Peter's Rock in Mohammed's Flood, from St. Gregory the Great to St. Leo III

by T. W. Allies

The relations[181] of the Franks to Rome had been [pg 340] various since the emperor Maximian had received the Salian Franks into the number of Rome's allies. After the victory over Syagrius, near Soissons, Clovis had raised up the Gallic-Frankish kingdom upon the ruins of Roman and Visigoth dominion. When baptised by St. Remigius, Clovis had become the first Catholic king in the midst of northern peoples attached to Arianism. This had brought him into manifold connection with the Holy See. In the time of Pope Gregory II., the conversion to the faith of Germany, from the Rhine as far as Saxony and Thuringia, not only relied for support, but had its root in the Frankish kingdom, and bound it still closer with the Papacy. There were also connections of another sort. As far back as the year 577, the emperor Justin II., conscious of his own impotence, had given to the messenger from Rome, soliciting help against Lombard aggression, for answer, either to seek to gain one of the Lombard dukes, or, if that failed, to draw the Franks to make a diversion by an expedition into Italy. The emperor Mauritius had himself made use of these means. From the year 584, king Childebert had been induced, by Byzantine invitation and gold, to undertake four campaigns against the Lombards. But it was reserved to a stronger family than his to co-operate in producing a great change south of the Alps. At the head of a people formed by the conjunction of various races amalgamated out of Germans, Gauls, and Romans, there grew up, in spite of sundry partial divisions, the mass of a mighty monarchy, north of the Alps. The weakness of the [pg 341] larger number of the kings who succeeded Clovis caused the chief officers of the crown to increase in strength. The lower the Merovingians sank, the higher rose the sons of Pipin, from the banks of the Meuse, until they equalled and outgrew the effete race. By the end of the first quarter of the eighth century, Charles Martell, Major Domus, first of the Austrasian, and then of the Neustrian-Frankish realm, had all power in his hands. In October, 732, he had won a greater merit from all the West than, perhaps, even Aetius and the Visigoth kings had gained. They had repulsed the vast Mongol mass at Chalons: he, by Tours, in a bloody battle, had set bounds for ever to the advance of the Arabians, overflooding Gaul after the conquest of Spain. He threw them back upon the uttermost south of Gaul, from which, after many a battle, they were forced to recross the Pyrenees.

To Charles Martell, shining in the lustre of that great victory which saved the West from Mohammed, as Leo III. prevented his entrance into Constantinople, the beleagured Pope turned from the cruel yet impotent tyranny of Leo, and the pretension of the encroaching Lombard. And his own words, at the moment of trial, will better express his situation than any others which can be put in his mouth:—[182]

“We have thought it necessary to write again to your Excellency for the excessive grief which is in our heart, and for our tears, confiding that you are a loving son of St. Peter, prince of the apostles, and ours also, [pg 342] and that from reverence to him you will listen to our charge for the defence of God's Church, and his own peculiar people: we, who can no longer endure the persecution and oppression of the Lombard race. They have taken from us all the lights in St. Peter's Church, which were given by your relations or yourself. Next to God, we take refuge in you: for this the Lombards oppress and make a mock of us. St. Peter's Church is stripped, and reduced to utter desolation. But we have rather confided the details of our sorrows to your liegeman, the bearer of this, which he may present by word of mouth. O my son, may the Prince of the Apostles deal with thee now and in the future life before our Almighty God, as thou disposest and contendest with all speed for his Church and our defence, that all nations may know your fidelity, your pure intention, the love which you bear to the Prince of the Apostles, to us, and to his peculiar people, by your zeal and your defence of us. And by it you will also gain eternal life.”

Either with this letter, or before it, the Pope had sent to Charles Martell the keys of St. Peter's Confession, together with rich presents. His messengers were received with great honour, but no actual help in soldiers came. It is supposed that Charles Martell was then engaged, together with Eudo, Duke of Aquitania, in expelling the Saracens from Southern France.

The acts of Leo III., as an open enemy of the Pope's spiritual power, by his completion of the Byzantine patriarch's usurped jurisdiction in the year 733, as [pg 343] above described, thus precede, by about five years, the appeal made to Charles Martell, by Gregory III., in the face of the advancing Lombard king, Liutprand, on the one hand, and the absence of any protection by the emperor on the other.

Such was the uncertain position of things when, in the year 741, the three great actors were withdrawn from this life, Leo III., on the 18th June, Charles Martell, on the 24th October, Gregory III., on the 27th November.

