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If there was any province of Christendom which had suffered less than
another from the debacle of the tenth century it was Germany Its
conversion might as yet be incomplete, but Catholicism was too powerful
a factor in the hold of the Carolingian kings on their conquest for
them to be wholly indifferent to its quality. It was a newer thing
there than in France. It had come in with the conqueror from the West
-- and very largely owing to his protection. In Germany, too, the
political organisation had never been sufficiently settled for the
country to suffer from the disintegration of the central government as
Italy, and France especially, were suffering. The Carolingians, who
survived in a weak fashion to delay the recovery of France for yet
another seventy years, disappeared from Germany in the first years of
the tenth century. The German kings who took their place had all the
freshness, and some of the strength, and even the genius, of
Charlemagne himself. From 918 to 983, under Henry I, Otto I and Otto
II, the Church in Germany had all the advantages, rare in that century,
that come of a strong, purposeful government. Scandals were by no means
lacking, but there never came upon religion that chaos which paralysed
its action in other places.
The chief feature which, in this comparatively united German
Catholicism, gave cause for real anxiety was its integration in the new
political unity, and the contentment of so many churchmen that it
should be thus integrated. It was the monarchy that had brought the
Faith to Germany, and the Church tended to be, more completely than
elsewhere, an instrument in the hands of the kings. They appointed and
dismissed bishops and abbots at their will; they employed them in the
great affairs of State; they named mere statesmen to the sees; all the
abuses and usurpation systematised by Charlemagne continued to flourish
in tenth-century Germany, part of the systematic royal protection and
promotion of the interests of religion.
The general contentment Or even good churchmen with this state of
things, the fact that they tended only to complain when, under a bad
ruler, it was used to nominate unworthy prelates, is striking evidence
how far abuse had passed into a system. It was indeed, as a system, a
very important part of the whole social order. In the bishopric (or
abbacy -- for both were affected by the development, entities wholly
different in kind, the spiritual function, the territory over which the
prelate had spiritual jurisdiction, the temporal principality and the
mass of property attached to this -- the lands, the buildings, the
serfs, the various kinds of tenants, the rights, the privileges, the
jurisdictions, the social and political obligations -- all these had
for a long time now (that is by the opening years of the eleventh
century) become, in the general view, a single, indissoluble whole.
Like the countship, the bishopric was, in feudal language, an honor, a
beneficium granted by the king. The cleric who received it became
thereby the man, the vassal, of the prince who gave it; and he became,
at the same time, the lord of other men. In the national scheme of
things the system of bishoprics was parallel to, and counterbalanced,
the system of countships, as a means whereby the country was governed;
it balanced the system of countships in this important respect, that
the countships had become hereditary, so that -- and this was
especially true of Germany -- the royal interest in nominations to sees
and abbeys was, fundamentally, a real concern that one of the main
checks on the tendency of the feudal nobility to nullify the royal
power should really function.
When the bishop died (or was translated to another see) the honor was
in the position of that of a lord who had died without heirs -- it
reverted, de plein droit, to the lord who had given it. And, like every
other honor, the ecclesiastical beneficium was conveyed to the
recipient through a ceremony -- this was the Investiture, about which
the famous controversy was now about to begin. The Investiture was not
a mere ceremony, but an act which really and actually transferred the
honor, from the lord to the man on whom he meant to confer it; and the
act consisted in the presentation by the lord of an object that
symbolised what was conferred. From about the year 899 the custom grew,
first in Provence and then in the Empire, that kings granted bishoprics
by handing to the cleric the crozier or pastoral staff. This practice
began to appear in France about a century later; and then, in Germany,
the emperor Henry III (1039-1056) added the ceremony of placing a ring
on the cleric's finger. To these new developments to this use by the
lay lord of ceremonials already used in the religious rite called the
consecration of a bishop, no objection ever seems to have been raised
for the first hundred and fifty years.
What was it now considered that such Investiture by the lord conferred
upon the cleric? Nothing else than that one juridical whole the
episcopatus, in which spiritual and temporal were, for this
mid-eleventh century, indissolubly conjoined -- not, of course, the
sacramental powers conferred through the act of consecration, [ ] but
everything else, including as well- the cura pastoralis.
So universal was this view of the indissoluble character of that
socio-religious complex the bishopric, that all the first generations
of reformers held it too. [ ] But while the kings, looking first to the
social role of the bishops, based upon this idea of the episcopatus as
a unity their claim to a final say who should be bishops, the new
clerical reformers drew from the fact of the unity a very different
conclusion. The bishop was primarily a spiritual personage -- therefore
the layman could not lawfully appoint him to the episcopatus and must
not invest him with it, using those symbols (acts and words) by the
handing over of which the bishopric was considered conferred. The two
views were diametrically opposed; and in the first, hot, fifty years of
the conflict the aim of each of the parties was, necessarily, the
unconditional surrender of the other. None, as yet, saw the
distinction, which existed in fact, between the bishop as the spiritual
ruler of men's consciences and the bishop as a kind of count who
happened also to be a cleric. Only as the war continued, and as the
theorists began to study the institution historically, did the reality
of this distinction emerge, and with it the possibility of a lawful
compromise between Church and State based upon it.
The great name in the history of this development is that of St. Ives,
Bishop of Chartres, [ ] one of the founders of the new scientific Canon
Law; the country where a solution on these lines was first attempted
was England, and its ecclesiastical patron was the Archbishop of
Canterbury, St. Anselm. [ ]
The danger is evident how easily a confusion might arise in an ordinary
man's mind between the prince's right to transfer his own temporal
authority over his subjects and, what belongs to quite another order of
reality, the right to confer on a man spiritual authority over other
men. But this danger was far from evident to the generations that saw
the system of such investiture slowly develop and expand. Once the
danger began to be evident to ecclesiastics, revolt was inevitable; and
before such a revolt became general there was bound to be a transition
period when ecclesiastics who were no less pious than the reformers
continued to stand by the old system because they were not clear headed
enough to see how dangerous the confusion was which it always implied
and was now producing. For many years the reform party was therefore
divided. About such evils as simony, and clerical incontinence, and
clerical marriage, it was indeed always united. But it was not until
the pontificate of Nicholas II (1059-1061) that the war on lay
investiture as the main source of all these evils, began really to be
waged by the popes, on a principle, and with any consistency. From the
time of St. Gregory VII (1073-1085) this is the main object with all
the party. The vision of how a good prince might use such authority in
church appointments to repress clerical abuses, the memory of what, in
the past, good princes had in fact accomplished -- these seem ever to
have haunted many minds among the reformers. The boldness of St.
Gregory VII, bent on extirpating a custom now well nigh universal, and
established for the best part of two centuries was, to such men,
something of a scandal.
The situation of the Church under this regime, now about to be attacked
and destroyed, is seen at its best in the reign of Henry II (king from
1002, emperor in 1012, died 1024). In his own life he was a model of
evangelical virtue, given to prayer and mortification, a generous
almsgiver and a promoter of good works. [ ] He was, none the less, the
effective administrative head of the Church in Germany, reforming
monasteries, enforcing Catholic tradition against divorce -- always a
difficult matter with these half-converted Barbarians -- deposing
unworthy bishops, creating new sees, convoking synods and presiding at
them: even, on one occasion, forbidding a bishop to say mass until he
had cleared himself of an accusation. His use of the powers he usurped
was admirable; and the new and growing tradition of which he is the
best example finds its way into the writings of one of the earliest of
the canon lawyers, Burchard, Bishop of Worms, who during this reign
began to compile his famous collection.
The pope who crowned St. Henry, Benedict VIII, died, in 1024, to be
succeeded by his deplorable brother, John XIX. How St. Henry would have
dealt with such a pope may perhaps be inferred from the way in which
Otto I had dealt with John XII. The contingency did not now arise,
however, for, in that same year, 1024, St. Henry also died. He left no
heir and the kingship, with the empire, passed to Conrad, the Duke of
Franconia.
