Ravenna, a Study Part 11

PEPIN AND CHARLEMANGE

The appeal of Stephen, which was to have for its result the resurrection of the empire in the West and the establishment of the papacy as a temporal power and sovereignty, was made in a letter now lost to us, which a pilgrim on his way back to France from Rome carried to Pepin the king of the Franks. In reply to it, the abbot of Jumieges appeared in Rome as Pepin's amba.s.sador to invite the pope himself to cross the Alps.

Meantime two events occurred, which cannot but have hardened the resolve of the pope to find a champion. These events were the occupation of Ceccano in the duchy of Rome by Aistulf and the appeal of the emperor to the pope that he should go to Pavia and attempt to persuade the Lombard king to give up Ravenna and the cities he had lately taken. The appeal of the emperor must have a.s.sured the pope, if indeed he had any doubt about it, that the emperor, so far as Italy was concerned, was helpless; while the occupation of Ceccano made it doubly obvious that the Lombard intended, now that the empire was helpless, to be absolute master throughout the peninsula.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Colour Plate S. GlOVANNI EVANGELISTA]

Stephen considered what course he should pursue, received two other Prankish envoys in Rome, consented to go to Pavia on behalf of the emperor, and determined at the same time to visit Pepin in the north.

He set out for Pavia upon October 13, 753, leaving Rome with a vast concourse of people, which accompanied him some distance along the Way, out of the Flaminian Gate. His mission on behalf of the empire was naturally entirely fruitless, and early in November the pope left Pavia with the hardly won consent of Aistulf to cross the Alps by the Great S. Bernard--a difficult and dangerous business at that time of year--and to meet the Frankish king at S. Maurice in the valley of the Rhone. In the latter he was disappointed. Pepin had been called away to deal with an incursion of the Saxons, and now awaited his amazing visitor at Ponthion in Champagne, but he sent his son Charles, destined to be the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a hundred miles down the long roads to meet the pope, and it was in the company of this youthful hero that upon the Feast of the Epiphany 754 Stephen entered Ponthion at last, and was greeted by Pepin, who cast himself upon the ground before him and walked as his lackey beside him as he rode.

The result of their interview is given in the _Liber Pontificalis_: "The most blessed pope tearfully besought the said most Christian king that by means of a treaty of peace (? with him the pope) he would dispose of the cause of the blessed Peter and the republic of the Romans, who by an oath there and then (de praesenti) satisfied the most blessed pope that he would obey all his commands and admonitions with all his strength and that it pleased him to restore by every means the exarchate of Ravenna and the rights and territories of the republic."[1]

[Footnote 1: As this is very important I give the original Latin "Ibidem beatissmus Papa praefatum Christianissimum regem lacrimabiliter deprecatus est ut per pacis foedera causam beati Petri et reipublicarae Romanorum disponeret. Qui de praesenti jurejurando eundem beatissimum Papam satisfecit omnibus ejus mandatis et ammonitionibus sese totis nisibus obedire, et ut illi placitum fuerit Exarchatum Ravennae et reipublicae jura seu loca reddere modis omnibus."]

That winter the pope spent at S. Denis, where he solemnly crowned Pepin and his queen, and Charles and Carloman their children, p.r.o.nouncing an anathema upon all or any who should ever attempt to elect a king not of their house. Upon Pepin too he conferred the t.i.tle of patrician. Can it be that by this he intended the king of the Franks to be his executor in the exarchate as the exarch had been the executor of the emperor?[1] We do not know; but a little later a doc.u.ment was drawn up in which Pepin declared and enumerated the territories he was ready to secure for the pope. This doc.u.ment, the Donation of Pepin, would seem to have confirmed in detail and in writing the oath he had sworn to the pope at Ponthion. Unhappily the doc.u.ment has disappeared, and we can only judge of its contents by what actually happened.

[Footnote 1: The t.i.tle patrician was not exclusively borne by the exarch, the Dux Romae, for instance, bore that t.i.tle in 743.]

