THE

POPES OF THE GREGORIAN RENAISSANCE

St Leo IX to Honorius II

1049-1130

 

THE LIVES OF THE POPES IN THE EARLY  MIDDLE AGES

  VOLUME IV

 

 HORACE K. MANN

 

CONTENTS

St. Leo IX. (1049-1054)

VICTOR II. (1055-1057),

Stephen (IX.) X. (1057-1058)

Nicholas II. (1059-1061)

Alexander II. (1061-1073)

ST. GREGORY VII. (1073-1085)

B. VICTOR III. (1086-1087)

B. URBAN II. (1088-1099)

PASCHAL I (1099-1118)

GELASIUS II (1118-1119)

CALIXTUS II (1119-11124)

HONORIUS II (1124-1130)

 

 

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

 

The century of papal history which it is hoped will be illustrated by the following pages was the age dominated by the great name of Hildebrand, and hence is often described as the saeculum Hildebrandicum. It was the age in which that high-minded and pure-souled monk strove, either by his own exertions or by those which he inspired, to promote that reform in the Church which had been inaugurated by St. Leo IX. The efforts at reform took the shape of a determined struggle against the triple scourge of simony, clerical incontinence, and the tyrannical interference of the powerful in the domain of the Church, and were at length focussed in the fight against lay investiture. But the attempt to stifle this abuse which was begun under the saintly Pontiff from Lorraine, was not destined to be concluded either in his reign, during which Hildebrand was trained, or in those of his immediate successors who were under the influence of Hildebrand, or in that of Hildebrand himself. It was not to be terminated till the pontificate of Calixtus II; while the general contest between the Papacy and the Empire which took its rise in this attempt at reform was to last till the fifteenth century, and was, in the temporal order, to exhaust both.

The reforming zeal of the Popes of the school of Hildebrand almost everywhere encountered the most stubborn opposition; so deep-rooted were the evils they strove to eradicate, so dear were they to the passions of the clergy, or to the interests of the great. And nowhere did they meet with greater opposition than in Italy. If simony was rife in France, it was worse in Germany, and worst of all in Italy; and if the spectacle of married priests and bishops was not uncommon in other countries of Europe, it was nowhere more obvious than in Italy, and especially in Milan and in Lombardy generally. The reason of this is not far to seek. Though the Church OF Italy, especially in its northern portion, had, owing to the power of its bishops, and to the comparatively rare interfering visits of the German emperors, been free to a very large extent from the royal oppression under which it groaned in other countries, it had become thoroughly demoralized by the terrible anarchy of the tenth century, and its bishops were, for the most part, as loose in their morals as their secular compeers.

Though, then, the fight for independence and reform upon which the Popes had entered was to be long and bitter, and was to bring upon them a very large share of suffering from the Franconian emperors and their con­temptible antipopes, they were not to stand alone in the combat. The words of such fiery champions of reform as St. Peter Damian must never be taken too literally. There were always good priests and even good bishops, and that too even in Italy, who were longing for a reformation in manners, and who were only waiting for an opportunity to help to promote it. Especially were the Popes supported by the religious orders, by the Camaldolese, founded by St. Romuald (1009), by the Premonstratensians (1125), and especially by the Benedictines, revivified by the reforms of Cluny and by those of the Carthusians (1084), and of the Cistercians (1098), and producing from such centres as Bec and Clairvaux men like Lanfranc and SS. Anselm and Bernard. They were sustained also in their conflict against the powers of evil by men deservedly conspicuous for their sanctity, by St. Peter Damian, by St. Bruno of Segni, by St. John Gualbert, with his order of Vallombrosa, and by St. Bruno with his Carthusians, who by their silence and penitential life protested loudly against the disorders of the age.

The era of which we are now about to write in detail was an era not only of ardent work for reform, but of great and glorious deeds, the soul of which was faith, both in the social and political as well as in the ecclesiastical order. It was the age in which the Crescent began steady decline before the Cross; it saw the birth of the Crusades, “the Lord's doing, a wonder unknown to preceding ages and reserved for our days”. It was a time wherein, owing to the spread of the work of the Truce of God, and then to the departure of much of its warlike element to the East, there was, in spite of feudalism, greater peace in Europe. Under its blessed shadow learning at once revived.

Guibert, abbot of Nogent (d.1124), assures us that “wandering clerklings of modern times” are more learned than were the professed grammarians in the time of his boyhood, or immediately before it.

Towards the end of the eleventh century French and Provençal poetry made their appearance, and the parent of modern literature is said to have been the French­man, William of Poitiers, the chaplain of William the Conqueror. It was at the same period that the Moors in Spain began their final retreat before the arms of the Christians. The great legendary hero of Spain, Roderick Diaz de Bivar, the Cid, died in 1099, and it is far from unlikely that the Castilian Muse was, within fifty years of his death, busy with the rich verses of the Poema del Cid, or with the first of the mystery plays, the Misterio de los Reyes Magos.

Side by side with the lighter forms of learning, there sprang into activity the more serious figures of law and medicine, philosophy and theology. As early as 1050 Salerno was known throughout Europe as a great school of medicine, and by his studies on Roman Law, Irnerius (c. 1113) was to render Bologna forever famous as a primary fount of legal learning. And whilst he and his successors in the teaching of Civil Law were to be partisans of the German emperors, and by their study of the Digest and the other jurisprudence of Justinian were to give intellectual support to their absolutism, Deusdedit (who wrote in 1087) and the other canonists of the latter part of the eleventh century, and particularly Gratian, with his immortal Decretum (1142), were to give no little help to the cause of the Popes and to civilisation generally. And if St. John Damascene and John the Scot are remote ancestors of scholasticism, Roscelin (d. 1106), St. Anselm of Canterbury, William of Champeaux (d. 1121), and Abelard (d. 1142) are its immediate parents. The ages wherein men “had been content to gather up and reproduce the traditionary wisdom of the Fathers” had passed away, and the powers of reason were to be used to inquire into and to systematise the masses of theological truths grouped together by the patient labour of Bedes and Alcuins.

The appearance of scholastic theology shows us that this age possessed an increased scientific knowledge of God and of the truths of God; the revival of art (manifesting itself in connection with church building and decoration) which took place during it is evidence enough of an increase of devout feeling for the things of God. In every country we find architectural masterpieces arising which have excited the admiration of every succeeding age that has itself been blessed with any degree of enlightenment. What Raoul Glaber tells us of the remarkable increase in church building during this epoch is abundantly borne out by what is known of the history of the great European ecclesiastical structures. France saw arising the great cathedrals of Autun (1060), Cahors (1096), Chartres (1108), Evreux (1112), and Laon (1114), etc. In the country of her modern ally, the erection of churches at Novgorod (1056), Kieff (1075), and Pskof (1138) is recorded. In England most of our cathedrals date back to this age, as in Scotland do Glasgow Cathedral (1123) and the abbey churches of Kelso and Waverley (1128), and as in Ireland do St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (1090), and King Cormack's Chapel in Cashel (1127). Many a cathedral too in Germany, Spires (1061), Treves (1077), Worms (1105), Bamberg (1110), and Hildesheim (1131), etc.;–Italy (Lucca and Parma (1060), Venice (1063), Pisa (1064), Anagni (1074), Modena (1099), Cremona (1107), etc; and Spain–(León (1063), Coimbra (1064), Santiago (1078), Avilla (1091)Salamanca (1120), etc.)– can proudly trace back its origin to this remote period, as can even Lund (1072) and Westaras (1100) in Sweden, and Roeskilda (1084) in Denmark. So great was the zeal for the erection of magnificent churches that in many instances existing buildings were pulled down in order that they might be rebuilt in what was regarded as a more perfect style. It was to this impulse in this great period of Romanesque architecture that we owe many of the existing Romanesque cathedrals. And just as many a basilica had in this age to give place to a Romanesque cathedral, so in the next many a Romanesque building, e.g., the Romanesque cathedral of Chartres, was levelled to the ground that the present Gothic structure might, on the same site, raise its noble front to the glory of God on High. But beautiful churches were not the only buildings which graced the Gregorian revival. It was distinguished by the erection of edifices of all kinds for the benefit of the energetic, or the consolation of the suffering. And we find his biographer noting with regard to St. John Gualbert (d. 1073) that he was a great bridge builder, and founder of hospitals throughout the whole of Tuscany. The winter of the early Middle Ages, with its darkness and its violent storms, had gone, and their springtime had come, instinct with bursting growth and gladdened with fresh life, even if troubled with violent winds and sweeping showers.

