godfather to Charles and Karlmann at confirma- tion ? They must surely have been baptized long before. ^ lb. p. 44. This was " cunctus ejusdem Langobardorum exercitus Tuscise partibus." 182 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. The extension of the Aurelian walls had taken their im- mediate battle-ground within the city ; but Aistulf had in his grasp the ground where Witigis had pitched his camp ; he threatened that corner where Eelisarius needed not to repair what was then abeady Muro Torto ; that broken wall which Saint Peter himself had guarded against the Goth and would now doubtless guard against the Lom- bard^. The headquarters of the King were by that Sa- larian gate which had been opened to an earlier Goth, and which Aistulf now sought, under heavy threats, to have in the like sort opened to himself. " Open me the Salarian gate," such are the words which the Pope puts into the mouth of the besieger, " and I will enter the city. Give me up your Pontiff, and I will deal graciously with you ; if not, I will break down your walls, and slay you all with one sword, and look who is he that shall deliver you out of my hands-." Meanwhile the whole force of the Lom- bards of Beneventum had advanced from the south ; they held the gate of Ostia, now that of Saint Paul ; his basilica was in their power, as that of Saint Peter was in the power of their Tuscan comrades. They held too the Latin gate, the gate of Saint John, the place of the deliverance of the Evangelist, where Stephen, from his own Lateran church and palace just within the walls, could look out at the enemies encamped at his own door ^. These gates are mentioned by name ; but all were held ; the whole country round Rome was occupied ; besides the churches of the Apostles, the basilicas of Saint Agnes and Saint Laurence, ^ See Procopius, Bell. Goth. i. 19. ^ Cod. Car., Jaffe, Ep. viii. 44; " Aperite mihi portam Salariam et in- grediar civitatem ; et tradite mihi pontificem vestrum et pacienciam ago in vobis. Minus ne, muros evertens, uno vos gladio interficiam ; et videam quis vos eruere possit de manibus meis." It is hard on the Lombard king to be turned into an Assyrian blasphemer. On the phrase '' uno gladio " see above, p. 119. ^ lb. ; " Beneventani omnes generaliter in banc Romanam urbem conjungentes, resederunt juxta portam beati lohannis et beati Pauli apostoli et cseteras istius liomane urbis partes." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 188 the catacomb of Saint Sebastian, all the holy places around the city were in the hands of foes whom the Pope speaks of as worse than the worst of heathens and barbarians ^ For fifty-five days (January 1 to February 24, 756) they had kept the city hemmed in at every point ; their attacks went on night and day ; all the devices and engines of war were brought to bear upon the walls ^. And more cruel than all were the scornful cries of the besiegers, " Behold, you are hemmed in by us ; let the Franks now come and deliver you out of our hands ^." It is at this point that the Pope mentions the Lombard seizure of several towns of the Roman territory, and specially of Narni, the town which Pippin's commissioners had specially put into the Pope's hands *. He had no way of communicating by land with the outer world ; it was only by the river that he was able to send his letter ^. Some notice of Stephen's former letter must have been taken by Pippin ; for there was now at Rome a Prankish envoy, the Abbot Warnachar, one of those churchmen who did not shrink, at such times as these at least, from the work of warfare ; he put on a coat of mail, and day and ^ Cod. Car., JafFe, Ep. viii. 45 ; "Tanta mala in hac Romana provincia fecerunt quanta certe nee paganse gentes ahquando perpetrates sunt." ^ lb. ; " Cum diversis machinis et adinventionibus plurimis contra nos ad muros istius Romanae urbis commiserunt." ^ lb, ; " Veniant nunc Franci et eruant vos de manibus nostris." * See above, p. 174. The Biographer also mentions the taking of Narni. ^ lb.; " Quam ob rem constricti vix potuimus" — "per maximum ingenium " is added in the copy addressed to the King — "maximo in itinere prsesentes nostras litteras et missum ad vestram Christiani- tatem dirigere." He adds, " quas et cum magnis lacrimis scripsimus." The letter to the King is much fuller about the tears — "per unam quamque literam lacrimas sanguine mixtas." The Biographer (p. 170) also mentions Warnachar and the sending of the letter by sea ; " Beatissimus pontifex per maximum iter suos ordinans, et ad eum Franciam dirigit missos, uno cum quodam religiose viro Warnerio qui ab eodem Francorum rege hue Romam directus fuerat." He gives a summary of the letter which, by a very odd phrase, he says was written "subtili fictione." 184 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. night he watched on the walls of Rome and strove with all his might for the defence and deliverance of all the Romans ^. He now went back to his own land and to his own master as one of the bearers of the Pope's letters. With him went as papal envoys George Bishop of Ostia and two others described as Thonaria and Comita. They were to tell the King and the Franks more minutely ^ all that they themselves had said, and the King and the Franks, were to trust them as they would trust the Pope himself. All this history and topography is doubtless fully trust- worthy. We begin to stumble a little at the more general account of the doings of the besiegers which the Pope sends to the King. All the possible horrors of war are brought to- gether^; all known doings of pagans are outdone ; the stones again appealed too, this time not to weep in silence, but to shout aloud ^. Every kind of havoc and spoil was done to property and produce^; that is almost a matter of course. The Lombards may even have killed and led captive men, women, and sucking children ; they may have wounded monks and ravished nuns ^. That is to say, some cases of all these evil deeds may have hap- pened ; no commander in those days, perhaps none in any days, could ever keep every man in his army in perfect order. But some of the Pope's charges refute themselves. ^ Cod. Car. pp. 48, 55. Warnachar was " bonus athleta Christi." We read how " pro amore beati Petri loricam induens, muros istius afHicte Romane civitatis vigilabat die noctuque.'' ^ lb. 47, 54. They were to tell "subtili enarratione quae propriis oculis viderant." 3 lb. 44, 50. * lb. 45. " Quia etiam, si dici potest, et ipsi lapides nostras deso- laciones videntes, ululant nobiscum." ^ lb. " Omnia peculia abstulerunt. Et vineas fere ad radices absciderunt et messes conterentes omnino devoraverunt." ^ lb. 44. " Servos Dei monachos qui pro officio divino in mo- nasteriis morabantur, plagis maximis tundentes, plures laniaverunt." Several details are given. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 185 His very first charge is that of a general burning of churches. To this it is easy to answer that the churches were not burned. Saint Peter's, to begin with, was in their power, and Saint Peter's was not burned ; the houses about it, the property of the Apostle, were burned ; but the church itself was not burned, nor does it seem to have suffered in any way ^. Nor is there anything to show that any of the other churches outside the walls suffered any more. When the Pope goes on to speak of the breaking of images, the stealing of vestments and ornaments, and of a strange form of irreverence to the consecrated host ^, we see, just as in the other class of stories, that some isolated cases are spoken of as if they were the systematic practice of the King and his whole army. The Lombards were a devout people under a devout King, and they seem to have specially given themselves to a form of robbery which in their case is spoken of as being greatly to the damage of their souls, but which, in those who were more favoured, was sometimes looked on as pardonable, if not praiseworthy. They dug up the bodies of the saints and carried them off to be objects of reverence in their own land ^. This was the King's own work. Aistulf most likely thought, as did the devout Einhard ^ and others in ^ The Pope (p. 44) starts with a general proposition, " ecclesias Dei incenderunt." Yet about Saint Peter's, all he ventures to say is " omnes domos cultas beati Petri igni combusserunt." So Cont. Fred. 121 ; " ad ecclesiam sancti Petri perveniens et domus quas ibidem reperit maxim e igne concremavit." And we shall presently have Saint Peter's own witness to the same effect. ^ lb. ; " CorjDus Domini nostri lesu Christi in his contaminatis vasibus quos folles vocant, miserunt et cibo camium copioso saturati, comedebant eadem munera." Yet this may have been superstition rather than profaneness. ^ Vita Steph. p. 170; "Corpora sanctorum efFodiens, eorum sacra mysteria ad magnum animae detrimentum abstulit." * Oelsner (261) makes reference to Einhard's pious theft of the bodies of the saints Marcellinus and Peter. Einhard's allusion to it which occurs in a letter to the Emperor's heir (Cod. Car., Jaffe, iv. 452) is curious. See also his Annals, 827; and those of Einhard of Fulda (Pertz, i. 559) in this same year. 186 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. much the same case, that he was thereby adding to his stock of good works. The siege went on for more than a month after the sending of this letter ; it lasted in all three months (Feb- ruary to March, 756), and we are not told how it came to an end ^. It was doubtless before the siege was ended that Pope Stephen ventured on a more daring piece of letter- writing than any that he had yet attempted. It was, we may be sure, with no feeling of irreverence, with no feeling of conscious dishonesty, with no purpose of really deceiving the mind of any man, but simply as putting his appeal into the most emphatic possible shape, that, when his earlier letters had brought no help, he at last composed one in a higher name than his own, in that of his patron apostle himself". Peter called to be an apostle by Jesus Christ the Son of the living God, writes, not without the usual complimentary phrases, to the three most excellent kings Pippin, Charles, and Karlmann, to the most holy bishops, abbots, priests, and all the religious monks, and to all the dukes, counts, and the whole army and people dwelling in the land of Francia ^. This was undoubtedly meant to be read in the first Mayfield^, and a stirring appeal it is, written naturally in a higher tone of command than when the Pope was simply speaking in his^own name. And it is well to mark the words chosen to set forth the relation between the patron saint and his chosen people, his elder people the Romans and his newer people the Franks. The Franks are his adopted sons, his special people chosen from among all nations ^. Like the ^Edui ^ "Per trium mensium spatium obsidens," says the Biographer. ^ Cod. Car., Jatte, iv. 55. ' lb. 55, 56. The formula is nearly the same as before ; but it ends " cunctis generalibus exercitibus et populo Francise commoranti- bus." * So Oelsner, p. 263. ° The Franks arc (p. 57) his " adoptivi filii," " peculiares inter omnes gentes vos omnes Francorum populos habemus." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 187 of old, they are the brothers of the Romans ^. He tells them how he has given them safety and victory whenever they had prayed to him ; above all, he had given them that famous victory, which a small band of them had won over the multitudes of the enemies of the Church of God ^. But the letter is not, like the earlier ones, rich in facts. Only it supplies the best possible answer to some of the vague statements of the earlier ones. Saint Peter is afraid that the body in which he suffered for Christ and the house in which that body rests may suffer some irreverence from the besiegers ^. No wrong therefore had been done in that quarter when the letter was written. The letter from Saint Peter in person may have stirred the hearts of the Frankish king and people in a way that the letters from his successor had not stirred them. The letter which Stephen wrote during the siege and sent by Abbot Warnachar and the letter written in the name of the apostle were doubtless both read in the Mayfield, and it would seem that the armed nation at once answered to the call, and marched straight from the place of assembly to the place of warfare. With a Mayfield this could be done, though not with a Marchfield ; but only if it was pretty well understood beforehand that there was to be ^ Cod. Car. p. 58 ; " Mea Romana civitas et populus meus peculiaiis, fratres vestri Romani." ^ lb. 59 ; " In omnibus vestris necessitatibus, dum me deprecati estis, auxiliatus sum ; " "inimicos sanctse Dei ecclesise dum contra vos proelium ingruerant a vobis, qui parvo numero eos fuistis, prosternos feci." ^ Saint Peter is made several times to refer to the presence of liis body at Rome. The passage which concerns us is at p. 58. The Franks are to come, " ne, quod absit, corpus meum, quod pro Domino lesu Christo tormento perpessum est, et domus mea, ubi per Dei prse- ceptionem requiescit, ab eis [Langobardis] contaminarentur, et populus meus peculiaris lanietur amplius nee trucidetur." The '' laniatio " and " trucidatio " is a thing which is going on and which should be stopped ; the " contaminatio " is a thing which may happen and which should be hindered. 188 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. an expedition that year, and even what course that ex- pedition was likely to take. The host seems to have set forth in May. The point to be reached was the same as before, but the line of march was different. It is specially marked as being through Burgundy ; the first point named is Cabillo, Challon on the Saone, ever to be carefully distinguished from the Catalaunian city on the Marne. Thence they went on to Geneva, whose name appears in the same corrupt form which is so often bestowed on that of Genoa, and which seems designed to point to both as showing the character of a gate^. Yet Geneva, perhaps the most central city of Burgundy, was much less of a gate than later political arrangements have since made it. Thence they crossed the lands south of the lake to their old halting-place by Saint John of Maurienne, and began to make ready for their second crossing of the Alps. Mean- while, as some have thought, the young Duke Tassilo was leading the forces of Bavaria to his uncle's help, but by some course more natural for a Bavarian army, by the Brenner or some other pass to the east of that chosen by the Franks ^. By whatever road they came, they were ready before long to meet the Frankish overlord on Lom- bard soil. But diplomacy did not cease even while the armies were on their march. The affairs of Italy had not been neglected by another power which had at least as much interest in ^ Cont. Fred. 121; " Hsec Pippinus rex cum per internuntios audisset, commoto iterum omni exercitu Francorum, per Burgundiam, per Cavalonum urbem, et inde per Januam usque ad Maurianium veniens." Geneva is " Janua," " Jenua," " Genua," " Gebena," See Ann. Laur. and Einh. 773. In the Divisio Imperii (Pertz, Leg. i. 373) we have " Genavensis comitatus " and " Cavallonensis." '^ This is the inference of Luden (iv.215, 499) from the words of the Continnator, who, after the Franks have defeated the Lombards at the Clusce, says, " Rex Pippinus cum nepote suo Tassilone, Baioariorum duce, partibus Italise usque ad Ticinum accessit." Ranke (Welt- geschichte, v. 39). He mentions the Frankish passage of the Klausum, and adds " Zugleich drangen die damals den Franken zur Heeresfolge verpflichteten Baiern in die Lombardei ein." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 189 them as any of the German kings. We parted from the Imperial envoy John the Silentiary at the court of Pa via when Pope Stephen set out on his toilsome journey into GauP. He now appears again, in company with a col- league George the Protosecreta, on an embassy from the Emperor Constantine to the King of the Franks. We are not at this stage directly told the nature of their errand ; but it becomes plain enough a little later. Let us try to look at things not from the point of Rome or Pavia or Saint Denis, but from that of Constantinople. The Pope, a subject of the Roman Empire, had gone, with the Emperor's good will, to ask the King of the Franks, a foreign Prince on friendly terms with the Roman Empire, for help against another foreign prince who was an enemy of the Empire. On that foreign prince a Roman title had been bestowed, and he had gone, at once a friendly prince and — at least in Imperial eyes — a Roman officer, to win back from the enemy certain lands for the Roman Republic, a form of words which, at Constantinople at least, could be understood in no meaning save that in which the Roman Republic was another name for the Roman Empire. The new-made Patrician had crossed the Alps ; he had over- come the common enemy; he had made him give up, or promise to give up, the lands which he had taken from the Empire. He had so engaged to do by a solemn treaty imposed on him by the Emperor's subject and late envoy the Pope and his officer the Roman Patrician. Since then a great deal had happened. The Lombard had broken the treaty ; he had besieged Rome ; the siege had been raised ; but not a word had been heard about restoring the lands which the Lombard had taken from the Republic to the head of the Republic at Constantinople. Constantine had most likely cherished no great hope of winning back the Exarchate by Frankish help ; but, as I have already put it, by the expedition of Pippin he could lose nothing and might gain something. He had certainly gained nothing, ^ See above, p. 126. 190 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. and his eyes may by this time have been more fully opened to the way, to use plain words, he had been tricked by the use of ambiguous words. Still it was worth while to send an embassy to the King of the Franks. As before, it might do some good and it could do no harm ; it was worth while at least to find out what Pippin's acts and purposes meant. The Imperial envoys, on their way to the Frankish court, stopped at Rome, and were received by Pope Stephen. From him they learned to their amaze- ment that the prince to whom they were sent was already on his march towards Italy. They could hardly believe the tidings ; they would go on into the Frankish dominions and learn more ^. We should like to know exactly how much Constantine knew of the actual state of affairs. In any case he had been deceived — if he had any real hopes — as to the issue of Pippin's first expedition. He may not have fully known how little that expedition had done for anybody ; but he at any rate knew that it had done nothing for him. He must have heard something of the state of things in Italy ; he could not fail to have heard that Aistulf still kept the Exarchate and that he had besieged Rome. But he may not have known how com- pletely Pippin had been outwitted by Aistulf^ and how little it was at that moment in Pippin's power to do anything in the matter of the Exarchate, to give it up to the Emperor or to do anything else with it, except as the result of another war against Aistulf. But in any case he would hold it to be Pippin's business to restore it to himself if he had the power, or, failing such power at the ^ The whole account of the Imperial embassy comes from the Life of Stephen (170, 171); "Cum ad praedictas Longobardorum Clusas jam fatus Christianissimus Francorum appropinquaret rex, con- junxerunt in hac Romana urbe imperiales missi." (" Georgium " is the right reading, not "Gregorium") . . . " directi ad prsedictum Fran- corum regem." The Pope announces to them " motionem praedicti Francorum regis ; quod quidem illi dubium habuerunt credendi." He attaches to them his own agent — "adhserens eis missum"— and they go on. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 191 moment, at least to make representations to Aistulf. We do not know how far Constantine had heard of the rumour that Pippin was designing a second Lombard war. He clearly knew nothing for certain. The news of Pippin's march comes as a surprise on the Imperial envoys. They may have absolutely known nothing about it, or it may simply have come sooner than they looked for. A very faint indication, which I shall discuss elsewhere, might suggest that he looked on a second expedition of Pippin's as not likely to serve his interest, and that one object of the embassy was to keep the peace between the Frankish and the Lombard king ^. Constantine may by this time have learned the truth which became a proverb among his successors, that it was well to have the Frank as a friend, that it was not well to have him as a neighbour^. The saying indeed is likely enough to have arisen out of all these complicated dealings between the Empire, the Franks, and the Pope. But what- ever were their exact instructions, it was in any case the business of the Imperial envoys to see the Frankish king as soon as they could, to strive to direct his course so as to suit their master's interests at the earliest stage of that course that might be. It would have suited them better to see him before he set out, to find out his purpose in the expedition, to direct it, if possible, so as to serve the Empire, if not, to make a last effort to hinder it altogether. For this they were too late ; but at least they would try and see the King before he entered Italy. It was no less the Pope's interest to thwart all that they did, or at any rate, narrowly to watch what they did. To that end Stephen sent in their company an envoy of his own, with whose presence they seem not to have been at all pleased. The envoys of the Emperor and the Pope sailed with all ■^ See Appendix, Note 8. ^ Einhard, Vita K. 16; " Erat enim semper Romanis et Grgecis Francorum suspecta potentia, unde et ilium Grsecum extat prover- bium; TON ^PANKON $IAON EXIC, TITONA OYK EXIC." Pertz adds, " Graecum ei et 77 ab Einhardo i legi solitum apparet," rrcof yap oii; 192 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. speed to Marseilles. There the news that they had heard at Rome was more than confirmed. The King of the Franks had not only set out on his march ; by that time he had already crossed the Alps, and was already on Lombard ground. The biographer of Stephen adds, per- haps echoing some saying of the Pope's envoy to his Imperialist companions, that the King had gone at the call of the most blessed Pope and to fulfil the promise which he had made on oath to the blessed Peter ^. That was a way of putting it which would naturally make the Silentiary and the Protosecreta more anxious than ever to see the Prankish king at the first possible moment. It was their business to plead the cause of their master before it was altogether too late, before the course of events had turned against him without hope. And to that end they had no need of the company of the Papal envoy who had come with them. Their interest clearly was to make a perfectly independent appeal to Pippin, and to that end to find him as little as possible exposed to papal influences. They would give him a chance of learning the real mean- ing of the words Roman Republic without any one standing by to throw dust into his eyes by cunningly turned sentences about Saint Peter and the Roman Church. They would go, one of them at least should go, with all speed to overtake the Prankish king on his march. The words of our Roman informant are not perfectly clear ; but it would seem that John the Silentiary stayed at Marseilles, and kept the nameless agent of the Pope with him. George meanwhile pressed on with all haste, and found Pippin drawing near to Pavia ^. The passage of the mountains by the Prankish army ^ " Didicerunt jam prsedictum Francorum regem Longobardorum fines fuisse ingressum, juxta adhortationem antefati beatissimi papse, et promissionem quam beato Petro jurejuraiido obtulerat." ^ " Hsec cognoscentes ipsi imperiales missi tristes effecti nitebantur dolose [al. decora] missum apostolicse sedis detinere Massiliam, ut minime ad proedictum properaret regem, qffligentes eiim valide.'" THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 193 seems to have been much easier the second time than the first. They had learned by experience how such things were to be done^. The Lombard force which withstood their entry at their own pass seem not to have been com- manded by the King ^ ; they were easily routed and most of them slaughtered, and the remnant took to flight. Such is the Frankish and Roman story, and we have no Lom- bard version to set against it. Pippin now advanced towards Pavia ; he was near to the city, but had not yet begun the siege, when George the Protosecreta overtook him with his master's message. To the piece of diplomacy which now followed I have more than once called attention in advance because it is something like the key to the whole story. We see how Constantino had understood matters, at least how he had formally professed to under- stand matters, through the whole business. In his view, undoubtedly the view of law and history, the Exarchate was his ; it was he who had been deprived of it by Aistulf ; it was to him that it ought to be restored. This was the doctrine which the Silentiary and the Protosecreta would have had, in any case, at any stage of Pippin's course, to press on the mind of the King. They had now to press it on his mind in such a shape and by such arguments as might best suit this last chance of all, when there was every likelihood that the Exarchate would soon pass, by the result of the war which had begun, from the hands of the Lombards into the hands of the Franks. One more appeal was to be made to the future conqueror to restore his coming conquest into the hands of its lawful master. We have no Imperialist, no Frankish, account of the inter- view between Pippin and George. According to the ^ Cont. Fred. 121 ; "RexPippinus cum exercitu suo, monte Cimisio transacto, usque ad Clusas, ubi Longobardi ei resistere nitebantur, pervenit, et stathn Franci, solito more, ut edocti erant, per montes et rupes erumpentes, in regnum Aistulfi cum multa ira et furore inruunt." The geography is well marked. ^ " Aistulfus ... ad Clusas exercitum Langobardorum mittens." O 194 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. biographer of Stephen, he earnestly called on the King, with many promises of gifts from his master, the Emperor, to give up to the Imperial dominion the city of Ravenna and the other cities and towns of the Exarchate. The words have a formal sound and seem chosen for the occa- sion. All ambiguous phrases about the Republic and even about the Empire are cast aside ; the Emperor says plainly what he wants. He does not ask for some vague acknow- ledgement of his nominal rights, some shadowy overlordship consistent with the practical dominion of one or more of his own subjects. He asks that the lands which the Lombard had seized and which he had not given up to any one, should now be given back to himself in the same full dominion in which he had held them before the Lom- bard seized them ^ The answer put into the mouth of Pippin, though brought in amidst a mass of fine words, is in itself equally to the purpose. The most Christian King, the mildest of kings, the faithful servant of God and Saint Peter, did not allow his firm heart to be moved. He would not give up the cities of the Exarchate to the dominion of the Emperor. They should in no wise be taken away from the power of the blessed Peter, from the right of the Roman Church and of the Pontiff" of the Apostolic See^. He added with an oath that he would not have undertaken this enterprise for the favour of any man, or aught else save for the love of the blessed Peter and to win the forgiveness of his sins. No treasures in the world should so work on him that he should take away from Saint Peter what he had once offered to him ^ These last words are remarkable ; Pippin seems to ground ^ Vifc. Stepli. 171 ; " Georgius . . . regem ... in finibus Longobar- dorum non procul a Papia reperit civitate." See Appendix 7. On the phrase "imperiali concederat ditioni." Luden (iv. 500) well adds, ''namlich unmittelbar." The Pope could not have denied some nominal overlordship. 2 See Appendix, Note 7. ' " Asserens et hoc quod nulla cum thesauri copia suadere valeret ut quod semel beato Petro obtulit auferret." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 195 the right of Saint Peter and his earthly representatives, not on any claim of earlier possession, but on his own offering, that is doubtless, on the treaty concluded with Aistulf less than two years before. The policy of Pope Stephen had triumphed. The calling of the Patrician of the Romans was now defined. He was to work, to %ht, to conquer, perhaps for the Roman Republic, though the words are now not uttered on either side. The ambiguous formula lived on, and we shall hear it again ; but its use just now would have confused matters. The Republic of which Pippin w^as the Patrician was now clearly shown to be a republic of which, not the Emperor but the Pope was to be the practical head. But two things are to be noticed. The Emperor is quietly set aside, and his lands and cities are taken possession of in another name. But there was no formal throwing off of his authority. As long as there was an Emperor of his house, the authority of Constantine and his successors was still never denied, and was recognized in various empty forms at Rome, and therefore at Ravenna. Moreover, though Pippin so distinctly refused the Emperor's request, yet Constantine did not treat him as an enemy. Our Roman guide tells us, with some little air of triumph, that the King sent the Imperial envoy back by another way, and that he went to Rome without having done anything ^. Marseilles was certainly not the obvious road from Pavia to either Rome or Constantinople. But we must remember that the Silentiary had seemingly been left at Marseilles, that he certainly had not gone to Pavia, and that it may be meant to mark that the two Imperial envoys parted company. Of George we hear no more. We may suppose that he went to report the ill-success of his mission to his master. Did John the Silentiary stay in the West? The very next year we shall find him again bringing friendly messages from the Emperor to the Frankish king. And ^ " Continue eum ad propria remeancTum per aliam viam absolvit, qui et sine ejffectu Romam conjunxit." 2 196 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. we shall find the Pope looking on his presence at the Frankish court as dangerous to Papal interest. After the Imperial envoy had gone his way, the King marched on to besiege Pavia the second time. If Tassilo had come by another road, he had joined his uncle on the march ; both were before the Lombard city. The land round about Pavia was harried, and the city itself was hemmed in ; the Prankish camp was pitched on both sides, and none could come forth ^. Before long, Aistulf, giving up all hope, prayed some of the Frankish nobles and clergy to be his mediators with their King. He would abide by the judgement of those whom he begged to intercede for him in all matters touching the oaths which he had sworn to the King of the Franks and the wrongs which he had done to the Apostolic See^. Pippin, in answer to their prayer, allowed the King of the Lombards both to live and to remain a king^. But life and kingship were granted to him on somewhat hard terms. He was to give up a third part of his hoard to the King of the Franks, besides undefined presents, both to the King and seemingly also to his lords *. And he admitted the Frankish supre- macy in the fullest shape. He swore oaths and gave hostaofes that he would never rebel ao^ainst or withstand King Pippin or — it is added — the great men of the Franks, and that he would pay yearly, sending it by the hands of an embassage, the tribute which the Lombards had been of ^ Cont. Fred. 121 ; *' Circa muros Ticini titraque pmie fixit tentoria, ita ut nullus exinde evadere potuisset." This is just after the mention of Tassilo ; so Luden infers separate camps of Franks and Bavarians. 2 See Appendix, Note 7. Aistulf approached Pippin "per sup- plicationem sacerdotum et optimatum Francorum veniens et pacem prsedicto regi supplicans." He is ready " omnia per judicium Fran- corum vel sacerdotum plenissima solutione emendare." ^ " Rex Pippinus soHto more iterum misericordia motus ad peti- tionem optimatum suorum vitam et regnum iterate concessit." "* "Thesaurum qui in Ticino erat, id est tertiam partem, praedicto regi tradidit, et alia munera majora quam antea dederat paribus regis Pippini dedit." THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 197 old wont to pay to the kings of the Franks ^. So far the Frankish historian, who tells us how King Pippin and his army, safe and sound, crowned with victory and loaded with treasure, went back to their homes to enjoy a rest from warfare of two years ^. The Roman writer has something more to tell us. It was not in his eyes the most important result of the war that the Lombard kingdom should become a Frankish dependency. And Pippin this time took care to do more effectually than before what the Pope had twice prayed him to come and do. By the new treaty Aistulf bound himself afresh to give up all that he bound himself to give up by the former treaty, and a little more besides. To the cession of Ravenna and all that of late had immediately depended on Ravenna was added the cession of the islands and lagoons of Comacchio somewhat to the north ^. They were a conquest of Agilulf in the earlier days of the Lom- bard kingdom (591) ; to give them up was in the nature of a penalty *. And now came in its most certain and its fullest form the famous grant of Pippin to the Roman Church. At Ponthion, at Quierzy, he could not be said to grant what he had not got; he could at most promise to grant if he should ever have the means of granting. After the fii'st Lombard campaign there was something which, as we have seen, could be spoken of as a grant by Pippin, but which seems merely to have been a clause in the treaty, a treaty of course dictated by Pippin, by which Aistulf engaged to give up the cities which he had' seized ^. Nor do we know by what terms he bound him- ^ " Sacramenta iterum et obsides donat, ut ampHus numquam contra regem Pippinuin vel proceres Francontm rebelHs et contumax esse debeat, et tributa quae Langobardi regi Francoram a longo tem- pore dederant, annis singuHs /jer missos suos desolvere deberet." ^ " Quievit terra a proeliis annis duobus." ^ See Appendix, Note 7. * Paul, Diac. iv. 3. He then speaks of "insula Comacina " ; so vi. 19. In V, 39 we hear of " lacus Comacinus." ^ See the letters of Pope Stejjhen quoted in Appendix, Note 7. 