Conrad II was an emperor whom the new regime at Rome suited
sufficiently well. For all his personal generosity to the churches he
favoured, he was never hampered in his dealings with them by any
interest in reform. The old abuses of simony and the marriage of
clerics began to creep back. The reform movement, where it continued,
did so thanks to the zeal of individuals, notably to the three bishops
of Liege, Utrecht and Cambrai. Nor did the reformers find any
difficulty in accepting this, by now, customary hold of the emperor on
the administration of the Church.
Conrad II reigned for fifteen years. His son, Henry III, who succeeded
him in 1039, was a personage of a very different order. A strong ruler,
studious, reserved in manner, correct where his father had been a
loose-liver, he halted the growing decadence of German Catholicism. The
Church was too valuable an instrument in the work of uniting Germany
for him to suffer the weakness and the wickedness of its subjects to
harm it. So, while the canon law was strictly enforced that barred the
sons of priests from an ecclesiastical career, and the whole force of
the Church enlisted to enforce the " Truce of God," [ ] the king, more
than ever, kept his hold on the nomination of bishops and abbots,
investing them, on appointment, with the symbols of their spiritual
authority. How such a man would deal with the Roman scandal no one
could doubt. The opportunity for his intervention was the fall of the
wretched Benedict IX, whose family owed the papacy very largely to the
patronage of the German kings. It was, in some sense, to revenge an
outrage on his crown that, in the autumn of 1046, Henry III crossed the
Alps with an army.
Everything went according to the traditional programme. The emperor met
Gregory VI and, with the threat of deposition, persuaded him to
abdicate. [ ] This was effectuated at the Council of Sutri (December
20, 1046). Silvester III was deposed and,. making no opposition,
retired to a monastery. On Christmas Eve, in the inevitable fashion of
these German protectors of the Church, like Otto I in 963, and Otto III
in 996, Henry III named his pope. It was, of course, one of his own
German bishops: Suidger, the experienced reformer who for six years had
ruled the see of Bamberg created by Henry II. He took the name of
Clement II, and on Christmas Day crowned his sovereign Emperor. The
coup d’etat ended, as always for now two centuries, with a renewed
acknowledgement of the emperor's rights in the matter of papal
elections; it was set out, this time, in the clearest possible terms.
Clement II, whatever his title to be pope, was a good man and promised
an era of better things. But the foundation on which his power rested
was the emperor. When the emperor withdrew, the Roman nobility, from
whose hands he had rapt the papacy, emerged once more; Clement died,
after a nine-months' reign, apparently poisoned (October 10, 1047) and
Benedict IX reappeared. Benedict survived for another eight months. On
Christmas Day, 1047, the emperor named yet another of his German
bishops, Poppo of Brixen, who took the name of Damasus II. This pope's
reign was shorter even than that of Clement II; it was not until July
17, 1048, that he came to Rome and was installed, and twenty-three days
later he too was dead. It was another six months before the emperor
filled the vacancy and meanwhile, to the easing of this complicated
problem of legitimacy, Benedict IX finally disappeared. At Christmas,
1048, the emperor named his third pope, Bruno, Bishop of Toul. He took
the name of Leo IX, and with his accession the leadership of the reform
passed to the Holy See.
Leo IX was, at this time, forty-seven years of age. He was of mixed
blood, partly Alsatian, partly Burgundian and French, and a near
relative of Henry III. He had begun his career in the imperial service
under Conrad II and, although in holy orders, he commanded a troop of
horse in that emperor's Italian expedition of 1027. The accident that,
on his return, the see of Toul was vacant, changed his whole life.
After much hesitation Bruno consented to be its bishop; and
thenceforward, for twenty years, he gave himself to the work of reform.
The evils of the Roman situation he knew well, for, since his
consecration, he had often visited the city as a pilgrim. But, unlike
his two immediate German predecessors, this third choice of Henry III
did not-the thing seems certain -- consider that the emperor's
nomination alone sufficed to make him pope. There still remained the
all-important matter of the consent of the Roman Church; and it was as
the Bishop of Toul, and in a pilgrim's dress, that he arrived in Rome.
[ ] He was enthroned on the first Sunday of Lent, 1049 (February 12).
The new pope took with him from Lorraine a number of experienced
reformers destined, in the next ten years, to make the new tendencies
the one stable feature of the papal policy. Humbert, Abbot of
Moyenmoutier, one of the monasteries which Bruno had reformed, a
learned and able controversialist, was the chief of them; Frederick of
Lorraine (brother to the Duke of Lorraine, Godfrey) was another; Hugh
the White, Abbot of Remiremont, was a third; and Halimard, the monk who
had recently been made Archbishop of Lyons, a fourth. Finally there was
Hildebrand, the secretary of the recently deceased expope Gregory VI,
who now returned to the city whence he was one day to organise and
direct the whole great movement. He was as yet, however, only one, and
that the youngest, [ ] of this band of able counsellors, the picked
instruments through whom Leo IX proposed to rule.
Leo IX was himself a man of great learning -- in the last month of his
life, while the prisoner of the Normans, he set himself to acquire a
knowledge of Greek -- and he was a saint. He had lost none of his old
military skill, and his short reign was a well-planned and
well-executed campaign that took him through every one of the diseased
and sickly provinces of Christendom. Everywhere he went the pope
presided personally at the council summoned to examine local
conditions, deposing unworthy prelates, restoring the practice of
elections, forbidding lay interference, and particularly the practice
of selling the rights of nomination, forbidding the clergy to make war,
restoring the old discipline of celibacy and enacting the most
stringent penalties against simony. The list of these councils is
imposing. They took the pope to the very confines of settled
Christianity. They began with one at Rome in 1049; then, in the same
year, the pope is at Pavia, Rheims and Mainz. In 1050 he is at Rome
again, tours southern Italy and crosses the Alps to Langres. Treves is
visited in 1051, Pressburg and Ratisbon in 1052, Augsburg and Mantua in
1053. By the time the pope died, the whole of the Church knew that
reform was now the papacy's own concern, and its main concern. The
Roman Church had been brought into direct touch with the dependent
bishops in so striking a way that none could now be unaware of this.
These apostolic journeyings were the foundation upon which all the
later effort of the Church as a united whole was built. The new
condemnations of lay control over appointments may not yet have sounded
with all the needed clearness. They were lost perhaps, for the moment,
in the condemnation of more striking and more openly scandalous
anomalies such as clerical marriage, clerical brigandage and simony.
But already Leo IX had singled out the root cause of all the disorder.
He had set in motion a force which, since the lay hold was universal,
must ultimately shake all Christendom, and which must, assuredly,
strain the new relations between pope and emperor. So far, and for St.
Leo, too, the imperial control of papal nominations was an undiscussed
feature of ordinary procedure -- the very means, indeed, by which the
papacy had been transferred from the control of blackguards to men of
goodwill. St. Leo was himself its creation. His own relations with the
emperor were excellent, and the question did not arise.
The pontificate ended, for all that, in storm. In 1040 the Normans had
invaded southern Italy, from that kingdom of Sicily which ten years
earlier they had wrested from the Arabs. For all that they were
Catholics, the new conquerors speedily showed themselves as great a
scourge as earlier invaders. Church lands were ravaged with the rest,
and in the course of his reform campaign in the summer of 1052 the pope
was brought up against the Norman atrocities. There ensued a series of
events that was to be of very great importance in the future
development of the papacy's relation to the empire. The pope gathered
an army-the German contingent for which the emperor, at the last
moment, refused to let go, thanks to the Bishop of Eichstadt -- and in
the summer of 1053 the campaign opened. It ended abruptly in the rout
of the papal army at Civitate (June 18, 1053). The pope was captured,
the Normans besought absolution for their crimes, swore fidelity and
were absolved. But they held the pope prisoner for another nine months
none the less. A few days after his release he died (April 19, 1054).
