The Historians' History of the World 07

The ill success which attended the efforts of Grifo,—whose claims but a few years before would have rallied thousands of malcontents round his standard,—and the rapid and easy suppression of the Swabian and Bavarian revolts, afford us evidence that the once bitter opposition of the seigneurs, both lay and clerical, to the establishment of the Carlovingian throne, was finally overcome; and that Pepin possessed a degree of settled authority which neither his father nor his grandfather had enjoyed.

SECULARISATION

[748-751 A.D.]

A Merovingian Frank

It was during the mayoralty of Pepin, and not, as is generally assumed, in that of Charles Martel, that the famous and important act of secularisation took place. The practice into which Charles Martel had been driven by his necessities, of bestowing ecclesiastical benefices on laymen who assumed the priesthood with purely secular views, was inconsistent with the peace and good order, and inimical to all the higher interests, of the Christian church. As an exceptional state of things, however, even rigid disciplinarians and pious churchmen like Boniface had thought it expedient to yield a tacit assent to the employment of church revenues for military purposes. But when, on the one hand, the consequences of these irregular and violent expedients had become, with the lapse of time, more clearly evident; and, on the other, a stricter discipline, and a more religious and ecclesiastical spirit had been diffused through the great body of the clergy by the labours of Boniface and his school, it became more and more repugnant to the feelings of all true friends of the church to see its highest offices filled by masquerading laymen, who had nothing of the priest about them but the name and dress. In this repugnance we have every reason to believe that both Carloman and Pepin largely shared; and yet, though not engaged in an internecine struggle like their father, they carried on expensive wars, and needed large supplies of land and money. It was not therefore to be expected that they should ease the church from all participation in the public burdens, especially at a time when it had absorbed a very large proportion of the national wealth. Under these circumstances, a compromise was effected by the influence of Boniface at the synod of Lestines. In this important council the assembled bishops consented, in consideration of the urgent necessities of the state, to make a voluntary surrender of a portion of the funds of the church; with the stipulation that the civil rulers should, on their part, abstain for the future from all arbitrary interference with its discipline and property.

The vast funds which the “secularisation” placed at the disposal of the Frankish princes contributed in no small degree to establish the Carlovingian throne; for it enabled them to carry out to its full extent the system of beneficial (or non-hereditary) grants, and to secure the services of the powerful seigneurs, who were bound to the sovereign not only by a sense of gratitude, but by the hope of future favours and the fear of deprivation.

THE ANOINTING OF PEPIN (751 A.D.)

[751 A.D.]

A change took place at the period at which we have now arrived, which, though easily and noiselessly made, and apparently but nominal, forms an important era in Frankish history. It costs us an effort to remember that Charles Martel, Carloman, and Pepin were not kings, but officers of another, who still bore the royal title, and occasionally and exclusively wore the crown and sat upon the throne. Carloman and Pepin, when they were heading great armies, receiving oaths of allegiance from conquered princes, and giving away duchies, were mayors of the palace of Childeric III, a Merovingian king. Even they had thought the time not yet come for calling themselves by their proper name, and had placed Childeric on the throne. The king’s name was a tower of strength, which they who had met and defeated every other enemy seemed to shrink from attacking.

The foundations of the Merovingian throne, indeed, had been thoroughly, perhaps systematically, sapped. The king-making mayors had set up monarchs and deposed them at their pleasure; they had even left the throne vacant for a time, as if to prove whether the nation was yet cured of its inveterate notion that none but a Merovingian could wear a Frankish crown. There was but one step more to the throne, and that step was taken at last when there was scarcely a man in the empire who had either the power or the wish to prevent it.

In 751 A.D. Pepin assumed the name of king, with the full consent of the nation and the sanction of the pope; and the last of the Merovingians was shorn of his royal locks, the emblems of his power, and sent to end his days in the monastery of St. Bertin, at Sithieu (St. Omer in Artois).