198 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. seK either in the first or in the second treaty. But after the second campaign something more definite was needed, something that more distinctly bound both Aistulf and Pippin than the mere words of the treaty. Aistulf, the actual possessor of the cities, granted them, by a formal writing, to the blessed Peter, to the holy Eoman Church, and to all the Pontiffs of the Apostolic See for ever. The charter was laid up in the archives of the Church of Home ^. To make all things sure, another writing, another grant, was put forth in the name of the King of the Franks. The cities, it might be held, had become his by right of conquest, and it was well to have a grant from him as well as from the vanquished priuce who still held them for a moment. The famous Donation of Pippin was now put into a full and formal shape in writing, and it was made by the King of the Franks to the blessed Apostle Peter and to his Vicar and to the Pontiffs his successors for ever. The charter was laid on the tomb of the Apostle, and was doubtless kept at least as carefully as that of Aistulf^. Now neither is forthcoming, neither has ever been produced in later times, of neither has the text ever been printed in any book. Yet there are no documents whose actual text we more eagerly long to see ; in their absence all that can be said on the detailed history of these events comes to little more than ingenious guessing. Pippin this time took care that the places to be given up should really be given up. But he did his work by deputy. He would seem to have had enough of Italian affairs. With a singular lack at once of ordinary curiosity and of the pious zeal for pilgrimage, the Patrician of the Romans never saw Rome. Again he turned back from Pavia and went home with his victorious army. The Lombard King was seemingly so cowed by his second defeat that no military force was needed to occupy the cities. A peaceful deputation was enough to receive their ' See Appendix, Note 7. 2 Ibid. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 199 submission. Pippin left his trusted counsellor Abbot Ful- rad behind, and he, in company with the commissioners of the Lombard king, went through the cities of the Pentapolis and Emilia, entering each, receiving the keys, receiving hostages, and, seemingly besides the hostages, taking some of the chief men of each town with him to Rome ^. The work was still going on, the Frankish and Lombard commissioners were going through the cities, but had not gone through the full tale of them, when a new series of revolutions and intris^ues brought their work to a stand- still. King Aistulf 's reign and life did not last long after the day of his humiliation. Writers on the other side of course describe him as striving again to get out of his new engagements ^ ; but there is nothing in their own narra- tives to show that he was doing otherwise than giving up the cities one by one. But while some were still un- touched, a sudden chance cut him off. He was hunting in the royal wood by Pavia, when his horse dashed him against a tree ; he fell, and, as some seem to imply, died on the spot ; the tale is perhaps more likely which makes him linger for a few days ^. His enemies, Pope ^ Yit. Steph. 171; "Ad recipiendas ipsas civitates misit ipse Christianissimus Francorum rex consiliarium suum, id est Fuh-adum venerabilem abbatem et presbyterum . . . Fulradus . . . Ravennatium partes cum missis jam fati Aistulfi regis conjungens, et per singulaa ingrediens civitates tam Pentapoleos quam et iEmilise, easque reci- piens et obsides per unamquamque auferens, atque primates secum una cum clavibus portarum civitatum deferens Romam conjunxit." ^ Ann. Laur. 756; "Dum reversus est Pippinus rex, cupiebat supradictus Haistulfus nefandus rex mentiri quae pollicitus fuerat, obsides dulgere, sacramenta inrumpere." On the odd word " dul- gere," explained " deserere, gurpire," see Ducange. ^ Cont. Fred. 122 ; " Post hsec Aistulfus rex Langobardorum, dum venationem in quadam silva exerceret, divino judicio, de equo quo sedebat super quamdam arborem projectus, vitam et regnum cru- deliter digna morte amisit." This doubtless gives the true cause of his death ; but one would think that Einhard must have had some authority when he said ; " ex hoc segritudine contracta, intra paucos dies Vivendi terminum fecit." The words of the Continuator do not necessarily imply that he died on the spot. In Ann. Laur. he is 200 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Stephen at their head, shouted over his fall ; they saw in his overthrow the hand of the divine judgement; they knew his place in the nether world ^ ; in his own kingdom he left behind him the name of a good and devout prince, the special friend of the monastic order ^. His death stopped for a while the surrender of the cities ; but we have a list of those which had been given up at the time of his death, which along with certain others which were surrendered afterwards, will give us a presumably accurate notion of the territorial extent of the grant of Pippin to the Eoman see ^. We cannot look in the mind of Aistulf to judge whether he had any inner purpose of escaping, if possible, from a full carr3dng out of his engagements. If so it were, he would be neither the first nor the last prince who has been so suspected. It would not be wonderful if he gave up first of all those cities which he could "percussus Dei judicio," and in the Life of Stephen (171) "divino ictu percussus," a flourish borrowed, as we shall see, from a letter of Stephen's own. The next step was to take these flourishes literally, and to kill him by a thunderbolt. His death is also recorded in Ann. Petav., Guelf , Nazar. ^ So Stephen writes to Pippin, Ep. 11 (Mon. Car. 64); "Tirannus ille sequax diaboli Haistulfus, devorator sanguinum Christianorum, ecclesiarum Dei destructor, divino ictu ;percussus est, et in inferni voraginem demersus." Directly after, he is " divino mucrone percussus." The Pope takes care to point out that his death happened just a year after the time when he set out to besiege Rome ; that is, in December, 756. ^ See Oelsner's note, p. 283. The passage which he refers to in Chron. Sal. 7 (Pertz, iii. 475) is, as he says, partly founded on a misunderstanding ; but, if it proves nothing else, it points to general Lombard opinion about Aistulf. ^ I have discussed in Appendix, Note 7, the question whether the list of towns in the Life of Stephen, p. 171, is a list of all the towns contained in the grant of Pippin or only of those which were actually surrendered in Aistulf's lifetime. There are some dijfficulties about the case ; but the latter view seems the most likely. The list runs thus ; Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Cesena, Sinigaglia, Esium, Forum Pompilii, Forum Livii, Susibio, Montifeltro, Acceragio, Montem Lucani, Sera, Castellus Sancti Mariani, Bobbio, Urbino, Callias, Luculos, Eugubium, Comacchio. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 201 least hope to keep, and those which he least cared to keep. If any cession was to be made at all, Ravenna, the head of all, would of course be demanded as the most precious of all and the earnest of all that was to follow. The Imperial seat of the Roman and the royal seat of the Goth, the tomb of Honorius and the tomb of Theodoric, the churches and baptisteries which Catholic and Arian had once held under an equal law of toleration, the palaces of emperors, kings, and exarchs, the many- coloured forms of the princes of East and West, all, after their short Lombard occupation, again passed under the dominion of Rome, though of a Rome which, for purposes of practical possession, was now represented by its Bishop and no longer by its Csesar. The city which Alaric shrank from attacking, which held out for three whole years against Theodoric, gave up its keys without a blow at the bidding of the Abbot of Saint Denis and of the commis- sioner of the Lombard king who came as his comrade. With Ravenna passed the whole coast as far as the most ancient boundary of Italy and Gaul. Rimini, first prize of the Roman who came from Gaul to conquer Italy ; the Gallic Sena, first colony of Rome on Gaulish soil, were alike handed over by the German lord of Gaul to the new power which was setting up its claim as the representative of Roman Italy. With them passed other cities of the coast and of the inland, Comacchio, severed, as the penalty of a second defeat, from the Lombard Austria, and inland Eugubium cut ofi" in the like sort from the Lombard Tus- cany. The lands of Saint Peter, of the Roman Church, of the Roman Republic, stretched, though in some parts by a narrow isthmus, from the one sea to the other, from the mouths of the Po to the mouths of the Tiber. Narni too, the precious hill fortress, subject of special complaints and special negotiations, gave up its keys and sent its hostages at the bidding of Fubad and his companions^. But the ^ On Narni see above, p. 174. Its surrender is mentioned specially with a kind of triumph ; " Necnon et civitatem Narnienscm, quae 202 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. lands which, whether through chance or design, remained unsurrendered at the death of Aistulf, are not without geographical significance. Gavello, Ferrara, Bologna, Fa- enza^ were still in Lombard hands^ keeping a solid zone of Lombard territory between the Lombard Austria and the Lombard Tuscany^ and leaving to Saint Peter only a narrow strip by the sea in the northern part of his recovered estate. At the other end, Ancona, Hamana, and Osimo, still enlarged the maritime border of the duchy of Spoleto to the north. From whatever motive, Aistulf had put off the surrender of these places till the last. Their keys had not been given up when Aistulf was so suddenly taken away. Abbot Fulrad had to go to Rome with his work not wholly finished. The natural inference is that the Lombard commissioners refused to act any further till there was again a King of the Lombards in whose name they could act. And Fulrad might well think it hazardous to go on to demand the surrender of fortified cities, in the name indeed of the mighty King of the Franks, but seem- ingly without a single armed man to enforce his master's bidding. § 6. The Later Dealings of Pippin with Italy. 756-768. An event of such moment in general history as the intervention of Pippin in Italian affairs cannot be called an episode, and yet it has something of the character of an episode as regards his own calling as a King of the Franks, whose immediate duties lay in Germany and Gaul. We may indeed suspect that, from the end of his first cam- paign, Pippin was not quite so zealous for the claims of Saint Peter and his Vicar as he perhaps was at the time of the conference at Ponthion and even of the Marchfield at Berny. Even after his first victory, he seems anxious to a ducatu Spoletani a parte Romanorum per evoluta annorum spatia fuerat invasa." Yet one who did not know the story might doubt from the Latin which was the invader. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 203 get back to his own kingdom ; the Eoman Patrician does not visit Rome. After the practical failure of his first campaign, he needs a great deal of pressing, and in a most singular shape, before he can be got to undertake a second. After his second campaign, his second victory, he again goes home with all speed ; he leaves Abbot Fulrad to carry his treaties and charters into execution. He had evidently had enousrh of Italian warfare and of Italian affairs of all kinds. From Italian warfare he contrived to keep him- self clear for the rest of his days ; from all dealings with Italian affairs of other kinds he could not wholly keep himself, but he clearly had no fancy for meddling with them more than he could help. No doubt he had plenty to do in his own kingdom ; Aquitaine and Bavaria, under Waifar and Tassilo, touched him far more nearly than the Roman Church and the Roman Republic. He must have seen that he had stepped beyond the natural sphere of a Frankish king, and he could hardly be expected to under- stand of how great things he was the instrument, for how great events he was opening the way, when he hearkened to the oecumenical temptations of Pope Stephen rather than to the local prudence of his brother Karlmann. He perhaps came, as a Frankish king, to feel that Karlmann had been the wiser, and made up his mind to be as little of a Roman Patrician as he could. And assuredly he had been de- ceived, and he had found out that he had been deceived. Yet he could not back out of his engagements ; he could not openly quarrel with Saint Peter and his Vicar. For the last twelve years of his reign Pippin meddled as little in Italian affairs as he could ; but he could not keep himself out of them ; least of all could he keep successive Popes from writing him letters as to which we are sometimes curious to know whether they always got answers. In treating of the reign of Pippin, then, we cannot al- together turn our backs on Italy, and Italian affairs occupy him more or less down to the end of his reign. But for his last twelve years Italian affairs are quite secondary 204 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. to his main work elsewhere, and have only an occa- sional and indirect bearing on that work. With the affairs of Bavaria and Aquitaine a new and stirring chapter in Pippin's life opens, a chapter quite as busy, if not so striking, as the chapter in which Italy holds the first place. Meanwhile all that he has now to do with Italy seems like a few pages of the old chapter going on alongside of the new one. While armies are yearly cross- ing the Loire the letters that are almost daily crossing the Alps are but a faint survival of the days when armies crossed the Alps also, a faint foreshadowing of the days when they were to cross the Alps again. The relations between Italy and the Frankish lands during Pippin's later years are the mere after-pieces of the stirring drama of the central years of his reign. It may be well to deal with them as such. In this present section then we will go on with the tale of Pippin's Italian dealings down to his death, and we will then come back to enter on the short tale of his final overthrow of the Saracen in Gaul, and on the long tale of his recovery of Aquitaine to Frankish rule. Aistulf, so suddenly cut off after the double defeat of his great plans, left no son to succeed him. On his death the crown of Lombardy, now a vassal crown of the Frank- ish kingdom, was disputed between two claimants. One party favoured the claims of Desiderius — mark the Roman name, first and last in the roll of Lombard kings — the marshal or staller of the late king, whom he had set over the duchy of Tuscany^. His home seems to have been Brescia, where he and his wife Ansa founded a monastery of nuns^. Of any claim that he had on the Lombard crown, whether by descent, by bequest, or by formal popu- lar election, we hear nothing. It would seem to have ^ In the Life, p. 171, he is "Desiderius quidam dux Longobardorum qui ab eodern nequissimo Aistulfo TuscisB in partes erat directus." Einhard, who, with Ann. Laur., cuts his accession short, describes him as " qui comes stabuli ejus erat." ^ See Oelsner, p. 284, note 2. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 205 been held that the death of Aistulf had left the kingdom open to any one who could seize on it ; Desiderius was the first to strike for the prize, and he found the province over which he was set to rule ready to support him in his attempt. When he heard of the vacancy of the throne, he set forth at the head of the whole force of Tuscany to take possession ^. But the general wish of the Lombard nation was not with him. Not a few on both sides of the Apennines looked with scorn on the pretensions of Desi- derius. Their candidate was one whom we should hardly have looked for. Again, as when Karlmann made his journey to withstand Pope Stephen in the Frankish Marchfield, did the gates of Monte Cassino open to let a servant of Saint Benedict go forth and mingle in the afiairs of the world. But Karlmann went at the bidding of his abbot and his king, and he sought nothing of earthly honour for himself. We know not how so great a breach of monastic rule came about ; but Katchis, the former King of the Lombards, the elder brother of Aistulf, had by this time repented him of his religious vows, and went forth to claim again the crown which he had laid aside. His march must have been speedy ; before the year was out, he was accepted by the more part of the Lombard nation ; for three months he sat as King in the palace of Pa via ^ ; he had partisans even in Tuscany ^, and when ^ Vit. Steph. 171; " Audiens prsefatum obiisse Aistulfum, illico aggregans ipsius Tuscise universam exercituum multitudinem, regno Longobardorum arripere nixus est fastigium," He set out TravdijfieL ^ lb. ; " Cujus personam despectui habens Radchisus dudiim rex et postmodum monachus, germanus prsefati Aistulfi, sed et alii plures Longobardorum optimates cum eo eundem Desiderium spernentes plurimam Transalpium vel cseterum Longobardorum exercituum mul- titudinem aggregantes." "Alps " must here mean "Apennines." The length of the second reign of Ratchis comes from the Annals of Brescia, Pertz, iii. 239; "Aistulfus rex obiit, gubernavitque palacium Ticinense Ratchis, gloriosus germanus ejus, dudum rex, tunc autem Christi famulus, a Decembris usque Martium." ^ See Oelsner, 285, note 3, for a Pisan charter of February, 757, dated as in the first year of Ratchis. 206 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. he gathered a host to go forth against his rival, the cause of Desiderius seemed hopeless ^. That Desiderius was in every sense the national candidate appears by the means by which he was at last set on the Lombard throne. He betook himself to the Pope, pro- mising, if by papal help he should be set upon the throne, to obey in all things the Pontiff's will, to restore to the Republic — so runs the form — all the cities which Aistulf had not given up, and to add costly gifts besides ^. But the Pope was not the only power to speak in this matter. His right-hand man at this moment was the chief coun- sellor of the King of the Franks. Abbot Fulrad was at Rome. Now that Lombardy had become a kingdom dependent on the Frank, the overlord or his representative might fairly claim a voice in disposing of the vassal crown. The advances of Desiderius were favourably hstened to ; Fulrad and another Frankish envoy Robert, together with envoys from the Pope, Stephen's own brother and soon to be successor, the Deacon Paul, and Christopher the Primicerius, were sent into Tuscany to him^. To ^ The Continuations of Paul the Deacon tell us very little. The '■* Continuatio Tertia," chiefly copied from the Lives of the Popes, does put in an original remark here and there, and just now we get a few (Scriptt. Rer. Lang. 211) ; " Videns Desiderius se non posse retinere quod ceperat, nisi Romanorum et Francorum favore uteretur seu juvaretur." ^ Vit. Steph. 172; "Desiderius obnixe beatissimum pontificem deprecatus est sibi auxilium ferre, quatenus ipsam regalem valeret assumere dignitatem, spondens jurejurando omnem prsefati beatissimi pontificis adimplere voluntatem ; insuper se reipublicse se reddi- turum professus est civitates quse remanserant, immo et copiosa daturum munera." The word "respublica," standing quite by itself, sounds as if it might be a scrap of Desiderius' own words. If so, it is significant in connexion with what followed. ^ Vit. Steph. U.S. Robert appears as Pippin's "missus" along with Fulrad in the letters of Paul ; Mon. Car. 77, 78, 80, 82. He is "Rodbertus," once " Ruodbertus." Einhard in a letter in p. 463 of the same volume has an older form " Hruotbertus." Christoj^her is here " consiliarius " ; he appears as "primicerius" in letters of later Popes (128, 1G8) when he was not so well thought of as now. THE ITALIAN AND SARACEN WARS OF PIPPIN. 207 them he promised, both by solemn oaths and by a written charter, to give up to the Pope, at one end the towns of Ferrara, Faenza, and Imola, with their territories, and at the other end Ancona, Osimo, and Humana^. On one point alone he seems first to have hesitated and then to have yielded. Bologna was made the subject of a special engagement, not made by Desiderius himself to the envoys in Tuscany, but by a duke Garrinod and another envoy Grimoald, sent for that purpose by Desiderius to Rome ^. On the strength of these promises and of a further promise of fealty to the King of the Franks ^, Desiderius was accepted as King of the Lombards by Stephen and Fulrad. Theii* will was made known by a letter from the Pope (757) addressed to Ratchis and the whole Lombard nation, and seemingly carried to Pavia by an envoy of Stephen's of his own name, a man of Sicily, now cardinal-priest of Saint Cecily, afterwards to be the present Pope's successor next but one. In that letter he called on the Lombards to submit to Desiderius without any shedding of blood*. Whether Fuh-ad went with the envoy Stephen is not ^ Vit. Steph. 172 ; " Per scriptam paginam terribili juramento isdem Desiderius cunctam professus est superius annexam sponsionem ad- implere." Stephen himself (Mon. Car. 64) says more definitely, " In prsesentia ipsius Folradi sub jurejurando pollicitus est restituendas beato Petro civitates reliquas ; Vaventia Imulas et Ferraria cum eorum finibus, simul etiam et salaria et omnia territoria, necnon et Ancimam Ancona, et Hunena civitates cum eorum territoriis." The Continuator of Paul the Deacon adds a special engagement ; " Se . . . pro Romano populo et Romana ecclesia pugnaturum," ^ Mon. Car. 64 ; " Postmodum per Garrimodum ducem et Grimoal- dum nobis reddendam spopondit civitatem Bononiam cum finibus suis." ^ lb. ; " Fidelem erga a Deo protectum regnum vestrum esse testatus est." * Vit. Steph. 172 ; " Suum missum, id est Stephanum venerabilem presbyterum cum apostolicis exhortatoriis Uteris praefato Radchiso vel cunctse genti Longobardorum direxit." The priest Stephen, the future Pope, will often come again. The Continuator of Paul the Deacon brings in the Pope as " rogans et obtestans ut a civilis effusione sanguinis abstinerent." 208 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. clear ; but he showed himself at the head of a few Franks as a supporter of Desiderius, and threatened the coming of a Roman army if resistance was offered^. An unsup- ported Roman army might not be very frightful to a Lombard king and his people ; but there was a chance of the Franks coming a third time, and Desiderius doubt- less still had partisans in Tuscany. Opposition ceased ; no sword was drawn against the nominee of the Bishop of Rome and the Abbot of Saint Denis. Ratchis with- drew again to his monastery ^ (March, 757) ; Desiderius, by the authority of Abbot Fulrad, mounted the Lombard throne ^. It would seem that possession was secured, even without the formal approval of the Frankish overlord ; but one of the first acts of the new king, the mildest of men, as he seemed at this moment in papal eyes, was to pray the Pope to procure for him a fuller assurance of peace and friendship at the hands of the King beyond the Alps *. The letter from which we learn many of these details, the last which Pope Stephen wrote to the king whom he had anointed, speaks as if no news as to Lombard affairs ^ Vit. Stepb. 172; "Properans et ipse Fulradus venerabilis cum aliquantis Francis in auxilium ipsius Desiclerii, sed et plures exer- citus Eomanorum, si necessitas exigeret, in ejus disposuit occurri adjutorium." 2 At least lie died there, according to the Chronicle of Saint Benedict ; Pertz, iii. 200. ^ " Cujus [paprocedere, cum Stephano papa, et reliquae nationes quae in suo regno commorabantur et Prancorum agmina . . . usque Mauriennam perveniunt." The words in italics are a difficulty to which I shall come again. It will be seen that the ceremony in Saint Denis is altogether left out ; but that proves nothing against it. The narrative is hurried, and the writer wishes to show, what is perfectly true, that the Loml^ard expedition was the result of the vote of the Marchfield. He has nothing to say about the coming of Karlmann. The Life of Stephen seems to make the unction come very early in the year, just after the Pope had gone to Saint Denis ; " Quo peracto et eo in eodem venerabili monasterio cuni THE ORDER OF EVENTS IN THE YEAR 754. 375 jam fato Christianissimo Pipino conjungente, Domino an- nuente, post aliqitantos dies isdem Christianissimus Pipinus rex ab eodem sanctissimo papa Christi gratia cum duobus filiis suis reges uncti sunt Francorum." Then comes the Pope's sickness (see p. 169). After his recovery- comes what seems to be the Marchfield of Berny removed to Quierzy ; '^Pipinus rex, cum admonitione, gratia, et oratione ipsius venerabilis pontificis absolutus, in loco qui Carisiacus appellatur pergens, ibique eongregans cunctos proceres regiae suae pote- statis, et eos tanti patris ammonitione imbuens statuit cum eis quae semel, Christo favente, uno cum eodem beatissimo papa decreverat, perficere." Then comes the mission of Karlmann, described at some length ; then the mission of Pippin to Aistulf ; then at last, "^ isdem eximius Francorum rex . . . generalem contra eum decrevit facere motionem." Then the army sets out. The Moissac Annals seem here to be imperfect. After the vain embassy to Aistulf comes the unction ; "Stephanus papa ipsum piissimum principem Pippinum regem Francorum et patricium Eomanorum oleo unctionis perunxit secundum morem majorum unctione sacra filiosque ejus duos felici successione Carolum et Carolomannum eodem coronavit honore." These last words are the only words anywhere which might seem to imply a coronation of either Pipj^in or his sons as distinguished from the unction. After all they may be only a flourish. After ''honore" Pertz j^uts a blank. Those that next follow are ' ' Pippinus vero rex non poterat ea quae Romano praesuli promiserat, nisi toto affectu cum Dei auxilio adim- j)leret." Then comes the march over the Alps. The gap is filled up in the Metz Annals by the assembly at Berny and the mission of Karlmann, both seemingly brought in without any regard to order and with a certain copying of words from the Continuator ; "Eodem quoque anno Pippinus rex placitum habuit secun- dum consuetudinem Kalend. Mart. Brennaco villa j)i^ihlica. Accepto inde consilio optimatum suorum, partibus Italiae se cum omni apparatu suo profecturum esse indixit, et cum omni mul- titudine per Lugdunum Galliae et Viennam pergentes, usque ad 376 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Mauriennam pervenerunt. Eodem qiioque tempore Karloman- nus, germanus domni regis Pijjpini, ab abbate suo destinatur ut pro Langobardis interpellaret, et ut iter regium. ab illis partibus impediret, in Franciam venit. Pippinus vero se non aliud jDosse facere nisi ea qase Eomano j)r9esuli promiserat, PipiDinus itaque, Alpes transiens," &c. Before we try to harmonize these three accounts in which the order seems to be so different we may see what is to be found elsewhere. The short Annals tell us really nothing. The Laurissenses Minores scatter the events of 754 over all the years from 754 to 760. The Annales Laurissenses and those of Einhard put the Pope's coming in 753, which of course it would be according to some reckonings of the beginnings of the year, and closely connect his coming with that of Karlmann. The words of the Laurissenses are ; '' Eodem anno Stephanus papa venit in Franciam, adjutorium et solatium quaerens pro justitiis sancti Petri ; similiter et Karlomannus, monachus et germanus supradicti Pippini regis, per jussionem abbatis sui in Franciam venit, quasi ad contur- bandam petitionem apostolicam." The words follow in brackets, ' ' hoc anno natalem Domini in Theodone villa, Pascha in Carisiaco celebravit." This means the Christmas of 753 and the Easter of 754. Einhard seems to make Pippin and Stephen first meet at Quierzy instead of Ponthion ; ''Eodem anno Stephanus Papa venit ad Pij^pinum regem in villa qu8B vocatur Carisiacus, suggerens illi ut se et Eomanam ecclesiam ab infestatione Langobardorum defenderet." He records the coming of Karlmann to oppose the Pope, but adds a kind of excuse (see p. 382) ; '' Invitus tamen hoc fecisse putatur quia nee ille abbatis sui jussa contemnere nee abbas ille prseceptis regis Langobardorum qui ei hoc imperavit audebat resistere." Under 754 both record the unction, but Einhard inserts the words, "Postquam a rege Pippino ecclesise Romance defensionis firmitatem accepit." And he adds ''mansitque hiberno tempore in Francia." Both put the Italian expedition in 755. In all this it is easy to see that there is a good deal of con- tradiction of the order of events. In the Continuator they stand thus ; the Pope's reception at Ponthion ; his request for THE ORDER OF EVENTS IN THE YEAR 754. 377 help ; his sojourn at Saint Denis ; the message to Aistulf ; the Marchfield at Berny ; the march to Italy. The order in the Life of Stephen is ; the Pope's reception at Ponthion ; his request for help ; his sojourn at Saint Denis ; the anointing of the kings ; the Pope's sickness ; the assembly at Quierzy ; the embassy to Aistulf ; the march to Italy. The Moissac and Metz order is ; the Pope's recejDtion at Ponthion ; his request for help ; his sojourn at Saint Denis ; the anointing of the kings ; the Marchfield at Berny ; the march to Italy. In all this, it is to be noticed, we get only two exact dates, January 6 for the Pope's coming to Ponthion, and, in the nature of things, March 1 for the Marchfield. Now it is not very hard to get another exact date, namely that of July 28, 754, for the unction. The evidence for this date is minutely gone into by Oelsner, 155, 156. The year is fixed by the famous ^' Clausula de Pippino," at the end of Gregoiy of Tours' book, De Gloria Confessorum. (Watten- bach in his fifth edition of Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen, i. 120, withdraws the objections to this authority which are spoken of by Oelsner.) The day comes from a document of Abbot Hildwin of Saint Denis, in his Life of Saint Denis (see Bouquet, v. 436), which copies the description of the unction given in the Clausula. He gives the date as ''anno, qui ab Incarnatione Domini nostri Jesu Christi dccliv. quinto Calendas Augusti." On such a point as this the local tradition or record is perfectly trustworthy. The honour of Saint Denis and his church was in no way concerned in fixing the unction to one day more than another. And this, or something very near to it, was the local tradition at Rome also. The letter of Pope Stephen in the Epitome Chronicorum Casinensium (Muratori, ii. part 1, p. 363) is clearly spurious, but the forger would be careful on such a point, and his date " die Kalendarum Augusti " is clearly Hildwin's date with the word or figures for five fallen out. The date was also preserved in the Annales Bertiniani, whence it has found its way into a note to the Annales Laurissenses, Pertz, i. 138. Of this date there can be no reasonable doubt. We must insert the unction into the gap which the Continuator leaves between the Marchfield and the march into Italy. The only question is as to the date of that 378 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. inarch. The most natural interpretation of the words of the Continuator would be that the expedition began early in 754, soon after the Marchfield. Pipj)in set forth ''inito consilio cum proceribus suis, eo tempore quo solent reges ad bella pro- cedere" (see above, p. 374 \ Here the Marchfield and the expedition are brought into the closest possible connexion, and the scriptural phrase is most naturally taken of an early time in the year. But, if the date of the anointing be right, it could not have been early in 754. That Pippin should have waited till after another Marchfield and gone in the " tempus quo solent reges ad bella procedere " of 755, seems most unlikely in itself, and it does not agree with the Continuator's own chronology. Though he uses the scriptural phrase, he puts the campaign in 754 and 755 in the ^'sequens annus," when the campaign is over. Oelsner moreover, in his Excurs '' Der Feldzug des Jahres 754 " (449, 450), seems to have set the matter at rest by the evidence of a number of documents. Lombard and Prankish. We must therefore jDlace the unction on July 28, 754, and the beginning of the march soon after. We have only to suppose that the Continuator, who was fond of using scrip- tural phrases, brought in this one without much thought of its meaning. And we cannot say that he is wrong in closely con- necting the Marchfield and the Italian expedition. The expe- dition was the carrying out of the vote of the Marchfield, though some months passed between the two things. That the writer leaves out both the anointing of Pippin and the mission of Karlmann is very strange, but we have got used to such strange omissions. There is no contradiction, simply a gap. The chronology of the Metz Annals is of less importance. But I do not think there is any real contradiction. The events are not put in strict order ; but are brought in as they suggested themselves, ^'eodem anno," ''eodem tempore." And now for the Life of Pope Stei^hen. We have only to suppose him to be what he clearly was, very careful in recording whatever it was important for his purpose to record, but not very exact as to the order of events nor even as to places in a strange land. In truth as to the date of the unction, there is no real contradiction. The Pope is THE ORDER OF EVENTS IN THE YEAR 754. 