The first result of the short war was a strong reaction against St. Leo
and his policies. The leading Italian reformer, St. Peter Damian,
denounced in unmeasured language the pope's recourse to arms. The
battles necessary for the Church should be fought by the emperor. The
only sword a priest should know is the sword of the word of God. At the
imperial court. too, there was a reaction and when, finally, after an
interregnum of almost twelve months, the emperor prevailed on a German
bishop to take up the unattractive responsibilities or the papacy, it
was that Bishop of Eichstadt who had opposed St. Leo that he appointed.
The circumstances of the "election" are curious. St. Leo's "cabinet"
was scattered at the moment of his death; Humbert and Frederic of
Lorraine were at Constantinople, [ ] Hildebrand in France. In September
(1054) a delegation from the Roman clergy and people met the emperor at
Mainz and agreed to accept his candidate. It was not until the
following March that the Bishop of Eichstadt accepted, and he made it a
condition that the emperor should assist him against the Normans; he
styled himself Victor II.
As well as the Normans another problem called the emperor into Italy.
Godfrey of Lorraine, already a troublesome and rebellious vassal, had
recently, without the emperor's leave married the widow of the Marquis
of Tuscany [ ] and become thereby lord of a territory of immense
strategical importance that stretched across the Apennines and was a
formidable obstacle to communications between Germany and Rome.
Henry III came down into Italy, to find that Duke Godfrey had managed
to escape. His wife was arrested; and his brother, Frederic, chancellor
now of the Roman Church and just returned from his mission to
Constantinople, also judged it more prudent to take to flight. The
Norman troubles continued to be the subject of negotiations without any
decision being arrived at, and the proposed expedition that was to
destroy them was abandoned; revolts in Germany had called the emperor
home. The pope, after acting for some months as Henry's lieutenant in
Italy combining the work of reform with that of policing the imperial
vassals, followed him in September, 1056. A month later he was
assisting at Henry III's deathbed (October 5, 1056) and securing the
recognition of his heir [ ] from the great lords and bishops. Then,
shortly after his return to Rome, Victor II died too, at Arezzo (July
28, 1057), reconciled in the last months of his reign with Godfrey and
with his brother Frederic, now, thanks largely to the pope, Abbot of
Monte Cassino (May 18, 1057) and a cardinal (June 3).
Victor II was to be the last of the imperially nominated popes. This
time the vacancy was of short duration. The news of the death of Victor
II no sooner reached Rome than, on August 2, the clergy elected
Frederic of Monte Cassino who was consecrated and installed as Stephen
IX. For the first time for centuries the I Church had a pope whom
neither the emperor nor the local aristocracy had appointed. An embassy
was, it is true, sent to ask the consent of the empress regent, but
sent only when the new pope had been consecrated and was already acting
as pope. All the pacts conveying to the emperor rights, privileges, and
powers of veto had been ignored; the policy of Leo IX was carried to
its logical conclusion. Meanwhile the reforms continued. Then, only
eight months after his election, the new pope died (March 29, 1058)
after laying a command on the Roman clergy not to: elect his successor
until the return of Hildebrand, then away at the imperial court. How
little progress, in one direction at least, all the labours of the
three last popes had as yet accomplished was shown immediately when,
without waiting for Hildebrand,: the Counts of Tusculum elected their
first pope for nearly thirty years -- the Cardinal-Bishop of Velletri,
John Mimicius, who took the ominous name of Benedict X (April 5, 1058).
The Roman clergy, led by Humbert, refused him recognition, and so
too-influenced no doubt by Hildebrand -- did the empress regent. The
court fixed on Gerard, the Bishop of Florence; [ ] Hildebrand won him
over to consent; Godfrey of Lorraine was commissioned to see to the
expulsion of the anti-pope; and, in December, 1058, Gerard was
proclaimed as Nicholas II. It was a return to the procedure which had
produced Victor II.
With a mixed army, in which the forces of Godfrey of Lorraine were
conspicuous, the new pope marched on Rome. Hildebrand's diplomacy had
won over one of the factions, after a little street fighting Benedict X
fled, and, on January 24, 1059 -- ten months after the death of Stephen
IX -- Nicholas was solemnly enthroned. He was the sixth pope in twelve
years, and destined to reign for little more than the average of his
recent predecessors, for he died at Florence in July, 1061. His reign
is, nevertheless, immensely important. For Nicholas II is the author of
the law governing papal elections that is still in force; and to secure
the freedom of the election from those out of whose hands the new law
took it -- the Roman nobility and the emperor -- this pope made an
alliance with the Normans. This was indeed a departure, for the Normans
were little better than a pirate state, nowhere recognised as anything
else. Here Nicholas II's adviser was, probably, the new Abbot of Monte
Cassino, Didier, lately created cardinal and one day to be pope himself
as Victor III.
The new electoral law was promulgated in the decree of a council held
in the Lateran in April, 1059. A hundred and thirteen bishops took part
in it, and after the usual condemnation of simony, of clerical marriage
-- it was now forbidden to hear mass said by a priest who was not
celibate -- and of lay investiture, [ ] a decree was passed making the
rule of life of the canons-regular obligatory on all clerics bound to
celibacy. The decree on the papal election laid down that, henceforth,
the only electors were the cardinal bishops and the cardinal clergy of
Rome; they are to elect, by preference, a cleric of the Roman Church;
the emperor is not accorded any rights, but whatever is done is to be
done "with due regard and honour to our son Henry the present king. . .
in accordance with the concession we have made, and likewise to those
of his successors who personally shall have received the like right
from the apostolic see."
The decree [ ] fixed the law for all future times, giving to the chiefs
of the Roman clergy, the cardinal bishops, priests and deacons, a new
importance and practically founding their corporate existence as the
College of Cardinals. It was by no means anti-imperialist in intention.
The enemy against which it was directed was the anarchical influence of
the Roman aristocracy, responsible for two centuries of scandal and
sacrilege, and still powerful enough to force the election of their
man. The emperor, nevertheless, was removed from the centre of the
action. His honour was to be secured, but the decree does not confirm
any one of the innumerable acts by which the consecration of the pope
was made to depend on the emperor's consent to the election; a whole
collection of imperial rights that had developed since Charlemagne was
silently set aside. The court, naturally, was displeased. The legates
who came from the council with the official communication of its
decrees, were refused a hearing, and a council of German bishops
condemned the pope and declared his laws null and void. Nor was the new
alliance between pope and Normans to the imperial liking. Their duke,
Robert Guiscard, swore fidelity to the Church, swore to assist the pope
to recover his rights, made over his lands to St. Peter and received
them back as St. Peter's vassal, pledging himself to pay an annual
tribute in acknowledgement of suzerainty. The new, independent papacy
was provided with a strong ally, should either of its ancient masters
seek to re-establish his hold.
While Nicholas II lived all was well. The anti-pope, Benedict X,
submitted. The German court remained passively hostile. But with the
pope's death (July 27, 1061) the various hostilities fused. It remained
to be seen whether the court, the defeated Roman aristocracy, and the
innumerable opponents of the new reforms from among the dignitaries of
the Church in northern Italy, could be united and unite on a pope.
Nicholas II was at Florence when he died. When the news reached Rome
there was a small-scale insurrection, and presently two missions were
on their way to the court, one from the Roman aristocracy, the other
from the unreformed bishops of Lombardy. There seemed small chance of
the statute of 1059 being carried into effect on this the first
occasion that called for its application.
It was Hildebrand who saved the situation. He was now archdeacon of the
Roman Church, the first dignitary after the pope himself; and the
pope's death left him in full charge. He had his candidate ready,
persuaded him to allow his name to go forward, and brought him to Rome.
