This constitution is of the year 824, and it is also the date of an oath which the Romans took in the following terms:⁷⁴
⁷² S. Marc. Ab. Hist Italy, vol. 1. p. 469.
“I promise to be faithful “to the emperors Louis and Lothaire, saving the “faith I have promised to the pope, and not to con− “sent to the election of a pope uncanonically, not “that the pope should be consecrated before he has “taken, in presence of the emperor’s commissioners, “an oath similar to that which Pope Eugene has “made by writing.”
The clause, “saving the faith promised to the pope,” has not failed to draw after it arbitrary restrictions: but this formula expressed decisively the sovereignty of the emperor.
We also see Gregory IV. in 827, solicit the emperor to confirm his election;⁷⁵ which proves, as we have already observed, that Louis had not renounced this right in 819. If the prince, said De Morca,⁷⁶ had left to the people and the clergy the power of electing the popes, their consecration was, notwithstanding, to be deferred till the sovereign had consented to it. In defiance of this preliminary, the pontificate of Gregory IV. is, nevertheless, one of the most memorable for the humiliations of the imperial dignity. It is true, they were caused by the weakness of the prince as much as by the ambition of the pontiff. The first error of Louis-le-Debonaire was the partition of his states, in 817, amongst his three sons: associating Lothaire in the empire, he gave Aquitaine to Pepin, and Bavaria to Louis; and by these arrangements he especially dissatisfied his nephew Bernard, King of Italy.
⁷⁵ Lpco illius (scil. Valentini) Gregorius presbyter tituli Sancti Marci electus est, dilatu consecratione ejus ad consulterai imperatorh. Quo annuente et electionem cleri et populi probante, ordinatus est in looo prions.—Vit. Ludov. Pii. kq mn. 827.—Gregorius presbyter non prius ordinatus est, quam legatus imperatoris Romam veneret et electionem populi ex-aminaret—Eginhard. ad ann. 827.
⁷⁶ De Concordiâ sacerdotii et imperii. 1;8. c. 14. n.8.
Bernard revolted: it became necessary to subdue and punish him. In commuting the punishment of death pronounced against him, Louis had nevertheless caused his eyes to be put out; and this cruel punishment cost the patient his life. Louis reproached himself with this cruelty, and evincing still less moderation in his repentance than in his crime, he claimed public penance. To add to his difficulties, Judith, his second wife, becoming the mother of Charles the Bald, claimed a kingdom for this child. She obtained a new partition, which, however, interfered with the first, and caused the three, who were portioned in 817, to rebel. They leagued against their father: Vala, abbot of Corbia, a factious but revered monk, encouraged their rebellion: like them, he heaped invectives on the emperor, his wife Judith, and his minister Bernard. Easily disconcerted by such an outcry, Louis convoked four councils, to which he referred the examination of his conduct and the complaints it occasioned. These synods favoured but little the pretensions of the revolted; but in them was professed a doctrine on the privileges of the clergy and the duties of princes, which, at a period so near to that of the unbounded power of Charlemagne, would seem incredible, if the purport itself of these assemblies⁷⁷ did not suffice, to justify and explain the idea which they had formed of their supreme authority.