Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part V

If we retrace the outlines of this geographical picture, it will
be seen that the empire of the Franks extended, between east and
west, from the Ebro to the Elbe or Vistula; between the north and
south, from the duchy of Beneventum to the River Eyder, the
perpetual boundary of Germany and Denmark. The personal and
political importance of Charlemagne was magnified by the distress
and division of the rest of Europe. The islands of Great Britain
and Ireland were disputed by a crowd of princes of Saxon or
Scottish origin: and, after the loss of Spain, the Christian and
Gothic kingdom of Alphonso the Chaste was confined to the narrow
range of the Asturian mountains. These petty sovereigns revered
the power or virtue of the Carlovingian monarch, implored the
honor and support of his alliance, and styled him their common
parent, the sole and supreme emperor of the West. 113 He
maintained a more equal intercourse with the caliph Harun al
Rashid, 114 whose dominion stretched from Africa to India, and
accepted from his ambassadors a tent, a water-clock, an elephant,
and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. It is not easy to conceive
the private friendship of a Frank and an Arab, who were strangers
to each other’s person, and language, and religion: but their
public correspondence was founded on vanity, and their remote
situation left no room for a competition of interest. Two thirds
of the Western empire of Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and
the deficiency was amply supplied by his command of the
inaccessible or invincible nations of Germany. But in the choice
of his enemies, 1141 we may be reasonably surprised that he so
often preferred the poverty of the north to the riches of the
south. The three-and-thirty campaigns laboriously consumed in the
woods and morasses of Germany would have sufficed to assert the
amplitude of his title by the expulsion of the Greeks from Italy
and the Saracens from Spain. The weakness of the Greeks would
have insured an easy victory; and the holy crusade against the
Saracens would have been prompted by glory and revenge, and
loudly justified by religion and policy. Perhaps, in his
expeditions beyond the Rhine and the Elbe, he aspired to save his
monarchy from the fate of the Roman empire, to disarm the enemies
of civilized society, and to eradicate the seed of future
emigrations. But it has been wisely observed, that, in a light of
precaution, all conquest must be ineffectual, unless it could be
universal, since the increasing circle must be involved in a
larger sphere of hostility. 115 The subjugation of Germany
withdrew the veil which had so long concealed the continent or
islands of Scandinavia from the knowledge of Europe, and awakened
the torpid courage of their barbarous natives. The fiercest of
the Saxon idolaters escaped from the Christian tyrant to their
brethren of the North; the Ocean and Mediterranean were covered
with their piratical fleets; and Charlemagne beheld with a sigh
the destructive progress of the Normans, who, in less than
seventy years, precipitated the fall of his race and monarchy.

113 (return) [ See Eginhard, c. 16, and Gaillard, tom. ii. p.
361-385, who mentions, with a loose reference, the intercourse of
Charlemagne and Egbert, the emperor’s gift of his own sword, and
the modest answer of his Saxon disciple. The anecdote, if
genuine, would have adorned our English histories.]

114 (return) [ The correspondence is mentioned only in the French
annals, and the Orientals are ignorant of the caliph’s friendship
for the Christian dog—a polite appellation, which Harun bestows
on the emperor of the Greeks.]

1141 (return) [ Had he the choice? M. Guizot has eloquently
described the position of Charlemagne towards the Saxons. Il y
fit face par le conquete; la guerre defensive prit la forme
offensive: il transporta la lutte sur le territoire des peuples
qui voulaient envahir le sien: il travailla a asservir les races
etrangeres, et extirper les croyances ennemies. De la son mode de
gouvernement et la fondation de son empire: la guerre offensive
et la conquete voulaient cette vaste et redoutable unite. Compare
observations in the Quarterly Review, vol. xlviii., and James’s
Life of Charlemagne.—M.]

115 (return) [ Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 361-365, 471-476, 492. I
have borrowed his judicious remarks on Charlemagne’s plan of
conquest, and the judicious distinction of his enemies of the
first and the second enceinte, (tom. ii. p. 184, 509, &c.)]

