Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

the Rev. Father has not a fingle opportunity of recording the triumphs.

Under the ufurpation of the fecond race, a new scene opens to us. Charles Martel, who without the name of King, inherited all the regal power with the office of Mayor of the Palace, was early courted, in the career of his brilliant victories, by Gregory the third. In confequence of a folemn embaffy fent by his Holinefs to Charles," the first (lays Father Daniel) that had ever been feen from a Pope in France," the revolution was planned, that fecured a throne to the family of the one, and to the fucceffors of the other. A negociation was fet on foot, by which it was agreed that Pope Gregory should renounce the allegiance, which the Bishops and people of Rome had, till then, owed and fworn to the Emperor of the Eaft ;-that he fhould put himself and the Holy See under the protection of Charles, and fhould confer on him, in the name of the Roman people, the titles of Patrician and Conful, as they had been conferred on Clovis by the Emperor Anaftafius. Charles undertook, on his part, to protect and defend the Pope, the Roman Church, and the people of Rome, not only against the Lombards, who had taken poffeffion of the Exarchate of Ravenna, the fuppofed gift of

E

Conftantine the Great, and threatened Rome itself with a fiege, but against the Grecian Emperor, the undoubted fovereign of the Duchy of Rome, fhould he be inftigated to punish this act of open rebellion in his vaffal.

This was the rough draft of the famous Partition Treaty between rebellion and ufurpation, that was finally ratified and carried into full effect, with the fubftitution of the Regal to the Patrician and Confular dignity, by Pepin, fucceffor to Charles, and Zachary, fucceffor to Gregory.

A celebrated writer of the 15th century, compares the conduct of the two contracting parties on this occafion to that of two robbers dividing their booty between them-Pepin engaging to transfer to Zachary the territories of which he was to defpoil the Emperor and the Lombards; and Zachary fanctioning the ufurpation of Pepin, in wrefting the fceptre from the hands of his lawful fovereign-Pepin enthroning the Spiritual power of Zachary, and Zachary regalifing the temporal power of Pepin.

It is worth obferving, and it cannot have escaped your difcernment, that the prostituted writers, who fuffocate us with the foetid incenfe of panegyric and adulation, which they inceffantly burn under the nofe of the new God of their idolatry, have never once brought forward the name or the example of Pepin in their references to the great characters to whom they labour to affimilate the hiftory and the

fortunes of the Corfican. The great original whom he copies, the renowned Prince in whofe fteps he treads, is Charlemagne. It is the genius of Charlemagne that leads him to univerfal conqueft ;-it is the piety! the devotion! of Charlemagne that infpires him with so ardent a zeal for the interests of the Holy Catholic Church; fuch profound veneration for the Apoftolic See; fuch filial fubmiffion to its Supreme Head. It is the example of Charlemagne, and a pious ambition not to be excelled by him in any of the ingredients that go to the compofition of a true Chriftian Knight and Hero, that impelled him to receive the facred Unction from the hands of the fucceffor of the Prince of the Apoftles.

Now the fact is, and it would be disrespectful in me to fuppofe you to be ignorant of it, that in the adventures of the Corfican we cannot discover the most distant resemblance to the fortunes of this hero of history and romance. Charlemagne found royalty in his cradle, however it came there ;-he fucceeded quietly and peaceably to the throne of his father, however acquired. With respect to the title of Emperor, with which he was invested after a triumphant reign of thirty-two years, if we are to believe his hiftorian and fecretary, Eginard, it had never been an object of his ambition; it had never been in his contemplation. According to this hiftorian, and who can deferve more credit in a tranf

action of which, moft probably, he was an eyewitness, it was the officious zeal of Pope Leo that funk the titles of Roman, Patrician and of King in that of Emperor. I need not inform a perfon fo converfant in church history, that this fame Leo had been under the neceffity of vindicating himself before Charlemagne, who came to Rome exprefsly for the purpose of having him tried, from a charge of the most horrible crimes *. He purged himself by his own oath. Charlemagne believed him, and 'took him under his protection, and the Christmas day following, as this Prince was on his knees during the celebration of Mafs in the Bafilic of Saint Peter, his Holinefs, without any previous communication of his defign, placed an Imperial crown on his head; excited the people of Rome to hail him "Cæfar, Auguftus the Great, the Pacific, crowned

ઃઃ

by the hand of God ;" and, with the people, paid him the homage, whlch the fovereign Pontiffs had immediately paid to the Emperors, whenever they visited the ancient capital of the Empire. But fo chagrined was the Emperor at the officiousness of this conciliatory act, which the gratitude and the policy of Leo fuggefted, and at the manner in which he was furprised into it, that he declared, as Eginhard afferts, that had he been aware of what was to happen, he would not have gone to the Church, notwithstanding the holiness of the day.

So he says himself in his exculptory oath, of which a copy

remains.

Such is the account of this memorable tranfaction, as I find it in Father Daniel, and other historians of equal authority, for I own I have not read the original history. Is there a fingle circumftance in which it bears the moft diftant refemblance to the atrocious ufurpation of the Corfican, or to the blafphemous ceremonies of his coronation?

But of the events attending the feizure of the crown by Pepin, and of the *repetition of the ce remony of his confecration by Stephen, who, next but one, fucceeded to Pope Zachary, we fee an im perfect copy sketched by the pencil of this modern master from the school of ufurpation and hypocrify. All that is fhocking and revolting in the old history piece, meets and difgufts the eye on the Corfican canvas; but a trace is not preferved of all that reconciled his contemporaries to the affumption of the royal dignity by Pepin. The difference is obvious, as well in the principal figures, as in the groupes that furround them; and it is melancholy to observe, that in the perfon of his Holiness it is the moft humiliating and degrading.

In the old piece we fee the defcendant of the moft ancient and illuftrious family in France, a chieftain, to whom an uninterrupted fucceffion of great and illuftrious characters, handing down to each other from father to fon, the high dignity of Mayor of the palace, had for centuries fecured the inheritance of the fupreme power and authority,

⚫ That ceremony had been previously performed by Boniface the famous Bishop of Metz.

« AnteriorContinuar »