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the eternal uncreated foundation of all things was held to be the creator of the mediate being who makes all things, but still himself unable to create. In the attempt to avoid lapsing into polytheism by as- suming that there were two primal causes, Arius posited a demi-god of whom the Scriptures say not a word. As a result of very effective propaganda his teachings gained a tremendous popular following.

Constantine did everything he could to salvage Church unity, so valuable to the Empire which his tireless efforts had unified. He called together the first great Council, that of Nice. Pope Sylvester's ambassadors acted as chairmen. The Council decided against Arius: Christ was proclaimed to be truly God, born of the true God and like in nature to the Father. But this verdict of the Council was also the inception of a drama which kept the Empire in a state of excitement for more than half a century. Under Constantine's successors, the Arians gained control of the secular power and also made some head- way in the West. During this springtime flood of the most powerful heresy since the days of the Gnostics, the Papacy could act only as a protecting dam. The See of Peter was sure that its was the true teaching. It maintained its claim to the highest pastoral authority and used whatever influence it possessed when the persecuted bishops of the Orthodox East asked for help. Nevertheless the Popes exer- cised no such influence as did Athanasius, the real leader of the Catholic forces. He has often been termed one of the greatest men of all times. The whole of his long life was dedicated to the upbuilding of the Church. Often viciously attacked, persecuted and exiled, he was a man of brilliant mind and unflinching character, and his was a soul which found God in the contemplative inner life, though it always tingled with zest for battle. In him were joined together, as con- temporaries already said, the nature of two precious stones: those who struck him found that he was a diamond, and those who were sundered from him realized that he was a magnet. Fellow Christians saw in the purity of his life a norm of the episcopacy, and in his theology a canon of orthodoxy. The odyssey of this warrior, who defended the Church against the power of the state as passionately as he fought for her against the heretics, also describes the hour of Pope Liberius' weakness: he had gone into exile for the cause of Athanasius, but there had conceded so much to the Arians that he was on the verge

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of sacrificing the Saviour of the Church. Nevertheless this policy of conciliation, which Pope Damasus continued after Liberius' death, helped the great theologian of the East to conquer Arianism, which had meanwhile split into so many factions inside the Empire that the Emperors Theodosius and Gratian could require their subjects to profess the Creed of Nice. It was now 380 AJD. But at the same rime the forbidden teaching won the hearts of the Germanic peoples, and its grip on them was not loosed until well into the seventh century.

It was not Rome but the Church as a whole which through the voice of its bishops had proclaimed the dogma that God had become man in the Son. Yet the import of these Greek sentences had already previously been the faith of Rome. How to preserve this unity of teaching was the great problem of the fifth century. By no means all doubts or all questions which reason may put to the mystery of the Incarnation had been foreseen. A series of great Councils, sometimes brilliant and edifying but occasionally also repellent, were needed before the things that are Christ's could be cleansed by fire from every lofty and mean passion to which man is subject in both Church and State. Doubtless the voice of Rome did not always prevail in these conflicts, but the decisions as a result of its utterances were linked by the laws of an inner logic into a coherence which was the seal of truth also in the eyes of Rome. Creative insight was the property of phi- losophers and the devout, indeed of all who were actuated by a living faith, regardless of whether they were giving or receiving citizens of the Church. But that which tested the rising human waters of the intellect and the soul by the inner loadstone of the Church, that which drained them off or channelled them into the oasis of the institution which authoritatively represents the divine leadership of mankind: this was, more or less patently, the common will of the theologians and Popes of the Old Church. They confronted a gigantic task which almost baffled fulfilment. They were exteriorly to build a Church out of the chaos of races and peoples. Interiorly they were to adjust the still immature form of the Church to the sum-total of human needs. It was given to one man to complete the major part of this spiritual task in so far as the Western World was concerned.

This man was Augustine. The political tasks were performed by Leo I and Gregory I, the two great Popes of the fifth and sixth cen-

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tunes. Augustine meant litde to the Papacy of his time, and im- measurably much to the Papacy ever afterward. His shadow covers the whole Western World for a thousand years and still lies over all that calls itself Christian. According to his own saying he had sun- dered himself from those that love the world. His journey from the things that seem to the things that are is described in his Confessions the most realistic of all novels and the most personal book in world literature. Here one sees the antique world burst like a pod because the fruit it has so long nurtured can no longer be restrained. It half clings to that fruit still, half falls off. Past and future are embraced in the unexampled richness of Augustine's mind. This is not the only sense in which he mirrors the duality of Janus. His human lim- itations are the limitations of human nature. Thence comes the fact that his ascent from the level plain to the heights is all too knowing, all too rich in fruit. Bidden to climb beyond himself, this most earth- bound of all religious men seeks the dizziest spiritual heights. / am and the best in me is my soul. But this soul is not all, though its all is the Good which is the only all. Certain of these things, Augus- tine the self analyst could endure being human. Indeed, he per- fected his self and then made it a memorial in a life work with which the development of countless years and countless men has conformed. Whatever stirred his time, stirred him, too; and yet there were many things that stirred him alone, and because of these he has moved time and the seasons. His life bridged the span of years during which Church and State had already formed a fateful partnership which with a thousand thongs bound the Heavenly Kingdom of the Gospels to the earth of the Empire. Christianity had conquered the world, but the world had also conquered Christianity. The blessings and dis- asters resulting from this interplay of forces the ferment in the Church, the pressure of the barbarians upon the Empire all this was the deep concern of this Christian and Roman, this thinker and bishop.

The Goths under Alaric conquered Rome in 410 and once more the ancient reproach was heard that the dethroned gods were taking vengeance on the Christian empire. Then Augustine, the Roman citizen, wept over the city's fall, but Augustine, the philosopher of the orbis universes Christianas, began to write De Civitate Dei. It is

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Impossible to summarize the contents of this book in a few terse sen- tences, because being a book of destiny written during several decades, it is a rambling structure in which the trends of thought run in par- allel and then finally interweave. The author, who had realized and understood that he himself was a drama growing out of the conflict between divine and human will, here beheld history as a process dur- ing which God and His beloved are sundered from the kingdom of all which has abjured Him. Realization of this cleavage leaves only a choice between a state of self-love and a state of selfless self-sacrificing love. Though there may be little goodness to be found under the sun, though evil and good are intertwined mysteriously throughout history, it is nevertheless in the here-and-now that the die is cast for the eternal and the beyond. The peril in which earthly states live of succumbing to evil grows out of their lust for power. They keep themselves in order only in so far as they surrender to the heavenly Kingdom, which is the Kingdom of everlasting rest. Herewith the song of Pax Romana was ended. But is this Heavenly Kingdom the Church? Yes and no. It is so in the sense that the Church is the communion of saints, conceived before the beginning of time a communion of those whom God has summoned to live with Him in the past, the present and the future. But it is not the Heavenly King- dom in so far as its temporal existence is concerned, for during this it is a compound of good and evil men just as the secular state is a com- pound of such men. Nevertheless, being the continuation of Old Testament theocracy, the Church here below is the true soil on which a Civitas Dei can be erected. It is solid and more receptive than is the purely temporal state, which tends always toward egotism. The goal of this Civitas is to be Christian, free of the personal ambitions of princes, and able to administer justice in the spirit of service to God. The Emperor is the best servant of the state when he is the best servant of the Church.

The political theology of Augustine is so rich in corollaries that it never loses actuality. In spite of its inner contradictions, which re- sult above all from its definition of the Church and its relation to the Civitas Dei, this theology is, on the whole, of undiminishing and un- dying importance. It is unified by the conception of God's reign which everywhere informs it. Augustine sees in the theocracy of the

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Old Testament the precursing shadow, the basis and threshold, of the ecclesiastical theocracy of the new world era which is builded by Christ and in turn is built on Him. Synagogue and Christian Church are associated inseparably, since God willed it so* The new form which the life of mankind must take on is the Church which, building mys- tically on Christ the God-man, is the communion of all who, living in Him and striving toward Him, are elected to and desire salvation* It is an organism through which there courses a supernatural soul; but it is also a union in which no member loses his independent per- sonal significance, because Jesus Christ is the source of the law which governs the life both of the individual soul and of the community. But in order to preach, preserve and carry out this law by which men are to be guided and the world transformed, the Church needs the concrete, visible, active authority whose function it is to restore all things in Christ. This high historical purpose is binding upon the bearer of every authority, even political authority. Jesus said that His Kingdom is not of this world; but He did not say that it is not within the world, or that it would not enter this world even as yeast pervades dough. It was to men who live in the world that He said: what was His Kingdom if not of those who believe in Him?" asked Augustine. "For here His Kingdom shall abide until the end of time, and shall mingle weeds with its wheat until the day of harvest. But the harvest is the end of the world, when the reapers come who are the angels, and weed from His Kingdom all that giveth offense. Yet these things could not happen were his Kingdom not here be- low." The immanent demand of the trancendental (tsternttm in- ternttm) is always that which really keeps both soul and human his- tory ceaselessly active. But if man becomes another being in Chris- tianity, is filled with new wine and sent off toward new horizons, the ancient forms of civic life that antedate Christ cannot but be under- mined. Although he seems in many ways still deeply rooted in an- tique habits of thinking, Augustine struggled to create a new political theology based on the Christian union of soul and world, in which theology all earthly institutions, including the state, would be set forth as agents of the Divine, The Highest Good and Christian salva- tion do not obligate the ecclesiastical state alone, but they must (for
 * Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.*' "For of

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this is sublime commission given to humanity and history) be the ultimate concern and raison d'etre of every community and every gov- ernment. Justice too, though a brutal Roman state may have thought otherwise, consists in fostering purposes and attitudes which conform with the life and work of the Church. As a result of the ideal mar- riage of world-state and believing-state, all authority in the Christian- ized world is stamped with the character of a kingly priesthood or a priestly royalty. But what happens to this transcendental unity of the theocratic ideal amid the turbulence of earthly history? Is it like the bow and the lyre of Heraclitus a union born of disparate tendencies, a coalescence which struggles to be sundered?