Had the pope and the Romans revived the primitive constitution,
the titles of emperor and Augustus were conferred on Charlemagne
for the term of his life; and his successors, on each vacancy,
must have ascended the throne by a formal or tacit election. But
the association of his son Lewis the Pious asserts the
independent right of monarchy and conquest, and the emperor seems
on this occasion to have foreseen and prevented the latent claims
of the clergy. The royal youth was commanded to take the crown
from the altar, and with his own hands to place it on his head,
as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the nation. 116
The same ceremony was repeated, though with less energy, in the
subsequent associations of Lothaire and Lewis the Second: the
Carlovingian sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a
lineal descent of four generations; and the ambition of the popes
was reduced to the empty honor of crowning and anointing these
hereditary princes, who were already invested with their power
and dominions. The pious Lewis survived his brothers, and
embraced the whole empire of Charlemagne; but the nations and the
nobles, his bishops and his children, quickly discerned that this
mighty mass was no longer inspired by the same soul; and the
foundations were undermined to the centre, while the external
surface was yet fair and entire. After a war, or battle, which
consumed one hundred thousand Franks, the empire was divided by
treaty between his three sons, who had violated every filial and
fraternal duty. The kingdoms of Germany and France were forever
separated; the provinces of Gaul, between the Rhone and the Alps,
the Meuse and the Rhine, were assigned, with Italy, to the
Imperial dignity of Lothaire. In the partition of his share,
Lorraine and Arles, two recent and transitory kingdoms, were
bestowed on the younger children; and Lewis the Second, his
eldest son, was content with the realm of Italy, the proper and
sufficient patrimony of a Roman emperor. On his death without any
male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his uncles and
cousins, and the popes most dexterously seized the occasion of
judging the claims and merits of the candidates, and of bestowing
on the most obsequious, or most liberal, the Imperial office of
advocate of the Roman church. The dregs of the Carlovingian race
no longer exhibited any symptoms of virtue or power, and the
ridiculous epithets of the bard, the stammerer, the fat, and the
simple, distinguished the tame and uniform features of a crowd of
kings alike deserving of oblivion. By the failure of the
collateral branches, the whole inheritance devolved to Charles
the Fat, the last emperor of his family: his insanity authorized
the desertion of Germany, Italy, and France: he was deposed in a
diet, and solicited his daily bread from the rebels by whose
contempt his life and liberty had been spared. According to the
measure of their force, the governors, the bishops, and the
lords, usurped the fragments of the falling empire; and some
preference was shown to the female or illegitimate blood of
Charlemagne. Of the greater part, the title and possession were
alike doubtful, and the merit was adequate to the contracted
scale of their dominions. Those who could appear with an army at
the gates of Rome were crowned emperors in the Vatican; but their
modesty was more frequently satisfied with the appellation of
kings of Italy: and the whole term of seventy-four years may be
deemed a vacancy, from the abdication of Charles the Fat to the
establishment of Otho the First.

116 (return) [ Thegan, the biographer of Lewis, relates this
coronation: and Baronius has honestly transcribed it, (A.D. 813,
No. 13, &c. See Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 506, 507, 508,) howsoever
adverse to the claims of the popes. For the series of the
Carlovingians, see the historians of France, Italy, and Germany;
Pfeffel, Schmidt, Velly, Muratori, and even Voltaire, whose
pictures are sometimes just, and always pleasing.]

Otho 117 was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony; and if he
truly descended from Witikind, the adversary and proselyte of
Charlemagne, the posterity of a vanquished people was exalted to
reign over their conquerors. His father, Henry the Fowler, was
elected, by the suffrage of the nation, to save and institute the
kingdom of Germany. Its limits 118 were enlarged on every side by
his son, the first and greatest of the Othos. A portion of Gaul,
to the west of the Rhine, along the banks of the Meuse and the
Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose blood and language
it has been tinged since the time of Caesar and Tacitus.

Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of
Otho acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of
Burgundy and Arles. In the North, Christianity was propagated by
the sword of Otho, the conqueror and apostle of the Slavic
nations of the Elbe and Oder: the marches of Brandenburgh and
Sleswick were fortified with German colonies; and the king of
Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia, confessed themselves
his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious army, he
passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the
pope, and forever fixed the Imperial crown in the name and nation
of Germany. From that memorable aera, two maxims of public
jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time. I.
That the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired,
from that instant, the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome. II.
But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and
Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the
Roman pontiff. 119

117 (return) [ He was the son of Otho, the son of Ludolph, in
whose favor the Duchy of Saxony had been instituted, A.D. 858.
Ruotgerus, the biographer of a St. Bruno, (Bibliot. Bunavianae
Catalog. tom. iii. vol. ii. p. 679,) gives a splendid character
of his family. Atavorum atavi usque ad hominum memoriam omnes
nobilissimi; nullus in eorum stirpe ignotus, nullus degener
facile reperitur, (apud Struvium, Corp. Hist. German. p. 216.)
Yet Gundling (in Henrico Aucupe) is not satisfied of his descent
from Witikind.]

