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Charlemagne gets suckered

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Spain in the second half of the eighth century was a place of splintered kingdoms, divided loyalties, and conflicting religions. Charlemagne, dreaming of easy conquests and religious glory, stepped right into the steaming pile of it, and ended up leaving his boot behind when he tried to scrape it clean.

Before we get into the details, let’s do a little scene-setting. As you may remember, Islam spread out of the Arabian peninsula with amazing rapidity, arrived in Spain around 711, and by 732 the Arab armies rapped at the very gates of Western Christendom. Charlemagne’s grandfather Charles Martel knocked them back across the Pyrenees, and his father Pepin had further cleansed the Narbonnaise, but to date the Franks had looked no further south. The Pippinids contented themselves with conquering Saxons and fellow Christians.

This balance of forces probably would have continued were it not for a coup in Syria around 750. The ruler of the Umayyad caliphate was murdered, and his family hunted down and killed. The new ruler, founder of the Abbasid caliphate, was determined to leave no root from which an Umayyad seedling might sprout. He got them all, but one. ‘Abd al-Rahman traveled first to Africa, then in 756 landed in Spain. Conditions were ripe for upheaval, as the ruler at that time was cruel, and a drought had caused much hardship.1.Collins, Early Medieval Spain, p.169-170.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Collins, Early Medieval Spain, p.169-170.

The biggest, fakest donation ever

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O Constantine, what evil did you sire,
not by your conversion, but by the dower
that the first wealthy Father got from you!1.Dante, The Inferno, trans. Mark Musa, canto 19, lines 115-117, p.244.

Such was Dante’s lament as he surveyed the ditch of the Simonists, head down in flaming pits. He believed that the corruption and greed of the 14th century church could be laid at the feet of the Roman Emperor Constantine, who, in a grand gesture of piety in 335, donated (there’s that word again) all of Italy to the church and the popes that would lead her. That wealth, Dante believed, created a culture of ecclesiastical greed that had infected and weakened the church in his own time.

The pledge in question is called the Donation of Constantine, for that emperor who converted to Christianity in 317 AD. He later moved the capital of the empire to the ancient city of Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople. The Donation is a document of some 4700 words, in twenty chapters, and it is written in the first person, allegedly by Constantine himself. In the first eleven chapters the author lays out the foundations of Christian theology, and relates the miraculous healing of “a mighty and foul leprosy” that led to his conversion. Pope Sylvester, the man who led him through his experience, is addressed frequently, as are “all his successors, the pontiffs who are about to sit upon the chair of Saint Peter until the end of time…”2.Donation of Constantine, in Carolingian Civilization, A Reader, ch.1, p.14.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Dante, The Inferno, trans. Mark Musa, canto 19, lines 115-117, p.244.
↑2 Donation of Constantine, in Carolingian Civilization, A Reader, ch.1, p.14.

Pepin donates Aistulf’s toys

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“Concerning all the cities received, he [Pepin] issued a donation in writing for their possession by St Peter, the holy Roman church and all the apostolic see’s pontiffs forever; it is kept safe even till now in our holy church’s archive.”1.Book of the Popes, bk.94, ch.46, p.72. Thus did the eighth century church issue yet another claim to a spiritual authority so powerful and unique in the western world, that the greatest king of the age forgo his Lombard conquests, but rather donated the lands to the budding Papal States.

As we saw in last week’s post, this idea of granting land to the papacy was not a new one. The Lombard king Liutprand had done so several times earlier in the century (if you can call giving back land you conquered and then were paid dozens of pounds of gold to return a ‘donation’). Pepin’s donation was the culmination of decades of conflict between the Lombards, the weakening presence of the Byzantine empire in Italy, and the popes. The Lombards would launch various territorial incursions to grab what lands they could. The pope would then beg and plead and bribe to get some of it back, and the Byzantines, generally otherwise embroiled in the Iconoclast controversy far to the east, would not do much. But the general trend was of a gradual separation of the papacy from the eastern emperor, while the Lombards continued to expand their territorial holdings. To the north and across the Alps, the Franks looked on Italian affairs with a benign neglect, while wrestling with Muslim incursions, secession issues, and other family matters.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Book of the Popes, bk.94, ch.46, p.72.