Out of Augustine's vision of a civic entity having a religious soul, the Mater Ecclesia gazed dreamingly into the future, her features still mobile in youth. He confronted her with almost too many ideas. He gave her so many goals to reach and showed her so many ways in which to reach them, that as a consequence she could hardly avoid coming into conflict with herself. Always a warrior fighting on two fronts at the same time, Augustine created an arsenal of spiritual weapons from which all camps in the Church could draw. He wrote a program of genuine tolerance, and nevertheless became the Father of the Inquisition. He taught that the highest obedience was that with which the soul followed counsels of conscience; and yet as a Roman lover of order he strengthened the arm of authority. Fight- ing against the Manicheans and their fatalistic lalssez faire, he drew the idea of human freedom as taut as an overstrained bow. Against the English Pelagius and his "self made man," he emphasized Chris- tianity all too vehemently as a conception of God as the Sole Cause, who inclines hearts toward good and evil according to His divine plan. Thus this prodigally wealthy mind bequeathed to Christianity such vast horizons, so many ways and manners of being a Christian inside the Catholic Church, that the very gain of inner freedom of move- ment could also become a danger to unity. Augustine recognized the primacy of the Apostolic See as this itself understood and practised that primacy. His declaration that the debate with Pelagius was ended when Rome had spoken found the immortal phrase Roma locuta, CAUSA finite. But, to a greater extent than he could have imagined, a firm Rode was needed amidst the flood of the life he himself had created.

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When the Bishop of Hippo closed his eyes in 430, the Vandals were storming the city. Yet he still clung firmly to the belief that Rome was the meaning and the substructure of world society. Al- ready the magic light of glamour and power lay on the See of Peter. Gifts from rich families enabled the spiritual masters of Rome to for- get the simplicity of the Fisherman of Capharnaum. The seriously devout were scandalized at their pomp and feasting. It was not al- ways noble passion that divided the electorate into parties. It was only after bloody street fighting that the Spaniard, Pope Damasus (366-384), could make use of an imperial edict to maintain himself in power against his rival. His private secretary, St. Jerome, waxed satirical when he described the spiritual Beau Brummels of the hier- archy. Perfume and curling irons, fashionable clothes and gilded horses! Were these clerics or amorous swains? Nevertheless be- hind this too, too human facade there was much courage and vigour. Damasus reopened and readorned the ruined catacombs and entrusted to his friend, the self-same Jerome, who slept with Cicero and Aristoph- anes under his pillow, the translation of the Bible into Latin. His immediate successors strove energetically to strengthen the position of their See quite as if they were aware of coming storms and sought to make it a safe haven for Western society. The city council, which still bore the proud name of Senate and was the sole surviving organ of Imperial Rome and its provincial cities, became a mere shadow com- pared to the true Friend and Shepherd of the people.

In as far as we are able to determine historically, Leo I (440-461) was the first truly great Pope. Possessing the qualities that make a Caesar, he lent his throne a dignity that in turn reflected upon him. To him Peter, with Paul, the founder of a more fortunate Rome, is the eter- nal bishop of the Church, mystically present in his See, which is the symbol of the rights and duties conferred by the Master upon the "Rock." The Roman Empire and all its numerous wars were in- struments of Providence working to prepare the way for the Empire of the Pax Christiana. The great city had, he declared, been conse- crated anew by the throng of thousands who had worn the purple of martyrdom. In them the firmness of Peter had been manifested a firmness of Faith that would abide as an example. Just as what Peter believed concerning Christ shall always endure, so shall there

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abide forever what Christ established in Peter. In his See there lives on also His power and authority. "Our apostolic office," Leo said, "is never in lack of Christ's eternal succour. He is the strength of the foundation above which the whole Church arises. All its offices are united with the one chair of Peter, even as the limbs of the body are united with the head."

This Pope was the first who proceeded to deduce clearly, impres- sively and fully from the doctrine of the Roman primacy the conclu- sion that, as the successor of Peter, the Pope is the highest shepherd and teacher of the Ecclesia universal**. He did not correlate new ideas or new rights with his position; he transformed the immanent law of the past (vetustatis norma, he terms it) into a broad and lofty con- ception of the Papacy which the Middle Ages were to take over but would not amend in any essential way. Leo was a born ruler who realized to the full the loftiness of his office, but he also took this to mean service to humanity. He loved the words auctoritas and po- testas, but no less dear to him were bttmanitas and consulere as char- acteristic of the leader Providence itself had set over Christianity. Re- mote as only a Roman can be from all the hidden confidences of mysticism, he warned against efforts to understand God in human terms or to think of him otherwise than as the Eternal One who is always everywhere in Himself a perfect wholeness. There is a vir- ginal shyness in the manner in which he counsels letting the mysteries of faith rest within themselves as being the inviolable seal put upon human dignity and moral order. He was no defender of supersti- tion. He upbraided church-goers who bowed before the spring sun according to Manichean custom as they came up the steps of St. Pe- ter's Church and entered the portico of the basilica. What are the stars more, he asks, than a reflection of the divine beauty? Similarly he censured the outlook of nominal Christians by saying that it was not enough to change deities and worship the Trinity in palaces and churches, if at the same time one took no heed of moral habits by which the real Christian first proves himself steadfast. But whenever the teaching of the Church was under question, Leo pointed out the orthodox view with clear vision and persistent strength. He forbade his Romans to associate with Egyptian merchants, who on the wharves along the Tiber peddled heresies of the Orient with their wares. He

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cook the lead in warding off aberrations from the faith in Italy, Spain, Gaul and Aquileia. In a memorable doctrinal epistle he drew up the basis on which the Council of Chalcedon the greatest assembly the Church had known until then in 451 concurred in the decision that Christ is truly Man just as He is truly God, and that therefore He must be worshipped as one Lord in two natures. The Occident did not prevail at this Council without the powerful influence of the Em- press Pulcharia and her aged husband Marcian.

Just at this time the East, shaken by spiritual turmoil, was awaiting Attila's attack. But Leo understood how to use the goodwill of the civil authority, which regarded the Church as also its concern, without being false to the religious mission of Christianity. Indeed, almost against the will of the crumbling Christendom of the Orient, he once more accorded it a place of refuge inside the realms of the Imperial Church. The basic characteristic of his political point of view was a strong determination to salvage from the collapse of the Imperial unity the religious unity of all peoples under the dominion of the Roman See. He battled against the Manicheans, who poisoned Christian life in Rome and Italy, resorting even to the arm of the state in order to stamp out their dens of vice in the cities. He warded off the wolves who in the East and West of the Empire had broken into the sheepfold of Christ, nor did he concern himself greatly in what dark places of the soul, the intellect or folk tradition, the hereti- cal teaching had been born. At the very outset of his reign he ob- tained an imperial edict recognizing the primacy of the Holy See as based upon the priority of Peter, the dignity of Rome and the decisions of the Sacred Synods. Thus legal status was given to Papal decrees. His conception of the Roman leadership and resolute Papal guidance of the Church did not grow out of a personal passion to rule but rather out of the profound realization which he as a representative had of the weight and worthiness of the power he represented. His writ- ings, his words of advice to delegated authorities, combine the Stoic trait of equal respect for all men and peoples with the idea of a mo narchically ruled Empire of Christ and an awareness of the unplumb- able depths and inviolable unity of the Revelation given to mankind* His mood was that of one who would shepherd the peoples in the name of Christ and administer the legacy of Peter in the spirit of

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service to all. Thus he began the transformation of the Augustinian Civitas from a nebulous Utopia into a reality.

As a statesman of this Civitas Dei he also rode out to meet Attila, the Hun, hoping thus to save Rome from ravage by these hordes. We do not know if it was the bearing and address of the Pope alone, or whether it was also the military situation which induced the barbarian leader to stop short of marching on Rome and visiting upon it still more dreadful woes than Genseric, the Vandal, would a few years later. The people of Rome loudly praised the deed of Leo and then soon forgot it. When the anniversary of the rescue came the Pope preached to only a few faithful. The mob was satisfied with its Pope so long as the mills on the Janiculum saw to it that no one went to the circus hungry. Leo is remembered, however, primarily as the saviour of Rome. The legend which says that the Prince of the Apos- tles appeared girded with a sword when Leo and Attila met, has been immortalized by Raphael in the frescoes of the Vatican. They reflect the conception which at heart the Pontifex had of his activities. He knew that he was the agent of the eternal Peter. He called his See a place of trembling responsibility; and if he also had a dark awareness of the future he sundered the honour and sacredness of the office from the worthiness or unworthiness of its custodians.

