dated resources.; found some latent power which brought it back to its commanding superiority. It ever retrieved its losses, revenged itself for its humiliations, and still grew on under every, it might seem, fatal change in the political atmosphere.

France and part of Germany, but especially France, had become a kind of feudal theocracy. Ecclesiastical councils almost superseded the Diets of the nation." Bishops and abbots, themselves nobly born, outnumbered the temporal nobles. The descendants. of Charlemagne were surrounded by a tonsured, not an armed aristocracy; the greater part of the royal army was levied by the prelates of the Church. Even the royal family, ambitious of real power, were constantly intruding themselves into the more wealthy bishoprics or abbacies..

The superiority of the clergy even over the Crown was openly and distinctly asserted. Kings Power. were not exempt from that general obedience

enjoined by the Apostle. The clergy ruled the laity through their vices, but chiefly vices of one kind. They were the appointed, the heaven-delegated guardians of connubial morals; to them belonged all matri

Nithard says, on occasion of the alliance of Charles and Louis against Lothair, "Primum quidem visum est, ut rem ad Episcopos sacerdotesque quorum aderat pars maxima, conferret, ut illorum consultu, veluti numine divino, harum rerum exordium atque auctoritas proderetur."-1. iv. c. i. These were purely secular matters, and this is the usual language. Compare c. iv.

exercised also this power, quotes, as a sentence of Pope Gelasius, that the pontifical is higher than the royal power, because the clergy have to render an account even of kings to God. He cites the restoration of Louis the Pious as an act of episcopal authority.

66 "Nostrâ ætate Hludovicum Augustum a regno dejectum, post satisfactionem, episcopalis unanimitas, saniore concilio, cum populi h Hincmar (De Divortio Hl. et consensu, et ecclesiæ et regno restituit." Theut.), who not only asserted but-p.473.

monial causes; no one, not the highest in the realm, was exempt from their interference. And if their judgements had always been superior to unworthy influences, and if, in these lawless times, they had equally opposed, as some no doubt did, oppression, inhumanity, injustice, their rule might have mitigated far more the ferocious manners, and assisted in blending together the hostile orders and races. But instead of Christianising the world, themselves had become secularised. They were stern barons or haughty dukes, rather than peaceful prelates and humble teachers of the gospel. It might, indeed, seem that, at this time, the only important public affairs were the domestic relations of the Sovereign. That licence which Charlemagne indulged without check or remonstrance, was denied to his feebler descendants. Council after council met on questions of adultery, divorce, and incest. Matrimonial Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, had married successively Ethelwolf, King of England; Ethelbald, her step-son (a connexion which shocked all feeling); and Baldwin, Count of Flanders, who had carried her off and married her with her own consent. Here prudence somewhat checked the moral zeal of the Church. The Pope intercedes in favour of Baldwin, lest he should revolt to the Pagan Normans. Another council, that of Toul, was called to annul the marriage of Stephen, Count of Auvergne, with the daughter of Raimond, Count of Toulouse, because a relation of his wife's had been his mistress. The Pope himself took cognisance, in a council at Rome, of the divorce of Ingeltruda from her husband, Count Boso, by whom she had been abandoned.

causes.

Nicol. Pap. Epist. Carolo Calvo. 862, Nov. 23.

The matrimonial cause, however, which for many years distracted part of France, on which council after council met, and on which the great prelates of Lorraine came into direct collision with the Pope, and were reduced to complete and unpitied humiliation under his authority, was that of King Lothair and his Queen Theutberga.

and Theut

This nobility, at once of race and order, which was the strength of the Carlovingian hierarchy, King Lothair of nobility by birth, and of power by eccle- berga. siastical dignity, was that which was most likely to grow up into natural independence, to resist all foreign supremacy, and, unless met with an intrepid and firm assertion of delegated divine authority, to shake off all subordination. In the struggle with Pope Nicolas the Frank clergy espoused a bad cause, one in which the moral, as well as religious sympathies of mankind were against them. When, in the character of guardians of public and private virtue, they countenanced gross immorality, the abrogation of their unjust decrees by the Pope carried with it the general sentiment. The whole affair is a monstrous tissue of indecency, cruelty, and injustice. To know the times must be known this trial, which so long occupied the clergy of the West.

