The Catholic Church, along with its vicars, has always had enemies, individuals who have devoted their lives to attempting to discredit it.
The Protestant Mr. Guizot wrote the following against the Catholic Church:
“No one in the Lombard church could think of equaling him (the Pope); it quickly fell under his authority. He also acquired new authority in the Gallo-Frankish church. It was with his help, and by relying on his name and advice, that the first Carolingians worked to reform it. Even before their elevation to royalty, Saint Boniface writes to Pope Zachary that Carloman, brother of Pepin the Short, asked him to come to Gaul, protesting that he wanted to amend and reform something in the state of religion and the Church, which for at least seventy or eighty years has been given over to disorder and trampled underfoot.”
It was under the presidency and influence of Saint Boniface, as legate of the pope, that councils were held, formerly so rare and which became frequent. The acts of the council of 742, called Germanicum, begin with these words:
“I, Carloman, duke and prince of the Franks, with the counsel of the servants of God and our nobles, have convened the bishops of my kingdom and Boniface, who is an envoy of Saint Peter, so that they may give me counsel.”
The same fact occurs at the council held the following year at Lestines or Leptines, in the diocese of Cambrai, and at the assembly of Soissons (752), where Pepin was anointed king. Not content with thus serving as an intermediary between temporal sovereigns and the popes, Saint Boniface also undertakes to closely link the metropolitans or archbishops, whose power he restores, to the See of Rome; he urges those of Rouen, Sens, and Reims, at the time of their nomination, to ask the pope for the pallium, a sign of their new dignity, and to thus await from him a kind of investiture.
Only one of them follows his advice, and the pope expresses to Boniface his sorrow that the other two have not done the same… Even if we had no other proof of the ascending movement of the papacy in the Gallo-Frankish church at that time than the tone in which it was spoken of, that would be sufficient: the language not only of the clergy but of writers in general, of temporal sovereigns themselves, becomes extremely pompous; magnificent and respectful epithets multiply; the pope is no longer simply the Bishop of Rome, the brother of bishops; he is given names, expressions are used for him that are used for no other.
A few phrases from Alcuin, who, in his capacity as a favorite of Charlemagne, cannot be suspected of having wanted to sacrifice his master's power to a foreign power, will say more than all generalities. In 796, he addresses Pope Leo III (795-816) in these terms:
“Most holy father, pontiff chosen by God, vicar of the apostles, heir of the Fathers, prince of the Church, guardian of the only spotless dove.” (Letter xx).
And elsewhere, in 794, to Adrian I (762-795):
“Most excellent father, as I recognize you as the vicar of the blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, I regard you as the heir of his miraculous power.” (Letter xv.)
And elsewhere, writing to Charlemagne in 799:
“Until now, there have been three persons of supreme rank in the world: the sublimity of the apostolic vicar who occupies the seat of the blessed Peter, prince of the apostles; the dignity of the emperor, who exercises secular power in the second Rome; the third is the royal dignity, in which the will of our Lord Jesus Christ has placed you to govern the Christian people.” (Letter lxxx.)
Certainly, one must not take these expressions literally, one must not believe that the pope already possessed in all its grandeur the power they attribute to him; but they attest to what religious, moral supremacy he already possessed in the minds of the people. From this period truly dates his intellectual domination, the source of all others.
His temporal power was at the same time receiving a notable increase… Thus,
1° by securing for the popes over the Italian church a power they did not have before;
2° by giving them a very active influence in the affairs of the Gallo-Frankish church;
3° by recognizing for them, through language and all demonstrations that strike the people, a majesty, a supremacy that princes had not yet acknowledged;
4° by finally increasing, either through wealth or its indirect consequences, their temporal power, the first Carolingians, and Charlemagne in particular, were the most useful allies for the papacy.
Observations — The reading of this historical fragment arouses keen interest and great curiosity. Faced with the accumulation of evidence attesting to pontifical superiority at the time of the first Carolingians, one may wonder how Mr. Guizot will manage to defend his hypothesis that the pope had not yet acquired real preeminence. For our historian, this obstacle seems less insurmountable. Mr. Guizot argues that, even if very serious testimonies affirm the supremacy of Rome, they must not be taken literally; and if facts of all kinds corroborate these testimonies, he considers that their totality only demonstrates a tendency towards the ascent of the papacy, which, in the end, only had a very active influence thanks to the support of the Carolingians.
Unfortunately, the ingenious turn of these insights is not enough to make them true.
1° Must we recall once again that the Holy See, existing before Charlemagne and even Clovis, is not a creation of the Carolingians? The latter certainly honored themselves by being its useful allies, facilitating the exercise of its authority, but without conferring any new power upon it. This has been amply demonstrated.
