Pope Leo III

Next month-

Christmas Day, 800 AD, Pope Leo III offers Charlemagne the crown of the Roman Empire.

You are there

And tonight, there's a program filled with youthful talent and fun, a program designed for all of you who like to see youngsters get a chance at the big break.

And that vacuum, into that vacuum came, in the Lord's providence again, I believe, two incredibly important popes.

Leo...

He was the one who articulated the Petrine authority, but he was the one who also negotiated with Attila the Hun and some of the other opponents who sacked Rome and convinced them not to destroy the city, rather to...

Not always convert, but certainly to allow the city to continue as a religious rather than political entity.

And the Western church needs something as a bulwark against what is happening, particularly from Islam in the South.

and the successes to the Vikings in the north, pagan pagans who are attacking them.

So that fourth turning point of these first thousand years is Pope Leo III crowns Charles Martel, His nickname is Charlemagne, as the Holy Roman Emperor.

So for the first time again, you see the emergence of a political force tied closely to the church.

It was the papal chrism which had anointed the first Carolingian king.

It was the diadem of the ancient Caesars bestowed by the hand of Leo III which rested on the head of Charles the Great.

It was Hildebrand himself who, by the hands of his instrument, Alexander II, had transferred the crown of England from the son of Godwin to William the Bastard of Normandy.

It has been well remarked that although the name had not yet been heard, yet in truth it was now that the first crusade was preached, and it was preached by the voice of Rome against the liberties of England.

This was a fictitious document which stated that the Emperor Constantine had conferred on the Bishop of Rome, who was at that time called Sylvester, authority over all the bishops outside Byzantine territory.

With that and the backing of the Franks, the papacy became the established leader of the Western Church, culminating in Charlemagne's reign with his coronation as Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800.

In return, the Pope was ensured control of Rome and its environs.

But after that, everything changed as Charlemagne's empire collapsed in the 9th century under the weight of the Viking onslaught and France disintegrated into a collection of warring feudal fiefdoms, disdainful of both royal and clerical authority.

And of course, those claims are not traditional.

go back to Leo III or Pope St. Gregory the Great, and you don't find any hint of what Pius IX, the epileptic nut that foisted infallibility off on the Roman Church, actually came up with.

So that's the one place in Vatican II that I could see recognizably quote-unquote traditional Roman Catholic doctrine.

The rest of it read like a comic book.

So a lot of people have tried to figure out who they were.

The Pope, Pope Leo III in the early 16th century did say they're human, and you can't just enslave them and kill them off, as a lot of the conquistadors were doing.

But to whom did they belong to, right? Who was their daddy, [laughs] to put-

Mm-hmm

Esto propició de forma indirecta el ascenso de la dinastía carolingia a la dignidad imperial.

¿Por qué? El papa León III consideró que el trono de Constantinopla, que simbólicamente conti-continuaba siendo heredera del Imperio Romano, consideró el papa que estaba vacante al no haber un hombre en él.

Dijo: "Uh, no hay un hombre, está vacante, está vacante".

Por favor.

But it's worth looking at the two most notable things of his life, his court, but then also his coronation.

And jumping to his coronation in 800 by Pope Leo III, for a long time, this was portrayed as the refounding of the Roman West, the proper beginning of the Middle Ages.

It also shows what is argued as the power of the Catholic Church, because it had the power to crown kings.

That's not the case at all.

His wife dies in mysterious circumstances a f- a few months after these envoys appear.

But, like, nobody says anything suspicious about it, but it does seem rather convenient.

And then the, the other part of this is that you mentioned Pope Leo III.

His own position in Rome is actually incredibly weak, and he has opponents.

A political crisis in Rome would provide the occasion for something more ambitious.

Pope Leo III was elected in 795, but his position in Rome was insecure.

On the 25th of April, 799, opponents attacked him during a procession, attempting to blind him and cut out his tongue.

Leo escaped and traveled north to seek Charles's protection.