The adventure into Italy to which the pope had persuaded Pepin was not universally popular with the Frankish n.o.bles. We find Pepin attempting to gain his end by negotiation with Aistulf, but all to no purpose, and probably in March 755 the Franks set out with the pope at their head to march into Italy to curb and chastise the Lombard.

The great army of Pepin crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis, and in what was little more than a skirmish upon the northern side of the pa.s.s defeated the Lombard army and proceeded to invest Pavia and ravish the country round about. Aistulf, who was rather an impetuous than a great soldier, had soon had enough and was ready to entertain proposals for peace. A treaty was made in which he agreed "to restore"

Ravenna and divers other cities, and to attempt nothing in the future against Rome and the Holy See. This having been decided, the pope took leave of Pepin, who returned to France, and went on his way to Rome.

The pope had won and had really established the Holy See as the heir of the empire; but Aistulf was by no means done with. He forgot alike his treaty and his promises. "Ever since the day when we parted," the pope writes to Pepin and the young kings, his sons Charles and Carloman, "he has striven to put upon us such afflictions and on the Holy Church of G.o.d such insults as the tongue of man cannot declare.... You have made peace too easily, you have taken no sufficient security for the fulfilment of the promises you have made to S. Peter, which you yourselves guaranteed by writing under your hand and seal...."

But the Franks were deaf. An expedition to crush the Lombards was a laborious and an expensive business, and Pepin had much to occupy him at home.

In January 756, however, Aistulf, mad from the start, laid siege to Rome, and for three months laid waste the farms of the Campagna, S.

Peter's patrimony. Narni was taken and indeed all seemed as hopeless as ever. Then the pope took up his pen and as the successor of the Prince of the Apostles wrote a letter as from S. Peter himself and sent it to the three kings, Pepin, Charles, and Carloman, to the bishops, abbots, priests and monks, the dukes, counts, armies, and people of Francia. Gibbon thus summarises this extraordinary and dramatic epistle: "The apostle a.s.sures his adoptive sons the king, the clergy, and the n.o.bles of France that dead in the flesh, he is still alive in the spirit; that they now hear and must obey the voice of the founder and guardian of the Roman Church; that the Virgin, the angels, the saints, and the martyrs, and all the host of heaven unanimously urge the request, and will confess the obligation; that riches, victory, and paradise will crown their pious enterprise; and that eternal d.a.m.nation will be the penalty of their neglect, if they suffer his tomb, his temple, and his people to fall into the hands of the perfidious Lombards."

Pepin could not be deaf to such an appeal. He again crossed the Mont Cenis, and again the Lombards were as chaff before him. On his march to Pavia he was met by two envoys from Constantinople who had ill-treated, detained, and outstripped the papal amba.s.sador. They besought Pepin to restore Ravenna and the exarchate to the empire, but he denied them and declared roundly that "on no account whatsoever should those cities be alienated from the power of the blessed Peter and the jurisdiction of the Roman Church and the Apostolic See, affirming too with an oath that for no man's favour had he given himself once again to this conflict, but only for love of S. Peter and for the pardon of his sins; a.s.serting, also, that no abundance of treasure would bribe him to take away what he had once offered for S.

Peter's acceptance."[1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. Hodgkin, _op, cit_. vii. p. 217.]

Pepin marched on; Pavia was besieged, Aistulf was beaten to the dust.

A treaty was drawn up in which the Lombard gave to "S. Peter, the Holy Roman Church, and all the popes of the Apostolic See forever" the Exarchate, the Pentapolis, and Comacchio. An officer was commissioned to receive the submission of every city, and their keys and the deed of Pepin's donation were placed upon the tomb of S. Peter in Rome. The papal state was founded; where the empire had ruled so long there appeared the heir of the empire, the papacy "sitting crowned upon the grave thereof."

