Survival of the Theory of the Empire in Western Europe, and especially in Italy—Its influence—Troubles of Pope Leo III.—He crowns Charles on Christmas Day 800—Consequences, immediate and remote, of the coronation—The Papacy and the Empire—Charles as administrator and legislator—His encouragement of Literature, Architecture, and Science—His later years and death.

While narrating the never-ending wars of the great king of the Franks, we have barely found time to mention the internal changes which he wrought in the condition and constitution of his realms. Of these the first and foremost was his introduction of a new political theory into the government of Western Christendom, when he caused himself to be crowned emperor by Pope Leo III. in the memorable year 800.

We have had occasion to remark in an earlier chapter that the theory of the universal dominion of the Roman Empire had long survived the extinction of any real power of the emperors in most of the countries of Western Europe. Theodoric the Ostrogoth and Chlodovech the Frank had been proud to acknowledge themselves as the first subjects of the Constantinopolitan Caesar, and to receive from his hands high-sounding titles and robes of honour. Till the middle of the sixth century Gaul, Spain, and Italy had all owned a nominal allegiance to the empire, and their homage had only been denied when Justinian by his bold attempt to recover the whole of the West had forced the Teutonic kings to take arms against him in their own defence. Then Baduila, Leovigild, and Theudebert had disclaimed their allegiance, and banished the imperial name from their coins and their charters. The last practical traces of the old Roman connection had been lost in Spain when the soldiers of Heraclius were driven out by Swinthila (623),^[50] and in Gaul when the encouragement and the subsidies of Maurice had failed to sustain the pretender Gundovald (585).^[51] Yet there still lingered on in the minds of the educated classes a memory of the ancient empire; curious turns of expression in chroniclers of the seventh century often show us that they still remembered the old theory of the world-wide rule of Rome. A Spanish chronicler writing in the seventh century can still call the East Roman armies ‘the soldiers of the respublica.’ Subjects of the Frankish kings in Gaul still dated their letters by Constantinopolitan indictions.

In Italy, of course, the tradition of the unity of Christendom under the emperors was in no danger of being forgotten. Appeals to the ancient temporal and spiritual supremacy of Rome were the most powerful items in the Pope’s stock of arguments, when a Gregory or a Zacharias stated his pretensions to patriarchal authority in the West, or denounced the wickedness of the intrusive Lombard. The personal ambition of the Popes was always leading them to indulge in fond reminiscences of the ancient glories of the Empire. The vanity of the degenerate populace of Rome sometimes found vent in futile claims that they, ‘the Roman senate and people,’ really were the heirs of Augustus and Constantine, while the Caesar at Constantinople was nothing more than a mere Greek. "The Empire and the West." When, by the rupture between Leo the Isaurian and Pope Gregory II., Rome practically passed out of the hands of the Eastern Augustus, it was easy enough for an Italian to maintain that Constantine Copronymus or Leo the Khazar had no longer any true right to use the Roman Imperial title. And the Italian malcontent would add, not, of course, that Rome had ceased to form part of the Roman Empire, but that the title of emperor had passed away from the heretical Isaurian house, and fallen into abeyance, while the empire itself still existed, for its cessation had grown to be inconceivable to the Italian mind.

The Italians, and to a less extent the Franks, were sorely puzzled by the long continuance of the anomalous condition of affairs, when for sixty years the titular emperors had remained heretics, and had failed to maintain their hold on Rome. Nor was the position improved when the Eastern Empire relapsed into orthodoxy indeed, but at the same time passed into the hands of an empress-regnant, a thing repugnant to all those who remembered the ancient Roman horror of a woman’s reign. Irene herself, too, had obtained the crown by such a series of crimes against her son, that not merely constitutional jurists, but all right-minded men shrank, in spite of her extreme orthodoxy, from the idea of recognising in her the legitimate ruler of Rome.

More than once during the long quarrel between the Popes and the Isaurian emperors there had been some talk of electing a separate Augustus to bear rule over Roman Italy,—those districts of the peninsula which were not in the hands of the Lombards. "Tendencies to separation in Italy." The scheme had not been carried out, mainly because the Popes opposed it, but it had not been forgotten. Now that the greater part of Italy, both Lombard and Roman, was under the rule of a single king, and one well liked both by the Pope and by the Roman people, it would have been strange if the idea of completely repudiating the ignominious dependence of Rome on Constantinople had not been once more mooted. For as long as there remained but one person bearing the Imperial style,—the ruler of the East,—the Pope and his Roman and Italian contemporaries had an uneasy consciousness that their homage ought still, perhaps, to be paid to that person, Greek and heretic though he or she might be.

