came the revenue of the Church: of that revenue the Pope was the guardian, distributor, possessor.

The pontificate of Paul, on the whole, was a period of peace. If Desiderius, after his first expedition against the rebel Duke of Spoleto, did not maintain strictly amicable relations with the Papal See, he abstained from hostility.

Papacy seized

Jan. 28, 767.

But, as heretofore, the loftier the papal dignity and the greater the wealth and power of the Pope, by Toto. the more it became an object of unhallowed ambition. On the death of Paul, that which two centuries later reduced the Papacy to the lowest state of degradation, the violent nomination of the Pope by the petty barons and armed nobles of the neighbouring districts, was prematurely attempted. Toto, the Duke of Nepi, suddenly, before Paul had actually expired, entered the city with his three brothers and a strong armed force. As soon as Paul was dead, they seized a bishop and compelled him to ordain Constantine, one of the brothers, yet a layman. They then took possession of the Lateran palace, and after a hasty form of election, forced the same bishop, George of Palestrina, with two others, Eustratius of Alba and Citonatus of Porto, to consecrate Constantine July 6, 767, as Pope." The usurper retained possession of to Aug.1,768. the see for more than a year, ordained and discharged all the offices of a pontiff, a period reckoned as a vacancy in the papal annals. At the end of that time two distinguished Romans, Christopher the Primicerius and Sergius his son, made their escape to the court of Pavia, to entreat the intervention of Desiderius. They obtained the aid of some Lombards, chiefly from

Constantine

Pope.

Vit. Stephan. III.

July 29.

the duchy of Spoleto, and appeared in arms in the city. Toto at first made a valiant defence, but was betrayed by his own followers and slain. Constantine, the false Pope, with his brother and a bishop named Theodorus, endeavoured to conceal themselves, but were seized by their enemies.

July 31.

Phillp.

A.D. 768.

The

Cruelties in

During the tumult part of the successful insurgents hastily elected a certain Philip, and installed him in the Lateran palace. The stronger party assembled a more legitimate body of electors, the chief of the clergy, of the army, and of the people. unanimous choice fell on Stephen III., who had been employed in high offices by Paul. Stephen III. The scenes which followed in the city of the Rome. head of Christendom must not be concealed." The easy victory was terribly avenged on Constantine and his adherents. The Bishop Theodorus was the chief object of animosity. They put out his eyes, cut off his tongue, and shut him up in the dungeon of a monastery, where he was left to die of hunger and of thirst, vainly imploring a drop of water in his agony. They put out the eyes of Passianus, the brother of the usurping Pope, and shut him up in a monastery: they plundered and confiscated all their possessions. The usurper was led through the city riding on a horse with a woman's saddle, with heavy weights to his feet; then brought out, solemnly deposed (for he was yet Pope elect) and thrust into the monastery of Centumcellæ. Even there he was not allowed to repent in peace of his ambition. A party of his enemies first seized a tribune of his fac

* He is called Vice Dominus.

Anastas., Vit. Stephan. III. "Dum adhuc electus extitisset."-Vit. Steph. III.

Aug. 6.

street.

tion, named Gracilis, put out his eyes, surprised the convent, treated the Pope in the same inhuman manner, and left him blind and bleeding in the These atrocities were not confined to the adherents of Constantine. A presbyter named Waldipert had taken a great part in the revolution, had accompanied Christopher, the leader of the deliverers, to Rome, but he had been guilty of the hasty election of Philip to the papacy. He was accused of a conspiracy to betray the city to the Duke of Spoleto. He fled to the church of the Virgin ad Martyres. Though he clung to and clasped the sacred image, he was dragged out, and plunged into one of the most noisome dungeons in the city. After a few days he was brought forth, his eyes put out, his tongue cut in so barbarous a manner that he died. Some of these might be the acts of a fierce, ungovernable, excited populace; but the clergy, in their collective and deliberate capacity, cannot be acquitted of as savage inhumanity.

Aug. 1, 768.