The cities that with their _contadi_ and dependencies thus formed the temporal dominion of the pope were, according to the papal biographer, twenty-three in number; Ravenna first and foremost, then Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia (but not Ancona) that had formed the old Pentapolis. To them was added La Cattolica. The whole of the inland Pentapolis--though Fos...o...b..one is not mentioned--Urbino, Jesi, Cagli, Gubbio--pa.s.sed to the pope as well as the following places: Cesena and the Mons Lucatium, Forlimpopoli, Forli, Castro, Caro, S. Leo, Arcevia, Serra dei Conti, the Republic of S. Marino, Sarsina, and Cantiano together with Comacchio and Narni. A few months after all this was accomplished, in December 756, Aistulf, "that follower of the devil,"

as the pope called him, died.

Every state that is nearing dissolution is the prey of civil discord.

So it was with the Lombards. Ratchis, who had more than seven years before become a monk, claimed the throne; so did Desiderius, "mildest of men." Pope Stephen supported the latter on condition that Ancona, that last city of the Pentapolis, Osimo which dominated it, and Umana, together with Faenza, Imola, and Ferrara, were "restored" to the papacy. Desiderius agreed and became king, but failed, as the Lombards always failed, to keep his promise, for though he handed over Faenza, Bagnacavallo, and Gavello, he withheld Imola, Bologna, Ancona, Osimo, and Umana; this was in 757, the year of Stephen's death.

In the same year Pope Paul I. seems to have visited the chief city of his new state, Ravenna, mainly perhaps on ecclesiastical business, for the archbishop Sergius was by no means a loyal subject and had only been brought to heel when nothing but submission was left open to him.

He had then, according to Agnellus, promised to deliver to the pope all the "gold, silver, vessels of price, h.o.a.rds of money," and so forth stored up in Ravenna. Agnellus tells a long and incoherent tale of the way the pope obtained this treasure and of certain plots to murder him therefor. All that seems fairly certain is that in the first year of his reign pope Paul I. visited Ravenna. Indeed the chief difficulty of the papacy at this time must have been the occupation of the state it had won so consummately. How were the popes to make good their somewhat shadowy hold upon Ravenna, and the Pentapolis, and those other strongholds in central Italy and Aemilia?

That they were not to hold them easily was soon evident. The empire was plotting to win Pepin to its side, and when that failed again, rumours of an imperial invasion reached Rome. Politically all relations ceased between Constantinople and Rome about this time; for though the pope in reality had long ceased to be a subject of the emperor, when he had possessed himself of the exarchate even theory had to give way to fact. Nor was the papacy more fortunate in its relations with Desiderius. The pope's object was doubtless to keep the Lombard kingdom weak, if not to destroy it. The first step to that end was obviously to encourage the achievement of a real independence by the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, which, again, bordering as they did upon the duchy of Rome, would be easier to deal with if they stood alone. There can be little doubt that the pope fostered the sleepless disaffection of the dukes, but when their revolt matured Desiderius was able to crush it, laying waste the Pentapolis on his way. He was then wise enough to visit Rome and to arrange a peace which was only once broken during pope Paul's pontificate: in 761 when Desiderius attacked Sinigaglia.

It was easier, however, for the pope to arrange successfully a foreign policy than to administer his new state. No machinery existed for the secular government by the Holy See of a country so considerable; nor was this easy to invent. The pope was forced to fall back upon his representative in Ravenna, namely, the archbishop. Now the archbishops of Ravenna had always been lacking in loyalty. Ravenna and the exarchate were governed in the name of the pope by the archbishop, a.s.sisted by three tribunes who were elected by the people. This government was never very successful, for at every opportunity, and especially after the resurrection of the empire in the West, the archbishops were eager to consider themselves as feudatories of the empire. This was natural and it may be worth while briefly to inquire why.

Because Ravenna had for so long, ever since the year 404, been the seat of the empire in Italy, the bishops of that city had acquired extraordinary privileges and even a unique position among the bishops of the West. As early as the time of Galla Placidia, the bishop of Ravenna had obtained from the Augusta the t.i.tle and rights of metropolitan of the fourteen cities of Aemilia and Flaminia. It is true that the bishop continued to be confirmed and consecrated by the pope--S. Peter Chrysologus was so confirmed and consecrated--but the presence of the imperial court and later of the exarch encouraged in the minds of the bishops a sense of their unique importance and a certain spirit of independence in regard to Rome. Of course the Holy See was not prepared to cede any of its rights; but the spirit of disloyalty remained, and presently the bishop of Ravenna at the time of his consecration was forced to sign a declaration of loyalty, in which was set forth his chief duties and a definition of his rights.

