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CHAPTER XIII

THE POPES AND THE REVIVAL OF THE EMPIRE

[Sidenote: Growth of papal power.]

The growth of the temporal power of the bishops of Rome was due to two
causes, the withdrawal of the imperial authority from Italy and the
conversion of the barbarians. As the emperors at Constantinople became
more and more busied with affairs Eastern, with the encroachments of
barbarians, heathen and Muhammadan, and the imperial rule in Italy was
destroyed by the Lombards, the popes stood out as the one permanent
institution in Northern and Central Italy. As gradually the barbarians
came to accept the faith they received it at the hands of the great
ecclesiastical organisation which kept together the traditions, so
strangely transformed, of the Old Rome. The legislation of Justinian
also had given great political power to the popes: and this power was
greatly increased when the papacy found itself the leader in the
resistance of the great majority of Christian peoples against the
policy of the Iconoclastic emperors. The history of Rome began to run
on very different lines from that of Venice, Naples, or other great
cities. It became for a while a conflict between the local military
nobility and the clergy under the rule of the pope. The {144} struggle
was a political one, just as the assumption of power by the popes, of
power over the country and a considerable district around it, was a
political act.

The popes had but very slight relations with the kings of the Merwing
house. It was different when the Karlings came into power. Zacharias,
both directly and through S. Boniface, came into close connection with
Pippin and Carloman. At first he was concerned simply with reform in
the Frankish Church, but before long he found himself able to intervene
in a critical event and to take part in the inauguration of the Karling
House, the revival as it claimed to be of the Empire in the West.

[Sidenote: The Karling reformation.]

The growth of the papal power was closely associated with two other
historic events: the growth of the Karling house among the Franks, and
the process of revival in the Church's spiritual activity, showing
itself in missions without and reforms within. The last leads back to
the first.

Whatever may be thought of the Karling reformation, it cannot be denied
that for the century before Charles assumed the Imperial crown the
Church showed many signs of corruption. The darkness of the