[169] James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire (new ed., New York, 1904), p. 50.
[170] Irene, the wife of Emperor Leo IV. After the death of her husband in 780 she became regent during the minority of her son, Constantine VI., then only nine years of age. In 790 Constantine succeeded in taking the government out of her hands; but seven years afterwards she caused him to be blinded and shut up in a dungeon, where he soon died. The revolting crimes by which Irene established her supremacy at Constantinople were considered, even in her day, a disgrace to Christendom.
[171] This expression has given rise to a view which will be found in some books that Pope Leo convened a general council of Frankish and Italian clergy to consider the advisability of giving the imperial title to Charlemagne. The whole matter is in doubt, but it does not seem likely that there was any such formal deliberation. Leo certainly ascertained that the leading lay and ecclesiastical magnates would approve the contemplated step, but that a definite election in council took place may be pretty confidently denied. The writer of the Annals of Lauresheim was interested in making the case of Charlemagne, and therefore of the later emperors, as strong as possible.
[172] Einhard, Charlemagne's biographer, says that the king at first had such aversion to the titles of Emperor and Augustus "that he declared he would not have set foot in the church the day that they were conferred, although it was a great feast-day, if he could have foreseen the design of the Pope" (Vita Caroli Magni, Chap. 28). Despite this statement, however, we are not to regard the coronation as a genuine surprise to anybody concerned. In all probability there had previously been a more or less definite understanding between the king and the Pope that in due time the imperial title should be conferred. It is easy to believe, though, that Charlemagne had had no idea that the ceremony was to be performed on this particular occasion and it is likely enough that he had plans of his own as to the proper time and place for it, plans which Leo rather rudely interfered with, but which the manifest good-will of everybody constrained the king to allow to be sacrificed. It may well be that Charlemagne had decided simply to assume the imperial crown without a papal coronation at all, in order that the whole question of papal supremacy, which threatened to be a troublesome one, might be kept in the background.
[173] The celebration of the Nativity was by far the greatest festival of the Church. At this season the basilica of St. Peter at Rome was the scene of gorgeous ceremonials, and to its sumptuous shrine thronged the devout of all Christendom. Its magnificence on the famous Christmas of 800 was greater than ever, for only recently Charlemagne had bestowed the most costly of all his gifts upon it—the spoils of the Avar wars.
[174] Charles, the eldest son, since 789 king of Maine. In reality, of course, he was but an under-king, since Maine was an integral part of Charlemagne's dominion. He was anointed by Pope Leo in 800 as heir-apparent to the new imperial dignity of his father.
[175] The term "canonical" was applied more particularly to the clergy attached to a cathedral church, the clergy being known individually as "canons," collectively as a "chapter." In the present connection, however, it probably refers to the monks, who, living as they did by "canons" or rules, were in that sense "canonical clergy."
[176] The secular clergy were the bishops, priests, deacons, and other church officers, who lived with the people in the sæculum, or world, as distinguished from the monks, ascetics, cenobites, anchorites, and others, who dwelt in monasteries or other places of seclusion.
[177] This is really as splendid a guarantee of equality before the law as is to be found in Magna Charta or the Constitution of the United States. Unfortunately there was not adequate machinery in the Frankish government to enforce it, though we may suppose that while the missi continued efficient (which was not more than a hundred years) considerable progress was made in this direction.
[178] Serfs who worked on the fiscal lands, or, in other words, on the royal estates.