After the Byzantine conquest the church of Ravenna, which the empire regarded as a bulwark against the papal claims, received important privileges and its importance in the ecclesiastical hierarchy was greatly increased. Like the bishop of Rome, the bishop of Ravenna had a special envoy at Constantinople and was represented, again like Rome, in a special manner in the councils of the Orient. In religions ceremonies the bishops of Ravenna took a place immediately behind the pope, and in ecclesiastical a.s.semblies they sat at the right hand of the pontiff. There can be little doubt indeed of the Erastianism of Justinian nor of his encouragement of the bishop of Ravenna.

The declaration that the bishops were forced to sign upon their consecration by the pope by no means settled matters. In 648 this declaration itself was in dispute as to its interpretation, for Constans II. had conferred upon the See of Ravenna the privilege of autonomy, and at this time the bishop did not go to Rome for consecration. The Iconoclastic heresy of Constantinople, however, indirectly brought about peace between the pope and his suffragan, for Ravenna was in this whole heartedly Roman.

It was then, by means of an instrument still very uncertain, that the papacy was forced to govern its new state, and in these circ.u.mstances, friendly relationship with Constantinople daily becoming more impossible, it is not surprising that we see the pope making an attempt to come to some sort of permanent reconciliation with Desiderius; and indeed when pope Paul died in 767 undoubtedly a peace had been arranged.

All might have been well if pope Paul's successor had been regularly chosen; but a layman Constantine was elected by a rabble at the instigation of his brother Toto of Nepi. Christopher and his son Sergius, who held two of the greatest offices in the papal chancery, decided to call in the aid of the duke of Spoleto to attack Constantine, Rome was entered, and in the appalling confusion the Lombards elected a certain priest named Philip to be pope. Christopher appeared, Philip was turned out, and Stephen III., a Sicilian, was regularly chosen. That was in 768, and in the same year king Pepin died and was succeeded by his two sons, Charles to whom apparently fell Austrasia and Neustria, and Carloman who took Burgundy, Provence, and Swabia.

The death of Pepin left the papacy without a champion. Nor was this all, as soon appeared. Charles and Carloman began to quarrel and to effect their reconciliation, or to avert its consequences, Bertrada, their mother, counselled and succeeded in forcing upon them a friendship and an alliance with the Lombards which meant the complete abandonment of Italy upon the part of the Franks. This alliance was to be secured by a double marriage. Charles was to marry Desiderata, the daughter of the Lombard king, while Gisila, Bertrada's daughter, was to marry Desiderius' heir. It is obvious that S. Peter was in peril, nor was pope Stephen slow to denounce the whole arrangement. His remonstrance, however, was ineffectual and there remained to him but one thing to do: to arrange himself with the now uncurbed Lombard king. This was exceedingly difficult, because his own election had been achieved only by the humiliation of the Lombards. However, he managed it at the price of civil war. Desiderius and his army entered Rome at the behest of the pope, who celebrated Ma.s.s before the king in S. Peter's. The Franks were checkmated.

It was not long before Charles saw that he had been outwitted. An immediate change of his policy was necessary. In 771 it came with the repudiation of Desiderata, who was sent back to her father's court at Pavia. Henceforth Charles and Desiderius were implacable enemies. And now everything went in favour of the papal policy, just as before everything had seemed to cross it. Carloman, who had not quarrelled with Desiderius, and might have opposed Charles and changed all the future, suddenly died in December of the year of the quarrel. Charles became thus sole king of the Frankish nation. When pope Stephen came to die in February 772 he must have laid him down with a quiet mind.