379 quartered at Saint Denis, and that suggests to his biographer the august ceremony which hapj^ened at Saint Denis a few months later, and he mentions it out of its place. He says it happened ' ' post aliquantos dies " ; but we have only to go on to the next column to see that that does not necessarily mean within a week or a fortnight, but may take in a time of several months. Karlmann is there taken to Vienne, and dies ''post aliquantos dies." This is in August, and he did not die till the next year. Then his expressions would certainly of themselves imply that the Marchfield was held at Quierzy ; but on such a point the witness of the Continuator that it was held at Berny is decisive. But something most likely happened at Quierzy. Pippin seems (see above, p. 144) to have kept his Easter there, and in a well-known passage of the Life of Hadrian (Muratori, iii. part 1, p. 186) that Pope is made to remind Charles the Great on his coming to Pome in 774 of a promise made at Quierzy ("promissio quae in Francia in loco qui vocatur Carisiacus facta est "). Of the value of this piece of evidence we may have to speak hereafter ; but the mere fact — likely enough in itself, but not very important — of Stephen's presence at Quierzy seems to be fully made out by his signature dated thence to a document in favour of a certain monastery, whether at Bretigny or elsewhere. (See Oelsner, 150 ; Dahn, Urgeschichte, iii. 878 ; Jaffe, Pegesta, i. 2315.) Whatever was done at Quierzy would be done at the Easter feast, when there would doubtless be a gathering of great men at the King's court, though not such an attendance as there had been before at the Marchfield. The Biographer has either left out the Marchfield at Berny or else rolled the two assemblies into one. How little careful he is of exact chronology we see directly after. '' Inter ea," while these things were going on, Aistulf sends Karlmann. Surely Karlmann was at Berny. There would seem to be quite time for an embassy to go to Pa via and back between January G and March 1. The Pope left Pavia on October 14, and reached Ponthion on January 6. But he disliked the journey, and doubtless travelled slowly. He also stayed (see p. 129) at Saint Maurice ''aliquantis diebus," words which, as we have just seen, may mean as long as we please. In fact it is pretty certain that he tarried there into December. It was in December that his comrade 380 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Ambrose died there (see p. 130), and there is nothing to show that Ambrose was left behind while the Pope went on. Envoys going at all speed on an errand that needed haste could surely do the journey both ways in less time than the Pope took to do it one way. It is worth noting that both the Annales Laurissenses and those of Einhard, which place the coming of Stephen in 753 and the unction in 754, place the Italian expedition in 755. In the case of Einhard at least it is easy to see how this mistake arose. After the unction he says, ''Mansitque [Stephanus papa] hiberno tempore in Francia," that is the winter of- 754-5. This surely comes from a misunderstanding of the Continuator, who thus describes the sojourn of the Poj)e at Saint Denis : ' ' Pij^pinus rex praefato Stephano papa apud Parisiis civitatem in monasterio sancti Dionj'sii martyris, cum ingenti cura et multa diligentia, hiemare prsecepit." But this applies to what in Einhard's reckoning is the winter of 753-4, so much of it as followed January 6. Of modern writers Gregorovius (Geschichte der Stadt Eom, ii. 311) seems to follow the Biographer, putting the unction before whatever was done at Quierzy and making no mention of Berny. So Waitz, iii. 81, who rebukes Pertz for doing otherwise. Krosta (De Donationibus Pippino et Carolo Magno factis. Konigsberg, 1862) sticks closely to the confused order of the Biographer. Ranke (Weltgeschichte, v. 35) reckons up some of the difficulties without attempting to solve them. Some of them perhaps are hardly on such a scale that we could expect the writer of a Weltgeschichte to tarry over them. But he too seems (p. 30) to put the unction very soon after the Pope's coming to Saint Denis. Troya (Cod. Dipl. Long. iv. 514) had put most things in their right order, only he turned the Marchfield on its own day into a quasi il/a^field after Easter, about April 23. This would make some things smoother, but it cannot be. It is Oelsner (129-204 and the Appendix) who has really gone into every detail, and put everything into its right place. That I wholly differ from him as to the nature of what was done at Quierzy takes away nothing from his merits in this way. He sees that something THE OEDEIi OF EVENTS IN THE YEAR 754. 381 was done at Pontliion, Saint Denis, Berny — he makes it Braisne, a difference of no importance to the story — Quierzy, and Saint Denis again. His arrangement is followed by Eichter and Kohl in the Annalen des frankischen Keichs. Lastly, on the whole matter it is worth while to tm-n to the amusing version in the Chronicle of Salerno (Pertz, iii. 472). His version is mostly made u]y from the Life of Stephen, and of course, in copying from the Life of Stephen, he follows the way in which Stephen is spoken of by his own Biographer. But at the very beginning he starts with quite another way of looking at things, which, we may be sure, represents genuine Lombard feeling ; " Per idem tempus invidia diaboli Stephanus i3apa Eomanus inter Langobardos et gens Francorum, Allamannorum, Bur- gundionum supereminavit Zizania, hoc ordine quod inferius declarassem." This would not have displeased Karlmann, nor seemingly a good many of the other Franks. In the very next sentence we have about the PojDe and his lost sheep copied word for word from the Life of Stephen. Note 5, p. 142. THE MISSION OF KARLMANN. The mission of Karlmann by King Aistulf and Abbot Optatus to oppose the pleadings of Pope Stephen with King Pippin is wholly left out by the fourth Continuator of Fredegar, just as the revolts of Grifo (the last of which he himself mentions) are left out by the Continuator before him. Such omissions can hardly be accidental. The omission of the second unction is very strange ; but it may perhaps be accounted for by the writer's wish to show the direct con- nexion between the Marchfield at Berny and the expedition into Italy. He hurries from one to the other, and leaves out what comes between, even the great solemnity. For the unction, important as it was in many ways, was only a solemnity ; it did not directly affect the course of events. So neither, as it happened, did the mission of Karlmann ; but 382 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. it was, just like an unsuccessful battle, a direct attempt to change them. It seems too to have made, as it well might, a deep impression at the time, and it is recorded in many of the Annals. I have already quoted (see p. 371) the remark- able entry in the Annales Petaviani. In the second set of small Annals (Pertz, i. 27, 28) his coming is mentioned in each, and with important notices. The Laureshamenses are nearly the same as the Petaviani ; the others have another formula; ''Karlomannus rediit, qui ct detentus,'' to which two add, 'est, et obiit.'" The Laurissenses Minores have a much more inadequate story; " Karlmannus monachus Franciam fratrem visitare veniens, Yiennae moritur." The Laurissenses Majores couple the coming of Stephen and that of Karlmann in a way that should be noticed ; '' Eodem anno Stephanus papa venit in Franciam, adju- torium et solatium quserendo pro justiciis sancti Petri ; simi- liter et Karlomannus, monachus et germanus supradicti Pippini regis, per jussionem abbatis sui in Franciam venit, c^uasi ad conturbandam petitionem aj)ostolicam." This comes under 753 ; so the writer must have looked on Karlmann as coming very soon after Stephen. Einhard clearly thought that the conduct of Karlmann in opj)osing the Pope needed some apology ; so he adds ; ''Venit et Karlomannus, f rater regis, jam monachus factus, jussu abbatis sui, ut apucl fratrem suum precibus Eomani pontificis obsisteret ; invitus tamen hoc fecisse putatur, qui nee ille abbatis sui jussa contempnere nee abbas ille i^rseceptis regis Langobardorum, qui ei hoc imperavit, audebat resistere." Einhard of Fulda (Pertz, i. 357) uses words which seem to be independent of the others ; but he is wrong in both the date and the place of Karlmann's death ; " Karlomannus frater Pippini, cum consilio Haistulfi regis Langobardorum in Franciam veniens, ad 23ersuadendum fratri ne exercitum in Italiam duceret, non jiost multos dies Lug- duni vita decessit." At the distance of Fulda, Lyons and Vienne perhaps seemed all the same thing, a confusion which would hardly have pleased the Primate of Primates. Most unluckily the Continuator of Fredegar does not mention THE MISSION OF KARLMANN. 383 the mission of Karlmann, neither does the Moissac annalist. I have ah'eady quoted (see p. 375) the account of the Metz Annals (much to the same effect as the others), thrust in as an afterthought in a wrong place. We have therefore no detailed account save that in the Life of Stephen. His coming is there described in these words ; '^Interea nefandissimus Aistulfus Carlomannum fratrem benignissimi Pipini regis a monasterio beati Benedicti, in quo devote per revolutum temporis spatium monachium degebat, diabolicis ei suasionibus suadens Franciam provinciam ad obicendum atque adversandum causae redemptionis sanctse Dei ecclesi^e reipublicie Eomanorum direxit." Now as to the date of Karlmann's coming. The language of the Annals, ''post eum," and the like, suggests, though it does not absolutely j^rove, that he came soon after the Pope. The '' interea " of the Life of Stephen covers the time between the Pope's coming to Ponthion on January 6 and the Easter feast at Quierzy on April 14. If Karlmann was to be of any use at all, it was Aistulf s object to send him to his brother's court as soon as possible. He would signify his will to Optatus as soon as Stephen had left Pavia ; his messengers would go with all gpeed, and Karlmann would go with all speed. The Pope, as we have seen, went slowly and tarried on the road. A journey through Gaul was not so frightful a business to Karlmann as it was to Stephen, and he may really have come to Pippin not very long after the coming of the Pope. All that concerns us is to get him to Berny by the first day of March, the day of the Marchfield. There is no distinct evidence whether either Stephen or Karlmann actually appeared on the Marchfield. We have no clear report of its acts. The Continuator, who so carefully gives us its date and place, and from whom we should look for the best account, hurries it over to' get to the fighting. We are thus driven to the Biogra23her, who, as we have seen, either leaves out the assembly at Berny or mixes it up with that of Quierzy. His language is very general ; but he records strong opposition on Karlmann's part to the action requested by the Pope made at some time after a promise made to the Pope by Pippin. In his narrative this might be understood either of 384 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. the promise at Ponthion or of the promise at Quierzy. If Stephen or Karlmann or both did appear before the Marchfield between those two we must of course understand it of the first promise at Ponthion. The passage runs thus ; "Dum illuc conjunxisset [Carolomannus^, nitebatur omnino et vehementius decertabat, sanctse Dei ecclesise causam sub- vertere, juxta quod a prsefato nee dicendo Aistulfo tyranno fuerat directus. Sed propitiante Domino minime valuit sui germani Christianissimi PipjDini regis Francorum in hoc firmissimum eos inclinare. Potius autem conferta nequissimi Aistulfi versutia tota se virtute [al. servitute] idem excellen- tissimus Pipinus Francorum rex professus est decertare pro causa sanctae Dei ecclesise, sicut pridem jam fato beatissimo spoponderat pontifici." All this might be done either in the public Marchfield or in some smaller council, say at Quierzy, or in private discourse with Pippin himself. Karlmann most likely tried all three ways. But that both disputants should appear in the public Marchfield seems quite to agree with what we know of the practice of that assembly. It was (see above, p. 144) a marked part of its business under the later Merwings that the King gave answers to foreign envoys, such answers as the Mayor of the Palace dictated to him. Surely the same practice would go on under the new dynasty, with the simple difference that the King could now answer for himself without any Mayor of the Palace to teach him. Moreover he did not only make answers but heard what the envoys had to say; '' Legates undecunque venientes audirent," says Einhard (Vita K. i). The diplomacy of the Prankish kingdom, like that of the Athenian democracy, allowed the ministers of foreign powers to speak directly to the assembled nation. Now Karlmann, by the strange turning about in his position, appeared as the minister of a foreign power, namely the King of the Lombards. The Pope was either himself a foreign power or the minister of a foreign power, namely the Emperor. According to the usage described by Einhard, both would be heard before the King gave his answer. Karlmann would speak to the assembled Franks in their own tongue. The Pope, as having to speak through an interpreter, would be neither better nor worse off than any other envoy from the Emperor or from the Caliph. THE MISSION OF KARLMANN. 385 It would seem, however, that the rights of ambassadors were not very strictly regarded in the case of Karlmann. He and all that belonged to him were clearly looked on as dangerous. The fact of the shearing of Drogo and his other sons, not mentioned in any of the fuller accounts, comes out in some of the shorter Annals as Petaviani and Laureshamenses, as the detention of the monks who came with him comes out in a letter of Stephen (see above, p. 164). So the three other Annals in Pertz, i. 28, 29. We have already seen the speaking entry ''Karlomanus detentus est." The Biographer says more fully; " Tunc pari consilio isdem sanctissimus pajja cum denominate Francorum rege concilio inito juxta id quod praefatus Karlo- mannus Deo se devoverat monachicham degere vitam in monasterio eum Viennse in Francia [the reading in the note Muratori, iii. 169] collocaverunt. Ubi et post aliquantos dies de hac luce migravit anno Domini 755." This evidently implies, if not actual imprisonment, some kind of safe-keeping. We shall see that he accompanied Pij)pin's army on his march against Italy as far as the jDlace of his death at Vienne. Karlmann, as we have seen, became a monastic hero, one of the special worthies of the house of Monte Casino. As time went on men found it hard to believe that so holy a man had ever acted in op230sition to the Pope. In the later traditions of Monte Casino the story of his mission to the Prankish court was strangely changed to make it agree with the new notions. We have seen that as early as Einhard's day this seems strange, and that an excuse had to be found for him. The story is told in a curious way in the Chronicle of Monte Casino by Leo Marsicanus (Muratori, iv. 270). Karlmann goes on the errand of Aistulph, but we are not told what that errand was. ^' Ab Aistulpho Langobardorum rege j^ro quibusdam rei su?e utihtatibus ad fratrem suum Pipinum regem in Franciam ire rogatus vix segre, Regi hoc annuente Abbate, profectus est. Ibidemque negotio pro quo abierat impediente aliquandiu retardatus judicio Dei defunctus est." But this was a weak way of getting out of the difficulty. The time came at Monte Casino when the story was altogether changed in order to paint Karlmann as no longer the adversary of the Pope, but his faithful companion and advocate. This C c 886 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. version we find in the Epitome Chronicorum Casinensiuni in Muratori, ii. part \, ^. 359, a forgery in the name of the librarian Anastasius, but really written by the deacon Peter of Monte Casino in the twelfth century. The earlier negotia- tions between Stephen, Pippin, and Aistulf, the mission of Chrodegang and the others, are told pretty much as they happened. Note 6, p. 152. THE PATRICIATE OF PIPPIN. That Pippin, his colleagues and successors, from the time of his anointing by Pope Stephen in 754 to the ImjDerial crowning of Charles in 800, bore the title of ^'Patricius Romanorum" is an undoubted fact. Pippin does not seem himself to have used it, but it is constantly given to him and his sons by the Pope. Charles uses it as part of his formal style along with his royal title as Eang of the Franks and Lombards. Out of these facts more than one question arises, and it is needful to make some distinctions between them. We ask then, First, By what authority was the title conferred ? This question is closely connected with another, which however is not quite the same, namely Second, What was the strict formal meaning of the title ? This question is quite distinct from another, namely Third, What was the object of Pope Stephen in bestowing the title or causing it to be bestowed ? What did Pippin understand by it ? And what use did the Pope practically make of the new relation ? These questions hang together. I had myself long been tending to the belief that the title of Patrician could not have been bestowed on the Prankish king except with the consent or indeed by the formal commission of the Emperor. It is imiDossible (see p. 13G) not to believe that John the Silentiary knew and approved of Stephen's journey into Gaul, in case the joint apj^eals of Pope, Silentiary, and Frankish envoys proved vain — as they did prove vain — to bring the King of the Lombards to submission. At Pavia the Pope and the Silentiary, hitherto joint envoys of the Emperor, THE PATRICIATE OF PIPPIN, 387 part ; the Poi^e goes on into Gaul without the Silentiary. Of the Silentiary, and indeed of the Emperor, we hear nothing more till the embassy to which I have had so often to refer in advance (see p. 189), when, in 756, the Silentiary again appears at Rome as joint envoy to Pippin with George the Protosecreta. Then Constantine is still on friendly terms with Pippin, and still cherishes or professes some hope that the King will give up the Exarchate to him. As to the circum- stances of the bestowal of the patriciate we are wholly in the dark ; not a detail is given, nor an explanation of any kind ; we can only say that it was bestowed. To my mind the most obvious guess is that the Poj^e, an Imperial envoy at Pavia, went on as an Imperial envoy to Ponthion, that he had an Imperial commission to ask for help from Pippin and to bestow on him the title of Patrician as an inducement or a reward. On the way in which this would suit the Emperor's purposes, the way in which I believe that the Pope turned the commis- sion to his own purposes, I have enlarged at some length in the text. And it seems to me that something like this would be the most obvious guess, if it were not for the kind of super- stition which hinders most minds from taking in the real position of an Emperor of the eighth century. It extends even to great scholars who know every recorded detail of every fact ; even they cannot set themselves free from popular notions ; it is plain that the rule of the Emperor in Italy seems to them something strange, something, so to speak, uncanny, something against kind {napa c^vaiv). They show the feeling by the use of needless epithets for the Emperor and the Empire. They are " Greek," an epithet utterly misleading at any time ; they are *' Byzantine," at best ''East-Eoman." But even this last epithet is needless when there is no '' West-Roman" to oppose to it ; it is out of place between the years 476 and 800. Eveiy- thing shows how hard it is to take in the position of the single Roman Emperor of the eighth century, reigning over what was left of the Empire, over Old Rome as well as New, by unbroken succession from the Elavil and the Julii. Once grasp this plain fact, and the whole thing is clear ; there is no longer any difficulty in conceiving the Poj^e as acting as the envoy of the Emperor and as bestowing the patriciate on the King of the Franks by an Imperial commission. The scholars of an earlier C c 2 388 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. time found far less difficulty in taking in the position of the Emi)erors from 476 to 800 than the scholars of our own day. They knew the documents and their language as well as later scholars, and it had never been beaten into their heads that those documents had to be interpreted by talk about '' Greek," ''Byzantine," ''effete Lower Empire," and what not. They had not been warped b}^ reading that fatal chapter of Gibbon (chap, xlviii) which, by its tone of scorn and mockery, undoes beforehand all that might otherwise be learned from the really precious chapters that follow it. Cast all these prejudices aside, and I say boldly that, though I cannot directly prove that Pippin received the patriciate by commission from Constantine Kopronymos, yet not only no one can directly prove that he did not, but that to suj^pose that he did is the most natural expla- nation of the whole matter. I speak now simply of the formal act ; what the Pope designed, what the King understood, what practically came of it all — all these are distinct questions which I shall come to afterwards. In the Beviie Historique, xxxiii. 58 (January- April, 1887), there is an article headed " Le Koyaume Lombard, ses relations avec I'Empire Grec et avec les Fi^ancs." Its matter has since appeared as part of a printed work, " L'Empire Byzantin et la Monarchie Franque, par A. Gasquet" (Paris, 1888). M. Gas- quet shows a far better understanding of these things than is common. Though he does talk about " I'EmiDire Grec" and a "roi de France," he quite takes in what the position of an Emperor of the eighth century was, and the difference between the position of Gregory towards Charles Martel and that of Stephen towards Pippin. Nothing can be clearer than Father Gasquet's language in p. 237 ; "Pepin et ses fils re9urent des papes le titre de patrices, qui impliquait la mission d'assurer la sauvegarde du sainte-siege. Le patriciat, qui etait une dignite imperiale, fut cette fois confere au prince franc avec I'autorisation et I'aveu de I'empereur. 11 ne s'agissait pas, en effet, comme au temps ou Gregoire III traita avec Charles Martel, d'associer la France a la rebellion du pontife centre Constantinople. Le legat imperial avait assiste aux conferences de Pavie ; la proposition du due Autchaire s'etait produite en sa presence sans soulever de sa part aucune protestation. II sembluit naturel que I'empereur chargeat le THE PATRICIATE OF PIPPIN. 389 roi de France de ce role de defenseur, que lui-nienie se sentait incapable de remplir efficacement. " So he says a little later; ''Nulle part il n'apparait que le pape ait pris sur lui de conferer de son plein droit une magi- strature imperiale. " Father Gasquet goes on to speak of the well-known ^'^ Fan- tuzzi Fragment," not at all as believing it to be genuine, but as supplying evidence in that secondary way in which a forged charter often is, on any point other than that which the forger is trying to establish, nearly as good evidence as a genuine one. The document itself will be found in Fantuzzi's Monumenti Eavennati, vi. 264, and in Troya (Cod. Dipl. Lang. iv. pt. iv. 503), and in Martens, Die romischen Fragm. p. 269. It is full of blunders, beginning with the very heading and greeting. Pippin, ''Patricium Komanorum " — he is not called ^'EexFran- corum " — is made to write to a Pope Gregory, which he certainly never did. Its object is to assert for the Eoman see a right, not only over the Exarchate, but over a vast deal more, Venice, Istria, Parma, Pistoia, Lucca, the island of Corsica, and what not. So far it may be safely set down as a shameless forgery. But the way in which it sets about to prove the claim is well worth notice. Pope Stephen, when he was troubled by the Lombards, got leave from the Emperor Leo to choose a "patronus," a word which the writer evidently looks on as equivalent to ^'patricius." '' Beatissimus ejusdem almae sedis pontifex Stephanus no- mine Imperatorem Constantinopolitanum nomine Leonem per legates sues accessit. . . . Petit ut licentiam haberet, vel quidquid vellet circa hoc Eegnum per Patronatum, defensio- nemque nominis nostri elegamini [eligere (Bettis)] sibi, suisque eligere solute valeret, cujus petitionis intercedente eodem clavigero Eegni caBlorum isdem Imperator adsensum prebens literis suis, non solum Eomanis, sed et nobis innotuit, quod eidem Pontifici concessse [concessam] haberet licentiam amicis, et tutorem sanctae suae Ecclesiae senatuique Eomano, atque cuncto Exarcatui Italico illi subjacenti Patrono fsederis robo- rationis firmare quantum se plurimis tribulationibus autum [auctum] hinc inde circa vicinitatem suam perferebat. Igitur per legatum ejusdem Imperatoris, nomine Marino, uterque [utroeque] nobis e]3istolse oblatae sunt." 390 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Pippin, it must be remembered, is speaking. He goes on to tell of the invasions of Aistulf, of the Pope's visit to Gaul, of his own embassy to Aistulf — by which he promised the Lombard king twenty-seven silver solidi and twelve thousand in gold, to keep quiet — of the Pope's sickness and recovery. Besides the figures, he is made to give some dates (p. 505) which should be noticed ; ''Praecipimus ut ex regnis nobis a Domino subditis, comites, tribuni et duces et marchiones post octavas paschae nostrse adessent praesentise, cum quibus de talibus inire debuissemus consilium. Cumque jussum nostrum fuisset impletum, et omnes eodem die coram nobis adstarent, statuimus cum consensu et clamore omnium et tertio Kalendas Maiarum in Christi nomine hostilitate Longobardiam adissemus." This looks like an assembly at Quierzy, where Pippin kept Easter in 754, mixed up with the march of the army in May, 756. He then goes on to speak of a promise conditional on success C'si Dominus Deus noster pro suis [Petri] meritis sacrisque precibus victores nos in gente et regno Longobardorum esse constituerit ") of the Exarchate and all the rest ''necnon et omnia quae pridem tuae per imperatoris largitiones subsistebant ditioni." All that he asks for himself is ''solummodo ut orationibus et animae requiem profiteamur et a vobis populo- que vestri patricii Romanorum vocemur." The strong Imperial tone of all this is certainly to be noticed. And, if we could be at all sure that the forgery was made at all near to the time of Stephen, say in the papacy of Hadrian, as Father Gasquet suggests, there would be very great force in Father Gasquet's arguments which follow. The immediate object of the forger, he says, p. 237, was simply to mark the extent of the grant to the Roman See ; ''II n'etait d'aucun interet pour sa these de faire deriver le patriciat du roi de France de la collation imperiale. II n'en parle que comme d'un detail presque indifferent, mais connu de tous les contemporains, et propre a aj outer de la vraisemblance a sa fiction. Si le pontife avait pris sur lui de decerner au roi de France la dignite de patrice, I'auteur anonyme qui ecrit pour glorifier le saint-si^ge n'aurait pas commis la faute de dementir cette usurpation. II aurait craint que sa fraude ne fut par Ih decouverte. II raisonne ainsi : Pepin a fait au saint- THE PATRICIATE OF PIPPIN. 391 sifege une donation de territoire fort etendue, et il avait le droit d'agir ainsi, puisque Fempereur lui-meme, en le nomniant patrice, lui avait delegue tons ses pouvoirs en Italie." But the forgery cannot possibly be as old as the pontificate of Hadrian. To make Pippin address a Pope Gregory, to make Stephen send to an Emperor Leo, are very bad mistakes, which are not likely to have been so near to the time, and the phrase "imperator Constantinopolitanus " cannot have been used before 800, and it is not likely to have been used till a good while after. Nor again would a writer at all near to Pippin's day have confounded "patronus" and "patricius." The docu- ment beyond all doubt belongs to a later time, say to that of Otto the Third and Gregory the Fifth, when papal and Imperial ideas were more friendly than at any other time since Charles the Great. SchefPer (Beichel, Mittheilungen des Instituts fiir Oesterreichische Geschichtsforschung, v. Band, 2*© Halfte, p. 205, Innsbruck, 1884) brings strong arguments to show that it was put together out of documents of Lewis the Pious and Otto the Great. Still there is something very remarkable in the Im- perialist tone of the document. The doctrine that Pippin held his patriciate by an Imperial grant, that the Pope held by an Imperial grant whatever he held or claimed to hold would be doctrines agreeable to Otto the Third or to any other Emperor. But to say that such a grant in the eighth century must have come from an Emj^eror reigning at Constantinople, and to take the rule of such an Emperor so quietly for granted, certainly shows that the forger, though he blundered somewhat in dates and names, and though he did not scruple to lie when it was for the good of the Koman Church, still had a grasp of the real state of things in Italy in the days of Constantino and Pippin, to which many scholars of our own day have not reached. But I confess that I am amazed when I find Father Gasquet going on to refer to one of the most daring fictions in the world as of some authority. He refers to the " Chronique du Mont-Cassin," as ''bien informee des evenements auxquels se trouva mele Carloman, et qui essaie de justifier le frfere de Pepin et I'abbe du monastere du role que leur pretent les annalistes du saint-siege." This is passing strange, as he can refer to no "Chronique du Mont-Cassin " except that wonderful Epitome, of which I have said something in the last Note. It 392 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. is there that we find tlie words which he quotes ; only they are not uttered at Saint Denis, but at Monte Cassino. It is there, if anybody likes to believe it, that Poj^e Stephen, in company with seven Cardinal Bishops, with the three Kings and Patricians, Pippin, Charles, and Karlmann, and the elder Karlmann to boot, prays to Saint Benedict in this fashion ; " Sedem apostolicam protege, Romanum Imperiuni et hos gloriosos patricios . . . defende." Presently follows; "Omnia praecepta et privilegia pontificum et imperatorum idem pontifex cum supradictis patriciis renovans." The forger of the " chro- nicon portentosum " in the twelfth century was not thinking of Emperors reigning at Constantinople in the eighth. I am afraid that, of Father Gasquet's two authorities, one proves nothing and the other very little, and that, to show that Constantine Kopronjmios had something to do with the l^atriciate of Pippin, Ave must trust mainly to the likelihood of the case. Still it is a gain to have the matter again brought forward, a gain to see that anybody has a notion of the position of the Isaurian Emperors in Italy. But there is a much earlier writer to whom I must also refer. I was struck in the third A^olume of Waitz with these words in a note at p. 80 ; " Luden's Meinung IV. p. 207, dass der Papst im Auftrag des ost-romischen Kaisers gehandelt, ist ganz ohne Grund." I had not then looked at Luden ; but the notice suggested that he ought to be looked at, and I found that he was very well worth looking at. When a man says " Dass der Papst im Namen oder im Auftrage des Kaisers gehandelt, hat Nichts gegen sich," one sees that he has got the sow by the right ear. In short, Luden (Geschichte des teutschen Volkes. Gotha, 1828) has given what is, in some respects, the best narrative of these matters, because he is the only writer who has fully grasped the true nature of an Emperor of the eighth century. In the passage which Waitz rules to be "ganz ohne Grund," he goes most thoughtfully into the whole matter. I had made up my own mind before I read him ; but, when I read such an exposition of things as I find in the following extract, I will not say, "Pereant qui ante Tios," &c., but rather thank Waitz for sending me, by his scornful reference, to so clear a statement of views to which I had come independently ; "... hatte sich der Papst zu der Reisenach Gallien entschlossen, THE PATRICIATE OF PIPPIN. 393 gewiss nicht ohne die Zustimniung des kaiserlichen Sendboten. Mithin hatte der Papst bisher durchaus im Einverstandnisse mit dem kaiserlichen Hofe in Constantinopel gehandelt, iind daruni ist zu vermuthen, dass dasjenige, \Yas er in Gallien gethan, nicht gegen den Willen des kaiserlichen Hofes ge- schehen sei. Endlich zeigen auch die niichsten Ereignisse, dass die Ertheilimg des Patriciats an den Konig der Franken wenig- stens keine feindliche Handlung gegen den Kaiser gewesen sei, sondern dass Pippin vielniehr fiir den Kaiser gestrebet habe : denn er stellet seine Forderungen an den Konig der Lango- barden wenigstens in so fern auch zuni Besten des Reiches, als er auftrat fiir eine Kirche des Reiches. Indess ist nicht zu lilugnen, alles ward in eineni gewissen Halbdunkel gehalten und die Worter wurden bei den Verhandlungen so gewahlet, oder die Worte wurden so gestellet, dass sie leicht fiir den Kaiser oder gegen den Kaiser gedeutet werden konnten, je nachdem Zeit und Unistande diese Deutung forderten oder jene." The second c^uestion, In what formal sense was the title of Patrician bestowed on Pippin ? is not a very hard one, if we keep it distinct from the third. For the Emperor to bestow the rank of Patrician on any king to whom he mshed to pay a compliment or of whom he wished to make any use was a most obvious and natural thing. Over the word "Patricius" itself we need raise no difficulty whatever. It is simply the highest rank in the Empire after those which implied some share or shadow of Imperial power. It was a rank, not an office ; but it was consistent with the holding of any office, and patrician rank was commonly bestowed on the holders of the highest offices. It is oiAj the particular form "Patricius Bomanonim" which raises the slightest difficulty. It is the turning into a formal title of a form of words which had now and then (see p. 152) been used as a mere descri23tion. In our utter lack of real evidence, we may be allowed to doubt whether the Emperor knew anything of the addition "Romanorum." Yet in the particular case of Pippin the addition was intel- ligible, perhaps necessary. I have suggested (see p. 153) that the familiar use of the name "patricius" in one part of the Frankish dominions would make it needful to add some quali- fication when it was applied to the Frankish king. Pipj^in 394 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. was to be a Roman Patrician, something different from this or that Patrician in Burgundy. And however the word ''Ro- manorum " got there, it would certainly not be taken by anybody as applying to the 'Pco^alot everywhere from Lily- baion to Mount Tauros, but definitely to the Romans of the Old Rome or at the most of Italy. If Constantino meant that Pippin might be Exarch, if he could get back the Exarchate from Aistulf, it would not be very wonderful. It would be a great gain if we could see the title in Greek. But the third question, because of its inherent vagueness, is much harder. What the Pope meant Pippin to be, and what Pippin understood that the Pope meant him to be when he became Patrician of the Romans, are two things which are them- selves not quite the same^ and both are quite distinct from the question what the words Patrician of the Romans would naturally and formally mean. None of the writers who record the bestowal of the patriciate tell us what they understood the patriciate to mean. If we turn to Pope Stephen's letters, it is not easy to distinguish the powers and duties (if any) directly involved in the patriciate from the duties which Pij)pin was held to have taken upon himself by the various ''promissiones" and "donationes" which we shall have to speak of in the next Note. In the first letter of Stephen after his journey to Gaul and the first Lombard campaign (Jaffe, Mon. Car. 34) there is a good deal about a ''donationis pagina," something about Saint Peter having anointed Pippin and his sons kings ; the patriciate is nowhere directly mentioned, unless it is the ''prse- fulgidum munus," the ^'bonum opus," which distinguished Pippin and his sons from all their predecessors (cf. p. 178), *'ut per vos exaltetur ecclesia et suam princeps apostolorum percipiat justitiam." In the second letter there is again a good deal about a j)romise and a " donatio " ; the kings are again told that they were anointed kings to do the "bonumopus" just defined. But of the patriciate there is not a word. Nor is the patriciate named in the third more private letter to Pippin (Mon. Car. p. 53), though it is open to any one to take it as referred to when the Pope says, "Tua3 amantissimae excellentiae vel dulcissimis filiis et cuncte genti Francorum — per Dei prseceptionem et beati Petri— sanctam Dei ecclesiam et nostrum Eomanorum reipublicce populum comisimus prote- THE PATRICIATE OF PIPPIN. 