Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/676

 CHARLEMAGNE

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CHARLEMAGNE

Charles was already, in joro conscientice, if not in Frankish law, wedded to Himiltrude. In defiance of the pope's protest (P. L., XCVIII, 250), Charles mar- ried Desiderata, daughter of Desiderius (7701. three years later he repudiated her and married Hilde- garde, the beautiful Swabian. (See Hergenrother, Kircheng., 4th ed., 1904, II, 71.) Naturally, Desi- derius was furious at this insult, and the dominions of the Holy See bore the first brunt of his wrath.

But Charles had to defend his own borders against the heathen as well as to protect Rome against the Lombard. To the north of Austrasia lay Frisia, which seems to have been in some equivocal way a dependency, and to the east of Frisia, from the left bank of the Ems (about the present Holland-West- phalia frontier), across the valley of the Weser and Aller, and still eastward to the left bank of the Elbe, extended the country of the Saxons, who in no fash- ion whatever acknowledged any allegiance to the Frankish kings. In 772 these Saxons were a horde of aggressive pagans offering to Christian missionaries no hope but that of martyrdom; bound together, normally, by no political organization, and constantly engaged in predatory incursions into the lands of the Franks. Their language seems to have been very like that spoken by the Egberts and Ethclreds of Britain, but the work of their Christian cousin, St. Boniface, had not affected them as yet; they worshipped the gods of Walhalla, united in solemn sacrifices — some- times human — to Irminsul (Igdrasail), the sacred tree which stood at Eresburg, and were still slaying Christian missionaries when their kinsmen in Britain were holding church synods and building cathedrals. Charles could brook neither their predatory habits nor their heathenish intolerance; it was impossible, moreover, to make permanent peace with them while they followed the old Teutonic life of free village com- munities. He made his first expedition into their country in July, 772, took Eresburg by storm, and burned Irminsul. It was in January of this same year that Pope Stephen III died, and Adrian I (q. v.), an opponent of Desiderius, was elected. The new pope was almost immediately assailed by the Lom- bard king, who seized three minor cities of the Patri- mony of St. Peter, threatened Ravenna itself, and set about organizing a plot within the Curia. Paul Afiarta, the papal chamberlain, detected acting as the Lombard's secret agent, was seized and put to death. The Lombard army advanced against Rome, but quailed before the spiritual weapons of the Church, while Adrian sent a legate into Gaul to claim the aid of the Patrician.

Thus it was that Charles, resting at Thionville after his Saxon campaign, was urgently reminded of the rough work that awaited his hand south of the Alps. Desiderius' embassy reached him soon after Adrian's. He did not take it for granted that the right was all upon Adrian's side; besides, he may have seen here an opportunity to make some amends for his repudiation of the Lombard princess. Before taking up arms for the Holy See, therefore, he sent commissioners into Italy to make enquiries, and when Desiderius pretended that the seizure of the papal cities was in effect only the legal foreclosure of a mortgage, Charles promptly offered to redeem them by a money payment. Hut Desiderius refused the money, and as Charles' commissioners reported in

favour of Adrian, the only course left was war.

In the spring of 773 Charles summoned tin- whole military strength of the Franks lor a great invasion of Lombardy. He was slow to strike, but he meant

to strike hard. Data for any approximate- estimate of his numerical strength are lacking, but it is certain that the army, in order to make the descent more Swiftly, crossed the Alps by two passes: Mont Cenis and the Great St. Bernard. Einhard, who accom- panied the king over Mont Cenis (the St. Bernard

column was led by Duke Bernhard), speaks feelingly of the marvels and perils of the passage. The invad- ers found Desiderius waiting for them, intrenched at Susa; they turned his flank and put the Lombard army to utter rout. Leaving all the cities of the plains to their fate, Desiderius rallied part of his forces in Pavia, his walled capital, while his son Adal- ghis, with the rest, occupied Verona. Charles, hav- ing been joined by Duke Bernhard, took the forsaken cities on his way and then completely invested Pavia (September, 773), whence Otger, the faithful attend- ant of Gerberga, could look with trembling upon the array of his countrymen. Soon after Christmas Charles withdrew from the siege a portion of the army which he employed in the capture of Verona. Here he found Gerberga and her children; as to what be- came of them, history is silent; they probably en- tered the cloister.

What history does record with vivid eloquence is the first visit of Charles to the Eternal City. There everything was done to give his entry as much as pos- sible the air of a triumph in ancient Rome. The judges met him thirty miles from the city; the militia laid at the feet of their great patrician the banner of Rome and hailed him as their imperator. Charles himself forgot pagan Rome and prostrated himself to kiss the threshold of the Apostles, and then spent seven days in conference with the successor of Peter. It was then that he undoubtedly formed many great designs for the glory of God and the exaltation of Holy Church, which, in spite of human weaknesses and, still more, ignorance, he afterwards did his besl to realize. His coronation as the successor of Con- st ant ine did not take place until twenty-six years later, but his consecration as first champion of the Catholic Church took place at Easter, 774. Soon after this (June, 774) Pavia fell, Desiderius was ban- ished, Adalghis became a fugitive at the Byzantine court, and Charles, assuming the crown of Lombardy, renewed to Adrian the donation of territory made by Pepin the Short after his defeat of Aistulpn. (For a good defence of the genuineness of this donation, see Huffer, Hist. Jahrbuch, 1881, II, 242; it is now gen- erally admitted, as well as the original gift of Pepin at Kiersy in 752. The so-called " Privilegium Hadri- ani pro Carolo" granting him full right to nominate the pope and to invest all bishops is a forgery; see Baronius, Ann. Eccl. ad. an. 774. no. 10, and Her- genrother-Kirsch, 1th ed., 1904, II, 76.)

From 774 to the Baptism of Wittekind (Widukind) in 7S5. — The next twenty years of Charles' life may be considered as one long warfare. They are filled with an astounding series of rapid marches from end to end of a continent intersected by mountains, morasses, and forests, and scantily provided with roads. It would seem that the key to his long series of victories, won almost as much by moral ascendency as by physical or mental superiority, is to be found in the inspiration communicated to his Frankish cham- pion by Pope Adrian I. Weiss I Weltgesch., II, 549) enumerates fifty-three distinct campaigns of Charles the Great ; of these it is possible to point to only twelve or fourteen which were not undertaken principally or entirely in execution of his mission as the soldier and protector of the Church. In his eighteen cam- paigns against the Saxons Charles was more or less actuated by the desire to extinguish what he and his people regarded as a form of devil-worship, no less odious to them than the fetishism of Central Africa is to us.

While he was still in Italy the Saxons, irritated but not Bubdued by the fate of Eresburg and of irminsul, had risen in arms, harried the country of the Hessian Franks, ami burned many churches; that of St. Boniface at Fritzlar, being of stone, had defeated their efforts, Returning to the north, Charles sent a pre- liminary column of cavalry into the enemy's country