Greek Gods- Rome- Middle Ages- England

ROYAL PALACE OF CHARLEMAGNE'S TIME.

"Scarcely had he spoken when there appeared in the North and West a dark cloud, as it were, which wrapped the clear day in most dreadful shadow. But as it drew nearer, there flashed upon the besieged from the gleaming weapons a day that was more terrible for them than any night. Then they saw him,—Charles,—the man of steel; his arms covered with plates of steel, his iron breast and his broad shoulders protected by steel armor. His left hand carried aloft the iron lance, for his right was always ready for the victorious sword. His thighs, which others leave uncovered in order more easily to mount their horses, were covered on the outside with iron scales. The leg-pieces of steel were common to the whole army. His shield was all of steel, and his horse was iron in color and in spirit.

"This armor all who rode before him, by his side, or who followed him,—in fact, the whole army,—had tried to imitate as closely as possible. Steel filled the fields and roads. The rays of the sun were reflected from gleaming steel. The people, paralyzed by fear, did homage to the bristling steel; the fear of the steel pierced down deep into the earth. 'Alas, the steel!' 'Alas, the steel!' cried the inhabitants confusedly. The mighty walls trembled before the steel, and the courage of youths fled before the steel of the aged.

"And all this, which I have told with all too many words, the truthful seer Otker saw with one swift look, and said to Desiderius: 'There you have Charles, whom you have so long desired!' And with these words he fell to the ground like one dead."

In this war Charlemagne was completely victorious. Desiderius ceased to be King of the Lombards, and Charlemagne became King in his place. For centuries after that Charlemagne's successors continued to wear "the iron crown of Italy," which the great King of the Franks had won from Desiderius.

One of the results of the conquest of the Lombards was that Charlemagne was brought into closer relations with the Pope. The Emperor of the East still claimed to rule over Italy; but his rule was feeble, and only a small part of the peninsula was now in the hands of his officers. The real power in Italy had passed into the hands of the King of the Franks; and the question now was, whether the Pope should be under his rule as he had been under that of the Eastern Emperors.

Two things made this question harder to decide. One was that Charlemagne, following the example of his father Pippin, had given to the Pope a large number of the cities and villages which he had conquered in Italy. The other was that the Pope, on Christmas day of the year 800, placed a crown on Charlemagne's head as he knelt in prayer in St. Peter's church at Rome, and proclaimed him Emperor.

Charlemagne had gone to Rome to aid the Pope against rebellious Romans, and remained for the celebration of Christmas. On that day, as Charlemagne's secretary tells us, "the King went to mass at St. Peter's, and as he knelt in prayer before the alter, the Pope set a crown upon his head. Then the Roman people cried aloud: 'Long life and victory to the mighty Charles, the great and peaceful Emperor of the Romans, who is crowned of God!'" He adds that later Charlemagne declared "that he would not have set foot in the church that day, although it was a great feast-day, if he could have foreseen the design of the Pope." Nevertheless, Charlemagne accepted the new title, and prized it higher than his old title of King.

When Charlemagne gave those cities and villages to the Pope, did it mean that he gave up the right to rule there, and turned the power over to the Pope, so that the latter became the Prince in these places? And when the Pope crowned Charlemagne as Emperor, did that mean that the Pope could set up and pull down emperors whenever he pleased?

These are very hard questions to answer; but they are very important questions to understand. Upon the answers given to them would depend the decision whether the Pope was above the Emperor, or the Emperor above the Pope; and this was a question about which men fought for hundreds of years.

We may also ask, What was this Empire of which Charlemagne became Emperor on that Christmas morning?

The name which men give to it is "the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation." They thought of it as a revival of the old Roman Empire of the East, which had come to an end more than three hundred years before. They called it the Holy  Roman Empire, to show how great a part the Church, and especially the Pope, played in it; and they added the words, of the German Nation, because it was the new and vigorous peoples who had come from the North who now supplied its strength. Though Charlemagne as Emperor ruled only over the peoples who had obeyed him as King, still men felt that his position now was higher, and his authority greater, than it had been before. For now his power was linked with the majestic history of Rome, and was given a more solemn sanction by the Church.

In this way the crowning of Charlemagne as Emperor was an event of very great importance. For a thousand years after that day, the office of Emperor in the West continued to exist; and for a good part of this time it was one of the most powerful means of holding peoples of Western Europe together in one family of nations, and preventing them from growing wholly unlike and hostile to one another. We may truly say that a new age commences in Europe, when force alone no longer rules, and when great ideas, such as the idea of the Church and of the Empire, begin to play a part amid the strife of nations.