Turning our eyes from the West in general to Italy, the more immediate field of papal labour, we are at once struck with the fact that the three empires which, in the last epoch, were so vigorously contending for the possession of its fair form, are now fading from its shores. The power of the Saracen Empire declined everywhere before the close of the tenth century. At the beginning of the eleventh century it had no permanent centres of aggression on the mainland of south Italy, and was being taught by bitter experience the might of the new maritime powers of Venice and Pisa. Even its predatory incursions became less frequent as the century advanced.

The same age saw the disappearance from the peninsula of the more disciplined troops of Constantinople. Their occupation of southern Italy, begun by the capture of Bari in 876, was brought to a close by their expulsion from it by the Normans in 1071. And if the rights of the German Empire were not yet to be extinguished in northern Italy, the rise of the people and of the communes or free burghs, which was to prove fatal to them, had already begun; so that during this epoch southern Italy became rapidly more and more Norman; northern Italy made steady advances towards becoming the land of free cities; and central Italy, especially through the Donation of the Countess Matilda, fell more than ever under the direct influence of the temporal sovereignty of the Popes.

It is, however, owing to the great dearth of documentary evidence, very difficult to say what was the precise extent of the papal domination at the opening of this epoch. In theory at least the states of the Church were as extensive as ever, and, by the junction to them of Benevento (1051), might even seem to be actually, i.e., de facto, more extensive than ever. But though it is true that Otho I renewed the donations of the Carolingians, the effective control of the Popes over their states was rather diminished than increased by that sovereign and his immediate successors. They protected the Exarchate of Ravenna in the name of the Pope; and in their own name, despite the protests of the Popes, disposed of its territories to men of their own choice. Even in the Duchy of Rome, the power of the Popes, like that of the other sovereigns of the West, was very largely controlled by the feudal rights and customs which had been usurped by the nobility. And what had befallen the sovereign claims of the Popes during Rome’s Dark Age had also, to a very large extent, overtaken their ownership rights. Their privy purse had become as empty as their State treasury. We have, or shall soon have, seen the low ebb at which Stephen (V) VI and St. Leo IX found the papal finances. To restore them we shall find the Popes of this period endeavouring to develop comparatively fresh sources of revenue. During the century in which they lost the patrimonies of the Church, the monasteries of Europe had begun to pay them taxes in return for privileges and the English had set the example to other countries of paying to the Popes the voluntarily imposed tax of Peter’s pence. We shall see Alexander II and Gregory VII urging its regular payment on William the Conqueror, as the former had already done on the King of Denmark. We need not then begin to think of greed of gold or lust of power when the efforts of Gregory and other Popes of this period to obtain money, or to extend their regal authority, are brought to our notice. As little could be done without money in the Middle Ages as now, and both gold and temporal authority were required by the Popes if, especially in an age of violence, they were to be in a position to exercise the charity of the priest, or to preserve in any way the dignity and independence befitting the Head of the Church.

During the saeculum Hildebrandicum, the position of the Popes improved not only from a pecuniary point of view, and with regard to their real authority over their States generally, but also in the matter of their control over the turbulent Romans. Owing to the collapse of the Byzantine power before the arms of the Lombards, civil authority in Rome had fallen into the hands of the Popes by default, and had practically remained there during the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries. But during the eighth century, owing to the establishment of a local militia, a military aristocracy had begun to be formed, which, of course, increased in importance when the Popes became temporal rulers, and had more wealth and lucrative positions at their disposal. This body, which had made its influence bear so heavily on the papal government that, during the ninth century, the latter had had to appeal to the Carolingian rulers for assistance against its encroachments, obtained its own way completely when the Frankish Empire went to pieces. For a century and a half the Roman nobles, with their fortress-houses in Rome, and their great estates outside it, lorded it over the city, and reduced it and the Papacy to the very lowest depths. But, partly broken by the Othos, who re-established the prefect of the city as their representative, partly kept in subjection by the firm hand of Hildebrand, who took away from them all opportunity of interfering in papal elections, and partly checked by the growing power of the people, who in the last years of this epoch (1143) asserted their independence of both Pontiff and baron, the nobles had to give way to the power of the Popes.

The first to benefit by the increased freedom and wealth of the sovereign Pontiffs was the city of Rome itself. Under Paschal II and Calixtus II not a few churches were repaired and embellished, and under Innocent II we see a revival in mosaic work. Art never perished in Rome, even during the dark days of the tenth century, but, helped by the Popes, it took during this age a new development in the hands of the Roman marmorarii or marble-cutters. For it was about the beginning of the twelfth century that there began to be cultivated in Rome that beautiful geometrical arrangement of pieces of coloured marbles which, from one of its later distinguished artists, came to be known as Cosmatesque work. At once architects, decorators, and sculptors, these Roman marmorarii formed a guild which rose and fell with the prosperity of the Popes in Rome. It originated during the twelfth century, did its best work in the thirteenth, and disappeared in the fourteenth.

In enumerating the cities which led the way in the revival of Italian art, Sir Martin Conway places Rome first, and adds that in Rome during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries no inconsiderable amount of inter­esting work was done, and, as just noted, was done under the direction of the Popes. Building and artistic operations were almost forced upon them owing to the necessity of repairing the damage wrought on the city by the terrible fires that devastated it during the eleventh century or thereabouts. It is the custom of historians to ascribe all the destruction inflicted on Rome by fire during the eleventh century to that which took place in 1084, when Robert Guiscard relieved Gregory VII. But we are informed that the city “was almost wholly destroyed” by a fire which occurred about 993 that under Pope Leo IX, on the feast of St. Eustachius, “a great part of the city was burned”, and that in the days of Alexander II that portion of the city was consumed by fire which stretched from the Parrione quarter to St. Felix in Pincis. There was need, then, of works of restoration before 1084, and that date was not awaited to begin them. “The frescos of S. Clemente are certainly the foundation stone of the revival of painting, and they date from Hildebrand’s time; so do those of S. Pudentiana, which he restored, and those in the Cappella del Martirologio at S. Paul’s. In fact, Hildebrand undertook a radical restoration of this basilica and its annexes ... It is even thought that the present monastic buildings and cloister of S. Prassede are the work of Hildebrand”. Of course, after the year 1084, there was more need than ever of building and decorative activity. Hildebert of Lavardin, who visited Rome in 1100, gives us a sad picture of the state of ruin in which he found the city, but suggests that all the resources of his time could not build anything equal even to Rome’s ruins. “Rome was”, he says, and yet:

“Bid wealth, bid marble, and bid fate attend,

And watchful artists o'er the labour bend,

Still shall the matchless ruin art defy

The old to rival, or its loss supply.

No art can equal that which still doth stand,

No skill make good what lieth on the sand”.

It was in the days of Pope Paschal that Hildebert came to Rome, and it was he who, during the few years of peace which he had after the year 1112, “made the first attempts to rebuild the city ... Modern researches are continually enlarging the scope of this brief activity”. The labours of Hildebrand had prepared the way for him, and “there were artists of a kind at his disposal when he began to attack his problem of renovation, to tear down the half-ruined buildings, establish new levels and new lines of streets, and lay the foundations of modern Rome, as it was until its dismemberment by the Renaissance Popes, and its disruption by the Italians, after the annexation in 1870. We know the names of a few of these artists: Paulus, chief among his architects and decorators, Guido and Petrolinus among his painters”.

For many centuries the influence of the Bishops of Rome over the churches of the East had been but small. And we have seen them sever their connection with them (1053) by a stroke which was destined to be final, and to be rapidly followed by the ruin of the Eastern Roman Empire. The last period of its military glory came to an end before the close of the Macedonian Dynasty in 1057, and the final bright epoch of its literary life, inaugurated by Photius, expired with the school of Psellus (d. 1078). Within twenty years after the legates of St. Leo IX pronounced the excommunication of Michael Cerularius, the Byzantine Empire received a blow from which it never recovered. By the battle of Manzikert, when Alp-Arslan with his Seljukian Turks defeated the emperor Romanus Diogenes, the Empire was broken. This was in 1071, and it was in the same year that the loss of Bari deprived Constantinople of its hold on Italy. It was “utterly ruined” by the Crusaders’ raid in 1204, “and from that time till the capture by the Turks it was a feeble wreck”. But over both the schism of the Greeks and their temporal misfortunes the Popes grieved. Their miseries overwhelmed them with sorrow; and, as we shall see, they made one vain effort after another to heal a gaping wound which for well-nigh a thousand years has refused to close.