In Stephen's stead there was elected as pope a pure Roman, born in the Via Lata of the n.o.bility of the City; he took the famous name of Hadrian I. Desiderius, who had watched with a growing anxiety the amazing policy of Stephen, now turned to his successor, and both demanded and begged a renewal of friendship. Hadrian answered his amba.s.sador at last with the mere truth. "How can I trust your king when I recall what my predecessor Lord Stephen of pious memory told me in confidence of his perfidy? He told me that he had lied to him in everything as to the rights of Holy Church, though he swore upon the body of the Blessed Peter.... Look you, such is the honour of king Desiderius and the measure of the confidence I may repose in him."

Desiderius' answer was not to the point. He seized the cities of Faenza, Ferrara, and Comacchio and ravaged the territory about Ravenna, burned the farms and carried off the cattle. Then he fell upon the Pentapolis, seized Sinigaglia, Jesi, Urbino, Gubbio, S. Leo, and other "Roman" cities, and indeed possessed himself of everything save only Ravenna and Rimini, and proceeded upon a raid into the duchy of Rome.

The answer of the pope was mild but firm: mild, for the hour was not yet come; firm, for it would strike ere long. "Tell your king," said he, "that I swear in the presence of G.o.d that if he choose to restore those cities which in my time he has taken from S. Peter, I will hasten into his presence wherever he may appoint a meeting place, at Pavia, Ravenna, Perugia, or here in Rome, that we may confer together.... But if he does not restore what he has taken away he shall never see my face."

The hour was not come. Charles was busy with the Saxon hordes upon the north and east of his kingdom. It was not till the beginning of January 773 that the pope sent his messenger Peter to summon him to his aid. Meanwhile, Desiderius marched on Rome. But even without Charles the pope was not defenceless. The Vicegerent of G.o.d who had without a soldier turned back Attila on the Mincio and had thrust back Liutprand from Rome was not to be at the mercy of such a king as Desiderius. At Viterbo his messengers, the three bishops of Albano, Palestrina, and Tivoli, met the Lombard king and gave him the pope's last word: "Anathema." Desiderius shrank back. In that moment as it seems the amba.s.sadors of Charles arrived in Rome, satisfied themselves of the justice of the papal summons, and carried back to the great Frank the prayer of the pope that he would "redeem the Church of G.o.d."

In the late summer of that year the Frankish host was a.s.sembled at Geneva and was already beginning to cross the mountains in two mighty commands by the Great S. Bernard and the Mont Cenis; in October the siege of Pavia was begun.

That siege endured for more than eight months. Meanwhile Charles had made himself master of Verona and of many of the cities of the plain.

The men of Spoleto hastened to "commend" themselves to the pope and the citizens of Fermo, Osimo, and Ancona, and of Citta di Castello, we read, followed their example, and for the feast of Easter 774, Charles appeared in Rome, and was greeted and embraced by the pope at S.

Peter's. On Easter Day Charles heard Ma.s.s in S. Maria Maggiore, on Easter Monday in S. Peter's, on Easter Tuesday in S. Paul's. On the Wednesday in that Easter week, according to Hadrian's biographer, he made that great Donation to the papacy which confirmed and extended and secured the gift of Pepin his father. The duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, and much else, were added to the exarchate "as it was of old" and given to the pope. Then in June Pavia, the Lombard capital, fell and Desiderius and his wife were sent by Charles as prisoners to a convent in Picardy where it is said they ended their lives.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GUARDHOUSE OF THE PALACE OF THEODORIC]

The Donation of Pepin, confirmed, renewed, and enlarged by Charles, may, of course, be understood in various ways; at any rate it has been so understood; but it is certain that the pope saw in it both the fulfilment of his hopes and the final establishment of the papal monarchy. Yet while he utterly refused, and rightly, to admit the claim of Charles--not yet emperor--to interfere in the election of the archbishop of Ravenna, the head of his new dominion, he graciously permitted the king to take away certain mosaics from the old imperial city to adorn his palace at Aix; and that in the following letter, which Dr. Hodgkin translates: "We have received your bright and honeysweet letters brought us by Duke Arwin. In these you expressed your desire that we should grant you the mosaics and marbles of the palace in the city of Ravenna, as well as other specimens to be found both in the pavement and on the walls. We willingly grant your request because by your royal struggles the Church of your patron S. Peter daily enjoys many benefits, for which great will be your reward in heaven...." On no theory yet put forward can the pope be considered as the subject of the king of the Franks. That he had been and was to be the subject of the emperor can be defended, but when has S. Peter been the creature of a king?