We may suppose that these doubts hardly troubled the Frankish vassals of Charles the Great, but to his Italian subjects they were a constant source of vexation of spirit; while practically they were liegemen of the Frankish king, they were not quite sure whether in theory they might not still be considered the liegemen of the hated Caesars at Constantinople.

Such thoughts must have been running through the heads of all the Popes who held the Roman See from 773 to 800. But it would seem that it was Pope Leo III. who first bethought him of the easiest way of settling the situation—to declare the king of the Franks Roman emperor, and not merely Roman patrician. A barbarian Augustus would be unprecedented, but not more so than the female ruler of the Empire who now swayed Constantinople. It was evidently the sight of a woman—and a very wicked woman—on the Byzantine throne that gave the final impulse to the desire of the Italians to cut off the last thread of connection with the Imperial line in the East. Their desire must have been well known to Charles himself, but it would seem that he for some time shrank from granting it. Perhaps he feared the responsibilities of the title; more probably he did not see how it legally could be conferred upon him: there was no precedent to settle what person or body in the West could claim to give it, and it was most certain that the court of Constantinople would utterly refuse to grant it, and would view its assumption by a ‘barbarian’ king of the West as a gross piece of insolence.

"Leo III, and Charles." It would seem that the fervent gratitude of Pope Leo III. for his deliverance by the hand of Charles from certain domestic enemies in Rome, was the active cause of the great ceremony of Christmas Day 800. Leo had been cruelly maltreated by personal enemies in Rome, the kinsmen of his predecessor Hadrian I.; they had seized his person and tried to blind him. But he escaped, fled over the Alps, and took refuge with the great king at his camp near Paderborn, in Saxony. Charles investigated the dispute between Leo and his enemies, and he determined that he would come to Rome and decide the matter in person; meanwhile he sent Leo home under the protection of some Frankish ambassadors. Late in the year 800 Charles moved down into Italy, and held a synod at Rome in which he carefully investigated the conduct of Leo, and pronounced him blameless, while his enemies were executed or thrown into prison. The Pope then purged himself by an oath from all the charges that had been made against him, and was reinstated in his place with much solemnity.

It was only a few days after Charles had thus restored and commended Leo, that the Pope paid the debt of gratitude by crowning his saviour as emperor. The details of this all-important ceremony are curious. The royal and papal courts were thronging St. Peter’s basilica to celebrate the festival of Christmas. "Charles crowned Emperor." When the service was ended, and while the emperor was still kneeling before the altar in silent prayer, Leo advanced with a diadem in his hand, and placed it upon the bowed head of the great king, crying, ‘God grant life and victory to Charles the Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific Emperor of the Romans.’ Frankish warriors and Italian clergy and citizens joined in the cry, and all present, including the Pope himself, bent their knees to Charles as he rose, and saluted him with the fashion of adoration paid to the ancient emperors.

Charles himself was wont to declare that the ceremony took place without his consent having been obtained, and that he would never have entered St. Peter’s that day, if he had known of the Pope’s intention. Yet there is no doubt that he had seriously taken the matter into consideration long before; it is probable that Leo in his outburst of gratitude for his restoration did no more than force Charles’s hand, by sweeping away by his sudden act the king’s lingering objections to the coronation. He knew that the act would be hailed with joy both by Frank and Roman, and that Charles himself was rather doubtful as to the proper form for assuming the title than opposed to its actual adoption. The way in which the coronation was viewed by the majority of his subjects may be gathered from an extract from the Frankish chronicle of Lauresheim:—‘The name of emperor had ceased among the Greeks, for they were enduring the reign of a woman, wherefore it seemed good both to Leo the apostolic Pope, and to the holy fathers (bishops) who were in council with him, and to all Christian men, that they should hail Charles king of the Franks as emperor. For he held Rome itself, where the ancient Caesars always dwelt, and all these other possessions of his own in Italy and Gaul and Germany. Wherefore, as God had granted him all these dominions, it seemed just to them that he should accept the imperial title also, when it was offered him by the consent of all Christendom.’

