CHAPTER IX.

SUPPLEMENTARY.

I. Influence of the Papacy.

THE preceding chapters have set before us the changes which took place in the position of the patriarchs during the seventh and eighth centuries-the sees of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem reduced to subjection under the Mahometan rule; the bishops of Constantinople becoming more and more tools and slaves of the imperial court; while in the west the power of the Roman bishop is greatly and rapidly increased. This advance of the papacy was much aided by the circumstance that Rome, although often taken by barbarians, never remained long in their possession." It alone retained its ancient character, while in all other quarters the old national distinctions were obliterated by successive invasions. The popes alone kept their ground amid the revolutions of secular powers; and their authority was vastly extended as nation after nation of the barbarian conquerors was brought within the sphere of Christian influence. As in former times the bishop of Rome had been regarded by the orientals as the representative of the whole western church, so he now appeared to the new nations of the north and of the west as the representative and source of Christianity on earth. St. Peter was regarded as holding the keys of heaven, and as personally connected with his successors. The popes strengthened their position at once by detaching themselves from the Byzantine empire, and by entering into an alliance with the princes of the west on terms such as the empire had never admitted. They were connected by mutual interest with the Frankish kings, especially with those of the second dynasty, and Charlemagne's conquests gave them a supremacy over the church of northern Italy, which they had in vain desired in the time of the Lombard princes. By the donations of Pipin and of Charlemagne they acquired a new secular power; and it would seem to have been in the early part of the ninth century that the forged Donation of Constantine appeared, to assert for them a more venerable claim to a wider jurisdiction, and to incite the Frankish sovereigns to imitate the

a

Guizot, ii. 329.

b Gieseler, II. i. 34.

C Guizot, ii. 332.

d

bounty of the first Christian emperor. Constantine, it was said, was baptised by Pope Sylvester, and, at his baptism, received the miraculous cure of a leprosy with which he had been afflicted; whereupon, in consideration of the superiority of ecclesiastical to secular dignity, he relinquished Rome to the pope, conferred on him the right of wearing a golden crown with other insignia of sovereignty, and endowed the apostolic see with Italy and other provinces of the west. This forgery seemed to justify the Romans in withdrawing themselves from the empire; it seemed to legitimatise the possession of all that the popes had gained, since this was but a part of what was said to have been bestowed on their see by the first Christian emperor; and the fable retained its credit, although not altogether unquestioned, throughout the middle ages."

The mission of Augustine introduced the papal influence into England, where a new church arose, strongly attached to Rome, and fruitful in missionaries who established the Roman ascendancy

d Thus Adrian styles Charlemagne a "new Constantine in magnifying the bounty of the elder emperor. Patrol. xcviii. 306.

e Ib. lxxiv. 523; cf. clxxxvii. 460. The forger of the ninth century here confounded the extent of the empire in the west under Constantine with that to which it had shrunk in his own time. Giesel. II. i. 190.

See the letter of Wetzel (seemingly a follower of Arnold of Brescia) to Frederick Barbarossa, A.D. 1152, in Patrol, clxxxix. 1423, D.

Gregory of Tours, in describing the baptism of Clovis, says, "Procedit novus Constantinus ad lavacrum, deleturus lepræ veteris morbum," &c. (ii. 31), where the leprosy of sin is evidently meant. The story of a bodily disease and cure, however, is found in the Acta Sylvestri,' which, although apocryphal, are reckoned by Gelasius I. among approved writings (Patrol. cxxvii. 1511; xcviii. 271; lix. 173; cf. Laur. Vall. in Fascic. Rerum, i. 141; Nic. Cusan. ib. 158), and are cited by Ratramn, in the ninth century, as the work of the historian Eusebius (Contra Græcorum Opposita, iv. 3, Patrol. cxxi.). G. Hamartolus has the story of the baptism and cure (c. clxxvi. I, 2), but the Greek writers know nothing of the Donation. The first distinct mention of it is by Eneas, bishop of Paris, about 868 (Adv. Græcos, c. 209; Patrol. cxxi.). Berengosus, abbot of St. Maximus at Treves, in the twelfth century, reconciles the statements that Constantine