This was Anselm of Baggio, Bishop of Lucca, who had in recent years
made a name for himself as the militant leader of the reform party in
Lombardy. He was a Lombard himself, a friend of St. Peter Damian and
well known at the court where he had served in recent years as
ambassador. He was by no means an intransigent, and represented a
school of reform less drastic in its procedure than that which had bred
Nicholas II. [ ]
Meanwhile Hildebrand had also won over one of the Roman factions, and
had called in the Normans [ ] who were, by this, camped outside the
gates of the city. On October 1, 1061 Anselm was installed as Alexander
II.
Four weeks later the court declared itself, and at Basel, in the
presence of the boy emperor, Henry IV, an assembly of German and
Lombard bishops chose as pope the Bishop of Parma, the candidate
favoured by the Roman nobility; he called himself Honorius II. The
emperor ratified the election and, with an army, the imperialist pope
descended on Italy. On April 14, 1062, he defeated the troops of
Alexander II in the fields by the castle of St. Angelo, took possession
of Trastevere and St. Peter's. Two things saved Alexander: the arrival
of Godfrey of Lorraine Marquis of Tuscany -- actually a check on
Honorius rather than an aid to Alexander, for Godfrey recommended both
to retire to their former sees and submit their claims to a council --
and, secondly a palace revolution in Germany. The new regent, Anno,
Archbishop of Cologne was a zealous reformer. He was however too much
of an imperialist to acknowledge Alexander immediately and he, too, was
possessed with the idea that both Alexander and Honorius should submit
their claims to a council. As regent he summoned a diet to discuss the
question at Augsburg.
To this diet Alexander sent as his advocate St. Peter Damian, who,
zealous reformer though he was, now gave away the principle of all that
the last two popes had accomplished for the freedom of religion when,
confident of Alexander's legitimacy, he declared that it was for the
emperor and his bishops to decide which of the rivals was really pope.
[ ] The German nobles and bishops voted for an enquiry into the case
against Alexander. The pope made no protest against this and, when the
diet recognised him as pope, he returned to Rome, in the spring of
1063.
And now St. Peter Damian, from France, whither he had gone as legate,
once again threw the pope's case into grave confusion. For, ignorant of
the Augsburg act of recognition, he wrote to Anno demanding that the
regent summon a general council. Alexander II was still too insecure to
make the kind of reply to Anno that Nicholas II might have sent; and
when the council met, at Mantua, (Pentecost 1063) the pope, although
his demand that he should preside had been bluntly refused, [ ]
consented to appear before it and to make a solemn protestation that
his election was not simoniacal, and was according to the ancient form.
As to the Norman alliance, concerning which he had to submit to a
lecture from Anno of Cologne, that was his own affair. The council
ended by acknowledging Alexander and it condemned Honorius. The schism
was ended. Alexander had triumphed, but not without the emperor. The
principle that the laity have no rights in papal elections -- to which
Nicholas II had lately given so much importance -- had suffered
something of an eclipse.
Alexander II had, however, by no means waited for the council’s
decision before beginning to rule the Church. The explanation which he
made to the council at Mantua was a simple act of policy to end the
schism. Ever since his election he had, in fact, continued the work of
his predecessors, by synods, despatch of legates, and correspondence,
working the reforms into every corner of Christendom. The direct
influence of the Roman Church was beginning to be felt throughout the
universal Church more continuously than ever before in its history.
Southern and central Italy were now comparatively well in hand. In
France the new Capetian rulers, still hardly more than nominal kings,
oscillated; but legates from Rome toured the country unceasingly,
preaching the new principles, and, in synods and councils, insisting on
the punishment of those who contravened them. Spain, too, felt the new
vigour. In Germany the chief interest, during these years, was the
gradual revelation of the young emperor as another Conrad II. Like his
grandfather before him Henry IV continued to traffic in sees, and he
showed every sign of resentment against the new limitations on his
power. He was not yet crowned as emperor, and the fear that the pope
would refuse to crown him acted, for the moment, as a restraint.
Nevertheless, despite the growing difficulty of Henry's hostility, the
reform continued to penetrate Germany too. Alexander was even able to
compel such chiefs of the German episcopate as the Archbishops of
Cologne and Mainz and the Bishop of Bamberg to come to Rome and stand
their trial.
One of the chief interests of this reign is that it saw the
introduction of the reform into England. William of Normandy who, two
years after the end of the schism. had conquered England, was a prince
who had always enjoyed the confidence of the popes of the reform. He
was himself the more enthusiastic for the reform in his new kingdom,
since he found it a means of strengthening his own authority. When, on
the death of St. Edward the Confessor (January 5, 1066), Harold
succeeded to the English throne, William sent off a mission to Rome
denouncing Harold as a perjurer, and the Archbishop of Canterbury who
had crowned him, as schismatic -- Stigand having received his pallium
from Benedict X, and having never since made his submission to the
lawful pope. Alexander blessed the expedition, despite opposition from
some of his cardinals, and sent William a consecrated banner as a
pledge of support. Hildebrand was the main mover in this policy, and
after the Conquest he reaped his reward. In 1070 two papal legates
presided over a great council at Winchester. Stigand and several other
bishops were deposed; Lanfranc, now abbot of Bec, was appointed
archbishop, and the Church in England, too, was opened to the full tide
of the new vigorous life.
When, in 1073, Alexander II -- not the least of whose merits was that
he survived to rule for more years than his six predecessors put
together -- came to die, the reform movement had been, for a quarter of
a century, the primary occupation of the popes. They had gradually
organised it throughout the whole Church, and where, in the beginning,
it had depended for its success on the lucky chance that the reigning
emperor was himself a good man and interested, it had now for sixteen
years been independent of any temporal authority, captained by the pope
himself. The imperial suzerainty over the Church, accepted without
reflection, by good men no less than bad, as one of the ordinary facts
of life, had been set aside. For a short sixteen years the papacy, for
the first time in five centuries, had been politically free. There was
now to begin the desperate fight to maintain that freedom, a fight that
was begun with the freedom barely gained and the gain in no way
consolidated.
The Emperor Henry IV was now twenty-three -- intelligent, cultured, an
artist, but selfish and sensual. To anyone who knew his character, and
the history of the popes' successful attack on the privileges which his
line had so long enjoyed, conflict must have seemed inevitable. Rather
than surrender to the new idea, that lay control of ecclesiastical
appointments was the main cause of all the ills that afflicted
religion, the emperor would throw in his lot with the anti-reform
forces. The pope, just as inevitably, would, in defence of what had
been won, increase the growing centralisation, tightening the links
that bound bishops to the metropolitans, and metropolitans to the Roman
Church. The time for compromise and half measures was gone. The moment
had come when to attack abuses yet more violently was a very necessity
of life. The time called for a pope who should be perfectly informed of
every element in the complicated game, who should possess a will of
iron, political subtlety, unshakable courage, and also, if these were
not to damage himself and his cause once the spirit breathed life into
the terrifying combination, a pope who should possess the heroic
disinterestedness that comes of supernatural charity. It was the
ultimate secret of Hildebrand's lasting success -- for he it was upon
whom the burden fell -- that he remained the monk first as last, the
ascetic and the man of prayer.
As in 1061, the vacancy found Hildebrand in charge. The decree of 1059
was to be applied for the second time, and in circumstances more
menacing than before. Hildebrand ordered a three days' fast in
preparation for the election, and proceeded with the dead pope's
funeral. There was only one possible candidate, and at the very
funeral, apparently, he was spontaneously, tumultuously, hailed as
pope, clergy and people shouting together and bearing down his
unwillingness. A month later he was ordained priest, and on the feast
of SS. Peter and Paul consecrated bishop.
