There are some indications that the nobles and warriors of the Frankish Court were averse to undertaking the risks and hardships of a Transalpine campaign, and it was probably for the sake of winning their concurrence that this scene was enacted. The king, though not perhaps very eager in the cause, was sufficiently bound to the pope by the memory of past favors, and the hope of favors to come, in the shape of papal blessings on his newly-assumed royalty.
The winter months of 754 were passed in embassies between the two kings. Pippin called upon Aistulf to cease from his impious presumption, and to leave unmolested the city of St. Peter and St. Paul. His ambassadors brought back naught but words of pride and obstinacy from the Lombard. War was resolved on, but before it began, Pippin, mindful of the chances of war, and determined to secure the succession in his family, resolved to have another confirmation of his doubtful title from the hands of his venerable guest. Pope Stephen, who had passed the winter at the wealthy convent of St. Denis, “anointed the most pious Prince Pippin King of the Franks and Patrician of the Romans with the oil of holy anointing, according to the custom of the ancients, and at the same time crowned his two sons, who stood next him, in happy succession, namely, Charles and Carloman, with the same honor.”
This passage is an important one, and we must pause upon it for a few minutes.
First, as to the rite of anointing. The writers who have most carefully inquired into the matter, are clear that this rite, though it had been practised upon the later Visigothic kings of Spain, and upon some of the British kings in Wales, was new to the Frankish monarchy, when performed first by Boniface and then by Stephen on the head of Pippin. It really rested upon Old Testament precedents, such as the anointings of Saul and of David: and it was possibly intended, as already hinted, to replace in some degree the religious sanction which in old heathen days royal families, such as the Merovingians, had possessed in their fabled descent from gods and demi-gods.
Secondly: as to the bestowal on Pippin of the title “Patrician of the Romans.” Long ago, before the series of Western emperors came to an end, the word patrician had ceased to denote an aristocratic class, and had been used of a single powerful individual, otherwise called “the Father of the Emperor,” who in fact bore to the sovereign a relation not unlike that which the Frankish mayor of the palace bore to the Merovingian king. Thus, in the fifth century, Aetius and Ricimer had successively borne the dignity of patrician, and in the sixth, the Ostrogothic king Theodoric, speaking by the mouth of his minister Cassiodorus, had said, “The great distinction of the patriciate is that it is a rank held for life, like that of the priesthood from which it sprang. The patrician takes precedence of all other dignities save one, the consulship, and that is one which we ourselves sometimes assume.” Since then, the imperial lieutenant in Italy had apparently always assumed the title of patrician at Rome, in addition to that of exarch by which he was best known at Ravenna. Now that the exarchs were gone, the sonorous and imposing title might perhaps be said to be nobody’s property. If any one had a right to bestow it the emperor at Constantinople was the man: but he was far off and unpopular. There was an obvious temptation to the Bishop of Rome to pick the shining bauble out of the dust and present it to his powerful friend on the other side of the Alps. It is not likely that it included any definite functions of government, but it probably carried with it, in a somewhat ill-defined and shadowy form, the right and the duty of defending from external attacks the people and city of Rome.
Thirdly: the pope included in his coronation-service the two boyish sons of Pippin, Charles and Carloman, and at the same time (if we may trust a curious memorandum, the Clausula de Pippino, which professes to have been written in 767 and which is now generally considered authentic) the pope “blessed the Queen Bertrada and the nobles of the Frankish nation, and while confirming them in the grace of the Holy Spirit, he bound them under penalty of interdict and excommunication never to presume to elect a king who should come forth from the loins of any other than these persons whom Divine Providence had raised to the throne, and who through the intercession of the holy Apostles had been consecrated and confirmed by the hands of their vicar, the pope.” Even so: that which had been done in the case of the last Merovingian was never to be repeated in the case of any Arnulfing however inefficient. The ruler who four years ago was only king de facto must now claim to the uttermost all the rights of a king de jure descended from a long line of regal ancestors.
This solemn coronation of Pippin took place, we are told, on the 28th of July, 754. We naturally ask what had so long delayed the intended expedition into Italy. There had been a dangerous illness of the pope, the result of the hardships of his journey and of the unaccustomed rigors of a Gaulish winter. There had also been more embassies: apparently Pippin would exhaust all the resources of negotiation before he proceeded to war. And lastly there had appeared at the royal villa of Carisiacum an unexpected advocate to plead for the Lombard king. This was none other than Pippin’s brother Carloman, lately ruler of Austrasia, and the senior partner in the semi-royal firm, now a tonsured monk, humbly though earnestly advocating the cause of peace. The papal biographer sees in him only a dupe tempted forth from his monastery by the “devilish persuasions of the unspeakable tyrant, Aistulf,” and “striving vehemently with all his might to subvert the cause of God’s Holy Church.” Certainly this intervention of the newly-made monk against the great Head and Patron of all monks, is one of the strangest incidents in his strange career: but it may be permitted us to conjecture that during his seven years’ residence in Italy he had acquired somewhat of an Italian heart and had learnt to dread the ravages of
“the arméd torrent poured
Down the steep Alps.”
Possibly too in the silence of his convent he had learned to estimate at their true value the papal claims to wealth and wide dominion, and with prophetic soul foresaw that the armed interference of the Franks in the quarrels of pope and Lombard king would in the end bring good neither to the Church nor to his father’s house.
But whatever Carloman’s motives might be, his interposition on behalf of Aistulf was firmly, perhaps ungraciously, repelled. He was not allowed to return to Italy, but was confined in a monastery in France, “where after certain days,” says the biographer, “at the call of God he migrated from the light of day.” He died on the 17th of August, 754. There is no suggestion of foul play, and indeed Pippin’s character, as far as we know it, is too noble to warrant any such suggestion. It seems probable that Carloman died broken-hearted at the discovery that he had renounced the honest worldliness of the palace for the baser and more hypocritical worldliness of the cloister and the cathedral.