ADRIAN II

N1icholas was succeeded (November, 867) by Adrian II, a rigid and lofty churchman, who, though his policy at first appeared doubtful, resolutely maintained, but not with equal judgment and success, the principles of his predecessor. Adrian (he was now seventy-five years old) had been married before he became a priest. At the intercession of the emperor Louis, he took off the ban of excommunication from Waldrada, and restored her to the communion of the church. By this lenity he might seem to lure King Lothair to the last act of submission. The king of Lorraine arrived in Italy. The pope seemed to yield to the influence of Louis and the empress Ingelberga; at least he accepted the munificent presents of the king.

2[Sidenote: [869-876 A.D.]]

3From Monte Cassino, where they first met, Lothair followed the pope to Rome. There, instead of being received as a king, and as one reconciled with the see of Rome, when he entered the church all was silent and vacant; not one of the clergy appeared; he retired to a neighbouring chamber, which was not even swept for his reception. The next day was Sunday, and he hoped to hear the mass chanted before him. The pope refused him this honour. He dined, however, the next day with the pope, and an interchange of presents took place. At length Adrian consented to admit him to the communion.

4Pope Adrian seized the occasion of the contest for the kingdom of Lothair to advance still more daring and unprecedented pretensions. But the world was not yet ripe for this broad and naked assertion of secular power by the pope, his claim to interfere in the disposal of kingdoms. Directly he left the strong ground of moral and religious authority, from which his predecessor Nicholas had commanded the world, he encountered insurmountable resistance. With all that remained of just and generous sympathy on their side popes might intermeddle in the domestic relations of kings; they were not permitted as yet to touch the question of royal succession or inheritance. The royal and the episcopal power had quailed before Nicholas; the fulminations of Adrian were treated with contempt or indifference: and Hincmar of Rheims in this quarrel with Adrian regained that independence and ascendency which had been obscured by his temporary submission to Nicholas.

5Nicholas I and Adrian II thus, with different success, imperiously dictating to sovereigns, ruling or attempting to rule the higher clergy in foreign countries with a despotic sway, mingling in the political revolutions of Europe, awarding crowns, and adjudging kingly inheritances, might seem the immediate ancestors of Gregory VII, of Innocent III, of Boniface VIII. But the papacy had to undergo a period of gloom and degradation, even of guilt, before it emerged again to its height of power.

6The pontificate of John VIII (872) is the turning-point in this gradual, but rapid and almost total change; among its causes were the extinction of the imperial branch of the Carlovingian race and the frequent transference of the empire from one line of sovereigns to another; with the growth of the formidable dukes and counts in Italy, which overshadowed the papal power and reduced the pope himself to the slave or the victim of one of the contending factions. The pope was elected, deposed, imprisoned, murdered. In the wild turbulence of the times not merely the reverence but the sanctity of his character disappeared. He sank to the common level of mortals; and the head of Christendom was as fierce and licentious as the petty princes who surrounded him, out of whose stock he sprang, and whose habits he did not break off when raised to the papal throne.

7John VIII, however, still stood on the vantage ground occupied by Nicholas I and Adrian II. He was a Roman by birth. He signalised his pontificate by an act even more imposing than those of his predecessors, the nomination to the empire, which his language represented rather as a grant from the papal authority than as an hereditary dignity; it was a direct gift from heaven, conveyed at the will of the pope. Already there appear indications of a French and German interest contending for the papal influence which grows into more and more decided faction, till the Carlovingian empire is united, soon to be dissolved forever, in the person of Charles the Fat. John VIII adopted the dangerous policy of a partial adherence to France. But the historians are almost unanimous as to the price which Charles was compelled to pay for his imperial crown. He bought the pope, he bought the senators of Rome; he bought, if we might venture to take the words to the letter, St. Peter himself.

8[Sidenote: [876-878 A.D.]]

9The imperial reign of Charles the Bald was short and inglorious. The whole pontificate of John VIII was a long, if at times interrupted, agony of apprehension lest Rome should fall into the hands of the unbeliever. The reign of the late emperor Louis had been almost a continual warfare against the Mohammedans, who had now obtained a firm footing in southern Italy. He had successfully repelled their progress, but at the death of Louis Rome was again in danger of becoming a Mohammedan city. The pope wrote letter after letter in the most urgent and feeling language to Charles the Bald soon after he had invested him with the empire. “If all the trees in the forest,” such is the style of the pope, “were turned into tongues, they could not describe the ravages of these impious pagans; the devout people of God are destroyed by a continual slaughter; he who escapes the fire and the sword is carried as a captive into exile. Cities, castles, and villages are utterly wasted, and without an inhabitant. The bishops are wandering about in beggary, or fly to Rome as the only place of refuge.”