Lothair II., King of Lorraine, the second son of the Emperor Lothair, had married Theutberga, the daughter of Boso, the powerful Count of Burgundy. Soon after his marriage he had dismissed her, from disinclination or a former attachment, from his court. The popular feeling had compelled him to restore her to her conjugal honours; but he would not bear the yoke. Publicly before the officers and great vassals of his court, he accused her of incest with her brother,

A.D. 860.

VOL. III.

N

Hubert, Abbot of St. Maurice.

m

This revolting charge

was made more loathsome by minute circumstances, contradictory and impossible. Yet on this charge the obsequious nobility, with the consent of the clergy, put the unhappy queen upon her trial. She demanded the ordeal of hot water;" her champion passed through unhurt; and who should presume now to doubt her innocence? She was restored at least to her rank and to outward respect, but treated with such petty and harassing cruelty, that at length the weary woman made a public confession of her impossible crime. A synod of the clergy was convoked at Aix-la-Chapelle; it was attended by the Archbishops of Cologne and Treves; the Bishops of Metz, Tongres, Verdun, Melun, and Autun. Their first decree not only released, but interdicted Lothair from all connexion with his adulterous wife; the second enforced a public penance on the unhappy Theutberga.

Divorce.

But separation alone was not the object of Lothair. He had lived in open concubinage with Waldrada, it has been said, without sufficient proof, the sister of Gunther, Archbishop of Cologne, and niece of Theot

Compare throughout, if thought | brother-in-law made him a duke.— fit, the treatise of Hincmar, De Epist. Benedict III., 857. He seems Divortio Hlotharii et Theutbergæ. to have lived as a layman. The questions submitted to the archbishop are only surpassed in their offensiveness by their absurdity. Hincmar discusses them with minute obscenity, protesting that he and his fellow bishops are entirely ignorant of such matters, and only acquired their knowledge by reading.

m Not from the high character of the abbot, whose discipline at St. Maurice was of the loosest; he lived himself with dancing girls. His

n In Hincmar there is a curious discussion on the ordeal. The archbishop draws a strange mystical analogy with the Deluge, in which the wicked were destroyed by water, the just saved: the fire in which Sodom was destroyed, Lot escaped. The ordeal was held to be a kind of baptism. The wiser Archbishop Agobard of Lyons wrote against the ordeal, as against some other superstitions of his time.

gand, Archbishop of Treves. A third council assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle. At this council, too, ap- A.D. 862. peared the Archbishops of Cologne and Treves,

Adventius of Metz, Franko of Tongres, Atto of Verdun, Arnulf of Toul, the Bishops of Utrecht and Strasburg. The king pleaded pre-engagement to Waldrada, and declared that he only married the daughter of Boso because her father's alliance was absolutely necessary in the perilous state of the kingdom. The canon laws against incest were read, the confession of Theutberga recited, the marriage declared void, and Waldrada proclaimed the lawful queen. She appeared in public in all the array and splendour of the king's wife. q

interferes.

It was at this juncture that the Pope interposed to protect the injured and blameless wife of Lo- Pope Nicolas thair. Theutberga herself, worn out with persecution, had renewed her confession, and only entreated permission to retire into a convent to bewail her sins.

66

66

quet, p. 191. The Annales Bertiniani say that the king was bound to Waldrada by witchcraft, as it was said 'faventibus illi avunculo suo Liutprando et Vultaria, qui ob hoc maximè illi erant familiares." Liutprand here seems to have been her uncle.-Apud Bouquet, p. 79.

• Sismondi quotes as authority for inexplicable.-Ann. Met. apud Bouthis relationship the Annales Metenses, according to which," he says, "Gunther and Theotgand were excommunicated and deposed on account of their relationship to Waldrada, and the assistance they gave her." In the Ann. Met. Gunther is bribed to the king's party by a promise to marry his niece (neptis), and this niece cannot be Waldrada.-" Guntharii Episcopi neptis ad regem accersitur, ac semel, ut aiunt, ab eo stupratur, atque cum cachinno omnium et omnium derisione 9 According to one letter of Pope ad avunculum remittitur." This in- Nicolas, she was actually married sult, moreover, to Gunther is utterly" publico festoque nuptiarum ritu irreconcileable with his faithful adhe- celebrato, Waldradam sibi jure matrision to the cause of Lothair and monii sociavit."-Nicol. Pap. Epist., Waldrada, and makes the affair more Bouquet, p. 434.

PA new contradiction was now inserted into the confession of Theutberga, that she was not ❝ idonea conjux."