Hildebrand -- St. Gregory VII -- was at the time of his election a man
in the middle fifties. [ ] His youth had known the Rome of the last of
the popes of the House of Theophylact. He had been the secretary of the
first of the reformers, and in the days of Gregory VI's exile he had
come into close contact with the leaders of the reform movement in
Burgundy and Lorraine. He had perhaps known Cluny, [ ] and he had
certainly known Liege, the one centre, [ ] at that time, of a reform
movement which was also anti-imperialistic. The Bishop of Liege it was
who, alone had protested when Henry III had disposed of the popes at
Sutri, who alone had ventured to oppose to the emperor the tradition
that the pope has no judge on this earth. [ ] From the north St. Leo IX
brought Hildebrand back to Rome, ordained him to be one of the
sub-deacons of the Roman Church and set him in charge of its finances.
Later he had served as legate in France at the time of the great
controversy on the Holy Eucharist, and under Victor II he had returned
to France, again as legate and reformer, presiding at great councils,
such as that of Lyons and that of Chalons, where simoniacal bishops
were deposed. He had gone as legate to the imperial court and, under
Nicholas II, with Anselm of Lucca to the place where the conflict raged
most violently between the reform and the old regime -- Milan. When
Anselm succeeded as Alexander II, he remained at Rome to be that pope's
alter ego. By the time of his own election, in 1073, he knew by
personal experience every phase of the vast movement, knew, too, every
personality engaged in it. Few popes have come to their task so well
prepared.
The principle that gives unity to the whole of Gregory VII's varied
activity, is his ever present realisation that he is responsible to God
for all the souls entrusted to him. Political activity may be a
necessary means, but the end in view is always wholly supernatural. The
pope must answer to God for the souls of kings no less than for those
of priests and peasants; for kings too must keep God's law, or find
themselves in hell for all eternity. And to William the Conqueror
Gregory VII wrote this explicitly, "If then, on that day of terrible
judgement it is I who must represent you before the just judge whom no
lies deceive and who is the creator of all creatures, your wisdom will
itself understand how I must most attentively watch over your
salvation, and how you, in turn, because of your salvation and that you
may come to the land of the living, must and ought to obey me without
delay." There is nothing new in this: it is but a particular
application of the general principle that the shepherd is charged to
guide the whole flock which Gelasius I, for example, had stated no less
explicitly to the emperor Anastasius six hundred years before St.
Gregory VII. [ ] Nor, despite the ingenuity of later, anti- papal,
historians -- was this meant as a thinly-disguised means of bringing
about a political system in which the pope should rule all the affairs
of the Christian world. Nowhere in the pope's own declarations is there
any hint that he hoped for such a position, nor in the multitudinous
writings of his supporters, whether publicists or canonists, that argue
for the rights he did claim; nor is there any sign that the emperor
believed this to be Gregory's aim, or any of the emperor's men. To none
of the pope's contemporaries, to none of those who were at the heart of
the struggle, did it ever occur, even to allege, that what Gregory VII
was aiming at was to be the emperor of a Christian world state. [ ]
Henry IV, too, had his problems, and chief among them that of
recovering what the crown had lost during his own long minority. [ ]
Appointments to sees, and the accompanying simony, were at the moment
important political expedients. This return to the evil ways of his
grandfather had already, in the last years of Alexander II, led to
difficulties between Henry and the Holy See; and the candidate to whom
the king had sold the see of Constance was, thanks to the pope, denied
consecration. Despite the king, a council, presided over by papal
legates, was held at Mainz (1071) and the bishop-elect of Constance was
compelled to resign. In another dispute, which divided the bishops and
abbots of Thuringia -- where the allocation of tithes was in question
-- the king had intervened to prevent an appeal to Rome. It was already
more than evident that, in Henry IV, the reform movement faced the most
serious opponent who had so far arisen. In Germany itself his
determination to dominate the great feudatories could only end in war,
and in 1073 a general revolt broke out which came near to sweeping him
away altogether. In his despair Henry appealed to the pope,
acknowledging his simony and his many usurpations in the matter of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, asking for aid and humbly promising
amendment of his life. Gregory VII had already planned his policy with
regard to the German king. He was not by nature an intransigent. [ ] He
would do his best, by kindly warnings, to turn Henry from an opponent
into an ally of the reform. Only when he proved obdurate did the pope
return to the drastic remedies of Cardinal Humbert and Nicholas II in
order to secure the freedom of religion. Already, in September, 1073,
he had forbidden the new Bishop of Lucca to receive investiture from
the king, and now came the king's submission and appeal.
The pope's reply was to despatch two legates, to reconcile Henry and
his subjects and to settle the details of the dispute between king and
pope still hanging over from the last pontificate. By May, 1074, the
war seemed practically over, and the pope and king were reconciled. The
pope resumed his activities on behalf of reform in the great German
sees. It was, very largely, to these great bishops, of Cologne, Mainz,
Augsburg, and Hamburg, that the ruling of Germany during the minority
had fallen. The accession of Gregory VII found them as little
subordinate to the pope as they were to the king. It was only with the
greatest difficulty that the pope's legates were able to bring together
the council he desired, and strong protests came from the German clergy
against the new discipline and especially against the newly enforced
clerical celibacy. There was not too much hope that, in any conflict
between Rome and Henry IV, the churches of Germany would make common
cause with the pope.
That conflict was not long in coming. Gregory VII had begun by renewing
the decrees against simony and clerical ill-living (Roman Council of
March, 1074). By the Lent of 1075 it was evident to him that, almost
nowhere, had the legates despatched to enforce these decrees, met with
any general support from the bishops. The pope now determined to strike
at the two chief causes of this failure on the part of the bishops. The
abuse that appointments to sees had everywhere fallen into the hands of
the lay lord, Gregory met by a solemn renewal of Nicholas II's decree
of 1059, which had never been enforced. No prelate must, henceforth,
receive an abbey or a see from any lay lord; no lay lord must, for the
future, make such grants. And in the Dictatus Papae the pope reminded
disobedient bishops that his authority was of divine institution, and
that it extended to a power of deposing bishops and, if need be, of the
emperor too.
This decree of February, 1075, against lay investiture was not
intended, the thing seems certain, as an aggressive move against the
princes -- still less was it an act which especially envisaged Henry
IV; the pope was in no hurry to promulgate the decree to princes
generally, and his policy in applying the law varied greatly. In the
English kingdom of William the Conqueror, for example, where simony had
no place in the royal appointments, and where king and bishops were at
one with the pope in the work of reform, Gregory VII never raised the
question at all. The new law was, indeed, " a preventive weapon
designed to assist the struggle against simony". [ ] In a country where
simony on the part of the king was systematic, and the king hardened in
his resolve to maintain the system, conflict -- speedy conflict -- was
inevitable; and such was the case with Henry IV. And, as the decree was
a challenge to Henry IV so too were the blunt declarations of the
Dictatus Papae a challenge to the feudalised ecclesiastical princes who
occupied the sees of Germany. In these twenty-seven terse propositions
king and bishops were warned that the pope's laws against simony,
clerical ill-living, and the usurpation of rights to appoint were no
dead letter, and that none, whatever his rank, would escape the
sanctions enacted against those who broke these laws. [ ]
The war in Germany, that still dragged on despite the papal
intervention of 1074, came to an end in September, 1075, with Henry IV
completely victorious. Master, at last, in his own house, the king was
now to show his hand against the papacy. The troubles of the see of
Milan gave the king his opportunity. In March, 1075 the party of reform
had suffered there a great defeat and their leader had lost his life.
Whereupon their rivals had begged King Henry to appoint a new
archbishop -- despite his recent acknowledgement of the archbishop,
Atto, whom the pope had recognised at the council of 1074. The German
king consented and nominated Tedaldo, a deacon of the Milanese church.
