onist Muratori reduces the popes to
be no more than the exarchs of the emperor. In the more equitable view
of Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 264, 265,) they held Rome under
the empire as the most honorable species of fief or benefice--premuntur
nocte caliginosa!]

Before the ruin of Paganism in Rome, the competition for a wealthy
bishopric had often been productive of tumult and bloodshed. The people
was less numerous, but the times were more savage, the prize more
important, and the chair of St. Peter was fiercely disputed by the
leading ecclesiastics who aspired to the rank of sovereign. The reign of
Adrian the First [89] surpasses the measure of past or succeeding ages;
[90] the walls of Rome, the sacred patrimony, the ruin of the Lombards,
and the friendship of Charlemagne, were the trophies of his fame: he
secretly edified the throne of his successors, and displayed in a narrow
space the virtues of a great prince. His memory was revered; but in the
next election, a priest of the Lateran, Leo the Third, was preferred to
the nephew and the favorite of Adrian, whom he had promoted to the first
dignities of the church. Their acquiescence or repentance disguised,
above four years, the blackest intention of revenge, till the day of a
procession, when a furious band of conspirators dispersed the unarmed
multitude, and assaulted with blows and wounds the sacred person of
the pope. But their enterprise on his life or liberty was disappointed,
perhaps by their own confusion and remorse. Leo was left for dead on the
ground: on his revival from the swoon, the effect of his loss of blood,
he recovered his speech and sight; and this natural event was improved
to the miraculous restoration of his eyes and tongue, of which he had
been deprived, twice deprived, by the knife of the assassins. [91] From
his prison he escaped to the Vatican: the duke of Spoleto hastened to
his rescue, Charlemagne sympathized in his injury, and in his camp of
Paderborn in Westphalia accepted, or solicited, a visit from the Roman
pontiff. Leo repassed the Alps with a commission of counts and bishops,
the guards of his safety and the judges of his innocence; and it was not
without reluctance, that the conqueror of the Saxons delayed till the
ensuing year the personal discharge of this pious office. In his fourth
and last pilgrimage, he was received at Rome with the due honors of king
and patrician: Leo was permitted to purge himself by oath of the c