395 gendum." Truly the '^respublica" has become something different from what it was but lately. The Pope has set the King of the Franks and the whole people of the Franks to look after it ; but there is nothing about a patrician. Saint Peter himself, so strong on his special relation to the Franks, does not even use the name in his greeting. But, what we should hardly have looked for, a patriciate vested in Saint Peter himself, and contrasted with the patriciate of the Prankish king, seems to be asserted in one of the letters of Pope Hadrian to Charles the Great (Mon. Car. p. 290. See Ducange in Fatri- ckis, and Savigny, i. 360) ; ''Quia, ut fati estis, honor patriciatus vestri a nobis iiTefragabiliter conservatur, etiam et plus amplius honorificae honoratur, simili modo ij^sum patriciatum beati Petri faiitoris vestri, tarn a sanctae recordationis domni Pippini magni regis genitoris vestri in scriptis in integro concessum et a vobis amplius confirmatum, irrefragabih jure permaneat." The meaning of this flourish may be better discussed when we come to consider the ''donatio"; but it is surely, as regards the title, a mere flourish. There is again a reference to the patriciate of Charles in another letter of Hadrian (Mon. Car. p. 267), where he calls on the King "pro honore vestri patri- ciati," and complains that royal "missi" have been sent to the election of an archbishop of Kavenna. It is from notices of this kind that we have to put together our notions both of the patriciate and the "donatio." Ravenna had been given to somebody, anyhow to Saint Peter in some shape ; the Patrician thought that nevertheless he might exercise a very kingly right there ; the Pope thought he might not. Did Hadrian object because Ravenna had been given to Saint Peter or because the Patrician had no business to meddle with such matters any- where? He claims free election for the church of Ravenna, subject to some kind of reference to the apostolic see. In the absence of any express description of the rights and duties of the Patrician, as understood on either side, there is in truth no way of finding out excejDt by seeing, from a heap of scattered notices, what kind of authority Pi^^pin and Charles really exercised at Rome or Ravenna from 754 to 800. In this case it is not wonderful if different scholars have been led to different views about the matter. Savigny (Geschichte des romischen Rechts, i. 310-313) does not say 396 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. much about the patriciate ; but in a note he seems to define the Frankish king as being in that character the Pope's Schirmvogt in Rome, while the Pope himself (see chap, i, and below, p. 416) was a patrician in the Exarchate. Gregorovius (ii. 273 et seqq.) seems to have, naturally enough, some difficulty in distinguishing the promise from the bestowal of the patriciate — one might perhaps take the promise as a kind of coronation-oath — but he has a fairly distinct theory as to what the jDatriciate was. The Imperial supremacy still lived on in name, or at least was not formally denied (^'bliebnoch stillschweigend im Princip anerkannt"); but the Pope and the Eoman peo]3le named Pippin as ''Defensor" of the Eoman Church ( ' ' Defensor der Kirche und ihres weltlichen Eigentums "). This was done by virtue of a '' Beschluss des gesammten romischen Volkes." Yet such a vote must have passed before Pippin set out for Gaul, and it is hard to find a place for it amongst all the negotiations at Rome and Pavia. The Patrician was the defender of Rome (" der Konig habe als Patricius der Romer die Pflicht der Verteidigung Roms ") ; he was (note on p. 275) the ''Advocator" of the Church. He notices that Pippin is often spoken of in the Papal and other Roman letters as a defender, but never formally as a Defensor (Mon. Car. 71, nosterque post Deum defensor), but that Charles the Great uses the title formally. He points out how the Popes tried to give the patriciate an ecclesiastical character ("die Politik der Pitpste leitete diese nur aus dem gottlichen Beruf, dessen Symbol die Salbung gewesen sei"). The Patrician represented the Emperor (he had "die Jurisdiction im Exarchat und in Rom im Namen des Kaisers und Reichs";. The powers of the patriciate grew, against the will of the popes ; it changed "aus einer bewaffneten Advocatur zur Gewalt oberherrlicher Jurisdiction. " An almost formal use of the word " defensor " is found in the report which the Moissac annalist (followed by him of Metz) gives of the messages which passed between Pippin and Aistulf. Pippin speaks of " sancta Romana ecclesia, cujus ille defensor per divinam ordinationem fuerat." This surely means the patriciate. The bestowal of the patriciate is not mentioned in this writer's description of the unction ; but his text seems to be imperfect, and the omission is supplied by the Metz writer. THE PATRICIATE OF PIPPIN. 397 Hegel (Geschichte der Stadteverfassung von Italien, i. 209) rules the patriciate of Pippin to be the " Statthaltersehaft im Ducat von Kom," formerly dependent on the Exarchs but latterly on the Popes. The Pope did not mean to give over to him the government of Eome ('' die Herrschaft von Kom an sie abzutreten") ; he only sought a mighty protector who would think honours and titles enough. Waitz (Verfassungsgeschichte, iii. 80) refers approvingly to Hegel, but pronounces the views of Gregorovius to be "fast alles unbegrlindet." The patriciate in some sort continued the Empire, but, as we have seen, it was bestowed on Pippin without any reference to the reigning Emperor. The Patrician was mainly concerned with Rome and its duchy. "Pippin emi:)fing damit ein Recht, das an sich freilich auf den Begriff des Kaiserthums zuriickging, bei dem aber von einer Beziehung zu dem ostromischen Kaiser keine Rede war. Der Papst tibertrug es ihm, indem er als Vertreter des in der Idee fortlebenden Reiches handelte ; er bestelle den frankischen Konig als den, welcher die Rechte desselben wahrnehmen, insonderheit die Kirche und ihren Bischof schiitzen und vertheidigen sollte." Dollinger, in his discourse "Das Kaiseiihum Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger" (Akademische Vortrage, Dritter Band, von I. von Dollinger, p. 83, 1891), goes more fully into the nature of the patriciate. The people of Rome, with the Pope at their head, devised it as something less strong than throwing off the authority of the Emperor altogether. The passage is remarkable ; we are in the grasp of a strong hand indeed ; "Darum ward die Mittelstellung des Patriciats geschaffen, und dem nun im Frankenreiche herrschenden Konigshause iibertragen. Damit sollten die Papste und die Romer sich keineswegs von der Unterordnung unter das Imperium zu Constantinopel lossagen. Aber sie batten schon so oft, von dort her verlassen und preisgegeben, fur sich sorgen miissen, und das thaten sie auch diesmal, als kein andres Mittel, das Joch der verhassten Longobarden abzuwehren, sich darbot. Dieses Patriciat nun war eine romische Reichswiirde ; indem die Romer und der Papst an ihrer Spitze und in ihrem Namen sie den Frankenfursten ubertrugen, machten sie die Trager des Patriciats 398 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. zu einem hervorragenden Gliede der romischen Eespublica, und handelten demnach bereits in dem Gefiihle, dass das romische Volk im Nothfall ein Amt, eine Wiirde verleilien konne, auch ohne dazu von Byzanz ermaclitiget zu sein." He goes on to say, with full truth, that the patriciate of Pippin was the first stei? towards the Empire of Charles. He rejects the view of Hegel that it had something to do with the Roman duchy, but quotes with approval his saying about the mighty protector who would be satisfied with titles and honours. He goes on to point out the difference between the Patrician and any duke, of Rome or elsewhere. He remarks that though the Popes applied it to the Prankish kings as a formal title, yet that they themselves never used it as such till after Charles had conquered Lombardy and taken the title of King of the Lombards. Then for the first time the title had a meaning for him ; then he was able to discharge the calling which it implied of a Schirmvogt over the Romans Cder romischen oder nicht-longobardischen Bevolkerung "). He did not, by taking the patriciate, mean to become an Imperial officer ; but neither did the Romans, by bestowing it, mean to separate themselves from the Empire. The patriciate gave no territorial power (''keine Gewalt auch nur liber ein Dorf"); it was essentially a Schirmvogtei, but not only over the Roman Church but over the Roman people. He remarks on the connexion of the patriciate with the anointing, and speaks of the application of the word by Hadrian to himself (or to Saint Peter) as a vague use of the word. The Poj)e was a real ruler under the nominal supremacy of the Emperor ; the Patrician was not a ruler but a Schirmherr ; yet his Scliirmlierrscliaft might, in eases of necessity, amount to actual dominion. Dollinger fuiiher refers (p. 86) to the offer made by Gregory the Third to Charles, but he speaks of the office offered to him as patriciate instead of considsMp. I must think that he does not quite see the distinction between the two. Ranke (Welt- geschichte, v. 31) naturally says less than Dollinger, who is specially dealing with Carolingian matters. He mentions the bestowal of the title on the King and his sons, and adds ; '^ Dadurch aber wurde die erste Sendung Gregors, welche den Entschluss der Romer, sich der Herrschaft von Constantinopel zu entziehen, ausgesj^rochen hatte, nahezu erreicht." THE PATRICIATE OF PIPPIN. 399 In a rough practical sense this is doubtless true ; but Dollinger sees more clearly that Stephen did not intend a formal separation from the Empire, Eanke sees more clearly that Gregory did. There is not much to be found in the special biographer of Pippin, Oelsner (p. 144). He collects some examples of the use of the word, and says, ''in dem Patriciatus Eomanorum, welcher den frankischen Konigen im Jahre 754 iibertragen wurde, lag der Begriff der Herrschaft ; nur in diesem Sinne nennt der Papst auch einmal seine eigene Stellung ein Patriciat " (referring to the words of Hadrian quoted above). He collects some examples from the papal letters to show that the Patrician exercised a practical authority in Rome. Martens, W. (Die romische Frage unter Pippin und Karl dem Grossen, Stuttgart, 1881) has two sections in close connexion (pp. 71 et seqq.), headed severally, "Die neue Respublica Eomana " and "Der romische Patriciat Pippin's und seiner Sohne," and another heading Kritische Erorterungen, in p. 98. The book was followed by a second paper (Neue Erorterungen tiber die romische Frage, &c. , Stuttgart, 1882) in which he reviews his reviewers. He has some views of his own. Pippin's unction by Stephen took place in February, 754 (pp. 22, 45) ; he seems misled by the phrase " post aliquantos dies." By that unction the patriciate was conferred. It had nothing (p. 81) to do with the old patriciate conferred by the Emperors ; it was a device (eine freie Schopfung) of Pope Stephen himself. Being new, it could be, as the Moissac Chronicle says, " secundum morem majorum " ; so those words must refer to the kingship only (yet no Prankish king before Pippin was ever anointed). The patriciate was " eine politische Titulatur," an honorary member- ship (Ehrenmitgliedschaft) of the new " EespublicaRomanorum." It had nothing specially to do with the Church, only with the "respublica," except so far as (p. 75) the territory of the republic belonged to the Church, "sancta Dei ecclesia rei- publicae Eomanorum." Stephen's Eepublic was something new. Hithei-to "Eespublica" had meant specially the Exarchate ("im achten Jahrhundert wurde in Italien unter Eespublica (im besonderen Sinne) der under griechischer Herrschaft stehende Exarchat von Eavenna verstanden," p. 72). But Stephen (p. 73) meant also to take in the duchy of Eome. 400 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Of this Kepublic the Pope was to be the sovereign, but not fully sovereign (^'erstrebte Stephan nicht bloss den Ducat, sondern auch den Exarchat der souveranen Herrschaft der Papste zu unterwerfen, " p. 76. '' Dem ungeachtet darf man Stephan II nicht als Souveran ini wahren und vollen Sinne des Wortes ansehen," jd. 77). He was not called "princeps" or ^^rex"; he was not in short a ''papa re." The Republic was independent of the Emperor (''von dem griechischen Kaiser ganz unabhangig," p. 77. '' Unabhangig von Byzanz," p. 78. "Ein von Griechenland unabhangiges Staatswesen," pp. 79, 84). The form ''ducatus" is dropped. That ConstantinojDle is called ''urbs regia," that deeds are still dated by the years of the Emperors proves no dependence. Nor was it dependent on the King of the Franks. With him the Pope had a " Freund- schafts- oder Liebesbund," ''ein ethisches Band" (pp. 26, 78) ; but no formal tie (" rechtlich," ''juristisch," ''volkes- oder staatsrechtlich," p. 78). But it was practically (factisch) dependent. This state of things is allowed to have been strange and not without its disadvantage; ''War diese Ent- stehung der Respublica Romanorum singular und anormal, so barg sie auch fur die Zukunft grosse Schwierigkeiten in sich." In fifty years the practical dependence became "recht- lich " ; the friend and "Defensor" became "ein Souveran, oder wenigstens ein Oberherr." In the " Kritische Erorterungen," Martens goes on to dispute against several of the writers to whom I have referred and several to whom I have not, both on the matter of the patriciate and on that of the " Schenkung " — to which we shall come presently. In this kind of discussion one feels more and more keenly how hopeless it is to try to heep up with the endless store of German writers, specially on a subject like this, where the direct evidence is so sKght, and where one man may guess as well as another. Martens of course (p. 110) deals a blow at Luden, because his belief that the Emperor had a hand in the business is "selbst- verstiindlich ohne einen Schein quellenmiissigen Beleges." Undoubtedly, as far as any direct evidence goes. But then the other guesses have just as little direct evidence for them, and Luden 's guess agrees better than the others with the "Quellen" before and after and with the general state of THE PATRICIATE OF PIPPIN. 401 things. Martens fights no less manfully against every one who looks on the Pope as in any sense a rej^resentative of the Emperor; he must be the head of his own new-made ''Ee- public." About the patriciate he disputes against Waitz, Dollinger, Gregorovius, Hegel, and others, to whom I have already referred, and he bestows some notes of admiration (!) on several writers whom I have not come across. He specially argues against Lorenz that the patriciate had nothing to do with the election of the Pope. Martens has also an Appendix on the Fantuzzi Fragment, which he prints at length at p. 268. He has of course no difficulty in showing it to be a forgery ; but he does not seem in the least to understand its importance as a witness to Imperialist ideas. We come to the great name of Eanke. He (Weltgeschichte, V. 2. 27) makes one remark which comes with special fitness from the author of a " Weltgeschichte," who is not shut up within any narrow bounds of specialism, but has his feet set in a large room. Aistulf chose for the time of his attack on the Imperial possessions in Italy a moment when the Emperor was busily engaged in Asia. Those who chatter about " Greeks of the Lower Empire " — though Eanke himself talks about '' Griechen " — would not think of that. Eanke does not go at any great length into the question of the patriciate ; but his views must be given in his own clear words ; '' Dadurch aberw^urde die erste Sendung Gregors, welche den Entschluss der Eomer, sich der Herrschaft von Constantinopel zu entziehen, ausgesprochen hatte, nahezu erreicht. '^ Eom trat nicht allein fur diesen Augenblick, sondern fiir alle Zeiten unter den Schutz des frankischen Konigs. Dem vom Papst ernannten Patricius fiel eine von dem Kaiserthum unab- hangige Autoritat zu. Die Wtirde des Patricius schloss die Pflicht der Htilfeleistung ein, sobald sie fiir die Stadt erforder- lich sein wiirde." Dahn, like Eanke, has the advantage of a wide knowledge and grasp of things. He has (Urgeschichte, iii. 876) less to say about the patriciate than about the '' Schenkung." He knows perfectly well the relations between the Emperor and the Pope, ' ' der damals zweifellos byzantinischer Unterthan war — eben D d 402 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. hatte er ' Befehle ' seines Herrschers befolgt." Only the saying is a little darkened by the word '' byzantinischer," and there was no need to go on to say, with a clear fling at Luden ; '' Kindisch zu nennen ist daher die Yorstellung, der Papst habe alle diese Verhindungen mit den Franhen angekniipft, im Auftrag des Kaisers." Luden (iv. 207, 208) says no such thing ; he merely says of the bestowal of the patriciate, '' dass der Papst im Namen oder im Auftrage des Kaisers gehandelt, hat Nichts gegen sich." And one might go on to call it '' kindisch " in Dahn when he asks, '' Geschah etwa auch die Errichtung des Kirchenstaats, die Ver- leihung von Eavenna und dem Exarchat, endlich die Kronung Karls im Auftrag des Kaisers ? '* The distinction needs hardly to be pointed out. In Luden's view, the Pope, confessedly the Emperor's envoy at Pavia, went on in the same character to Ponthion. Only he betrayed his master — I am almost trans- lating Dahn's own words, how the Pope was guilty of a '' Rechtsbruch der Treupflicht eines Unterthans " — and so brought about ^' die Errichtung des Kirchenstaats " and ''die Yerleihung von Ravenna und dem Exarchat." Dahn shows presently that he knows all about the Imperial embassy of 756 ; but he seems to have forgotten it just now. On the patriciate itself Dahn is not very clear ; but the following passage is worth noting ; "Den Titel patrichis — ohne jede reale Bedeutung — zu ver- leihen, hatten die Pabste, ohne Widerspruch des Kaisers, sich schon langere Zeit verstattet ; nur diesen Titel hatte der Pabst Karl Martell gegeben ; aber auch Pippin und dessen Sohnen konnte der Pabst rechtsgiiltig nur diesen Titel verleihen ; eine wirkliche Schutzgewalt staatsrechtlichen Inhalts, also einer Art tibergeordneter Staatshoheit iiber der halbsouverainen des Pabstes, konnte dieser rechtsgiiltig so wenig wie 737 oder 774 oder 800 verleihen ; denn er hatte sie nicht ; er war und blieb, dem Rechte nach, Unterthan des Kaisers und die Schritte, welche er, von den Franken imterstiitzt, zwischen 754 und 800 gethan, dies Verhiiltniss zu losen, konnten es nur that- sachlich, nicht rechtlich losen." We look back to p. 820, where Dahn describes the offer of the consulate to Charles Martel by Gregory. He does not seem to have caught the distinction between the consulate and the THE PATRICIATE OF PIPPIN. 403 patriciate. And where he gets the supposed patriciate of the Popes is plain enough (see above, p. 396). But in p. 821, just as in p. 876, he puts forth the true relations between the Popes and the Emperors with all clearness. My own belief will have been made clear already. Pope Stephen went into Gaul with a commission from the Emperor. He was to ask for help for the Eoman Republic against the Lombards and to offer the rank of Patrician as a reward. It was the mission of Theodoric over again. The Emperor used the words in their ordinary sense. The Pope played on this possibly doubtful meaning ; he made the King promise to help the Republic, he bestowed on him the rank of Patrician, using both words in a sense different from that intended by the Emperor. He did not openly throw off his allegiance to the Empire ; he did not directly ask the King to do anything hostile to the Emperor ; he kept the Empire in the back- ground, and made Pippin accept the patriciate in the sense which Dollinger gives to it, that of a Sckirnivogtei — I really cannot translate the word — over the Roman Church and over the Roman Republic in the new sense of the word. Stephen wished to do things quietly ; he might have frightened Pippin by so bold a proposal as that which Gregory had made to his father. He wanted to get a protector, a ScJiirmvogt, who should silently put the Emperor aside without any open revolt. He wanted one who would come to his help whenever he was needed against Emperor, Lombards, or any other possible enemies, but who would at other times leave him to manage his Roman Church and Republic by himself. Between Stephen and the Patrician Pippin this plan answered fairly well. Later popes found that the Patrician Charles was inclined to be somewhat more of a master. And, if they were to have a master, an Emperor might be less displeasing than a Patrician. In short I do not see any difference between my notions of the actual workings of the patriciate and those of Dollinger — so immeasurably the fullest and clearest of all that I have quoted. Only I must cleave to the belief, which I share with a somewhat antiquated yoke-fellow in Luden, that the formal bestowal of the patriciate was made by Imperial authority. With such evidence as we have, this is a position which cannot D d 2 404 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. be directly proved, as it surely cannot be directly disproved. But it surely has every likelihood on its side. For any but the Emperor to make a patrician was unheard of ; for the Pope to do it of his own authority would have been an act of revolt, and Pope Stephen wished to avoid all formal revolt. When we see him acting as an Imperial envoy up to the last moment before his starting for Gaul, the presumption surely is that it was in that character that he went on into Gaul. And this inference is strengthened when we find that the next recorded piece of Imperial diplomacy was to ask the new-made Patrician to hand over to their proper master the lands of whose recovery his patriciate was the reward. The Pope took in both King and Emperor, the King perhaps more thoroughly than the Emperor. For we cannot think that Constantine had any very sanguine hope that the mission of Stephen to Gaul would turn out for his advantage. He most likely ordered it or consented to it as a last chance. Note 7, p. 171. THE PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. In this Note, as in the last, we must distinguish between the outward order of events and their practical meaning and results. We will first try to find out the time, place, and form of any promises, any grants, made by Pippin to the Pope or to those whom the Pope professed to represent. We will then try to find out what was understood by such promises and grants and what practically came of them. It is, I think, of special importance to distinguisli two things which are apt to get con- founded, namely mere promises, even on oath, by which the King binds himself to do something which the Pope asks him to do, promises in their own nature contingent on success, and actual grants made when by success the King had become possessed of power to make grants. We often hear of a "donatio," a " Schenkung," of the Exarchate or of something else in Italy made by Pippin at Quierzy or elsewhere during the Pope's stay in Gaul. Now such a grant, in any strict sense of the word, is of course impossible. Setting aside any question about the Emperor or anything else, Pippin could not grant what he had not got ; he could at most promise to grant it if PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 405 he should ever get it. For my part, I see nothing that could be called a ''donatio" in any strict se-nse till after Pippin's second Italian campaign. But I see something following the first campaign which might easily be called a "donatio" in somewhat laxer language. Up to that time I see nothing but promises which might or might not be set down in writing, but to which the name " donatio," if ever applied, was wrongly applied. That is to say, I hold that Pippin made promises to Stephen while he was in Gaul, that these promises were embodied in a clause of the treaty made between Pippin and Aistulf after the first Lombard campaign, and lastly that Pippin gave the Pope a grant in regular form after the second cam- paign. This last was strictly a "donatio," a "Schenkung"; the clause in the treaty might easily be called so in a laxer sense. Till the treaty there was nothing to which the name could be at all fau'ly applied. Our authorities are, as before, the Life of Stephen, the Prankish annalists, and the references to the matter in the letters of Stephen and other popes. It will this time perhaps be better to look first at our Prankish i^iformants, if only to see how very little they have to tell us. The older and shorter Annals tell us nothing, except the entry in the Annales Alemannia, Guelferbytani, and Kazariani ; "753. Papa in Franciam venit ; commotoque exercitu Fran- corum, caede facta in Langobardos, receptas res sancti Petri, reversus est in sedem suam." The- last clause, the important one for us, is the same in all three. As they all mention the second expedition of Pippin, this recovery of the goods of Saint Peter must refer to some- thing which happened after the first, that is to the treaty. From Stephen's letters one might call this an over-cheerful way of looking at things. The Continuator of Fredegar does not distinctly mention any promise made by the King to the Pope while in Gaul. He tells us the Pope's request without the King's answer ; but he says that the King promised the Pope to do something for him may be inferred from his embassy to Aistulf. I have quoted the passages, above, p. 373. There is nothing in them the least like a grant from Pippin to Stephen. The Continuator (120), in reporting the treaty after the first campaign, describes 406 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Aistulf as promising on oath '^ ut ulteriiis ad sedem apostolicam Komanam et rempublicam hostiliter numquam accederet. " After the second campaign, among the terms of the submission made by Aistulf, ^'ac quod contra sedem apostolicam vel nefariam faceret . . . plenissima solutione emendaret. " That is all ; there is not a word of any formal part by the Frankish king at any stage. In the Annales Laurissenses and those of Einhard, 755, 756, we find very clearly stated — First, a promise of Pippin on behalf of the rights of Saint Peter, inii^lied in his setting out to re- cover them. Secondl}^, a treaty with Aistulf after the first campaign, confirming those rights. Thirdly, an actual grant of Kavenna and other lands after the second campaign. The words in Laurissenses that concern us are ; " Pipi^inus rex per apostolicam invitationem in Italiam iter peragens, justitiam beati Petri apostoli quaerendo, Haistolfus Langobardorum rex supradictam justitiam vetando . . . obviam PijDpino regi et Francis venit. . . . Incluso vero Haistulfo rege in Papia civitate, justitiam sancti Petri pollicitus est faciendi, unde rex Pippinus cum sacramenta firmata re versus est in Franciam. '' Dum prospexisset Pippinus rex, ab Haistulfo . . . ea non esse vera quod an tea promiserat de justitiis sancti Petri, iterum iter peragens in Italiam . . . magis magisque de justitiis sancti Petri confirmavit, ut stabiles permanerent, quod antea pro- miserat, et insuper Kavennam cum Pentapolim et omni exar- catu conquisivit et sancto Petro tradidit." That the words in italics refer to Aistulf's promise in the treaty, not to any earlier promise of Pippin, is shown by the paraphrase of Einhard, ^ ' Pippinus rex . . . Haistulf um . . . obsidione ad impletionem promissorum suorum compulit." The Moissac annalist records what amounts to a promise on the part of Pip^^in at Ponthion. The kings lift the Pope from the ground " j^ro indicio et suffragi futuri et liberationis." He then records the various embassies to Aistulf, his demand on behalf of the Roman Church, including '^omnem justitiam de rebus ablatis. " We then get a definition of the words ; ''Haistulfus requisivit quae ilia justitia esset : cui legati responderunt, Ut ei reddas Pentaj^olin, Narnias, et Cecanum et omnia unde j^opulus Romanus de tua iniquitate conqueritur ; PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 407 et hoc sibi mandat Pippinus, quod si justitiani sancto Petro reddere vis, dabit tibi duodecini niillia solidorum." He then goes on to assert an actual grant and seisin of the lands to the Pope as the result of the first expedition ; ''Pippinus . . . Haistulfuni ita coarctavit ut omnes justitias sancti Petri se redditurum repromitteret. His minis . . . territus, per manus Pentapolini, Narnias, et Cecanuni et reli- qua debita quae sancto Petro debuerat, missis domni Pippini regis per vadium reddidit . . . Pippinus vero, accepta bene- dictione domni apostolici, in pace eum abire permisit, tradens ei Eavennam, Pentapolim, Narnias et Cecanum, et quid quid in illis partibus continebantur." Then Aistulf belies his promises and drives the Pope out ("omnia quaecumque promiserat contumaciter postposuit et Stephanum papam cum armis a finibus suis expulit "). Then comes the siege of Kome, the second march of Pippin. What followed the second siege of Pavia seems to come from the Continuator of Fredegar. The Metz Annals are to the same effect. I should be inclined to think that the Moissac compiler had transferred to the first siege of Pavia the events which followed the second. We now turn to the Life of Stephen. Here Pippin makes Stephen a very distinct promise on oath at the very beginning of things at Ponthion. The Pope prays him (see above, p. 116) "ut per pads fcedera causam beati Petri et reipublicae Roma- norum disjponeret." Then the King "de prassenti jurejurando eidem beatissimo papse satisfecit, omnibus mandatis ejus et admonitionibus sese totis nisibus obedire, et ut illi placitum fuerat, exarchatum Ravennae et rei- publicae jura seu loca reddere modis omnibus." Then the King and his nobles confirm at Quierzy (see above, p. 375) what the King alone had promised at Ponthion ("statuit cum eis quae semel, Christo favente, una cum eodem beatissimo papa decreverat, perficere"). Karlmann argues in vain; " excellentissimus Pippinus Francorum rex professus est decertare pro causa sanctae Dei ecclesiae, sicut pridem jam fato beatissimo spoponderat pontifici." Then comes the first Lombard campaign. The treaty which followed it appears very distinctly as a treaty ; "Ad haec Christianissimus Pipinus Francorum rex ejusdem 408 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. beatissimi patris, et boni pastoris audiens, adimplensque ad- monitionem Deo dilectam pacem inientes, atque in scripto foedera partium adfirmantes inter Eomanos, Francos, et Longo- bardos, et obsides Longobardorum isdem Francorum rex abs- tollens : spopondit ipse Aistulfus cum universis suis judicibus, sub terribili, et fortissimo sacramento, atque in eodem pacti foedere per scrijDtam paginam affirmavit se illico redditurum civi- tatem Kavennatium cum aliis diversis civitatibus." Then comes all that happened between the first and the second expedition. Then, while Pippin is on his march, comes (see p. 189) the Imperial embassy to Pippin, and the interview between George the Protosecreta and the King. The Em- peror's demand runs thus ; '^ Nimis eum deprecans atque plura spondens tribui imperia- lia munera, ut Eavennatium urbem vel ceteras ejusdem exar- chatus civitates et castra imperiali tribuens concederet ditioni." Pippin in like sort refuses ; '^ Ut easdem civitates et loca imperiali tribueret ditioni. Asserens isdem Dei cultor, mitissimus rex nulla penitus ratione easdem civitates a potestate beati Petri et jure ecclesiae Eomanas vel pontificis apostolicae sedis quoquomodo alienari." He will not take from Saint Peter what he has given him (seep. 194). Such was his answer ("Hsec praedicto imperiali misso reddere in responsum "). Pavia is now besieged and Aistulf is driven to renew and carry out the treaty of the former year ; '^ Aistulfus . . . ut veniam illi tribueret [Pipinus] et ab obsidione cessaret, quas prius contempserat conscriptas in pacti foedere redderet civitates, se modis omnibus professus est redditurum. Et denuo confirmato anteriore pacto, quod per elapsam octavam indictionem inter partes provenerat, restituit ipsas civitates praefatas, add ens et castrum quod cognominatur Comiaclum." And now at last we come to a real ''donatio," a real deed of gift on the part of Pippin, a real charter from the King to the Pope, as distinguished from a treaty to which Pippin, Stephen, Aistulf — and perhaps the Emperor Constantino — were all parties. But, besides the grant of Pippin, there was also, if words have any meaning, a grant of Aistulf. The passage which described the carrying out of the treaty is very PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 409 strangely worded, but it can hardly mean anything else except that each King gave the Pope a charter. The passage last quoted, in which Aistulf appears in the nominative case as the actor, is unmediately followed by these words ; ''De quibus