1839.] The Crowning of Charlemagne.
THE CROWNING OF CHARLEMAGNE.
On the death of Pope Adrian the First, his nephew had been set aside for Leo, a priest of the Lateran. The election was met with the usual violence of those times; the partisans of the defeated candidate attacked the new Pope in one of his processions, swept his guards before them, and beat himself, until they thought that they had killed him. But he recovered, and made his complaint to Charlemagne, then at the head of an army in the north of Germany. Already the first soldier of Europe, he instantly seized on the opportunity of administering the affairs of Italy—marched with an overwhelming force to Rome. The multitude met him in grand procession, and, with the ejected Pope in his train, he entered the city, and drove his opponents into exile. The Emperor, in Italy, had hitherto borne only the title of "The Great Patrician." But on Christmas day, a.d. 800, mass was celebrated with peculiar pomp in St Peter's; and while Charlemagne knelt at the Papal feet, in his patrician robe, Leo suddenly arose and placed on his head a diadem, and the Emperor was hailed by the whole assemblage, as "the most pious Augustus, crowned by God, the great and pacific Emperor of the Romans."
The power of this mighty master of European dominion thenceforth lent an irresistible superiority to the Papal influence: the army of Charlemagne was virtually the army of the Pope; there were but two steps more to supremacy, and both were accomplished, the election of the Popes without the consent of the German Emperor, and the extension of their temporal dominion over Christendom the former by Gregory the Seventh, (a.d. 1073,) the latter by Innocent the Third, (a.d. 1198.)
Midnight sits upon the sky:
Yet among thy myriads, Rome,
Sinks to rest nor foot nor eye;
Steps are hurrying through the gloom,
Lights from roof and wall are hung,
Clangs the bell's unwearied tongue.
Through the streets the human tide
Rushes, from the princely hall,
From the hovel at its side,—
Mitre, banner, tissued pall,
In the blaze, now seen, now lost,
Roll, like barks by tempests tost.
On the dark and dewy air,
Comes the trumpet's stirring swell;
Comes the broken chant of prayer;
Comes the proud cathedral's peal;
Mingling like the distant roar
Of ocean heaving on its shore.
Still rolls on the living stream,
Prince and peasant, serf and mime,
Like the figures of a dream,
All uncheck'd by space or time,
As if earth had oped her womb,
Thy exhaustless myriads, Rome!
Onward to the Volscian hill
Sweep on foot and horse the throng;
From the rolling column still
Echo prayer, and shout, and song,
Every eyeball's eager gaze
Fixing on the mountain's blaze.
There, on high, like watching stars,
Shine the camp-fires of the Gaul,
Glittering on the brazen cars,
Glittering on the standards tall,
On the cuirass and the chain,
Burnish'd helm and silken vane.
There around the ruddy flame,
Sit thy warriors, old Martel!
Many a bold and haughty name,
By the Moor remember'd well,
When, with bloody spur and rein,
He fled thy field of death, Touraine.
On that wild and glorious day,[1]
Thick as reeds by storms o'erblown,
Rank on rank the Moslem lay;
There the Caliph left his throne—
There the Emir's dying yell,
Told thy triumph, old Martel!
- ↑ The great battle of Tours, in which Charles Martel, at the head of the French chivalry, drove the Moors from France.