That there was much to be said against the legality of the assumption by Charles of his new style, cannot be disputed. Certainly the Pope had no right to give it: nor had there been a precedent for many centuries for the conferring of the imperial title by the decayed body of nobles and the miscellaneous gathering of citizens who might still call themselves ‘the senate and people of Rome.’ Apparently the Pope, when he saluted Charles as ‘crowned by God,’ claimed that the impulse to hail him by the great name of emperor, descended by a direct inspiration from heaven upon the multitude gathered in St. Peter’s. "The meaning of the coronation." But such a plea would hardly appeal with much force, either to the Byzantine Court or to the modern historian. In truth, there was much to be said for the assumption of the imperial style by Charles, as recognising an accomplished fact, but little for the particular forms by which it was carried out. Most especially did the fact that the Pope seemed to confer the title, by his own act and impulse, prove of incalculable harm in future years. If the coronation of the great king had taken some other form, it would have been impossible for the Popes of later generations to bring forward their preposterous claim to have the power of giving or taking away the imperial crown. The successors of Charles would have been spared many a weary journey to Rome, and many a bitter wrangle with the Holy See, if there had been a formal election-ceremony in which all the nations of the West could have taken part, or if Charles, like Napoleon in a later age, could have placed the crown on his own head instead of receiving it from the pontiff’s hand.

The assumption of the imperial title by the great king had many practical consequences at the moment, and many and yet more important influences upon the history of Europe for long centuries to come.

"Charles’s views of the Empire." The most notable of the immediate results of the coronation was that Charles and all his subjects regarded his regal authority as being re-affirmed in a new and more hallowed shape by the ceremony. Formerly his power rested on his election as king by the Franks, and afterwards by the Lombards: now he was ‘crowned by God’ as well as chosen by the people. For the future he showed an increasing tendency to insist on the omnipotence of his authority in things ecclesiastical and moral as well as in civil matters. As Heaven’s anointed he claimed to be the guardian of morality and the reformer of Christendom, as well as the protector of the Church. Charles had always shown a deep interest in the spiritual welfare of his dominions. We have seen already what energy he displayed in enforcing the conversion of Saxony, of the Slavs, and of the Avars. He had presided at innumerable councils and synods, stirring up his bishops to enforce strict discipline and sober life among the clergy, and to root out heathen survivals and immorality among the laity. Now that he had become emperor he insisted even more than before on the moral side of his authority: he thought of himself not only as the successor of Constantine and Theodosius, but even as inheriting the theocratic powers of the ancient kings of Israel—of David or of Josiah. When Charles recrossed the Alps after his coronation and held his next great council in Austrasia, he took the opportunity of bringing home his views to his liegemen. He made all his subjects, lay and secular, swear allegiance to him for a second time under his new name of emperor: every person above the age of twelve was to have the oath administered to him by the local clergy, and to be warned ‘that his vow of homage was not merely a promise to be true to the emperor and to serve him against his enemies, but a promise to live in obedience to God and His law according to the best of each man’s strength and understanding. It was a vow to abstain from theft and oppression and injustice, no less than from heathen practices and witchcraft: a vow to do no wrong to the Churches of God, nor to injure widows and orphans, of whom the emperor is the chosen protector and guardian.’ Much more followed to the same effect: Charles formally claimed that the defence of all law and morality was involved in the imperial name, and warned his subjects that any offence against him and his ordinances was a direct crime against the anointed of God.

It was not only in the mind of Charles that this high and holy view of the duty and power of the emperor found a place. "The Holy Roman Empire." He succeeded in impressing it on his own contemporaries and on long centuries to come: with him starts the idea of the ‘Holy Roman Empire,’ which affected so deeply the whole secular and religious life of the Middle Ages. The Frankish kingship, a mere rule of force, had no exalted and spiritual meaning: the new empire represented a close and conscious union of Church and State for the advantage of both. It started with the conception that the emperor should be the protector and overseer of the Church: by an unhappy development it ended in making the Pope the overseer of the State. But the generation which had seen Pope Leo on his knees ‘adoring’ the majesty of the great Charles, could not have foreseen the day when the successor of Charles should humbly wait for hours before the unopened door of the successor of Leo, or beg as a favour the privilege of holding his stirrup.

A new age then commences in Europe with the coronation of Charles the Great. The reign of pure barbaric force is ended: there follows a time when the history of Europe is complicated by the strife of ideas no less than by the strife of armed nations. For the future we must always be on the watch to detect the influence on politics of the ideal conception of Christendom as a great empire, under a single ruler chosen by God to sway the sword, and the rival conception of it as a great Church under a single Patriarch at Rome, appointed to hold the keys of heaven and hell, and to guide kings in the way they should go.

The internal government of the vast realm of Charles was a difficult problem. "Charles and his sons." In his own lifetime the great king provided for it by delegating his authority in certain large sections of it to his sons: we have already spoken of his nomination of Charles, Pippin, and Lewis to be kings in Neustria, Italy, and Aquitaine. Charles contemplated the possibility of a single empire existing while yet many of its parts should be governed by vassal sovereigns. In his own time the plan worked well enough: he did not, perhaps, foresee that the problem would be far harder in the next generation, when the homage and obedience of the lesser kings would have to be paid to a brother, an uncle, and at last to a mere distant cousin.

