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

by T. W. Allies

Nevertheless the queen mother, Bertrada, carried out her design, and the king Desiderius seemed to attain the summit of security, so far at least as this, that though his son Adelchis did not obtain the princess Gisela, Charles took his daughter Ermengarde. He also sent her back to her father the next year, and his friend and secretary, Eginhard, has left unexplained the cause of this repudiation. No historian has thrown light upon this particular in the history of Charles, either how he came to brave the anathema of Pope Stephen III. by deserting a lawful wife, or how he came to send back in a year the unhappy princess whom he had unlawfully taken, or how we find Hildegarde acknowledged as his [pg 439] lawful wife from 771 to her death in 786. The blot remains unerased upon the memory of him who was otherwise the greatest of the Christian emperors.

With the marriage—if it is to be so called—of his daughter with Charles, Desiderius seemed to have reached well nigh the end of his ambition. Christophorus and his son Sergius had put an end to the usurpation of Constantine, were the heads of the national Roman party,[231] and the soul of Pope Stephen III.'s government. Desiderius in a visit to Rome managed to set the Pope against them. He had a Lombard party there, at the head of which was a certain Paul Afiarta, high in the Pope's service. Christophorus and his son Sergius both lost their lives. They had urged the king of the Lombards to restore to the Holy See the rights which he kept back. Desiderius was infuriated by their conduct[232] and strove to destroy them.[233] Desiderius was encamped outside of St. Peter's. A company of Lombard soldiers dragged the two victims, who had been taken out of St. Peter's, to the gate of the city, at the bridge: tore out their eyes, of which outrage Christophorus died in three days: Sergius survived in prison during two years, that is, to the death of Pope Stephen, when he was most atrociously murdered by order of Paul Afiarta.

But now the whole course of history was altered by a death which occurred on the 4th December. Carloman [pg 440] died in the flower of his youth, leaving behind him two very young children by his wife Gilberga. Charles was called by the unanimous vote of the Frank magnates to rule the whole kingdom of the Franks increased greatly as it was by the late conquests of Charles in Aquitania and Gascony. Two months later, 1st February, 772, Stephen III. closed his pontificate of three years and a half. The Pope before his death had discovered how grievously he had been deceived by king Desiderius, to whom his two chief servants and ministers had been sacrificed. Desiderius kept none of the promises which he had made on the occasion of his coming to Rome: and when the Pope reminded him of them by a special embassy, mockingly replied:[234] “The Holy Father Stephen might have been contented that I delivered him from his two tyrants Christophorus and Sergius, and did not need to demand the rights of St. Peter. If I had not helped the Holy Father, great ruin would have fallen upon him, since Carloman, king of the Franks, the friend of both, was ready to bring an army to Rome to avenge their death, and carry away the Pope captive.”

The repudiation of his daughter, Ermengarde, and the rupture of the desired alliance between Desiderius and Charles, terminated the good fortune of the Lombard king. From that time he seemed to lose his vigour of mind, and political insight. He continued to pursue, without check, the design of Aistulf, which he [pg 441] had now fully made his own, to become master of Rome. But he had to deal with other adversaries. Eight days after the death of Pope Stephen III., he was succeeded by one of the greatest pontiffs who ever sat on the throne of St. Peter. Adrian, the son of Theodorus, was born in Rome of a very noble family, one of the most powerful in the city. Losing his parents early, he was brought up by a relation named Theodotus, Primicerius of the Roman See. He was distinguished from his youth by his purity of life, and his singular personal beauty. Pope Paul I. had placed him among the clergy, Pope Stephen III. created him a cardinal deacon, in which office his zeal, eloquence, learning, and management of affairs endeared him to the Roman people. On the very day of the Pope Stephen's death he was proclaimed unanimously his successor, and in eight days consecrated. He showed at once the vigour of mind and promptitude of execution which rendered his reign illustrious, and it continued nearly to twenty-four years, a period which no Pontiff reached in the seven hundred years from St. Peter before him, nor in the thousand years after him, until, at the end of the eighteenth century, it was slightly passed by that Pontiff who died a confessor, exiled, persecuted, and forlorn at Valence, in that land of the Franks, with whose greatest king Pope Adrian was bound in the closest personal friendship.

