Carloman in cause. But the throne of Pepin was too firmly fixed; he turned a deaf and contemptuous ear to his brother's arguments. The Pope asserted his authority over the renegade monk, who had broken his vows; and Carloman was imprisoned for life in a cloister at Vienne; that life, however, lasted but a few days. e Pope Stephen was anxious to avert the shedding of blood in the impending war. Thrice before he collected his forces, once on his march to Italy, Pepin sent ambassadors to the Lombard king, who were to exhort him to surrender peaceably the possessions of the Church and of the Roman Republic. Pope Stephen tried the persuasiveness of religious awe. Astolph rejected the menacing and more quiet overtures with scorn, and fell on an advanced post of the Franks, which occupied one of the passes of the Alps, about to be entered by the army. He was routed by those few troops, and took refuge in Pavia. The King of the Franks and Pope Stephen advanced to the walls of the city; and Astolph was glad to purchase an ignominious peace, by pledging himself, on oath, to restore the territory of Rome. Pepin in Sept.-Oct. Pepin had no sooner retired beyond the Alps with his hostages, than Astolph began to find causes to delay the d According to Anastasius, "vehe- | audebat resistere." Sub ann. 753. mentius decertabat, sanctæ Dei ecclesiæ causam subvertere." It is impossible to conceive how Astolph could peruade him to engage in this strange and perilous mission, and the arguments urged by Carloman on his brother are still more strange. Eginhard asserts that he came ". 'jussu abbatis sui quia nec ille abbatis sui jussa contempuere, nec abbas ille præceptis Regis I ongobardorum, qui ei et hoc imperavit, "Obtestatur per omnia divina mysteria et futuri examinis diem ut pacifice sine ullâ sanguinis effusione propria sanctæ dei ecclesiæ et reipublicæ Romanorum reddat jura.”—Vit. Steph. f The Pope attributed the easy victory of the Franks, not to their valour, but to St. Peter. "Per manum beati Petri Dominus omnipotens victoriam vobis largiri dignatus est."-Steph. Epist. ad Pepin, p. 1632. g November. covenanted surrender. After a certain time he marched with his whole forces upon Rome, to which Pope Stephen had then returned, wasted the surrounding country, encamped before the Salarian Gate, and demanded the surrender of the Pope. The plunder, if the Papal historian is to be believed, which December. he chiefly coveted, was the dead bodies of the Siege of saints. These he dug up and carried away. He demanded that the Romans should give up the Pope into his hands, and on these terms only would he spare the city. Astolph declared he would not leave the Pope a foot of land.h Rome, His first Pope Ste phen's first Stephen sent messengers in all haste by sea, for every way by land was closed to his faithful ally. letter reminded King Pepin how stern an exactor of promises was St. Peter; "that the letter. king hazarded eternal condemnation if he did not complete the donation which he had vowed to St. Peter, and St. Peter had promised to him eternal life. If the king was not faithful to his word, the apostle had his handwriting to the grant, which he would produce against him in the day of judgement." Second letter. A second letter followed, more pathetic, more persuasive. 66 'Astolph was at the gates of Rome; he threatened, if they did not yield up the Pope, to put the whole city to the sword. He had burned all the villas and the suburbs; he had not spared the churches; the very altars were plundered and defiled; nuns violated; infants torn from their Dec. 754- mother's breasts; the mothers polluted ;-all the horrors of war were ready to break on the devoted city, which had endured a siege of fifty-five days. He conjured him, by God and his holy mother, by the angels of heaven, by the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and by the Last Day." This second letter was sent by the hands of the Abbot Warnerius, who had put on his breast-plate, and night and day kept watch for the city. (This is the first example of a warlike abbot.) With him were George, a bishop, and Count Tomaric. Stephen summed up the certain reward which Pepin might expect if he hastened to the rescue-" Victory over all the Barbarian nations, and eternal life." St. Peter himself. But the Franks were distant, or were tardy; the danger of the Pope and the Roman people more and more imminent. Stephen was wrought to an agony of fear, and in this state took the daring-to our calmer Third from religious sentiment, impious step-of writing a letter, as from St. Peter himself, to hasten the lingering