Yet Dante places Constantine, who "from good intent produced evil fruit," in heaven; where
"Now he knows how all the ill deduced
From his good action is not harmful to him,
Although the world thereby may be destroyed."
And he speaks favorably of Charlemagne’s intervention in behalf of the pope:
"And when the tooth of Lombardy had bitten
The Holy Church, then underneath its wings
Did Charlemagne victorious succor her."^239
The policy of Pepin was followed by Charlemagne, the German, and Austrian emperors,
and modern French rulers who interfered in Italian affairs, now as allies, now as enemies, until the
temporal power of the papacy was lost under its last protector, Napoleon III., who withdrew his
troops from Rome to fight against Germany, and by his defeat prepared the way for Victor Emanuel
to take possession of Rome, as the capital of free and united Italy (1870). Since that time the pope
who a few weeks before had proclaimed to the world his own infallibility in all matters of faith and
morals, is confined to the Vatican, but with no diminution of his spiritual power as the bishop of
bishops over two hundred millions of souls.§ 56. Charles the Great. a.d. 768–814.
Sources.
Beati Caroli Magni Opera omnia. 2 vols. In Migne’s Patrol. Lat. Tom. 97 and 98. The first vol.
contains the Codex Diplomaticus, Capitularia, and Privilegia; the second vol., the Codex
Carolinus, the Libri Carolini (on the image controversy), the Epistolae, Carminâ, etc.- The Letters of Charles, of Einhard, and of Alcuin. Also the letters of the Popes to Charles and
his two predecessors, which he had collected, and which are called the Codex Carolinus, ed.
by Muratori, Cenni, ad Migne (Tom. 98, pp. 10 sqq.). - The Capitularies and Laws of Charlemagne, contained in the first vol. of the Leges in the Mon.
Germ., ed. by Pertz, and in the Collections of Baluzius and Migne. - Annals. The Annales Laurissenses Majores (probably the official chronicle of the court) from
788 to 813; the Annales Einhardi, written after 829; the Annales Petaviani, Laureshamenses,
Mosellani, and others, more of local than general value. All in the first and second vol. of Pertz,
Monumenta Germanica Hist. Script. - Biographies: Einhard or Eginhard (b. 770, educated at Fulda, private secretary of Charlemagne,
afterwards Benedictine monk): Vita Caroli Imperatoris (English translation by S. S. Turner,
New York, 1880). A true sketch of what Charles was by an admiring and loving hand in almost
classical Latin, and after the manner of Sueton’s Lives of the Roman emperors. It marks, as
Ad. Ebert says (II. 95), the height of the classical studies of the age of Charlemagne. Milman
(II. 508) calls it "the best historic work which had appeared in the Latin language for
centuries."—Poeta Saxo: Annales de Gestis Caroli, from the end of the ninth century. An
anonymous monk of St. Gall: De Gestis Caroli, about the same time. In Pertz, l.c., and Jaffe’s
Monumenta Carolina (Bibl. Rer. Germ., T. IV.), also in Migne, Tom. I., Op. Caroli.
(^239) Paradiso XX. 57-60; VI. 94-97. Longfellow’s translation.