Charlemagne Judges Pope Leo III: Papacy and Empire United

Charlemagne sat in judgment of a pope. The charges against Leo III were serious: perjury, adultery, simony. They were brought by nephews of his predecessor who'd ambushed him in the street, tried to gouge out his eyes and cut out his tongue. Leo had fled over the Alps to Charlemagne's court. Now the Frankish king convened bishops in Rome to hear the case. But the assembled clergy declared no earthly court could judge the pope. Leo swore his innocence on the Gospels instead. Two days later, Charlemagne knelt before him for coronation as emperor. The events of December 800 were among the most consequential in Western history. Leo III had been attacked by a faction of Roman nobles on April 25, 799, while leading a religious procession through the streets of Rome. His attackers attempted to blind him and cut out his tongue, a punishment designed to make him canonically unfit for the papacy. He escaped, possibly with less severe injuries than reported, and fled north to Charlemagne's court at Paderborn. Charlemagne escorted Leo back to Rome with a military guard and convened a council in December 800 to adjudicate the charges. The council's refusal to judge the pope established a precedent that would echo through centuries of church-state relations: the pope was answerable to God alone, not to any temporal or ecclesiastical court. Leo's oath of purgation, sworn on December 23, cleared him of all charges through his personal declaration of innocence before God. On Christmas Day, December 25, 800, Leo placed the imperial crown on Charlemagne's head during Mass at St. Peter's Basilica, proclaiming him Emperor of the Romans. The coronation created the political entity that would become the Holy Roman Empire and established the principle that papal authority was necessary to legitimize secular rule in Western Christendom.