Charles publicly issued in 806 the scheme on which his realm was to be ruled after his death: the title of emperor and all the Frankish lands, both Neustrian and Austrasian, were to go to his first-born Charles; with them went Saxony, Thuringia, and Burgundy. Pippin, the second son, had Italy, together with Bavaria and eastern Suabia. Lewis, the youngest child, was to take Aquitaine, Provence, and the Spanish March. This division, however, was rendered fruitless by the unexpected decease of the two elder kings: to the great grief of their father, Pippin died in 810, and Charles in 811. This necessitated a new division of the empire: Lewis was now the only grown man in the family: to him, therefore, was left the imperial name and all the realm save Italy, which was to be a vassal-kingdom for Bernard, the young son of Pippin.

Charles, while all his sons yet lived, gave over the charge of large sections of his realm to them. Beneath their authority the kingdoms were ruled by the same hierarchy of dukes and counts who had existed in Merovingian times. When any new land, such as Saxony or Lombardy, was added to the empire, it was ere long cut up into countships on the same pattern that already served for Austrasia and Neustria. Thus a regular ascending scale of grades lay between the count and the emperor. The count obeyed the duke, the duke the sub-king, the king his father the suzerain of all. In the conquered lands Franks were, as a rule, intrusted with the most important provincial governments: but Charles often gave countships in their own native districts to Lombards, Aquitanians, or even Saxons who had served him well and truly.

The best security for the unity and peace of the empire was the never-ceasing activity of Charles himself, who incessantly perambulated his realm from end to end so long as life was in him. It was his own frequent visits to Saxony, Italy, or Bavaria, that were the best means of keeping those outlying provinces in loyalty and obedience. But he had also a regular system of travelling commissioners who were always moving round the realm, and reporting to him on the needs and requirements of the different provinces. "The Missi Dominici." The circuits of these Missi Dominici, or royal legates, as they were called, were fully settled by him only in 802, but he had been employing them less systematically at a far earlier date. His father and grandfather, Pippin the Short and Charles Martel, had been wont to send out occasionally travelling commissions (Missi discurrentes), but it was Charles the emperor who multiplied and systematised their activity. By his arrangements his emissaries, who were sometimes clerics, sometimes laymen, were appointed for a year’s duty over a certain number of countships. They visited the assemblies of the inhabitants of the district, summoned to the count’s Mallus,^[52] and inquired into the state of the provinces. Complaints against the count himself or the local bishop were brought before them, and they would send them up to the king or take account of them on the spot. We sometimes find Missi charged with other duties, such as the conduct of an embassy or a warlike expedition, but this terminal inspection of the local governors was their primary duty. As long as men of probity and strength were chosen, no better machinery for keeping together the wide empire of the Franks could have been devised.

We have already mentioned in an earlier chapter the interest which Charles always showed in art and letters, an interest which had been very rare among the Frankish kings, whether of his own house or of the Merovings. Of all the two dynasties the ruffian Chilperich I. is—curiously enough—the only one who is recorded to have shown any literary tastes. Charles, however, atoned for the neglect of his predecessors. "Encouragement of learning." He collected learned men from all quarters: the Northumbrian Alcuin and the Lombards Peter of Pisa and Paul the Deacon were the best-known names among them: at first his scholars were mostly foreigners, but by the end of his reign he had seen a generation of learned Franks arise in response to his encouragement. Two of his proclamations, the Epistola de litteris colendis and the Encyclica de emendatione librorum, set forth his purpose. He complains that the letters addressed to him by bishops and abbots from all parts of his realm are ‘very correct in sentiment but very incorrect in grammar,’ so that he has begun to fear whether his clergy have enough knowledge of Latin to understand the whole sense of the Scriptures. Wherefore he will have schools established in every monastery for the perfect teaching of the Latin tongue, ‘because it is useful that men of God should not only live by the rule and dwell in holy conversation, but should devote themselves to literary meditations, each according to his ability, that they may be able to give themselves to the duty of teaching others.’ "Multiplication of books." Under the fostering hand of Charles all the greater monasteries became centres of learning: we owe to his care the preservation of many of the classical authors, for he was incessantly causing the old volumes, ‘almost worn out,’ as he says, ‘by the carelessness of our ancestors,’ to be fairly copied out and multiplied. Each monastery was urged to have its own treasures preserved by several copies, and to interchange them with those of its neighbours. He paid special attention to the books of the Old and New Testaments, was shocked at the diverse readings which he found to exist—due, as he asserts, to the extreme ignorance of copyists—and set Paul the Deacon to construct a new lectionary, corrected according to the best texts, and destined to be used in all the Churches in his realm. It was not only to religious books that he turned his attention: he had the old heroic epics of the Franks—the prototypes, we may suppose, of such works as the Nibelungenlied—collected and written out: unfortunately his pious son Lewis destroyed this invaluable corpus of Frankish poetry, because he deemed it heathenish. He is also found setting his scholars to work on the compilation of grammars—both Latin and German—biographies, and even of works of secular history. It is, no doubt, to his inspiration that we owe the sudden expansion and multiplication of the Frankish chronicles. Our historical sources, down to his time, are few, bald, and jejune; soon after his accession they become full, satisfactory, and numerous. The ninth century, in spite of all its troublous times, is far better known to us than the eighth.