After Leo's death a century of bitter conflict passed over Rome, The Germans secured control of Italy. Ottocar, the Herculean Scyth- ian, exiled Romulus, the pretty, weeping boy who could term him- self the last Emperor of the West, to the ancient Lucullian estate on the slopes of the Mysenium (476). He then made himself king, and remained in office until 495 when Theodoric struck him down at a feast of reconciliation in Ravenna. The King of the Goths made the first great attempt to weld Germanic and Roman natures into a unity, the foundation of which was to be the superior Roman culture. The thirty years of his reign and the sixty years of his East-Gothic kingdom brought the Papacy face to face with a situation not unlike that of a sailor caught between Scylla and Charybdis. When the Patriarch Acasius of Constantinople favoured the teachings of the Monophy- sites, the first great schism between the Church of Rome and the East was at hand. After a peaceful understanding with the Arian Theo- doric, Pope Gelasius proved himself a master of the Emperor of By-

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zantium. The world, he said, had two appointed rulers the sacred authority o the bishops, and the kingly power; but the significance of the bishops must be greater because they would also be summoned to give an account before the Divine Judge of what the kings had done. The Christian Emperors had need of the bishops for their eternal sal- vation, and the bishops for their part needed the laws of the sovereign in so far as this world is concerned. The self-same Pope also gave expression to the ties which welded the born Roman and the rightful monarch of a newer Rome together, and thus manifested a universal- istic consciousness of the ancient co-ordination of the two halves of the Empire.

Anastasius II, the successor of Pope Gelasius, sought to reunite the Churches, but went so far in conciliating the East that Rome itself was split into parties. Then Anastasius died, two Popes were elected, and both East and West asked Theodoric to act as arbitrator. He was already involved in personal political conflicts with Byzantium, and decided in favour of the candidate of the Rome-minded group and against the choice of the minority friendly to the East. But no sooner was the schism which separated East and West ended, than the political opposition between Rome and the Arian Goths waxed stronger. This was understandable enough. In 518, Justin, an or- thodox Catholic, ascended the throne in the East and began to perse- cute the fellow countrymen and co-religionists of Theodoric; the Popes meanwhile were subjects of an heretical king; and in Italy almost every city had both a Catholic and an Arian Church and generally two rival bishops as well. When Byzantium had weakened the Monophysites and so made it easier for Italy to rejoin the Empire, Theodoric, who had now been forsaken by his Vandal allies, turned the tables and wrote on them the sombre message of his last years to the world. A Pope, John I, also felt his heavy hand. Theodoric called him to Ra- venna, forced him to ease the lot of the Arians in Constantinople and threw him into prison when he returned because the results attained were not satisfactory. There death released him a few days after- ward.

During the same year (526) Theodoric also died, leaving his plans unfulfilled. He had succeeded neither in effecting harmony between the Romans and the East Goths, nor in establishing a Germanic fed-

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eration of states. Thirty years later the Empire builded by his coura- geous Goths fell under the strokes of the Romaic generals. Once more, the Papacy leaned on the unsteady pillars of the Byzantine throne, but this was the last time. Justinian, the great figure of this- era, who had risen from amidst Macedonian farmers to become Em- peror, controlled the destinies of the Empire and also of the Church. His wife Theodora, who had previously been a dancer in the Manege,, was his true helpmate. He would have disturbed the peace of even greater Popes than those who flourished during his long reign. In order to renew the Roman Empire on a Christian basis, he wanted to hold all offices in his hand and did so. He was a lawyer and his codification of Roman law, the Codex Justiniani, has become the text- book of mankind. He was a builder and enriched Byzantium and Ravenna, the city of the exarch, with marvels of art. Viewed from a distance he looked like a Caesar comparable to the greatest of the past. He was interested in and studied everything. Unfortunately thb meant that like his wife he claimed to be a theologian, too.

In this Ccesar Papa there was incarnate the most destructive idea a ruler can entertain the idea of theocratic despotism. Regis voluntas suprema lex. In order that the whole implied tragedy of this maxim should be unfolded it was necessary only that there should be on the throne of Peter an opponent of equal determination. But none was there. The result was only a small handful of glorious and inglorious episodes in Papal history. The saddest is associated with the name of Pope Vigilius. Theodora, who was heretically minded, expected that this favourite, whom she had managed to place on the Papal throne as a successor of his exiled predecessor, would follow a political trend ac- cording to her own heart. At the beginning he resisted, but during the later dogmatic troubles he swayed weakly between "yes" and "no" and "no" and "yes" when the teaching of the Church was deeply in- volved. The Church of the West held its ground against its spirit- ual head. The bishops of Northern Africa severed their relations with him, and ecclesiastical provinces of Milan and Acjuileia per- sisted for a long while in their separation from Rome. The guilty Pope was the victim of grave maltreatment while at the altar, but the Catholic West did not immediately live down the moral upheaval that had shaken his throne. Since the baptism of Clovis in 496,

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temporal and spiritual lords of the steadily growing kingdom of the Franks had noted very clearly the justice and injustice, the strength and weakness, of the vassals of the East enthroned in the city of Peter. Circumstances there now pointed more and more toward a separation from Byzantium. The government of Justinian, hollowed out by wars, the cost of luxurious splendour and confiscatory taxes, was unable to help Rome and its Popes during the time of tribulation at the hands of the barbarians, plagues, and inner conflicts. The situation became utterly hopeless when the Lombards, the last migrant Germanic tribe, invaded Italy, They did not conquer the whole of the country but they broke it asunder politically and were the causes of its long- enduring impotence. The Greek Empire retained Rome and the ad- joining territory, Ravenna and the Pentapolis. To the south it re- tained the region of Naples, Calabria, and Sicily. If the Church was to be the fundamental society, it must now imperatively find leaders able to preserve its social and spiritual authority. And the men it needed appeared.

"I, unworthy and feeble man, took over an old ship which the waves had battered severely. The waters poured in from all sides, and the rotten planks whipped daily by storms foreshadowed imminent ship- wreck." So wrote Gregory the Great (590604) shortly after he had been elected Pope. Comparable for strength of will and active energy to Leo I, he nevertheless bore a good-natured smile on his paternal features. He was a monk by disposition; but despite the fact that he was tired of this world, he sowed the seeds of the future on a vast field. The last "Roman" looked from the height of a ruined building at the fierce melee of peoples roundabout and placed his hope when he dared hope in gathering and unifying all peoples, even the bar- barians of the north, inside the educational institutions founded by Christ. Throughout all the subsequent history of the Church, this man and his achievement have remained the great exemplars of what a successor of Peter can be and can accomplish.

Gregory was the son of a rich Roman patrician family, and during his early manhood had become a prefect of the city. He was a born lawyer, an administrator and a lover of brilliant display, who managed the police, the judges, the tax officials and others subordinate to his office in a manner pleasing to the Romans. When his father died

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he inherited a vast fortune, but meanwhile he had reflected upon the meaning of life, the condition of the world contemporary with himself, and the future of Rome. Thereupon the rich ruler of a city became a poor monk. He built six monasteries on his estates near Palermo and erected a seventh (San Andrea) in his paternal mansion on the Monte Cadius, the most patrician quarter of Rome. He gave away literally everything, even his last possession the silver dish in which his mother sent him vegetables every day. He was not the first Roman who had gladly sought his happiness in the new vita socialis. But this man, who fled from life and looked down upon a devastated Rome and its ruined amphitheatre from a seclusion devoted to higher things, as a monk and builder according to the Rule of Benedict, became a pioneer of Western monasticism.

In the monastic life Gregory sought to conform with the spirit of its founder. The object was to obtain a common sanctification of existence in a cloistered life of prayer and work. The daily tasks in a house set apart were to be performed according to the prescribed rhythm and to be based upon contemplation of eternal things assur- ing depth and consecration to such tasks. The values of eternal life wrung from contemplation were to bear fruit in practical work. Ben- edict had not by any means desired to found an order for pious scholars, but what he established was, like all foundations of its kind, to give witness unto the law that those who seek the Kingdom of God shall have all else given them. This law, the tragic nucleus of which is also evident, has revealed itself again and again throughout Christian history. While bustling, active careers often leave not a trace behind, even as water seeps through sand, it is possible that the most secluded existence can win for itself a very great sphere of in- fluence. Quiet, directed toward the inner life, surrender of the world and concentration on seemingly most unreal things, can prove itself the source of the most fruitful public influence, and the lever of a powerful incision into the processes of world history. Then, of course, it may turn upon its first authors like a strange hostile force. The Order of St. Benedict was still far from witnessing any such turn of events, but the scholarly culture of pagan origin which Cassiador, Theodoric's statesman who had become a monk, took on board the ship of the Church soon after Benedict's death in 543, implied a change

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in the spirit of the Rule. The incalculable service thus rendered to all time is not ascribable either to monasticism's holy founder nor to his imitator, Pope Gregory. Nothing was further removed from cither's mind than the thought of rescuing the treasures of antique culture. For the Pope, the care of souls was the art of arts, and this he taught and practised as a friend of wisdom dwelling in simplicity. His Regula Pastorates was the wise, nobly proportioned basic text of pastoral action he bequeathed to the Catholic Church. The whole Middle Ages were to drink deep from all his writings, so notable for their lucidity, their warm spiritual content and their gracious and force- ful form. Yet there was also a tendency toward the primitive in the nature of this preacher standing above the ruins, and this tendency had a profound and lasting effect upon the devotions of the Church. Gregory did all he could to make men love the Invisible, but he like- wise did all he could to make the Invisible visible. In this respect he satisfied a natural human desire to give outward expression to the inner life, but he also increased the danger that the external might affect the interior life and so helped to lay the foundation for a later reversal to the opposite danger. Still more serious is the fault that lies in his legalistic, often mathematical view of what Heaven will do for men who do something for it. Nevertheless it became evident as time went on that Gregory had done the "state of the Lord" a service when he gave it a form more discernible by the senses and more op- timistic from the religious point of view than the tragic Civitas Dei of the more intellectual Augustine. The Church also owes him undy- ing gratitude for what he accomplished as the fashioner of her liturgy and the restorer of liturgical music.

