Roots of the Reformation XVI: Charlemagne the Usurper

The French Royal Tombs
in the former Abbey Church of Saint Denis  

OK, vacation is over and I need to refocus.   I want to get back to our “Roots of the Reformation series”  and go back—waaaaay back—to Charlmagne and his heritage.  As I had been writing more than a month ago, there is a long history of Reformations.  It does not begin with Martin Luther—far from it.   Some Reformations have happened within the unity of the Church and some have fractured the unity of the Church.  Charlemagne’s Reformation was one of those that happened within the unity of the Church—indeed fortified the unity of the Western Church.  (It would, however, have repercussions that were partially responsible for the schism of 1054 between Rome and Constantinople).

For those who think linearly—and most people interested in history do—I owe an apology regarding my postings on Charlemagne.  In the first place I should have kept them together and not interspersed them among the postings on clericalism that I had been doing before I went to Prague—though I have to say those postings got much more attention than these on Charlemagne.  In the second place, I should have posted them in a different order—and begun with this one which explains how Charlemagne got to  be king (and emperor) in the first place as neither did he nor his father come from the French royal line but where members of a family of hereditary civil servants.  After explaining the ascension of his family to the throne, I should have posted the entry on the Carolingian Reformation: Roots of the Reformation VIII: Reformation or Reformations, and then Roots of the Reformation XI: Crown Control of the Church, but as Pontius Pilate used to say: Quod scripsi, scripsi. 

We think of the Popes as having governed the Church continuously from Peter down to the present day but history tells us a very different story.  There were times that the popes had great influence over the Church, even times when it did make its power felt beyond Rome and the towns and cities of central Italy and there were times where the bishop of Rome had now power and little influence beyond his own diocese. For example, at the time of Pope St Gregory the Great (590-604) papal influence (“power” is too strong a word for papal authority at the time) was felt in England and much of what is today France as well as throughout Italy.  On the other hand, a century later, that influence was waning and the pope was little more than a name that was mentioned in the prayers of the Mass.  Of course just that mention was not insignificant as he reminded people that Peter’s successor still governed the Church at Rome and Peter’s mystique was strong throughout the Church.  In practical matters however, the Pope was pretty powerless. There were no papal writs authorizing the consecration of bishops; such decisions were entirely local.   Bishops were pretty much supreme in their dioceses except where a strong Archbishop could—usually with royal backing—convince the bishops of his province to conform to his ideas.  Bishops were chosen by the clergy of their dioceses—usually with the confirmation and blessing of the King or the local nobility. 

In the eighth century papal power received an important boost due to a dynastic change in France.  The Kings of the Franks were sacred persons—heirs of the great Clovis who had converted to Christianity in 496 and brought his people with him.  Saint Remi had anointed Clovis with a heaven-sent chrism (or so the story goes) and thus he and his line, the Merovingian Kings of the Franks, were a God-chosen line to govern.  As time passed, however, the Merovingians began to enjoy the kingship too much and allowed their prime ministers, the “Mayors of the Palace” to assume actual power.  This office, like the kingship, became hereditary in the Pippinid family.  The power and esteem of the Pippinds soon matched that of the royal house.  In fact, because they were actually the holders of power, the popularity of the mayors of the palace exceeded that of the kings and when Mayor of the Palace Charles Martel drove the Muslim armies back across the Pyrenees after the Battle of Tours in 732, thus guaranteeing the independence of the French and the survival of the Christian faith, the Mayors of the Palace established themselves as the de facto rulers of France and the populace saw that the Merovingian Kings were redundant. 

This provided too strong a temptation for the Mayors of the Palace and Charles Martel’s son, Pepin the Short.  He was determined to take the crown for himself.  Of course, Pepin needed some legitimacy to take the throne and not be seen as a mere usurper.  Enter the pope.  Pepin petitioned Pope Zachary asking whether a king who had no power was king at all?  The answer came back that the one who held the power, not necessarily the one who had the lineage, was true king.  This is a revolutionary doctrine and has implications for modern politics.  On the pope’s word, Pepin deposed Childeric III, the last of the  Merovingian kings.  Childeric and his son were forced into the monastic life, ending the dynasty.  Zachary’s successor, Stephen II, came to France and anointed and crowed Pepin in the royal necropolis at the Abbey Church of Saint Denis just north of Paris.  Anointing and coronation in the burial church of the Frankish royalty gave Pepin a share in the legitimacy which had heretofore belonged to the Merovingian kings.  Stephen also conferred on Pepin the title “Patrician (a nobleman) of the Romans” giving him a tie to Rome and its imperial heritage. 

Of course the popes had some political motives for sponsoring a change of dynasty.  History will show you that popes act from political expediency far more than from theological purism.  Their own power in Italy was being challenged by the Lombards, a Germanic tribe who had invaded northern Italy and were threatening Rome.  The popes looked to the new dynasty to protect papal power in Italy; Pepin’s son, Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus, Charles the Great) defeated the Lombards in 774 and absorbed them into the empire he was building. 

Charlemagne would not only defend the papacy from the Lombards but would again become involved in defending a pope from the Roman nobility.  The old and noble families of Rome were appalled when in 795 a commoner was chosen pope as Leo III.  The nobility had seen that this office belonged by right to one of them.  The nobility charged the pope with adultery and perjury.  In 799, a gang of thugs, at the behest of the nobility, kidnapped Leo, and when the nobility declared him deposed, attempted to blind him and to cut out his tongue.  He escaped them and fled to Paderborn where Charlemagne met him.  Charlemagne investigated the charges against Leo.  He then returned Leo to Rome for a formal hearing where the pope cleared himself by an oath and Charlemagne reinstated him.  (Today we would never accept a person’s word, even a pope’s, that he was innocent but those were far more generous times. Or may just more naive. )  Two days later, on Christmas day 800, Leo, in turn, then crowned Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans. 