omnibus receptis civitatibus donationem in scriptis a beato Petro atque a sancta Romana ecclesia vel omnibus in perjDetuum pontificibus apostolicse sedis misit possi- dendam, quae et usque hactenus in archivio sanctse nostras ecclesiae recondita tenetur." This can only refer to a formal grant of Aistulf. But a formal grant of Pippin is clearly referred to a little later. Now comes the account of the progress of the Prankish and Lombard commissioners for the surrender of the cities (see p. 199). Then come these words, in which, according to all grammar, the nominative to the verb is Abbot Fulrad ; '^Et ipsas claves tam Ravennatium urbis, quamque diver- sarum civitatum ipsius Ravennatium ex archatus una cum suprascripta [al. subscripta] donatione de eis a suo rege emissa in confessione beati Petri ponens, eidem apostolo et ejus vicario sanctissimo papae, atque omnibus ejus successoribus pon- tificibus perenniter possidendas atque disponendas tradidit." Then follows the list of the towns now surrendered. It would seem that Aistulf, as being in actual possession, first made a grant of the cities to the Pope. Then they were given up into the hands of Abbot Fulrad, as commissioner for the King of the Franks. The King of the Franks, being thus for a moment in actual possession, further grants them to the Pope. The Lombard charter is simply laid up in the archives as an important document ; the Prankish charter, the gift of a devout friend, is solemnly offered on Saint Peter's tomb. This is to my mind a very clear story, as to the main outline of which there seems no reason to doubt. We have the promise, the treaty, the double grant by Aistulf and by Pippin, all in their places ; the smaller question as to the order of events in Gaul we have discussed already. The mere promise is made in Gaul ; the treaty follows the first campaign ; the first real '' donatio " follows the second. Between the treaty and the grant comes the Emperor's demand. And I do not 410 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. see that the letters of Stephen, if we allow for the difference between his rhetorical way of writing, and the more formal style of the Biographer, in which we can see traces of the actual wording of documents, at all upset this order of things. It is true that in the very first letter of Stephen to Pippin in the time between the two expeditions, the Pope (Mon. Car. 35, 36) talks repeatedly and emphatically of a ^'dona- tionis pagina " already given to himself by the King. ' Justi- tiam beati Petri in quantis potuistis exigere studuistis et per donationis paginam restituendum confirmavit bonitas vestra." So again; '' propria vestra voluntate per donationis paginam beati Petri sanctseque Dei eccclesiae reipublice civitates et loca restituenda confirmastis." Presently he speaks of " quod semel beato Petro polliciti estis et per donationem manu firmatam." So again in the next letter (p. 40) he speaks of ''quae per donationem beato Petro offerendum promisistis ; " he tells them that Saint Peter has got their written document C sicut cyrographum vestram donationem princeps aposto- lorum firmiter tenet "), and goes on about the duty '' ut ipsum cyrographum expleatis." I doubt if there is anything about it in the twin letters to the Prankish people and to Pippin, or in the one written in the name of Saint Peter. In not one of these phrases is there anything to imply a ''donationis pagina" written in Graul. The letters to be sure are addressed to the three kings and patricians ; but it is surely pressing language too far to argue that the words used by the Pope necessarily imply that the document referred to was actually signed by the two boys as well as by their father. Otherwise there is nothing whatever against the notion that the "donationis pagina" may mean nothing more than the clause in the treaty which bound Aistulf to give up Kavenna and the other cities. It would be quite in the papal style to put Aistulf out of sight, and to speak of the treaty, a treaty dictated by Pippin and signed by Pij^pin, as a charter granted by Pippin to himself. Stephen's own rhetoric contrasts with the careful language of his biograj^her. The biographer talks of a " scripta pagina," but it is a "foedus," a "pactum," a treaty in short ; he says nothing about "donatio" till after the second expedition. PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 411 I do not think that it would have come into anybody's head to carry back the "donatio" to the time of the Pope's presence in Gaul, if it were not for a well-known passage in the Life of Hadrian (p. 186), where a reference is made to a written document seemingly drawn up at Quierzy. Charles the Great has just come to Eome after his Lombard conquest. Among the ceremonies of the King's reception the Pope causes a promise made at Quierzy to be read afresh ("ijDsam promis- sionem quae in Francia in loco qui vocatur Carisiacus facta est sibi relegi"), which of course implies a written document. And a very wonderful document it is, granting to the Blessed Peter and to the Pope a widespread dominion indeed, taking in Sjjoleto, Benevento, Venetia, Istria, and the island of Corsica. His faith must be strong indeed who believes that Pipi^in granted or promised all this at Ponthion or Quierzy or anywhere else on the Gaulish side of the Alps. The state- ment in truth bears falsehood on the face of it, and the whole story of which it is a part has been largely rejected by scholars. To an examination of these points we shall come later ; I wish now only to point out that, even if we accept this story, we are no nearer to a formal ''donatio" or ''Schenkung" of anything at Ponthion or Quierzy. The Life of Hadrian speaks only of a ''promissio," not of a ''donatio." The " promissio " might in a certain sense form a written document ; that is, it would be in no way wonderful, if either Pippin's private promise or the public decree of the Marchfield was set down in writing and kept by Stephen. All that is needed is that this docu- ment, if it ever existed, should be distinguished from the "donationis pagina" spoken of by Stephen in his letters. Why either Hadrian in any real application to Charles or a biographer of Hadrian in putting together such a story as seemed to him convenient should refer to this earlier promise, and not to the treaty or the final charter, is plain enough. In whatever was done at Ponthion or Quierzy or Berny the boy Charles had a formal share ; he was personally bound by those acts ; he was not in the same way personally bound by his father's acts in Italy. Hadrian therefore perhaps really referred — it is certain that his biographer represents him as referring — to a promise personally made by Charles m Gaul as the ground- work of his demands upon him. Out of this I feel sure arose 412 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. the notion of a formal " donatio "or " Schenkung " as made in Gaul, as distinguished from a mere promise to give help and to carry out certain objects in case of success, whether set down in a written document or not. This last is all that could possibly have happened while Stephen Was in Gaul. And if any one chooses to maintain that the mere promise was set down in writing at Quierzy or elsewhere, the thing is likely enough in itself, and it makes no difference to the general run of the story. There is no evidence for it, and that is all. The point is that there was not and could not be any ''donatio" at that stage. We shall see, as we go on, that some scholars have imagined a ''donatio" of Pippin, distinct from the treaty, after the first campaign. The only thing to be said against such a notion is that there is no evidence for it ; otherwise there is no unlikelihood in the belief, and it would make Pope Stephen's references to the "donationis pagina" still clearer. So again, the most natural construction of the last passage quoted from the Biographer of Ste^Dhen is that Aistulf as well as Pippin gave a charter to the Poj)e. But the point is of no great consequence ; it is open to anybody to make Pippin the nominative to ' ' misit, " instead of Aistulf. The construction is a little harsh, as indeed it is anyhow, and that is all. The main points are that Pippin did not make any real " donatio" to Stephen in Gaul, but that he did make one after the second defeat of Aistulf. All this is comparatively plain sailing. It is quite another matter when we come to the long controverted questions as to the force and extent of the "donatio." What did the King mean to do ? What did the Pope understand him as doing ? How were the rights of the Emperor touched in the matter ? These are much harder matters, to which we must now turn. First of all, it will be w^ell, as in the last Note, to go through the opinions of various scholars on the matter. And in so doing, it will be well to see how things looked in the eyes of some of the earlier scholars. The men of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, on whose foundations we often build without knowing it, had some advantages over their later successors. They had some special advantages in this particular matter. It is plain that the notion of an Emperor of the Romans, ruling over the Old Rome from the New, was not to PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 413 them the great difficulty which it has so often been in later times, even to men of real learning. They found it in their books, and they did not stumble at it. They found it in the formulae of the age, and they took those formulsB in the literal and grammatical sense, and did not make it their business to cast about for non-natural senses. Thus Le Cointe (Annales Ecclesiastici Francorum, v, 418, ann. 755) is not at all troubled at the mention of the ^'Kespublica Komanorum" ; he puts on it the obvious meaning which the phrase had borne for many ages and says, ''Lex Aistulfo haec imposita est ut ablata cum ecclesise Romance tum imperio Romano pro juribus utriusque restitueret. " When Pippin refuses to make restitution to the Empire, his comment (v. 483) is ; ''Anno superiori Pippinus cum adveniens Langobardos bello seu capta sen quae cum ecclesiae Romanae tum Imperio Romano ablata fuerant ecclesiae imperioque restituenda decrevit, nee aliud rogatus erat a Stephano papa, mutata fuit sententia ; ecclesiae statuit utraque concedere." I do not see the change of purpose so clearly as the old French scholar ; but it is pleasant to come to one to whom, as to Gregory the Great, John of Bielar, and many others, it did not occur for a moment that "respublica Romana" could mean anything different from "imperium Romanum." Pagi however (Critica in Baroniam ad ann. 754) takes him to task for this belief. Muratori in his eighteenth Dissertation (Antiq. Ital. i. 988) brings together endless passages to prove the use of "respublica" in the Imperial sense; but he speaks with somewhat of an uncertain sound in the Annali, ann. 755 (vol. x. 264, Florence, 1827; iv. 310, 4to). He does not at all deny that "respublica" ought to mean the Empire; but he holds that the grant of Pippin to the Pope did shut out the sove- reignty of tlie Emperor in the lands ceded. Having refeiTed to Le Cointe, he says ; "A questa opinione non acconsente il padre Pagi, ma per quanto mi sono io ingegnato di probare nolle Antichita italiane, indubitata cosa e che sotto il nome di republica veniba I'imperio romano, benche non apparisca, qual cosa fosse resti- tuta ad esso imperio, essendo anche incerto, come restasse in questi tempi il governo di Roma. Pretende bensi il suddetto padre Pagi, che da li innanzi i romani pontifici avessero in 414 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. pieno lor dominio non meno essa citta, che I'esarcato ; ma senza che si veggano probe concludenti di tal opinione. Certo non si puo mettere in dubbio la donazione dell' esarcato e della Pentapoli fatta dal re Pippino alia santa sede romana, con escluderne affatto la signoria dei Greci Augusti, ma se awe- nisse per conto di Roma e del suo ducato lo stesso, e se Pip- pino si riservasse dominio alcuno sopra lo stesso esarcato, non pare finora concludentemente deciso come altrove osservai." Le Beau (Histoire du Bas-Empire, xiii. 430), writing in 1770, seems a little divided between his allegiance to France rather than to the Holy See and his own literary allegiance to the Empire whose history he is writing. He tells the whole story, including the Imperial embassies, without anything that calls for special remark ; he does not enter on the sense of the word "respublica" ; but when he comes (p. 433) to the promise of Pippin to the Pope, his Imperial loyalty breaks forth ; ''Ce fut alors que dans un entretien secret le Eoi promit au Pape avec serment qu'il le protegeroit de tout son pouvoir, et qu'apres avoir retire I'Exarcat et la Pentapole des mains des Lombards, au lieu de rendre ces contrees a I'Empereur, il en feroit present a saint Pierre et a ses successeurs. II est difficile de croire que saint Pierre ait accepte cette donation. Le Eoi donnoit et le Pape recevoit ce qui appartenoit a I'Empereur, alors souverain legitime du Pape. Constantin etoit heretique ; il etoit hors d'etat de defendre Tltalie ; mais ni I'heresie ni la foiblesse ne donnoit aux autres aucun droit sur ses Etats. Ce n'est que le consentement tacite des successeurs de Constantin et la duree d'une possession non contestee, qui peut avoir legitime cette donation dans les successeurs d'Etienne." He goes on to discuss the policy of Pippin, and some way further on (p. 446) when he comes to the Imperial embassy of 75G he puts, after the manner of Livy, speeches into the mouths of the Imperial envoy and of the King which are hardly to be made out of our only authority, the Life of Stephen. Pippin is made to claim the Exarchate by the same right of con- quest by which the Franks held Gaul and the Empire itself anything that it held. It is his, and he has made it his with the object of giving it to Saint Peter, and not to any one else. PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 415 The series of more recent scholars may well begin with Sismondi (Histoire des Republiques Italiennes, i. 125). He could hardly be expected to take the word '^respublica " in the same sense as Le Cointe and Muratori. He holds that from about 726 to the coronation of Charles the Great, there was " un simulacre de republique, qui subsista obscurement dans Rome," and which was specially lively during the pontificate of Gregory the Third. So in a certain sense there was, if we are not thereby obliged to allow that this is what is always meant by ''respublica," especially in an Imperial mouth. This ^' republic " is further (p. 129) defined to be '^ le gouvernement de Rome et des provinces qui, apres s'etre detachees de I'empire grec, demeuroient independantes." And this explanation is justified by a very odd translation of a passage in the Life of Stephen (p. 172) where he is spoken of as one ''rempublicam dilatans, et universam dominicam plebem . . . ab insidiis eruit. " This is perhaps as early an example as could be found of *'respublica" in the new sense; but it is passing strange when the ''dominica plebs " become " le peuple souverain." Sismondi looks (p. 130) on the ''donatio," as a gift of sove- reignty, as never having been carried out, and which neither Pippin nor Charles nor Lewis ever meant to carry out. But he adds, settling Muratori's doubt about the Patrician ; '' Ces memes princes enrichirent le Saint Siege par des largesses plus reellement profitables ; ils lui donnerent le domaine iitile d'une partie de I'Exarchat et de la Pentapole, c'est-a-dire, les fruits et la rente de la terre ; tandis que la souverainete de ces memes provinces etoit reservee a la repu- blique romaine, au patrice, et en fin a I'empereur d'Occident. Cependant I'obeissance d'un grand nombre de vassaux etoit attachee a ce domaine utile ; en sorte que le pape, qui depuis longtemps etoit reconnu pour le premier citoyen de Rome, en devint aussi le premier et le plus puissant baron." He then quotes the opinion of Constantine Porphyrogenitus (De Them. ii. p. 62) with the comment that '' meme au dixieme siecle, le papa n'etait encore qu'un des jdIus puissans seigneurs de Rome." Savigny ' Geschichte des romischen Rechts, i. 310 et seqq.) has more to say about the " donatio " than he has about the patriciate, and he refers both to Muratori and to Sismondi. 416 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. He asserts the grant of Eavenna, the Exarchate, and the Penta- poHs by Pippin to the Pope. He argues against the doctrine that the grant was a mere grant of property, conveying no rights of government ( ' ' die Schenkung von Pippin habe nur Gtiter zum Gegenstand gehabt, nicht die Kegierung des Landes ; wenigstens nicht gleich im Anfang"). He argues that the Pope was a practical ruler (''die wirkliche Ausiibung regie- render Gewalt von Seiten des Pabstes hat keinen Zweifel ") from his sending judges and other officers to the ceded towns, and from his treating those who denied his authority as rebels (" Aufrtihrer "). He specially quotes the letter of Hadrian to Charles in 774 (Cod. Car. 172), in which he speaks of his pre- decessor sending judges to Eavenna ; he refers also to the letters which in Jaffe are numbered 56 and 77. He remarks that the grant was to the Church and the Eoman Eepublic (see p. 207), and he quotes the passage (see p. 396) in which Hadrian speaks of a patriciate as vested in Saint Peter as showing that the Pope held the rank of Patriarch and the authority of Exarch (''der Pabst aber wurde Patricius des Landes ; d. h. Statthalter mit sehr freyer Gewalt, wie sie bisher der Exarch ausgeiibt hatte, und mit dem hochsten Eang nach dem Kaiser "). He then goes on to explain that the '' Eespublica Eomana " so often spoken of was not the city of Eome, nor yet the existing Empire C'noch weniger das GriecMsche Eeich, gegen welches ja die Feindschaft laut ausge- sprochen ward "). It was rather, in some way which is not very easy to understand, the beginning of a restoration of the Western Empire. The existing Empire — "Greek" in Savigny's language — was a mere usurpation in which Italy was dealt with as a foreign and conquered land. The restoration of the Western Empire was perhaps designed all along ; but till its accomplishment, the Pope was independent, not admitting the sovereignty of the Prankish king. With the Empire of Charles his independence ceased. The chief arguments for the Pope's independence are the Pope's title of Patrician, and the leave given by Hadrian to Charles (Cor. Car. 67, p. 268 Jaffe) to take columns from Eavenna. The Frank was a helper, but not a lord ; so he argues against Muratori. ''Es war vielmehr das alte westliche Eeich, welches mit diesem kleinen Anfang, obgleich noch ohne sichtbares Ober- PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 417 haupt, wiecler hergestellt wurde, vielleicht schon mit dem Gedanken an die bald nachher erfolgte formliche Herstellung. So gedacht erscheint das ganze Unternehmen gar nicht als eine Emporung gegen den rechtmassigen Herrscher, den Griechi- schen Kaiser, welcher vielmehr selbst diese Lander nur als eine Usurpation besass. . . . Mit dieser Ansicht ist eine Ober- hoheit des Frankischen Konigs nicht vereinbar, die auch in der That nicht behauptet werden kann . . . Dieses allerdings anderte sich diirch die Herstellung des Kaiserlichen Namens und von dieser Zeit an war die Abhangigkeit des Pabstes nicht zu bezweif eln. " Luden (iv. 215, 500) is of course true to the rights of the Enipne, as against Muratori, Savigny, or any one else. He specially, and not without reason, lifts up his hands at Mura- tori's doctrine that the '' signoria de' Greci Augusti" came to an end. In this view there is no doubt as to the true meaning of the gift. The lands given to the Church of Kome were given just as they might have been given to the Church of Eheims or of Mainz. They made the Church of Rome richer than any other Church ; but that was all ; the grant in no way interfered with the relations of the Bishop of Rome to his sovereign the Emperor ; ^'Der Pabst erhielt den Exarchat und alles Land, das in der Hand der Langobarden gewesen war, als Kirchengut ; er erhielt es, wie die Kirchen iiberall Gtiter besassen ; und wenn eine Kirche durch diesen Erwerb reicher wurde, als irgend eine Kirche in der christlichen Welt, so wurde doch in seinen Verhaltnissen zum romischen Reiche nichts geandert ; er blieb Bischof des Reiches und horte nicht auf, der Hoheit des Kaisers unterworfen zu sein." He goes on to say that the Pope could not willingly let these lands pass again into the immediate possession of the Emperor, for fear of any iconoclastic doings in them ; he further needed some compensation for the possessions of the Roman Church in Southern Italy and Sicily wiiich had been confiscated by Leo. Pippin, in making the grant, exercised a right of conquest, for which he is not to be blamed. But the making of the grant in no way bound Pippin to meddle between the Pope and the Emperor. E e 418 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. p. 2 1 8. ' ^ Es blieb clem Kaiser uberlassen, den Bischof, welchen er als seinen Unterthanen ansah, in das Verhaltniss zu bringen, das er fur gut liielt. War der Kaiser ausser Stande, den mach- tigen Geistlichen in Gehorsam zu erhalten, so konnte doch Pippin gewiss nicht verpflichtet sein, ihm seinen Arm zu leihen. " In the notes Luden further emphatically denies that the grant gave the Pope the Imperial rights over Kome or in any- way touched Eome or the Eoman duchy at all. He examines the application by Hadrian (see above, p. 396) of the word patri- ciate to Saint Peter or to himself, and rules it to be ^'nur ein Spiel mit dem Worte Patriciatus." He lastly goes on to discuss the connexion between the grant and the embassies which were exchanged in the next year between Pippin and Constantino, of which we shall speak presently. Hegel (Stadteverfassung, i. 216) sees many things much clearer than most writers. He describes the grant, quoting the words of Stephen himself (seep. 209) as made ''an die romische Kirche und das romische Keich (respublica)." He then goes on to explain that this last word does not mean the rule of the Emperor (" die Herrschaft des griechischen Kaisers "), which he holds to be forbidden by Pippin's answer to the Imperial embassy. The Pope used an ambiguous phrase in order to win a practical dominion for himself without formally casting off the authority of the Emperor ; ' ' Der Pabst gebrauchte diese ungewisse Vorstellung, um sich sehr gewisse und wirkliche Hoheitsrechte anzueignen, indem er mit vieler Gewandtheit einerseits das romische Reich in die romische Kirche aufgehen liess, und auf der andern Seite der Oberherrschaft des griechischen Kaisers immer noch einen wenigstens ideellen Eaum verstattete. " He insists on the formal acknowledgement of the Imperial authority in documents and on the coin, and adds that out of the grant of Pippin grew the temporal dominion of the Eoman Church — he carefully avoids saying that PijDpin in any way founded that dominion. Gregorovius (ii. 287 et seqq.) clearly brings out the un- certainty of the whole matter in consequence of the loss of the original deed of grant. He brings out no less clearly that, whatever the grant was, it had nothing to do with Eome or the PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 419 duchj^ of Kome, but only with Ravenna and the other lands which Aistulf had just given up. He too asserts in the strongest way the continued formal acknowledgement of the rights of the Emi3eror ("die Fortdauer der Oberherrschaft von Byzanz, die ich alsf llr Princij^jener Zeit anerkenne "), though his authority practi- cally ceased (" Jedoch die Kaiserliche Gewalt war thatsachlich erloschen "}. But Pippin took the lands from the Emperor, and gave tiiem to the Bishop of Eome in a character which I do not quite understand ; '^Er gab sie dem Bischof von Rom nicht als einem geistlichen Fursten. nicht als einem ausserhalb der Reichsgewalt stehenden Souveran, sondern als dem factisch anerkannten Haupt der Stadt Rom und dem Reprasentanten der romischen Republik im Sinne cles tvestUchcn Iteklies in Italien." He says that the Pope covered his ''usurj)ation " with the name of Saint Peter, as a convenient way of answering Imperial protests ("ein solcher Priitendent den Reclamationen von Byzanz entgegenzutreten ganz geeignet war "). Still, though the ceded lands practically passed away from the Empire as well as from the Lombard kingdom, though the Pope held the ' ' Landeshoheit, " still he held in it forces only as a Lieutenant of the Emperor (''der Pabst in jenen Landern nur als ein Yicar des Kaisers, oder als ein Nachfolger des Exarchen und Patricius von Ravenna erschien "). Waitz (Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, iii. 81) is not very clear. When Pippin had overcome Aistulf, and taken his conquests from him, "Sie wurden dem h. Petrus und seinem Stellvertreter, oder wie der Pabst selbst genauer schreibt, der Kirche und dem Eeich der Romer tibertragen ; der Bischof der Stadt Rom empfing sie fiir das Bekli und als Vertreter desselhcn, zugleich aber ftir die Kirche, die mit jenem in der nachsten Verbindang gedacht ward. Wie ein Recht des ostromischen Kaisers hier nicht mehr anerkannt ^vurde, so nahm audi Pippin fiir sich ein solches nicht in Anspruch. Audi in Rom war von einer Herrschaft oder Oberhoheit PijDpins nicht die Rede." Yet he adds that all relations with the Emperor ("der Kaiser des Ostens ") were not given up ; at Rome men still dated by the years of his reign. He adds again most truly ; "Es waren schwankende unklare Yerhaltnisse, die sich so E e 2 420 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. ergaben, wie sie der Bischof wohl in seinem Interesse fand, Pippin sich wenigstens gefallen liess." Abel (Der Untergang des Langobardenreichs in Italien, 36, 37) talks of a ''Schenkung von Kiersy," which he places after the anointing of Pippin. He infers from the often referred to passage in the Life of Hadrian (see p. 395) that such a '"Schenkung" was made then and put into a written shape. And he conceives that it took in all that is mentioned in the Life of Hadrian. But, though he speaks of a '' Schenkung, " he sees (p. 39) that ''die Schenkung ware also vorerst ein blesses Versprechen gewesen." He describes (p. 46) the treaty after the first Italian campaign, the Imperial embassy (pp. 52, 53), and lastly (p. 54) the real '^ Schenkung " after the second Italian campaign, when "Pippin stellte eine besondere Ur- kunde aus, worin er alle diese Stadte der romischen Kii'che schenkte." It was of no importance to Dollinger (Das Kaiserthum Karl's des Grossen, pp. 326, 375) to go into any exact details as to time and j^lace. But he seems to speak (p. 327) of a ''Schen- kung " made at Quierzy, and renewed after each of the Italian campaigns. " So stand es in der Urkunde von Kiersy 754, und auch bei dem Frieden mit Astolf 755 und in der erneuerten Schenkung von 756 waren diese Gebiete [das Exarchat mit der Pentapolis] dem Pabste zugeeignet worden." In his main examination of the question he begins by remarking the darkness into which the whole subject is thrown through the document itself not being forthcoming. The "Schenkung" took in the Exarchate, the Pentapolis, and Narni. He enlarges on the fact that the "Schenkung" is spoken of as a "Restitution," which is inconsistent with its being in any strictness a grant to the Roman Church. If that had been the ground taken, we should not have heard about the Republic, and we should have heard something now, as later in Pope Hadrian's time, about the donation of Constantine ("in welchem Falle man annehmen miisste, dass ihm die um diese Zeit erstandene Schenkung Constantins als Besitztitel vorgezeigt worden sei "). The grant was made to the Roman Republic, and to the Pope only as the representative of the Republic. The Roman Republic, in his view (p. 375), is equivalent to the Roman people ; PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 421 ''Das Zeugniss des Papstbuches ist entscheidend fiir die Thatsache, dass Pipin mit der Uebergabe des Exarchats und der Pentapolis nicht ein geistliclies Furstenthuni, einen Kirchenstaat griinden, sondern diese Lander der Ftirsorge des Papstes als Vertreter der Respublica ini Gegensatze gegen Longobarden und Griecben anvertrauen wollte, und dass dies aucb die Form war, in welcher der Papst und sein geistliches und weltliches Gefolge deni Konige ibre Bitte vortrugen" (p. 376). His notions of the '' Republic " are then more fully explained (p. 326) ; ^ "... Pipin die Lander dem Papste als dem Vertreter der national-italianischen Respublica iibergab, so dass der romischen Ku'che nur die in diesen Gebieten befindlichen Patrimonien zufielen, und er und die Papste gebrauchten den Ausdruck 'zuriickerstatten,' well sie die byzantinische Herrschaft iiber diese Provinzen als erne lange, durch die Eroberung unter Justinian begonnene Usurpation betrachteten, welche das autonome Recht der italisch-romischen Respublica nur faktisch unterbrochen, nicht aufgehoben habe. Durch die longobardische Eroberung und die Besiegung der letzteren durch die Franken waren deninach die Ansprliche der Respublica wieder erwacht und lebenskraftig geworden, und Pipin's Akt war, von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus betrachtet, in Wahrheit eine Restitution. Der Papst aber war damals der einzige, der als natiirlicher Schirmvogt oder Patricius der nicht longobardischen Italianer das Zuriickgegebene in Empfang nehmen konnte." There is not much in Sickel's (Acta Karolina, ii. 389) remarks on ''Acta deperdita," bearing on Pippin; but he reckons among them a "promissio Carisiaca " as well as the "donatio" of 756. He remarks that the different promises, grants, whatever they were, gave different rights in different places ; ' an gewissen Orten nur um privatrechtlichen Besitz, an andern um Hoheitsrechte." The grant of Pippin is incidentally referred to by the writer who veils himself under the name of Janus (Der Papst und das Concil, Leipzig, 1869, p. 143). Dollinger had brought in the "Schenkung" of Constantino ; "Janus" assumes that that " donatio" was shown to Pippin, referring si)ecially to the act of the King (" diese den Franken so ganz fremde Huldigung ") in holding the Pope's bridle (see p. 132). Pippin was won over 422 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. by false documents, the '^ donation" being one, and the letter from Saint Peter another. Oelsner (Konig Pippin) has a whole chapter (p. 129) devoted to '' die Pippinische Schenkung." He argues against much that has been said both by Dollinger and by '^ Janus." He alto- gether casts aside any reference to the donation of Constantino, of which he looks on the mention in the Life of Hadrian as the earliest. The act of Pippin as strator proves nothing, as the strator {o-Tpdrcop) was well known long before (p. 127). He also casts aside what Dollinger says about " Byzantine usurpation " ; the Pope might be the '' heir " of the Roman Republic ; he was not its ''representative" (Vormiinder). He begins his argu- ment (p. 129) by saying that the question is, What happened at Quierzy in 754 ? To this he too is led by the passage in the Life of Hadrian. The gift there attributed to Charles is meant as a renewing of the gift of Pi2:>pin ; but it is not to be taken as telling us what the contents of the '' Urkunde von Quierzy " really was. In that '' Urkunde " there was nothing about Istria or Venetia (139) ; perhaps there was in the treaty ''inter Romanes, Francos, et Longobardos." For, though Oelsner insists so strongly on the act at Quierzy, he clearly saw (135- 138) the necessary difference between the mere promise made then and the treaty and the real " Schenkung" of 756. Oelsner holds (p. 134) that the "Schenkung" was by no means confined to the Exarchate and the Pentapolis. Its object was that "das den Langobarden entrissene Land sollte in den Besitz und unter die Botmassigkeit des Papstes kommen." It took in everything that the Lombards had at all touched, it took in, and more than took in, Rome and the Roman duchy ("So bildete denn die Stadt Rom und der romische Ducat den Kern der Pippinischen Schenkung "). He afterwards (p. 139) goes on to explain what he means by "Besitz" and " Botmassigkeit " just above. Up to this time the Pope had simply been a great landowner ("ein reicher Grundherr"), possessor of certain " patrimonia, " like those of any other bishop. He now received political rights over his peoj)le ("tibte er fortan fiber seine Untergebenen politische Hoheits- rechte aus "). Oelsner goes on to collect a great number of examples, chiefly from the letters of Hadrian, to show the extrcise of political power by the Popes. But he adds that PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 423 this fact was not singular ; the growth of the political power of the Popes was (p. 143) of essentially the same kind as the " Immunitatsrechte " of other prelates. At the same time the Pope was not sovereign ( ^ ' besass auch cler Papst nicht die voile Souveranetat in seinem Lande "). He says this, not so much on account of the supremacy of the Emperor (''der griechische Kaiser " of course), which he looks on as practically abolished and going on as a mere formality ('' die wesenlose Fortdauer einer Formalitat "), as because of the real power of the Prankish king. A '^papstlicher Staat" was founded by the Franks; but it stood to them in a " Schutzverhaltniss " ; the Frankish kings had a ''Schutzrecht " and a '' Schutzherrschaft." He brings together (144) many passages to show the authority of the Frankish kings. The Franks were brothers of the Romans, partly ''in dem Sinne dass Beide das Volk des Eigenthumes Petri sind," but also because the same prince was King over the one and Patrician over the other. He then goes on with the remarks on the patriciate which I have referred to already (see above, p. 399), and winds up with the conclu- sion that the gift of Pippin did in effect found the States of the Church ; '' So lag in dieser Neubildung doch der Keim der paj^stlichen Souveranetat ; das romische Bisthum war zur sancta Dei ecdesia reipiMicce (152) Homanonini geworden ; der Kirchenstaat war gegriindet." Martens (Die romische Frage, p. 21 et seqq.) admits of no w^ritten document in Gaul. PipjDin swore an oath at Ponthion and made a solemn promise at his unction. Between the two (p. 29) he draws this distinction ; ''(1) In Ponthion wurde ein Eid geschworen : in S. Diony- sius erfolgte hingegen nur ein formloses, nicht durch Eid bekraftigtes Versprechen. ''(2) In Ponthion libernahm Pippin allein und ausschliess- lich eine Verpflichtung : in S. Dionysius wurden neben PijDpin auch dessen zwei Sohne mitverpflichtet, und der Papst selbst leistete seinerseits ein Versprechen. ''(3) Das eidlich bestiirkte Versprechen von Ponthion hatte eine wesentliche politische Tendenz, indem durch die Erfiillung desselben die Vindication des Exarchats von Ravenna erzielt werden sollte : die Promissio von S. Dionysius hingegen war 424 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. ein kirchlicher Act, und erzeiigte der Kirche gegentiber umfas- sende Verpflichtungen." He holds, as I do, that the " donationis pagina" so often spoken of by Stephen between the two Italian campaigns is no other than the treaty with Aistulf (pp. 54, 55). Even then Pippin did not formally promise ; he only confirmed (acceptet) the promise of Aistulf. He holds (as I do) that the real " Schenkungsurkunde " did not come till 756, after the second Lombard campaign. This was the " Eestitutionsact " (p. 56), and he discusses at some length the force of the words '' resti- tuere," ''reddere," and the like, as applied to them. The particle re does not always keep its full force in Latin com- pound words— any more, he might have added, than it does in modern French compound words ; but the Pope clearly meant the words to be taken in then' strict sense, "Riickforderung," "zuriickgeben," &c. He discusses the legal and moral aspect of the case at some length. He fully sets forth the relation of the Pope as a subject of the Empire — it is odd that a man who can do this so clearly can call the Roman Empire '' Griechen- land," a word which, if it meant anything just- then, could mean only the theme of Hellas. He sees that Stephen bore himself as a subject of the Empire up to the moment of his starting for Gaul. At that point he altogether changed his course; "trat er mit ein em ganz neuen Programm auf." He w^as no longer acknowledged the Emperor ; he claimed the "restitution" of the Exarchate and the rest ("der Papst das Exarchat fiir die Kirche als Eigenthumsobject beanspruchte ") because the Imperial government was weak, unpopular, unor- thodox, and the people wished for the Poj^e as their ruler. All this was unlawful and morally to be blamed ; only sophistry ( " Sophismen ") can defend Stei)hen's conduct. But it was historically necessary (" eine historische Nothwendigkeit "). Constantino was legally justified in asking for his lands back again from Pippin, but he was a jDoor creature for doing so ; he ought rather to have made war. Ranke (Weltgeschichte, v. 2. 