was baptised by Sylvester and that he was baptised by Eusebius (see vol. i. p. 213) by saying that the name Eusebius means a good writer, and therefore was given to Sylvester as being a "scribe instructed unto the kingdom of righteousness"! (De Laude et Inventione S. Crucis, iii. 7; Patrol. clx.). Another mediæval opinion was that the emperor, after having been baptised into the Church by Sylvester, was re-baptised into heresy by Eusebius (Anselm. Havelb. Dialog. iii. 21; ib. clxxxviii.). On the revival of a spirit of inquiry, the story of the Donation was attacked by Lorenzo Valla and others (see the Fasciculus, i. 128, seqq.), and was soon found to be indefensible. Baronius gives up the document, but attempts to maintain the fact of the Donation. He indulges in ingenious conjectures, such as that Constantine may have made the gift, and Sylvester may have magnanimously refused it; or that the forgery was contrived in the Greek interest, with a view of ascribing the power of the popes to a human origin (324. 118-20). Tillemont (Emp. iv. 142) exposes the disingenuousness of Baronius, and now even the Abbé Rohrbacher is ashamed to uphold the fable of the baptism (vi. 284-5). Comp. Crakanthorp's Vindication of Constantine,' Lond. 1621; De Marca, iii. 12; Nat. Alex. viii.; Dissert. 25; Mosh. ii. 141; Gibbon, iv. 490-1; Schröckh, xix. 595-7; Fabric. Bibl. Græc. vi. 697; Giesel. II. i. 41, 189-191; Neand. v. 168; Gfrörer, Die Karolinger,' i. 76.

h

in Germany and in Gaul. The English church owned subjection to the pope, not so much on account of his supposed succession to St. Peter, as because, having derived its origin from Rome, it was included in the Roman patriarchate by the same principle which subjected the Abyssinians to the see of Alexandria. But as the papal power increased elsewhere, the subjection of England to it became also greater. The Council of Cloveshoo,' assembled by Ethelbald, king of Mercia, opened with the reading of two letters from Zacharias, "the pontiff and apostolic lord, to be venerated throughout the world ;" and it is acknowledged that the recital of these documents, in which he exhorts the English of every degree to reformation, under the threat of an anathema, was in obedience to his "apostolical authority." In 785, two Roman legates-the first (as they said) who had been sent into England since the time of Augustine visited this country, and, with a view to the reformation of the church, councils were held in their presence in Mercia and in Northumbria. Offa, king of Mercia, then the most powerful of the English kingdoms, attended the Mercian assembly at Chalchythe." In consequence of some offence which he had taken, on political or other grounds, at Janbert, archbishop of Canterbury, he wished that Lichfield should be erected into an

m

h Planck, ii. 704, 715. See as to the Abyssinian Church, vol. i. p. 289.

This place has been identified with Cliff-at-Hoo, near Rochester (Fuller, i. 152); Shovesham, now Abingdon (Rapin, n. in Fuller; Somner and Gibson, quoted by Wilkins, i. 161; Johnson, i. 292-4); Tewkesbury (Kemble, ii. 191), &c. Mr. Thorpe says that the true date is 742, instead of 747, as usually given (note on Lappenb. tr. i. 225).

Wilkins, i. 94; Johnson, i. 243. A letter in which Boniface sent some canons lately passed by a council at Mentz to Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury, and urged the assembling of a council for reformation of abuses in England (Ep. 63, Patrol. lxxxix.), is supposed to have been a chief cause of the meeting at Cloveshoo (Inett, i. 174; Johnson, i. 241). Much has been made by some protestant controversialists of the fact that, although the German canons were in general adopted at Cloveshoo, one relating to the pope was omitted. But I must agree with Dr. Lingard (Angl.-Sax. Ch., i. Append. G) and Hefele (iii. 531-2), that the estimation in which the pope was held by the English council is sufficiently proved by the preface to its canons, as quoted in the text; and also that the

second canon, in which the bishops bind themselves to cultivate peace and charity, "without flattery of any person," is not meant to refer to the pope, but is to be explained by the fact that the assembled prelates were subjects of different sovereigns (i. 390-1). I must, indeed, avow my inability to sympathise with the contentiousness which some respectable Anglican writers think it necessary to display on such points. To mix up the question of our present position as to Rome with inquiries into the history of the Anglo-Saxon church, tends to obscure historical truth, while it is altogether needless and useless for the purposes of controversy. If we believe ourselves able to show that the Roman claims and peculiarities of doctrine are unwarranted by the primitive church, we can surely afford to discuss their growth in a spirit of dispassionate impartiality.

m Wilkins, i. 146.