As a shaper of ecclesiastical policy, Gregory cut deep and broad across the life of history. Previous Popes had summoned this experi- enced official from the retirement of the cloister to curialistic and dip- lomatic service. He spent six years in Constantinople as Papal am- bassador and here gathered information, insight into human nature and breadth of vision for the tasks he was to perform in Rome later on. Upon his return he directed the affairs of the Roman See as Sec- retary to Pope Pelagius II. Then in 590 he himself became Pope at the age of fifty. Now he experienced the truth of his own saying:; "Men listen gladly to one they love." In view of the economic col-

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136 Lotharingian runs as follows: A king has three sons. He sends them successively to seek the water of life. Two of them refuse to help a shepherd on the way, and rest from their search in Pekin. The third, who is deformed, aids the shepherd, and receives from him some arrows, which will pierce well whatever they strike, and a flageolet, which will make everyone dance within hearing of it. Arrived at Pekin, the humpback pays the debts of a corpse, and has it buried. He goes on till his money is exhausted. When he is about to shoot a fox one day, he is stayed by pity, and is directed by the creature to the castle where the water of life is to be found. There he is detained by an ogre, and wins battles for him by the aid of the magical arrows. There is a princess in the castle, who refuses to marry the ogre. The hero makes her dance, and obtains from the ogre as recompense the promise of whatever he wishes. He asks for the most beautiful thing there and the right to circle the castle three times. So he takes the princess, a phial of the water of life, as well as the uglier of the two mules and of the two green birds, as the fox has told him, and flees away. He meets the fox again, and is warned not to help any one in trouble. Nevertheless, he rescues his two brothers from the scaffold in Pekin, and is cast into a well by them. They go home, but are not able to heal the king. Meanwhile, the prince is saved by the fox, and is made straight of body. He goes home, and at his coming the king becomes young again, while the brothers are burned. So the prince marries the lady.

In Tuscan we learn that the youngest of three princes, while wandering, paid the debts of a man whose corpse was being insulted. When he had buried the man, he found himself without a farthing, and so slept in the forest. In the morning he was greeted by a hare (lieprina) with a basket of food in its mouth. He took

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lapse of the Western Empire, which had long since seen its last cargo of Egyptian grain, it was his first care to give the people bread. Only after that could he say to them that man does not live by bread alone! As steward of the city and all the ecclesiastical estates within and out- side of Italy estates which had been accumulated as a result of gifts and bequests he inaugurated a great reform by building a system of ecclesiastical self-management upon the idea of rational use and highest returns. To him the purpose of ecclesiastical economy was to supply the needs of the poverty-stricken, the proletariat, the horde of those who fled from regions desolated by the Lombards, and the prisoners whose freedom he could purchase. The spirit which actu- ated his method of organizing work was in consonance with the pur- pose of his charitable enterprises. The chief officials were Roman clerics, directly responsible to the Pope; and a system of leases and payments curbed the danger that some would seek to enrich them- selves. In all this Gregory opposed Mammonism of every kind, and directed his attention in particular to simonistic bishops who demanded payment for administering the Sacrament of Holy Orders. He re- gretted deeply that the needs of the time compelled him to be so much engrossed in worldly business (he even had to take a hand in selling cows and oxen) and he therefore strove to emphasize doubly the spirit of Christian kindliness and the eternal meaning of all earthbound industry. To his clergy he preached the motto of service rather than lordship, holding up before them the picture of a Christ who had driven the money-lenders out of the temple.

Gregory mastered the troubled situation in Church and State in a spirit of lofty nobility blended with the prudence and wisdom of a political calculator. He did what was possible at every given mo- ment, but over and beyond that proved himself able to frame a long range policy. Against the East he defended the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Church as emphatically as he could in view of the tragic vagueness of which Pope Vigilius had been guilty. This he excused by referring to the false impression under which Peter had laboured in the beginning concerning the mission to the heathen. He opposed to the arrogant attitude of the "ecumenical patriarch" of Byzantium a description of himself as servtts servorum Dei, servant of the servants of God. He also succeeded in defending his Lombard

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policy against the rude, soldierly Emperor Mauritius and against Pho- <a$, Mauritius' assassin, whom he conciliated with an official message -of recognition. The Pope had called Italy "my country" in a letter written to Mauritius, and the future was to prove him right. It was not merely his industrial skill, but also his activity in behalf of the Roman See and above all his efforts to conciliate the ever-threatening Lombards which saved Rome and the provinces and, outside their boundaries, the idea of Rome, In the famous "funeral oration 51 which he delivered during the siege of 593 he could repeat the Vision of Ezekiel: the meat in the vessel is eaten, even the bone has been boiled, and now the empty vessel (the city) is burning and melting away over the fire. For 300 years the Church had paid day after day some tribute to the barbarians in order to stave off the worst and now, too, a peace with Agilulf was purchased with the treasure of Peter. The Papal patriot described in his sermon the sad remnant of ancient Rome now visited by famine and the pest, war and floods. It was a de- scription of a bald, featherless eagle, but to this eagle he was mean- while giving the strength of the Phoenix.

Gregory had never lost sight of the trailing thread which bound Rome to the East, but perhaps it was a feeling that better times were approaching which led him to formulate a West-European policy of his own. Now the successor to the Fisher of Men threw his net into the sea of the Germanic peoples in order to assemble them as peaceful conquerors in the unity of a spiritual order under the primacy of the Roman See. The viceroy of Christ raised the staff of the shepherd of the peoples which was to become both sceptre and lance in the hands of later Popes. Blessing, pacifying, building up, he based the paternal authority of the Papacy upon the rising kingdoms and na- tions which would eventually call themselves France, Spain and Eng- land. He petitioned Theodelinda, the Catholic princess of the Lom- bards, to induce her Arian husband to enter "the community of the res publicana Christiana" Against the will of the imperial govern- ment, he tried to persuade those who threatened Rome to accept spirit- ual membership in a Catholic confederation of peoples. "If," he said, "my object had been to destroy the Lombards, this people would to- day have neither king nor duke, nor count, and would have become a prey of hopeless disunity. But because I feared God, I did not wish

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to make myself guilty of destroying anything or anybody/' In him the idea of the Pax Romana had the greatest of its unarmed protago- nists. He firmly reminded the provincial churches of the primacy of his See, but to each he allowed a liberal measure of self-government be- cause he had a high regard for the episcopal office and for the individ- uality of each people. He could say, "We are defending our rights," but also, "We respect the rights of the several churches." Recogniz- ing fully the future significance of the Prankish kingdom for the Cath- olic totality, he was persistently careful to do all he could to improve and unite the corrupt churches involved in the political conflicts then decimating the Merovingian territories. Having a great objective constantly before his eyes, he overlooked the moral deficiencies of the notorious Franconian Queen Brunhilde when he needed her power and influence in his struggle against simony and surviving heathenism. In order not to break off the first slender thread of a Franco-Roman relationship, he also resisted the project of Columba, a fiery missionary who wanted to force the Irish date of the feast of Easter upon the Gauls and Romans. This Celt addressed to the Papal See, "The no- blest flower of the whole declining Europe," one of the curtest letters which Rome ever received from one of its own messengers. But Greg- ory ignored it. He also paid no attention to a threat that the Celtic Church would go its own way in schism; and by this silence he re- tained the help of an opponent whose violence was also useful.

The Pope had very little success with the Franks, but they spurred him on rather than hindered him in his attempt to win the Anglo- Saxons for the European cultural community and for intimate union with Rome. For the first time Rome sent its own missionaries Prior Augustine of the Monastery of St. Andrew and a small company of monks to these barbarians. Rumours of Anglo-Saxon savagery induced these messengers of the faith to turn round when they had reached the Rhone, but Gregory did not budge from his resolve and sent them out again, making provision this time for French support. Their success after landing in Kent rapidly paved the way for progress among princes and peoples. For they did not come as emissaries of a foreign political power and had been authorized by the Pope to exercise great freedom in their missionary methods. One readily feels that there hovers over his answers to their anxious questions the supe-

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nor smile with which a grown man listens to the prattle of children, who in their effort to make out the letters o the alphabet do not yet gather the meaning of what they are reading. "Why should one not be allowed to baptize a pregnant woman? In the eyes of the Al- mighty, fruitfulness is certainly not a fault. What is given to human nature as a gift of God cannot possibly be an obstacle to the grace of baptism." The customs of the people, he says, ought to be tolerated and then gradually and wisely filled with Christian meaning. His first advice was to destroy the heathen temples; but then "after long reflection upon the matter of the Angles" he reached another conclu- sion. No, they ought to remain. Only the images of the gods should be destroyed. Altars should then be erected, the walls sprin- kled with holy water, and relics placed within the altar stones. The fact that a given place had long been associated with the cult should prove advantageous also to the worship of the new true God. If here- tofore the Angles have sacrificed oxen to the demons, they may hence- forth butcher them and eat them in praise of God. For it is impossi- ble to take away everything at once from hearts hardened by custom. If one wishes to climb a high mountain, one cannot run up it but must proceed slowly, step by step. Very gradually and persistently the monks of St. Benedict carried the faith and morals of Rome from the cities of Canterbury and York to the far corners of the British Isles. Soon the vigour of the Anglo-Saxon Church was felt on the continent. Csesar had landed with six legions to carry out the first Roman con- quest of Britain; Gregory had effected the second with forty monks. By so much is, as Gibbon himself must admit, the glory of the Pope greater than that of Caesar.

