his name, all the privileges of the Roman See. He acknowledges the Emperor's power of making ordinances concerning the territory of St. Peter, which he is bound to protect against the Saracens and evil-minded Christians: "The Church must suffer no diminution, but rather be augmented in her rights and possessions.” z Charles the Fat, crowned Emperor," by degrees became master of the whole dominions of Charlemagne. For a few years the Empire of the West displayed its ancient unity. The kingdom of Arles stood alone in precarious independence. But though he received at Rome the Imperial Crown, the Emperor could afford no efficient protection against the Mohammedans. The Pope, who was founding kingdoms beyond the Alps, who was again interfering in the ecclesiastical quarrels of Constantinople, alternately absolving and excommunicating the Patriarch Photius, confirming or annulling the so-called general Council of Constantinople, was trembling within the walls of Rome at the invasion of the Saracens, and in vain heaping interdict on interdict, not merely on the secular princes, but against an ecclesiastic, a more dangerous enemy. Athanasius, the Duke-Bishop of Naples, still maintained in secret his unholy alliance with the enemies of the Cross. The Pope visited Naples, in order to persuade him to join the other Dukes in a general defensive league against the common enemy of Christendom. He offered large sums of money, which Athanasius a Coronation of Charles, Christmas alone. See the excommunication: of 880, or early in 881. See Muratori, the people of Amalfi for the same sub ann.; Jaffé, Feb., March, 881. cause.-Epist. ccxxv. and ccxlii. The western empire of Charles was Epist. ccxxvii. properly only from 884 to 887. d April 8, 881. received with unscrupulous avidity, and pledged himself to break off his wicked alliance. But the perfidious Prelate not merely kept up his amicable relations with the Saracens, he punctually received his share of the booty made during their ravages. The Pope, in the most solemn manner, pronounced the sentence of excommunication; he declared Athanasius suspended from his office, and cut off from the communion of the Church. It was not till a year after that Athanasius yielded, or pretended to yield, to the terrors of the sentence. He sent a deacon to Rome to assure the Pope that he had abandoned his infidel allies. But the mistrustful Pope demanded, before he would grant the absolution which he sought, some more convincing evidence of his sincerity. He required that Athanasius should commit himself with his old allies, by an act of signal perfidiousness and cruelty; that he should seize the chief of the Mohammedans, send them to Rome, and massacre the rest in the presence of the Legates. By this Christian act, demanded by the head of Christendom, he was to obtain re-admission to the Christian. Church, and the right to officiate as a Christian Bishop. It is almost impossible to trace the intricate labyrinth of intrigue, treachery, crime, war, which filled the later years of this Duke-Bishop. Nothing was done without an oath; and no oath influenced for a day his policy or his actions. His great object was to make himself master of Capua, an object seemingly attainable through the deadly feuds of the various descendants of the d Epist. celxvii. e Epist. cclxx. f "Atque si præsentibus his nostris, Marino videlicet reverendissimo episcopo et sanctæ sedis nostræ arcario, et Sicone egregio viro, majores Saracenorum quantos melius potes, quos nominatim quærimus, cum aliis omnibus caperes, et, aliis omnibus jugulatis, eos nobis direxeris."- Epist. ccxciv. 882. g Ducal house, whom Lando, the Bishop, had committed in interminable strife. They, in their revenge, as each party obtained or lost the mastery at each turn, made or degraded a Bishop. The Saracens in the mean time, courted by all parties, impartially plundered all, made or broke alliances with the same facility as 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 in providing means of war against his Saracen and Christian foes, or in dealing excommunications on all sides; yet facing with gallant resolution the foes of his and his power. person 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. That he had enemies who would not have scrupled at such a crime, rests on his own acknowledgement, and these were men of high rank and official dignity. In the early years of his pontificate, Gregory the Nomenclator, and George his son-in-law, are accused A.D. 882. April 19, 876. of having for eight years, that is almost during the whole pontificate of John, committed the most enormous crimes, and aimed at seizing the рарасу. The actual crime which called for the terrible sentence of anathema against these men was a conspiracy either to murder the Pope and his faithful adherents, or to introduce the Saracens into the city. They had been cited "Saraceni invitati ab omnibus, omnia diruunt, omnia consumunt." h Ann. Fuldens. Contin. "Summum Romanæ urbis pontificium, conjurantibus sibi dudum suis k complicibus factiose præripere affectavit."-Epist. cccxix. Donec aut nos cum fidelibus ecclesiæ Dei potuissent perimere, aut Saracenos, quos jam per suos fami to answer this charge; and, after much suspicious delay, had seized a large portion of the treasures of the Church, passed the gate of St. Pancrazia with false keys, and left it open to the marauding Saracens, who might have surprised Rome. It is the most remarkable part of the affair that Formosus, Bishop of Porto, called the Apostle of the Bulgarians, and afterwards Pope, is involved as an accomplice in these dark charges, and named in the same sentence of excommunication. Yet the specific offences urged against Formosus are of a totally different kind-disobedience to the Roman See, and an attempt to raise Bulgaria into a new province independent of the Pope. From early times the Bishop of Rome in his person had been less an object of awe and less secure in Rome than in any part of his spiritual dominions; but this conspiracy anticipated the coming darkness of the next century. Either the Pope grounded on a false and wicked invention, or, at the best, on an unwarranted suspicion, this most terrible accusation; or there were persons of the highest rank in the service of the Pope, so blinded with faction, so infatuated with crime (for, according to the Pope, they were men of the most rapacious and licentious habits), on whom their allegiance to the Pope hung so loosely as not to make them shudder at shedding the blood of the successor of St. Peter, or at surrendering the metropolis of Christendom to the unbeliever. Almost the first act of Marinus," the successor of dwells strongly on the conspiracy being an act of treason, not to the Church only, but "contra salutem reipublicæ et regni dilecti filii nostri, Caroli, serenissimi principis." iarissimos æquè Saracenos invitave- | able that m Marinus, or Martinus II., 882, died May or June 884. rinus. Dec. 882. John VIII., was the absolution of Formosus, his release Pope Ma- from his oath not to enter Rome," and his reconciliation with the Holy See. The decided partisanship of this measure declares the triumph of the German faction, and makes it more probable that the vacancy was caused by violent means. The enforced acknowledgement of Charles the Fat, as the master of the whole Carlovingian empire, by John VIII., would not necessarily combine the factions arrayed against each other during years of fierce animosity. It was a German Emperor who again ruled the world, and his supporters would seize the opportunity of more than triumph, of revenge. The short pontificate of Marinus was followed by the still shorter rule of Hadrian 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. A.D. 884. A.D. 885. A.D. 887. 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 for ever. 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. Formosus had sworn (at Troyes, Sept. 14, 878) never to enter Rome, or to resume his episcopal dignity. "Formosus enim nequam angustatus jurejurando promisit, ut Romuleam urbem nunquam ingrederetur, ad reconciliationem sui honoris nunquam accederet, suumque episcopatum nunquam reciperet."-Auxilii Trec. apud Mabillon, Analect. Vet. p. 51. |