The reception of classical pastoral in the Age of Constantine

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Even before King Charlemagne (768–814) arranged to have his Roman political ally, Pope Leo III (795–816), crown him emperor in Rome on Christmas Day 800,1 the king's contemporaries might conceive of him as having "imperial" stature. In an oft-quoted letter that Pope Hadrian (772–795) sent to the Frankish court in May 778 the writer compared Charlemagne directly to the first Christian emperor, Constantine: Et sicut temporibus beati Silvestri Romani pontificis a sanctae recordationis piissimo Contantino, magno imperatore, per eius largitatem sancta Dei catholica et apostolica Romana ecclesia elevata atque exaltata est et potestatem in his Hesperiae partibus largiri dignatus, ita et in his vestris felicissimis temporibus atque nostris sancta Dei ecclesia, id est beati Petri apostoli, germinet atque exultet et amplius quam amplius exaltata permaneat, ut omnes gentes, quae hec audierint, edicere valeant: 'Domine, salvum fac regem, et exaudi nos in die, in qua invocaverimus te' [Psalm 19:10]; quia ecce novus christianissimus Dei Constantinus imperator his temporibus surrexit, per quem omnia Deus sanctae suae ecclesiae beati apostolorum principis Petri largiri dignatus est. And just as during the time of blessed Pope Silvester the church of Rome was elevated and exalted by the most pious, great emperor Constantine of holy memory through his liberality and transfer of power over the western regions, thus in your most blessed time and ours may the church spring up, exult, and continue ever more fully to be exalted so that everyone who hears these things may loudly proclaim, 'Give victory to the king, O Lord, and answer us when we call'. Indeed here this day a new most Christian emperor Constantine has arisen, through whom God has thought worthy to bestow everything on the holy church of Peter, prince of the apostles.2 By promoting the Frankish monarch to "imperial" status thusly as novus Constantinus, Hadrian did not seek to flatter but to obligate. Four years previously Charlemagne had conquered Lombard Italy – Pavia, the capital of the Lombard regnum, had fallen to the Franks in 774 – and in Easter of that same year, while visiting Pope Hadrian in Rome, the king had promised to transfer control of many towns and huge swaths of formerly Lombard-controlled Italy to the Republic of Saint Peter.3 Now in 778, anxious that his Frankish royal ally fully honor the bequest, the Republic's leader wrote pointedly to call those promises to mind: Constantine had favored Silvester by liberal gifts; now Charlemagne should act in the same way toward Hadrian.4 Hadrian used this ploy again some seven years later in a letter he wrote to the Byzantine emperor Constantine VI and his mother and regent, Irene, as he responded to their invitation in 785 to attend an ecumenical council, the second at Nicaea held in 787 to condemn iconoclasm.5 Hadrian began by hailing the Byzantine rulers as a new Constantine and a new Helena, respectively,6 then reminded them how the first Constantine and his mother had worked closely with, and especially favored, Pope Silvester, Peter's vicar. Thus again did Hadrian attempt to define and fix relations between all parties concerned.