A Brill Calendar: December 25

High Mass at St. Peter's: 800AD

Few ceremonies had more vital consequences for Western civilization than the High Mass celebrated by Pope Leo III, Christmas Day Anno Domini 800 in Saint Peter’s Basilisk in Rome.

Guest of Honour: the old monarch of all Franks, Charlemagne (58). Earlier that month he liberated Leo from attacks on His Holy Person and See. It should be recalled, that this was by no means not the first time Charles set eyes on a Pope. A predecessor of Leo, Stephen, had already elevated him, then 12 years old, together with father Pepin and brother Carloman, to the status of a ‘Patricius Romanorum’.

In the pagan days of Rome December 25 - just after the longest night of the solar year - used to be the calendar day to worship another god, ‘Sol Invictus’, the Invincible Sun. The populace of the Eternal City, assembled in a transformed religious context, with enraptured souls, now suddenly acclaimed Charles as ‘Imperator Romanorum’, probably to everybody’s surprise; including Charles and the Pope himself. Rising to the occasion, the spiritual leader of Christianity in the western part of the ‘Imperium Romanorum’, with its new Capitol City in Constantinople, crowned the seasoned northern warrior and statesman, who rescued His Holiness from his worldly foes, in the old, appropriate way; Leo might even have anointed his rescuer.

It is seldom that a contingency unencumbered by careful preparation and elaborate negotiating – and taking its course within a matter of hours - triggered an emergence of new ways to structure interaction between earthly and heavenly worlds; and it proved to be a powerful notion. When political philosophy – not much less than a millennium later – started to defend the view that a sound separation between Church and State might prove to be beneficial, desirable and even necessary for Western nations, a world-view that had been taken for granted since Christmas 800 began to wane. This world-view provided the European Middle Ages and Renaissance with an almost unbelievable unity & coherence.