Before this introductory chapter is brought to a conclusion, a word or two may be said in connection with simony and clerical marriage, of which mention will so frequently be made in the pages that are to follow. In the Acts of the Apostles (c. 8) it is related that a certain Simon Magus attempted to buy from St. Peter the power of bestowing the gifts of the Holy Ghost. From this action of the magician the sin of giving or receiving any temporal emolument in direct exchange for any spiritual profit became known as simony. Gregory VII points out that the sin may be committed when other things besides money or money value are given in exchange for what is spiritual. Hence, for the sake of clearness, he divides what may be thus offered into three classes, which he calls “munera (gifts) a manu, ab obseguio, et a lingua”. By the first he understands the giving of money or its worth; by the second the offering of any kind of service; and by the third the promise of the use of influence on the donor’s behalf. On the other hand, by the phrase “things spiritual” is to be understood not merely what are such in themselves, as the gifts of the Holy Ghost, but those temporal things which are closely connected with them, as, for instance, the sacred vessels or the right of patronage. It was, however, the grossest form of simony against which the mediaeval Pontiffs had to direct all their energies, viz., the simony a manu, the simony of which the powerful were guilty when they sold ecclesiastical offices to the highest bidder. There was comparatively little question of the more refined varieties of the crime. Indeed, it would seem that those rulers were regarded as free from simony who kept their hands from taking money for the bishoprics and abbacies of which they disposed. Had there been no question of the grosser simony (simonia a manu), the Popes would not have convulsed Europe on the subject.

Another abuse against which the Popes of this period offered strenuous and successful opposition was that by which bishops and priests took to themselves wives, and lived as married men. The custom had crept in during the dread days of feudal anarchy, and in many parts of Christendom was tolerated by public opinion. It would appear certain that in the first ages of the Church, down to about the time of the great council of Nice, there were no laws forbidding the clergy to be married; but even during that epoch marriage was very early prohibited to those who had once taken Holy Orders. This canonical discipline on the matter is that still in force in the Greek Church, and in the East generally. But in the West a severer discipline began to be introduced soon after the council of Nice, and, by the time of St. Leo I (440-461), it was well-nigh universally recognised that all those in Holy Orders were bound to lead a celibate life. However, after the break­up of the Carolingian Empire, the laws both of the Church and of the State were largely disregarded. Very many of the clergy married without, it would appear, giving much or any scandal to the laity, and even transmitted their benefices to their offspring. But during all this anarchical epoch neither the Church nor the State ceased altogether to endeavour to enforce its laws, and, as soon as the troublous times began to pass away, the Church at once commenced to re-establish its canons regarding the celibacy of the clergy. An indulgence, however, which in many parts of Christendom at least, had been sanctioned by long custom, was not likely to be surrendered without a struggle. It required to suppress it not merely the exhortations of the most virtuous among the clergy themselves, but the authority of the greatest of the Popes, manifested in drastic legislation. This went so far that, during the course of the twelfth century, the marriage of bishops, priests, deacons, and even of sub-deacons was decreed to be not simply unlawful, but invalid. And this discipline, enforced by the great reforming Pontiffs of the Gregorian Renaissance, is that in vogue in the Catholic Church today.

Now that we have reviewed the arena in which the Popes had to fight, have enumerated the foes against whom they had to contend, and have reckoned those on whose help in the combat they could rely, we must recount their deeds in detail. In reading them we must never lose sight of the end for which the Roman Pontiffs were striving. It was for no other than the moral upraising of both clergy and people. In the course of their struggle to accomplish this all-important object, they may not have always used the best means. In a long and fierce fight, supposing every effort is made to conduct it properly, some deeds are sure to be done, even by the party that is fighting for the right, which are not altogether creditable to it. Hence, in the history of the hard contest between the Church and the Empire, we shall encounter some things which would have been better either not done at all, or, at least, done in a different way. But with the best and the most impartial writers who have treated of this war of Titans, it may unhesitatingly be stated that the end the Popes had in view was the highest, and that in the main their mode of conducting the campaign for liberty, justice, and virtue was most fair and most honourable, and was in harmony with the glorious cause for which they were contending.

 

 

ST. LEO IX

(1049-1054)

 

To the great family which had already given to the world St. Leger, a grandson of Charlemagne, and St. Odilia, and was yet to give to it St. Norbert, the founder of the Premonstratensians, and Rodolf of Hapsburg, belonged Bruno of Egisheim. It was fitting that one who was destined for such noble deeds, who was with honour to close the darkest period of the history of the Papacy, and was to inaugurate the grand yet peaceful Reformation of the eleventh century, should have such a noble origin. His parents, Hugh, who was first cousin of the Emperor Conrad, and Heilewide, were distinguished by their piety and learning, as well as by their illustrious descent. Wibert assures us that the circumstances of Bruno’s birth gave promise of his future holiness and greatness. One night, shortly before he was born, his mother had a vision in which she was told that she would give birth to a male child who should be great before God, and whom she must call by the name of Bruno. And behold! when the child was born (June 21, 1002), its little body was marked all over with tiny crosses. Here we may or may not be face to face with the super­natural; for many most extraordinary cases have been recorded which show that the child in the womb can be affected in the most wonderful way by powerful sensations experienced by the mother? But whether in this instance there is or is not question of the supernatural, there is no doubt that the faith and piety which could so affect the body of the future Pope had no small share in producing the grand character which Bruno afterwards developed

It was at the castle of Egisheim, near Colmar, situated on one of the advance slopes of the Vosges, “on the borders of sweet Alsace”, that Bruno first saw the light.

At five years of age the little Bruno was entrusted to the care of Berthold, bishop of Toul, to be by him trained and educated. This zealous bishop had not only reformed monasteries, improved the trade of his episcopal city, and adorned it as well with numerous public buildings as by gathering learned men within its walls, but had also founded a school for the sons of the nobility. Here, under the able guidance of the bishop, and with the aid of a naturally bright mind, Bruno soon showed himself as superior in intelligence to most of his companions as he already was in birth and wealth. But, though to these advantages Bruno added grace of body, he was dear to his schoolfellows; for he did not allow himself to be puffed up by his good fortune, but was affable and kind, and was at everyone’s service.

In connection with his early training two interesting stories have reached us. One is from the chronicle of Saint Hubert d'Andain, one of the most remarkable historical productions of medieval Belgium, which was composed about the year 1098. The Emperor Lothaire had presented to the abbey of St. Hubert in the Ardennes a splendid Psalter written in letters of gold, and ornamented with a portrait of his father, Louis the Pious, to whom it had belonged. This beautiful book, said to be still in existence, and removed from the monastery in some dishonest manner, came to be offered for sale in Toul. It was at once bought by Heilewide, and given to her little son. But, strange to say, the lovely golden letters, instead of serving to encourage Bruno, seemed to baffle him. “For the Holy Ghost”, says the chronicler, “was unwilling that one who was to be a vessel of election of His should even unconsciously be defiled by contact with sacrilege”. Whilst Heilewide was lost in wonder at the child’s embarrassment, it came to her ears that the book belonged to the monastery of St. Hubert, “for under penalty of anathema search was being everywhere made for it”. At once, with her little son, did the good lady betake herself to the abbey, and, humbly begging pardon for what she had done in ignorance, she restored the volume to its owners. Nay more, in satisfaction, she made the monks a present of a sacramentary (Liber Sanctorum).

Without pausing to draw the attention of the reader to the number of medieval ways and manners which this pretty story brings to our notice, we will pass on to the second. When Bruno had advanced somewhat in age and in art and in science (in the trivium and the quadrivium), “and his neck had become a little freer from the scholastic yoke”, he was allowed, from time to time, to visit his home, to which he was drawn, boy-like, not only by the goodness and affection of those in it, but by the attraction of the soldiers within its walls. During one of these visits, whilst he was lying asleep “in a charming little bedroom” which his loving mother had prepared for him, some animal found its way into the room, fastened itself upon his face, and began to lacerate it. Awaking in terror, the youth uttered a loud shriek, struck the animal from his face, and sprang from his bed. At his cries the servants rushed into the room; but though the animal escaped, it left permanent marks of its baneful presence on Bruno’s person. For two months he lay between life and death. At the end of that period, when he had become so weak that he had even lost his voice, he saw in a vision St. Benedict, “the most blessed father of the monks”, who touched his wounds with a bright cross which he held in his hands. At once the youthful sufferer felt relief, and in a day or two he was himself again. “To this very day, in familiar conversation with his friends, he is wont to recount this evident mark of the Divine favour in his behalf”. Those who continue reading the events of his life, concludes Wibert, and see all that he did for the advantage and for the reformation of the monks, will readily understand why his cure came from the hands of St. Benedict rather than from any other saint.