35) has a few words on the whole discussion, which he says show "Scharfsinn und Gelehr- samkeit," but which lead to no result. On the strength of the ' ' donationis pagina," he admits "bestimmte Zusage," "entschei- denden Entschluss," either at Quierzy or at Braisne (Berny). PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 425 He comments (p. 40) on the Imperial embassy of 756. It is needless to say that Ranke, though he will talk about ''grie- chische Herrschaft " and what not, fully takes in the position of the Empire. In the Imperial demand ''lag der Knotenpunkt der allgemeinen Politik der Zeit." According to all right the lost lands should have been given back to their lawful master the Emperor, and so to do would have established a good under- standing between East and West. But Pippin had bound himself to the Pope and gave to him what belonged to the Emperor ; "Das Besitzthum des Kaisers "wurde in Folge dieser Vorgange Eigenthum des Papstes " (p. 41). But it is odd that Eanke (p. 41) should put the action of Abbot Fulrad (Vit. Steph. 171 ; see p. 199) in 7bQ after the first campaign of 754. Dahn (Urgeschichte) ventures to grapple with ' ' Altmeister " Eanke, as he calls him (874), on some points. He sees (874, 875) perfectly well that the talk about ''donationis pagina" in Mon. Car. 35 (see p. 394) proves nothing as to any document being issued in Gaul ; but, on the strength of the words in p. 38, and of the passage in the Life of Hadrian, he accepts (pp. 874, 880) a written document at Quierzy. In that docu- ment the foundation-stone of the States of the Church was laid ("ein weiterer wichtiger Grundstein zu der weltlichen Macht des Pabstes, den spater sogenannten ' Kirchenstaat ' "). A geo- graphical distinction seems to be drawn. "With the Roman duchy Pippin meant a grant only of property ('' privatrechtliches Eigenthum"), not of full sovereignty; such '' Hoheitsrechte" as were conveyed with it were only such ' ' Immunitatsrechte " as were enjoyed by the Frankish prelates. But, besides this, in the lands to be wrested from the Lombard he designed to give the Poj^e '' Gebiete als Territorien w^ahrer Staatsgewalt. " The Emperor was put away, jDractically, if not formally ; the Frankish king had (see above, p. 423) "eine Art libergeordnete Staatshoheit iiber der halbsouveranen des Pabstes," and this became something more after Charles's conquest of the Lombard kingdom. He understands (800) the "donationis pagina" — he quotes it as ''cartula" — in Mon. Car. 35, 36 of a cession of the cities by Aistulf to Pij^pin in the treaty, and a grant of them by Pippin to the Pope. He comiDares the way in which Venice in 426 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. 1866 — as Lombardy in 1859 — was not ceded directly by Austria to Italy, but by way of France. On the final grant in 756 Dahn (906) comments at some length ; nearly everything that has happened in Italy since has come out of ''dieser Grilndung des Kirchenstaats," down to 1870 when it came to an end (" dieses Werk Pippins wieder aus der Geschichte verschwand "). In 1880 H. von Sybel published in his ^' Historische Zeit- schrift" (xliv. or viii. p. 47) a discourse headed ''Die Schenkungen der Karolinger an die Papste." He begins by speaking of the importance of the subject in the point of view of general history, of the great mass of writing to which it has given occasion, and the little result which has been gained. He contrasts the two contemj^orary accounts of the dealings between Pij)pin and Stephen, that is, the Life of Stephen and the Continuator of Fredegar, with the version of Pippin's act which is given in the Life of Hadrian. In the former, the promise of Pippin (''das Yersprechen, welches Papst Stephan III. in Ponthion von Konig Pippin erhielt") took in only Kavenna and the neighbouring towns, not even (p. 58) the whole of the Exarchate. In the Life of Hadrian, PipjDin is made to grant by charter a vast deal more, Venetia, Istria, Corsica, and what not (Vit. Hadr. 186). Between these two statements, he says, we must choose. Von Sybel then goes through the events before and after the journey of Pope Stephen into Gaul. He does not leave out, though he hardly values at its proper importance, the joint action of the Po23e and the Silentiary at Pavia. In recording the events of Stephen's stay in Gaul, he pays special attention to the different readings in the manuscripts of the Life. In such phrases as "causa Beati Petri [etj reipublicse Romanorum," "sanctse Dei ecclesisD [et] reipublicae Romanorum," he remarks that the "et" is found only in the later versions. The two accounts. Prankish and Roman, have no substantial contradic- tions, but each fills up gaps in the othero The promise made at Ponthion did not go beyond — "ein gegenseitiges Schutz- und Freundschaftsbtindniss, durch welches Pipinn die Restitution aller der Kirche entrissenen Giiter und Gerechtsame verhiess." There was, he holds, no direct promise of the Exarchate, or PR03IISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 427 any part of it, to the Pope ; but (p. 54) the promise was most likely understood to take in some authority at Ravenna (^'gewisse Schutz- oder Hoheitsrechte tiber Ravenna"). The promises of Aistulf after his first defeat, embodied in the treaty of peace, were (p. 56) the same as those of Pippin ; but Pippin now further embodied them in the form of a charter of gift of his own to the Pope. This, Von Sybel allows, is not recorded by the Biographer at this stage ; but it is to be inferred from the passages in Stephen's letters which speak of '^donationis pagina," and the like. He then mentions the Emperor's demand for the restoration of the Exarchate and Pippin's refusal. The "donatio in scriptis" after the second defeat of Aistulf (Vit. Steph. 171) was a charter of Aistulf, not of Pippin. It is not perfectly clear whether Von Sybel holds that both this charter of Aistulf and the former charter of Pippin were laid uj) together in the Roman archives. His words are ; ^'Jetzt berichtet auch der Biograph, liber die Zuweisung aller dieser Stadte an den hi. Petrus sei eine Urkimde Aistulf s ausgefertigt ivorden, die sich in den Ai'chiven der romischen Ku'che befinde ; sodann habe Pippins Kommissar, der Abt Fulrad, nach vollzogener Ueberlieferung der Stadte die Schliissel derselben und die von Pippin ausgestellte SchenkungsurJcimde sun Grabe des hi. Petrus niedergelegt. " From the list of cities in the Biographer, p. 171, we learn, according to Von Sybel, what was the territorial extent of the grant. It did not take in Bologna and Imola, older Lombard conquests, nor Farrara, nor yet Osimo and the southern part of the Pentapolis. All these, with Faenza and Ancona, were (p. 59) the subject of a fresh engagement of surrender on the part of Desiderius (Mon. Car. p. 64). And besides the terri- torial grant, the SchenJcimg took in (p. 59) rights and possessions of the Roman Church (''Giiter und Gerechtsame ") in various parts of Italy, which could neither be restored nor ascertained all at once. On the exact position of the Po]3e towards the cities which formed part of the grant, and on then* relations either to the Emperor or to the King of the Franks, Von Sybel does not enlarge. The latter part of his article is devoted to an examina- tion of the alleged confirmation of Pippin's grant by Charles the Great. To this we shall come at a later stage. 428 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Von Sybel's statement of the case did not fail to stir up some controversy. In the second volume of the ^ ' Historisches Jahr- buch" of the '' Gorres-Gesellschaft," p. 76 (Mtinster, 1881), is an article '' Die Schenkungen der Karolinger an die Papste, eine Keplik gegen H. von Sybel von Prof. Dr. B. Niehues." The writer seems a good deal displeased at having his full belief in a written charter of Pippin at Quierzy in 756, confirmed by another written charter of Charles the Great at Rome in 774, somewhat disturbed by Von Sybel's arguments. He carries his historical inquiry a good deal further back than Von Sybel, as far indeed as the reign of Justinian the Second and even back to the Letters of Gregory the Great. His chief object is to show that the ''respublicaRomana," the phrase which we have so often come across both in these times and earlier as a common name for the Empire, means, if I rightly understand him, a definite Italian republic, with the Pope at its head, which he seems to conceive as having broken off from the Empire during the Iconoclast disputes. It is Dollinger's notion of ''respu- blica" put into a more distinct shape, or Sismondi's republic extended from Eome over a great part of Italy. It gets startling when Mehues directly denies (i^p. 83, 84) that "respublica" ever means the Empire, or at any rate that it is ever used as an official name. The one official name is " imperium." Yet he quotes the passages from the Liber Diurnus in which ''respublica " is plainly used in that official meaning, specially the oath of the Bishoj)s (no. Ixxv. j). 159), "si quid contra rempublicam vel piissimum principem nostrum quodlibet agi cognovero " (cf. the use of " principatus," " respublica, " and "imperium," as equivalent words in p. 215); and he further quotes the passage in the Life of Stephen (p. 166) where the word "respublica" is j)ut into the mouth of the EmjDoror himself, certainly not to express anything that has revolted against him. The " respublica " is equivalent to the " provincia Italia," "das ehemals griechische Gebiet Italiens, die sj^atere Republik." One was at first temj^ted to take these words in their literal and grammatical sense, and to suppose that this Italian Republic took in Naples and Calabria as well as Ravenna and Rome. But we get an explanation further on in p. 214, where we learn that the Italian Rej^ublic was the Exarchate together with the Roman duchy ("Ravenna mit Pentapolis PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 429 und dem ganzen Exarchat war eben der italischen Republik gleichbedeutend ; " and in a note, ''Selbstredend ist in den Umfang der Republik stets audi der romische Dukat einzu- ziehen "). According to Niehues (207), the towns which the Lombards had taken away from this Republic were guaranteed to the Pope by a verbal promise at Ponthion, which grew into a written '' Schenkung " or '^ Schenkungsversprechen " at Quierzy. It is a comfort to hear that the thing was done only in a general way and that the names of the places were not set down ("So ist mir nicht wahrscheinlich, dass sie die Patri- monien der romischen Kirche und die Stadte der italischen Republik, deren Restitution sie dem Papste garantirte, im Ein- zelnen benannt hat "). There is therefore no need to believe that, as soon as the Pope got up from the ground in the chapel at Ponthion, he at once began to talk about Corsica and Istria. The guaranty was made only "schlechtweg und iniAllgemeinen,'' but it promised to the Pope the restoration (" Wiedergewin- nung ") of all that the Lombards had taken from the Roman Church and the Roman Republic. That this took in Ravenna and the neighbouring cities is plain from the first peace with Aistulf in which (see above, p. 1 70) he promises to restore them. For that peace (209, 211) did but confirm the arrangement made at Quierzy ; only Pippin certainly and Aistulf most likely added to the treaty special charters of gift to the Pope ("ausser der allgemeinen Friedensurkunde noch eine si^ecielle Cessions- oder Schenkungsurkunde des Inhalts "). On one point, it seems to me, Niehues attacks Von Sybel with success. Von Sybel holds that the promise, grant, treaty, did not take in the whole of the Exarchate, and that the towns given up by Desi- derius were a distinct cession. Niehues maintains, and I think with truth, that whatever was done about Ravenna or any other cities took in the whole Exarchate and the Penta^Dolis, and that the fact that some towns were left to be given up by Desiderius was simply because of the sudden death of Aistulf, which interrupted the restoration which he had begun. These papers of Niehues are most curious for the line, or rather no line, which they take with regard to the Empire. What they show is not the every-day w^eakness of forgetting its existence. Niehues knows that there was an Emperor, and 430 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. that he had something to do with Italy. Even the mission of Pope Stephen to Pavia as Imperial envoy is (pp. 87, 88) recorded by him in a way, though it is clearly not understood. Nor, as we have seen, does he forget the demands of the Emperor for the restoration of his lost lands. Niehues sees the Emperor and does not see him. It would be curious indeed to know his exact notion of the '^griechische Kaiser," and the relation in which he fancies him to have stood to the '' Italische Freistaat " or '' Kepiiblik." And I think that Niehues is the first German writer that we have had to deal with who uses such misleading words as ' ' Frankreich " and Stephen's " franzosische Eeise." Next, as far as I know, in 1884 comes ''Pipins und Karls d. G. Schenkungsversprechen. Ein Beitrag zur Kritik der Vita Hadriani. Von Paul Scheffer-Boichorst," which appears in the " Mittheilungen des Instituts fur Oesterreichische Geschichts- forschung," v. 193 (Innsbruck, 1884). And this is followed in 1887 by an ^'Exkurs," " tJber die Schenkungen der Karo- linger an die Papste," by Kohl the continuator of Eichter, in the ''Annalen des frankischen Eeichs im Zeitalter der Karo- linger," p. 674. The two must in some sort go together, as, according to Kohl, Scheffer-Boichorst, if he has not settled the question for ever and ever, at least got nearer to the end of it than anybody else (''Erst in jtingster Zeit ist die so lange streitige Frage liber den Umfang der Karolingischen Schenkung durch den kritischen Scharfsinn Scheffer-Boichorsts endlich ihrer Losung um ein bedeutendes naher gefiihrt worden "). This may be ; but, where guessing is so easy and so pleasant, and where it is impossible to be quite certain, I suspect that we have by no means seen the last "Exkurs" and " Disser- tatio " on the matter. Scheffer-Boichorst is directly concerned with the passage in the Life of Hadrian which has been so often spoken of ; what Pij^pin did, as recorded by the writers of his own time, concerns him only as confirming or refuting the statement of the Biographer of Hadrian. To that Biographer I hope to come again ; at present it is enough to say that he accepts the passage, with the exception of the list of places to be granted ; so again we are not expected to believe that Pippin said anything anywhere about Corsica and Istria. As Kohl makes a separate division for "Die Schenkung Pippins," while PROMISES AXD GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 431 in Scheffer-Boichorst Pippin comes in only incidentally, Kohl's own statement is the clearer of the two ; but we must look back to his oracle first; Scheifer-Boichorst then (pp. 200, 201) looks on the ^^respublica Eomana " of our story as equivalent to the ''provincia Italia," and on that as equivalent to the Exarchate and the Duchy of Eome. Of this the Pope was the head and representative, seemingly as in some sort an officer of the Emperor, though whether with the Emperor's consent and knowledge we are not told. His words are ; "Nachdem dann dasExarchat als griechische Beamtenschaft aufgehort hatte, da betrachteten sich die Papste als Vertreter istius Italiae provinciae ; sie bezogen die Eepublik auf die Kirche des hi. Peter und sagten demnach : ecclesia sancti Petri reipublicae, kurzweg sprechen sie auch wohl von nostra respublica. Aber der Zusammenhang mit Byzanz ist dabei gewahrt ; die Papste waren gieichsam nur Statthalter istius Italiae provinciae oder Romanorum rei publicae, und solang der eine und andere Ausdruck begegnet, wii'd demnach auch die Oberhoheit von Byzanz anerkannt." He then goes on to quote the charter of Hadrian to Farfa in 772 (Mur. ii. pt. 2, p. 346 ; Jaffe, Eegesta, i. 290), which he says is the last papal document dated by the name of an Emperor reigning at Constantinople. In it the Pope certainly speaks of ''nostra Eomanorum respublica," though I cannot find the exact words which he quotes (p. 346), "nefarii homines nostras Eomano- rum reipublicae." After that time, he holds, both phrases, "province" and "republic," went out of use, for the Popes bore themselves as sovereigns and no longer acknowledged the Emperors ("die Papste von der griechischen Suzerainetat Nichts mehr wissen wollten, sondern sich voll und ganz als Souveraine betrachteten "). He refers to a document of Hadrian dated December 1, 781 (Baluzii Miscell. vii. 120; Jaffe, ii. 297), in which, instead of the usual date by the years of the Emperor, the date given is ' ' regnante Domino et Salvatore nostro Jesu Christo." "Ich glaube," he adds, "nun nicht, dass Jemand viel spater noch von der Provinz Italien, wie auch von der Eepublik reden konnte." Kohl gives a summary of events, the journey of Stej)hen, the promise at Ponthion, the written promise at Quierzy, " die Zuweisung der romischen Eepublik, d. i. des Dukats von Eom 432 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. und des Exarchats von Kavenna." He does not believe in any formal '' Schenkungsurkunde " of Pippin after the first Italian campaign ; the ^ ' donationis pagina " spoken of in Stephen's letters may be (p. 676, n. 3) the document given at Quierzy, or, if it be objected that that was only a '^ promissio " and not a "donatio," it may be (as I have all along held) simply the treaty with Aistulf laxly so spoken of. After the second cam- paign, Aistulf, as well as Pippin (see p. 424), put forth a "Schen- kungsurkunde." He seems to look on the cession made by Desideiius as a simple carrying out of the promise of Aistulf interrupted by his death. I have no doubt that in the endless '^Litteratur" on the subject, there is much that I have not come across ; but I have brought together a good many of the opinions of modern German scholars as well as the views of some of those who spoke of the subject in earlier times. Now in going through them all, and comparing the opinions of the commentators with the statements of the original writers, one is more and more struck, as several of the writers quoted have very naturally been, with the singular and unhappy lack of results. For my own part, I am free to confess that I rise from the controversy with no very definite conclusions, at least of a positive kind. The truth is that we have no materials to help us to come to any definite conclusion. When all must really turn on the words and construction of a document, we have not that docu- ment before us. If anything was set down in writing anywhere in Gaul, it is not now forthcoming. Neither are the terms of the first treaty with Aistulf forthcoming ; nor yet the most important document of all, the seemingly real ''donatio" of Pippin after the second Lombard campaign. Where the exact words are of the utmost consequence, we have only the repoi-ts in the Biographer and the Continuator, in which we seem some- times to see traces of formal language, but where we can never be quite sure whether we have the real words of docu- ments or the words, necessarily more or less coloured, of the reporters. Where there is no absolute certainty to be had, a boundless field for ingenious guessing is at once opened, and it may be to the charm of this process that we owe the vast mass of '' Litteratur " which has grown up on the subject. PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 433 After going through so many different arguments, I am not ashamed to say that I still do not know exactly what Stephen asked or what Pippin promised and granted. But I must further add that, being in that case, I believe that I am in very much the same case as Pippin himself. I believe, as I have said more than once, that the King was taken in by ambiguous words, and that, whatever he promised and granted, he did not fully take in the exact meaning, still less the probable conse- quences, of his own acts. For this Pippin is not to be blamed, excejDt so far as he may be thought blameworthy for acting or listening at all. He might have done more wisely in his own generation, if he had hearkened to Karlmann and the opposition party among the Franks, if he had stayed at home to set in order his Church and realm, and to guard them against Saracens, Gascons, Saxons, and Bavarians. But this is a question which it is idle to discuss ; the course of the world's history was destined to be otherwise. As it was. Pippin was outwitted. A man of honest purj^ose, of clear understanding in ordinary affairs, was no match for the subtle diplomacy of the Italian churchman. When we read that he promised or granted some- thing to Saint Peter and the Bishop of Kome, to the Eoman Church, to the Eoman Republic, it is vain, even if we could be sure that we have the exact words which passed between Stephen and Pippin, to discuss the exact force of the words as if they were the words of a treaty on which two parties agreed with their eyes open. The Pope meant the words to be taken in the sense most favourable to himself ; but he had further to put them in such a shape as might give the least amount of offence to his sovereign, the King's ally, the Emperor Constantine. It is the strange fashion of putting that most important personage out of sight which has led to most of the confusions on the subject. When so much guessing is allowed on all hands, I may be allowed to guess too, and my guess, as I have several times hinted, is that the Pope, going into Gaul as the Emperor's envoy, deceived both Emperor and King by words capable of more than one meaning, and persuaded Pippin to promise something which, through the use of such words, could be construed into a promise of Ravenna and other cities to the Roman Church. It is to be remarked that, in the accounts of the Pope's sojourn in Gaul, there is not, either in the Life Ff 434 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. of Stephen or in the Continuator of Fredegar, any mention of Eavenna or the other towns of the Exarchate or the Penta- polis. The phrases are all perfectly vague ; something has been taken from the Koman Church by the Lombards, but we are not told exactly what. And phrases about Saint Peter, the Eoman Church, the Koman Eepublie, are all so mixed up together that, as it is hard to see what was to be restored, it is no less hard to see to whom it was to be restored. When documents, if they ever existed, are not forthcoming, we cannot be really certain ; but it is an allowable guess that the phrase * ' respublica " was used, in order that the Emperor might take it in the old and received sense, while Pippin might gradu- ally be taught to take it in some new sense, in which Eoman Church, Eoman Eepublie, and Saint Peter, patron of both, were cleverly mingled together. That the words ^' Eespublica Eomana" did begin to put on a new sense during these years is, I think, clear. When in the Life of Stephen (166) the Emperor demands of Aistulf '^ ut reipublicse loca diabolico ab eo usurpata ingenio proprio resti- tueret dominio," there can be no doubt that the '^respublica" spoken of is simply the Empire. Constantino assuredly did not ask for the cities to be restored to any one but himself. When in the same Life (p. 172) Desiderius promises ''Eeipublicae se redditurum . . . civitates quae remanserant," it may be that the old form is kept on for form's sake ; but what is practi- cally meant is that the cities were to be given up to them. The use of words is much the same as when the citizens of Gloucester, summoned to surrender to Charles the First, answered that "they held the city for the King, and would surrender it only to his Majesty's orders signified hy both Houses of Parliament" The Pope just now stands in much the same rela- tion to the Emperor as that in which ''both Houses of Parlia- ment " stood to the King at the siege of Gloucester. The passages between these two in which "respublica" occurs are all during Stephen's stay in Gaul, and in all of them the '' respublica " is mixed up with Saint Peter and the Eoman Church (see pp. 168, 169). The word does not occur in the account of the first treaty with Aistulf, nor in the demand of the Emperor and Pippin's reply to it, nor yet in the summaries of the grants of Aistulf and Pippin. The Pope (see pp. 171, 172) is definitely put in its PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 435 place. It is only with the promise of Desiderius that we come to " respublica " again. In the letters of Stephen, though he has more to say about Saint Peter and though Saint Peter himself does not mention the Republic, the Republic is men- tioned several times (Mon. Car. pp. 35, 36, 42, 65 ; see above, p. 209), and once after the death of Aistulf. In every case the Republic and the Roman Church are more or less mixed up together. We read ^'beatoPetro sanctseque Dei ecclesise rei- publicae Romanorum," '' sanctae Dei ecclesiae reipublicae Ro- manorum beato Petro," once, more clearly, '^noster populus reipublicae Romanorum." This last agrees with the still later phrase (see above, p. 394), ''nostra Romana respublica." The Continuator of Fredegar also, in recording the first treaty with Aistulf, also couples (see above, p. 407) '' sedem apostolicam Romanam et rempublicam. " There must be some reason for this change of language. One of the earlier scholars already quoted, one of those who can see what the ordinary and natural sense of the word is, supposes a change of purpose in Pippin. He first meant to restore the cities to the Emperor ; but then changed his mind and gave them to the Pope. This comes rather nearer to what I conceive to be the real story. Only I should not so much say that Pippin changed his mind as that his mind was gradually enlightened. He would at first naturally understand the word '' respublica" in its ordinary sense. He would conceive that he was to win back the cities for his ally — in his patrician character one might say his sovereign — their lawful owner, the Emperor. He would gradually be taught that to grant them to the Pope was not inconsistent with the ultimate sovereignty of the Emperor, that such a grant was w^hat was meant by granting ''sanctae Dei eccle- siae reipublicae Romanorum," till at last, when the Emperor demanded the restoration of their own cities, he could answer that he had promised to give them to the Pope. But again, in the absence of documents we do not in any case know what were the real words used, and, without such knowledge, all is guess-work. What then did the grant or restoration, to whomsoever it was to be made, take in ? Clearly, I think, the Exarchate and the Pentapolis. The mention of Ravenna, which does not Fid, 436 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. appear in the two strictly contemporary accounts, conies in in the later Annals. And that something was done which con- cerned Kavenna and the other cities appears from the Imperial embassy of 756. Constantino expected — or diplomatically professed to expect — that the Exarchate would be restored to him as the result of Pippin's victory. We have not the text of the treaty of 754, the treaty between Franks, Lombards, and Komans. It is perfectly possible that it was so worded that it might seem at Constantinople to imply a restoration of the Exarchate to the Empire. But in any case, it must have been so worded that the Pope could put another meaning on it, a meaning which implied the transfer of the Exarchate to the Koman Church. And this almost implies that something which could be taken in that sense formed part of the promise made by Pippin to Stephen while in Gaul. That that promise was set down in writing is likely enough ; but, beyond the statement in the Life of Hadrian hereafter to be discussed, there is no evidence that it was. But, in the absence of the document, the point is of no great consequence. As we can only guess at the existence of such a document, we can only guess at its contents. But they must have been something of which the surrender of the towns given to the Pope after the second Lombard campaign could pass as the carrying out. That is, it must have had something in it about the Exarchate. But this document, if it existed, was at most a promise to give something if the King ever had it in his power to give it. It must be carefully distinguished from the actual grant when the King had it in his power to make a grant. When was that grant made ? It seems to me on the whole that, as I have already said, the '' donationis pagina" referred to by Pope Stephen in his letters of 755-756 merely refers to the treaty. There is no mention of any separate document on the part of Pippin ; but, as we have seen, some scholars try to establish the existence of such a document ; and it really makes no difference. The document is not forthcoming ; we can only suppose that this first grant which was not carried out was to much the same effect as the second grant which was carried out and whose nature we know from the Biographer's list of towns. We know that, after the second campaign, Pippin did PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 437 make a grant which, with some exceptions, was carried out ; it matters very little, in the state of our knowledge, whether we suppose him to have made an earlier grant to the same effect which was not carried out, or whether we hold that he was satisfied with a clause in the treaty. Anyhow, I think that the list in the Life of Stephen (p. 171) must be enlarged by the towns aftei^wards given up by Desiderius (see p. 213). That is, the grant took in the whole Exarchate, that the list of towns in p. 1 7 1 of the Life of Stephen is not a list of all the towns that were to be ceded, but only of those which actually were ceded during the life of Aistulf. There is some difficulty about the matter. The account of Abbot Fulrad's progress in the Life reads very much like the record of a transaction which was brought to an end. Still one does not see why the cities which were afterwards given up by Desiderius should have been left out in the original grant, and they are spoken of as if they were something which Aistulf was going to restore or ought to have restored. In the Life (172) they are " civitates quae remanserant." In Stephen's letter (Mon. Car. 64) they are ''civitates reliquae." These last words are addressed to Pippin, who must have known what he had granted. It is easier then to believe that Bologna, Faenza, Farrara, and Ancona were among the cities which Aistulf was to restore, that he died before the surrender was completed, and that Desiderius gave up the remaining towns, or part of them. This is surely much more likely than to suppose that the grant took in only parts of the Exarchate and the Pentapolis, and that the further cession of Desiderius was something fresh which Pippin had not designed. On the whole then we have a promise at Ponthion, perhaps put into writing at Quierzy, a promise which, to say the least, could be construed as a promise to grant the Exarchate and the Pentapolis to the Pope. A clause which could be construed in the same way had a place in the treaty with Aistulf, a clause binding Aistulf to give up the Exarchate and the Pentapolis. That clause may have been accompanied by a formal grant by Pippin. The second peace with Aistulf was certainly followed by a deed of grant from Aistulf, accompanied by one from Pippin. In conformity with these the surrender was begun by Aistulf, and carried on by Desiderius. 