2° Why would we not take seriously the words of Alcuin, a learned and serious man, who, according to Mr. Guizot, would not have sought to compromise his master's power in favor of a foreign authority?
Why belittle his statements, as if he were an ignoramus or a rhetorician? It is important to remember that while Mr. Guizot minimizes Alcuin, reducing his credibility, he depicts Pepin and Charlemagne as political charlatans, using solemn language and demonstrations to impress the people.
One must lack solid arguments to resort to such subterfuges! But in the end, what is this exceptional grandeur that Charlemagne and his favorite would have granted to the papacy, which it did not already possess? Alcuin affirms that papal authority is the most august on earth, that the pope is the successor of Saint Peter, the heir of his power, the prince of the Church and the guardian of the immaculate dove. Well, if some claim that the pope held these titles and this power only in the praises of the Anglo-Saxon monk, facts will show that this authority and these titles were truly attributed to the Holy See, according to the belief of the Franks and other Christian peoples.
In 742, the legate Saint Boniface, reporting on the work of the assembly of Leptines to Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, says to him:
“We there confessed the Catholic faith, union with the Church, as well as the submission due to it, and which we promised to Saint Peter and his vicar to keep all our lives. We resolved that the council would be held every year, and that the metropolitans would ask for the pallium from the Holy See, and would follow, according to the canons, all the precepts of Saint Peter, in order to be counted among the flock entrusted to him. We all subscribed to this confession of faith and sent it to the tomb of Saint Peter. The clergy and the pontiff of Rome received it with joy and congratulated us.”
Now, was it also a matter of politeness, this declaration of the necessity, imposed by the canons, to obey Saint Peter in the person of his vicar? In the year 799, a faction rose up in Rome against Leo III, who fled to Saxony to Charlemagne, to implore his help. The Frankish king, having gone to Rome, formed a tribunal to examine the accusations brought against the pope.
The Frankish and Roman lords attended the debates with Charlemagne. But, say Leo's judges first, “we dare not judge the apostolic see, which is the head of all the churches of God; for it is all of us who are judged by it and by its vicar, while it is judged by no one, as was the ancient custom; but, according to what the sovereign pontiff himself thinks, we will obey following the canons.”
Leo consented to let the procedure take its course; but no accuser having come forward, the pope protested his innocence by swearing on Holy Scripture.
In a council of Aachen, presided over by Paulinus of Aquileia, Roman legate, in 803, Charlemagne wrote:
“We make known to all the children of the Church and all our subjects that we have often been wearied with complaints against the archbishops… To end these disputes, we have consulted the Holy See, according to the canons which indicate that major causes must be referred to it, as the holy council orders and as praiseworthy custom requires. That is why, in sending Archbishop Arno to Pope Leo, we charged him, among other things, to consult him on this question. The pope replied that ordinations performed by archbishops are null… and that the archbishops must be condemned and expelled. But the bishops of our kingdom assembled at Regensburg believed, with the pope's agreement, that they should use more gentleness, etc.”
As can be seen, it is in the presence of the council and with its assent that Charles speaks of the duty to refer major causes to the pope, according to ancient ecclesiastical laws. Of the last two facts I have just recalled, one, I mean the refusal to judge Leo, a scruple that neither Charlemagne, nor the bishops, nor the lords in his suite regarded as a novelty, does this refusal not proclaim as eloquently as Alcuin's texts that the pope is the prince of the Church? And the other fact, or the appeal to the Holy See, according to custom and the canons, for a major cause, that is, to obtain first the pontifical sentence on the archbishops, then a mitigation of this sentence, does it not demonstrate very clearly that it was in Rome that resided the guardian of ecclesiastical discipline, of the spotless dove?
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It is therefore permissible, according to Leo's judges and the council of 803, to take literally what Alcuin and Charlemagne said and wrote about the papacy. We read in a capitulary of 801 dictated by the most filial affection:
“In memory of the prince of the apostles, let us honor the holy Roman church and the apostolic see, so that she who is the mother of priestly dignity may also be our mistress in ecclesiastical matters. For this, we must preserve towards her humility and gentleness, to bear with pious sentiments the yoke that this see would impose on us, even if it were in some way intolerable.”
These words, according to Mr. Guizot, were written only to captivate the imagination of the people. But it is difficult to believe that Charlemagne wanted to establish the pope as the spiritual sovereign of the Gallo-Frankish Church. It is conceivable that he founded a small state beyond the mountains, a useful ally of the Franks; but the idea that he built a papal throne in Gaul, before which all, including himself, should prostrate themselves, even if this throne represented an unbearable burden, remains incomprehensible.
It therefore seems that belief in papal supremacy was already well established in the time of Charlemagne.
Source: Defense of the Church – Abbé J.-M.-Sauveur Gorini – 1864