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The strong French pope, whose diplomacy had brought to a victorious end
the fifty years' controversy with the emperor, did not long survive his
triumph. He died in the year which followed the Lateran Council, on
December 13 or 14, 1124. His successor, Honorius II -- the cardinal
Lambert -- had a long experience in the central government of the
Church, that went back to the days of Urban II. Pascal II had made him
a cardinal; he had been the companion of Gelasius II in that pope's
flight and exile; he had been a power in the conclave that elected
Calixtus II and had been, throughout the reign, that pope's most
trusted adviser; as such he had played an influential part in the
negotiations that preceded the Concordat of Worms, and his known
conciliatory temper had won him the goodwill of the Roman nobility; it
had been a career to which election as pope came as a very natural
crown. Yet the election was made unwillingly, and in circumstances that
might easily have led to schism, and which did, six years later,
actually lead to schism.
The Roman nobility, whose interest in the frequent changes in their
temporal ruler had been from the first beginnings of the Papal State,
and could hardly fail to be, one of the major permanent anxieties of
the popes, were still as willing as ever, at the death of Calixtus II,
to attempt to renew their ancient hold on the papacy. In place of the
Crescentii, the Theophylacts, the Cencii of previous centuries there
were now the Pierleoni and the Frangepani. Each faction had its
candidate, and the Pierleoni now triumphed, electing the cardinal
Tommaso Buccapecci who took the name of Celestine II. But while the Te
Deum was still in progress, the Frangepani leader broke in, tore from
the shoulders of the newly-elected the papal mantle and bade him
resign. The which, apparently very willingly, he did; and the terrified
cardinals then elected Lambert, who took the name of Honorius II. For a
few days the party of Celestine held out. But by St. Thomas's Day
December 21, they had followed their leader; and then Honorius, too,
resigned, to be immediately re-elected in more canonical fashion.
Almost immediately he had to face a serious crisis, for in 1125 his old
adversary, the emperor Henry V, died leaving no direct heir. For a
century now the imperial crown had passed from father to son, and it
was as important for the popes, as for the imperial feudatories, to
take full advantage of the opportunity now offered to safeguard the
principle of its electoral character against any claims of family. It
was no less important to secure that the new emperor should be a prince
sympathetic to the settlement of 1122, and that there should be no risk
of a renewal of the controversy about Investiture. To election
therefore, Honorius sent his legates, and in combination with the
archbishops and bishops of Germany they secured the choice of Lothair
of Supplimburg. When Lothair besought the pope's confirmation of his
election the principles of St. Gregory VII were given an ideal
recognition, and the emperor showed that the petition was no merely
formal act of goodwill by an important modification of the Concordat.
Elections of bishops and abbots were henceforward to be absolutely
free, "neither extorted by fear of the king nor influenced by his
presence as the use has been, nor restricted by any convention.” [ ] It
is to the bishop thus freely elected and canonically consecrated that
investiture of the temporalities is to be conferred by the touch of the
sceptre.
In his relations with France Honorius was equally happy, although his
tactful handling of Louis VI, in a quarrel that involved the French
king and the bishops, brought him a stiff letter of reproof from the
young St. Bernard.
Italian affairs were more troublesome. Much against his will the pope
was forced, by losses in the field, to acknowledge the Norman hold on
Apulia; and the Roman faction-fighting in which his reign was born
continued through all its six years. It raged even around his very
death-bed, for the Frangepani, who had so nearly lost in 1124, were
determined to maintain their hold. They gathered in the palace where
the pope lay dying, set it about with guards, and, the pope no sooner
dead, all the cardinals present elected as his successor, the cardinal
Gregory, who took the name of Innocent II (February 14, 1130).
Unhappily the electors, for all their unanimity, were but a minority of
the electoral college, and a few hours later their colleagues, outraged
at the unseemliness of the uncanonical proceeding, elected-without any
reference to Innocent's election -- the cardinal Peter Pierleoni. He
called himself Anacletus II.
The Church had a practical problem without a precedent since the new
system of papal elections introduced in 1059. Which of the two was
really pope? The first elected? or the elect of the majority? That
neither was pope, since both were the elect of fragments only --
greater or less -- of the electoral college, is a view no one seems to
have taken. The law of the papal election did not as yet specify any
particular majority of the votes as necessary for validity. Nor was
there any machinery to decide between the rivals. Anacletus had Rome in
his support, and maintained himself there until his death (1138).
Innocent meanwhile, driven from Rome, followed the well-worn track of
persecuted popes over the Alps to France, to win, ultimately,
recognition from the majority of the Catholic bishops and princes.
The chief factor in that general recognition was the recognition
accorded by Louis VI of France and the French bishops, and what
determined their decision was the immense influence of St. Bernard at
the Synod of Etampes. What principle, it may be asked, guided St.
