Some officers in the service of Lothaire having been put to death in the Lateran palace, the holy fathers, accused of having ordered the commission of the crime, hastened to send nuncios to Louis to do away such suspicion. Louis received the nuncios coldly, and dispatched commissioners to Rome, before whom Pascal cleared himself by oath. He constantly, however, evaded delivering up the murderers, ‘because they were of the family of St. Peter’, that is, of the pope’s house. Louis-le-Debonnaire followed his natural love of clemency, says Fleury⁷¹ and notwithstanding his wish to punish this action, he consented, not to follow up a proceeding, the first acts of which prove, at least, that he was recognized in 823, as sovereign of Rome, and judge of the Roman Pontiff. ⁷¹ Hist Eccles. 1.46. n. 57. Eugene II. after the example of his predecessor Pascal, dispensed with having his election confirmed by the emperor. Lothaire complained loudly of it, and came to fill at Rome the functions of the sovereign authority. He tried a suit between the pope and the abbot of Farfa, of whom the court of Rome exacted an annual tribute—Not only was the abbey exempted from this tribute, but the pope was obliged to restore the property which the Roman Church had _unjustly deprived it of_: these are the terms of a charter of Lothaire.⁷² This prince published, at the same time, a constitution of nine articles,⁷³ in which the authority of the pope is indeed formally established, yet subordinate to that of the emperor. It is there stated, that complaints against the judges and other officers shall first be taken before the pontiff, who shall apply an immediate remedy, or inform the sovereign thereof, in order that he may provide for it. This constitution is of the year 824, and it is also the date of an oath which the Romans took in the following terms:⁷⁴ ⁷² S. Marc. Ab. Hist Italy, vol. 1. p. 469. ⁷³ Ibid. p. 472. ⁷⁴ Ibid. p. 473. “I promise to be faithful “to the emperors Louis and Lothaire, saving the “faith I have promised to the pope, and not to con− “sent to the election of a pope uncanonically, not “that the pope should be consecrated before he has “taken, in presence of the emperor’s commissioners, “an oath similar to that which Pope Eugene has “made by writing.” The clause, “saving the faith promised to the pope,” has not failed to draw after it arbitrary restrictions: but this formula expressed decisively the sovereignty of the emperor.