438 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Nearer than this, in the absence of documents, it seems impossible to come. But the further question remains, What was implied in the promise, or grant, or restoration, of Ravenna or anything else to the Roman Church? First of all, it may- be remarked that any words like ''reddere," '' restituere," or the like, are really out of place, if applied to anything except a restoration to the Emperor of the lands and cities which the Lombard had conquered from him. The Emperor had held them ; that is, in the usual language of the time, they had been held by the Roman Republic. They had certainly never been held by the Popes or (for a good many ages past) by any Roman Republic other than that which was another name for the Roman Empire. I confess that I can see no sign of any such definite "Italian RejDublic " as some of the writers whom I have quoted seem to imagine ; but something tending that way must have been growing up ; when a Pope could speak of " nostra Romanorum respublica," he assuredly did not mean the Empire, and he could hardly have meant quite the same as the Roman Church. And the new use of the word fell conveniently in with the use of the words "red- dere," '^ restituere," and the like. A promise to '^restore the Exarchate to the Republic" would have a very clear meaning in the eyes of the Emperor ; it would mean the real restoration of a lost possession to him who had lost it. But the Pope would be able to teach Pippin to take the words in a sense that suited him better. The cities were to be restored to the Roman Republic ; by skilful turns of language it would be easy to make the unsuspecting Frank believe that he was restoring them to the Roman Republic, if he gave them to the Roman Church, without any formal exclusion of the rights of the Emperor. But what did Pippin mean to grant in granting what he did ? Was it mere property? Was the Exarchate granted as he might have granted a house or a farm ? Was it absolute sovereignty, shutting out all superiority on the part either of the Emperor or of himself the Patrician? What was meant was surely something between the two. The Pope was cer- tainly not meant formally to disj^lace the Emperor whom he still acknowledged as his sovereign. But he was to be some- thing more than a mere landlord. We are in the region of PROMISES AND GIFTS OF PIPPIN TO POPE STEPHEN. 439 Imimoiitafes, and Immiinitates will cany us a long way. If I rightly understand the case, the Pope was not to be a full sovereign, but he was to be something of a prince. He was to have something like the position to which the prelates of Germany gradually rose. The notion of an ecclesiastical princij)alit3^, not shutting out the acknowledgement of the Imperial sovereignty, but hindering its practical daily exercise, was something new, something not very definitely marked out, something of which we may be sure that the King had but a very vague idea and the Pope himself not a very clear one. But it was something which grew up in after-times at Mainz, Aquileia, and elsewhere, and the action of Pippin seems to have caused the beginning of its growth at Eome. Pippin assuredly did not design to create "the States of the Church," in the sense which those words came afterwards to bear ; but he assuredly did an act which led to their beginning. The vagueness of the whole matter is remarkable. The scholars who have gone most minutely into the matter seem to shrink from saying an5i;hing very definite, and there is certainly nothing very definite in the original authorities. The vagueness was doubtless designed. A very minute definition of anything would not have suited Stej^hen's purpose. His policy was to get all that he could, and to enlarge whatever he got. If we had the actual words of any of the documents, still more if we knew exactly what passed between the Pope and the King, we might be able to speak with some confidence about the matter. As it is, we can hardly get out of the region of guessing. Only one or two negative points seem clear. The grant did not take in anything beyond the Exarchate and the Pentapolis. It was not a mere grant of an estate. It did not shut out the Imperial supremacy which the Popes still acknow- ledged. When Pippin refuses to give up the cities to the Emperor, we are not certain that we have his exact words, and the refusal by no means shuts out the Emperor's ultimate sovereignty. Ages after, when ecclesiastical princes had grown a good deal, a refusal to put the Emperor in immediate posses- sion of the lands of any German bishopric would not have implied a denial of the Emperor's position as the Bishop's temporal superior. Something like this, but of course not put 440 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. into so definite a shape, I take to have been the relation of the Pope and the Emperor as brought about by the grant of Pippin. But of course the policy of the Pope was to put the Emperor as far as might be out of sight, and to take every opportunity of increasing his own powers at the expense of all others. As I read the story — it is only my guess, like the guesses of other people — Pippin was taken in, and he half felt that he was taken in. He had not fully understood what he was granting, and he presently awoke to the feeling that he had granted more than he had meant to grant. He grew weary of Italian affairs, and took as little part in them as he could. It is clear that he might have made a great deal more of his patriciate, if he had chosen. That he never even went to Rome is significant. But of one thing we may be certain. Though the Popes were striving to cut down the Imperial power to the lowest possible point, they still for many years formally acknowledged it ; they never formally disowned it. The Pope was a good deal more than a landlord in the Ex- archate ; he was not an independent sovereign. The supremacy of Caesar Augustus was not cast off. It lived on, as a mere name perhaps, a mere shadow, in the hands of Constantino, his son, and his grandson, till it was ready to pass in a more practical shape, from the last Isaurian to the first Frank, from the sixth Constantino to him who was in Latin eyes his lawful successor, the first Charles. Note 8, p. 191. THE LETTER OF CONSTANTINE TO PIPPIN. It is curious how often one is sent to an useful source of knowledge by a contemptuous reference. I remember a German scholar, rather young certainly, who had the presumption to use the words "Stubbs irrig." I might not, perhaps I ought to, have gone to Montfaucon's Palaeographia Graeca for light on the doings of Pippin. But I found this note in Oelsner, p. 267; ''Das von Montfaucon, Palaeographia Grseca, pp. 265-267, aufbewahrte Bruchstuck eines griechischen Briefes, worin der Herausgeber ein Schreiben des Kaisers Constantin an Pij^pin THE LETTER OF CONSTANTINE TO PIPPIN. 441 erkennen will, bietet so geringe Anhaltspunkte fiir die Beiiut- zung dar, dass \^dr es lieber ganz iibergangen haben." The chance of something Imperial, preserved and respected by a scholar of a past age, and scornfully tossed aside by a German scholar in 1871, was tempting. I looked up the document, and, though I cannot say that it helj)ed me to any new and important facts, it was certainly quite worth looking at. The document comes from Saint Denis, and is in a fright- fully fragmentary state. It is written in a style which Montfaucon calls tachygrapliia, which is even harder to read than a modern Greek letter ; but Montfaucon kindly printed each word underneath in intelligible type. It is indeed so torn that, as its editor says, 'Wix divinando aliquid expiscari et qua de re agatur intelligere possimus." Montfaucon how- ever goes on with his fishing, and not without some luck. It is from an Emperor to some king, presumably a king of the Franks, who has been at war with another king, with whom he prays him to make peace. There had been a warlike expe- dition {ra^ihov) ; on the result of which the Emperor blesses the successful king with many blessings. He wishes for a restoration of something, for the safety of his friends and for the overthrow of his enemies [[a-noK^aTda-Taa-is (pddvr] koL ol [e'x^poi] . . . [d7r]dXovrai Koi ol ^tXoi (rco^oi/rai). He blesses him still more, and then suggests peace with the other king ; . , . dpfModiov croi icrrXv koX vrrofie . . . flprjn/eveivj ra npodrjXaidevTt [koI 0tXo;(pi1crr(jp rjixatu rtKva tco piyL Some fragments of pious phrases follow, and what Mont- faucon took to be the Emperor's signature in Latin. Montfaucon goes on to argue that these fragments fit well in with the relations between Constantine, Pippin, and Aistulf. He does not seem to think that the letter was sent by the hands of envoys who went by way of Marseilles. He seems rather to suppose an earlier embassy during the year 754, while Pippin's first Lombard campaign was still going on ; he conceives the Emperor '^pacem inter ambos [Pippinum et Aistulfum] componere conatum esse, ac scilicet conditione ut Eavenna et alise urbes sibi restituerentur, et quidem amice statim utrasque per literas alloquutum esse, qui ab utroque sibi metueret." Now it certainly strikes one as a little strange if 442 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. nothing went on in the diplomatic way between the joint mission of Pope Stephen and John the Silentiary to Pavia in October 753 and the appearance of John and George at Rome about May 756. But we at least find none recorded. And I do not know why this fragment should not be a fragment of a letter carried by John and George in 756. They were sent at a time when it was not known at Constantinople that Pippin had begun his second campaign, but when it was most likely expected that he would begin it. They were troubled when they heard of Pippin's march ; they had therefore come to hinder it, that is to keep peace, if they could. By that time peace between the two kings had clearly become the interest of the Emperor ; he must have come to see that the Pope had taken him in, and that he had a better chance of getting back Ravenna by diplomacy between the two kings than he would have if Pippin again overthrew Aistulf at the Pope's request. Nothing of course can be said with any certainty about such a mere fragment. If we had the whole letter and were more certain about it, it would most likely not tell us any new facts. Its contents would most likely be something very vague and formal. The deeper diplomacy of those days was done by word of mouth. Envoys sent from Constantinople at such a moment must have had very elaborate instructions. They must have been told how they were to act according to the many possible states of things which they might find. A formal letter from the Emperor to the King must have been some- thing which would not be out of place under very different sets of circumstances. But the fragment is clearly a fragment of a letter from an Emperor to a Prankish king, and what there is of it well suits the circumstances of this particular embassy. And since Oelsner so scornfully cast aside the opinion of Montfaucon, the views of the elder scholar have been confirmed by more recent palasographers in Germany, France, and England. The fragment is accepted as of the date of Constantino and Pippin, and as sent by Constantino to Pippin, by Wattenbach, Schrifttafeln zur griechischen Palaographie (1876), X, xi, and in his Script. Gr^ec. Specimina (1883), p. 6. It is also accepted by M. Graux in the Journal des Savants (1881), p. 307, and by Sir E. Maunde Thompson in his article THE LETTER OF CONSTANTINE TO PIPPIN. 443 Palaeography in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (vol. 18, p. 150), where it is called ''the single surviving specimen of Greek writing of the Imperial chancer5\" And these scholars accept Montfaucon's reading of the Greek text of the fragment. Only the Latin word which he read as the Emperor's signature Constantmus, they read legimns. I owe special thanks to Sir E. M. Thompson for guidance in the matter. The letter makes one think of its author. It is curious that Gregorovius (ii. 285), who sees the analogy between the rela- tions of Pippin and Aistulf with the relations of Theodoric and Odowaker (though he does not quite see the bearing of that analogy on the patriciate), should talk about ''derelende Kaiser Constantin." Such words remind one of Mr. J. M. Neale, when he talks of the ''long and peaceful reign of the Slayer of the Bul- garians." Why should Constantino be called " elend " ? Gregoro- vius goes on to talk about his ecclesiastical doings, and tells us how "er hatte weder die Kraft, das verlorne Italien wieder zu gewinnen, noch tiberhaupt Einsicht in die wahre Lage der Dinge. Mit dem Inhalt des Vertrages zwischen Pipin und dem Papste unbekannt," &c. Likely enough ; the Pope, his own subject and ambassador, had taken him in. An Emperor reigning at Constantinople is of course fair game ; so are his ministers. (Martens, Die romische Frage, p. 69, has also much to say against Constantino.) Oelsner therefore (267) sees something very ^\^cked in the Imperial envoys because of the "afflictio" felt by the man whom the Pope had thrust on them, when George the Protosecreta con- trived to get away to the Prankish king without a spy at his side ; "Eine im Uebrigen vollig vereinzelte Notiz der Annales S. Bevonis Gandensis, Parte SS. II. p. 187 von einer ahnlichen That erzahlte ; Anno 752 Hildebertus abbas Gandensis inter- ficitur a consiliariis Constantini impiissimi imperatoris." The " impiissimus " is still "piissimus" in the dates of papal documents; but that Ghent entry is certainly "verein- zelt," and altogether very odd. Dahn (Urgeschichte, iii. 904) has something to say about the matter, the worthless- ness of the authority and the needlessness of the surmise. Still there is the never-failing question, What put so odd 444 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. a notion into the compiler's head ? And the later the compilation is, the more strongly does the question come. How the counsellors of the Emperor had the chance of killing an abbot of Ghent does not appear ; but at any rate the Ghent chronicler was as well informed about the fate of the Iconoclast in the other world as Pope Stephen was about that of Aistulf ; '' Qui propter hsec et alia facta horribilia quae perpetravit igne gehennali in corpore et anima atrociter punitur." But does Oelsner really think that, when we read of the Imperial envoys with their unwelcome papal envoy as "affligentes eum valide," it means that they went about to kill him ? Note 9, p. 326. THE EVENTS OF THE YEAK 939. The events of the year 939, so far as they deal with the affairs of the two Frankish kingdoms and of the border-land that was disputed between the two, supply an instructive example of the way in which our authorities have sometimes to be used. We have accounts from the Eastern kingdom and from the Western, and one at least from the border-land itself. Now I really think that if a man, without any further guidance, should read the Eastern and Western accounts, it is quite possible that it might not occur to him that they were versions of the same story. Or if he saw that one or two striking events, like the drowning of Duke Gilbert, were clearly the same in both, he would at least think that one side or the other had grossly misstated the story. Each story would show him that the Eastern King Otto had to strive against enemies in Lotharingia ; but, with the single exception of Gilbert, who is common to both versions, they would seem to be two wholly different sets of enemies. From the Eastern version no one would find out that one chief enemy of the Eastern king was his Western colleague. From the Western version no one would find out that another chief enemy of the Eastern king was his own brother in alliance with the Western king. The Eastern version tells us only of revolt against a king on the part of his own vassals. The Western version tells of a foreign war between two kings in which each is helped by vassals THE EVENTS OF THE YEAR 939. 445 of the other. And yet these two stories are only different account of the same facts. Each may in the main be believed ; neither contradicts the other in any material point. In both there is a vast deal of that kind of misrepresentation which consists in leaving out facts of such importance that their omission gives the story quite another character. In both there is little or nothing of that kind of misrepresentation which consists in directly misstating such facts as are reported. That is, there is on both sides a great deal of suppressio veri, little, if any, of suggestio falsi. One who came to the story with some knowledge of the state of things in the two kingdoms would see this for himself, and would be able to a great extent to put together the story from the Eastern and Western versions only. But his work is greatly lightened w^hen he turns to the inter- mediate version which contains a good many of the facts which are reported by both. In other words, the Saxon version tells us nothing about Lewis, a great deal about Everhard and Heniy. The West-Frankish version tells us nothing about Everhard and Henry, but a great deal about Lewis. In the Lotharingian version the names of all three are found. Our main accounts are five. Widukind in his second book tells the story in his fashion, naturally treating it primarily as a piece of his own Saxon history. The events of Lotha- ringia alternate with events in Saxony and elsewhere in Germany. The main fact with him is that Henry rebelled against his brother, and that Everhard and Gilbert were partakers in his rebellion. That King Lewis had any share in the matter no one would find out from his narrative. He has no need to speak of him in either of the battles, as he was not present in either. But it is strange that he should leave out all mention of any negotiation between Lewis and the rebel princes, and it is yet stranger that he should leave out a fact which touched German feelings so nearly as the Western king's entrance into Elsass and his withdrawal from it. And one might have thought that, if he did not care to record that certain of Otto's princes commended themselves to Lewis, he would have taken a certain pleasure in telling how several of Lewis' princes commended themselves to Otto. But he has no more to tell us about Duke Hugh and Count Herbert than he has about King Lewis himself. But, whatever he 446 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. leaves out, his fault is simply in leaving out. His narrative, where he tells us anything, is perfectly straightforward and trustworthy. He gives us everything in fair chronological order, and alone brings out the fact that Otto, busy with Slaves, Saxon rebels, and foes of this kind and that in other parts of his kingdom, contrived to make three journeys to the Khine in the one year 939. Thietmar of Merseburg tells us nothing. Liudprand, at this time deacon at Pavia, one day to be Bishop of Cremona, must, for our purpose, count, Lombard as he was, for a German writer. He tells us a good deal in the fourth book of his Antapodosis, in the characteristic style of his Anta- podosis. His story is essentially the same as that of Widukind, a narrative of the revolt of Henry, Everhard, and Gilbert. But he does not marshal his facts so clearly as Widukind. He leaves out many things that certainly happened, while he has more to tell us of the inner workings of men's minds, about w^hich one cannot be so certain. And he has legends and marvels and eloquent outbursts, for which Widukind had no place. Not a w^ord has our rhetorical Lombard to say about the Western king any more than our sober Saxon. Flodoard, our no less sober Canon of Rheims, tells the story as it looked at Rheims. He leaves out Henry, as Widukind and Liudprand leave out Lewis ; but the omission is of a different kind in the two cases. Widukind must have known ]3erfectly well that Lewis had a good deal to do with the business, and he must have known that his share in the business gave it quite another character from a mere revolt of any of the Eastern princes. Flodoard does not leave out Otto, he could not leave him out ; all that he leaves out is Henry. To him it was very important that the Lotharingian princes commended themselves to Otto and the Western princes to Otto ; it was very important that Otto entered Lotharingia and that Lewis entered Elsass. But that the beginning of all this was the rebellion of Henry against his brother might really seem not greatly to matter. We can hardly say that Flodoard leaves anything out except the battle of Birthen. If there is any approach to contradiction between him and the German writers, it is as to the way in which King Lewis got him out of Elsass. The monk Richer of Saint Remigius follows after the canon THE EVENTS OF THE YEAR 939. 447 of Our Lady. He does not tell us quite so much as Flodoard does ; he leaves out some things that Flodoard mentions, as the first Lotharingian application to Lewis ; and his narrative is nothing like so orderly as Flodoard's. But we have to thank Kicher for that passage in the whole story which, confused and casual as is the way in which it is brought in, really best sets forth the real grounds of quarrel between the kings. This is that referred to in p. 326 from Richer, ii. 18. It comes in a late stage of the war. It contains a gross confusion of generations. It is of course deeply coloured from a partisan point of view. Still it expresses a real state of things. Lewis has (c. 17) entered Lotharingia [Belgica] and Elsass ; ' praesenserat enim Ottonem velle in suum jus Belgicam transfundere." Lewis is here conceived as the lawful sovereign of Lotharingia ; he has just asserted his right and taken possession ; but he expects that Otto will disturb that possession. In the next chapter Otto comes, and we hear his reasons for coming ; '^Eo quod collatione paterna princeps fieri Belgicis dedig- nantibus contenderet, cum ejus pater Saxonise solum propter Sclavorum improbitatem rex creatus est, eo quod Karolus, cui rerum summa debebatur, adhuc in canis vagiebat." I have said something on this passage in p. 326. The con- fusion between Lewis and his father is odd ; the French — one cannot help using the word — colouring is amusing ; Otto is spoken of as if he were strong to win a new kingdom instead of striving to hold one of which he was just before in full possession ; yet, wdth all this, these w^ords go to the root of the matter. It is the true Lotharingian theory. The Karling is the lawful lord ; if no Karling is to be had, another king may be endured ; if the choice lies between a Saxon and a Bur- gundian, the Saxon is to be preferred ; but, when once a Karling again shows himself, Saxon and Burgundian should both pass away. The wonder is that a writer so much later as Richer could have so fully entered into the feelings of the time. But we must not forget that, as his fourth book very clearly shows, the same question came up again in his own day. The last writer on our list is the monk of Saint Maximin at Trier, be his name Adalbert or anything else. His last editor Kurze tells us (p. x. and Neues Archiv, xv. 32) that his account of this year is made up from Annals of Fulda and from Annals 448 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. of Eeichenau (Annales Augienses). But the Fulda Annals are confessedly lost ; so we may make any guess about them that we please ; between the Continuator's narrative and the exist- ing annals of Kichenau (Peiiz, vol. i) a plain understanding can see no further likeness than there must be between any two accounts of the same event which do not directly contradict one another. To the insular mind, not aspiring to the higher criticism, the Continuator seems to write exactly as a man at Trier, as distinguished from a man either at Kheims or at Corbey, would write. He does not distinguish the three expe- ditions of Otto so clearly as Widukind does; his order of events generally is not so clear as Widukind's. He leaves out the first application to Lewis, because nothing came of it. He equally leaves out the submission of the Western princes to Otto, because nothing, immediately at least, came of that either. But he looks on both sides of him, as a man of Lotharingia would look. He does not leave out Henry ; he does not leave out Lewis when he actually does anything. And he tells us many details which were likely to be better known at Trier than either at Corbey or at Kheims. He is the man of the Middle kingdom— a name which we may surely give to Lotharingia as well as to Burgundy— and he writes as such. In following the different stages of the story, we may begin with the account of the opening of the war given by Widukind, ii. 15. The stir in Lotharingia is brought in as an appendage to the revolt of Henry in Saxony. Some nameless counsellors, who seem to wish to get rid of him under a fair pretence C'dabant consilium, quo facilius bellum solveretur "), recom- mend him to go into Lotharingia ; ^' ut videlicet ipse relinqueret Saxoniam sub prsesidio militari, et sese inferret Lothariis generi hominum imbelli." The writer adds his own brief, but hardly accurate, comment ; '^ ita factum est ut prime impetu eos rex devincerat et uno certamine fatigaret. " He then goes on (c. 1 6) to explain how Gilbert came to ally himself with Henry, at least to point out that he was already disposed to revolt against Otto. During the war with Everhard the King had sent his chamber- lain Hadald to Gilbert, Wid. ii. 16, "Missus Hadaldus, qui erat super cubiculum regis, ad Isilberhtum pro concordia et pace, cum necdum ad neutram partem palam declinaretur." After- THE EVENTS OF THE YEAR 939. 449 wards went Bishop Bernhard of Halberstadt. Neither was treated as he should have been by a loyal subject. Therefore Henry and Gilbert make up their minds to meet Otto in arms when he comes to the Rhine (c. 17, ''Igitur copias belli parantes Heinricus et Isilberhtus decreverunt ad Renum occurrere regis"). Then follows the battle of Bii-then. Liudprand, after some wonderful verses in which Henry, " optimus Saxigenum," is rebuked for his rebelHon, and ad- dressed as ^'impie Leviathan Behemoth," goes (Ant. iv. 18-23) more fully into the workings of Gilbert's mind, and specially brings out the agency of Everhard. He tells the story of the former warfare and reconciliation of Everhard and Henry, into the account of which he brings Gilbert, who does not appear in Widukind's narrative (ii. 11, 12) of that matter. Everhard already has Henry as a prisoner ; he has persuaded Gilbert to rebel against the King ( ' ' Haeverardus sane Gisleberhtum Lotharingorum ducem a regis fidelitate sejunxerat, cujus adju- torio regi non minime resistebat "). Gilbert, though married to the King's sister, had rather be king himself. He does not yield to the persuasions of Everhard, till Everhard promises him the kingdom C Haeverardus haud secus Gislebertum a regis fide sejungeret, donee regem eum se facturum promisit"). Then Gilbert persuades Henry to turn against his brother on a like promise of the crown (^'Gislebertus autem Heinricum hac arte decipere voluit, ut dum suo adjutorio regem devin- ceret, ipsum deponeret sibique regni solium obtineret"). On these conditions Everhard sets Henry free (c. 21). This is confirmed by what Widukind says in c. 12 ; •'Heinricus . . . eo pacto crimine solvit eum [Everhardum], quo, conjuratione secum facto contra regem dominum suum et fratrem, sibi regi diadema, si possibile foret, imponeret. Foedus itaque invicem persuasum." Widukind however does not seem to know so much of the inmost motives of all parties as Liudprand does. Of course nobody wanted anybody to be king but himself ; each meant to make use of the others. And Liudprand now brings in, though he says that it happened at a later time, the story of Everhard and his wife which I have mentioned in p. 344. Then (c. 23) Gilbert and Henry make war upon Otto, and the battle of Birthen follows. 450 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Here is not a word about King Lewis or about the West- Frankish kingdom in any shape. Yet one cannot doubt that this conspiracy of Everhard, Henry, and Gilbert, got up in Lotharingia against Otto, is the same which Flodoard records under the year 939, as the first application from Lotharingia to Lewis to which he refuses to listen ; * ' Lotharienses Othonem regem suum deserunt, et ad Ludo- wicum regem veniunt, qui eos recipere distulit ob amicitiam quse inter eos, legatis ipsius Othonis et Arnulfo comite me- diante, depacta erat." This first application from Lotharingia is not recorded by Eicher ; but it seems implied in the singular way (ii. 16) in which he brings in the second embassy to which we shall come presently. Neither of the Western writers mentions the battle of Birthen, clearly because it was waged in a war with which their king refused to have anything to do. The account from the border-land itself, that of the Conti- nuator of Kegino, begins with what seems to be rather a sum- mary of the events of the whole year than a direct account of its first stage. His words are ; '^Eberhardus ab exilio remittitur, totumque regnum inimi- citiis et rebellionibus confunditur. Eberhardus enim et Gisal- bertus cum Heinrico fratre regis adversus regem conjurant, sed et quidam ecclesiastici viri nequam et Dei odibiles cum illis factione concordant, omniaque passim pacis et concordia) jura turbabant." He then goes on ; '' Tunc rege Lotharienses, ubi tunc rebellionis summa gere- batur, adeunte, Gisalbertus cum fratre regis transitum Eheni regi prohibere volens nee valens juxta Bieii:anam sociis regis congreditur." The mention of the "^ ecclesiastici viri nequam et Dei odibiles " shows that this is a summary of the whole year. Even the submission of the Lotharingian bishops to Lewis comes much later ; but the reference is doubtless to the still later rebellion of Archbishop Frederick which this writer records at length further on. It therefore follows that his mention of Everhard at the very beginning cannot be quoted to confirm the account which Liudprand gives as to Everhard's active plotting from the very beginning. Of those plots Widukind says nothing. THE EVENTS OF THE YEAR 939. 451 He does not bring him in as an actor till c. 24, at the time of Otto's third expedition to Lotharingia. In c. 16 he only uses him as a date, to mark the time when Gilbert began to show signs of disloyalty. Nor does Liudprand himself bring in Everhard as really acting till the same time as his mention by Widukind, just before the battle of Andernach (e. 29). One can hardly build much on the ungrammatical sentence wliich opens c. 24 ; " Igitur, ut praefati sumus, hujusmodi promissione animatus, immo deceptus, collecto exercitu, cum Gisleberto pariter atque Heverardo regi praeparant bellum." The nominative to '' praeparant" must be ''Heinricus" out of the chapter just before. It comes to a little more when, a little later in the same chapter, Henry goes to Birthen ''cum praefatis comitibus," which must take in Everhard. But surely these passages do not prove so much one way as is proved the other way by the words of Widukind in c. 24 ; ''Tractum tamdiu bellum Everhardus considerans ultra non quiescit." It is to be noticed that both Liudprand and the Trier Conti- nuator leave out the action of Henry and Otto in Saxony, which did not concern their stories, while it concerned Widukind more than anything else. And, just as the French writers leave out the battle of Birthen, because their own people had nothing to do with it, so the Continuator leaves out the first application to Lewis, because it did not lead to any Western action in Lotharingia. The battle of Birthen is recorded by Widukind (ii. 1 7) and Liudi^rand (iv. 24-26), and by the Continuator of Regino(939). There is nothing very special to comment on in any of these narratives beyond what has been pointed out in the notes to the text. Widukind speaks emphatically of Otto's prayers ; but it is Liudprand who speaks of the holy lance of which he stops to give the story at length with many reflexions. And there is seemingly a reference to the same story in the shorter entry of the Continuator (Pertz, i. 618) ; ''Tunc rege Lotharienses, ubi tunc rebellionis summa gere- batur, adeunte, Gisalbertus cum fratre regis transitum Kheni regi prohibere volens nee valens juxta Biertanam sociis regis congreditur, Deoqiie victoriam prcestante, pluribus suorum occisis aliisque fugatis, ipse et frater regis fugae subsidia petunt." Gg 2 452 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Here are no details ; but we may mark that there is no mention of Everhard. We may mark that the Trier writer uses the Nether-Dutch "Biertana," while Liudprand the stranger has the High-Dutch "Bierzuni." Widukind gives the place of battle no name at this point ; but he had already casually spoken of '^Biertanicum bellum." It is plain from Widukind that Otto went back to Saxony veiy soon after the battle. The Continuator leaves out Otto's second expedition, or perhaps more strictly puts all three into one, by leaving out Otto's journeys to Saxony. One would think from his account that Otto besieged Chevremont immediately after the battle of Birthen. He goes on ; ^^Quos rex insequens usque ad Caprimontem pervenit, castellumque in eo situm firma undique obsidione circum- dedit." We learn the actual course of things from Widukind, ii. 18, 19, 22. Otto meant to follow Henry and Gilbert; but he was called off by the journey of Henry to Saxony ; '^Regi post victoriam visum est persequi fratrem suum generumque. . . . Fractus [frater sc] recenti regis victoria . . . Saxoniam adiens . . . Quo rex comperto, et ipse reversus est Saxoniam." Then comes the mention of the Slaves (cc. 20, 21) ; then in c. 22 Henry comes back to Lotharingia, Otto comes after him, and besieges Gilbert in Chevremont. This second appearance both of Henry and of Otto in Lotharingia comes out most clearly in this chapter of Widu- kind. Henry comes back from Saxony to Lotharingia. He joins himself to Gilbert (''Lotharios iterum adiit, et cum genero . suo, duce scilicet Isilberhto, cum suis militibus aliquamdiu moratus est "). Then Otto comes ; he burns the possessions of Gilbert (" Iterum ducitur exercitus a rege contra Isilberhtum, et omnis regio Lothariorum illius imperio subjacens igni traditur"), and besieges him at Chevremont (see p. 341). Gilbert escapes ; the siege goes on to no purpose (''cum obsidio difficultate locorum parum procederet ") ; the King therefore, after doing some more liarrying, goes back to Saxony. Liudprand leaves out the second expedition altogether. We turn to our West-Frankish guides, and we see how very much is left out in Widukind's account. The Saxon writer THE EVENTS OF THE YEAR 939. 