Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/247

 THE FRANKISH STATE AND CHARLEMAGNE 207 I only on the culprits, but also on those who have consented to such deeds, that no Christian who shall have heard of it will ever dare in the future to perpetrate such acts." i Charlemagne intended to direct church doctrine as well as I discipline the clergy and convert the heathen. In 787, when ! the Byzantine Empress Irene and her son Constantine called I an oecumenical council at Nicaea, which restored images, — j just what the pope wanted, — Charlemagne insisted that, should excommunicate Irene. Charlemagne saw the value of J the Church as a means of cementing his diverse posses- sions together; he used the clergy as political assistants; but, j on the other hand, his secular officials helped collect the 1 church tithes ; and his control of the Church was in the main exercised through ecclesiastical machinery. When he de- i creed the death penalty for Saxons caught in heathen prac- I to a priest and confessed his sin should have to do only such I penance as the priest ordained. The fact is that Charle- j magne made little distinction between ecclesiastical and I political matters. He ran both at once, and in his reign ! Church and State, king and pope, were in cordial partner- I ship. As Gregory the Great had advised the statesmen of j his day, not because he had any particular right to do so, I magne, because of his strong will and ability to get things idone, managed the affairs of the Church without raising serious papal objections. There were two weak points in the position of the pope quite apart from his relations with the Byzantine em- peror, the Lombards, and the Franks. The office chronic was elective, giving opportunity for disorder, weaknesses corruption, and violence whenever a new pontiff medieval had to be chosen. Then the populace of Rome Pa P ac y often made life very uncomfortable for a pope whom they did not like. Such were the troubles at home that the Papacy had to put up with all through the Middle Ages, no matter how independent it made itself of outside interfer-
 * the decrees of the council were heretical and that the pope
 * tices, he made the exception that any such person who fled
 * but because of his superior energy and sagacity, so Charle-