And it was with this incident that the great struggle began between the
sacerdotium and the imperium that was to be a main feature of European
history for the next two hundred and fifty years.
Gregory VII answered the challenge with a solemn warning, December 8,
1075, that the decrees of the last council bound the king no less than
the rest of the Church, and with a private message that if Henry
persisted he should himself be excommunicated and deposed. Henry's
reply was to organise against the pope all the discontented
ecclesiastics of Germany and Lombardy; with them there rose, also, the
anti-papal Roman aristocracy. It was not yet thirty years since Henry's
father had despatched three popes in as many weeks.
It was the Romans who moved first, and as the pope sang the Midnight
Mass of Christmas in St. Mary Major's he was attacked and carried off
by one of the leading Roman nobles, Cencius, to be delivered however,
after a few hours. Next, in January, 1076, a council of German bishops
at Worms -- twenty-seven in all-denounced the pope as a usurper,
elected without the king's authorisation, a mischief maker who for two
years had sown dissension and trouble throughout the Church. The king
added to their official decree letters of his own, inviting the Romans
to expel the pope and bidding Gregory VII himself, "no pope but a false
monk," abandon the see he had dishonoured. " Come down then, leave the
see thou hast usurped, that another may take the place of blessed
Peter. I, Henry, king by the grace of God, and all the bishops, we say
to thee 'Come down, come down, thou whom all the ages will condemn." [
]
The envoys from the German council halted on their way to Rome, to hold
a council at Piacenza, where the Lombard bishops swore to refuse
obedience to the pope. At Rome the pope gave the envoys a hearing --
and proceeded to excommunicate the Archbishops of Mainz and Cologne,
the presidents of the German council, and with them the king himself
(February 14, 1076). This last decree was promulgated in terms of
unusual solemnity, which reveal the new development given by the
reformers to Our Lord's promises to St. Peter. "Hearken, O Blessed
Peter, Prince of the Apostles, to the prayer of thy servant, whom thou
hast nourished since infancy, whom, to this day, thou hast protected
from the power of the wicked. Thou art my witness, and Our Lady, God's
mother, and thy brother the blessed Paul, that it was thine own holy
Roman Church which set me, for all my unwillingness, at the helm. . .
By thy favour it is, and not by any works of mine, that the Christian
people obey my ruling. . .
In thy place, and by thy favour, God has given me authority to bind and
to loose upon earth. Wherefore, filled with this confidence, for the
honour and defence of thy Church, in the name of God Almighty, by thy
power and thy authority, I deprive Henry the king, son of Henry the
emperor, who with unheard-of pride has risen against thy Church, of all
authority in the kingdom of the Teutons and in Italy. I release all
Christians from their oaths of fidelity sworn to him or that they shall
swear to him. I forbid any person to do him any of the service due to
kings. . . . I bind him with the chain of anathema so that the whole
world may know that upon this rock the Son of the living God has built
his Church and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
This act of unprecedented boldness, the culmination of the efforts of
the reformers since 1049, was the culmination, too, of Gregory's reign,
a focal point indeed of all the long history of the relation of the
Catholic Church and the Catholic kings, towards which much previous
history tended, to which all later history looks back. Gregory VII was
to meet disaster upon disaster, to die with the Church divided, with
the reformers defeated and scattered. But, because of the setting he
gave it, this first papal excommunication and deposition of a king
never left the Catholic memory. It fixed for all time, upon all
subsequent popes and bishops. the elementary nature of their duty to
secure the rights of religion and in securing them to make no
distinction of persons. Imperator intra ecclesiam non supra ecclesiam
est, so St. Ambrose had admonished Valentinian II seven hundred years
earlier. St. Gregory VII's excommunication of the German king stamped
that truth so deeply into Catholic practice that, henceforth, it ceased
to be matter for discussion.
At first all went well and a great victory for the reformed papacy
seemed assured. Around the papal decision all the recently quelled
rebellion rose again. The great feudatories gladly renewed, under the
new papal sanction, their old war on Henry. As the summer of 1076 came
on his bishops, too, left him for the pope. At an assembly at Tribur
(October 16, 1076) his deposition was proposed and it was agreed that
this should be left to the pope who should come, in the following
February, and hold a great council at Augsburg. Henry, apparently, was
irrecoverably lost.
As in 1073, he resolved to save himself by submission. The pope had
already left Rome for Germany when, with a few attendants, Henry
crossed the Alps. He met the pope at Canossa, a fortress belonging to
the pope's ally the powerful Countess Matilda, ruler since her father's
death of the important marquisate of Tuscany. The pope, convinced most
unwillingly that Henry's repentance was sincere, could not refuse him
the absolution he sought (January 28, 1077). The king might stand, for
three days, as he has ever been painted, clad only in his shirt,
barefoot in the snow, beseeching the inflexible pope. It was he,
nevertheless, who triumphed, staving off disaster at the last moment of
the last hour, and breaking the entente between the pope and the German
opposition before it had had time to take diplomatic shape. [ ]
In Germany, meanwhile, the opposition had elected another king, Rudolf
of Swabia, Henry's brother-in-law (March 13, 1077). As between the two
rivals the pope declared himself neutral, offering to arbitrate and
judge between them. Both kings accepted, at least so far as to send
ambassadors to plead their case before a great council of a hundred
bishops which the pope assembled at the Lateran in the April of 1078.
Once again, however, for lack of convincing evidence, the pope refused
to decide. contenting himself with sending to Germany a commission of
investigation. When it was clearly shown where the right lay, he would
condemn the usurper.
The mission achieved very little. The war went on despite the
endeavours of the legates, and presently Henry, disregarding the
explicit oaths he had sworn at Canossa, was once more disposing of
abbeys and sees in the old fashion. When, in the first weeks of 1080,
he demanded that Gregory should excommunicate Rudolf, he merely applied
the last stimulus to force the punishment that had been accumulating.
At a council summoned in March of that year the pope recalled the
previous decrees and renewed the excommunications of the disobedient
and rebellious prelates. The rules for episcopal elections were again
set forth, and finally the question of the German kings was dealt with.
Henry, his bad faith since Canossa set forth in detail, was once more
excommunicated and deposed, Rudolf acknowledged as lawful king.
Henry, however, was in a strong position. His nobles stood by him, his
bishops too. Except in the far north he was master everywhere. The
bishops of Germany, first at Bamberg (April 12, 1080) and then at
Mainz, (May 31) the bishops of Lombardy at Brixen, (June 25) renewed
the denunciations of the earlier council at Worms. The pope was a
magician, a sorcerer, the protector of heretics, a poisoner who had
made away with his four predecessors; his deposition was decreed, and
in his place was "elected" the Archbishop of Ravenna who for ten years
had led the anti-papal movement in Italy. He styled himself Clement
III.
In October, Rudolf was slain in battle and Henry, master now in
Germany, was free to invade Italy, execute the sentence of his bishops,
and enthrone "Clement III." The independent papacy had endured just
twenty-three years. The king was now in a position to regain what his
father had held in 1046, Otto III in 996, Otto I in 963.
Before the new danger the pope was helpless. Although the Countess
Matilda was as loyal as before, her energies were wholly absorbed in
defending herself against her own vassals and against the towns which
resented her claims; the invasion would be the signal for a general
revolt throughout her territories. The Normans again had, in recent
years. shown themselves so eager to raid the pontifical territory that
it was extremely doubtful if they would now defend it. But finally,
through the diplomacy of the Abbot of Monte Cassino, their two chiefs,
Richard of Capua and Robert Guiscard, were reconciled to the pope.
Further treaties were made with the petty barons of the Campagna.