succour :-"I, Peter the Apostle, protest, admonish, and conjure you, the Most Christian Kings, Pepin, Charles, and Carloman, with all the hierarchy, bishops, abbots, priests, and all monks; all judges, dukes, counts, and the whole people of the Franks. The Mother of God likewise adjures you, and admonishes and commands you, she as well as the thrones and dominions, and all the host of heaven, to save the beloved city of Rome from the detested Lombards. If ye hasten, I, Peter the Apostle, promise you my protection in this life and in the next, will prepare for you the most glorious mansions in heaven, and will bestow on you the everlasting joys of paradise. Make common cause with my people of Rome, and I will grant whatever ye may pray for. I conjure you not to yield up this city to be lacerated and tormented by the Lombards, lest your own souls be lacerated and tormented in hell, with the devil and his pestilential angels. Of all nations under heaven, the Franks are highest in the esteem of St. Peter; to me you owe all your victories. Obey, and obey speedily, and, by my suffrage, our Lord Jesus Christ will give you in this life length of days, security, victory; in the life to come, will multiply his blessings upon you, among his saints and angels. A vain but natural curiosity would imagine the effect of this letter at the court of Pepin. Were there among his clergy or among his warrior nobles those who really thought they heard the voice of the apostle, and felt that their eternal doom depended on their instant obedience to this appeal? How far was Pepin himself governed by policy or by religious awe? How much was art, how much implicit faith wrought up to its highest pitch by terror, in the mind of the Pope, when the Pope ventured on this awful assumption of the person of the apostle? That he should hazard such a step, having had personal intercourse with Pepin, his clergy, and his nobles, shows the measure which he had taken of the power with which religion possessed their souls. He had fathomed the depths of their Christianity; and whether he himself partook in the same, to us extravagant, notions, or used them as lawful instruments to Gretser, pp. 17-23. Mansi, sub ann. A.D. 755. Fleury observes of this letter: "Au reste, elle est pleine d'equivoques, comme les precedentes. L'Eglise y signifie non l'assemblee des fidèles, mais les biens temporels consacres à Dieu le troupeau de Jesus Christ sont les corps et non pas les âmes les promesses temporelles de l'ancienne loi sont mêlées avec les spi- | : rituelles de l'Evangile, et les motifs plus saints de la religion employes pour une affaire d'etat."-Liv. xlvii. c. 17. After all, the ground of quarrel was for the exarchate, not for the estates of the Church. If the Pope had allowed the Lombards to occupy the exarchate, they would have been loyal allies of the Pope. terrify the Barbarians into the protection of the holy see and the advancement of her dominion, he might consider all means justified for such high purposes. If it had been likely to startle men, by this overwrought demand on their credulity, into reasoning on such subjects, it would have hindered rather than promoted his great end. Not the least, remarkable point of all is, that Christianity has now assumed the complete power, not only of the life to come, but of the present life, with all its temporal advantages. It now leagues itself with Barbarians, not to soften, to civilise, to imbue with devotion, to lead to Christian worship; but to give victory in all their ruthless wars, to confer the blessings of heaven on their schemes of ambition and conquest. The one title to eternal life is obedience to the Church-the Church no longer the community of pious and holy Christians, but the see, almost the city, of Rome. The supreme obligation of man is the protection and enlargement of her domain. By zeal in this cause, without any other moral or religious qualification, the most brutal and bloody soldier is a saint in heaven. St. Peter is become almost God, the giver of victory, the dispenser of eternal life. The time is approaching when war against infidels or enemies of the Pope will be among the most meritorious acts of a Christian. The Franks had alarmed the Pope by the tardiness of their succour; but, their host once assembled and on its march, their rapid movements surprised Astolph. Scarcely could he return to Pavia, when he found himself besieged in his capital. yield. Lombard forces seem to have been altogether unequal to resist the Franks. Astolph yielded at once to the demands of Pepin, and actually abandoned the Pepin in The |