The learned editor of the Liber Pontificalis, Duchesne, is convinced that the first part of the life of Hadrian, which culminates in this donation, was written by a contemporary cleric and must be regarded as genuine. He suggests that, when Hadrian perceived the impracticability of Charlemagne winning two thirds of Italy for the Roman See, he released the monarch from his oath. This is inconsistent alike with the character of Hadrian and the terms of his correspondence, and recent historians generally regard the range ascribed to Charlemagne's donation in the Liber Pontificalis as either fictitious or enlarged by later interpolations. The first part of Duchesne's study—the proof that the early chapters of the life of Hadrian were written by a contemporary—is convincing: the second part—that the Pope sacrificed five or six great provinces because it was difficult at the time to get them—has not even the most feeble documentary basis and is unlikely in the last degree, to judge by the known facts. Either some later writer during the Pontificate of Leo III. (or later) rounded the narrative of the early years of Hadrian with this grandiose forgery, or the passage which specifies the extent of the donation was interpolated in the narrative. For either supposition we have ample analogy in the life of the eighth century: for a Papal surrender of whole provinces we have no analogy whatever, and there is not the faintest allusion to it in Hadrian's forty-five extant letters to Charlemagne.[124]
The life of Hadrian in the Liber Pontificalis consists, as will already have been realized, of two very distinct parts. The first is a consecutive and circumstantial narrative of events up to the departure of Charlemagne from Rome in the spring of 774. This seems to have been written by an eye-witness, possibly a clerk in the Papal service; and it seems equally probable that this contemporary narrative was rounded by a later hand with a fictitious account of Charlemagne's conduct on the Wednesday. Immediately afterwards, Charlemagne returned to Pavia, conquered Didier, and carried him off to a French monastery. This occurred in the second year of Hadrian's Pontificate, yet in the Liber Pontificalis, the remaining twenty years are crushed into a few chaotic paragraphs, and these are chiefly concerned with his lavish decoration of the Roman churches. We turn to his letters, and from these we can construct a satisfactory narrative and can obtain a good idea of the writer's personality.
Of the fifty-five extant letters of Hadrian no less than forty-five are addressed to Charlemagne, and they are overwhelmingly concerned with his temporal possessions. He is rather a King-Pope than a Pope-King. For twenty years he assails Charlemagne with querulous, petulant, or violent petitions to protect the rights of the Blessed Peter, and it is not illiberally suspected that the lost replies of Charlemagne contained expressions of impatience. The Pope's letters, with their unceasing references to the Blessed Peter and all that he has done for Charlemagne, are not pleasant reading, and the Frank King, whose Italian policy seems to baffle his biographers, must have realized that his position as suzerain of the Blessed Peter was delicate and difficult. Hadrian on the other hand, found that the temporal rights of his See left comparatively little time for spiritual duties and laid a strain on his piety. Once in a few years he smites a heretic or arraigns some delinquent prelate, but the almost unvarying theme of his letters is a complaint that the Blessed Peter is defrauded of his rights, and he is at times drawn into political intrigues which do not adorn his character. We may recognize that his ambition was as impersonal as that of Gregory the Great, yet the spectacle of his plaints and manœuvres is not one on which we can dwell with admiration.
Charlemagne had scarcely returned to France when he received from Hadrian a bitter complaint that Leo, Archbishop of Ravenna, had seized the cities of the exarchate and was endeavouring to win those of the Pentapolis.[125] Charlemagne did not respond; indeed Leo went in person to the Frank court, and it is significant that after his return he was, Hadrian says, more insolent and ambitious than ever. He cast out the officials sent from Rome and, by the aid of his troops, took over the rule of the exarchate. Charlemagne was busy with his Saxon war, and he paid no attention to the Pope's piteous appeals.[126] Leo died in 777, however, and his successor seems to have submitted to Rome. Charlemagne had meantime visited Italy and may have intervened.
The business which brought Charlemagne to Italy in 776 was more serious. Arichis, Duke of Beneventum, one of the ablest and most cultivated of the Lombards, who was married to a daughter of Didier, was an independent sovereign. Hildeprand, Duke of Spoleto, who had—in spite of the supposed annexation of Spoleto—chosen to regard Charlemagne rather than Hadrian as his suzerain, was on good terms with Arichis, and the Pope looked on their friendship with gloomy suspicion. He reported to Charlemagne that they were conspiring against his authority. Charlemagne's envoys were due at Rome, and Hadrian bitterly complained to him that they had gone first to Spoleto and had "greatly increased the insolence of the Spoletans," and had then, in spite of all the Pope's protests, proceeded to Beneventum.[127] It is clear that there was in Italy a strong feeling against the Papal expansion, and that the occasional appeals for incorporation in the Roman territory came from clerics. Spoleto remained independent, in spite of Hadrian's claim that it had been promised to him; in fact, it was clearly the policy of Charlemagne to leave these matters to local option, and he can scarcely have made a definite promise to include Spoleto in his "donation."