Arrived now at an age (fifteen) when it became necessary for him to think of choosing his career in life, he resolved to embrace the clerical state. Perhaps he had essayed the joys of the world and had found them wanting; for Wibert will not assert that “in this miserable life, which is one long temptation, he at all times lived without sin; for that cannot be asserted of the babe of a day”. At any rate he left the episcopal school, and seems to have attached himself to the cathedral of St. Stephen, i.e., as it was then expressed, he became a canon, and lived under the rule of St. Chrodegang of Metz, or, to use the words of St. Peter Damian, speaking of another cathedral cloister, he joined “the white band of clerics shining as bright as the angels’ choir. There, as in a school of some heavenly Athens, the young students are instructed in the words of the Sacred Scriptures; there they zealously devote themselves to the study of true philosophy, and there daily exercise themselves under the rule of regular discipline”. On such a sensitive nature as that of Bruno the mere daily sight of the cathedral of Toul, one of the most imposing Christian monuments of France, must have produced a strong and elevating impression. At any rate he made the best use of all the advantages which came in his way, and gave just reason to Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino, afterwards Victor III (1087-1088), to speak of him as a man not only “apostolic in every way, and conspicuous for his religious qualities”, but also “endowed with wisdom and thoroughly instructed in every branch of ecclesiastical learning”.

Berthold, the enlightened bishop of Toul, died in August 1019, and was succeeded by Herimann of Cologne, whose virtues and vices were those of an upright German martinet. It says much for the sweet character of Bruno that he was able to moderate the fiery zeal of his new bishop. He kept his influence with Herimann, for he obeyed him just as readily as he had obeyed his amiable predecessor; as though, says Wibert, “he had always before his mental vision that dictum of the Blessed Pope Gregory—Let no one dare to command who has not first learnt to obey, lest he should exact from his subordinates obedience he has never learnt to render to his superiors”. His biographer furnishes us with two examples of his influence with the choleric Herimann. One of the monasteries which the latter had favoured was that of Saint-Évre in his cathedral city. Owing, however, to the calumnies of the jealous, the goodwill of the bishop towards it was changed to dislike, and he became as anxious to injure it as he had once been to bestow benefits upon it. But Bruno, “as he had pity upon those in trouble”, exerted himself in the monks’ behalf. Whenever he could, he opposed himself to the angry blows of the bishop like “a wall of stone”; and, when resistance was unavailing, he mingled his tears with those of the persecuted monks. For some cause or other, Herimann does not seem to have viewed with favour the college of clerics attached to the cathedral, for we are told that it required all the efforts of Bruno to preserve intact the canonical institution and its revenues, which former bishops of the see had been at great pains to establish and preserve. His close intercourse with his bishop was brought to an end by the death of the Emperor Henry II (July 14, 1024), and the election of his cousin (Conrad II of Franconia) as king of the Germans. Between Henry, the saint and great emperor, who had deserved so well of the empire, and the illiterate and warlike Conrad, there was as much difference as between the bishops Berthold and Herimann. But Conrad was their cousin, and so it was decided by Bruno’s relatives to send him “to be trained in the king’s court, and to serve in his chapel”. This decision was quite in keeping with the feudal spirit of the age; for it was customary at this period for the inferior vassals to put their sons under the care of their overlord, that they might be educated with his children, not perhaps so much in literature, as in arms and in the ways of the world. But no doubt, even if Conrad did not, like Charlemagne, maintain a palace school, there would be opportunities for Bruno to continue his studies; for, though the king had a greater love for the sword than for books, he interested himself in the education of the clergy.

The youthful Bruno quickly made a name for himself by his grace and learning. Among his companions, to mark him out from those who bore the same name as he did, he was known as “the good Bruno”, and was soon the confidant of both the king and the queen. As such, he soon discovered that it was their intention to bestow a rich bishopric upon him; and, fearful lest their affection might lead them to favour him in an exceptional manner, he resolved to accept the first poor one that God might cause to be presented to him.

But meanwhile he had other work to do. On the death of the Emperor Henry II, some of the cities of north Italy, anxious, if they had to have a master, to have one as far away and as feeble as possible, had shown a disinclination to accept Conrad, and had offered the Iron Crown to others. But no one was anxious to measure swords with Conrad, who descended upon the plains of Lombardy for the first time in the beginning of the year 1026. With his sovereign went the young deacon Bruno, in charge of the troops which the bishopric of Toul had to furnish for the king’s army. As a feudatory of the empire, Herimann should have marched in person with his troops; but he was old and infirm, and entrusted his contingent to Bruno. During the brief period he was with his soldiers he gave every indication of possessing the qualities which go to make at least a careful commander.

But he was not destined to remain long “fixing camps, posting sentinels, and acting as commissary”. His bishop died in the Lent of this same year (1026), and the unanimous voice of the clergy and the people of Toul besought the king to send them as Herimann’s successor their beloved Bruno. They pointed out to Conrad that, as a border town, their city was fearfully exposed, and that they needed a bishop “whose vigour and energy would keep the enemy from their gates”. And they implored Bruno to take them despite of their poverty. Though the king had destined him for a more elevated appointment, the saint acceded to the people’s wishes precisely because their see was comparatively insignificant.

Running no little risk from the hostile Lombard, he contrived to reach France, and then his episcopal city. He was received at Toul with the greatest joy, and was solemnly enthroned on Ascension Day (May 20). The throne of marble used on this occasion is still shown in the cathedral.

But though enthroned, Bruno was not yet consecrated. It was Conrad’s wish to have him consecrated by the Pope at the same time that he himself received the imperial crown. Naturally enough, when the king’s intention was noised abroad, it excited no little jealousy, and his metropolitan, Poppo of Trier, as eager for power as any of the great lay or church lords of his day, declared that he alone had the right to consecrate the bishops of Toul. Loath to be the cause of strife, Bruno succeeded in obtaining leave from Conrad to be consecrated by Poppo. This act of humility caused Poppo to mistake the character of the man with whom he had to deal, and he declared he would not consecrate Bruno until he had solemnly engaged not to do anything in his diocese without the express permission of his metropolitan. To such an unlawful demand Bruno would not give his assent, and he left Trier unconsecrated. Conrad, however, on his return from receiving the imperial crown, brought about a compromise. Bruno agreed not to act in important matters without consulting his metropolitan, and was then duly consecrated, September 9, 1027.

For twenty-three years, says Wibert in a chapter of his biography only just printed, he governed his diocese with vigour, and during all that period enjoyed only four years of comparative peace. The years of quiet were the two at each extremity of his episcopate. If ever, throughout the years of stress, he slipped from the path of justice, we are assured that he was never content “to stand in the way of sinners”, but returned to God at once by humility and sorrow. He thought nothing of confessing his faults to his inferiors, and of asking the help of their advice and prayers, with the result that those who saw “his innocence and continency were moved to despise their own lives”.

To the work of reform—the keynote of his active life—the bishop now devoted himself with renewed zeal. He had already begun the work immediately after his election. Convinced that the monasteries, as centres of peace and learning, were the hope of the future both for the Church and for the State, he applied himself to improve their discipline, which, says his biographer, “had for a long time fallen off”. He deposed such abbots “as, neglecting the souls committed to their charge, seemed to think that they had been appointed merely to exercise secular power”. Monastic foundations begun by his predecessor, he brought to successful completion. But he was careful not to use the resources handed down to him, if they had not been properly acquired. Finding that a widow had a sound claim to certain property which had been acquired by the See of Toul, he ordered it to be restored. “I cannot and ought not to resist the laws”, he said. And with such exceptional elegance of manners and grace of person was he blest, that, as we are told, all he did or said gave general satisfaction. He pushed his charities to the verge of indiscretion, and never allowed stress of business to prevent him from personally attending every morning to the wants of the poor. These and the other duties of his state, such as making visitations, attending synods, and the like, he lightened by devoting a little time to musical composition. In him, says the devoted Wibert, “were conspicuous evidences of his possession of the sciences, both human and divine; especially did he excel in the pleasing art of music, so that he was able not merely to equal ancient authors, but in the sweetness of his melodies even to surpass some of them”. To us it is especially interesting to find it recorded that he composed new tunes for the feast of “the venerable Gregory, doctor and apostle of the English”, who was honoured in an abbey of the adjoining diocese of Basel, which was hence known as Munster-in-Gregorienthal. Among the saints in whose honour Bruno exerted his musical talent, besides Gregory, a name best beloved throughout the Middle Ages, there was at least one more connected with the British Isles, viz. the famous Columbanus. According to the historian of the monastery of Moyenmoutier, in the year 1044 a monk, afterwards the renowned Cardinal Humbert, composed certain metrical responsories for the feast of St. Columbanus, and induced his bishop to set them to music.