It was not Hadrian as we know but Leo who was destined to crown what pope Stephen had begun, and to re-establish the empire in the West, and as he thought to create for S. Peter not an occasional but a permanent champion.

Twenty-five years after that great Easter in Rome, pope Leo, who succeeded Hadrian, whose long pontificate lasted for twenty-three years, was attacked in the streets of Rome and thrown to the ground in the Corso by two nephews of Hadrian's. Exactly what was the nature of their quarrel with Leo we do not know, but they managed to imprison the pope, who presently escaped and, a.s.sisted by Winichis, duke of Spoleto, made his way to the court of Charles. During the summer of 799 the pope remained in France, and probably in October returned to Rome with a Frankish guard of honour. In the following autumn Charles set out on his fourth journey to Rome. It was now that he visited Ravenna, as he had already done in 787, and remained for seven days.

On the 24th November he arrived in Rome. A month later upon Christmas Day the great king, attended by his n.o.bles, amid a vast mult.i.tude, went to S. Peter's to hear Ma.s.s. It was there in the midst of that great basilica, before the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, that upon the birthday of Christ the empire re-arose; the pope placed upon the head of Charlemagne the golden diadem and the Roman people cried aloud, "_Carolo Piissimo Augusta Deo, Coronato Magno a Pacifico Imperatori Vita et Victoria_," Three times that great acclamation echoed over the tomb of the Fisherman. Once more there was an emperor in the West, a champion of the Faith and defender of the Holy See.

It has been a.s.serted, and is still I believe maintained, that that coronation was a surprise to Charles. But such things do not come unforeseen, nor was Charlemagne the man to permit or to tolerate so amazing an astonishment. All Rome knew what was about to be accomplished and had gathered in the ancient basilica to await it and complete it.

Such a question, however, concerns us but little. For us it remains to note that with the re-creation of the empire, and the appearance of the Holy See as a great temporal sovereignty in Italy, the historical importance of Ravenna comes to an end. We have seen that in the autumn of the most famous year save that of the birth of Our Lord, Charlemagne had visited Ravenna and had spent seven days in the city.

Once more he was to visit it, and that upon his return journey northward in May 801. From this time Ravenna ceases to be of any significance in the history of Europe. The pa.s.s it held was no longer of importance, for the barbarian invasions were at an end, and a new road into Italy over the Apennines was coming into use, the Via Francigena, the way of the Franks. As the port upon the sea which was the fault between East and West it, too, ceased to exist; for East and West were no longer of any real importance the one to the other, and already the alteration of the coast line, which was one day to leave the old seaport some miles from the sh.o.r.e, had begun.

The history of Ravenna, her importance in the history of Europe and Italy, thus comes to an end with the appearance of Charlemagne and the resurrection of the West. The ancient and beautiful city which had played so great a part in the fortunes of the empire, which had, as it were, twice been its birthplace and twice its tomb, herself pa.s.ses into oblivion when that empire, Holy now and Roman still, rises again and in the West with the crowning of Charlemagne in S. Peter's Church upon Christmas Day in the year of Our Lord 800. With her subsequent story, interesting to us mainly in two of its episodes--the apparition of Dante and the incident of 1512--I shall deal when I come to consider the Mediaeval and Renaissance city.

But in fact we always think of Ravenna as a city of the Dark Age, and in that we are right. She is a tomb, the tomb of the old empire, and like the sepulchre outside the gates of Jerusalem, that was Arimathean Joseph's, she held during an appalling interval of terror and doubt the most precious thing in the world, to be herself utterly forgotten in the morning of the resurrection. And surely to one who had approached her in the dawn, while it was yet dark, of the ninth century, of mediaeval Europe that is, her words would have been those of the angels so long ago: _Non est hic; sed surrexit_. While to us to-day she would say: _Venite et videte loc.u.m ubi positus erat Dominus_.