It is said that as an old man stricken with gout he lay abed instruct- ing students in Church music. Regardless of what his part in the creation or renewal of "Gregorian" choral may really have been, this anecdote by his biographer characterizes the inner nature of the great- est educator in early Christian Europe. There is something of music in everything to which he gave expression. Friends and defenders of culture who laugh at him and his style in writings which influenced centuries more deeply, perhaps, than any others, misunderstand Greg- ory's own smile at "the wisdom of men." To him the life of the mind was not an end in itself, but only a means to help bring about

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the moral maturity needed to begin a life of a higher kind. He cre- ated culture as and because he sought more than culture. He was a herald of social justice, the saviour and liberator of Italy, and a man of genius in the administration of the patrimony of Peter which only later, under other Pontiffs, became the "temporal power" of the Church. The prophet of a federation of peoples led by Rome in which the Church "unites what is separate, gives order to what is in disorder, harmonizes dissonance, perfects the imperfect, not for its own sake but for the sake of human society," he was the model of all Popes of goodwill who followed him and the first great pattern of a shepherd of peoples. So illustriously did he represent the greatness of the Papacy through service that despite all that time has changed in countless hearts he can still enkindle a desire for divine authority on the earth. Yes, Gregory was really and truly what is written on his tomb a "Consul of God."

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The Germans overpowered the weak Roman Empire, but the heart o that Empire, the Christian Church, in turn conquered the Germanic world. Gregory the Great, farseeing captain of his ship, had cast anchor far off in the British Isles, where his legates established them- selves firmly in a soil that was fertile and nourishing. Then he had carefully tried also to anneal the Prankish Christian kingdom more firmly to the Roman rule. Two hundred years after Gregory was laid to rest in the Vatican, Charlemagne erected his Roman palace next to St. Peter's; but on the tower of his redoubt in Aachen, there hovered a mighty eagle with gilded wings flung wide. This was reminiscent, it is true, of the eagles of the oriental sovereigns, of Job's eagle, of the eagle of the Roman Emperors, which according to Dante's image flew down into the tree of young Christianity and destroyed leaves and blossoms. But it was also like unto the eagle of the Evangelists, a symbol of power to behold the things of God and to ascend unto them. There followed (to use a more modern expression) the translatio im~ perii ad Francos the passing of the West Roman Imperial author- ity to the Franks, who were now to restore it and give it added vigour.

The New Eagle hovering over that northern city looked down on buildings ercted in the styles of the East and the South. The ro- tunda of the dome, Roman in conception and Byzantine in construc- tion, arched itself like a kind of Pantheon over relics of many saints of the One God. The city hall was copied from models in Constanti- nople; and everywhere pillars and blocks of marble taken from the ruins of Roman Trier, from Rome itself or from Ravenna, were em- ployed. But this new Empire which took over from the old its idea, its law, and many treasures of the mind, was not the same in so far as extent and territorial possessions were concerned. Ancient Rome had been divided into three parts Byzantine, Arabian, and Latino- Germanic. Proceeding from the last, a new correlation of energies could be effected round the ancient centre, the Rome of the Church. That which now arose and lasted for centuries despite all vicissitudes of temporal and spiritual power was the idea and the actual realiza- tion of a religious super-state. This had only one aim: the sancti-

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fication o human existence. But in this aim there was necessarily latent a conflict between two elements: the world as it is, and the super-world which is to absorb the other, change it, and desecularize it. Therewith history was given a dramatic motif having no parallel. In the distance Scylla and Charybdis, dual dangers, threatened the "no" which is said to the world for the sake of the super-world, and the "no" that is spoken to the super-world as the deepest cause of all the unrest and the inner estrangement that seep into human life.

Naturally the originators of these great adventures of the eighth and ninth centuries could not see so far into the future. But their deeds were concatenated in rapid succession into a prelude crammed with meaning a prelude in which there are motifs that, however varied and repeated, have governed the whole subsequent history of Europe. That which remained the same throughout all rising and falling accents, that which merely developed, throughout all varia- tions, a form established at the beginning, was the Church. And the support upon which this persistent unity rested was the Roman See.

If one were asked to characterize the history of the Papacy from 600 to 900 in a few words, the answer would be: Islam, Byzantium, France, the German mission, the Lombards, the Italian people, the Roman no- bility. Not all of these implied good fortune for the cathedra Petri. But taken together they meant the rise of a power which found the winning of all the world and its greatness no longer profitable because it had suffered loss to its own soul.

About the rime of Gregory the Great's death, Mohammed saw in a vision the terrible power of God and heard on Mount Hera the sum- mons to be a prophet. Islam, feverishly driven on to carry out its boundless mission, first overthrew the neo-Persian kingdom of the Sassanids. Next it severed from Eastern Rome Palestine, Syria, Egypt and the land of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Then during the eighth century it reached out to northern Africa and Spain. Mo- hammed died in Modena during 632. A hundred years later, his Arabian followers invaded southern France. It was a tense moment in human history, for Christianity, Germanic and Roman culture were in the balance. Then Charles Martel, the "Hammer," and his Franks defeated the Mohammedans in the Battle of Tours. The greatest

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gain which a rescued Europe derived from this victory was a con- sciousness of unity, a consciousness which implied a summons to unite against the alien, and yet so related, world power. This it also was which, despite all the weakening relapses that followed, gave the spir- itual monarchy of the Papacy new strength and the chance to carry out more easily the plans to bring about Christian solidarity.

About this time Rome was involved in a complicated struggle be- tween varied forces. Though the Lombards had become Catholic, they had nevertheless twice taken the field against the Eternal City within ten years. In 729, Gregory the Second induced their king Liutprand to depart, but in 739 the Lombards sacked St. Peter's Ca- thedral. No help could be expected from Constantinople, for there the Iconoclasts had been in rebellion since 726 and Rome was strongly opposed to the Emperor's view of Iconoclasm. Then Gregory III, a Syrian, turned for help to Charles Martel. One urgent letter fol- lowed the other, but the Prankish king also would not help because Liutprand was his only ally in the new wars against the Arabs in the Provence. When Pope Zacharias ascended the throne during the year Charles died, he made some progress but could not reach a lasting peace with his assailants. Suddenly, however, Franconian policy needed the spiritual aid of Rome; and now everything on both sides of the Alps took a new turn.

Charles Martel had risen to the dignity of a royal major-domo in Austria, his part of the Empire; and the Prankish dominion had been extended over the Frisians, Saxons, Bavarians, Allemans and Aqui- tanians. Support came from the nobility from which Charles him- self had risen. Soon the real power no longer lay with the exhausted Merovingian dynasty but was in the hands of the major-domo. Nev- ertheless, the last shadow of this dynasty still called himself king when Charles MarteTs son Pepin took over the whole Empire after his co- heir and brother Carloman became a monk in 747 and renounced the throne. Who was the king? He who had the power or he who bore the name? Pepin was determined to rule and sent two ecclesias- tical prelates to Rome with these questions. Pope Zacharias, a Greek, a learned man, a strong mind, a person of noble distinction, was then in office. Throughout the decade of his reign (741^752) Boniface, the Anglo-Saxon missionary, proceeded with his reform of the Church

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within the Prankish realm. From the beginning this had stood only in loose relationship with Rome and had fallen a victim half to its own riches and half to the passions of the Merovingian dynasty or of the nobility. Charles Martel had helped to rid it of earthly goods by making presents to his vassals, but he had done nothing to free it from the pressure and whims of the state. Even Pepin, who had gone to school to the monks of Saint-Denis, considered himself elected the ruler of the Church, though he based his view on what he con- sidered the duties of a prince. Boniface and the Pope taught him otherwise. He was willing to listen (as was his brother Carloman, die lord of Austrasia) doubtless because he had seen for himself that only the Church could save the state from complete collapse. This Church could not be the Prankish Church as it was, since this had become no more than a function of the state and was therefore equally sick unto death, but only the full power of living religion as the Anglo- Saxons, acting hand in hand with Rome, were awakening it in the people. The reform passed from Carloman's German Austrasia to the region governed by Pepin. But Pepin seemed none too eager to welcome the new system. Though he asked the Pope countless ques- tions, he obeyed instructions sent from Rome only when they suited him. Meanwhile Pope Zacharias did not cease to insist that his in- structions be followed. If the work of building up the unified Ger- man Church under the leadership of Rome was to succeed, the power and the authority of the Lord of the Empire were needed.