10Yet, if possible, even more formidable than the infidels were the petty Christian princes of Italy. “The canker-worm eats what the locust has left.” In many parts of Italy had gradually arisen independent dukedoms; and none of these appear to have felt any religious respect for the pope, some not for Christianity. On the vacancy after the death of Pope Nicholas, Lambert of Spoleto had occupied and pillaged Rome, respecting neither monastery nor church, and carrying off a great number of young females of the highest rank. Adelchis, the duke of Benevento, had dared to seize in that city the sacred person of the emperor Louis. He was only permitted to leave the city after he had taken a solemn oath to Adelchis--an oath in which his wife, his daughter, and all his attendants were compelled to join--that he would neither in his own person nor by any other revenge this act of insolent rebellion. No sooner, however, had Louis reached Ravenna in safety than he sent to the pope to absolve him from his oath. Adrian II, then pope, began to assert that dangerous privilege of absolution from solemn and recorded oaths.

11The bishop-duke of Spoleto did not scruple to return to the unhallowed policy of his brother. He entered into a new league with the Saracens, gave them quarters, and actually uniting his troops with theirs, defeated the forces of Benevento, Capua, and Salerno, and opened a free passage for their incursions to the gates of Rome.

12The imperial crown was again vacant, and claimed by the conflicting houses of France and Germany. But Carloman, son of Ludwig of Germany, had been acknowledged as king of Italy. Probably as partisans of the German, and to compel the pope to abandon the interest of the French line, to which he adhered with unshaken fidelity, Lambert, duke of Spoleto, that antichrist, as the pope described him, with his adulterous sister, Richildis, and his accomplice, the treacherous Adalbert, count of Tuscany, at the head of an irresistible force, entered Rome, seized and confined the pope, and endeavoured to starve him into concession, and compelled the clergy and the Romans to take an oath of allegiance to Carloman, as king of Italy. For thirty days the religious services were interrupted; not a single lamp burned on the altars.

13[Sidenote: [878-891 A.D.]]

14No sooner had they retired than the pope caused all the sacred treasures to be conveyed from St. Peter’s to the Lateran, covered the altar of St. Peter with sackcloth, closed the doors, and refused to permit the pilgrims from distant lands to approach the shrine. He then fled to Ostia, and embarked for France.

15When he reached the shores of Provence, John VIII felt himself in another world. Instead of turbulent and lawless enemies (such were the counts and dukes of Italy) whose rapacity or animosity paid no respect to sacred things, and treated the pope like an ordinary mortal, the whole kingdom of France might seem to throw itself humbly at his feet. No pope was more prodigal of excommunication than John VIII. Of his letters (above three hundred) it is remarkable how large a proportion threaten, inflict, or at least allude to this last exercise of sacerdotal power.

16The indefatigable pope returned over the Alps by the Mont Cenis, to Turin and Pavia; but of all whom he had so commandingly exhorted, and so earnestly implored to march for his protection against the Saracens, and no doubt against his Italian enemies, none obeyed but Duke Boson of Provence. The Saracens, in the meantime, courted by all parties, impartially plundered all, made or broke alliances with the same facility with the Christians, while the poor monks, even of St. Benedict’s own foundation, lived in perpetual fear of spoliation. The last days of John VIII were occupied in writing more and more urgent letters for aid to Charles the Fat, in warfare, or providing means of war against his Saracen and Christian foes, or dealing excommunications on all sides; yet facing with gallant resolution the foes of his person and his power. This violent pope is said (but by one writer only) to have come to a violent end; his brains were beaten out with a mallet by some enemy, covetous of his wealth and ambitious of the papal crown.

17The short pontificate of Marinus (Marinus I or Martin II) was followed by the still shorter rule of Adrian III, which lasted but fourteen months. That of Stephen V, though not of longer duration, witnessed events of far more importance to the papacy, to Italy, and to Christendom. On the death of Charles the Fat, the ill-cemented edifice of the Carlovingian Empire, the discordant materials of which had reunited, not by natural affinity but almost by the force of accident, dissolved again and forever. The legitimate race of Charlemagne expired in the person of his unworthy descendant, whose name, derived from mere physical bulk, contrasted with the mental greatness, the commanding qualities of military, administrative, and even intellectual superiority which had blended with the name of the first Charles the appellation of the Great.