No sooner was Pope Adrian seated than he struck down that Lombard faction which the gold and intrigues of Desiderius had planted at Rome. Its head was Paul [pg 442] Afiarta. In the very last days of Pope Stephen, he had caused the blinded Sergius to be assassinated, and banished from Rome certain judges, both of the clergy and the army, that he might have more weight in the forthcoming election. Adrian, the moment that he was elected, recalled the judges, and delivered from prison those who had been confined for the like reason. Desiderius, who desired to keep up appearances with him, sent him a solemn embassy of the three principal persons in his kingdom, Theodicius, duke of Spoleto, Tunno, duke of Ivrea, and the Lord Treasurer Prandulus. Their office was to profess friendship and alliance to the new Pope. Adrian replied:[235]—“It is my desire to have peace with all Christians, and even with your king, Desiderius, I will study to remain in that compact which was made between the Romans, the Franks, and the Lombards. But how can I trust your king in the matter in which my predecessor, Stephen, of holy memory, has spoken to me fully of his want of good faith: how he falsified everything which he promised on oath over the body of St. Peter, for the rights of holy Church, and only by his own hostile pleading, caused the eyes of Christophorus and Sergius to be put out, and worked out his own will upon those two chief men of the Church. Such is the faith of your king, Desiderius, and how can I trust in a treaty with him?” In reply, the ambassadors made oath that Desiderius would fulfil what he had promised to Pope Stephen, and broken. The Pope thereupon despatched messengers to see that [pg 443] Desiderius fulfilled the promise. When these reached Perugia, they found that Desiderius had already taken the city of Faenza, and the duchy of Ferrara, and was pressing Ravenna with siege. It was only two months after the accession of Pope Adrian, and presently messengers from Ravenna came supplicating his help, just as thirty years before, when pressed by the arms of Liutprand, they had recourse to Pope Zacharias. But now the exarchate was fully subject to the Pope, and called upon him as part of his own State for defence. When this conduct of Desiderius was reported to the Pope, he wrote in the gravest terms to the Lombard king, requiring him to restore the cities, and upbraiding him with the breach of those very promises which his own ambassadors had just made in his name. “The king,” he said, “had taken cities which his predecessors, Stephen II., Paul I., and Stephen III., had possessed.” Desiderius returned, for answer, “that he would not restore those cities, unless he first met the Pope”. At the same time, he had received the widow and young children of the deceased Carloman, and wanted to induce the Pope to crown them, and so create division in the Frank empire, and alienate Charles, the Patricius of Rome, from the Pope, and thus subjugate the city of Rome and all Italy to the Lombard kingdom.[236] But Adrian stood firm as adamant. One of his two legates to the king, Paul Afiarta, was in league with the king, and promised to bring the Pope before him, even if it were with a rope round him. But, at this very moment, [pg 444] the body of the murdered Sergius was discovered at Rome. The Pope ordered an inquiry into the circumstances of his death. At the earnest entreaty of the Palatine judges, among whom Sergius had been second in rank, and of the whole Roman people, the Pope ordered the prefect of the city to try for homicide the parties inculpated. The crime was brought home to the legate, Paul Afiarta himself, at whose suggestion other highly placed officers had taken the blind Sergius out of prison, and pierced him with wounds. The Pope ordered the bodies of Christophorus and Sergius to be taken up and honourably buried in St. Peter's. He sent the Acts of the Court to the archbishop of Ravenna, instructing him to detain Paul Afiarta, when he returned from his embassy to the Lombard king. Archbishop Leo went beyond the Pope's instructions: handed over Paul Afiarta to the chief judge of Ravenna, before whom he acknowledged his guilt: and, instead of sending the criminal, as the Pope ordered, in exile to the East, had him executed by the judge.

Desiderius found himself bereft of his counsellor, Paul Afiarta: he refused to listen to the Pope's request to restore his cities. He committed further outrages and assaults. He rejected repeated letters and messengers of the Pope. His reply was that, instead of restoring cities, he would march with his whole army to Rome, and force it to surrender. The Pope had several of the gates of Rome built up and others carefully closed, and sent by sea messengers to Charles, begging him to help [pg 445] the Roman Church as his father had done, and force Desiderius to restore what he had taken from St. Peter.[237]

Desiderius saw that his attempt to move the Pope to crown the sons of Carloman was vain; then, with the widowed Gilberga, these sons and the duke, Autchar, he advanced his troops from Pavia, on the way to Rome, and informed the Pope of it. Adrian replied, “If the king does not give up the cities, as he has promised, and fully satisfy us, it is useless for him to take the trouble to come to us. He shall not see my face.”

Adrian, while awaiting the succour which he had asked from king Charles, had taken all measures necessary for the defence of Rome. He collected all the men of war whom he could from the Roman Tuscany, from Campania, from the duchy of Perugia, from such cities of the Pentapolis as the Lombards had not yet taken, who, with the Roman soldiers, might suffice to defend the vast circle of the walls and towers, and sustain a siege at least for a time. The two basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul, being outside the walls, were defenceless. The Pope caused them to be stripped of all precious objects, which were brought for protection within the city. He had all the doors closed and barred up within: so that, if the Lombard king attempted an entrance, it would be as a burglar.

These were his acts as a sovereign prince—as pontiff, learning that the king was approaching the Roman frontiers, he sent to him the bishops of Albano, Palestrina, and Tibur, with an intimation in his own hand, [pg 446] adjuring him by all the divine mysteries, and under threat of excommunication, that neither he, nor any Lombard, nor the Frank Autchar should set foot on the Roman territory without his leave.

Desiderius had reached Viterbo, the last city of the Lombard Tuscany. He was, at the head of his army, about to pass the frontier. On receiving the Pope's injunction he was struck with confusion and retired back with his army to his own city, Pavia. As the Hun had listened to St. Leo, the Lombard also listened to Adrian, and Rome was once more saved by her pontiff.