118 (return) [ See the treatise of Conringius, (de Finibus
Imperii Germanici, Francofurt. 1680, in 4to.: ) he rejects the
extravagant and improper scale of the Roman and Carlovingian
empires, and discusses with moderation the rights of Germany, her
vassals, and her neighbors.]

119 (return) [ The power of custom forces me to number Conrad I.
and Henry I., the Fowler, in the list of emperors, a title which
was never assumed by those kings of Germany. The Italians,
Muratori for instance, are more scrupulous and correct, and only
reckon the princes who have been crowned at Rome.]

The Imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced to the East by
the alteration of his style; and instead of saluting his fathers,
the Greek emperors, he presumed to adopt the more equal and
familiar appellation of brother. 120 Perhaps in his connection
with Irene he aspired to the name of husband: his embassy to
Constantinople spoke the language of peace and friendship, and
might conceal a treaty of marriage with that ambitious princess,
who had renounced the most sacred duties of a mother. The nature,
the duration, the probable consequences of such a union between
two distant and dissonant empires, it is impossible to
conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins may teach us
to suspect, that the report was invented by the enemies of Irene,
to charge her with the guilt of betraying the church and state to
the strangers of the West. 121 The French ambassadors were the
spectators, and had nearly been the victims, of the conspiracy of
Nicephorus, and the national hatred. Constantinople was
exasperated by the treason and sacrilege of ancient Rome: a
proverb, “That the Franks were good friends and bad neighbors,”
was in every one’s mouth; but it was dangerous to provoke a
neighbor who might be tempted to reiterate, in the church of St.
Sophia, the ceremony of his Imperial coronation. After a tedious
journey of circuit and delay, the ambassadors of Nicephorus found
him in his camp, on the banks of the River Sala; and Charlemagne
affected to confound their vanity by displaying, in a Franconian
village, the pomp, or at least the pride, of the Byzantine
palace. 122 The Greeks were successively led through four halls
of audience: in the first they were ready to fall prostrate
before a splendid personage in a chair of state, till he informed
them that he was only a servant, the constable, or master of the
horse, of the emperor. The same mistake, and the same answer,
were repeated in the apartments of the count palatine, the
steward, and the chamberlain; and their impatience was gradually
heightened, till the doors of the presence-chamber were thrown
open, and they beheld the genuine monarch, on his throne,
enriched with the foreign luxury which he despised, and encircled
with the love and reverence of his victorious chiefs. A treaty of
peace and alliance was concluded between the two empires, and the
limits of the East and West were defined by the right of present
possession. But the Greeks 123 soon forgot this humiliating
equality, or remembered it only to hate the Barbarians by whom it
was extorted. During the short union of virtue and power, they
respectfully saluted the august Charlemagne, with the
acclamations of basileus, and emperor of the Romans. As soon as
these qualities were separated in the person of his pious son,
the Byzantine letters were inscribed, “To the king, or, as he
styles himself, the emperor of the Franks and Lombards.” When
both power and virtue were extinct, they despoiled Lewis the
Second of his hereditary title, and with the barbarous
appellation of rex or rega, degraded him among the crowd of Latin
princes. His reply 124 is expressive of his weakness: he proves,
with some learning, that, both in sacred and profane history, the
name of king is synonymous with the Greek word basileus: if, at
Constantinople, it were assumed in a more exclusive and imperial
sense, he claims from his ancestors, and from the popes, a just
participation of the honors of the Roman purple. The same
controversy was revived in the reign of the Othos; and their
ambassador describes, in lively colors, the insolence of the
Byzantine court. 125 The Greeks affected to despise the poverty
and ignorance of the Franks and Saxons; and in their last decline
refused to prostitute to the kings of Germany the title of Roman
emperors.

120 (return) [ Invidiam tamen suscepti nominis (C. P.
imperatoribus super hoc indignantibus) magna tulit patientia,
vicitque eorum contumaciam... mittendo ad eos crebras legationes,
et in epistolis fratres eos appellando. Eginhard, c. 28, p. 128.
Perhaps it was on their account that, like Augustus, he affected
some reluctance to receive the empire.]