The question which Pepin had originally sent to the Pope was supported by the nobles and the people, for this chieftain undertook nothing of importance without assurance of the people's support. It testifies to the high regard in which the Roman See was then held. The pioneer in the effort to restore Papal influence was Boniface, who was actuated by a profound faith in the Papacy and its divine origin. This faith he had brought with him to Europe from the British Isles. As a monk of the Order of Benedict, he belonged to the Anglo- Saxon Church which under Gregory the Great had again united itself most intimately with Rome, gradually overcoming that ancient Brit- ish individualism that had grown up during the time when England was cut off from the Empire by the Germanic invasions. Wynnfrith, for that was Boniface's original name, completed in more than thirty

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years of labour a task with which everyone is familiar. As a mis- sionary and organizer, he welded together the peoples that spoke the German language in national unity, and at the same time subordi- nated this unity to Rome. He rendered the greatest possible service to the Church and the peoples of his time: everything said to the contrary later on is mere idle talk. His work proceeded under the protection of Prankish rulers and Roman Popes, and so prepared the way for a union between Church and State and for the major trends of political and ecclesiastical history during the Latino-Germanic Mid- dle Ages. His genius suffered guidance, but he was also able to act as guide towards the city to which all roads lead. The Papacy never had an assistant to whom it owed more. To it he was a pupil, but also a teacher. He served the universal Church, but when he died his last words were in the English tongue. He was a master of politi- cal policy, but when the Frisian sword was lifted to deliver the death blow, the martyr Boniface held the New Testament above his head as a shield.

Pope Zacharias saw that the Church of the Franks had derived new strength from the reform. He was under pressure from the Lom- bards under Aistulf' s command, and he had sundered relations with the iconoclastic East. Accordingly he answered Pepin's question thus: the name "king" belongs to him who is able to be a king. The Prank- ish ruler now felt that his conscience was clean before God and the people. He termed himself a king Dei Gratia, by the grace of God, and was anointed by Boniface. The last Merovingian was sent off to a monastery.

After writing that answer Zacharias died, and now the Lombard danger reached its zenith. Aistulf occupied Ravenna, and his armies appeared outside Rome. Stephen II, a genuine man of the people, walked barefoot with the Cross in his hands at the head of a procession which prayed that the danger might be warded off. The Eastern Emperor was still the Pope's sovereign, and all the possessions of the Church lay within the territories of the old Empire. But the hour was at hand when Stephen had perforce to repeat Gregory Ill's sum- mons for aid. He entrusted a pilgrim with a letter in which he asked Pepin to send an ambassador across the Alps with a request that the Pope visit him. This Pepin did. Under Prankish protection, the

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Pope met Aistulf in Pavia and demanded that the lost territories be restored. The Lombard refused assent, but he dared not prevent Stephen from travelling farther. In midwinter the Pope reached Pon- thion, the Prankish encampment not far from the Marne. He re- quested and accepted protection from the Prankish king. Pepin made a promise in the form of a vow to St. Peter, to protect the Church and its rights. Two congresses, at which a certain amount of resist- ance from the nobles had to be overcome, brought into being the doc- ument incorporating the "Promise of Pepin." It stated that, in case of a victory over the Lombards, the Church would receive a free grant of the acquired territory, would be given dominion over the Duchy, would regain its patrimonies, and would not be obliged to surrender Rome. As protector of Italian territory, Pepin was now in a danger- ous relationship to his Imperial overlord. He received from the Pope the tide of Patricias Romantts, which implied an office in which there lay a temptation to become master of the Church after having been its protector. His new title confirmed the advantages and disadvan- tages Rome was destined to derive from the pact; for although this Prankish monarch kept his promise, made real the "Donation of Pepin" in two military campaigns, and therewith founded the Papal States, he was henceforth not only lord of the Franks but also su- preme master of Italy and co-director of ecclesiastical affairs. During 754, Stephen again anointed Pepin as well as his sons (among them the young Charlemagne), in the Church of Saint-Denis in Paris. Henceforth the Roman liturgy was to be followed at German masses; but on the other hand the Pope in Rome swore allegiance not only to St. Peter, but also to the Prankish king!

Pepin's declaration spoke of "giving back" not of "giving." This expression is surprising when one considers the actual facts. Never previously had the Roman See claimed to be the owner of the regions occupied by the Lombards. It is possible that the new Papal con- ception of a "state of St. Peter and of God's Holy Church" presup- posed a legendary basis for this new enlargement of power, such as we shall soon meet as the "Donation of Constantine." Yet it was not merely the Roman See's craving for an enlargement of its powers, or revival of ancient ambitions of the res publica Romanorum for which the Papacy (sole surviving organ of Roman national feeling) was the

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mouthpiece, that gave the Prankish king a basis in law for "restora- tion" when in 756 he concluded a second peace with the Lombards in Pavia, by which he became the patricius of a realm he far preferred to see in the hands of the Pope than in those of the Lombards or even of the Eastern Emperor.

This step toward separation from Byzantium just one more re- mained to be taken brought the Papacy everything else but free- dom, for Charlemagne followed Pepin. The son resembled the fa- ther in that he felt an urge toward universalism, toward transcending national boundaries; and he was like him also in fostering the idea that temporal power must be sanctioned by spiritual power. The holy oils of the Pope, whom he had ridden out to meet as a boy, had touched his young forehead in Saint-Denis. It mingled more deeply with his blood than the Popes may afterward have wished.

There is a basic religious trend in the political thinking of all times. Again and again in both East and West, philosophers and rulers seek to transform a policy of benevolence into a policy o redemption from the deepest causes of upheaval. The leadership of empires and states must not only make kings mighty or subjects happy and well fed. A feeling that all transitory things are mere symbols, a desire to dispose human affairs according to the Divine plan, sent Asiatics, Greeks and Romans on a quest for a practical politic of the highest kind the realization of an innermost world law believed and known to be good, and the attainment of dimly visualized possessions of unchanging value and permanence. From Isaias to Dante and on to Kant, all wise men and all kings worthy of their name have striven to give peace to the world. In this sequence of efforts, more or less spiritual in character, to order human society in consonance with eternity, there stand Au- gustus, Hadrian, Constantine and Justinian. There Charlemagne also stands. He was given to reflecting upon Augustine's books con- cerning the City of God; and when passages from them were read to him the words fell upon the receptive mind of a German whose race had from time immemorial attributed a sacred character to kingship. But whether or not he realized it, this magic, perhaps even mystical, conception of his dignity was in conflict with the sphere of the spirit- ual monarch of Rome the older ruler in the name of God, whose

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User talk:Mattisse/discussion

Wikinews - facepalm
Hello, Mattisse. I couldn't help noticing your block at en.wikinews, and just wanted to say I'm sorry you've been treated in such a hostile manner. My opinion of Wikinews has reached a new low, it's really disgraceful.

On a lighter note, it's really nice to see you editing here. If you'd ever like a change of pace sometime - you're also welcome to help out at my "home" wiki, Simple Wiktionary, the community's very friendly and needs all the help it can get. Happy editing. :-) Tempodivalse (talk) 16:09, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

 * Wow! It is great to see you!. I wanted to contact you but didn't know how. Do you have an email address? I would benefit from some discussion. Yes, I have been very happy here since July 2010. Mattisse (talk) 16:16, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

 * My email is hidden as a precaution against spam. I've heard too many stories about vandals flooding addresses with profanities. (I also don't check that particular address very often.) I could e-mail you so you'd know my address, if you wish to talk privately; alternatively, we can converse on freenode's IRC sometime - I have my own channel set up at ##Tempodivalse. (Note that I don't use IRC that often though, you probably wouldn't find me unless we arranged some time to talk.) Or, if privacy is not essential, we can use my simple.wiktionary talk page - it's off the beaten track and unlikely to be perused by Wikinews regulars. Tempodivalse (talk) 17:26, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I replied at my talk page. Tempodivalse (talk) 21:07, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
 * (cross-posted) http://webchat.freenode.net/, type in your username and ##Tempodivalse under the channel name. (Unless you use your own chat client?) Tempodivalse (talk) 21:45, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
 * In general though, a wiki talk page is more convenient for me than IRC. I can't be online all the time, there's a high chance of missing me, but I check simple wikt a few times a day for edits and replies. BTW, I responded to your query at my simple.wikt talk page. Tempodivalse (talk) 21:53, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I tried the IRC and can get on the channel but there is no way for me to make an entry. I use Chatzilla, but that freenode IRC has never worked for me. I can't make a remark on it.  Mattisse (talk) 22:06, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

 * I've replied about this issue on my simple wiktionary talk page. Can we move further discussion over there, if that's convenient for you? It's a little hard to coordinate a fragmented conversation over three distinct talk pages. Tempodivalse (talk) 00:49, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, I'd like to suggest that the dispute resolution between yourself and MacNeil is no more likely to be resolved satisfactorily than your previous meditations, or than my disputes with him. The community is immutably set in its erroneous ways; it took me several years to discover that, but I did. It's like a small bubble that refuses to listen to anything the real world around it has to say.
 * You can proceed however you wish, but my advice is to leave the project and not waste your time further; it would be much better spent improving other Wikimedia projects, and contributing to the sum of Knowledge. Tempodivalse (talk) 01:08, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

 * Thank you. You are obviously right. Save myself grief. I do well on the Commons and Wikisource. And I will try out wiktionary etc. It is just so unbelievable, but I will face the fact. Talk about the Land of Oz! Please keep in contact with me. I need some contact and support. Thank you so much. Mattisse (talk) 02:06, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Indeed, it is hard to grasp. I've never seen any Wikimedia project, either in English or any of the other languages I know, be this hostile; Wikinews is detracting from the Foundation's overall image. But, enough of my rants; I'm hard to stop when I start rolling. :-) If you ever need help, please drop me a line at simple.wiktionary - I check in at least once a day. Tempodivalse (talk) 02:25, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Very true. Tony1, a marvelous editor and extremely well respected on wikipedia, was blocked on wikinews. He has discussed with me the prospect of brining the issue of the dysfunction of wikinews to WMF when the time seems right. Mattisse (talk) 05:48, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I complained to the WMF before, but it didn't get far - they were shocked, and posted a strong message at Wikinews in an official capacity (which in itself was heretofore unheard of). However, it was mostly disregarded and no further action was taken, given the Foundation's stance of minimal intervention.