Charles kept the best of his scholars about his Court, and treated them as familiar friends. When he was settled down at Aachen for the winter, and was at rest from wars, he gathered them about him to discuss all manners of subjects, from astronomy to logic. The literary circle assumed old classical names. Alcuin called himself Flaccus, Charles was addressed as King David, other scholars styled themselves Homer, Mopsus, and DamÆtas. Their discussions were often fruitless, and sometimes childish, but it was something new in Western Christendom to find a whole group of scholars busied in discussions of any sort whatever. After looking back at the blank darkness of the seventh century, we find the court of Charles the Great a very centre of light and wisdom. In it lay the promise of great things in the future, a promise for which we have looked in vain in any period of the preceding ages.

It was not only in literature that Charles busied his leisure hours. He was a great admirer of music, both secular and ecclesiastical. His ear was charmed by the Gregorian chants which he heard at Rome, and he took back with him Italian choirmasters to teach the churchmen of the north the sonorous cadences of the sainted Pope.

"Charles as builder." He was also a mighty builder. At Aachen he reared a great palace for himself and a magnificent cathedral. The former has perished, but enough survives of the latter to show the exact extent to which Romanesque architecture had developed by his time. So much was he set on making it the most magnificent basilica to the north of the Alps, that when he found his own workmen unable to carry out his ideas, he sent for ancient columns and marbles from distant Rome and Ravenna. His own coffin was a splendid Roman sarcophagus, probably procured from Italy. He constructed palaces in two other Austrasian towns besides Aachen, the old royal seats of Nimuegen and Engelheim, for he was Austrasian to the core, and always made the land of his ancestors his favourite dwelling. He built a bridge at Mainz five hundred yards long, the first effort of Frankish engineering in that class of structure. Unfortunately it was destroyed by fire in 813, and never renewed. Another piece of work which testifies to his interest in engineering was a canal to join the Rhine and Danube, by means of their tributaries, the AltmÜhl and the Rednitz.

But to follow Charles into every department of his activity during his long life and reign would require many volumes. "Death of Charles, 814." Here it must suffice to say that after all these achievements he died at his chosen abode at Aachen, on the 28th of January 814, carried off at a ripe old age by a pleurisy caught in the winter cold. He was buried in the cathedral that he himself had built, and over his tomb was placed a golden shrine, with his image and the inscription:—‘Sub hoc conditorio situm est corpus karoli magni et orthodoxi imperatoris, qui regnum francorum nobiliter ampliavit, et per annos xlvii feliciter rexit.’ It was but a short epitaph considering the mighty deeds of him who lay beneath, but no length of words could have done justice to his greatness. A far better memorial was left to him in the hearts of his subjects; his name survived in the mouths of all the races that had served him, as the type of power, wisdom, and righteousness. All Western Europe looked back to him for seven hundred years as the common pride of Christendom, the founder of that ‘Holy Roman Empire’ which satisfied their ideal of governance. His figure looms out, though often with outlines blurred and distorted, from dozens of the legends and romances which shadowed forth the aspirations of the Middle Ages. Within a hundred years of his death it was currently believed that he had conquered Spain and Byzantium, and carried his arms as far as Palestine. So great was the impression he had left behind him, that the world thought nothing too impossible for him to have achieved. Perhaps the notion that his reign had been a kind of Golden Age was partly produced by the contrasting years of trouble and civil strife that followed his death. But the tendency to look back to his time as a period of unexampled splendour and righteousness was no delusion, but a just recognition of the fact that he had given the Western world a glimpse of new and high ideals, such as it had never known under the brutal rule of twelve generations of barbarian kings, nor in those earlier days when it was still held together in the iron grasp of the Caesars of ancient Rome.