But Bruno was not destined to pass the long years of his episcopate in peaceful retirement among his fellow-bishops, his priests, the poor, and the Muses. The exigencies of the time and his position forced him to play a conspicuous part in the great events of the day. He had to face not only the terrible famine which afflicted especially France, Italy, and England between the years 1030 and 1033, but the still more awful scourge of war.

Affairs of Lorraine and Burgundy.

From the time of the creation of the impossible Middle Kingdom by Louis the Pious, and of its subdivision by Lothaire into Lorraine, Burgundy, and Italy, it had proved an apple of discord between the Gauls and the Germans, and was to be the prize of the strongest. The struggle for Lorraine we have seen continued till our own day. Under the Othos it was attached to the empire. The new Capetian dynasty had used it to buy German support. But Conrad had now (1027) reason to believe that Robert the Pious was casting longing eyes on the debatable land. To avoid war he sent Bruno to the French Court. Perhaps he had an easy task, for Robert was, after all, of a pacific disposition. At any rate his mission was completely successful. “France is my witness how satisfactorily he accomplished his embassy; for there men still speak of his wisdom and humility, of his success in his under­takings, of his grace of mind and body, and of his tact in executing his mission. He was loved as a father, and venerated as a saint. So firmly did he establish peace between the two kingdoms, that it was not shaken either during the remaining years of Conrad and Robert, or during the reigns of their sons—Henry I of France and Henry III of Germany.”

But another section of the old Middle Kingdom was to give him more trouble. Rodolf III, the Fainéant, king of Burgundy, died September 6, 1032. Being childless, he had bequeathed his crown to Conrad, the husband of his niece Gisela. The German emperor, however, found himself in presence of a rival, Eudes, or Odo II, the powerful count of Blois and Champagne. Though Conrad was crowned king of Burgundy (February 2, 1033), he had not reduced Eudes to submission. Whenever he was in any difficulty, the count was again in arms. On one occasion Eudes made a determined effort to seize Lorraine; and, understanding that Bruno was in difficulties with some rebellious vassals, laid siege to Toul, the key of the province. To no purpose, however. Bruno’s eloquence roused the courage of the inhabitants, and his military skill may have directed their energies. At any rate, Eudes failed to take the city; and, while he died a rebel (November 15, 1037), the kingdom of Burgundy was added “to the Roman Empire by the wisdom and exertions of Bruno”. Granting that Wibert in his love and admiration for his hero may have attributed to him a larger share in these important transactions than he actually took, there is no doubt that the part he did take in them shows that he had in him the soul of a warrior and the tact of a diplomatist, as well as the faith and piety of a priest.

Another series of important events in the episcopate of our saint was the annual pilgrimage to Rome. It was his great devotion to St. Peter that drew him to the Eternal City, there to pray for his people. On one of these pilgrimages, when over five hundred clergy and lay people, attracted by his affability and holiness, were in his company, an epidemic, “arising from the dire corruption of the air of Italy”, attacked the whole party. So fearful was its strength that the immediate death of all those seized with the disease was expected. Full of trust in God, Bruno touched some wine with the relics of the saints he always carried about with him, and gave it to the sufferers; and we are assured that all who had strength enough left to swallow (gustare) the liquid recovered. During the whole journey the bishop said Mass nearly every day, and during it exhorted those present to do penance, and lead a better life. Every night, too, whilst the plague lasted, a number of the pilgrims, and of the people of the country through which they happened to be passing, came with lights to where the saint was lodging, and, when morning dawned, the sick among them found themselves perfectly restored to health through the merits of the saints and the bishop’s prayers. These wonders were soon noised about through all the patrimony of St. Peter, with the result that love and veneration for Bruno were firmly fixed in the hearts of all.

It was whilst he was bishop that he lost his father and his pious mother. No doubt his grief for their loss was tempered as well by long expectation of it as by the reflection that, in accordance with the law of the length of human life, their time had come. But the same cannot be said of his affliction at the premature death of his elder brother, Gerard, “the brave and courteous knight”, and of another brother, Hugh, “our heart’s sweet solace whilst he lived”. Beneath domestic troubles, public calamities, and his unceasing toil for his people, Bruno’s health completely broke down. His life was despaired of, not only by his physicians, but by himself and by his sorrowing people. Acting, however, “on a divine impulse”, he caused himself to be carried before the altar of St. Blaise at the hour of Matins. There, whilst in an ecstasy, he seemed to see the holy martyr come to him from the altar, and tenderly wash the suffering parts of his body. When Bruno returned to himself, he found that he was quite cured, and he walked back by himself to his room singing, “What god is great like unto our God?”

In all his trials his great resource, says his biographer, was prayer. Endowed with “the gift of tears”, he wept continually whilst at his prayers, or whilst celebrating Mass; for he knew that the sacrifice which pleases God is a contrite heart.

The time had now arrived when Bruno, who had sought the lowest place among bishops, was to be exalted to the highest, and when, with the greatest advantage to it, his talents, his virtues, and his accomplishments were to be placed at the disposal of the Universal Church. According to Wibert, the bishop received no uncertain premonition of the position he was to occupy in the Church. Of two visions which, on the authority of some of his intimate friends who had heard Bruno speak of them, are related by his biographer, we will recount the second. One night, when he had fallen asleep whilst meditating on heavenly things, he seemed to see an old woman, or rather hag, so dirty, bedraggled, and dishevelled was she, who wished to engage in conversation with him. Horror-stricken at her loathsome appearance, Bruno endeavoured to escape from her. She, however, followed him quickly and closely. At length, quite wearied out, the saint turned round, and made the sign of the cross on the creature’s face. Instantly she fell to the earth, only to rise again a thing of beauty incomparable. Whilst lost in wonder as to what this could portend, the blessed abbot Odilo appeared to him, and, in response to Bruno’s request for an explanation of what he had seen, joyfully replied : “Blessed art thou, for thou hast saved her soul from death”. The meaning of the vision, concludes Wibert, cannot be doubtful when we reflect that in various parts of the world the beauty of the Church, or of Christianity, had been terribly defiled, and that it was Bruno who, with the help of Christ, restored it to its former state. Whether these visions were sent by God, or not, they show, at any rate, if our dreams are images, however blurred, of our waking thoughts, how constantly the mind of the bishop of Toul was engaged in reflecting on the Church’s needs, and on the best way of satisfying them.

The short reign of Clement II, and the sudden death of Damasus II, terrified the Romans. They feared lest the Black Emperor, Henry III, who had succeeded Conrad, would attribute to them the premature demise of his countrymen. The same causes produced a similar result among the German bishops. Whether they assigned the deaths to the climate, to poison, or to the judgment of God punishing what some of them regarded as the arbitrary deposition of Gregory VI, the bishops of Germany showed a great disinclination to accept the supreme pontificate. “The Romans”, said Bonizo, “frightened by the speedy death (of Damasus), and not being able to remain long without a Pontiff, set out for the North, crossed the Alps, reached Saxony, and there (at Pöldhe) finding the king, asked him for a Pope. But as the bishops were unwilling to go to Rome, the matter was not of easy accomplishment. The king, therefore, decided to go to Rhenish Frankland, trusting to find in the kingdom of Lorraine a bishop whom he might present to the Romans to be made Pope”.