453 makes no mention of the dealings either of the princes of the East with the King of the West or of those of the princes of the East with the King of the West. Both come out plainly enough in Flodoard. After his narrative of the affair of Montreuil, he goes on ; " Lotharienses iterum veniunt ad regem Ludowicum, et proceres regni, Gislebertus scilicet dux, et Otto, Isaac, atque Theodoricus comites eidem se regi committunt, episcopi vero, quoniam rex Otto eorum secum detinebat obsidatum, Ludowico se committere differunt." Then he mentions the coming of Otto into Lotharingia, that is the second coming recorded by Widukind, ii. 22 ; " Otto rex, Rheno transmisso, regnum Lothariense perlustrat, et incendiis praedisque plura loca devastat." Then comes the English fleet, of which more presently ; then we read ; "Otto rex colloquium habuit cum Hugone et Heriberto, Arnulfo et Willelmo Nortmannorum principe, et acceptis ab eis pacti sacramentis, trans Rhenum regreditur." This is the second return recorded by Widukind in ii. 22 ; but Widukind makes no mention of the submission of the Western lords to Otto. This second application of the Lotharingian lords to Lewis is the same as the first recorded by Richer, ii. 16, under the heading '"Belgicorum querimonia ad regem super ejus levi- tate." As I have already said, he does not mention the first application, but his language now, though anything but clear, would seem to take it for granted. His words certainly seem to imply that something had already happened between Lewis and the Lotharingians. The application comes, as in Flodoard, just after the affair of Montreuil ; "Quo tempore Belgicorum principes ad regem conveniunt ac Lauduni apud eum gravissime conqueruntur, eo quod incon- sultus omnia appetat. Si eorum quoque consiliis adquiescat, in bonum exitum res suas deverturas memorant ; ad hoc etiam sese convenisse, ut quid velit eis injungat, quod cupit ingerat : si velit, consilio et armis, terra marique contra hostes sese congressuros. Rex ab iis fide suscepta, cum multa benevolentia redire permisit, se fortuna quandoque postulat, redire jubens. " He does not now mention any Lotharingians by name, but 454 WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. he speaks of Gilbert, Theodoric, and Isaac at a later stage in the next chaj)ter. He then records the action of the English fleet ; but the second coming of Otto into Lotharingia, recorded both by Widukind and by Flodoard, is left out, and with it the conference of the Western princes with him. The Continuator, as I said before, leaves out the second journey of Otto, as also both the submission of the Lotharingian princes to Lewis, and that of the Western princes to Otto. He does not mention Lewis at all till a little later. The movements of Lewis at this stage are fixed by charters. The charter on behalf of Cluny is given in Bouquet, ix. 590. The King is described as "Ludovicus, pacificus, augustus, et invictus, Dei gratia rex." The Burgundian Hugh appears as "Hugo filius Richardi, vir illustrissimus et Marchio." The date is plainly June 20, 939. "Actum in querceto juxta Dociacum villam super fluvium Carum .xii. Kal. Jul. Indict, xii. anno iv. regnante Ludovico rege in Dei nomine feliciter." The place is the same as that mentioned by Flodoard, 947, under the names of Duodeciacum, Douzy, near Mouson on the Lotharingian frontier. The explanation of " Carus "by " Cher " might easily mislead. The stream meant is a small one, Char or Chiers, running into the Meuse. The other charter (Bouquet, ix. 592) is "Datum iv. nonas Augusti, anno quarto regnante Ludovico serenissimo rege apud Lugdum [Clavatum] in Dei nomine feliciter. Amen." It is witnessed by " Ginsiabertus comes," in whom we are tempted to see Duke Gilbert of Lotharingia ; but as there is another reading " Vinsubius," it is perhaps hardly safe. Yet a second visit of Gilbert to Laon was not at all an unlikely step to the action of Lewis which follows. We may safely place the second expedition of Otto, his con- ference with the Western princes, and his second return to Saxony, between the dates of these two charters, that is, in July. Lewis does not seem to have crossed the frontier while Otto was in Lotharingia. He looked out from Douzy, and that was all. After Otto had gone back, and after things had taken a turn in the Eastern kingdom which seemed favourable to him, he set out, as soon as we please after the August charter. His action comes out cleaidy in Flodoard ; THE EVENTS OF THE YEAR 939. 455 ''Eex interea Ludowicus Yirdunensem pagum petit, ubi qui- dem regni Lothariensis episcopi sui efficiuntur. Indeque in pagum proficiscitur Elisatium, locutusque cum HugoneCisalpino, et quibusdam ad se venientibus receptis Lothariensibus, non- nullos quoque Ottonis regis fidelibus trans Ehenum fugatis, Laudunum revertitur." Then follows the King's dealings with Bishop Rudolf, and then we come to the battle of Andernach and the death of Gilbert, but without any mention of Otto or of Everhard, nor is there any mention of Lewis's presence at Breisach. Richer's tale (ii. 17) is less clear ; the heading is, '' Rex in Belgica sues sibi sociat, et Ottonis fautores ultra Rhenum fugat. " This is the first time that he brings Otto's name into the story, though he has been several times mentioned by Flodoard. His words are ; ''Rex in pago Elisatio cum Hugone Cisalpino principe locutus, Belgicos exteriores qui ad se nondum venerant, sibi asciscebat. Et qui partibus Ottonis favebant ultra Rhenum fugere compulit . . . Qui vero sibi consentiebant asciscens, Gislebertum videlicet Belgicorum ducem, Theodoricum quoque atque Isaac comites, cum eis consilium confert, ac pro fide habenda jusjurandum ab eis accepit, post hsec Laudunum rediens." In the blank comes that singular exposition of Lewis's motives to w^hich I have referred in p. 447, as if Otto's claim to Lotharingia was something wholly new. The "Belgici exteriores " of this version would seem to be the same as the bishops in Flodoard's. But unless Gilbert and the counts now took a second oath to Lewis, their names, which come (see p. 453) at an earlier stage in Flodoard, would seem to have got out of their places. After the return to Laon, Richer mentions the affair of Bishop Rudolf ; and then he comes to the third expedition of Otto — the only one which he mentions, by no means leaving it out, as Flodoard does (Richer, ii. 18) ; "Otto interea Belgicos comperiens regis partes sustentare et a se penitus defecisse, Rheno transmisso Belgicam ingressus, ejus loca plurima incendiis ac ingentibus prsedis devastat . . . Multam itaque praedam abducens, Rhenum transmeat." In the blank comes, quite casually, that remarkable setting forth of the Lotharingian case of wliich we have already spoken in p. 447. INDEX Aachen, Aquse Grani, Pippin keeps Christmas there, 263. Abd-al-Rahman, founds the line of Ommiad Emirs, 226. Adalbert the Black, dies of wounds, 335- Adelhard, count of Challon, and count Australd, defeat and slay Chilping, 261. ^dde's confused story concerning Wilfrith, 13. ^gelberht, Frankish bishop of Dorchester, 4. becomes bishop of Paris, 4. Agde, Agathe, 107. Agen, Pippin halts there, 266. Aistulf, his chance of the kingdom of Italy, 114. breaks his engagement with pope Stephen, 116. rejects at Pavia the demands of pope Stephen, 124. fights with Pippin, 168. flees to Pavia, 168. treaty with Pippin, 170. second march of Franks against, 187. new treaty with Pippin, 197. accidental death, 199. Pippin's message to, 374. Alamans, admit supremacy of Franks, 62. Alboin, duke of Spoleto through the influence of pope Stephen, 209. Amanung, count of Poitou, 261. defeated by men of Tours, 261. Ambrose, Primicerius, ambassador to Aistulf, 115. accompanies pope Stephen, 123. Anastasius, bishop, envoy of pope Gregory to Charles Martel, 356. Ancona, head of Pentapolis of Italy, 33. latest colony of Greece in Italy, 33- Angouleme, Waifar breaks down the walls of, 245. Annemundus, martyr revered by church of Lyons, 14. brother of count Dalfinus, 14. Ansa, wife of Desiderius, 204. Ansemund, the Goth, leads his people against Saracens, 106. Anthat, a fidelis of Charles, 45. Aosta, Burgundian not Italian, 166. Aquitaine, kingdom of Charibert, 3- our ignorance concerning, in seventh century, 16. and Neustria, kept together by Roman element only, 17. an independent land, 61. dependence on Frankish power, 73- boundaries of duchy, 233. 458 INDEX. Aquitanians, submit to Pippin, 277. Pippin's code of laws for, 285. Arabic writers, their account of loss of Narbonne, 226. Argenton, Pij)pin restores, 265. entrusted to Remistan, 265. Arilo, bishop of Freising, rebukes duke Grimoald, 361. Arnold, bishop of Toul, crowns count Rudolf, 306. Arnulf, bishop of Metz, withdraws to a hermitage, 6. and Pippin, Austrasian rulers, 10. x\mulf of Bavaria, pupil of Liud- ward, 287. duke of Carinthia, 288. his forces reach Frankfurt, 289. chosen king, 290. and Odo meet in conference at , Worms, 310. enters Elsass against Rudolf, 313- punishes Arnulf the bishop, 313. accepts Lewis as under-king of South Burgundy, 314. devises Eastern crown to his natural sons, 316. enters Italy, 317. Arnulf of Flanders, wars against Herlwin of Montreuil, 337. does homage to Otto, 341. Aschheim, synod of, 220. Attigny, Pippin's palace at, 84. Mayfield at, 263. Aurelian, archbishop of Lyons, crowns Lewis at Valence, 316. Australd, Frankish count, 258. defeats and slays Chilping, 261. Autchar, duke, envoy of Pippin, 122. goes with pope Stephen, 123. Auvergne, Blandinus, count of, 231. Baldwin, count of Flanders, 308. husband of -iElfthryth, 308. does homage to Odo, 310. Balthild, her exalted position, 12. our first slave queen, 12. her good character, 12. Bavaria, duchy of, a fief of Frankish kings, 220. duke of, a vassal of Pippin, 220. Bavarian campaign, 67. army, defeat of, 68. Benevento, Lombard duchy of, 34. Berengar, sent by Pippin to capture Remistan, 273. Berengar succeeds Everhard as Margrave, 304. the choice of Frankish Italy, 304. hallowed as king at Pavia, 304. does homage to Arnulf, 315. Bergamo, slaughter at, 317. Bernhard, last of the race, 288. follows Charles, 292. Berny, Mayfield at, 374. Berry, west of Cher, conferred on Remistan, 265. Bertellanus, archbishop of Bourges, 231. envoy to Pippin, 231. Bertrada, queen, anointed with Pippin, loi. goes to Orleans, 274. Bertrand and Boggis, fiction concerning, 16. Beziers, Biterris, 106. Bilitrudis, who was she ?, 361. wife of duke Theodbald, 361. wife of duke Grimoald, 361. Blandinus, count of Auvergne, envoy to Pippin, 231. leader of Waifar's army, 236. captured, 240. dies in battle, 249. Boggis and Bertrand, fiction concerning, 16. Bologna, a special arrangement for its surrender, 207. INDEX. 459 Boniface, metropolitan of Mainz, 84. saint, his estimate of Swana- hild, 363. Bordeaux, held by Waifar, 267. submission of, 277. Boso, his kingdom South Bur- gundy, 300. Bourbon, the fortress of, 237. siege of, 238. burnt, 238. Bourges, besieged by Pippin, 58. Bertellanus, archbishop of, 231. captured by Pippin, 242. palace built there for Bertrada, 270. Mayfield at, 271. Prankish army meets there, 273. Breisach, a fortress of Everhard's, 343- Brescia, home of duke Desiderius, 204. the tight between Berengar and Arnulf, 315. Burgundy, Prankish army spends winter at, 273. north part of Karolingia, 301. Cahors, Prankish force harries Aquitaine as far as, 247. Canstadt, assembly at, 75. Ceadwalla, West-Saxon king, 76. Challon on the Saone, Pranks march through, 188. Charles Martel, offered by Gregory the consulship, 45. as a forerunner of Crescentius and Rienzi, 45. refuses request of Gregory, 47. dies at Quierzy, 48. Charles Martel, brother of Pippin, his struggle with Plectrudis, 19- meaning of titles given to, 26. first to harry Nimes, 29. Charles Martel, main object to assert in Gaul headship of Pranks, 29. his choice of title, Mayor, 30. falls ill at Verberie, 31. his family, 360. his love for Grifo, 362. his supposed ejection from Paris, 363- Charles and Karlmann, counties given them at Worms, 254. Charles, young prince, sent to meet pope Stephen, 131. brings pope to Ponthion, 132. crowned at St. Denis, 149. king and patrician, 159. Charles, a boy, not bound by acts of Pippin at Pavia, 411. Charles of Swabia, to be deposed, 288. deposed by Eastern kingdom, 290. stays with Liudberht, arch- bishop of Tribur, 291. submits to deposition, 291. dies at Nordingen, 292. Chartres, raid on, by Duke Hunold, 367- Chelles, Swanahild confined there, 55- Childeric, king in Austrasia, 15. Childeric III, his accession, 63. his uncertain pedigree, 63. no actions of, known, 64. Chilping, count of Auvergne, 260. harries Burgundy, 260. defeated by Franks, 261. Chiltrudis, stirred up by Swana- hild, 54. marries Odilo, 55. Chimnehild, widow of Sigebert, stays with Childeric, 15. her son Dagobert is in an Irish monastery, 15. Chlodowig, offered consulship by Emperor Anastasius, 45. 460 INDEX. Chlodowig II, cuts off arm of St. Denis, ii. Chlotachar succeeds CModowigll, II. Chrodegang, bishop of Metz, 122. Chrotrudis, wife of Charles Martel, 360. Clermont, Pippin reaches, 238. description of, 238. capture and slaughter at, 240. Comita, envoy with Warnachar, 184. Compiegne, Mayfield assembly at, 218. synod at, 219. Constantine, emperor, sends an organ to Pippin, 212. Consulship, offered to Chlodowig and Charles, differences in ofler, 45. as offered to Charles Martel meant same as patriciate offered to Pippin, 358. Corbinian, his life by Aribo, 361. Dagobert, friend of saints, 6. Neustrian tendencies, 10. Dalfinus, never archbishop of Lyons, 13. Defensor, formal meaning of, 396. Denis, St , scene of coronation of Pippin, 148. Desiderius, duke of Tuscany, his claim on Lombard crown, 204. promises to give up remaining cities claimed by pope Ste- phen, 207. accepted as king of Lombards by pope Stephen, 207. assumes Lombard crown, 208. delaj'^s to fulfil promises, 209. Diedenhofer, royal house at, iii. DoUinger's views on patriciate, 397- and Ranke, their opposite views of intentions of Stephen, 399. Donatio of Exarchate, an impos- sibility, 404. Droctegang, abbot of Jumieges, 120. envoy of Pippin to i3ope Stephen, 120. his journeys, 121. envoy of pope Paul, 252. Drogo, son of Karlmann, 78. shorn, 150. his shearing, 385. Duchy, the Roman, 33. Diiren,. Pippin makes grants at, 223. Waifar absent from assembly at, 235- Eastern Caliph and Western Em- peror, their friendship, 260. Eastern Kingdom and Western Kingdom, their relationship, 319- East-Frankish realm reaches the Oder, 336. Ebroin, the need of fuller informa- tion of, 7. difficulty of deciding on his character, 8. hard and cruel actions, 9. head of a National party, 10. his supposed connexion with the martyrdom, 14. Ecclesiastical principality, ideas of, grew up at Mainz and Aquileia, 439. Einhard, his words concerning patriciate, 359. histor}' of Grifo's revolt, 364. Empire, Western, division of, 294. English Fleet appears on coast of Flanders, 340. Erchamberti Breviarum, 161. Erkenwald, mayor of Chlodowig II, II. mayor of three kingdoms, 11. Estinnes, synod at, 63. INDEX. 461 Eutropius, St., church of, at Frederick, archbishop of Mainz, Saintes, 276. accompanies Otto into Bel- Everhard, succeeded by Beranger gium, 346. as Margrave, 304. withdraws from Otto at Brei- duke, desires to supplant Otto, sach, 347. 329- consults with bishops at Metz, releases Prince Henry, 330. 347- and duke Gilbert engage to Frisonofeld, region of, 80. support Henry against Otto, Fuldrad, abbot of St. Denis, 80. 330- abbot, goes to meet pope Ste- Exarchs of Italy begin with Narses, phen, 130. 33- left at Rome as Pippin's envoy, 172. Fulk, archbishop of Rheims, op- Faenza, surrendered by Desiderius, 213; poses Odo, 308. Fantuzzi Fragment, its evidence crowns Odo, 313. on patriciate, 389. historic errors of, 391. Gairefred, Count of Paris, his Ferrara, surrendered by Deside- conspiracy, 363. rius, 213. Galeran, Frankish count, 258. Formosus, cry of pope, 317. Garrinod, duke, arranges terms Franci, early meaning of word. about Bologna, 207. 10. Gascons, strange use of word, 242. Francia Occidentalis becomes Gasquet's L'Empire Byzantin, 358. Francia Latina, 328. his remarks on patriciate, 388. Francia Orientalis becomes Fran- his unwarranted reliance on cia Teutonica, 328. Monte Cassino chronicles, 391. Frankish, East, Church, first synod Gaul, Southern, connexion of two of» 57- wars in, 224. army surrounds and captures severe winter in, 250. Alamans, 76. Frankish king, lord of all, 278. a pilgrim in Rome used as envoy Gauzebald, his mission to Bavaria, by pope Stephen, 1 19, 369- charter, its character, 409. Gavello, surrendered by Deside- Franks, speech of, changing, 5. rius, 213. close alliance with Lombards, Geilo, bishop, abbot, and count, 32. supports Guy, 307. their reverence for kingly kin. Geneva, Franks march through, 88. t88. assembled at Berny declare Gentilly, Pippin keeps Easter war, 144. there, 244. some in favour of the Lombards, George, bishop of Ostia, accom- 144- panied pope Stephen, 123. Frederic, the count, attacks Grifo, envoy to Pippin, 211. no. George, imperial envoy, goes to death of, in. Pippin at Pavia, 189, 192. 462 INDEX. George, stops at Rome, 190. sails to Marseilles, 192. at the court of Pippin, 210. attests the decrees of synod of Compiegne, 219. Gilbert, duke of Lotharingia, 326. rebukes Lewis at Laon, and commends himself to him, 339- besieged at Chevremont, 341. reveals his ambition to his wife, 344. Girbald,bishop, taken prisoner, 68. Gisela, wife of PJverhard, 304. Godescale, duke, persecution of, 44. Gregorovius, his view as to the Donatio, 418. Gregory III, pope, sends two letters to Charles Martel begging help, 31. offers a title to Charles Martel,32. his words to Phokas, 37. and Charles Martel, letters be- tween, 41. his desire for independence, 41. offers allegiance to Charles Martel, 45. Grifo, his plots against Karlmann, 52. what powers conferred on him by Charles Martel, 53. put in prison, 55. his release, 79. his revolt, 80. his defeat, 81. gets Tassilo into his power, 81. accepted by Bavarians, 81. surrendered to Pippin, 82. given twelve counties in Neu- stria, 82. retires to Waifar, 82. flight to Aistulf, no. death, in. healed by St.Leutfred at Laon, 362. Grifo, seizes Laon, 365. Grimo, abbot of Corbey, envoy of Martel to pope Gregory III, 357- Grimoald, his dreams to become realities, i. envoy to arrange terms about Bologna, 207. Guy, crowned at Langres, 307. retires to Italy as rival of Berengar, 307. a stranger and tyrant in eyes of Italians, 314. defeats Arnulf's men on the Trebia, 317. crowned at Pavia, 317. crowned Emperor by the Pope, 317- death of, 317. Hagen brings a message from Henry to Otto, 332. Hahn on Annales Mettenses, 359. on chronology of Bavarian war, 367- Hegel, his view of patriciate, 397. Henry rebels in Saxony, 330. retires to Lotharingia, 331. plans of submission, 331. his men flee and he is wounded at Xanthen, 335. surrenders to Otto and leaves Saxony, 335. Herbert of Vermandois does hom- age to Otto, 341. Herlwin flees from Montreuil, 338. his wife and children sent to King ^Ethelstan, 338. defeats Arnulf s men ravaging his land, 339. Hermenald sent by Pippin to capture Remistan, 273. Herowicus surrenders to Pippin, 278. Hildebrand joint-king with Liud- prand, 43. INDEX. 463 Hilderad sent by Pippin to cap- ture Remistan, 273. Hugh of France does homage to Otto, 341. Humbert, count of Bourges, leader of the army of Waifar, 236. taken prisoner, 242. sent by Pippin to capture Remistan, 273. Hunold, vassal of King of Franks, 52- of Aquitaine, refuses to recog- nize Pippin, 56. campaigns against, 58. ruled over a Roman land and people, 58. burns Chartres, 67. his submission, 73. blinds and imprisons his brother Hatto, 74. leaves duchy to Waifar, 74. retires to Rhe as a monk, 74. Iconoclast controversy belongs to the history of the East, 37. Immo, envoy of Pippin, witnesses consecration of pope Paul I, 216. goes over to Otto, 342. Ine, West-Saxon king, 74. Irmengard, Boso's widow, comes to Arnulf at Forchheim, 316. appeals on behalf of her son Lewis, 316. guardian of Lewis, 316. Isaac, count of Cambray, rebukes Lewis and commends himself to him, 339. Ita, mother of Guy of Spoleto, 304- Jerome, brother of Pippin, 165. as the envoy of Pippin left be- hind at Rome, 172. John, the silentiary, comes to Rome, 116. John, the silentiary, message to Aistulf, 117. sent to Aistulf a second time, 117. goes back to Constantinople, 117. comes again to Rome, 121. envoy of Constantino Koprony- mus to Pippin, 189. stops at Rome, 190. sails to Marseilles, 192. at the court of Pippin, 210. attests decrees of synod of Compiegne, 219, approves of pope Stephen's mission to Gaul, 386. John, sacellarius, envoy to Pippin, 211. Jupil, Pippin keeps Easter there, 227. Karlmann, joint ruler with Pippin, 50. his religious zeal, 57. divides inheritance with Pippin, 60. his journey into Saxony, 70. withdraws from world, 70. captures Hookscoburg, 71. remorse at slaughter of Ala- mans, 76. sent by Aistulf as envoy to Pippin, 142. unwillingly pleads against pope Stephen, 143. his sons' interests, 147. his sons are shorn, 150. a monastic hero, 385. the account of Leo Marsicanus on his mission, 385. when did he arrive as Aistulf's envoy, 383. the forged account of deacon Peter on his mission, 386. Karlmann, son of Pippin, crowned at St. Denis, 149. 464 INDEX. Kaiimann and Charles, counties given them at Worms, 254. Karolingia, what did it include ?, 300. Kosmas, Helladians would make him emperor, 39. Lambert, son of Guy, crowned joint-emperor, 317. Landfrid, duke of Alamannia, 56. Laon, Lugdunum Clavatum, Grifo seeks shelter there, 54. surrendered, 55. German element makes its last stand at, 321. Le Beau, on the promises of Pippin to Stephen, 414. Le Cointe, his meaning of respub- li'ca, 413. Le Mans, capital of Grifo's domi- nion, 82. Leodgar, Neustrian bishop, 19. Lewis, from beyond the sea, his appearance in Gaul, 322. king at Laon, 322. his claim to election, 325. declines the offer of Lotharingia, 331- enters Elsass, 342. occupies Breisach, 343. drives bishop Lewis out of Laon, 346. Limoges, Pippin advances to, 240. Waifar breaks down the walls of, 245. occupied by Pippin, 266. Liudward, revenge of chancellor, 287. Liudprand, the good justice of, 37. a model prince, 40. joint-king with Hildebrand, 43. Liudprand, duke of Benevento, commends his duchy to Pippin, 209. Loches, the northern Lucca, 59. capture of, 59. Lombard king, never Magister militum, 33. had taken away gifts made to St. Peter, 42. fear of his rule at Rome, 46. Lombard, a barbarian to the Romans of Italy, 36. Lombard character, what it im- plied, 409. Lombard kingdom, succession of rulers, 112. Lombardy, submission of, 317. Lonclau, Pippin keeps Christmas there, 227. Luden, his account of pope Stephen's business, 392. Lull, archbishop of Mainz, 262. Pippin writes and orders thanks- giving, 262. Lupus, duke of Gascons, 277. Lyons, Pippin marches to, 163. Maguelone, count of, father of St. Benedict, 259. Mancio, count, heads Waifar's men, 258. slain, 258. Marseilles, Saracen envoys arrive at, 274. Martens, his views on patriciate, 460. Masonas, Pippin crosses frontier at, 234. Maurice, St., Ambrose the Primi- cerius dies there, 130. Maurienne, Pippin's army reaches, 166. church of St. John, 167. Franks march through, 188. Meaux, attacked by Danes, 312. Menicia, killed at Xanthen, 335. slayer of Thankmar, 335. stole tore from Heresburg, 335. Merwing, king, why Karlmann and Pippin set up the last, 64. INDEX. 465 Merwing, decline of royal house, 90. Moissac Annals, their record of the Coronation, 375. Montreuil, gained by treachery, 338. Narbonne, holds out against Franks, 106. duration of siege, 108. besieged by Franks, 226. conditions of surrender, 228. Waifar's plot against, 250. visited by Pippin, 268. Narni, besieged by Aistulf, 173. handed over to pope Stephen, 201. Narses, first exarch of Italy, 33. Neufchateau, place of Grifo's im- prisonment, 55. Nevers, Franks cross the frontier at, 237. Frankish force meets at, 245. Niehues, his mesbningoi i-esjnihlica, 428. Nimes, Saracen tower at, 105. Nordgau, becomes part of Frank- ish dominions, 69. Norman force recaptures Mon- treuil for Herlwin, 338. Odda, takes the West Deal, 295. Odilo, vassal of king of Franks, 52. of Bavaria, revolts against Frankish supremacy, 66. flight of, 69, 368. restored to his duchy, 370. Odo, count of Paris, champion of Gaul, 302. coronation of, 306. fight with Danes near Mont- faucon, 309. meets Arnulf in conference, 310. keeps Christmas with abbot Rudolf, 313. Oelsner, his view on the papal state, 423. Optatus, abbot, sent to Aistulf, 116. Ordheim, headquarters of Grifo, 81. Orleans, Mayfield at, 264. Otto, count of Verdun, rebukes Lewis and commends himself to him, 339. Otto and Lewis, their claims for election, 325. marches to Xanthen, 332. in alarm prays for victory at Xanthen, 332. unexpected victory at Xanthen, 334- his soldiers call out in Gaulish Latin, 334. besieges Henry in Merseburg, 335- raises siege of Chevremont, 346. besieges Breisach, 346. his coronation as emperor, what it signified, 349. Paris, origin of greatness, 295. defended by Odo, 312. Patrician, survival of name, 153. in what sense applicable to Pippin, 153. how understood by pope Stephen, 157. of Romans, meaning of term, 394- Patriciate, offered to Pippin, means same as consulship offered to Charles Maiiel, 358. Pippin receives, by commission of emperor Constantine, 136, 387- of Pippin, first step to empire of Charles, 398. Paul the deacon, ambassador of pope Stephen to Aistulf, 115. Hh 466 INDEX. Paul the deacon, sent a second Pippin and George, their inter- time to Aistulf, 117. view, 193. elected pope, 215. as patrician to work for Roman sends embassy to Pippin, 252. republic, 195. death, 271. his donation, 198. Pavia, danger from the king at, receives surrender of cities of 40. the Pentapolis, 199. siege of, by Pippin, 169. territorial extent of his grant second siege of, by Pippin, 196. to pope Stephen, 200. Perigueux, Waifar breaks down first campaign against Waifar, "walls of, 245. 234- Peyrasse, holds out for Waifar, attacks Bourges, 241. 270. takes Waifar's banner in battle. Philip, a priest, envoy of Tassilo, 249. 253. crosses the Loire at Digoine, Pippin, grandson of St. Arnulf, 2. 250. son of Ansgisl and Begga, 2. keeps Christmas at Longlare, founder of the greatness of 251. Austrasian Franks, 2. sends envoy to Al-mansur, 257. establishes principle that the world-wide diplomacy, 257. king must have a mayor, 3. lawgiver of Aquitaine, 285. his speeches to Sergius and receives sword from pope Girbald, 69. Stephen, 373. marches into Alamannia, 75. Pippin II, adopted son of Liud- sole ruler of the Franks, 78. prand, 32. victory on the banks of the Pippin, son of Pippin, his birth Lech, 81. and death, 227. was his house to succeed to that Poitiers, Waifar breaks down of Chlodowig ?, 85. the walls of, 295. his motives for assuming kingly when occupied by Pippin, 275. power, 87. Ponthion, meeting-place of Pippin his relations with pope Zachary, and pope Stephen, 130. 97' chosen king at Soissons, 100. Quierzy, Pippin keeps Easter at, what did he promise at Pon- 146. thion?, 139. Easter at, 263. sends first embassy to Aistulf, promises made at, read before 141. Charles the Great, 411. and Bertrada, with their sons crowned, 149. Ramonulf, count of Poitiers, his and his sons made Roman patri- possible ambition, 307. cians, 152. Ranke, his view on the Metz spares Aistulf, 169. Annalist, 370. his treaty with Aistulf, 170. his views on patriciate, 401. assents to surrender of Italian Ratchis, Lombard king, retires to cities to pope Stephen, 171. Rome, 77. INDEX. 467 Ratcbis, duke, retires to Monte Cassino, 112, 208. repents his retirement, 205. accepted as candidate for Lom- bard crown, 205. Ratulf, natural son of Arnulf, 316. Ravenna, occupied by Aistulf, 114. surrendered to pope Stephen, 201. Pope John VIII crowns Lambert at, 317. Regensburg, Arnulf halts there, 314. Reichenau, Charles buried there, 292. Remistan, goes over to Pippin, 261. his revolt from Pippin, 272. brought back to Pippin, 276. hanged by order of Pippin, 277. Rheims, its holy oil, 96. Odo of Paris crowned a second time at, 313. Richard, count of Autun, a sup- porter of Odo, 308. prince of Burgundy, a guardian of king Lewis, 316. Rimini, surrendered to pope Stephen, 201. Romainmotier, pope Stephen visits the abbey there, 130. Roman Empire, transferred from Greeks to Franks through religious controversy, 38. people of south Gaul all ele- ments of a nation, 17. Roman emperor, his position in eighth century, 387. Rome, old, its feelings in harmony with Constantinople, 38. its orthodoxy, 39. Lombard siege of, 181. description of Aistulf s camp, 181. H Rome, Salarian gate, 182. Ostian gate, 182. what horrors did Aistulf com- mit, 185. Stephen's letters on siege of, 186. stormed by Bavarians, 318. Rothard, duke, goes to meet pope Stephen, 130. bishop of Strasburg accom- panies Otto to Belgium, 346. withdraws at Breisach, 347. Rotharris, good justice of, 37. Rouen, duke of, influence of, 322. Rudolf, chosen for middle king- dom, 304. his origin, 305. his Lotharingian kingdom col- lapses, 313. does homage to Arnulf, 314. Rudolf, abbot of St. Vedast, at Arras, 308. Rudolf, bishop, plots against Lewis at Laon, 346. Saintes,Waifar breaks down walls of, 245. headquarters of Franks, 276. Samoncy, Pippin keeps Christmas at, 268. Saracen envoys winter at Metz, 275- arrive at Selles, 279. Savigny, his views on patriciate, 396. Saxons, their forced conversion, 71- war with, 222. Saxon campaign, 61. of Pippin, 80. Saxon Christians, subject state of, 72. ' Schenkung ' includes Exarchate, Pentapolis and Narni, 420. Schirmvogt, Pippin's, over the Romans, 398. h 2 468 INDEX. Scoraille, holds out for Waifar, 271. Selles, Pippin and Bertrada keep Easter at, 279. Septimannia, Saracen occupation of, 105. rise of people against Saracens, 106. Sergius, sent by pope Zachary, 67. in the Bavarian army, 67. sent by Odilo to the Frankish camp, 67. was he sent by pope to warn ofFKarlmann and Pippin ?, 68. taken prisoner, 68. "a priest, envoy of pope Gregory bo Charles Martel, 356. mission to Bavaria, 369. Siegmund, bishoj), defends Meaux, 312. Sigebert, envoy of Charles Martel to pope Gregory, 357. Sitnia, battle of, 222. Slaves, allies of Saxons, 56. Slavonic war, 56. Soissons, home of Chlodowig, 98. Leutrada's abbey at, 98. abbey of St. Medard at, 98. Spoleto, Lombard duchy of, 33. Stephen, pope, comes to claim help against Aistulf, 112. his policy, 113. demands help from Constantine Kopronymus, 118. starts for Pavia, 123. demands safe conduct to the Frankish king, 126. crosses the Alps, 129. story of his pleading with Pippin, 135. had he authority from Con- stantinople?, 136. quartered at St. Denis, 141. his illness and recovery, 141. complains again against Aistulf, 176. Stephen, pope, favours candida- ture of Desiderius, 203. sends to Pavia to acknowledge Desiderius, 207. his death, 213. comparison with popes Gregory and Leo, 214. lays in fraud the foundations of the temporal power, 215. a slow traveller, 379. his letters to Pippin, 394. Strator, Pippin as, what it meant, 422. Suleiman, emir of Barcelona, 229. Susa, occupied by Franks, 167. Swabians, the north, 81. Swanahild, her position, 52. sent to monastery of Chelles, 55' 365- her Bavarian birth, 66. daughter of Theodberht, 360. Sybel, von, views on the Donatio, 426. Tassilo, son of Chiltrudis, 81. duke, leads Bavarian force, 188. does homage to Pippin, 212. pledges himself on holy relics in Gaul, 221. deserts from king Pippin, 247. plots with Waifar, 248. practical independence, 251. asks pope Paul to intercede for him, 253. sends envoys to Pippin, 253. envoys stopf)ed by Desiderius, Thankmar, his claims against Otto, 327- Theodbald, duke of Alamannia, 56. declares Alamannia indepen- dent, 75. Theodebert, count, defends Meaux, 312. Theodoric, count, supports Odo of Paris, 306. INDEX. 469 Theodoric, count, prepares way for Oclo, 310. rebukes Lewis at Laon and com- mends himself, 339. Theodoric, a Saxon leader, cap- tured, 71. Theodoric IV, king of Franks, dies, 23. Theodwin of Vienne, attacks Grifo, no. death of, in. Theophanes, his account of pope Stephen's action, 160. Theudwald, son of Grimwald, 19. Thionville, royal house at, in. Thonaria, envoy with Warnachar, 184. Thouars, taken and burned by Pippin, 243. Thrasimund, duke, persecution of, 44. Tomieres, monast'ery founded by Raymond, count of Toulouse, 340- Toul, Rudolf crowned there, 306. Toulouse, held by Waifar, 267. taken by Pippin, 269. Tournus, the monastery at, threatened by the Danes, 312. Tribur, general assembly at, 287. Troya, his order of events in 754, 380. Troyes, meeting-place of Prankish army, 234. Prankish force marches to, 236. gathering at, 269. Tugumir,betraysBrennaburg, 336. Turenne, holds out for Waifar, 270. Unction, authorities for exact date, 377. exact dates, 378. Ursus, layman, envoy of Tassilo, 253- Valais, 129. Valence, Lewis crowned at, 316. Veltman, his dissertation on the offer to Charles Martel, 357. Verberie, Charles Martel dies at, 31- meeting at, 232. Prankish army sets forth from, 232. Vernueil, gathering at, 175. Vienne, Pippin marches to, 163. Karlmann detained there, 163. Bertrada quartered there, 163. Karlmann dies there, 164. PijDpin keeps Christmas there, 269. Vincent, St., abbot of, sent to Aistulf, 116. Waifar, expedition in territory of Narbonne, 230. charged with death of some Goths, 230. seizes lands of Prankish churches, 230. refuses weregild of Goths, 231. makes peace, 235. enters land of Autun with army, 236. attacks Pippin in the Limousin, 249. defeat and flight of, 249. seeks peace at Worms, 255. refused peace at Worms, 256. ally of Abd-al-Rahman, 258. enemy of Al-Mansur, 259. his mother and sister delivered to Pippin, 276. killed by his own men, 280. was his death the secret prac- tice of Pippin ?, 281. his death a blow to rise of South Gaul, 281. Waitz, his views on Grifo's rela- tionship, 366. Walter, archbishop of Sens, sup- ports Odo of Paris, 306. 470 INDEX. Wandrille, St., Pippin's grant to, 84. Waratho, supposed murderer of Waifar, 280. Warnacliar, abbot, at Rome, 183. West Deal, what was it ?, 299. Western and Eastern Kingdoms, their relationship, 319. Western Emperor and Eastern Caliph, friendship of, 260. Wido or Guy, duke of Spoleto, 304. his relationship to Charles the Bold, 304. abbot, his conspiracy, 363, Wifred, marquess, wins Vicque from Saracens, 321. Wilchar, bishop of Nomentum, accompanies pope Stephen, 123. Wilchar, bishop of Nomentum, carries second letter from pope Stephen, 178. Wilfrith, said to have been enter- tained by Dalfinus, arch- bishop of Lyons, 13. William of Normandy does homage to Otto, 341. Wini consecrated bishop in Gaul, cf. note, p. 7. Winidon-gau, region of, 80. Worms, May field at, 251. Wulfhard, envoy of pope Pau], 252. Wulfwald, East-Frank mayor, 19. Zwentibald, natural son of Arnulf, 316. enters Italy, 317. Oxford : Horace Hart, Printer to the University WORKS BY EDWAED A. FREEMAIN^ M.A., D.C.L., LL.D. 8vo. lOS. 6d. HISTOKICAL ESSAYS. First Series. 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