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

by T. W. Allies

The position of the Popes from the time of St. Gregory to the beginning of the State of the Church is thus described by a Jewish writer forty years ago.[218] “The Popes were usually the helpers out of every need. They supplied the money required for the payment of the troops, and for the requisite provisionment, to keep off the ever-impending threatenings of scarcity. They also frequently redeemed captives. Now as the Protector always exercised a decisive influence on the protected, and the distant emperors distinguished themselves as much by their neglect, as the Vicars of Christ by their activity in the interest of Italy, and especially of the seven-hilled city, nothing was more natural than that the estimation of those who were so often its preservers advanced more and more. Thus they soon came in fact to stand at the head of almost all secular matters in and about Rome, with almost sovereign power. That was especially the case since the pontificate of the great Gregory I., a Pope truly venerable both for his very distinguished mental gifts, and for his far-stretching, sound, practical discernment, and his inflexible will. [pg 426] These were the reasons enabling him to assume a freer political position towards the Greek imperial court than his predecessors.”

It has been computed[219] that the Popes were in all landlords of 1360 square miles, that is 870,400 acres, in the time of Leo the Isaurian, and that these lands produced to them 200,000 gold soldi in money, and 500,000 in kind. And if we add to this computation the very great secular powers which the policy of Justinian had placed throughout his empire in the hands of the bishops, we may form some notion of the secular authority wielded by the Popes before they obtained the technical rank of sovereigns, according to modern definition of that word. Constantine's gift of the Lateran palace may be considered the starting point which the continual generosity of so many succeeding generations extended, as has been recounted, until the unanimous voice of his people, delivered, as they hoped, from the Lombard burden, saluted Stephen II. on his return in 756, not only as Papa, but as Dominus Urbis.

Under the year 752, when Aistulf had attacked the exarchate and occupied the city of Ravenna, and was turning his arms against the Roman duchy and the cities depending on it, Muratori writes: “From what we have hitherto seen, although the Greek emperors had their ministers in Rome, yet the principal authority of government seems to have been seated in the Roman Pontiffs. They with the power and majesty of their rank and with the accompaniment of their virtues [pg 427] tranquilly governed that city and duchy, defending it moreover vigorously, when need arose, from the claws of the Lombards.”[220]

Such was the position of the Pontiffs before that definitive rejection of the Byzantine sovereign made by Stephen II. when he was left naked to the assault of Aistulf by the cowardice or the impotence of Constantine Kopronymus. From his return in 756 he and his successors after him became kings as well as Popes of Rome. Scrupulous as the two Gregories, Zacharias and Stephen himself had been up to the time of the compact with Pipin, never after did any Pope acknowledge the Byzantine as his civil sovereign.

Never could an Italian of those ages have given to the Goth or the Lombard that heartfelt devotion which they felt for the perpetual defender of the Italian people, who was seated in the centre of Italy at once the champion of the Christian faith, and representative of Rome's old Commonwealth. The Byzantine slave-master revolted the Roman heart; the Arian politician revolted the Christian faith: but in the Roman see St. Sergius the Syrian emulated the courage of St. Martin the Roman, and St. Gregory III., also Syrian, was in no quality behind his predecessor St. Gregory II. the Roman. Is it any wonder that by the end of the seventh century when a Justinian II. tried to repeat on the person of St. Sergius the wickedness practised by his grandfather upon St. Martin, his own soldiers rose against the guardsman whom he had deputed to this atrocious work, and recognized [pg 428] in the Pope the defender of all which they held dear, whether in the natural or the supernatural life.

And, again, had not the seven revolutions at Byzantium—ending in the exultation of a rough soldier who was able in the field, but ignorant in doctrine—given a sufficient lesson to the Italian peoples to cast off a force which disregarded all right in the natural order, and the whole tradition of faith in the supernatural realm of revealed truth?

That is the consummation which we have been following during a whole generation, from 726 to 756.

I will here insert the judgment of another historian, upon the gift of the exarchate, made by Pipin to St. Peter, in the person of the Popes:—[221] “To question the rightness of this donation is unreasonable and preposterous. Since the reconquest of Italy by Belisarius and Narses, Rome was regarded at Constantinople simply as a province, not as a member of the realm, or not as, what it had originally been, the seat of empire. On what could the right of Greek tyrants be founded constantly to receive back, even at second hand, conquests which they were able neither to govern nor to maintain? The assertions of some late historical writers seem to pre-suppose that all Europe, as far as the Rhine and the Danube, were placed by God for ever under the Byzantine yoke, and that the shaking off this yoke was an unpardonable injustice. Rome did under her [pg 429] bishops what peoples did under their kings. Rome took her opportunity to free herself from the yoke of foreign dominion and unnatural relations. No prince, no people of Europe has any other claim upon its soil to show than this and the centuries. Both tell for Rome. Before this testimony, the lesser but yet valid right disappears, that the Greek emperor had confiscated the Papal possessions situated in Lower Italy, and that nothing was more natural than that it should take the compensation which presented itself. The other question which has been also proposed, whether the office of a teacher and bishop of the Christian community can be united with a secular administration, had been long before answered. Rome owed its actual existence solely to the protection of its bishops. They had found their best right of sovereignty in the gratitude of the people, and long before the donation of Ravenna, they had been, if not in name, yet in fact, princes in Rome.”

At the beginning of the year 756, Aistulf, the most aggressive of Lombard kings, had strictly invested Rome, ravaged its campagna, and destroyed the churches therein, while he devoutly exhumed the bodies of martyrs to transport them to new shrines in Pavia. In the spring of that year he surrendered his capital to the king of the Franks, and submitted to all the conditions imposed on him by Pipin. In the autumn, by a sudden stroke of God, he died out hunting. At the beginning of the year 757, Desiderius, by the help of the Pope, Stephen II. had succeeded to the Lombard throne, itself spared by Pipin, and these great changes are recorded [pg 430] in an extant letter of Pope Stephen, a hymn of gratitude and praise, to Pipin, who had placed the keys of the recovered cities, forming the new created State of the Church, on the tomb of St. Peter. Great is the contrast between the letters of 756, written to Pipin, in the height of Rome's distress and danger, and this letter from the first Pope-king to his benefactor.

“Words[222] cannot express, most excellent son, our delight at your work and your life. For we have seen miracles in our days wrought by the divine power. For the Roman Church, the holy mother and head of all the churches of God, the foundation of the Christian faith, which was groaning under the attacks of enemies, now through you, has been translated into the fulness of joy and security. Thus, by your work, and in our exultation, we rejoice to exclaim with the angels, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of goodwill’. This time last year we were wounded and afflicted on all sides: now, in our deliverance through you, we cry out. ‘This change is by the hand of the Most High,’ and, again, ‘In the evening, there shall be weeping, but in the morning joy’. What heart is there so stony that, knowing what your goodness has done, would not break into praise of God and affection to your excellency. This I am wont to say to those who come hither from all the nations of the earth: and I perpetually pray to God for your welfare, and that of the whole nation of the Franks. What can I call you but a new Moses and a glorious David, for, as they delivered [pg 431] the people of God from the oppression of the heathen, so have you the Church of God. May the Lord, the beauty of justice, bless you and your children, Charles and Carloman, my spiritual sons, appointed by God kings of the Franks, and patricii of the Romans.”