As noted in our article last week on the "Holy Roman Empire," Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day, 800 A.D. Charlemagne had done wonderful deeds for the Church of Rome, as already noted; and on that memorable day he was kneeling in worship in the basilica of St. Peter in the city of Rome, when the pope rose and placed the crown upon him, saying as he did it, "To Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned of God, the great and peace-giving emperor, be life and victory." The story goes, altho it is questioned by many, that this crowning by the pope was without the previous knowledge or consent of Charles, but a sudden impulse or inspiration had seized him to do it, and hence he expressed it as "crowned of God."
To use the expression of Mr. Bryce in his volume on the "Holy Roman Empire:" "As Constantine founds so Charles erects on a firmer basis the connection of Church and State. . . . Again, it was by him first that the payment of tithes, for which the priesthood had long been pleading, was made compulsory in Western Europe, and the support of the ministers of religion recognized as a legally binding obligation." The idea of a holy or ecclesiastical empire had taken deep hold on the minds of men in general, and Charles himself took the question with serious solemnity. A sentence from Archbishop Trench reads: "Nor is it without its meaning that in the familiar circle of his intimate friends, in which each was called by some name, Scriptural or classical, which he had assumed, 'King David' was that by which Charles was willing to be known."
Rome's greatness during the period of her greatest glory had left a deep impression on the minds of men. Even the barbarians that came down from the North and broke up the old Roman Empire were so impressed by her greatness and grandeur that they thought she must in some way stand forever. And even tho the Northern barbarians had parceled up her territory, and even tho the ruin was being rendered more complete by the incursions of the Mohammedans, yet there was the exceedingly strong impression that Rome must endure till the end of time. With many there was the conviction that the passing of Rome would mean the end of the world. And when Charles the Great (Charlemagne) united his wonderful abilities and influence with the Papacy, it was an easy matter for them to turn this sentiment concerning the old Roman world into the forming of an ecclesiastical empire. A paragraph from Trench will give something of the historian's view of the greatness of the influence of Charles:
This casting of the whole weight of the Frankish monarchy into the Roman scale was one of the determining facts of medieval history. Charles, when he wrought this deliverance, already bore the title of patrician of Rome; this title, whatever it may have meant, having been first bestowed by a grateful pope upon his father. But Charles' relations with the Papacy were destined to be more intimate still. "The new Constantine," as he was
often called, he made over by donation to the Roman see large portions of the territory conquered by the Lombards from the Greeks, and now wrested by him from the Lombards. He was thus, with his father who had already done something of the same kind, tho on a more limited scale, the founder of the temporal dominion of the bishops of Rome,—the so-called patrimony of St. Peter dating back to this time.—"Mediaeval Church History," page 79.
Charles and Leo III having thus united in forming the "Holy Empire," they also took the step of reversing the act of Constantine by which he had removed the civil head of Rome to Constantinople. The city of Rome is made the head, both civil and ecclesiastical, of this new "Holy Roman Empire," and the emperor should be crowned there, even tho his official residence is elsewhere. The notions of the heathen that there were many gods of many kinds had now been supplanted, at least in their theories, by the doctrine that there was but one God. A paragraph from Bryce summarizes their views on the universality of the church of this new empire:
The doctrine of the unity of God now enforced the unity of man, who had been created in His image. The first lesson of Christianity was love, a love that was to join in one body those whom suspicion and prejudice and pride of race had hitherto kept apart. There was thus formed by the new religion a community of the faithful, a "Holy Empire," designed to gather all men into its bosom, and standing opposed to the manifold polytheisms of the older world, exactly as the universal sway of the Caesars was contrasted with the innumerable kingdoms and city republics that had gone before it. The analogy of the two movements made them appear parts of one great world-movement towards unity: the coincidence of their boundaries, which had begun before Constantine, lasted long enough after him to associate them indissolubly together, and make the names of Roman and Christian convertible.
Men who were already disposed (for reasons set forth above) to believe the Roman Empire to be eternal, came, under influences of far greater power, to believe the church, founded by the ever-living Son and guided by the ever-present Spirit of God, to be also eternal. Seeing the two institutions allied and conterminous, they took their alliance and interdependence to be equally eternal; and went on for centuries believing in the necessary existence of the Roman Empire, because they believed in its necessary union with the Catholic Church.—"The Holy Roman Empire," edition 1907, pages 33, 34.
The "Holy Roman Empire" being thus so strongly and so broadly established by the great power of Charles at the head of his ever-victorious and all-convincing armies, as the days wore on half the property of the empire is said to have been gathered into the hands of the churchmen. The greatness of the Rome of the Caesars is transferred to the "universal church" that has become an essential part of the great empire.
The visible church on earth must have its secular side, so they theorized, and the "Holy Roman Empire" was a necessary counterpart of the "Holy Catholic Church." But when this alliance of Church and State was formed by Charles and Leo it was with the distinct understanding that the State was at the head and the church must obey the dictates of the civil ruler. No pope could be legitimately installed in office until he had received the endorsement of the emperor of the "Holy Empire;" and in like manner the emperor must receive his crown from the pope. The first great emperor of
this "Holy Empire" had received his crown from the pope, and to this was added that he had also received it from God, since the theory was that the pope was the representative of God upon earth. And if the first emperor received his crown in this way, certainly all the rest that followed should.
It is a peculiar thing that this "Holy Empire" became a fixed thing in the minds of men the world over. As has already been intimated, the first of these "holy emperors" was a Teuton and more of a German than a Frank. And while in theory the office of emperor of the "Holy Empire" was open to all the world, yet in practise it was confined to the German nation. England, Spain, France, Denmark, and all the rest of the nations recognized it and had their part in the election of the emperor of this invisible empire.
Each nation that thus recognized this ecclesiastical empire, attended to its own affairs as if no such empire existed. For the "holy emperor" was not ruler of any one nation in particular, but was a sort of general ruler in behalf of the church over the whole world. In a sense this "Holy Empire" was only a fiction in the minds of men. But, says Bryce, "Never by their fiercest enemies in earlier times, not once by popes or Lombard republics in the heat of their strife with the Franconian and Swabian Caesars, had the emperors been reproached as mere German kings, or their claim to be the lawful heirs of Rome denied. The Protestant jurists of the seventeenth century were the first persons who ventured to scoff at the pretended lordship of the world, and declare their empire to be nothing more than a German monarchy."
As already stated, the civil power of the emperor was made supreme at the outset, and the church was a kind of fief or dependency, answerable to the civil ruler the same as any of the feudal lords of the middle ages. But the bishops, being relieved from the fears of the powers that threatened their destruction in the days of Charles, were not long in advancing the doctrine that the "vicar of God" should not be amenable to any human tribunal. Instead, all human authority should bow before the Roman pontiff. There were the two swords, the one to represent the civil and the other the spiritual power, and these were both in the hands of the church. And following these sentiments, Gregory VII in 1073 seized the power of choosing and crowning the pope, and his election was placed for all time in the College of Cardinals.
When the church thus usurped the civil authority, and taught that the State must bow before her, then followed the most terrible days of the Inquisition and the horrible persecutions that were inflicted upon them who refused to yield their individuality and their consciences to the bishop at Rome. And thus it remained till the great Reformation broke this power by preaching the freedom that there is in Jesus Christ through the Gospel.
Next week we will give some of the evidence that shows that the Protestant Reformation, that set so many captives free, became in its turn another despotism, and in many places established what amounted to a Protestant Papacy.