Bishop Gibson supposes this place to be Kelceth, in Lancashire (Johnson, i. 265). Dr. Lingard suggests Chelsea (Hist. Eng. i. 10-1); Mr. Soames, Chalk, or Challock, which are both in Kent. Ang. Sax. Ch. 107.

archiepiscopal see. Janbert strongly opposed a scheme by which his metropolitan authority was to be limited to the kingdoms of Kent and Sussex ; but it is supposed that the legates at Chalchythe favoured the change, and it received the sanction of pope Adrian." Some years later, however, Kenulph, the second successor of Offa, having annexed Kent to Mercia, and being desirous to conciliate the clergy of his new territory, joined with Athelard, archbishop of Canterbury, in a request that Leo III. would again reduce the see of Lichfield to its original condition. Athelard went to Rome in order to press the suit; the pope consented, and with his license the new archbishoprick was abolished by a council held at Cloveshoo in 803."

Ina, king of Wessex, in 725 resigned his crown, and went on pilgrimage to Rome, where he ended his days as a monk; and his example was followed by other Anglo-Saxon sovereigns. It has been said that the tribute of a penny from every hearth in England, afterwards known as Romescot or Peterpence,' was first granted by Ina, and was confirmed by Offa in 794." But it would seem that the donation of Ina is imaginary, and that in the case of Offa a payment of 365 marks towards the lighting of St. Peter's and the relief of pilgrims--an eleemosynary grant from the crownhas been confounded with the Romescot of a later time, which was a tax levied on the subject, and was interpreted by the advocates of the papacy as an acknowledgment that this island was held in fee from the successors of St. Peter."

II. Kelations of Church and State.

(1.) The right of confirming elections to the papacy had been exercised by the Byzantine emperors, either personally or through their representatives, the exarchs, from the reconquest of Italy under Justinian until the iconoclastic disputes led to the omission of the form in the case of Zacharias. The Carolingian emperors assumed the same privilege as a part of their sovereignty." The story

Z

that, during Charlemagne's visit to Rome in 774, Adrian, with a synod of a hundred and fifty-three bishops, bestowed on him and his successors the right of nominating the popes," is now rejected, and, with other such inventions, is supposed to have originated in later times from the wish of the Roman party to represent the superintendence which the Frank princes exercised over ecclesiastical affairs as derived from the gift of the popes.d

f

(2.) In the east, where no political power was attached to the episcopal office, the emperors had not usually interfered in the appointment of bishops, except at Constantinople and other cities in which they themselves resided. The second council of Nicæa enacted that bishops should be chosen by their episcopal brethren, and that any nomination by princes should be invalid. But in the new states of the west, the position of the bishops as great landowners, and the political importance which they acquired, occasioned a remarkable mixture of secular and spiritual things. Although it was again and again laid down by Frankish councils that the elections of bishops should be free, without any other condition than the approbation of the sovereign, the usual practice throughout the period appears to have been that bishops were appointed by the crown, whether the nomination were or were not followed by a formal election on the part of the clergy and people." In 614 a synod at Paris enacted that a bishop should be appointed without any payment, by the concurrence of the metropolitan and bishops of the province with the clergy and people of the city." But Clotaire II., in ratifying the canons, introduced considerable alterations in favour of the royal prerogative; among them, he required that a bishop should be consecrated under a mandate from the crown, and reserved to himself the power of naming a clerk from his household to a vacant see, although he promised in so doing to have regard to the learning and merit of the nominee.' It has been supposed that Charlemagne, by a capitulary of 803,* b Gratian. Decret. I. Ixiii. 22 (Patrol. a less evil to leave the appointment to clxxxvi.). the crown than to the rude laity in general.

e Thomassin. II. ii. 20-5; Pagi, xii. 410-1; n. in Mosheim, ii. 144-5; Schröckh, xix. 599.

d Giesel. II. i. 40-1..

e

h Hard. iii. 551.

"Vel certe si de palatio eligitur, per meritum personæ et doctrinæ ordi

Fleury, Disc. ii. sect. 10; Schröckh, netur." (Pertz, Leges, i. 14.) Planck

xix. 408.

f C. 3. Fleury, Disc. ii. sect. 10; Schröckh, xix. 409-410; Planck, ii. 112-8; Rettb. ii. 605-7. Perhaps, as Dom Pitra says (Vie de S. Léger, 154-5), the bishops, while they maintained the theory of election, may have found it practically

(ii. 119) and Rettberg (i. 293) give the interpretation which I have followed; but Thomassin (II. ii. 10. 13; 13. 6) thinks that the words were meant to allow the bishops a power of examining the nominee's qualifications.

k Hard. iv. 453, c. 2.