121 (return) [ Theophanes speaks of the coronation and unction of
Charles (Chronograph. p. 399,) and of his treaty of marriage with
Irene, (p. 402,) which is unknown to the Latins. Gaillard relates
his transactions with the Greek empire, (tom. ii. p. 446-468.)]

122 (return) [ Gaillard very properly observes, that this pageant
was a farce suitable to children only; but that it was indeed
represented in the presence, and for the benefit, of children of
a larger growth.]

123 (return) [ Compare, in the original texts collected by Pagi,
(tom. iii. A.D. 812, No. 7, A.D. 824, No. 10, &c.,) the contrast
of Charlemagne and his son; to the former the ambassadors of
Michael (who were indeed disavowed) more suo, id est lingua
Graeca laudes dixerunt, imperatorem eum et appellantes; to the
latter, Vocato imperatori Francorum, &c.]

124 (return) [ See the epistle, in Paralipomena, of the anonymous
writer of Salerno, (Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 243-254,
c. 93-107,) whom Baronius (A.D. 871, No. 51-71) mistook for
Erchempert, when he transcribed it in his Annals.]

125 (return) [ Ipse enim vos, non imperatorem, id est sua lingua,
sed ob indignationem, id est regem nostra vocabat, Liutprand, in
Legat. in Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 479. The pope had
exhorted Nicephorus, emperor of the Greeks, to make peace with
Otho, the august emperor of the Romans—quae inscriptio secundum
Graecos peccatoria et temeraria... imperatorem inquiunt,
universalem, Romanorum, Augustum, magnum, solum, Nicephorum, (p.
486.)]

These emperors, in the election of the popes, continued to
exercise the powers which had been assumed by the Gothic and
Grecian princes; and the importance of this prerogative increased
with the temporal estate and spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman
church. In the Christian aristocracy, the principal members of
the clergy still formed a senate to assist the administration,
and to supply the vacancy, of the bishop. Rome was divided into
twenty-eight parishes, and each parish was governed by a cardinal
priest, or presbyter, a title which, however common or modest in
its origin, has aspired to emulate the purple of kings. Their
number was enlarged by the association of the seven deacons of
the most considerable hospitals, the seven palatine judges of the
Lateran, and some dignitaries of the church. This ecclesiastical
senate was directed by the seven cardinal-bishops of the Roman
province, who were less occupied in the suburb dioceses of Ostia,
Porto, Velitrae, Tusculum, Praeneste, Tibur, and the Sabines,
than by their weekly service in the Lateran, and their superior
share in the honors and authority of the apostolic see. On the
death of the pope, these bishops recommended a successor to the
suffrage of the college of cardinals, 126 and their choice was
ratified or rejected by the applause or clamor of the Roman
people. But the election was imperfect; nor could the pontiff be
legally consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the church,
had graciously signified his approbation and consent. The royal
commissioner examined, on the spot, the form and freedom of the
proceedings; nor was it till after a previous scrutiny into the
qualifications of the candidates, that he accepted an oath of
fidelity, and confirmed the donations which had successively
enriched the patrimony of St. Peter. In the frequent schisms, the
rival claims were submitted to the sentence of the emperor; and
in a synod of bishops he presumed to judge, to condemn, and to
punish, the crimes of a guilty pontiff. Otho the First imposed a
treaty on the senate and people, who engaged to prefer the
candidate most acceptable to his majesty: 127 his successors
anticipated or prevented their choice: they bestowed the Roman
benefice, like the bishoprics of Cologne or Bamberg, on their
chancellors or preceptors; and whatever might be the merit of a
Frank or Saxon, his name sufficiently attests the interposition
of foreign power. These acts of prerogative were most speciously
excused by the vices of a popular election. The competitor who
had been excluded by the cardinals appealed to the passions or
avarice of the multitude; the Vatican and the Lateran were
stained with blood; and the most powerful senators, the marquises
of Tuscany and the counts of Tusculum, held the apostolic see in
a long and disgraceful servitude. The Roman pontiffs, of the
ninth and tenth centuries, were insulted, imprisoned, and
murdered, by their tyrants; and such was their indigence, after
the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that
they could neither support the state of a prince, nor exercise
the charity of a priest. 128 The influence of two sister
prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded on their wealth
and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most
strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and
their reign 129 may have suggested to the darker ages 130 the
fable 131 of a female pope. 132 The bastard son, the grandson,
and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated
in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen
years that the second of these became the head of the Latin
church. 1321 His youth and manhood were of a suitable complexion;
and the nations of pilgrims could bear testimony to the charges
that were urged against him in a Roman synod, and in the presence
of Otho the Great. As John XII. had renounced the dress and
decencies of his profession, the soldier may not perhaps be
dishonored by the wine which he drank, the blood that he spilt,
the flames that he kindled, or the licentious pursuits of gaming
and hunting. His open simony might be the consequence of
distress; and his blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if
it be true, could not possibly be serious. But we read, with some
surprise, that the worthy grandson of Marozia lived in public
adultery with the matrons of Rome; that the Lateran palace was
turned into a school for prostitution, and that his rapes of
virgins and widows had deterred the female pilgrims from visiting
the tomb of St. Peter, lest, in the devout act, they should be
violated by his successor. 133 The Protestants have dwelt with
malicious pleasure on these characters of Antichrist; but to a
philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous
than their virtues. After a long series of scandal, the apostolic
see was reformed and exalted by the austerity and zeal of Gregory
VII. That ambitious monk devoted his life to the execution of two
projects. I. To fix in the college of cardinals the freedom and
independence of election, and forever to abolish the right or
usurpation of the emperors and the Roman people. II. To bestow
and resume the Western empire as a fief or benefice 134 of the
church, and to extend his temporal dominion over the kings and
kingdoms of the earth. After a contest of fifty years, the first
of these designs was accomplished by the firm support of the
ecclesiastical order, whose liberty was connected with that of
their chief. But the second attempt, though it was crowned with
some partial and apparent success, has been vigorously resisted
by the secular power, and finally extinguished by the improvement
of human reason.