To deliberate on the matter, Henry convoked an assembly of bishops and nobles at Worms. Thither, of course, proceeded Bruno; “for nothing of moment was transacted in the imperial court without his advice”; and thither (i.e., to the city) also went the ever-famous Hildebrand, already on fire with desire for the elevation of the Roman Church. The Roman envoys had apparently been commissioned to ask once more for Halinard, archbishop of Rheims, or for Bruno, both of whom were known and loved by them from their conduct while on pilgrimages to Rome. In some way or other Halinard learnt the wishes of the emperor and the people, and put off his arrival till another had been elected. No word, however, of what was to happen had reached Bruno; and no one was more astonished than he when he found that it was the wish of all, emperor, Germans, and Romans, that he should accept the See of Rome. He at once raised objection after objection, for greatly did he dread responsibility for souls. No one, however, paid the slightest attention to them, but implored him, by his love for SS. Peter and Paul, to come to the succour of the Roman Church, and not to be afraid to face any dangers for the sake of the faith. He pleaded for a delay of three days, which he passed in fasting and prayer; and then, as a last effort to turn aside the wishes of the assembly, he made, “with torrents of tears”, a public confession of the sins of his life. His piety and humility moved to tears the bishops and nobles who heard him. But they loudly declared that God would not allow the child of such tears to perish, and renewed their importunities. At length he yielded so far as to say: “I will go to Rome, and if, of their own accord, its clergy and people choose to elect me for their bishop, I will yield to your desire; but, if not, I shall not regard myself as elected”

This bold and unexpected declaration of the rights of the people of Rome has so astonished many writers that they think it must have been inspired, and could have had no other author than Hildebrand. This idea, however, does not seem to be borne out by the best authorities; for, according to Bruno of Segni, when the newly-elect asked the monk to accompany him to Rome, he refused, “because”, he said, “you wish to take possession of the See of Rome by the power of kings, and not by canonical means”. Assured that such was not the case, Hildebrand agreed to accompany him. Evidently, then, the zealous monk was unacquainted with what the bishop had said before the assembly. Both of them were full of the same thoughts; but drew their ideas, not from one another, but from reflection on the high-handed interference of the German emperors in the affairs of the Church.

With what inner feelings Henry III listened to this declaration of his saintly relative we can only infer from our knowledge of his ideas as to the extent of his rights over the Church. Wazo, the independent bishop of Liège, might impress upon him: “To the king we owe allegiance, to the Pope obedience”; but the emperor, so far from contenting himself with giving practical demonstrations of what he regarded as his just authority in ecclesiastical affairs, declared that his imperial consecration gave him a preeminent right of exacting submission. “Like you”, said he to Wazo, “I have been anointed with the holy oil, and the power of commanding has been bestowed on me beyond all others”. Ignoring the meaning of the title both under the emperors at Constantinople, and as understood by Pippin and Charlemagne, he urged his dignity of Patricius of the Romans as though it gave him the right of disposing of the Papacy at will. However, despite these exalted ideas of his prerogatives, Henry agreed to the condition laid down by Bruno, who, after spending the Christmas of 1048 in his episcopal city, set out for Rome immediately afterwards. In his train went the Tuscan monk Hildebrand, a very host in himself. In taking with him to Rome the man by whose prudence and wisdom the Roman Church was one day to be ruled, Leo, we are told, thereby rendered a great service to the Blessed Apostle Peter, and, it may be added, attached to himself one in whose judgment he soon learnt to have the most complete trust, and who exerted no little influence on his pontificate.

Greatly was Bruno cheered on his journey by the hearty reception accorded to him by the people as he moved through France and Italy, and by a heavenly vision. Once, when near the city of Aosta, “he was in an ecstasy; he heard angels singing to an exquisite melody (these words of Jeremiah): ‘I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of affliction ... You shall pray to me, and I will hear you ... And I will be found by you, saith the Lord; and I will bring back your captivity’. Reanimated by this sweet consolation, and now feeling sure of the help of God, he made haste to accomplish the rest of his journey”.

He traversed north Italy by the Via Aemiliana, then known as the King’s High Road (Via Regia), and reached the neighbourhood of Rome in February. The whole city poured out to meet him. To their astonishment the people found him not surrounded with the pomp of martial men, nor clad in the insignia of a Pope, or even of a bishop, but barefoot, habited as a pilgrim, and escorted by a few clerics. But if his bare feet proclaimed his humility, the garb of a pilgrim could not conceal his noble mien; and as the Romans gazed on his fair and handsome face, on his tall figure, and on his imposing carriage, they felt that both a saint and a hero had come to them. Loud and joyous, and chanted in divers tongues, were the hymns with which they welcomed him to their city.

 On the following day both the clergy and the people of Rome betook themselves to St. Peter’s. There they were addressed by Bruno, who told them simply that he had hearkened to their embassy, and was, moreover, anxious to conform to the will of the emperor. He had come to Rome to pray, and to take measures for the election of a new Pope. Thereupon the bishops and cardinals cried out, as one man, that him and no other would they have for their bishop; and the archdeacon in the customary formula (de more) proclaimed : “Blessed Peter has chosen Bruno bishop”, while the mass of the clergy and the people repeated the same cry. This was in the early days of February. On its twelfth day he was consecrated, i.e., as he was already a bishop, he was solemnly presented with the pallium, and was duly enthroned in the Lateran. And, as Wibert assures us, he lost no time in endeavouring to imitate the virtues of St. Leo the Great, whose name he assumed.

Anxious as he was to give his undivided attention to the work of reform, more mundane considerations were promptly forced upon his attention. Like his immediate predecessors, he experienced the difficulties which arose from the emptiness of the pontifical treasury, and from the want of any means of refilling it. Despite the enthusiastic reception with which all classes of the Romans had received him, no disposition was shown by them to give him sub­stantial help. Those who had accompanied him on his journey were in the direst straits. They thought of selling part of their wardrobes, and of returning home. In vain did Leo try to dissuade them. They were on the very eve of departing when envoys came from Benevento with presents for the Pope. Its people, it may be remembered, had been excommunicated by Clement II, and were being hard pressed by the Normans, whom the Emperor Henry had urged to harry them. Their necessities were soon to throw them into the arms of the Popes altogether, and it is thought highly probable that, even at this time, they begged Leo to take them under his protection. At any rate, the gifts which they offered Leo on this occasion enabled him to relieve the wants of his friends; but in doing so, he did not fail to impress upon them the necessity of never distrusting the providence of God.

To add to his difficulties arising from shortness of money, Leo was distressed by the warlike operations of the ex-Pontiff Benedict IX and his party. Rome and its environs were harried in all directions by the adherents of Theophylactus. On the side of Tusculum mischief was wrought by that wicked man himself, with his two brothers, Gregory and Peter; on the side of Tuscany it was the brothers, Counts Gerard of Galera and Girard de Saxo, who terrorized the people; while on the east the same evil work was being carried on by John and Crescentius, the sons of Oddo or Otho, and the people of Tivoli. In their misery the Romans called upon the Pope to rid them of their enemies. But, telling them that he had not come to kill but to vivify, he bade them await the result of the council he was about to hold.

Theophylactus was accordingly summoned to appear before the synod which met in April. But as neither he nor any of his party took the slightest heed of the summons, they were anathematized by the council, and the “whole Roman army” was called to arms. The result of the ensuing engagements was favourable to the cause of Leo, and the ex-Pontiff seems to have been reduced to a state of belligerent helplessness which lasted during the rest of Leo’s reign.

As day by day the virtues of the new Pope were ever more and more widely noised abroad, not only were crowds drawn to Rome to listen to the words of consolation which fell from his lips, but those who could not come sent him presents in the hope of receiving his blessing. It became necessary, however, for Leo to see to it that all the gifts made to him really reached him; for, while he was in the habit of giving to the poor all those which were, “as in the times of the apostles, actually offered at his feet”, others were apparently in the habit of taking for themselves what was placed on the altar of St. Peter. To put a stop to this, if Leo did not make Hildebrand economus, steward, or rather treasurer of the Roman Church, he ordained him subdeacon, and named him one of the guardians of the altar of St. Peter.