Early in 1081 Henry began his march. Verona, Milan, Pavia, Ravenna,
opened their gates to him in turn. Everywhere the local discontent
rallied to him. On May 21 he appeared before Rome. His forces were,
however, too slight to take the city, and the summer heat soon put an
end to his attempted blockade. In the spring of 1082 the king made a
second appearance before the walls -- but with no better fortune. In
June 1083 he was, however, able to occupy the Leonine city and the pope
agreed to call a general council on the condition that Henry would
guarantee the safety of the bishops coming and going. This plan failed;
and then, in 1084, upon a fourth military demonstration, the king was
successful -- with the help of the funds sent by the emperor at
Constantinople for an expedition against the Normans, and the
connivance of war-weary traitors within the city. Thirteen of the very
cardinals had, in fact, deserted Gregory VII when, on March 21, Rome
fell to Henry. Three days later his anti-pope was enthroned at the
Lateran, and on March 31, Easter Sunday, " Clement III " crowned Henry
IV as emperor in St. Peter's, saluting him as Patrician of the Romans,
while the old oaths were sworn anew that guaranteed the emperor's
rights in the election of the popes. The old regime had been restored:
the German king was once more master of the Roman Church.
His triumph was of short duration. The pope, still besieged in St.
Angelo, managed to get a message through to the Normans and soon Robert
Guiscard, with a huge army, was marching north to relieve him. The
emperor did not await his coming but fled (May 21, 1084). Six days
later the Normans arrived, and, treating the Romans as rebels, put the
city to the sack. The pope was released, to become little else but the
prisoner of his ferocious allies. Without them his life was not safe;
when they retired with their booty he had no choice but to accompany
them, to Monte Cassino, to Benevento, and finally to Salerno.
As the Normans retired, the imperialists recovered their hold "Clement
III" once more reigned in the Lateran, while Gregory; protected by the
Normans, passed the last three months of his life at Salerno. Isolated
in southern Italy, cut off from all effective communication with the
rest of Christendom, he launched a last appeal for help to all who
believed "that the blessed Peter is the father of all Christians, their
first shepherd after Christ, that the holy Roman Church is the mother
and the mistress of all churches." The pope was broken, and in a short
few months he died (May 25, 1085). [ ]
For the moment it seemed as though his work must die with him. It was a
year before the cardinals could come to an agreement as to his
successor, and another year before that successor would take the
decisive step and seal his acceptance by receiving episcopal
consecration. It was a curious choice that the sacred college had made,
for the new pope -- Victor III -- was no other than the Abbot of Monte
Cassino, the patron of the Normans, the negotiator of their peace with
Gregory VII, and also, in the last days of St. Gregory, threatened with
excommunication for his dealings with Henry IV. Victor III [ ] reigned
for a matter of weeks only. On September 16, 1087, he died, and
confusion descended once more on the followers of Gregory VII. Finally,
on March 12, 1088. the cardinals elected Odo, the Bishop of Ostia.
After three years of leaderless chaos the work of St. Gregory was to go
forward once more.
The new pope was French by birth. He had made a name for himself at the
school of Rheims, and had risen to be archdeacon of that see. Then he
had gone to Cluny, and once again his gifts had raised him. He was
prior of Cluny when, in the early days of Gregory VII, he accompanied
his abbot -- Hugh -- to Rome. The pope kept him there, creating him
cardinal and making him Bishop of Ostia. Thenceforward he was one of
the most active of the pope's lieutenants in the work of reform. When
Gregory VII, in the last days of his life, was asked whom he would
prefer to succeed him, the Cardinal Odo was one of those whom he named.
Odo by no means approved of Victor III, though he did not -- like some
of the party -- refuse to acknowledge him as pope, and in the end he
was so far reconciled to him that Victor III even recommended him as
his successor.
It is the glory of Urban II -- for so the new pope styled himself-that
in the ten years he reigned he made good the immense damage which the
cause of reform had suffered since the excommunication of 1080. He did
more; for, as devoted as Gregory VII and as determined, he supervised
personally the progress of the movement as Leo IX had supervised its
beginnings. [ ] The history of his pontificate divides easily. During
the first five years the anti-pope and the imperialists continued to
hold Rome and northern Italy: Urban II had no choice but to live under
the protection of the Normans in the south. In 1090 the emperor himself
again descended on the country, and for six years more the struggle
went on between his forces and those of the Countess Matilda, aided now
by the league of Lombard towns. But gradually the imperialists were
forced out; Henry's son, Conrad, joined the rebels, was accepted by
them as king, and went over to Urban II; in Germany itself, thanks to
Urban's legate the Bishop of Constance, the reform party was slowly
reunited. The monastery of Hirschau -- a German Cluny -- began to be a
new source of strength, and even in the episcopate (now for fifteen
years filled with Henry's nominees) bishops began to desert "Clement
III" for the successor of Gregory VII. Urban's own personal tact, his
diplomatic combination of inflexibility in principle with the
traditional mildness of the Roman Church to repentant schismatics, did
much to hasten these reconciliations. After 1093 he was able to live
safely in Rome, where, so far, he had spent but an occasional,
hazardous few weeks. .
The years of his "exile" among the Normans Urban II had -devoted to the
reorganisation of that much tried land, where for the best part of a
century Norman, Byzantine and Saracen had fought for the mastery. Now
he turned his attention to the north. In March, 1095, he presided over
an immense assembly at Piacenza, an international congress to which the
loyal supporters of the policies of Gregory VII came in from all over
western Europe, bishops from Germany, France and Spain, ambassadors,
too, from the old empire of the East, clerics to the number of 4,000
and, it was estimated, 30,000 laity. This unprecedented success marked
very definitely the end of the crisis in which the work of Hildebrand
seemed fated to perish. The council also marks a definite change in the
tone of Urban II's government of the Church. The pope is, once more.
free of political anxieties; the canons of the council are a
declaration to the world that the reform of Christian life is, once
again, the sole task that occupies his mind. And from now on Urban II
shows himself more and more of a rigorist in his attitude to lay
investiture.
From Piacenza the pope moved slowly through Lombardy to his native
France. Here many matters awaited his decision. The Church in France
had, in fact, suffered cruelly from lack of leadership since Gregory
VII's death, now ten years ago. There were controversies over
jurisdiction between different bishops, disputes between metropolitans
as to precedence and, finally, there was the scandal of the repudiation
of his wife by the king, Philip I (1060-1106), and his subsequent
remarriage.
Philip I was another, but less able, Henry IV. He had already incurred
the wrath of Gregory VII for his crimes against the Church and his
cruel oppression of his subjects. The same pope had also chastised the
French bishops for the servility which kept them from protecting the
weak against the king's tyranny. Now the king had turned his wife out,
married another, and the Bishop of Senlis had blessed the second
marriage. The Archbishop of Rheims and the other suffragans had
approved, and the Bishop of Chartres, the famous canonist St. Ives, who
alone had protested. was thrown into prison. For all this, Philip had
recently (October 16, 1094) been excommunicated by the Archbishop of
Lyons acting as papal legate.
The pope reached France in July, 1095, and for four months he moved
about the valley of the Rhone, occupied in a general mission of
restoring peace and unity, everywhere deciding, with authority, the
disputes and controversies which, for lack of decision, had degenerated
into feuds. On August 15, he was at Le Puy, to discuss the coming
crusade with its bishop, Adhemar, who was something of an authority on
affairs in the Holy Land. A fortnight later, at St. Gilles, Urban was
in consultation with the count, Raymond, whose experience of the wars
against the Saracens in Spain suggested him as the leader of the
expedition which Urban had in mind. In October he consecrated the new
abbey church at Cluny, where twenty years before he had ruled as prior,
and in November he moved to Clermont to preside over the council
summoned in the previous August.