126 (return) [ The origin and progress of the title of cardinal
may be found in Themassin, (Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. i. p.
1261-1298,) Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. vi.
Dissert. lxi. p. 159-182,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles.
p. 345-347,) who accurately remarks the form and changes of the
election. The cardinal-bishops so highly exalted by Peter
Damianus, are sunk to a level with the rest of the sacred
college.]

127 (return) [ Firmiter jurantes, nunquam se papam electuros aut
audinaturos, praeter consensum et electionem Othonis et filii
sui. (Liutprand, l. vi. c. 6, p. 472.) This important concession
may either supply or confirm the decree of the clergy and people
of Rome, so fiercely rejected by Baronius, Pagi, and Muratori,
(A.D. 964,) and so well defended and explained by St. Marc,
(Abrege, tom. ii. p. 808-816, tom. iv. p. 1167-1185.) Consult the
historical critic, and the Annals of Muratori, for for the
election and confirmation of each pope.]

128 (return) [ The oppression and vices of the Roman church, in
the xth century, are strongly painted in the history and legation
of Liutprand, (see p. 440, 450, 471-476, 479, &c.;) and it is
whimsical enough to observe Muratori tempering the invectives of
Baronius against the popes. But these popes had been chosen, not
by the cardinals, but by lay-patrons.]

129 (return) [ The time of Pope Joan (papissa Joanna) is placed
somewhat earlier than Theodora or Marozia; and the two years of
her imaginary reign are forcibly inserted between Leo IV. and
Benedict III. But the contemporary Anastasius indissolubly links
the death of Leo and the elevation of Benedict, (illico, mox, p.
247;) and the accurate chronology of Pagi, Muratori, and
Leibnitz, fixes both events to the year 857.]

130 (return) [ The advocates for Pope Joan produce one hundred
and fifty witnesses, or rather echoes, of the xivth, xvth, and
xvith centuries. They bear testimony against themselves and the
legend, by multiplying the proof that so curious a story must
have been repeated by writers of every description to whom it was
known. On those of the ixth and xth centuries, the recent event
would have flashed with a double force. Would Photius have spared
such a reproach? Could Liutprand have missed such scandal? It is
scarcely worth while to discuss the various readings of Martinus
Polonus, Sigeber of Gamblours, or even Marianus Scotus; but a
most palpable forgery is the passage of Pope Joan, which has been
foisted into some Mss. and editions of the Roman Anastasius.]