Bernard? Apparently the very simple one that, of the two rivals,
Innocent was the better man, "une espece de divination de sa
conscience." [ ] Pierleoni was the chief of the faction that had
brought about his own election, an ecclesiastical politician primarily.
Innocent, although the choice, perhaps even -- in the election -- the
tool, of a faction, was at any rate not its leader. His election had
not about it that air of self-election which, in his rival’s case, was
so sinister a reminder of the worst days of. the last century. And
Innocent had played a distinguished part in the struggle against Henry
V. He must now have been advanced in years, for the earliest thing
recorded of his clerical career is his service with the rival of St.
Gregory VII, the anti-pope Clement III dead now these thirty years.
Pascal II had made him a cardinal in 1116, he had shared the exile of
the next pope, and then, in the time of Calixtus II, he had been the
colleague of the cardinal Lambert -- the future Honorius II -- in the
negotiation of the Concordat of Worms.
What the influence of St. Bernard did in France, that of St. Norbert
did in Germany. By the end of the year 1131 Innocent was recognised
everywhere, except in Rome and southern Italy where Roger of Sicily
remained true to Anacletus.
It was inevitably a troubled pontificate, and even after 1138, when the
death of Anacletus brought Innocent II universal recognition, some
shadow of its origins continued to darken it. The emperor, Lothair, for
all his exemplary action at his election in 1125, and despite his
several expeditions against Anacletus, threatened to reopen the
Investiture struggle, and only the influence of St. Bernard and St.
Norbert kept him loyal to the Concordat. The French king, too, was not
always satisfactory and his interference in the freedom of episcopal
elections drew down on France an interdict. For Innocent II, despite
his misfortunes, was no weakling. St. Bernard championed a spirit
fashioned like his own. The work of reform went forward, the pope
maintaining the tradition of local councils where he himself presided,
correcting abuses and devising guarantees to prevent their repetition.
The culmination of these, and the pope's greatest achievement, was the
General Council of April, 1139, held in the Lateran, that marked the
restored unity of Christendom after the death of Anacletus.
The history of this great council, at which some five or six hundred
bishops and abbots assisted, is curiously obscure. Its canons indeed
survive, but no record of the council has come down written by anyone
who was even in Rome at the time. Its canons, for the most part, [ ]
repeat the legislation of earlier reforming councils. Of the new canons
one regulates the dress of clerics, three are concerned with nuns --
they are formally deprived of the power to contract a valid marriage,
they are not to sing the Divine Office in company with the monks, and
spurious nuns who live privately at home are to be suppressed. Two new
canons reflect the Church's care for religion as a social force, one
against usurers a d the other against the use of catapults and bows in
wars against Christians. Finally the ordinations of Anacletus are
declared null and void. Two older canons are re-enacted, one against
incendiaries and another against violators of the Truce of God.
The council has, too, a certain doctrinal importance, not so much
perhaps for its condemnation of Arnold of Brescia -- who as yet had not
developed all his latent possibilities -- as for its condemnation
(Canon 23) of the new, Manichee tendencies which were, seventy years
later, to menace the very existence of Catholicism in southern France.
For the first time for many years there is no canon touching the matter
of investiture. On the other hand three canons deal once more with the
question of clerical celibacy, and, in even stronger terms than in
1123, declare null and void marriages contracted by clerics in major
orders.
The principal work before the council was to remove the last traces of
the late schism. Following the precedent of 1123, of Urban II in 1095
and of St. Gregory VII before that, the ordinations of the late
anti-pope were annulled -- a proceeding that, in the mind of its chief
historian, raises the greatest difficulty which the whole history of
re-ordination presents. Innocent II was not content with this, nor with
the submission of those who had followed his rival. There were numerous
deprivations, and the altars these bishops had consecrated were
destroyed. One victim,. especially, of the pope's revengeful spirit was
the Cardinal Peter of Pisa, who had indeed been one of the anti-pope's
chief supporters, but whom St. Bernard had won over to make his.
submission even before the anti-pope's death. He had been a most
valuable recruit to Innocent, who had received him gladly and confirmed
him in his dignities. In the movement to secure the submission of the
party of Anacletus, Peter had played a great part, but Innocent, now
secure, thought only of the past and deprived him. Nor, despite all St.
Bernard's pleading, did he ever restore him.
For all its circumstance, the council was destined to very slight
success. The pope's rigour made too unhappy an impression, he was soon
involved in the disastrous war with Sicily, and there began twenty
years of domestic political anxiety in Rome which effectively slowed
down the papacy's European activity.