This Council of Clermont (November 18-28, 1095) was an even greater
success than that of Piacenza. Once more, although it was summoned as a
council of French bishops, prelates, monks and laity came in from all
parts. Accounts speak of between three and four hundred bishops and
abbots. The total number of those whom the council drew to the town may
have reached 100,00 () It was a second stupendous testimony, within a
few months, to the hold of the papacy on the mind of Christendom, and,
necessarily, an immense aid in the struggle still going on in Germany.
The usual decrees on reform recently renewed at Piacenza, were
explained and published once more; new decrees emphasised the cleric's
independence of the lay lord and protected church property against lay
usurpation; the Bishop of Cambrai was deposed for simony and for
receiving investiture from the emperor, the King of France was solemnly
excommunicated, and the Truce of God was officially adopted as of
obligation universally throughout the Church. Finally, Urban II, on his
own initiative, launched the scheme for the first Crusade.
In 1096 the pope returned to Italy. He held yet another council at Rome
in 1097, one at Bari in southern Italy in 1098 and, a few months before
his death, a last council in Rome, to which a hundred and fifty bishops
came.
On July 29, 1099, Urban II died. The long fight for independence was by
no means won, but, by comparison with the situation in 1088, victory
and release might seem, were there no set-back, to be no more than a
matter of time. Set-backs, however, there were to be, and the chief of
them was the personality of the new pope -- Pascal II (elected August
13, 1099). His loyalty to the reform was beyond all doubt. It was
Gregory VII who had made him a cardinal, and he had stood by the cause
through its darkest days. Like Urban II he was a monk, an Italian, and
a man whose life was a model of austerity. He was, however, of that
large number of whom, sorrowfully, their friends can but regret capax
nisi imperasset. A good counsellor, he showed himself as a ruler
uncertain and vacillating, and he afflicted the Church for eighteen
years.
The first years of his reign, however, saw one obstacle after another
disappear. " Clement III " died in 1100, and left no effective
successor. Philip of France made his submission in 1104. The
investiture struggle which St. Anselm of Canterbury had waged in
England with William II and Henry I was settled. in 1107, by a pact
which recognised the Church's freedom of election. [ ] Finally, in
1105, Henry IV, defeated and crushed, was compelled to abdicate in
favour of his son, the leader since 1100 of the party in opposition.
And to all this series of important gains must be added the new
prestige accruing to the papacy from the Crusader' capture of Jerusalem
(July, 1099). The pope's position when the young Henry V, his
succession secured, broke through his promise and renewed his father's
policies, was already stronger than that of any pope for centuries.
Henry, inevitably, was excommunicated. He replied by invading Italy
(1110). As he approached Rome Pascal II, possibly through fear that the
capture of the city would entail the creation of another anti-pope and
the renewal of the schism, prepared to treat. He offered, if Henry
solemnly undertook to abandon the practice of investiture, to renounce
all the Church's feudal rights within the empire, to make over to the
king the whole vast amount, lands, privileges, temporal jurisdiction.
Had it been possible to carry out, the treaty would have revolutionised
the social structure of half Europe. To the king it would have conveyed
immediately an immense increase of wealth and power. The Church --
bishops, abbots, schools, hospitals, pious foundations, the whole vast
movement before which still lay the task of Christianising the Germans
and converting the heathen -- would just as suddenly be stripped of all
its material equipment and its public status while there still lay upon
it the burden of maintaining all the life it had called into being in
the course of seven centuries; and it would once more, inevitably, have
fallen into the lay lords' power. [ ]
If the pope showed a dove's simplicity in making such an offer his
bishops and abbots lacked none of the wisdom that should be its
complement. When, in the presence of the emperor-to-be, on February 12,
1111, the proposals were announced in St. Peter's, there were violent
scenes and presently a wild riot. The king thereupon arrested the pope,
sixteen of the cardinals, and a number of the Roman nobility. When they
were released it was announced that Pascal II had surrendered. All that
Gregory VII had fought for was abandoned. Henry was lo be crowned as
emperor, and the pope had made over to him all the rights of
investiture he claimed. "What I would not have done to save my life,"
said the lamentable pope, "I have done for the peace of the Church."
The hard toil of the last sixty years, the labours and sacrifices of
his predecessors, saved Pascal II. They had created such a spirit in
the Church that he was powerless before it. The personal activity of
the papacy, felt in every see of Christendom for the last two
generations, the innumerable councils, the continual tours of the papal
legates, the constant intervention of the popes in the local crises of
so many sees, those journeys which had familiarised so many of the
faithful with their very presence, all had contributed to build up an
enthusiasm that would not tolerate such a surrender. Soon from all
sides, and nowhere more strongly than from France, protests began to
pour in. The Abbot of Monte Cassino, ordered personally to surrender
his rights, refused. "I love you," he wrote, "as my lord and as my
father, and I have no desire for another as pope. But the Lord has said
'Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.'. .
. As for this outrageous treaty, wrung from you by violence and
treachery, how can I praise it? Or indeed how can you?. . . Your own
laws have condemned and excommunicated the cleric who submits to
investiture. . . ." Another sturdy prelate the Archbishop of Lyons,
urged the pope in still stronger terms. "Detestable pilot that you are,
in times of peace a bully and before the storm a coward." The
Archbishop of Vienne, Pascal’s own legate in France, called a council,
declared lay investiture to be heretical, and excommunicated the
emperor. He, too, wrote to the pope, begging him to confirm the
council’s sentence and to break with Henry. "If you hearken to our
prayer and break with King Henry we shall be your faithful and devoted
sons. If you remain union with him, we pray God be merciful to us for
we shall withdraw ourselves from your obedience." Cluny took the same
line; and another abbot wrote bluntly to Pascal that he was a heretic.
In Germany the bishops of the great sees who had so far fought the
emperor -- Cologne, Mainz, Halberstadt, Magdeburg and Salzburg -- took
up arms once more. The war was on again and the pope, after a temporary
retirement, in which he even thought of abdicating, yielded. To the
legate in France he wrote that he had withdrawn the concession, and in
a great council at Rome (March, 1112), acknowledging that it was
contrary to justice, he annulled the grant and confirmed once more the
legislation of Gregory VII and Urban II. Four years later, in the
council of 1116, Pascal was more explicitly repentant. "I confess that
J failed," he said, "and I ask you to pray God to pardon me. As for the
cursed privilege. . . I condemn it with an everlasting anathema, and I
will that its memory be for ever hateful." [ ]
In February, 1115, Henry was badly defeated at Welfesholze, and though
he attempted to renew the schism -- setting up the Archbishop of Braga
as "Gregory VIII" and even, master of Rome again, having a second
coronation -- the days of his power were numbered. Pascal II died in
1118, his successor, Gelasius II, lived only a year; and then (March 1,
1119 the cardinals elected as pope the Archbishop of Vienne who had, in
1111, led the Catholic movement against Pascal’s concessions. He it was
who now, as Calixtus II, was to arrange the treaty which ended the long
struggle.
In a council at Worms (September 23, 1122) they were finally arranged.
Henry conceded, once and for all, the Church's right freely to elect
and consecrate its bishops, and he forswore the investiture with ring
and crozier, the act by which he had created his bishops. The pope, for
his part, conceded that the elections should take place in the king's
presence so long as they were free and without any simony. The
bishop-elect was to receive investiture of the temporalities of the see
by the touch of the king's sceptre.
The Concordant of Worms was a compromise, [ ] hut a compromise which
registered the victory of the principle for which the popes, during
eighty years of controversy, had contended, namely that bishops should
not, as of right, owe their promotion to the lay sovereign. It was more
than six hundred years since, with the first of the Barbarian kings who
was a Catholic, the disastrous custom had first taken root. Now, thanks
to the unremitting warfare of three generations of popes, bishops,
monks and faithful people, the ancient principle was re-established, to
he in practice often enough ignored, but never again to he denied by
churchmen or treated as non-existent. [ ]
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