131 (return) [ As false, it deserves that name; but I would not
pronounce it incredible. Suppose a famous French chevalier of our
own times to have been born in Italy, and educated in the church,
instead of the army: her merit or fortune might have raised her
to St. Peter’s chair; her amours would have been natural: her
delivery in the streets unlucky, but not improbable.]

132 (return) [ Till the reformation the tale was repeated and
believed without offence: and Joan’s female statue long occupied
her place among the popes in the cathedral of Sienna, (Pagi,
Critica, tom. iii. p. 624-626.) She has been annihilated by two
learned Protestants, Blondel and Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique,
Papesse, Polonus, Blondel;) but their brethren were scandalized
by this equitable and generous criticism. Spanheim and Lenfant
attempt to save this poor engine of controversy, and even Mosheim
condescends to cherish some doubt and suspicion, (p. 289.)]

1321 (return) [ John XI. was the son of her husband Alberic, not
of her lover, Pope Sergius III., as Muratori has distinctly
proved, Ann. ad ann. 911, tom. p. 268. Her grandson Octavian,
otherwise called John XII., was pope; but a great-grandson cannot
be discovered in any of the succeeding popes; nor does our
historian himself, in his subsequent narration, (p. 202,) seem to
know of one. Hobhouse, Illustrations of Childe Harold, p.
309.—M.]

133 (return) [ Lateranense palatium... prostibulum meretricum ...
Testis omnium gentium, praeterquam Romanorum, absentia mulierum,
quae sanctorum apostolorum limina orandi gratia timent visere,
cum nonnullas ante dies paucos, hunc audierint conjugatas,
viduas, virgines vi oppressisse, (Liutprand, Hist. l. vi. c. 6,
p. 471. See the whole affair of John XII., p. 471-476.)]

134 (return) [ A new example of the mischief of equivocation is
the beneficium (Ducange, tom. i. p. 617, &c.,) which the pope
conferred on the emperor Frederic I., since the Latin word may
signify either a legal fief, or a simple favor, an obligation,
(we want the word bienfait.) (See Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands,
tom. iii. p. 393-408. Pfeffel, Abrege Chronologique, tom. i. p.
229, 296, 317, 324, 420, 430, 500, 505, 509, &c.)]

In the revival of the empire of empire of Rome, neither the
bishop nor the people could bestow on Charlemagne or Otho the
provinces which were lost, as they had been won, by the chance of
arms. But the Romans were free to choose a master for themselves;
and the powers which had been delegated to the patrician, were
irrevocably granted to the French and Saxon emperors of the West.
The broken records of the times 135 preserve some remembrance of
their palace, their mint, their tribunal, their edicts, and the
sword of justice, which, as late as the thirteenth century, was
derived from Caesar to the praefect of the city. 136 Between the
arts of the popes and the violence of the people, this supremacy
was crushed and annihilated. Content with the titles of emperor
and Augustus, the successors of Charlemagne neglected to assert
this local jurisdiction. In the hour of prosperity, their
ambition was diverted by more alluring objects; and in the decay
and division of the empire, they were oppressed by the defence of
their hereditary provinces. Amidst the ruins of Italy, the famous
Marozia invited one of the usurpers to assume the character of
her third husband; and Hugh, king of Burgundy was introduced by
her faction into the mole of Hadrian or Castle of St. Angelo,
which commands the principal bridge and entrance of Rome. Her son
by the first marriage, Alberic, was compelled to attend at the
nuptial banquet; but his reluctant and ungraceful service was
chastised with a blow by his new father. The blow was productive
of a revolution. “Romans,” exclaimed the youth, “once you were
the masters of the world, and these Burgundians the most abject
of your slaves. They now reign, these voracious and brutal
savages, and my injury is the commencement of your servitude.”
137 The alarum bell rang to arms in every quarter of the city:
the Burgundians retreated with haste and shame; Marozia was
imprisoned by her victorious son, and his brother, Pope John XI.,
was reduced to the exercise of his spiritual functions. With the
title of prince, Alberic possessed above twenty years the
government of Rome; and he is said to have gratified the popular
prejudice, by restoring the office, or at least the title, of
consuls and tribunes. His son and heir Octavian assumed, with the
pontificate, the name of John XII.: like his predecessor, he was
provoked by the Lombard princes to seek a deliverer for the
church and republic; and the services of Otho were rewarded with
the Imperial dignity. But the Saxon was imperious, the Romans
were impatient, the festival of the coronation was disturbed by
the secret conflict of prerogative and freedom, and Otho
commanded his sword-bearer not to stir from his person, lest he
should be assaulted and murdered at the foot of the altar. 138
Before he repassed the Alps, the emperor chastised the revolt of
the people and the ingratitude of John XII. The pope was degraded
in a synod; the praefect was mounted on an ass, whipped through
the city, and cast into a dungeon; thirteen of the most guilty
were hanged, others were mutilated or banished; and this severe
process was justified by the ancient laws of Theodosius and
Justinian. The voice of fame has accused the second Otho of a
perfidious and bloody act, the massacre of the senators, whom he
had invited to his table under the fair semblance of hospitality
and friendship. 139 In the minority of his son Otho the Third,
Rome made a bold attempt to shake off the Saxon yoke, and the
consul Crescentius was the Brutus of the republic. From the
condition of a subject and an exile, he twice rose to the command
of the city, oppressed, expelled, and created the popes, and
formed a conspiracy for restoring the authority of the Greek
emperors. 1391 In the fortress of St. Angelo, he maintained an
obstinate siege, till the unfortunate consul was betrayed by a
promise of safety: his body was suspended on a gibbet, and his
head was exposed on the battlements of the castle. By a reverse
of fortune, Otho, after separating his troops, was besieged three
days, without food, in his palace; and a disgraceful escape saved
him from the justice or fury of the Romans. The senator Ptolemy
was the leader of the people, and the widow of Crescentius
enjoyed the pleasure or the fame of revenging her husband, by a
poison which she administered to her Imperial lover. It was the
design of Otho the Third to abandon the ruder countries of the
North, to erect his throne in Italy, and to revive the
institutions of the Roman monarchy. But his successors only once
in their lives appeared on the banks of the Tyber, to receive
their crown in the Vatican. 140 Their absence was contemptible,
their presence odious and formidable. They descended from the
Alps, at the head of their barbarians, who were strangers and
enemies to the country; and their transient visit was a scene of
tumult and bloodshed. 141 A faint remembrance of their ancestors
still tormented the Romans; and they beheld with pious
indignation the succession of Saxons, Franks, Swabians, and
Bohemians, who usurped the purple and prerogatives of the
Caesars.