Black smoke, white smoke – red blood

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In my last post Pope Constantine II won a contentious papal election, in a revolt of the ‘aristocratic party’ against the ‘clerical party’ for control of the Duchy of Italy (the nascent Papal States). But the clerical party, in a daring move, enlisted the help of the despised Lombard King Desiderius to regain the papacy. Desiderius, eager for the chance to have the pope deeply in his debt, ordered the Lombard priest Waldipert to assist papal clericists Christopher and his son Sergius, and sent them all to Spoleto to gather Lombard forces for the counter-revolution.

In Spoleto the clerics gathered a force of soldiery and marched on Rome.1.Liber Pontificalis, n.96, ch.7, p.91. As I mentioned in the previous post, virtually the only source for these events is the vita of Stephen III from the Book of the Popes. I won’t cite this source every time, but you can go read chapters 1 – 22. On 28 July 778, a little more than a year after Constantine’s consecration, the combined Lombard and clerical forces took possession of the Salarian gate. A fair question to ask is, what had the clerical party been doing for the past year? Aside from the plot that brought them to see Desiderius, no one knows. Biding their time, hoping for a miracle, and hatching schemes that never came to fruition are probably fair guesses. But now, in heat of a Roman summer, they were poised to turn the tide, and had yet another trick up their robes.

While the Lombard forces waited on a hill outside the Roman walls, Toto, leader of the aristocratic party that had put Constantine on the throne, launched an attack on these forces of restoration (as he must have seen them), but he was killed in the fighting. Constantine, hearing the news of the death of his patron and protector, and brother, let us not forget, fled the Lateran palace to the sanctuary of a local church. The Roman militia arrived, however, and placed him in custody.

Waldipert, probably acting on standing orders from Desiderius, found a local priest named Philip and quickly had him voted and consecrated pope! His pontificate didn’t last long (it must be one of the shortest on record), but he got a good meal out of it.

And following custom they took him into the Savior’s basilica. There the prayer was said by a bishop in pursuance of ancient custom, and he gave the Peace to everyone and they brought him into the Lateran patriarchate. There too, sitting on the pontifical throne, he again gave the customer Peace; he went aloft and as pontiffs normally do he held a banquet, with some of the church’s chief men and the militia’s chief officers sitting with him.

Christopher, seeing defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory, took a bold and risky step, and publicly proclaimed that he would never again enter the gates of Rome unless Philip was removed. No doubt Christopher knew that Desiderius had some kind of plan in mind for Lombard aggrandizement, but counted on his popularity with the Roman people to seize control of the situation. Philip, probably an unwilling participant from the beginning, scurried back to his monastery, and was never heard from again.

As a side note, Christopher must rank with the greatest schemers of this era, if not all of history. He extracted a (later broken) promise from Toto not to interfere in the papal election, made his own promise (later broken) to the pope to retire to a monastery, evidently pledged some kind of quid pro quo (also broken later) to the Lombard king, made a daring public and undefended stand to force the withdrawal of yet another pope, until finally his party emerged triumphant. Well played, sir, well played.

In Rome the way forward was clear. Christopher gathered together everyone in Rome who mattered, and opened a conclave of sorts to select a new pope. “They deliberated and with absolute and total unanimity they all agreed on holy Stephen.” Stephen was solid member of the clerical party, and with his election the right order of things had been restored. Punishment and cleansing were the next tasks of the day. Unfortunately for Constantine and those who followed him, the mob ruled the streets. That, at least, is what the author of Stephen’s life would like history to believe. The author mentions “plague-ridden instigators of evil” who egged on those “perverted individuals” actually responsible for the violence.

The first victims were Theodore, one of Constantine’s leading counselors, and Passibus, Constantine’s other brother. Both had their eyes gouged out and tongues cut off. Theodore was thrown into a dungeon and later died of thirst. Constantine, however, required public humiliation. “[H]e was brought out into the open; they fixed a huge weight to his feet and made him sit on a horse in a saddle designed for a woman.” The day before Stephen’s consecration Constantine was officially deposed. “Maurianus the subdeacon came forward, removed the stole from his neck, threw it at his feet, and then cut off his papal shoes.”

The mob’s blood lust had not been sated. Forces from Rome, Tuscany, and Campania mustered and marched on the town of Alatri, where they extracted a follower of Toto named Gracilis, brought him to Rome, and then “gouged out his eyes and removed his tongue.” After that the force “went to the Cella Nova monastery where Constantine the intruder into the apostolic see was confined; they forced him out of the monastery, gouged out his eyes and then left him blind in the street.” One more victim remained. Waldipert, despite taking refuge in “God’s mother the ever-virgin St Mary’s church called ad martyres,” and while “he was holding the image of God’s mother,” was taken to “the foul prison called Ferrata.” A few days later they put out his eyes and cut out his tongue, and sent him to a monastery, where he soon died.