When he had completed at least some preliminary arrangements for the putting of the temporalities of the Roman Church on a sounder basis, and had satisfied his devotion by a visit to the Italian “St. Michael’s Mount”, on Mount Gargano, and to Monte Cassino, he began the work of reform to which his life was to be devoted. For he felt that “we have been placed in this episcopal pre-eminence to pluck up and to destroy, as well as to build and plant in the name of the Lord”. At a synod held in the Lateran during Low Week (April 3-8), to which he had invited the bishops of Gaul and other countries, besides vainly striving to reconcile Theophylactus, he struck at the two crying evils of the time, simony and clerical incontinence. Not content with condemning these vices in the abstract, he proceeded at once to depose certain bishops who were stained with the former crime; and men believed that God was visibly working with him, when they saw the bishop of Sutri, who was endeavouring to defend himself by perjury, fall dead before the assembly. But he was not able to go as far as he wished. A decree had been passed annulling all the ordinations held by simoniacal prelates, which immediately raised a perfect storm in Rome. Leo was assured not only “by a multitude of Roman priests”, but also by several bishops, that, if such a resolution was put in force, there would be no priests to serve the churches, and the faithful would be reduced to despair or indifference. He was, thereupon, forced, as well by necessity as by his natural inclination to mercy, simply to renew the decree of Clement it. Other simoniacal practices were also condemned, and, to prevent poverty from being pleaded as an excuse, it was decreed that all Christians must be reminded of their duty to pay tithes, “of which in Apulia and other distant countries the memory alone survive.

In renewing the decrees relative to the celibacy of the clergy, he decreed that the concubines of the Roman clergy should be at once reduced to the condition of slaves to the Lateran Palace.

Of the need of legislation on the subject of the morality of the clergy there is more than proof enough in the letters and other writings of St. Peter Damian. Not only were the canons which required celibacy in the higher clergy very widely set at naught, but even unnatural vices were prevalent among them. On this subject the zealous monk of Fonte Avellana addressed to the Pope a scathing pamphlet, appropriately named Liber Gomorrhianus. “Since from the mouth of Truth itself”, he begins, “the Apostolic See is known to be the mother of all the Churches, it is only right that, if any difficulty regarding the cure of souls arise anywhere, recourse should be had to it, as to the mistress and source of heavenly wisdom, so that from that one head the light of ecclesiastical discipline may shine forth, and the whole body of the Church be illuminated by the splendour of Truth”. He goes on to say that a criminal and horribly base vice has manifested itself “in our neighbourhood”, which, if not checked, will bring down the anger of God on the people. He is ashamed indeed to mention so foul a sin to such holy ears, but “if the physician shrinks from the plague poison, who will take in hand to apply the remedy?”. This unnatural vice has spread like a cancer, and has even attacked the clergy. In concluding his preface, the saint urges that such of the latter as are stained with these vices should be promptly deposed. Then, without further introduction, he plunges straight into his unsavoury subject, and in twenty-four short chapters explains the kinds, effects, and remedies of crimes against nature. In the twenty-fifth chapter he defends himself for treating of such matters, and would rather with Joseph, who “accused his brethren to his father of a most wicked crime”, by thrown, though innocent, into a pit, than with Heli, who saw the sins of his sons and kept silent, be punished by an angry God. In the next and last chapter he recurs “to thee, most blessed Pope”, begs him to give what he has said the support of his authority, and trusts that during his pontificate the Church may recover its former vigour.

At first the Pope approved of the publication of this outspoken denunciation of filthy vice; and his letter of commendation of his beloved son, the hermit Peter, who “had raised the arm of the spirit against obscene licence”, figures at the head of the Liber Gomorrhianus. He notes that, in connection with those delinquents concerning whom Peter, “moved with holy fury”, had written, it is only fitting that there should be a display of apostolic severity. But—and here spoke the characteristic virtue of the man—mercy must season justice. Hence, so far from approving of the drastic measures proposed by St. Peter, he would not even go so far as strict justice and canon law exacted, but would only decree deposition against those clerks who were guilty of the most criminal offences. That this decision was the outcome of a tender heart full of compassion for human weakness, and not of a feeble character, is clear from the energetic words of the next sentence: “If anyone should dare to criticise or carp at this decree of ours, let him know that he is in danger of his order”. In conclusion, he rejoices that the saint “teaches as well by the holy example of his life as by the words of his mouth”.

Despite the sanction which Leo had given to the Liber Gomorrhianus, no sooner were its contents noised abroad than there arose a storm of indignation against its author. Those whose guilty consciences told them that the work was levelled against them were furious at the way in which they had been denounced. Men with delicate consciences feared that more harm than good would result from such a laying bare of vice. Even moderate men thought that the saint’s onslaught was too fierce, and that it would result in the formation of exaggerated ideas as to the spread of the evil. These views were duly impressed upon the Pope. Fearing, accordingly, that he had an ally whose very zeal made him dangerous, he showed himself less favourable to him. It is easy to imagine how this change of front on the part of the Pope, whom he revered so profoundly, must have cut the sensitive soul of Damian. He wrote to the Pope, telling him that he was not surprised that he should have listened to the words of those who had spoken against him, seeing that even David, who was filled with the prophetic spirit, was led, by placing ill-founded confidence in the words of Siba, to wrong Miphiboseth. But even God Himself is represented as going down to see whether things were as they were said to be or not, to show men that they must have proof before they pass an adverse decision. He prayed Him, if it would be for the good of his soul, to change in his favour the heart of the Pope, which He held in His hand.

What effect this respectful but straightforward letter had upon the Pope is not known, but “it is certain that Peter Damian only played a very secondary part during the reign of Leo IX”.

Knowing that the Roman Church was the only force capable of regenerating the world, and yet realising that owing to the number of unworthy bishops it was well-nigh impossible for its reforming action to reach the people, Leo resolved, in imitation of the Apostles, to carry the truth to them himself. Accordingly, “asking the permission of the Romans”, he set out for the North with Peter, cardinal-deacon, librarian and chancellor of the Apostolic See, and other distinguished Romans. In Pentecost week salutary measures of reform were impressed on the people of north Italy, where they were sadly needed, by a council at Pavia.

Before the month of June was over Leo had joined the emperor in Saxony; and on the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul was received with him by the clergy and nobility with the greatest pomp in Cologne. Granting to its archbishop and his successors the office of chancellor of the Roman Church, and assigning to them the Church of St. John '”at the Latin gate”, he betook himself with Henry to Aix-la-Chapelle.

Here important work awaited him. Already as bishop of Toul he had been employed to bring peace to Lorraine; he was now again called upon to work for its interests. In 1044 had died Gozelon or Gothelon I, duke of Lorraine, a powerful prince who had at one time (1026) defied the might of the Emperor Conrad. Compelled, however, to give way, he became reconciled with his over-lord; and later on, through his good-will, became master of Upper as well as of Lower Lorraine. Gothelon left three sons : one, a younger son, of the same name as himself, a man of no account, who was therefore allowed by the German emperor to succeed to part (Lower Lorraine) of his father’s duchy; Frederick, who afterwards became Pope Stephen (IX) X; and Godfrey the Bearded, who, feared for his abilities, was arbitrarily deprived by his suzerain of part of his inheritance. War was the consequence. Forming an alliance with various nobles, such as Thierry of Holland, he first attacked the bishops, the bulwark of the empire against feudal anarchy. Already under the ban of the empire, he was excommunicated by the Pope. Leo took this step not only to help to preserve the integrity of the empire, but also on account of the barbarous manner in which the war was being waged by the rebels. This union of Church and State proved too strong for Godfrey. “Fearing the power of the emperor and the excommunication of the Pope, he came to Aix-la-Chapelle to surrender himself. By the intercession of the sovereign Pontiff he suc­ceeded in obtaining the emperor’s favor”. But the fire he had lighted was not to be easily extinguished; and during the minority which followed the death of the Emperor Henry III, Flanders and other parts of the Low Countries became practically independent of the empire.

Granting privileges to monasteries, and consecrating churches as he went along, the Pope now proceeded to Rheims to fulfil an engagement he had made with the abbot of St. Remy. When bishop of Toul, he had promised Herimar, for that was the abbot’s name, to make a pilgrimage, “without the comfort of a horse”, to the shrine of St. Remy, the apostle of France. It might have been thought that his elevation to the See of Rome would prevent his carrying out his undertaking; but Herimar adroitly suggested to him that, if ever the needs of the Church should bring him back to his native place, he could then keep his vow; and, sending him a beautiful drinking-cup, hinted that he had a church which stood in need of consecration. Thoroughly appreciating the abbot’s delicate tact, Leo hastened to assure him that even if he were not summoned by any wants of the Church, he would return to Gaul (ad Gallias) and consecrate his basilica for him. But we know from his own writings that the real end of his journey was the reform of the German and Gallican Churches.