Of what this most noble Pope did for Rome, Anastasius gives a long account. If the Romans loved and admired him as a cardinal priest, they loved and admired him no less as Pontiff to the end. While fully acknowledging still the sovereignty of the eastern emperor, a man as unworthy of the loyalty which bound the Pope to him, as a sovereign could be, the Pope neither by his heresy nor by his tyranny was induced to renounce him. He did, indeed, one great and momentous act. He sent to Charles Martell the keys of St. Peter's Confession, conjuring him in the name and person of the Apostle, to save his city from the Lombard robber: the city which its sovereign was neither able nor willing to save: the city on which the robber was descending with the utmost force. It is supposed that Charles Martell was engaged in battle with the Saracens in Southern France at the time. The Pope sent a second time, to the great leader, the Hammer of the infidel, the Liberator of the Christian. What took place is not exactly known: but the Lombard king, Liutprand, retired [pg 344] in the month of August, 739, from the siege of Rome with his army to Pavia, and helped Charles Martell against the Saracens, who had again invaded Provence. Then also Rome was saved by her pontiff from becoming a Lombard prey.

Once more towards the end of 741, Liutprand was preparing a new expedition against Rome and its duchy, when Rome lost, on the 27th November, St. Gregory III., its pontiff, prince, and champion. At Constantinople, Leo III. had been succeeded by his son, Kopronymus, whom the Greek Zonaras calls, “a cub more cruel than his sire”. Rome seemed covered by a terrible tempest: France had been deprived not a month before of Charles Martell. All minds were in fearful expectation, when a star of peace appeared on the horizon. There rose up one who, by the force of his mind and the unsparing risk of his own person, was to preserve Italy during ten years from the destruction which seemed impending.

Upon the death of Pope Gregory III., the Roman chair was filled in four days. The usual three days having been devoted to the solemn funeral of that Pope, the electors, on the fourth day, which was Sunday, the 2nd December, met in the Lateran palace, and immediately united their votes on the person of Zacharias, and he was consecrated the same day. Two things combined to bring about this rapid election and ordination, one the extraordinary merit of the elected, the other the extreme urgency of the public need, as Rome, with its provinces, was threatened by King [pg 345] Liutprand. The confirmation by the exarch, that token of imperial oppression, was not waited for. Zacharias was the last of those illustrious orientals of whom a series at this time occupied the Roman Chair. Though born in Italy, being a native of the Calabrian city, St. Severina, he was Greek by lineage. Of him and of his predecessor, Photius himself, the leader of the Greek schism, has left written, “How could I pass over in silence the two Roman prelates, Gregory and Zacharias, who were eminent for their virtue, who contributed to increase the flock of Christ by their teaching full of divine wisdom, who were even conspicuous by the divine gift of miracles?” Of Zacharias, the character given by Anastasius is, “a man most meek and gentle, adorned with every goodness, a lover of the clergy and all the Roman people, slow to anger and quick to mercy, rendering to no man evil for evil, nor punishing according to desert, but from the time of his ordination made kind and tender to all: so that he returned good for evil to his former persecutors, both promoting and enriching them”. During ten years, Zacharias, by his wisdom and personal influence, kept at bay the three Lombard kings, Liutprand, Rachis, and Aistulf, who seemed on the point of completing the long-fostered ambition of their people by the absorption of Rome into a barbarian kingdom. The whole time is a contest of mind against matter, of right against encroachment. We learn, by the very words of these Popes, that even in the eighth century the radical opposition between Romans and Lombards continued [pg 346] still as in the time of the first invasion under Alboin. The end of the Lombards was to make themselves lords of all Italy: that of the Romans, to prevent themselves passing under a barbarian yoke. True peace there could never be between them. A truce, liable at any time to be broken, was all that could subsist.

Three times at least in the ten years of his pontificate, Zacharias repeated, with Lombard kings, the action of his great predecessor, Leo, with Attila. Liutprand, after thirty years of reign, was consolidating his kingdom by the reduction of the two Lombard dukedoms, Spoleto and Benevento. Bent upon gaining Rome, when he had subdued Spoleto, free from the check of Charles Martell, secure of the East by the contested succession to Leo of his son, Kopronymus, Liutprand was at Terni. Thither Pope Zacharias resolved to go in person, accompanied by a train of clergy. Liutprand received the Pope with great honour, and the result of a long interview was that he agreed to restore to the Pope four cities of the Roman duchy which he had taken. He likewise gave back the patrimony of Sabina, which he had seized thirty years before, and made peace with the Roman duchy for twenty years. The Pope returned as it were in triumph to Rome, was received with exultation, and ordered a procession of thanksgiving from the Church of St. Mary of the Martyrs, that is, the Pantheon, to St. Peter's. This was in his first year, 742.