While the mob dispensed victor’s justice, Stephen worked to solidify his rule. He sent word to Pepin of his election, and also requested that the king send a dozen bishops to a synod in Rome to discuss the happenings of the last year. By this time Pepin had died, but Charles and Carloman received the papal envoy warmly, and nominated the bishops as requested.

Once everyone was in Rome the synod was convened, and it was time to enact the final, formal denouement to Constantine’s time as pope. The first act of the synod was to put him on trial. Somewhat surprisingly, given his position and physical state (“now eyeless”, as the vita notes), Constantine mounted a vigorous defense.

He professed in front of everyone that he had been pressurized by the people, elected by force and taken under compulsion into the Lateran Patriarchate, owing to those burdens and grievances that lord pope Paul had caused the Roman people. Falling to the ground, with his arms stretched out on the pavement, he wept that he was guilty and had sinned more times than there were sands in the sea, and implored pardon and mercy from that sacerdotal council. They had him lifted up from the ground and that day passed no sentence against him.

The next day, however, Constantine pushed his luck a little too far. The synod did not appreciate his references to previous examples of layman being consecrated to high clerical office, and “they had him buffeted on the neck and ejected him from that church.” Next the bishops turned their attention to reversing all of Constantine’s acts, and demoted all priests and bishops whom he had elevated. After that the council strengthened the canons to ensure that “no layman should ever presume to be promoted to the sacred honor of the pontificate, nor even anyone in orders, unless he had risen through the separate grades and had been made cardinal deacon or priests.” They really were determined to root out any and all evidence of Constantine’s time in office.

In all fairness, Stephen and the bishops did not excuse their own behavior during the past year. Everyone confessed “that all of them had sinned in that they had taken communion from Constantine’s hands. So as a result a penance was imposed on them all.” The nature of the penance is not documented, which is too bad. But we can probably be certain that they didn’t cut out the tongues that had received communion from the ‘intruder’.

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Liber Pontificalis, n.96, ch.7, p.91. As I mentioned in the previous post, virtually the only source for these events is the vita of Stephen III from the Book of the Popes. I won’t cite this source every time, but you can go read chapters 1 – 22.

Black smoke, white smoke – revolution

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Usurper, interloper, anti-pope: these are some of the epithets used to describe Constantine II, who held the papal seat for just over a year. Getting him into the papal shoes involved a march on Rome with a mass of peasants to force the issue, and a threatened beat down of a bishop. Overturning his election resulted in one of the bloodiest purges in papal history. Let’s dig in.

The death of Paul I on 26 June 767 marked the culmination of decades of ‘career popes.’ These were men who had joined the ranks of the religious orders at a young age, climbed the ladder of Lateran1.The Lateran Palace was the home of popes for a thousand years, and the base of papal power during that time. positions their entire lives, before their peers elected them to the supreme office. These popes followed a more or less common policy regarding theological questions and relations between the Papal States and foreign entities. They distrusted the Lombards, sought Frankish assistance in return for the bestowal of kingship, and sought to separate themselves from the authority of the Byzantine empire to the east. For the sake of convenience, and to align with current scholarly verbiage, let’s call them the ‘clerical party.’

But these clerics were not the only power in Rome and surrounding areas. Earthly power and authority, as was true throughout Europe, was held by a nobility such as dukes and counts. We’ll call them the ‘aristocratic party.’ “During the first seven decades of the eighth century, in Rome, the clerical and military orders had usually worked together harmoniously, not only because their domestic interests converged, but also because they faced common external threats.” But the papacy was the jewel in the crown. “The clerical bureaucracy, with the pope at its head, was larger, wealthier, and more sophisticated than anything that the military aristocracy could, or in fact did, erect to confront it.”2.Noble, The Republic of St Peter, p.113.

Paul’s reign carried (sadly) unspecified seeds of conflict between the aristocratic and clerical parties. This conflict finally boiled over at his demise, and ended with mobs in the street, torture and death.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 The Lateran Palace was the home of popes for a thousand years, and the base of papal power during that time.
↑2 Noble, The Republic of St Peter, p.113.