 * If we could gather a group of respected editors willing to complain, our efforts would carry more weight. Requests for comment at Meta-Wiki is a central, cross-wiki venue through which uninvolved, impartial eyes can read and judge complaints. A joint post from several users would be more effective than, say, me posting by myself. Even if the Foundation cannot be prompted to act, the Wikimedia community should be aware of the problem. Tempodivalse (talk) 15:22, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Note
I've enabled the email function on my account at this wiki, if you wish to email me privately; please also see my reply here. Tempodivalse (talk) 03:51, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

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tide was incomparably better established and who had been deprived of nothing by his Lord save only evil and the sword.

But despite all specious reasons for assuming the contrary, Charle- magne was much more important to the Papacy than it was to him. When he took over the reigns of government, Roman factions were fighting for possession of the Holy See. It almost seemed a law of the time that the supernatural dignity of this much coveted office was to be demonstrated by weakening it in every temporal sense. In ac- cordance with Roman requests, Charlemagne sent bishops from his Prankish Empire to the Lateran Synod (769). Immediately the congress decided that henceforth only the clergy were to have the right to vote, and that no layman could be elected. As a consequence the ruler laid hands on everything on Italy and its Pope. Stephen III was greatly alarmed when he confronted a new union of the Prankish and Lombard dynasties. He protested in vain. In 770, Charle- magne was betrothed to the daughter of Desiderius. Therewith he forced the Pope to make a sham peace with the Lombard king, who was sure his new hopes for Italian possessions had the support of a strong faction in Rome. Then there followed a sudden change in the situa- tion which liberated the Papacy from the Lombards forever, but at the same time made it dependent upon the liberator. Charlemagne an- nulled his marriage and sent the young wife back to her father. De- siderius now tried to enkindle a rebellion in the Prankish territory of his mortal enemy. He sought to induce Pope Hadrian I to anoint with the oils of kingship the disinherited children of Charlemagne's brother, who together with their mother had found a place of refuge at the Lombard court. But in Rome he met the revenge of a Prankish faction whose leader he had blinded and put to death in order to gain a victory for the Lombard faction under Paul Asiarta. Pope Hadrian clung firmly to the policy of alliance with the Franks and reinforced this decison by turning over Asiarta to the courts, which condemned him to death on a charge of murder. Thereupon Desiderius occupied cities in the Papal territory and vowed that he would take Rome by storm.

Summoned by Hadrian, Charlemagne destroyed the tottering kingdom of Desiderius and proclaimed himself ruler o the Lombards. In 774 he concluded his victorious campaign with an Easter pilgrimage

CHARLEMAGNE

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to Rome. The frightened city opened its gates only after he had promised it security. There followed a day of rejoicing. He was welcomed with all the banners of the militia and the city organizations. Young people swarmed about him, carrying palms and olive branches. On the steps of St. Peter's Church, Pope and King met and embraced. The singing of Benedicts qui venit in nomine Domini filled the nave as they entered. A few days later the "Donation of Pepin" was re- affirmed in the basilica, and the deed incorporating it was signed by Charlemagne and laid at the grave of Peter. It gave the Pope no new advantage other than security, and even this took the form of con- firmation from the hand of him who was the master of what had been given. Though both parted good friends, this first expression of German romantic feeling for Rome implied as little concerning Charle- magne's relations to the Papacy as did his later visits and meetings with the Pope.

Everyone knows how he cleared a path for the Cross with his sword during the years that followed. This conqueror was a missionary and an educator. As a king he added steadily to the dominions of the Church, which seemed to this passionate friend of progress the supreme thought and the primal force behind everything done to strengthen either the Empire or the activities of the human mind. In the spirit of the ancient Prophets, he unearthed the ethical element in religion and therewith imbued the Romanism, of which he himself had so deep an experience, with German seriousness on German soil. On the other hand he bound the strong moral treasure of his Germans to the world of ecclesiastical symbols and laws, stemming the dangers of the trend ad intra (which Schiller terms a German trait) by es- tablishing religious dogma as the barrier to endless roaming amid the infinite.

Men's feelings had been dominated by the Christian message long before his time; and even in times of Merovingian worldliness men had wanted to feel the breath of the Church upon them in difficult hours. The dying had put on penitential robes after their final con- fessions, had asked to lie on beds of ashes, and had received the Eu- charist before "joining the wild army' 1 or riding "to the old company." But the kind of religion which Charlemagne spread in the wake of Willibrord and Wynnfrith was a greater moral force, was of a more

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lucid intellectual substance. Through the artists and scholars who lived at his court he fostered the work of the Carolingian renaissance, about which so many debates have been held. It was an attempt to make available to the present surviving remnants of antique culture. Undoubtedly it had a dash of pedantry, of awkward ceremoniousness before strange gods. It can be criticized for having prevented or at least staved off the birth and growth of a native, national culture. All this, however, is useless fault-finding with history, and obscures one's insight into the true mission of that epoch. Had it not been for the broad vision of a ruler who did not cease to be Franconian with his whole heart when he raised antique culture out of oblivion, there would have been no mediaeval age of German minsters, no second Renaissance, no culture at the French courts, no baroque art and no German clas- sicism. The alien Latin mind to which he played the nurse fostered the European universalism of the Church and therewith also the Euro- pean consciousness. Beyond that he strengthened the vision of the inner unity of culture when he placed it under the aegis of Christen- dom. Charlemagne must be given his full share of credit whenever after his time the lyre and the sword are in harmony and when both of them consort with the Cross. For him everything was so unques- tionably subordinate to the idea of the One Kingdom of God, whom all that is earthly must serve, that he was not conscious of a sharp conflict between the worldly and the spiritual. "The monks at his court also say without hesitation: it is immaterial for the salvation of a man whether he live in a monastery or in the world." It seems that many of his people were rendered happy by a feeling that they dwelt in the peace of a theocratically ordered existence. A poet of his day wrote that though elsewhere in the world men praised the ages of gold, everybody in the kingdom of the Franks held that the present was far superior to the past.

Charlemagne's kingdom was theocratic and it is in this sense that the position of its ruler must be understood. In his first edict he referred to himself as anointed through the grace of God; and these words possessed for him all the ancient significance. He knew that he was the leader of Christendom, not merely of his own people; and the theologians in his circle called him the new David, viceroy of God, or viceroy of Christ. He made the law of the Church the law of

THEOCRACY

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the realm. He required his subjects to swear an oath of allegiance to their ruler, in which at the same time they vowed to live a life ac- cording to God's commandments. Sternly and gently alike he im- posed his will as rector ecclesiee upon minds throughout his kingdom, and so provided for the education of clergy, the monks and people. His broad regulations for the conduct of the ecclesiastical and worldly estates formed a program binding his peoples to the divine law. There is, for example, his famous message of 789, which a thousand years before the proclamation of the rights of man by the Paris assembly, called itself a warning of love and looked upon kingship by the grace of God as a duty in which arrogance has no part. In this message Charlemagne termed himself the humble protector of the Church and the supporter of the Apostolic See in all things. In reality he regarded himself as the divinely appointed monarch of an Empire to which a theocratic authority of the Imperial Church gave the character of an ecclesiastical Empire. In this conception there was no room for a powerful, or even an independent Papacy. Charlemagne did not question the Roman primacy, indeed he saw in it the source and safe- guard of true doctrine. He clung strictly to the dogma of the Roman Church, made the divine service he attended conform more and more fully to the Roman model, and insisted upon a similar conformity in outward things, even to the kind of shoes his clergy wore. Yet in spite of this unconditional recognition of Rome as the religious norm, he beheld in the Pope merely the first among all the bishops the praying Moses, for whose sake God granted success to the conquering, law-giving arm of the Imperial master.

The Popes were forced to put up with not only the political su- premacy of the patricius in so far as the worldly possessions of the Roman See were concerned but also with what he desired in his capacity as sovereign within the Church. A conflict concerning images re- vealed the deep inner contradictions and the fragility of the new rela- tionship which had been established between Rome and the Empire of the Franks. It was a religious struggle fought out between two camps, but it was also a political struggle in which three powers clashed.

Emperor Leo III, the founder of the Isaurian dynasty, had gained a victory over the Mohammedan Saracens and then set about reforming his decaying Byzantine Empire. A tendency to look upon matters

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86 of the cult with a sensitive Semitic rigour appeared in reaction against the boundless, superstitious veneration of holy images, against which Gregory the Great had already warned the West. The Emperor, who was won over to this point of view, loosed a destructive wave of Iconoclasm, possibly because he wished to curry favour with his Iconoclastic Islamic neighbours. The consequence was that during the reign of his son, Constantine Copronymus, there followed a cruel persecution of the monastic opposition. It was not until the widowed regent, Irene, intervened that a temporary truce was established. Under her regency the Second General Council of Nice restored the Catholic rule in 787, and the veneration of images was again declared legitimate in the East.

