CHAPTER VI.
This colossal figure stands the one supreme historical landmark midway between Julius Cæsar and Napoleon Bonaparte. In looking back, he saw not his equal in history until he beheld Cæsar. Nor in looking forward would he have seen another until just one thousand years later, when the world seemed to have found another master in Napoleon Bonaparte.
In the amplitude of his intelligence, in the splendor of his attributes, and in his seven feet of stature, Charlemagne was every inch a king. He was twenty-nine years old when, by the death of his father, Pepin, he became monarch, and set about his task, which was, to develop a great empire—overturning, conquering, despotic, often cruel, but always with the high purpose of giving to his race a higher civilization. In twenty-nine years more this task was accomplished, and a map of the German Empire was a map of Europe. On Christmas day, in the year 800, in the Cathedral of St. Peter's, at Rome, he received the imperial crown from Pope Leo III., and was greeted with cries of "Life and victory to Carolus Magnus, crowned by God Emperor of the Romans;" and at that moment he stood at the head of an empire which included all Christendom.
Charlemagne acknowledged the pope who crowned him as his spiritual sovereign, while, on the other hand, the pope bowed before the emperor who appointed him, as his temporal sovereign. It was a magnificent, all-embracing scheme of empire, of which the spiritual head was at Rome, and the temporal at Aix-la-Chapelle.
It seemed as if by this dual supremacy Charlemagne had provided for all possible exigencies of human government. He rested content, no doubt thinking he had embodied a perfect ideal in creating a system which should thus coördinate and embrace both the spiritual and temporal needs of an empire. Unfortunately, in order to be realized, it needed always the wisest of emperors and best of popes. As soon as his controlling hand was removed unexpected dangers assailed his work.
In less than fifty years from his coronation, his three grandsons had quarrelled and torn the empire into as many parts, the elder retaining the imperial title. This event, 841 of our era, marks the beginning of France and Germany as distinct nationalities; hence it is that both nations claim Charlemagne, whereas he belongs to the French just as Queen Elizabeth does to Americans.
In forecasting his plans of empire, it is not probable that danger of conflict between the spiritual and temporal heads ever occurred to Charlemagne. But that is precisely what happened. Even this astute, far-seeing man did not suspect the nature of the power with which he formed this close alliance. His plan of government made the pope distinctly the creation of the emperor. His creature, and hence subordinate. But there was a tremendous principle of growth in that spiritual centre!
The first five hundred years after Christ the pope had been simply Bishop of Rome. In the next five hundred years he was nominal head of the whole Church. As the Church was entering upon its third five-hundred-year lease, in the year 1073, the fiery monk Hildebrand, who had now become Pope Gregory VII., determined it should be supreme in authority over all other powers—a religious empire, existing by Divine right, independent of the fate of nations or will of kings and emperors. Henry IV., who was then emperor, indignant at these insolent pretensions, deposed the pope—this creature of his own appointing, who would override the authority of the power which had created him!
The pope excommunicated the emperor. Each had done his worst, pope and emperor; and had Henry stood his ground as he might, for he would have had ample support from his people, it would have been a gain of centuries for Europe. But—the ban of excommunication, with its attendant horrors here, and still worse hereafter—it was more than he could bear. Affrighted, trembling, penitent, he crossed the Alps in dead of winter, crept to the castle of Canossa, near Parma, where Hildebrand had taken refuge; and there this successor to Charlemagne, this ruler of all Christendom, standing barefoot and clad in sackcloth shirt, humbly begged admittance. The pope's triumph was complete. So he let him shiver for three days in cold and rain before he opened the gates and gave him forgiveness and the kiss of peace.
The Church had never scored so tremendous a victory. She was supreme over every earthly authority, and the hands on the face of time were set back for centuries. Let Guelph and Ghibelline (the two political parties representing the adherents of the pope and the emperor) storm and struggle as they might, she need never more be afraid of overstepping any humanly constituted bounds.