derius for their king. But the crown being contested by Rachis, who had taken the hood, Desiderius appealed to the pope, promising him the cities which Astolphus had neglected to deliver; and Stephen condemned Rachis to return to his cloister. Desiderius then took quiet possession of the throne of Pavia, and the pope of Faenza, Gabellum, the whole duchy of Ferrara, and other places. Stephen II. died shortly after, April 24, 757, leaving the papacy a considerable temporal state. He was succeeded by Paul I., his brother, who appears not to have sought the confirmation of his election by Pepin, though he wrote to that monarch protesting his devotion.

The temporal dominion of the popes was, however, at first, anything but secure; and the Lombard kings long disputed with them the possession of the towns and districts which Pepin had assigned to them. But we forbear to relate the details of this contest, which was not attended with any important effects on the city. The contest which ensued for the papacy after the death of Paul I., and the bloody scenes which sometimes took place on that occasion, show how much its possession had come to be considered as an object of worldly ambition. Under Stephen II. and Paul I., the building of many churches, convents, and pilgrims' houses had contributed to give Rome more and more the air of the capital of the popes. Under the former of these pontiffs the first bell-tower yet seen at Rome had been erected at St. Peter's; an addition which began very much to alter the model of the ancient Basilicas. During the reign of Paul, many cartloads of corpses were disinterred from the catacombs, and escorted into the city by processions of monks, and amid the singing of hymns, in order to be again buried under the churches; while ambassadors were constantly arriving from the Anglo

tor sanguinum Christianorum, Ecclesiarum Dei destructor, divino ictu

percussus est, et in inferni voraginem demersus.'-Cod. Carol. viii. (Cenni).

Saxons, Franks, and Germans, to beg the gift of some of these highly-prized relics.1

Charles, or Charlemagne, and his brother Carloman, jointly occupied the Frankish throne on the death of their father Pepin in 768. But the reign and life of the younger brother were soon brought to a close. Theintervention of Charlemagne in the affairs of Italy was speedily required. When Adrian I., a pontiff of great energy and talent, ascended the papal throne, in 772, the disputes with the Lombard kings were still proceeding; but Desiderius had been deterred from attacking Rome by a threat of excommunication: a striking proof of the dread which these spiritual thunders already inspired. Desiderius, nevertheless, would not comply with Charlemagne's demands for the restoration of the towns ceded to the Holy See; and, in order to enforce them, Charlemagne entered Italy with his army in the autumn of 773, and invested Pavia. As the place still held out after a siege of six months, Charlemagne left it blockaded in the spring of 774, and marched with part of his army to celebrate Easter at Rome, where he arrived on Holy Saturday, April 2nd. The ceremonies observed on this occasion were entirely of a religious, or rather ecclesiastical, nature. Adrian received the king at the main entrance of St. Peter's church, who, falling on his knees, kissed every step of the ascent till he reached the pontiff. After a mutual oath of surety at the tomb of the apostle, Charlemagne, who was dressed in the robes of a patrician, entered Rome by Hadrian's bridge, proceeded on foot to the Lateran, and returned in the same manner to his camp near the Vatican. Easter Sunday was spent in

1 A goodly collection must still have been left behind, since an inscription in the church of Sta. Prassede, founded more than half a century afterwards by Paschal I., records the placing there by that pontiff of the

remains of 2,300 martyrs. It seems to have been assumed, as a matter of course, that all the bones found in the catacombs belonged not only to Christians, but to martyred Christians.

hearing the pope perform mass at Sta. Maria Maggiore; after which the king dined with him at the Lateran. The festival was brought to a conclusion by a mass at St. Peter's on Monday, and another at St. Paul's on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Charlemagne confirmed his father's donation. to the papal see. The document is said to have been drawn out anew with additions, to have been signed by the king and his peers, and to have been confirmed with a fearful oath at St. Peter's tomb. Nearly all Italy was made over to the pope, even places which had not fallen under the Frankish dominion, as Corsica, Venice, Beneventum, and others. But this document, like that of Pepin, has never been produced. Charlemagne claimed in turn all the rights and prerogatives of a Patricius, the title of Defensor, and the supreme jurisdiction in Rome and its duchy and in the Exarchate. Charlemagne now returned to Pavia, took that city, and put an end to the Lombard dynasty. Desiderius, who had been captured, was banished, and ended his days in the convent of Corbay. Charlemagne assumed the iron crown of Italy, styling himself henceforth King of the Franks and Lombards, and Patricius of the Romans.

Charlemagne again visited Rome in 781 and 787; on the latter of which occasions, after reducing the duchy of Beneventum, he is said to have made the pope further presents of several towns, including Capua. But another and last visit to the eternal city is far more important in the history of Rome and the world. Leo III., who had filled the throne of St. Peter since the death of Adrian I. in 795, was deeply indebted to the protection of Charlemagne, when, flying from a conspiracy which threatened his life, he had taken refuge at the court of that monarch at Paderborn. Towards the end of 800, Charlemagne again approached Rome, when Leo III. went out as far as Nomentum to meet him. The king passed the night at that place, while the pope returned to Rome, in order to

receive him next day on the steps of St. Peter's. On the last Christmas-day of the eighth century, Leo placed the imperial crown on the head of Charlemagne, and the crowd which filled the cathedral of St. Peter's saluted him with the title of Emperor of the Romans. This revival of the Western Empire was afterwards confirmed by a formal

vote.

While Rome was thus asserting her supremacy in the affairs both of this world and the next, the state of her manners seemed hardly on a level with the loftiness of her pretensions. Since the time of Gregory the Great it had been a part of the papal policy to discourage profane learning. Literature flourished better in many of the provincial towns of Italy, and even in England and Ireland, than at Rome; and Virgil and Horace were better known at the Frankish court than in the city of the popes. The papal epistles of this period are wretched specimens both of logic and grammar. Poetry was unknown, unless the verses inscribed on tombstones may deserve that name. The only art which flourished at Rome was music. We have already seen, from the description of Ammianus Marcellinus, the passionate fondness of the Romans for music several centuries before. Gregory the Great, whose object it seems to have been to render religion a thing of the senses, was the founder of the music of the church. He instituted a school for it in the Lateran, whence the Carlovingian monarchs obtained teachers of singing and organ-playing. The Frankish monks were sent thither for instruction. But the Italian masters complained that they could not make the Franks trill their notes. They seemed to stick in their throats.1

1 Annales Lauriss. ap. Gregorov. B. ii. S. 456.

369

SECTION VIII.

FROM THE RESTORATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE.

FROM this period the history of the city and its ancient monuments, or rather their ruins, has little interest but for professed antiquarians; for it is hardly possible to connect them any longer with the life of the people. The civil history of Rome, too, during the long centuries of the middle ages, is obscure and perplexed, and could not possibly be even fragmentarily developed within the compass of the present work. We must therefore content ourselves with selecting some of those events which had a more special influence on the city, and particularly on its monuments, and with endeavouring to ascertain the progress of their decay. Rome was still to suffer at the hands. of external enemies; but henceforth her own children, perhaps, were more destructive than these to her ancient monumental glories.1

The first half, or nearly so, of the ninth century presents almost a blank in the history of the city. But in the year 846, in the pontificate of Sergius II., the Saracens from Africa, having landed at Porto, appeared before Rome. It does not appear that they assaulted the walls, and, at all events, they did not succeed in entering the city. But the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul, which lay almost defenceless outside the walls, invited and rewarded their attacks. In these holy places, enriched by ostentatious

1 In this part of his labours the author must more particularly acknow

BB

ledge his obligations to the works of Papencordt and Gregorovius.