What was the Carolingian Dynasty? What was its influence on church history?

Charlemagne visited Rome again in 781, and a third time in 787, and on each occasion the church was enriched by gifts, bestowed, as he professed in the language of the age, "for the good of his soul." Overwhelmed with gratitude, and fully conscious of his own need of a permanent defender, the pope crowned Charlemagne on the Christmas-eve of the year 800 with the crown of the Western empire, and proclaimed him Caesar Augustus. A Frankish prince, a Teuton, was thus declared the successor of the Caesars, and wielded all the power of the Emperor of the West. "The empire of Charlemagne," says Milman, "was almost commensurate with Latin Christendom; England was the only large territory which acknowledged the ecclesiastical supremacy of Rome, not in subjection to the new Western empire." This event forms the great epoch in the annals of Roman Christendom.

Ecclesiastical history, so-called, from the time of Pepin, is so interwoven with the history of the Frankish kings, and the disgraceful intrigues of the popes, that we must further, though briefly, trace the course of events which have an important bearing on the character of popery and the history of the church.

The rising power of Charlemagne, the younger son of Pepin, was watched by the occupants of St. Peter's chair with the greatest possible interest, and skilfully used by them for the accomplishment of their ambitious designs. Pope Hadrian I and Leo III, both able men, filled the papal throne during the long reign of Charles; and succeeded in greatly aggrandising, through what he called his religious wars, the Roman See.

A quarrel between Desiderius, king of the Lombards, and Pope Hadrian led to a war with France, which ended in the complete overthrow of the Lombard kingdom in Italy. This was the result of the grand scheme of the papacy, and brought about by the unprincipled and treacherous policy of the pontiff. Charles was son-in-law to Desiderius; but after one year's wedlock he divorced Hermingard the Lombard's daughter, and immediately married Hildegard, a lady of a noble Swabian house. The insulted father, on receiving back his repudiated daughter, naturally sought for redress from the pope, the head of the church, of which Charles was so dutiful a son. But although the church, when it suited its own purposes, had asserted in the strongest terms the sanctity of the marriage bond, its open violation in this instance was passed quietly over; the pope refused to interfere.

"Charlemagne, in christian history, commands a more important station even than for his subjugation of Germany to the gospel, on account of his complete organization, if not foundation, of the high feudal hierarchy in a great part of Europe. Throughout the Western empire was, it may be said, constitutionally established this double aristocracy, ecclesiastical and civil. Everywhere the higher clergy and the nobles, kind so downwards through the different gradations of society, even of the same rank, and liable to many of the same duties, of equal, in some cases of co-ordinate, authority. Each district had its bishop and its count; the dioceses and the counties were mostly of the same extent.....

"Charlemagne himself was no less prodigal than weaker kings of immunities and grants of property to churches and monasteries. With his queen Hildegard, he endows the church of St. Martin, in Tours, with lands in Italy. His grants to St. Denys, to Lorch, to Fulda, to Prum, more particularly to Hersfuld, and many Italian abbeys, appear among the acts of his reign.

"Nor were these estates always obtained from the king or the nobles. The stewards of the poor were sometimes the spoilers of the poor. Even under Charlemagne there are complaints against the usurpation of property by bishops and abbots, as against counts and laymen. They compelled the poor free man to sell his property, or forced him to serve in the army, and that on permanent duty, and so to leave his land either without owner, with all the chances that he might not return, or to commit it to the custody of those who remained at home in quiet, and seized every opportunity of entering into possession. No Naboth's vineyard escaped their watchful avarice.

The political results of the Iconoclastic controversy were equally great and important. Rome now burst the bonds of her connection with the East, separating herself for ever from the Byzantine empire; and Greek Christianity from this time becomes a separate religion, and the empire a separate state. The West, receiving a great accession of power through this revolution, ultimately created its own empire, formed alliances with the Frankish kings, and placed the crown of the Western empire on the head of Charlemagne, as we have already seen.

Charles ordered schools to be opened all over his dominions, not forgetting the great need also in this respects of the monks and the clergy. "We have often received," said he, "from different monasteries letters which contained, indeed, many good things, but of which the style was so gross and rude, and so marked with ignorance, that it might reasonably be doubted whether the writers were capable of understanding the holy scriptures."

Charles � or Charlemagne, as he was called after the death of his father � took the lead in all ecclesiastical as well as in temporal matters. He considered it his duty to watch over the spiritual well-being of his people. In spiritual matters he was chief. He considered the pope the highest of bishops, and consulted him, and at times acted on his advice; but when he did, he gave the orders in his own name and not in that of the pope. It was not till later times that all spiritual matters in France were referred to the pope.

