‘I conjure you, most beloved, by the living God, leave not this my city of Rome to be any longer torn by the Lombards, lest your bodies and souls be torn and tormented for ever, in inextinguishable and Tartarian fire with the devil and his pestiferous angels; and let not the sheep of the Lord’s flock, which are the Roman people, be dispersed any more, lest the Lord disperse you, and cast you forth as the people of Israel was dispersed.’
You will conclude, doubtless, that this curious document can be nothing but a papal allocution. Its peculiar scriptural style (wrongly supposed to have been invented by the Puritans, who merely learnt it from the old Roman clergy), as well as the self-conceit, which fancies the fate of the whole world to depend on the prosperity of a small half-ruined city in Italy, will be to you sufficient marks of the Roman hand. But you will be somewhat mistaken. It is hardly an epistle from the successor of St. Peter. It professes to be an epistle from St. Peter himself, and sent by him through the hands of Pope Stephen III. to Pepin the king of the Franks, in the year 755. You will have concluded also from it, that Catholic Christianity is in its extreme agony; that the worship and name of our Lord, and the fountains of sacramental grace are about to be extinguished for ever, and that nothing but heresy or heathendom can follow. Then you will be quite mistaken. These Lombards are pious Catholics. Builders of churches and monasteries, they are taking up the relics of the Roman martyrs, to transfer them to the churches of Milan and Pavia. They have just given Pope Stephen the most striking proof of their awe of his person and office. But they are quarrelling with him about the boundaries of his estates for the patrimony of St. Peter. They consider that he and his predecessors have grossly wronged them at different times; and now last of all, by calling in foreign invaders; and they are at the gates of Rome laying waste the country, and demanding a poll-tax as ransom. That is all.
The causes which led to this quarrel must be sought far back in history. The original documents in which you will find the facts will be Paulus Diaconus, as far as King Luitprand’s death; then the Life and Writings of Gregory the Great; and then Baronius’ Annals, especially his quotations from Anastasius’ Life of Stephen III., bearing in mind that, as with the Ostrogoths, we have only the Roman Papal story; that the Lombards have never stated their case, not even through Paulus Diaconus, who, being a clergyman, prudently holds his tongue about the whole matter. But by far the best account is to be found in Dean Milman’s ‘Latin Christianity,’ Vols. I. and II. Rome, you must understand, has become gradually the patrimony of St. Peter; the Popes are the practical kings of Rome, possessing, in the name of the Church, much land round Rome, and many estates scattered throughout Italy, and even in Sicily, Gaul, Africa, and the East—estates probably bequeathed by pious people. They have succeeded to this jurisdiction simply by default. They rule Rome, because there is no one else to rule it. We find St. Gregory the Great feeding the pauper-masses of Rome, on the first day of every month, from the fruitful corn-bearing estates in Sicily; keeping up the ‘Panem;’ but substituting, thank Heaven, for the ‘Circenses’ at least the services of the Church. Of course, the man who could keep the Roman people alive must needs become, ipso facto, their monarch.
The Pope acknowledges, of course, a certain allegiance to the Emperor at Constantinople, and therefore to his representative, the Exarch of Ravenna: that is to say, he meets them with flattery when they are working on his side; with wrath when they oppose him. He intrigues with them, too, whenever he can safely do so, against the Lombards.
Thus the Pope has become, during the four centuries which followed the destruction of the Western Empire, the sole surviving representative of that Empire. He is the head of the ‘gens togata;’ of the ‘Senatus Populusque Romanus.’ In him Rome has risen again out of her grave, to awe the peoples once more by the Romani nominis umbra; and to found a new Empire; not as before, on physical force, and the awe of visible power; but on the deeper and more enduring ground of spiritual force, and the awe of the invisible world.
An Empire, I say. The Popes were becoming, from the 5th to the 8th centuries, not merely the lords of Rome, but the lords of the Western Church. Their spiritual Empire, to do them justice, was not so much deliberately sought by them, as thrust upon them. As the clergy were, all over the Empire, the representatives of the down-trodden Romans, so they naturally gravitated toward the Eternal City, their ancient mistress. Like all disciplined and organized bodies they felt the need of unity, of monarchy. Where could they find it, save at Rome? Rome was still, practically and in fact, the fountain of their doctrine, of their superior civilization; and to submit themselves to the Pope of Rome was their only means of keeping up one faith, one practice, and the strength which comes from union.
To seat the Pope upon the throne of the Cæsars; to attribute to him powers weightier than all which the Cæsars had possest . . . It was a magnificent idea. A politic idea, too; for it would cover the priesthood with all the prestige of ancient Rome, and enable them to face the barbarian in the name of that great people whose very memory still awed him; whose baths, aqueducts, palaces, he looked on as the work of demons; whose sages and poets were to him enchanters; whose very gems, dug out of the ruins by night, in fear and trembling, possest magic influence for healing, for preservation, for good fortune in peace or war.
Politic; and in their eyes, true. Easy enough to be believed honestly, by men who already believed honestly in their own divine mission. They were the representatives of Christ on earth. Of that fact there could be then, or can be now, no doubt whatsoever. Whatsoever truth, light, righteousness, there was in the West, came to it through them. And Christ was the King of kings. But He delayed his coming: at moments, He seemed to have deserted the earth, and left mankind to tear itself in pieces, with wild war and misrule. But it could not be so. If Christ were absent, He must at least have left an authority behind Him to occupy till He came; a head and ruler for his opprest and distracted Church. And who could that be, if not the Pope of Rome?
It ought to be so.—It must be so—thought they. And to men in that mood, proofs that it was so soon came to hand, and accumulated from generation to generation; till the Pope at last found himself proclaiming, and what was more, believing, that God had given the whole world to St. Peter, and through St. Peter to him; and that he was the only source of power, law, kingship, who could set up and pull down whom he would, as the vicegerent of God on earth.
Such pretensions, of course, grew but slowly. It was not, I believe, till the year 875, 180 years after the time of which I am speaking, that Pope John VIII. distinctly asserted his right, as representative of the ancient Roman Empire, to create the Cæsar; and informed the Synod of Pavia that he had ‘elected and approved Charles the Bald, with the consent of his brothers the bishops, of the other ministers of the Holy Roman Church, and’ (significant, though empty words) ‘of the Roman senate and people.’