Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 15.djvu/348

PAPACY. cil of Chalcedon (451), the formula of faith presented by Leo was accepted as a sufficient statement of the Christological problem. In Gaul the rising metropolitan power received a serious check in Leo's severe treatment of Hilary of Aries, who had on insufficient «vi- deuce deposed Chelidonius, Bishop of Besanton. In 452 Leo went out, armed with none but spiri- tual weapons, to meet the terrible Attila, and actually turned him back in the full tide of victory. In 455 he again faced a Vandal invasion from the south and succeeded in gaining at least milder terms for the doomed capital.

Especially clear does this Roman leadership appear in the dealings with those Germanic peoples who for a longer or shorter time occupied the soil of Italy and organized there an actual administration of government. Tlie popes of this period, nominally subject to the emperors at Constantinople, never really questioned the de facto sovereignty of the barbarian rulers in Italy. With Odoacer (476-49.3), and then with Theodoric the Ostrogoth ( 493-526 ), we find them in relations of friendly temporal subjection, ilany cases of Papal privilege and several dis- puted elections were referred to these barbarous and heretical chiefs of tribes, and their decisions were accepted. It was the wise policy of Rome, at this early stage, to conform itself to actual conditions and make its profit out of them. This de facto allegiance was readily transferred to Constantinople when, after the death of Theo- doric, the armies of .Justinian under Belisarius and Xarses finally drove the Ostrogoths out of Italy (535-53). This revival of Byzantine sover- eignty was, however, the most serious disaster that could have happened to the Papal idea. Again and again popes were made to feel the rough hand of the Empire if they ventured to act against its will, even on a matter of doctrine. The prestige of Rome was in danger of disapjjear- ing, if she were to become merely one among the numerous patriarchates under the fitful dic- tation of Constantinople. It was leally an ad- vantage when the dreaded Lombards swarmed over into the Po Valley (568) and rapidly drove the Byzantine garrisons from most of the country east of the Apennines. The Lombard terror forms the background of the Papal history for nearly two hundred years, but it was one of the means through which the importance of the Papal in- stitution was recognized and justified.

These were the conditions under which Gregory 1., the Great (590-604), came to power. From his correspondence we gain for the first time a clear impression of the economic side of the Papal administration. We find a considerable total of landed properties scattered from Africa, through Sicily and Italy, to Gaul, managed directly by Papal agents and serving as the chief financial "basis of the Roman bishopric. Gregory, a prudent manager and astute politi- cian, knew how to keep on good terms with the Empire, and even succeeded in making some impression on the Arian Lombards in the direc- tion of their ultimate conversion to Catholicism. He kept up an active correspondence with the Catholic Merovingian princes of the Franks, and was the originator of the conversion of the heathen Anglo-Saxons to Roman Catholic Chris- tianity. In a spirit of wise charity for all hu- man diversities. Gregory I. laid the foundations for a Papal system which would have made the Roman bishop the guide and harmonizer of West- ern Christendom. As time went on, the hold of the Eastern Empire ui>on Italy became weaker and weaker. In vain |)opes implored emperors for help against the Lombards. The Moham- medan eonijuest ab-sorlx-d all the energies of the declining Empire, and Rome must turn elsewhere for the material support it needed. Gregory's relations with the Franks gave the clue for the future. So hjng as the -Merovingian dynasty lasted nothing could be done: but when the new and vigorous House of Pejiin Ijegan to displace the Merovingian princes, the opportunitv came. Papal appeals to Charles Martel ( JlajorDomus, 714-741) were flatly refused, but his son. Pepin, needing a sanction for his usurnation of the kingdom, found it worth while to win this of Rome as the price of deliverance from the Lom- bard terror. .More than this, he guaranteed to the Papacy the temporal sovereignty over an ill- defined stretch of territory including Rome and a considerable surrounding country. .See Pap.^l States for the subsequent history of the tem- poral sovereignty.

With the coronation of Charles the Great as Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III. (800) a new phase of the Papal power begins. The revival of the Imperial name was doubtless intended to connect the actual domination of the Frank- ish people with the traditions of the ancient Roman world. It was, however, to l>e several generations yet before the importance of this new connection was to be evident. No emperor from Charles to Otho the Saxon held a position that could in any sense be called 'Imperial.' Even the title disappeared for more than a generation before Otho. Meanwhile the Papacy kept on quietly developing the constitution under which it was to do its great work. The administration of Nicholas I. (858-8(>7l. coincident with the notable rise of intellectual culture in West Fran- eia, serves to indicate this progress. Nicholas I. was keen to seize every occasion to assert Pa- pal right of supreme jurisdiction. ( 1 ) As de- fender of a sound Christian morality he took up eagerly the cause of Theutberga. the rejected wife of King Lothair II. of Lorraine, and car- ried it against the supjMrt of the fighting men and the whole clergy of Lorraine to a complete triumph. (2) He assailed the metropolitan power in the [)erson of the great .Archbishop Hincmar,, the most important prelate in the North, on the old question of the right of a subordinate clergy- man disciplined by his local superior to appeal directly to Rome.

With the tenth century we find the Papacy in a phase which seemed at times to imperil all it had gained. Its three functions — the bishopric of Rome, the government of a Roman State, and the hea<lship of Latin Christianity — were often in hopeless conflict, but never more than now. In the furious strife of local parties in which Rome, like every other Italian city, was involved, the Papacy came to be hardly more than the spoil of party victory. Popes of everj- variety of incapacity and imsuitableness were set up by rivals in politics, and. even if they succeeded in maintaining their hold upon the bishopric and the Roman territory, there was little qiicstion of any influence upon the movement of affairs outside this field. It is the most convincing proof of the need in that age of some such cen- tral religious authority in Europe that men con-