Leo III
The Pope had his own reasons for taking this historic step. No longer able to depend on the
Byzantine Emperor for help, he needed a strong protector in Italy. By setting himself up
as donor he secured the superior position of putting the emperor under obligation to the
Papacy.
Charlemagne's empire was held together chiefly by the strength of his personality.
Soon after his death in 814, the empire disintegrated - leaving but a fiction of unity and
an ideal. The devastations of the Saxons, which recalled Charlemagne from Spain, exceeded
anything which Europe had witnessed since the days of Attila.
A new menace had come to threaten to security of the Bishop of Rome, namely the Roman
nobility, who struggled to secure the election of one their scions to the throne of Peter.
As a consequence of this internal squabble Leo was assailed by a faction of the Romans
during a solemn pontifical procession and charged by his enemies in the Roman nobility
with moral turpitude. His assailants knocked him down and attempted to blind him and cut
out his tongue. The sorely wounded Pope was rescued at length by his own partisans. When
he had recovered sufficiently he fled across the Alps to the court of the Frankish king to
secure the assistance of the official "protector of the Romans" at war with the
Saxons and called upon Charlemagne for help. Charlemagne sent the Pope back to Rome under
guard and kept him in protective custody until he himself could cross the Alps toward the
end of 800. On Dec. 23, at a trial which Charlemagne presided, Leo purged himself of the
accusations against him in the German manner and the Roman Pontiff was restored to his
proper authority. The Pope was restored to Rome under the protection of Frankish troops.
To Pope Leo it must have come as an irresistible conclusion that one who had the power and
the will to act the part of the Christian emperor should have the title.
In 808 Pope Leo wrote in a letter to Charlemagne that, although he himself believed the
filoque doctrine to be sound, yet he considered it a mistake to tamper with the wording of
the Creed. It was not until 850 that the Greeks paid much attention to the filoque, but
once they did so, their reaction was sharply critical. Orthodoxy objected, and still
objects to this addition to the Creed, for two reasons, First the Ecumenical Council
forbade any changes, and if any changes were to be made only a 2nd Council would be
competent to make it. The Creed is the common possession of the whole Church, and a part
of the Church has no right to tamper with it. In the second place the Orthodox Church
believe the filoque doctrine to be theologically untrue. They hold that the Spirit
proceeds from the Father alone, and consider it a heresy to say that he proceeds from the
Son as well.
Leo III was Pope at the time of Charlemagne and seems from the first to have resolved to make Charlemagne emperor. Hitherto the court at Byzantium had possessed a certain indefinite authority over the Pope. Strong emperors like Justinian had bullied the Popes and obliged them to come to Constantinople; weak emperors had annoyed them ineffectively. So at his accession Leo III sent the keys of the tomb of St. Peter and a banner to Charlemagne as a symbol of his sovereignty in Rome as King of Italy.
[04, 07, 08, 25, 31, 48, 76]
Issue Oriented Discussion Newsletter
Index | Search This Site | Aristide.Org | The Latter Rain | Babylon the Great | The Kingdom | The Nicolaitans | Jezebel
The Baptism With the Holy Ghost | The Grand Delusion | World Trade Org | Liberation Theology | Jay Atkinson | Alphabetical Index