A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. BOOK IV. FROM THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE TO THE DEPOSITION OF POPE GREGORY VI., a.d. 814–1046-continued. CHAPTER V. FROM THE DEPOSITION OF CHARLES THE FAT TO THE DEATH OF A.D. 887-1003. We now for the first time meet with a long period-including the whole of the tenth century-undisturbed by theological controversy. But we must not on this account suppose that it was an era of prosperity or happiness for the church. Never, perhaps, was there a time of greater misery for most of the European nations; never was there one so sad and so discreditable for religion. The immediate necessities which pressed on men diverted their minds from study and speculation. The clergy in general sank into the grossest ignorance and disorder; the papacy was disgraced by infamies of which there had been no example in former days. Soon after the beginning of this period the Byzantine church was agitated by a question which also tended to increase its differences with Rome. Leo the Philosopher, the pupil of Photius, after having had three wives who had left him without offspring, married Zoe, with whom he had for some time cohabited. According to the Greek historians, the union was celebrated by one of the imperial chaplains before the birth of a child; and, when Leo had Hist. Litt. vi. 2; Giesel. II. i. 264. PART II. b Cedren. 600. A.D. 905. become father of an heir, he raised Zoe to the rank of empress. The marriage would, in any circumstances, have been scandalous, for even second marriages had been discountenanced by the church, and a fourth marriage was hitherto unknown in the east. The patriarch Nicolas, therefore, deposed the priest who had blessed the nuptials; he refused to admit the imperial pair into the church, so that they were obliged to perform their devotions elsewhere; and he refused to administer the Eucharist to Leo, who thereupon banished him to the island of Hiereia. The account given by the patriarch himself is somewhat different-that the son of Leo and Zoe was born before their marriage; that he consented to baptise the child only on condition of a separation between the parents; that Leo swore to comply, but within three days after introduced Zoe into the palace with great pomp, went through the ceremony of marriage without the intervention of any priest, and followed it up by the coronation of his wife. Nicolas adds that he entreated the emperor to consent to a separation until the other chief sees should be consulted, but that some legates from Rome, who soon after arrived at Constantinople, countenanced the marriage, and that thus Leo was emboldened to deprive and to banish him.a Euthymius, an ecclesiastic of high character, who was raised to the patriarchate, restored the emperor to communion, but resisted his wish to obtain a general sanction of fourth marriages, although it was supported by many persons of consideration. the death of Leo, his brother Alexander, who succeeded together with the young son of Zoe, Constantine Porphyrogenitus,f not only restored Nicolas, but gave him an important share in the government, while Euthymius on his deposition was treated with barbarous outrage by the clergy of the opposite party, and soon after died. Alexander himself died within a year, when Zoe became powerful in the regency, and urged her son to insist on the recognition of her marriage. A.D. 911. See the Continuation of Theophanes, pp. 370-1, ed. Bonn; Sym. Magist. de Leone, 18; Cedrenus, 600-2, and the other writers quoted by Baronius, 901. 2, seqq., and by Pagi in his notes. Nic. Ep. ad Anastas. Roman. A.D. 912, ap. Baron. 912. 6. Mr. Finlay follows this account, ii. 312. e 'EXλoyíuwv. Cedren. 602. Symeon Magister's word is λογικωτάτων, which On But she was shut up in a convent by Romanus Lecapenus, who assumed the government as the colleague of Constantine, and in 920 the rival parties in the church were reconciled. An edict was published by which, for the future, third marriages were allowed on certain conditions, but such unions as that of which the emperor himself was the offspring were prohibited on pain of excommunication.' At Rome, however, fourth marriages were allowed, and on this account an additional coolness arose between the churches, so that for a time the names of the popes appear to have been omitted from the diptychs of Constantinople.m The Greek church continued to rest on the doctrines and practices established by the councils of former times. The worship of images was undisturbed. The empire underwent frequent revolutions, marked by the perfidy, the cruelty, the ambition regardless of the ties of nature, with which its history has already made us too familiar; but the only events which need be here mentioned are the victories gained over the Saracens by Nicephorus Phocas (A.D. 963-969) and by his murderer and successor John Tzimisces (A.D. 969-976). By these princes Crete and Cyprus were recovered, and the arms of the Greeks were carried even as far as Bagdad. And, although their more distant triumphs had no lasting effect, the empire retained some recompence for its long and bloody warfare in the possession of Antioch, with Tarsus, Mopsuestia, and other cities in Cilicia." In the west, the age was full of complicated movements, which it is for the most part difficult to trace, and impossible to remember. After the deposition of Charles the Fat, the only representatives of the Carolingian line were illegitimate-Arnulf, a son of the Bavarian Carloman, and Charles, styled the Simple, the offspring of Louis the Stammerer by a marriage to which the church refused its sanction. Arnulf assumed the government of Germany, which he held from 887 to 899. He ruled with vigour, carried on successful wars with the Obotrites and other Slavonic nations of the north, and broke the terror of the Northmen by a great overthrow on the Dyle, near Louvain, in 891. He also weakened A.D. 892. the power of the Moravians; but in order to this he called in the aid of the Hungarians or Magyars, and opened a way into Germany to these formidable barbarians. No such savage enemy of Christendom had yet appeared. They were a people of Asiatic origin, whose language, of the same stock with the Finnish, bore no likeness to that of any civilised or Christian nation. The writers of the time, partly borrowing from the old descriptions of Attila's Huns, with whom the Magyars were fancifully connected, speak of them as monstrous and hardly human in form, as living after the manner of beasts, as eating the flesh and drinking the blood of men, the heart being particularly esteemed as a delicacy. Light in figure and accoutrements, and mounted on small, active horses, they defied the pursuit of the Frankish cavalry, while even in retreat their showers of arrows were terrible." They had already established themselves in the territory on the Danube which for some centuries had been occupied by the Avars. They had threatened Constantinople, and had laid both the eastern empire and the Bulgarians under contribution. They now passed into Germany in seemingly inexhaustible multitudes, overran Thuringia and Franconia, and advanced as far as the Rhine. Almost at the same moment the northern city of Bremen was sacked by one division of their forces, and the Swiss monastery of St. Gall' by another. A swarm of them laid Provence desolate, and penetrated to the Spanish frontier, although a sickness which broke out among them enabled Raymond, marquis of Gothia, to repel them. Crossing the Alps, they rushed down on Italy. Pavia, the Lombard capital, and then the second city of the peninsula, was given to the flames, with its forty-four churches, while the Magyars glutted their cruelty and love of plunder on the persons and on the property of the inhabitants. The invaders made their way even to the extremity of Calabria, while the A.D. 924. Liutprand, 'Antapodosis,' i. 13, ap. Pertz, iii.; Schmidt, i. 526; Am. Thierry, Hist. d'Attila,' ii. 218-221. Luden disbelieves this (vi. 248); but see Palacky, i. 148. Luden, vi. 298-9; Milman, ii. 369. Milman, n. on Gibbon, v. 296. This seems, however, to be disputed. See Mrs. Busk, i. 395-6. See Ammian. Marcellin. xxxi. 2; Jornandes, c. 24. (Patrol. lxix.) u Regino, A.D. 889 (Pertz i., or Patrol. cxxxii.). See Gibbon, v. 294-8; Schmidt, i. 526; Sismondi, Rép. Ital. i. 25; Lu X b |