as his predecessors had written to former sovereigns of France. For a pope to speak of "ordering" a king is said to be a new and unexampled audacity. It is denied that Adrian was entitled to evoke the case of the younger Hincmar to Rome for trial. The privileges of St. Peter depend on the exercise of justice; the king will not violate the principles of Scripture and of the church by interposing to defeat justice in a case where the offences of the accused are so many and so clear. He declines with indignation the office which the pope would impose on him by desiring him to guard the property of the see of Laon; the kings of the Franks had hitherto been reckoned lords of the earth-not deputies or bailiffs of bishops. He threatens, if the matter cannot be ended at home, to go to Rome and maintain the rightfulness of his proceedings. The pope had spoken of decrees; but any decree which would affect to bind a sovereign must have been vomited forth from hell. The letter concludes by declaring the king's willingness to abide by the known rules of Scripture, tradition, and the canons, while he is determined to reject "anything which may have been compiled or forged to the contrary by any person"-the plainest intimation that had as yet been given of Hincmar's opinion as to the Isidorian decretals.k

h

m

Adrian again felt that he had committed a mistake in advancing pretensions which were thus contested; and a league which had just been concluded between Louis the German and his nephew the emperor contributed to alarm the pope as to the consequences which might follow from a breach with the king of Neustria. He therefore wrote again to Charles, exchanging his imperious tone for one of soothing and flattery." After some slight allusions to the style of the king's letter, he proceeds (as he says) "to pour in the oil of consolation and the ointment of holy love." He begs that he may not be held accountable for any expressions which might have seemed harsh in his former letters; and, knowing the intensity of the king's desire for additional territory and power, he volunteers an assurance that, if he should live to see a vacancy in the empire, no other candidate than Charles shall with his consent be raised to it. The case of the bishop of Laon is treated as of inferior moment; the pope still desires that he may be sent to Rome, but

promises that he shall not be restored unless a full inquiry shall have shown the justice of his cause, and that this inquiry shall be held in France. Adrian did not live to receive an answer to this letter; and Hincmar the younger was kept in prison until, by taking part in fresh intrigues, he exposed himself to a severer punishment.

q

Adrian's conduct in this affair had been alike imprudent and unfortunate. The French bishops had set aside the false decretals; they had insisted on confining the papal right as to appeals within the limits which had been defined by the council of Sardica; they had denied that the examination of all weightier causes belonged to the pope alone; they had denied that he had the right of evoking a cause to Rome before it had been submitted to the judgment of a national synod, and would only allow him the power of remitting it, after such judgment, to be again examined by the bishops of the country in which it arose; and his lofty pretensions had ended in a humiliating concession. Yet the Roman see had gained something. Hincmar, in all his opposition to the Roman claims, carefully mixes up professions of high reverence for the authority of the apostolic chair; his objections to the Isidorian principles, being addressed to his nephew, were not likely to become much known at Rome, while, as he had not openly questioned the genuineness of the decretals, the popes might henceforth cite them with greater confidence; and a feeling that the power of the papacy was useful to the church restrained him in the midst of his opposition to it. Both bishops and princes now saw in the papacy something which they might use to their advantage; and the real benefit of all applications to Rome for aid was sure to redound to the Roman see itself.s

A.D. 872.

The circumstances of John VIII.'s election as the successor of Adrian are unknown; but he appears to have belonged to the Frankish party among the Roman clergy, and there is no reason to doubt that the emperor consented to his appointment. In 875 the death of the emperor Louis II. without issue opened up to Charles the Bald the great object of his ambition; and the time was now come for the pope to assume the power of disposing of the empire-an assumption countenanced by the fact that his predecessors had long acted as arbiters in the dissensions of the Carolingian princes." Setting aside the stronger hereditary

P Ib. 720.

Gfrörer, ii. 88-9.

Planck, iii. 192-4.

Planck, iii. 199-203.

Gfrörer, ii. 90.

u Schröckh, xxii. 196-7.

X

claims of Louis the German, John invited Charles to Rome, and on
Christmas-day-seventy-five years after the coronation of Charle-
magne-placed the imperial crown on his head. Although the pope
afterwards declared that this was done in obedience to a revelation
which had been made to his predecessor Nicolas, it would appear
that influences of a less exalted kind had also contributed to the
act. The annalist of Fulda, whose tone towards the "tyrant" of
France is generally very bitter, tells us that, in order to obtain the
empire, Charles had made a prodigal use of bribery among the
senators, "after the fashion of Jugurtha;" nor did the pope
himself fail to benefit on the occasion. A writer of later date
is undoubtedly wrong in saying that Charles ceded to him certain
territories which are known to have then belonged to the Greek
empire; but there is reason to believe that he gave up the
control of elections to the papacy, released the pope from the
duty of doing homage, and withdrew his resident commissioners
from Rome, leaving the government in the hands of the pope,
while the title of Defender still served to connect the emperor with
the city, and entitled the Romans and their bishops to look to him
for aid.a

Charles now professed that he owed the empire to John, and during the remainder of his days he was solicitous to serve the author of his dignity. Proceeding northwards, he was crowned as king of Italy at Pavia, in February 876, when the estates declared that, as God, through the vicar of St. Peter and St. Paul, had called him to be emperor, so they chose him king. The acts of Pavia were confirmed in an assembly held some months later at Pontyon, when the Neustrian clergy and nobles professed that they chose him for their sovereign, as he had been chosen by the pope and by the Lombards. This change of title from a hereditary to an elective royalty appeared to hold out to the pope a hope of being able to interfere in the future disposal of the Neustrian and Italian kingdoms; but an attempt which was made in his behalf at Pontyon, although

* Hard. vi. 182.

y Annal. Fuld. 875, ap. Pertz, i. 389. Cf. Regino, ib. 587-9.

z First published by Flaccius Illyricus, in an appendix to Eutropius. By some he has been placed in the tenth century, but the best authorities refer him to the eleventh (see Schröckh, xxii. 194, seqq.; Planck, iii. 210). Even if the grant were genuine, it would have expired with Charles, as the German kings and emperors had no power to

alienate the property of the crown be-
yond their own lifetime. Pertz, Leges,
ii. App. 261.

a See the various views of De Marca,
Pagi, and Mansi in Baron, xv. 278-281;
also Schröckh, xxii. 194; Planck, iii.
218; Gfrörer, ii. 124-5.

b Schröckh, xxii. 198-201; Planck, iii. 218-9.

