“The third is the royal dignity in which the decree of our Lord Jesus Christ has placed you as ruler of the Christian people, more excellent in power than the other aforesaid dignities, more illustrious in wisdom, more sublime in the dignity of your kingdom. Lo! now on you alone the salvation of the churches of Christ falls and rests. You are the avenger of crimes, the guide of the wanderers, the comforter of the mourners, the exalter of the good.
“Have not the most frightful examples of wickedness now made themselves manifest in the Roman see where of old there was the brightest religion and piety? These men, blinded in their own hearts, have blinded him who was their true head. There is in that place no fear of God, no wisdom, no charity. What good thing can you look for where these are absent? These are the perilous times long since foretold by Him who was Himself the Truth, and therefore the love of many waxes cold.”
Alcuin then advises his royal friend to make peace if possible with the “unutterable” people (the Saxons), to forbear threats in dealing with them and to intermit, at any rate for a time, the exaction of tithes. Evidently this prudent counsellor felt that the affairs of Italy had now the most pressing claim on his master’s attention, and that it would be wise to concentrate all his forces for the solution of the problem which there awaited him.
It was then to a monarch thus prepossessed in his favor by the representations of one of his nearest friends that Leo III. appealed in the interview at Paderborn. The pope’s accusers sent their representatives to the Saxon towns, repeating the charges of adultery and perjury, and claiming that the pope should be called upon to deny the truth of these charges on oath. Privily they gave him the advice of professed well-wishers that he should give up the contest, lay down his papal dignity and retire in peace to some convent. But the king, while reserving the investigation into these charges for some future assembly to be held in Rome, showed by his conduct that he attached to them but little importance. After several weeks’ sojourn at Paderborn, Leo was dismissed with all honor from the camp and was escorted by royal missi reverently back to Rome, where he received an enthusiastic welcome from his penitent subjects (30th November, 799).
The close of this year was saddened by the tidings of the death of those two brave champions of Frankish civilization, Gerold and Eric. In the spring of 800, Charles set forth on an expedition into Neustria, a part of his dominions which he had apparently not visited for two-and-twenty years. Piratical raids of the Northmen seem to have been the determining cause of this expedition, the object of which was to put the coast of the Channel in a proper state of defence. He also, however, received the submission of some Breton chiefs who had long been in a chronic condition of revolt; he made the round of his villas and country palaces in Neustria; and above all he visited the tomb of St. Martin at Tours, and had a long spell of close and confidential intercourse with his friend Alcuin. Here at Tours his fifth and last wife Liutgard died (4th June, 800), and her illness probably lengthened his stay in that city. At length, after revisiting Rhine-land and holding a placitum [assembly] at Mainz (August, 800) he began his last and most celebrated journey into Italy.
Having rested for seven days at Ravenna, where he probably inhabited the palace built by Theodoric wherein the Byzantine exarch had dwelt, he marched down the coast of the Adriatic to Ancona. From thence he despatched his son Pippin to lay waste the territories of that unruly vassal, Grimwald of Benevento. Charles himself proceeded through the Picene and Sabine districts by the old Via Solaria, and arrived at Nomentum, fourteen miles from Rome. Here he was met by the pope, who accosted him with every show of humility and deference. Pope and king supped together at Nomentum, and then Leo returned to arrange for the triumphal entry into Rome. Next day (24th November, 800) this great pageant was enacted. The banners of the city of Rome borne by citizens, the gilt crosses borne by ecclesiastics, came in long procession to meet the great Patrician. Groups of citizens and of the foreigners resident in Rome, Franks, Frisians, Saxons (among the latter doubtless many of our own countrymen), stationed at intervals along the Salarian Way, thundered forth their laudes as the king rode by. St. Peter’s Church, now as before, was the goal of his pilgrimage, and on the broad marble stairs stood the pope, with all his train of bishops and clergy, to welcome him. He sprang from his horse, mounted the steps (not now apparently on his knees), and after receiving the papal blessing went in and paid his devotions at the tomb of St. Peter.
The chief business which had brought King Charles to Rome was, of course, the inquiry into the brutal assault on the pope and the clearing of his character from the charges brought against him. Already the Frankish missi [ambassadors] who accompanied Leo to Rome had held a preliminary inquiry, the result of which was that Paschalis and Campulus had been sent across the Alps to Charles for judgment. Now apparently they returned in his train, not so much to defend themselves on the score of the outrage (for their guilt was too clear) as to prove, if they could, their often-repeated accusations. A great synod was assembled at St. Peter’s on the 1st of December, and was opened by a speech from the king. According to the papal biographer, the ecclesiastics composing the synod all with one accord declared: “We do not dare to judge the Apostolic see, which is the head of all the Church of God; for by it and by the Apostle’s vicar we all are judged, but the see itself is judged of no man, and this has been the custom from old time.” Whether this high papal doctrine was proclaimed and accepted or not, it certainly seems as if Paschalis and Campulus entirely failed to make good their charges; but the pope offered, if his conduct were not drawn into a precedent against his successors, to accept the challenge to clear himself by oath from the charges brought against him. It is possible that the pope was only slowly brought to make this concession, for it was not till more than three weeks after the assembling of the synod that the next step was taken. On the 23d of December, in the presence of the Roman clergy, as well as of the Frankish followers of the king, Pope Leo appeared in the ambo[62] of St. Peter’s, bearing a copy of the four gospels, which lie clasped to his breast, and then he swore with a loud and clear voice: “Of all those charges which the Romans, my unjust persecutors, have brought against me, I declare in the presence of God and St. Peter, in whose church I stand, that I am innocent, since I have neither done those things whereof I am accused nor procured the doing of them.”
The result of the whole investigation was that Paschalis and Campulus and their accomplices were found guilty of high treason and condemned to death, a sentence which, on the intercession of the pope, was commuted to perpetual banishment into Frank-land.
During the weeks that the papal trial was proceeding Charles, of course, abode in Rome, whether in one of the old imperial dwellings on the Palatine, or as an honored guest of the pope at the Lateran, we are not informed. It was observed that now, as on the occasion of a previous visit to Rome, out of courtesy to the pope he laid aside his Frankish dress—a tunic with silver border, a vest of otter-skins and sable, and a blue cloak—and wore instead, after the Roman fashion, a long tunic and a chlamys[63] over it, shoes also made like those of the Romans, instead of his Frankish boots with stockings and garters.
It was precisely during this month of December that by a fortunate coincidence, the priest Zacharias, whom more than a year before Charles had sent on a mission to the holy places, returned from the East. Two monks came with him, from Olivet and St. Saba, sent by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and bringing by way of blessing from that ecclesiastic the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and of Calvary, of Jerusalem and Mount Zion, together with a consecrated banner. A more striking testimony to the world-wide fame of the Frankish conqueror could hardly have been rendered than this, which must have been meant to invest Charles with a kind of protectorate over the most sacred sites in Christendom.