N*. There were Christ's hidden ones surely all through, but it is not in the great or the doctors that we find in general anything like Christ. And now all was superstitious, translating relics and the like, though there was, as we have seen, resistance to it. The power of Charlemagne was a remarkable feature of the time, and the way he governed the church in his empire, and led hundreds of bishops in council to reject image worship, as now restored in the East. Still all was confusion and violence; he conquered the Saxons who were heathens, and drove them with the sword to be baptized in the Elbe, and so they were made Christians of. There were devoted men, however, who occupied themselves with the spread of Christianity such as they knew it. The Roman See had very great wealth and possessions, and, Pepin having added large territories to those the see already had, it was hence the object of ambition. Piety was occupied with buildings, and sumptuous clothes of service in the church.

The pope (Adrian) was pleased with the restoration of images, and sent the canons of the council to Charlemagne. But they were ill received in France. The king sent the canons to Alcuin, who was then in England, for his examination. His judgment was against images. Alcuin wrote against them, and four books written by him and others on the subject, were put forth in the name of the king. They are known as "The Caroline Books."

These books boldly called in question the authority of the council, saying it was not universal. They blamed the council for listening to stories of a fabulous character, and refuted in detail all the statements put forth. Still the conclusion went no further than that the worship of images was not to be enforced: images were to be allowed and were not to be broken. A council was now called by Charlemagne, to meet at Frankfort in 794, at which, among other things, the enforced worship of images was condemned; but, as the images were not removed, it is easy to see that the clergy, where so disposed, could encourage their worship.

N*. How can I say that? Constantine, who had been consecrated and confirmed by a local council, was alive, though his eyes were torn out, and Philip too. And if Constantine were not properly consecrated, then all the clergy he ordained were no clergy at all, and there were no real sacraments; I speak always on your own principles. As to violence, violence there was. But the violence was as much on the side of Stephen as Constantine. The only difference was, that John, Constantine's partisan and brother, was guilty only of violence; Christophle, of perjury too. Rome was an object of ambition, and they fought for it. Stephen ordained in his council that only the clergy should elect, and the people then salute him; that images should be adored, which was forbidden at Constantinople by a very numerous council, and by a still larger one (under Charlemagne, at Frankfort) of several hundred bishops. They condemned images in the strongest terms, however the adorations and superstition prevailed. King Pepin gave tithes to the clergy, and Charlemagne issued orders for the regulation of the church and clergy. The pope's legates were at the Council of Frankfort, where a late Constantinopolitan council, which restored the use of images, presided over by the pope's legates and received by him, was utterly rejected. This was somewhat later in 794; I speak of it here in order not to return to in Pope Adrian answered Charlemagne very mildly, excusing himself. This pope's letter to Charlemagne makes no objection to the Greek doctrine as to the procession of the Holy Ghost. Pope Stephen IV (or V, one having died as soon as elected, and hence not counted by many) ordained that the clergy only should elect, the people being present, and that it should not be done without the Emperor's ambassadors being there, in consequence of the violence often used.

64 The second of Nice (787) brought in images again under the influence of Irene; put down under Leo, they were set up again under Theodora his widow, and a festival established in commemoration. In England (792) and at Frankfort under Charlemagne (794), where some eight hundred prelates were assembled, the second Council of Nice was condemned. So was the doctrine in the Council of Illiberis in Spain at the same epoch, noticed here to shew the dates of these questions. Up to 824 purity as to this was maintained. In the middle of the ninth century Paschasius Radbert introduced transubstantiation in the West, as John of Damascus some few years before the Council of Constantinople (654) in the East, just a century before Radbert. Sirmondi, in a short life prefixed to Radbert's works in the Bib. Max. Pat. says (14, 353), "He first so explained the genuine sense of the Catholic church, that he opened the way to others who in numbers wrote afterwards on the same subject." And Bellarmine says he was the first author who wrote seriously and copiously concerning the verity of the body and blood of the Lord in the Eucharist.

Although the sanguinary ambition and the dissolute life of Charlemagne forbid our thinking that he was possessed of any true christian principle, yet it is only fair to acknowledge that he was used of God for the advancement of education at home, and for the spread of Christianity abroad. Schools were erected, universities were founded, learned men were sought for in Italy, England, and Ireland, with the view of raising his subjects to a higher level of moral, religious, and intellectual attainments. Towards the close of his long reign he was surrounded in his royal residence at Aixla-Chapelle by literary men from all countries. The scholars, grammarians, and philosophers of the time were welcomed in the great Hall of Audience. But chief amongst these was our countryman, the Anglo-Saxon monk, Alcuin, a native of Northumbria, and tutor to the imperial family.