At this Council two Roman legates also spoke in the name of Pope Hadrian. His predecessors had already defended the old custom against the East, fully conscious as they were that the Church of the West was gaining new political strength and that there was a general trend toward separation from Imperial territories so overburdened with taxes. But now decisions of the Council met with resistance from the Franks. Charlemagne, through his theologians, fought against the Eastern way of venerating religious images. The reason was not merely that wholly misleading translations of the documents set before him had given him to understand that not merely veneration, but actual worship of the images had been permitted. It was also and primarily an attitude of jealousy toward Byzantium as well as a goodly measure of annoyance at the role which the Pope had played in this matter. While Prankish ambassadors resided in Constantinople to promote the betrothal of Charlemagne's daughter to the son of Irene, preparations for the Council were under way. This circumstance and the fact that he was the powerful lord of Western Christianity sufficed to make him certain that he would be asked to share in the synod, which was of a universal character. But Irene did not extend an invitation to the Prankish Church, obviously because Pope Hadrian had sought to keep Charlemagne out. This and in all probability other incidents that had followed the engagement, induced Charlemagne to break it off and thereupon to adopt an openly hostile attitude towards Byzantium. When the Council announced its decisions, he answered with a statement of opposing views drawn up by his theologians. A

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biting north wind blows through the pages of these Libri Carolini, Charlemagne demanded that the Pope repudiate a Council which, not having consulted him who by the grace of God was King of the Franks, ruler over Gaul, Germany, Italy and the neighbouring prov- inces, and to whom there had been entrusted the guidance of the Church through the stormy seas of this world, had thus gone utterly astray. There could be no doubt (the Libri said), that the Franks were in agreement with the true teaching of the Roman Church, whose primacy they had always recognized; but the Greeks had deviated from the truth. The situation was ominously grave. Pope Hadrian, resorting to a moderate position, defended the Council against Charle- magne's attack and warded off his interference in the teaching office of the Church. But he himself weakened the force of his argument by making the quite improper suggestion that if the King so willed, he would nevertheless declare the Emperor a heretic if he refused to restore certain possessions of the Church. Charlemagne thus obtained the last word in this struggle, and he used it as a telling trump card against the Pope. Insisting upon his authority to guide the Church aright, he summoned a General Council of the West to Frankfort in 794. This repudiated what had been done at Nice and opposed to the decisions of the Greeks concerning which, of course, he was grievously in error new decisions by the Prankish Church.

Hadrian died during the following year. The coins which he had struck after Charlemagne's second visit to Rome in 781 as well as the new practice adopted by the Papal chancellery of reckoning years from the beginning of Charlemagne's reign, proved to the East that it had lost the battle of the images, the last test of strength between the Em- peror and the Church, and that the Prankish kingdom was now quite as powerful as the Byzantine realm. Soon the new Pope Leo III found out how wisely his predecessors had acted when they avoided a breach with the Franks. He sent the king a copy of the electoral returns together with a vow of loyalty, added the keys to the grave of Peter and the banner of Rome, and requested in return that Charle- magne send ambassadors to receive proofs of Rome's goodwill. Char- lemagne acceded and sent Leo gifts consisting of parts of the booty taken in the wars against the Avars. The Pope caused a new mosaic to be placed in the rectory of the Lateran Palace, portraying his con-

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ception of the harmony existing between the two powers. Above the niche picture depicting the sending of the apostles by the Master, one saw on the left hand Christ giving the keys to Peter, and the banner with the cross to Constantine. On the right hand, Peter was shown giving the kneeling Pope the pallium and the likewise kneeling Prankish king a pointed flag shaped like a lance. But soon afterward, during the spring of 799, a conspiracy organized by relatives of Hadrian brought Leo into dire straits. According to an ancient custom, he was on horseback at the head of the St. Mark's Day procession; and he was set upon by his enemies, who tore off his robes and dragged him away to a monastery. With the help of his companions he escaped by climbing down a rope and went back to St. Peter's. Worse than the attack itself was the reason advanced for it that the Pope had been guilty of adultery and perjury.

Leo fled to Charlemagne's court at Paderborn. There the whole incident was already known. Soon there also appeared legates of the attacking party. The King s circle held diverse opinions regarding what should be done. Some believed that the accused pontiff was innocent and others doubted it. But was it legitimate to sit in judg- ment over the Apostolic See? What Pope would be secure if Roman factions were allowed to dethrone a Pontiff they disliked? Would it not be best to induce Leo to retire quiedy? Or ought one to demand that the Pope swear an oath to prove his innocence, since the reproaches made against him were so grave and so specific? Charlemagne could not make up his mind and mistrusted both sides. He demanded that an investigation be made in Rome and sent the bishops and nobles who were to undertake that investigation back to the city with Leo. The inquiry could prove so little that the German judges refused to commit themselves. The leaders of the rebellion were not executed but were sent across the Alps to Charlemagne. Then he himself made the journey to the Eternal City during November of 800. Anxious to rescue the Pope, if that were possible, he presented him with the alternative of retiring or cleansing himself by swearing a solemn oath. Thereupon Leo vowed his innocence in the pulpit of St. Peter's, and this action was accepted as a vindication. The de- feated antagonists were condemned to death by Charlemagne, but he thereupon pardoned them. Thus he protected the highest office on

CHARLEMAGNE

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earth from the gravest attacks that had been made upon it, transferred the moral responsibility for the solution of this dark affair to the person of the accused, treated the plaintiffs justly and mercifully alike, and stood before the humbled Pope as his judging sovereign.

On the same day, the 23d of December, monks of Jerusalem (where the Caliph of Bagdad now lorded it over the Christians) paid homage to the King of the Franks and in the name of the Patriarchs of Con- stantinople sent him a flag and the keys of Jerusalem and the holy places. Therewith the Church of the East requested the protection of the bulwark of all Christendom. What more did Charlemagne need to become all-powerful in lands professing the Christian name? Two days later the Pope surprised him with a Christmas gift just as he was rising from prayer at the grave of the Apostles: it was the Im- perial crown. The jubilant acclamation of the people was directed to this most pious Augustus, the great Emperor, whom God had crowned and who would bring peace. Before him Leo genuflected in homage, according to the Byzantine custom. Through this sudden occurrence the Roman-German Empire came into being.

We of the present do not know what caused the Pope to act thus or what role the ruler who was crowned played in the matter. There are witnesses who assert that Charlemagne had not wanted such a crown at all. It is usually said that neither Pope nor Emperor was accorded a status essentially different, and that die balance of power remained what it had been. That may be true, but the strongest force in history is not the mere event but the response which men make to that event. Though Charlemagne did not actually possess more or consider himself more after he had obtained the Imperial crown, Christendom as a whole received, because of that crown, a deeper con- ception of the dignity of its protector and a new reason for believing that the old Empire had been transferred to the Franks in accordance with the will of Providence. Certainly the Papacy gained whether the monarch did or not. The fact that the Pope acted as one who bestowed the crown surrounded him with an aura of supernal power regardless of whether the monarch was informed in advance of the coronation or whether it came as a surprise to him. In the eyes of the world the Papacy was now identified with the idea that the temporal power received its loftiest consecration and confirmation from the

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spiritual power. Possibly the Pope did not act so subtly, but the fact remained that the Lateran mosaic which pictures the two powers kneeling in equal rank before Christ and Peter had already been ren- dered obsolete. Just a few days previous Leo had awaited the verdict of his judge. Now that judge was of lower rank than he.

As Emperor, Charlemagne continued to govern the Church as he had governed it when he was only a king. He brought to it a pros- perity so great that since his time the Papacy has seldom been able to achieve anything comparable. He ploughed the Roman field and sowed the seed of its future greatness. But the unification of powers which he assumed proved no unmingled blessing in this theocracy. By enlisting his clergy, particularly the prelates, for the business of the state on equal terms with the other officials, and by conferring on them especial rights and privileges, Charlemagne unwittingly paved the way for a worldliness that would seriously impair the social structure. Indeed the disease would have become incurable later, had there not been a Papacy not subservient to an Emperor.

Hardly had Charlemagne been laid in his grave than the Empire and the Imperial authority weakened in the hands of his quarrelling heirs. A party of spiritual and temporal nobles was gradually or- ganized on the basis of common conviction that only across the Alps was there a centre where the conception of universal unity remained alive amidst the all-surrounding decay. Another faction clung to the spirit of Charlemagne and bluntly opposed the Pope when he refused to do the Imperial bidding. But Rome gradually rose from its position of subservience; it had only drawn back in order to prepare for a resurgence soon to follow. The Popes who ruled during the first half of the ninth century were not great men but they were con- scious of the duties incumbent on their office.

In all probability the notorious document known as the "Donation of Constantine" dates from the first years of the reign of Louis the Pious, the son of Charlemagne by Hildegarde. It is a forgery which purports to be a document executed by Constantine the Great in favour of Pope Sylvester I and the Roman Church. It states that out of gratitude to the Pope, who had converted, baptized and healed him of the plague, the Emperor had confirmed the subservience of all the churches of the world, including the four Oriental Patriarchies,

THE "

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