C

Pertz, Leges, i, 529. d Ib. 533.

1

zealously supported by the emperor, met with a strenuous opposition from the Frankish clergy. The papal legate, John, bishop of Tusculum, read a letter by which Ansegis, archbishop of Sens, was constituted vicar apostolic and primate of Gaul and Germany, with power to assemble synods, to execute the papal orders by the agency of bishops, and to bring all important matters to Rome for decision. Hincmar and his brethren requested leave to examine the document; to which the emperor replied by asking them whether they would obey the pope, and telling them that he, as the pope's vicar in the council, was resolved to enforce obedience. He ordered a chair to be set for Ansegis beside the legate; and the archbishop of Sens, at his invitation, walked past the metropolitans who had held precedence of him, and took his seat in the place of dignity. But Hincmar and the other bishops behaved with unshaken firmness. They repeated their request that they might be allowed to see the letter and to take a copy of it. They protested against the elevation of Ansegis as uncanonical-as infringing on the primacy granted to the see of Rheims in the person of Remigius, and on the privileges bestowed on Hincmar by Benedict, Nicolas, and Adrian; nor could they be brought to promise obedience to the pope, except such as was agreeable to the canons, and to the example of their predecessors. One bishop only, Frotarius, was disposed to comply, in the hope of obtaining a translation from the diocese of Bordeaux, which had been desolated by the Northmen, to that of Bourges; but his brethren objected to the translation as contrary to the laws of the church. The emperor, provoked by Hincmar's opposition, required him to take a new oath of fealty in the presence of the assembly, as if his loyalty were suspected-an unworthy return for the archbishop's long, able, and zealous exertions for the rights of the crown and of the national church. The council broke up without coming to any satisfactory determination, and Hincmar soon after produced a strong defence of the rights of metropolitans against the new principles on which the commission to Ansegis was grounded. Charles was induced by political reasons to act in a spirit of conciliation, and the pope got over the difficulty as to Ansegis by conferring the primacy of Gaul on the see of Arles, to which it had been attached before the Frankish conquest.

But amid the commotions of the time this arrangement had no practical effect.m

Nov. 877.

In the mean time the pope was greatly disquieted at home by the factions of his city, by the petty princes and nobles of the neighbourhood, and by the Saracens, who, since the death of Louis II., carried on their ravages without any effectual check." Sometimes the nobles made alliance with the enemies of Christendom. Naples, Gaeta, Amalfi, and Sorrento, after having suffered much at their hands, entered into a league with them, and united with them in the work of devastation and plunder. Sergius, duke of Naples, made frequent incursions into the papal territory, and John, after having in vain employed gentler means, uttered an anathema against him. On this, the duke's brother, Athanasius, bishop of Naples, took on himself the execution of the sentence, seized Sergius, put out his eyes, and sent him to the pope, who requited the bishop with a profusion of thanks and commendations-quoting the texts of Scripture which enjoin a preference of the Saviour over the dearest natural affections." Athanasius now annexed the dukedom to his spiritual office. But he soon discovered that he was unable to cope with the Saracens, whereupon he allied himself with them, harassed the pope after the same fashion as his brother, and obliged John to buy him off with a large sum of money, in consideration of which he promised to break off his connexion with the infidels. But the promise was not fulfilled, and the pope with a Roman synod, in 881, uttered an anathema against the duke-bishop. Beset and continually annoyed as he was by such enemies, John implored the emperor to come to his assistance, and Charles was disposed to comply with the entreaty; but the unwillingness of the Frank chiefs to consent to such an expedition may be inferred from the heavy price which the emperor paid for their concurrence, by allowing the office of his counts to be converted into an hereditary dignity at the council of Quiercy in 877. The pope, on being informed of his protector's Aug. 877. approach, set out to meet him, and on the way held a council at Ravenna, where he passed some canons by which, in accord

m Hard. vi. 30-2; De Marca, VI. xxix. 5; Planck, iii. 233-40.

n Baron. 876. 33; Milman, ii. 322-6. • Gfrörer, ii. 139. See Joh. VIII. Epp. 187-8, 279 (Patrol. cxxvi.).

P Chron. Casin. i. 40, ap. Pertz, vii. a Ep. 96 (Patrol. cxxvi.); Baron. 877. The cardinal's justification of the pope for praising this "indecens episcopo factum" is curious.

3.

Joh. VIII. Epp. 101-3, 187-8, 191; Frchempert ap. Pertz, iii. 254-5; Chron. Salern. ib. 536, seqq.; Baron. 881. 1-4. He afterwards absolved Athanasius, provided that he had separated from the infidels, and had taken or slain their chiefs. A.D. 881-2. (Ep. 352.) Athanasius is supposed by Muratori to have lived to the year 900. Annali, V. i. 325. C. 9. See above, p. 297.