In the following year, Hadrian sent more alarming news. Adelchis, a son of Didier, had fled to the Greeks and was pressing them to assist in overthrowing the Frank-Roman system. Hadrian said that Arichis and Hildeprand, as well as Hrodgaud of Friuli and Reginald of Clusium, had conspired with the Greeks, and he implored the King "by the living God" to come at once. Charlemagne came, and chastised Hrodgaud, but he does not seem to have found serious ground for the charges against the Dukes of Spoleto and Beneventum. Presently, however, Hadrian was able to announce more definitely a conspiracy against his rule; the Beneventans and Greeks had captured some of his Campanian towns, and Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria (son-in-law of Didier), had joined them. It is true that Charlemagne was, at the time, busy in Saxony, but it is equally clear that he was angry with the Pope and resented his efforts to secure the two duchies. In 777, Hadrian wrote that he rejoiced to hear that Charlemagne was at length coming; he sent him a long list, from the Roman archives, of all the territories to which Rome laid claim, and invited the Frank to be a second Constantine.[128] But Charlemagne came not, and in his next letter Hadrian has to lament that the Frank has committed the "unprecedented act" of arresting the Papal Legate for insolence, and the Lombards are openly exulting in his humiliation.[129]
There seems then to have been a long period without correspondence between the two courts, or else it has not been thought judicious to preserve the letters. In 781, however, Charlemagne came to Rome. Tassilo was disarmed, and, as Charlemagne's daughter was betrothed to the son of the Eastern Empress Irene, the Greeks must have been pacified. The six years of peace which followed were, no doubt, used by Hadrian in that princely decoration of the Roman churches of which I will speak later and in some attention to ecclesiastical affairs. We find him writing, in 785, to the bishops of Spain; though he seems to have had little influence on the Spanish heresy which he denounced, and it was left to the more vigorous attacks of Charlemagne.[130] In 786 he extended his pastoral care to England, which had not seen a Roman envoy since the days of Gregory. His Legates were received with honour, but they reported that the English Church was in a deplorable condition.[131] King Offa made a princely gift for the maintenance of lamps in St. Peter's (a euphemism of the Roman court) and for the poor, and it is curious to read that Hadrian consented, at the King's request, to make Lichfield a metropolitan see.
The peace was broken in 787 by an active alliance of Arichis, Tassilo, and the Greeks, and Charlemagne again set out for Italy. Arichis was forced to pay the Franks a heavy annual tribute and give his sons as hostages. The elder son and Arichis himself died soon afterwards, and Hadrian again made lamentable efforts to secure the duchy. The accomplished widow of Arichis, Adelperga, besought Charlemagne to bestow it on her younger son, Romwald, and Hadrian begged him not to comply. He trusted Charlemagne would not suspect him of coveting the duchy himself[132]; but he refrained from suggesting an alternative to the son of Arichis, and at length he boldly warned Charlemagne not to "prefer Romwald to the Blessed Peter."[133] Other indications of the building of the temporal power are not more edifying. We read that representative inhabitants of Capua and other Beneventan cities have sought incorporation in the Roman "republic"; and then we read that the cities have been handed over to the Papacy without inhabitants—a clear sign of the wishes of the majority—and that Romwald is assuring his subjects, on the authority of Charlemagne, that they need not pass under the authority of Rome unless they will.
Charlemagne again ignored the Pope's efforts, and soon had the Spoletan and Beneventan troops co-operating with his own against the Greeks. Hadrian obtained no control over Spoleto and Beneventum, and the fact that he does not charge Charlemagne with failing to keep faith with the Blessed Peter casts further discredit on the supposed donation. In Venetia and Istria he had no influence whatever, and his agents were barbarously treated.[134] Corsica never enters his correspondence. His power was confined to the Roman duchy, the exarchate, and the Pentapolis; and even there it was much assailed. It is true that in an hour of resolution he forbade Charlemagne to interfere in an ecclesiastical election at Ravenna, and it was as master of Ravenna that he gave Charlemagne the marbles and mosaics of the old palace. But he complained bitterly that Charlemagne listened to his critics in Ravenna,[135] and he had repeatedly to appeal to Frank authority to enforce his sentences. To the end his letters to Charlemagne were querulous and exacting. A few years before his death he heard that Offa of England was proposing to Charlemagne to depose him, and he protested, with more petulance than dignity, that he had been elected, not by men, but by Jesus Christ.[136]
This demoralizing concern for his temporal rights seems to have warped Hadrian's religious temperament and to have left him little time for purely spiritual duties. A single lengthy letter to Spain and a legation to England are all that we have as yet related, and there is little to add. His third exercise of jurisdiction was unfortunate. Irene had restored the worship of images in the East and was eager for a reconciliation with Western Christendom. She invited Hadrian to preside at an Ecumenical Council. His reply was admirable in doctrinal respects, but he annoyed the Greeks by at once claiming all his patrimonies in the East and protesting against the title used by Archbishop Tarasius. They retorted by suppressing part of his letter to the Council of Nicæa (787), at which his Legates presided, and ignored both his requests.