The first act of Stephen was to communicate hist election to the Patrician, the King of the Franks. Pepin had expired before the arrival of the ambassadors. His sons sent a deputation of twelve bishops to Rome. The Pope summoned the bishops of Tuscany, of Campania, and other parts of Italy, and with the Frankish bishops formed a regular Council in the Lateran. The usurper Constantine was brought in, blind and broken in spirit, to answer for his offences. He expressed the deepest contrition, he grovelled on the earth, he implored the mercy of the priestly tribunal. His sentence was deferred. On his next examination he was asked how, being a layman, he had dared to venture on such an

April 12,769.

of Constan

ious innovation as to be consecrated at once a bishop. It is dangerous at times to embarrass adversaries with a strong argument. He replied that it was no unprecedented innovation; he alleged the Punishment cases of the Archbishops of Ravenna and of tine. Naples, as promoted at once from laymen to the episcopate. The indignant clergy rose up, fell upon him, beat him cruelly with their own hands, and turned him out of the church.

April 14, 769.

All the instruments which related to the usurpation of Constantine were then burned; Stephen solemnly inaugurated; all who had received the communion from the hands of Constantine professed their profound penitence. A decree was passed interdicting, under the strongest anathema, all who should aspire to the episcopate without having passed through the inferior orders. All the ordinations of Constantine were declared null and void; the bishops were thrown back to their inferior orders, and could only attain the episcopate after a new election and consecration. The laymen who had dared to receive these irregular orders fared worse they were to wear the religious habit for their lives, being incapable of religious functions. This Lateran Council closed its proceedings by an unanimous decree in favour of image-worship, anathematising the godless Iconoclasts of the East.

These tragic scenes closed not with the extinction of the faction of Constantine: new victims suffered the dreadful punishment of blinding, some also seclusion in a monastery, the ordinary sentence of all whose lives were spared in civil conflict. But the causes of this new revolution and the conduct of the Pope are contested and obscure. All that is undoubted is that the King of the Lombards appears as the protector of the Pope;

VOL. III.

D

Carloman the Frank, the son of Pepin, threatens his dethronement."

King of Lombardy, A.D. 757, in Rome, A.D. 769.

Desiderius, the Lombard King, presented himself before Rome with the avowed object of delivering the Pope from the tyranny of Christopher the primicerius, Desiderius, and his son Sergius. These men had been the leaders, with Lombard aid, in the overthrow of the usurper. Christopher and his son hastily gathered some troops, and closed the gates of the city. They were betrayed by Paul (named Afiarta), the Pope's chamberlain, seized, blinded: the elder, Christopher, died of the operation. Desiderius boasted of this service as equivalent to and annulling all the papal claims to certain rights in the cities of Lombardy. Carloman the Frank, on the other hand, espoused the cause of these oppressors, as they were called, of the Pope, who had menaced his life, in conjunction with Dodo, Carloman's ambassador. Carloman threatened to avenge their punishment by marching to Rome and dethroning the Pope. This strange state

The great object of dispute, after | in Sicily or elsewhere? or dues claimed the surrender of the exarchate, that at least of all Roman Christians in which the popes constantly demanded, Italy? Sismondi's suggestion, that it and the Lombard kings endeavoured means the royal cities, the property to elude, was the full restitution of of the crown, which were administered the "justitia" claimed by the pope in France by judges, seems quite inwithin the Lombard kingdom.—Vit. applicable to the Lombard kingdom Stephan. III. This term, intelligible (Sismondi, Hist. des Français, ii. p. in the forensic language of the day, is 281). Manzoni, in a note to his now unmeaning. Muratori defines it, Adelchi, supposes that it was a vague "Allodiale, rendite e diritte, che term, intended to comprehend all the appartenevano alla chiesa Romana nel demands of the Church. Yet in the regno Longobardico." But what were epistles of the several popes, the two these allodial rights, in a kingdom of Stephens, Paul, and Hadrian, it seems which the full sovereignty was in the to mean something specific and definite. Lombards? Were they estates held To me Muratori appears nearest to by the Church, as landlords, like those the truth.