Innocent II had triumphed, but to the end things continued to go badly
in Rome and the south. The King of Sicily was excommunicated at the
Lateran Council, and the pope himself prepared to carry out the
sentence and depose him. But Roger was the better general. He captured
the pope and compelled him not only to lift the excommunication but
also, once more, to recognise the Norman claims to the Italian
mainland. The Romans were angered by the pope's refusal to sanction the
destruction of the rival Latin town of Tivoli. The new spirit of the
Commune that now evidently possessed Rome as it did the whole north of
Italy, showed itself in another way when Innocent was compelled to make
a grant of local self- government. This developed, and a republic was
proclaimed. In the midst of these new troubles the unhappy pope died,
September 24, 1143.
He was succeeded by the short-lived Celestine II (September,
1143-March, 1144) who had been one of Abelard's pupils and, when
Cardinal Legate in France presiding at the condemnation of Arnold of
Brescia -- of whom more immediately -- had been rebuked by St. Bernard
for his neglect to use that disturber of the peace more severely. As
pope he reigned long enough to revoke Innocent II's concessions to the
King of Sicily, thus leaving to his own successor, Lucius II, an
additional worry to embarrass his endeavours to suppress the new
republic.
Lucius II had been one of the legates thinks to whom Lothair III was
elected emperor in 1125. The next pope had made him Chancellor of the
Roman Church, and upon his election (March 12, 1144) he turned all his
diplomacy to extricate the papacy from the domestic chaos in which its
temporal affairs were rapidly submerging. He arranged a truce with
Sicily. He allied himself with the Frangepani -- the more easily
because the Pierleoni supported the Republic -- and with their aid
proceeded to military measures. While besieging the Capitol he was
however killed by a chance shot, after a reign of less than a year.
In his place, that same day (February 15, 1145), the cardinals elected
the abbot of SS. Vincent and Anastasius. He was
Cistercian, won to the monastic life fifteen years before by St.
Bernard, and after some years spent at Clairvaux, under the saint's
direction, he had gone into Italy to undertake, at the request of
Innocent II, the reform of the great abbey of Farfa. The election over,
pope and cardinals fled from the hostile city, and it was in the abbey
church of Farfa that, as Eugene III, its one-time abbot was
consecrated. Rome meanwhile was given up to anarchy and pillage and
then, in reaction against the horrors the pope was invited to return.
But his stay was of short duration. The arch-disturber of his age now
appeared there, the mystical revolutionary Arnold of Brescia, and in
the January of 1146 Eugene III was once more an exile, destined not
again to see Rome until a few months before his death in 1153.
Arnold of Brescia, the ruler of Rome henceforward for a good nine
years, is as typical a figure of the time as the popes he opposed, as
Abelard, or as St. Bernard himself, who knew him well and whom in many
respects he greatly resembled. He was much the same age as St. Bernard,
born at Brescia in the last years of the eleventh century. He was
ordained priest, became a canon-regular and even prior of his
monastery. Like St. Bernard he was a man of amazing austerities. He was
a famous speaker and gifted with a singularly charming personality. In
Brescia he rapidly acquired fame as an eloquent critic of contemporary
abuses, and, like many another clerical critic of clerical habits, he
passed easily into a denial of the good of that he saw abused. The
Church, for example, had no right to own property. Pope and bishops, by
owning, were guilty of mortal sin; the Church was contaminated by the
presence of such men; it ceased to be the Church; the pope was no
longer pope; people should, therefore, refuse to receive the sacraments
such men offered; better far, indeed, to confess to each other.
Finally, he invited the attention of the emperor, to the miserable
state of matters ecclesiastical. "It is in your power," he wrote to the
emperor, "to arrange that for the future no pope shall be elected
without your good pleasure.,'
Arnold speedily came into conflict with his own bishop, for his share
in making the commune of Brescia independent of the bishop. He was
denounced at the Lateran Council of 1139 and deposed from his monastic
office and banished from Italy, not to return without the pope's
permission. France was his place of refuge, and 1141 found him at
Abelard's side at the Council of Sens. With Abelard he was sentenced by
Innocent II to lifelong confinement in a monastery. The sentence was
never carried into execution, and Arnold passed to Paris where, hike an
anti-clerical St. Bernard. he denounced in his lectures the wealth and
vices of the clergy.
St. Bernard's influence with Louis VII brought about his expulsion from
France. He wandered into Switzerland, he spent some time in Bohemia in
the company of the papal legate there, and then, in 1145, at Viterbo,
he made a complete abjuration to Eugene III. Before the year was out he
was the head and centre of the new revolt that drove the pope forth,
and for the next nine years the object of rich reprobation as the most
subversive enemy of the whole social order.
The chief event, however, of Eugene III's reign (1145-1153) was the
Second Crusade.
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