Charlemagne had a clear understanding of the role of the Pope and the Role of the Emperor.  The Emperor was to protect the Church and manage its external affairs—which in Charlemagne’s eyes also meant to appoint bishops and other prelates.  The Pope’s duty was to define the doctrines that united Christianity and to pray for the Emperor and the army whose task it was to protect the Church.

Roots of the Reformation VIII: Reformation or Reformations

reliquary bust of Charlemagne

I was asked why I keep referring to the Protestant Reformations—note the plural.  I think “the Reformation” is often misunderstood  because we do not nuance the term correctly and in a historical context.  There was no single Reformation.  Indeed the Church has known a series of Reformations—some of which happened within the unity of the Church and some of which happened in such a way as to separate groups within the Church from one another and divide the Church.  And that was not the end of it—within some of the Churches formed by the divisions, there were further Reformations.  Perhaps we can look at the history and see this.  

First of all, let’s remember the axiom: ecclesia semper reformans, semper reformanda—the Church, always reforming; always in need of reform.  History has borne that out.  Human nature being what it is, the Chuch—which after all is a collection of humans with all the faults and failures of the residue of original sin—keeps slipping from the ideal is Founder set for it and, like the individuals who comprise it, needs to do penance and amend its ways. 

When I teach the history of the Church, the earliest reformation of the Church, or at least the Church in the West, that I treat is the Reform of Charlemagne.  I suspect that one might be able to look back to Gregory the Great (c.600) and argue for a Reform, though personally I don’t see that being a time of Reform but more of a pristine idealism in a Church had had yet to be corrupted.  On the other hand I am probably naïve; human nature being what it is the Church has probably needed Reform from the time of the Apostles.    Some might speak of “Constantine’s Reformation”—after all he did call the Council of Nicea and he reshaped the Church to fit into the Roman world, but I guess I come out of the Niebuhr school that judges Constantine’s influence on the Church to have been deforming rather than reforming.  That will be an interesting series of blog entries—the Constantinian heritage.  Hmmm  have to think about that.

In any event, we will start with the Carolingian Reformation—which was part of the Carolingian Renaissance—renaissances and reformations often travel together through the pages of history books.  Charlemagne was faced with a problem.  He had a vast empire which today would cover France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, most of Germany, the northeastern corner of Spain, parts of Austria, and Italy as far south as Rome.  There were, in this Empire, huge variances in language, culture, and religion.  When I say there were differences of religion, most of the region had been Christianized but there were significant differences in liturgy (worship practices and rites), monastic practices, and church discipline.  While the pope had the title of Patriarch of the West, in actual fact he had no power and there was no central authority.  Each bishop was elected in his diocese and was pretty much independent.  Charlemagne wanted to unify his empire and so he decreed that there would be one language for all official business-Latin, the language of ancient Rome.  And as for religion—he decided that Roman practices should be used throughout his empire.  The Roman liturgical books were made standard.  Now, in the ninth century liturgical books contained the texts of prayers, not the rubrics.  Matters such as the number of candles on the altar, the color of vestments, when to bow or genuflect—that still varied from city to city according to the local custom.  Charlemagne imposed a uniform calendar (again, allowing for additions of local usage) and the text of the prayers. Thus, for example, the Roman Canon (today’s Eucharistic Prayer I) became the standard consecratory prayer used throughout the empire.  Similarly the structure of the Mass and the various collects for Sundays and major feasts were determined for all the empire, which meant practically speaking, for all Western Europe.  The Roman martyrs and saints began to be venerated throughout Europe, while the memory of local saints were still honored in their home region.     

Charlemagne also imposed the Roman Rule for Monks—that is the Rule of Saint Benedict—on all the monasteries of his empire.  There were innumerable monasteries of nuns and monks in the ninth century and again, in various matters such as the arrangement of the monastic garb or what foods were eaten at which season, local custom remained, but in the essentials of monastic organization and discipline, Charlemagne established a uniformity. Every monastery had an abbot.  Every monastery fasted from “the ides of September until Easter Day” as Benedict prescribed.  The round of daily services—Matins, Vespers, Compline, etc. was followed as it was in Rome.  Charlemagne also mandated that all the monasteries, at least of men, should have a school as education was very important to his program.  Of course, other than future monks few attended these schools but it did preserve learning and culture.  By the way, the nuns’ monasteries often had schools every bit as good as the monks’ and though they were primarily for the education of future nuns they did provide an opportunity for women to learn not only how to read and write, but Latin, music, art, astronomy, mathematics and other disciplines.  

In many ways it was Charlemagne’s Reform that created a “Roman” Catholic Church although it would not be called that for several centuries.  Charlemagne did his best in the Reform of the Church, but there were many issues left pending.  Economically the Church was deeply immersed in the feudal system and its offices and incomes would be exploited by kings and nobles alike—bishoprics and abbacies were too often filled with men (or in the case of abbacies, with women as well as men) whose only qualification was their parentage or patronage.   Monasticism was limited to the upper classes and the ordinary peasantry was relegated to a life that was more superstitious piety than Christian discipleship.  The primitive Church’s idealism regarding pacificism was forgotten as the demands of political situations required warfare.  Nevertheless, Charlemagne’s efforts should not be dismissed.  While he did not do all the Church needed for reform, given the resources with which he had to work, he made an honest effort and it was not without its benefits, most notably in regards to education.