135 (return) [ For the history of the emperors in Rome and Italy,
see Sigonius, de Regno Italiae, Opp. tom. ii., with the Notes of
Saxius, and the Annals of Muratori, who might refer more
distinctly to the authors of his great collection.]

136 (return) [ See the Dissertations of Le Blanc at the end of
his treatise des Monnoyes de France, in which he produces some
Roman coins of the French emperors.]

137 (return) [ Romanorum aliquando servi, scilicet Burgundiones,
Romanis imperent?.... Romanae urbis dignitas ad tantam est
stultitiam ducta, ut meretricum etiam imperio pareat? (Liutprand,
l. iii. c. 12, p. 450.) Sigonius (l. vi. p. 400) positively
affirms the renovation of the consulship; but in the old writers
Albericus is more frequently styled princeps Romanorum.]

138 (return) [ Ditmar, p. 354, apud Schmidt, tom. iii. p. 439.]

139 (return) [ This bloody feast is described in Leonine verse in
the Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo, (Script. Ital. tom. vii. p.
436, 437,) who flourished towards the end of the xiith century,
(Fabricius Bibliot. Latin. Med. et Infimi Aevi, tom. iii. p. 69,
edit. Mansi;) but his evidence, which imposed on Sigonius, is
reasonably suspected by Muratori (Annali, tom. viii. p. 177.)]

1391 (return) [ The Marquis Maffei’s gallery contained a medal
with Imp. Caes August. P. P. Crescentius. Hence Hobhouse infers
that he affected the empire. Hobhouse, Illustrations of Childe
Harold, p. 252.—M.]

140 (return) [ The coronation of the emperor, and some original
ceremonies of the xth century are preserved in the Panegyric on
Berengarius, (Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 405-414,)
illustrated by the Notes of Hadrian Valesius and Leibnitz.
Sigonius has related the whole process of the Roman expedition,
in good Latin, but with some errors of time and fact, (l. vii. p.
441-446.)]

141 (return) [ In a quarrel at the coronation of Conrad II.
Muratori takes leave to observe—doveano ben essere allora,
indisciplinati, Barbari, e bestials Tedeschi. Annal. tom. viii.
p. 368.]