Accordingly, when he arrived in Germany, Herimar lost no time in going to see him in order to arrange with him about the ceremony he had at heart. It was decided that the Pope should come to Rheims in time to say Mass in St. Mary’s on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, September 29; that the translation of the relics of St. Remy should take place on his feast-day (October 1); that the Pope should consecrate the abbatial basilica on October 2; and that he should hold a great synod on the three following days. Herimar had already secured the promise of the French king (Henry I, 1030-1061) that he would, if possible, come himself to the consecration and would convoke the bishops and princes of his kingdom. Leo, too, when he reached Toul, ordered the bishops and abbots of the neighbourhood to attend the synod which was to be held in the basilica of the apostle of the Franks. And he, wrote the Pope, who had taught them the rudiments of their faith would cause it to revivify. Herimar, moreover, on his return had sent letters throughout “France (Francia) and the neighbouring provinces, inviting the faithful to come and do honour to their patron saint, and to receive the Pope’s blessing”.

But nothing flows on without encountering obstacles. The plans of the good abbot were suddenly checked and seemed likely to come to naught. “The serpent, who from the beginning of the world has ever tried to ruin the human race, resolved to prevent, if possible, the accomplishment of these useful measures”. He employed, continues the good monk, certain powerful laymen whose incestuous marriages and other delinquencies would not bear the light, and certain bishops and abbots who, on account of their simoniacal practices, were most averse to being summoned to a synod. These men succeeded in impressing upon King Henry I that to allow the Pope to assume authority in France would be fatal to his honour; and, ignoring the fact that John VIII had held a synod at Troyes in 878, assured him that never before had a city of France opened its gates to a Pope for such a purpose as the holding of a council. Besides, at the present time, they urged, the country was too disturbed to allow of the gathering of the great ones in Church and State for any other purpose than that of war.

History of the Catholic Church of Scotland

Carried away by these specious statements, and because he was a notorious simoniac himself, Henry sent to inform the Pope that the necessities of war prevented his fulfilling his engagements to the abbot of St. Remy and to beg him to defer his visit to France till he should be ready to receive him. But Leo quietly replied that he could not break his engagements, and that, if he found any lovers of religion in the basilica of St. Remy, he would hold the synod with them. The king, however, was obstinate, and, despite the opposition of many, summoning around him his nobles, bishops, and abbots, including the crestfallen abbot of St. Remy himself, set out on a military expedition.

Nevertheless, the firmness of the Pope met with at partial reward. Herimar was allowed to return; and Anselm, from whose narrative all this is taken, mentions as present at the synod some twenty bishops, not only from Germany and Burgundy, but also from France and England. There were also present fifty abbots. From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle we learn that two of the abbots were English; and from it too we learn the name of the “bishop from England” spoken of by Anselm, and the object of the presence at the synod of prelates from this island. “King Edward sent thither (to the great synod at Rheims) Bishop Dudoc (of Wells), and Wulfric, abbot of St. Augustine’s, and Abbot Elfwine (of Ramsey), that they might make known to him what should be there resolved on for Christendom” and “to render an account of the condition of the Church in England”. And if petty political jealousy failed, at least to some extent, to prevent a very large gathering of bishops at the synod, it failed absolutely to prevent the assembling at Rheims of a huge concourse of people full of the most ardent enthusiasm for the Pope. In a marvellously quick manner, considering the difficulty of communication in the eleventh century, it had become noised abroad, probably through the monasteries, that the Pope was to spend some time at Rheims. As a consequence—we have it on the word of Leo’s biographer: “it is hard to say what a great number of people came from the ends of the earth to see him, Spaniards, Bretons (Britannorum), Franks, Irish (Scotorum) and English”.

When Leo arrived at the abbey of St. Remy, then outside the city of Rheims, he found an enormous crowd of both clerics and laymen, rich and poor, awaiting him. After a service in the abbey church, concluded by a “vigorous Te Deum”, a monster procession was formed, which escorted the Pontiff to the Church of St. Mary in the city. High Mass was there sung by the Pope, after which, he was entertained by the archbishop of Rheims in his palace close to the cathedral. Next day (September 30), as the number of people was still on the increase, the Pope had to slip away quietly, in order to get near the monastery, which was now so beset with people, who had come to pray to France’s patron saint, “and to see the vicar of St. Peter”, that the monks could not carry on their services in the church. Thrice during the day had Leo to preach to fresh crowds of people. All night long they kept watch and ward by torchlight

On the 1st of October, as arranged, there took place the solemn translation of the relics of St. Remy. For a time the Pope himself, assisted by the archbishops and abbots carried them on his shoulders; and then, when the antiphon, Iste est de sublimibus, burst forth, “how many cheeks were bedewed with tears, how many souls poured forth pious supplications to obtain the patronage of the glorious saint!”. When the Pope yielded the relics to others to be carried to the city, there took place an incident which would now be called regrettable, and would be ascribed to very defective police arrangements, but which the piety of our monastic chronicler presents in quite a different light. No sooner had the sacred relics left the abbey church, than the pious enthusiasm of the people broke all bounds. They clapped their hands; they sang aloud the praises of God; they crowded together to get as near as they could to their patron’s shrine. The reliquary with its bearers was so pushed first to one side and then another, that it seemed like a ship tossed on human billows. “All this was an expression of deep faith which merited a great recompense. In some it manifested itself even in contempt of death; for, animated by a too lively desire to approach the shrine with the least possible delay, they made an attempt forcibly to push their way through the crowd. But in the surging movement they were overthrown and trampled to death”

When at length, the relics were safely laid on the altar of St. Mary’s at Rheims, they were there exposed for public veneration all the rest of that day and during the night. On the following day (October 2), whilst the Pope was performing part of the long ceremony of consecrating the abbey church, they were solemnly carried round the city walls and then back to the monastery. Distressed at the disasters of the previous day, and fearful lest they should occur again, Leo had ordered the gates of the basilica to be kept fast shut, so that the relics had to be passed into it through a window. This gave the people an inspiration, and many of them found their way into the church in the same way. At the close of the ceremony the Pope gave absolution “to the people who, according to the prescribed form, had made public confession of their sins”.

The next day (October 3) there was opened the synod of Rheims, and a very dramatic event it proved to be. In the midst of the assembly, which, with the Pope, consisted of twenty-one bishops, some fifty abbots, and a “very great number” of clergy, were exposed the relics of St. Remy. For, remarked the Pope, if anyone says any­thing that is unbecoming, the man of God, present by his relics, will make him feel the effect of his power.

The real work of the synod was very nearly marred by one of those disputes between great churchmen, so common in the Middle Ages. There sprang up what Anselm calls “the old discussion” as to precedence between the archbishops of Trier and of Rheims. But Leo was determined that such a comparatively unimportant question should not then occupy either his own attention or that of the assembly. He ordered the bishops to be arranged round him in a circle. Then arose the deacon Peter, who, saying that the questions which were to occupy their attention were simony, the encroachments of lay patrons of churches, incestuous and adulterous marriages, sodomy and oppression of the poor, called upon the bishops to declare publicly one after another whether they had received or given Holy Orders for money. Some arose at once and declared their innocence in this matter; some most humbly and touchingly confessed their guilt; some begged for delay before giving an answer; and others, as well bishops as abbots (for the same command was laid upon them), remained silent. The archbishop of Besançon, who made an attempt to defend the bishop of Langres, who had been guilty of atrocious crimes, suddenly found himself for the time being utterly unable to continue speaking. “It was certainly the great St. Remy”, interjects Anselm, from whom we are still quoting, and to whose full narrative we must refer readers who desire more ample details, “who wrought this prodigy, in recompense for the act of faith which had led the Pope to place his relics in front of the assembly”.

The Church in Spain

Perhaps the most interesting matter discussed by them was the primacy of the Apostolic See, in relation, apparently, to an assumption of dignity on the part of the archbishop of Compostela. The synod decreed, “under pain of the anathema of the apostolic authority, that if anyone of those present had ever said that any other than the bishop of the Roman See was primate of the Universal Church, he must there and then make public atonement. And when no one acknowledged himself guilty under this head, the decrees of the orthodox Fathers on this subject were read, and it was decreed that the bishop of the Roman See alone was primate of the Universal Church and apostolicus”. This may have been aimed at the patriarch of Constantinople; but when, a little later, we find it stated that the synod “excommunicated the archbishop of St. James of Galicia, because he had illegally assumed the title of apostolicus”, there cannot be much doubt that the decree was directed against the See of Compostela.

In the beginning of the ninth century, during the reign of Alfonso or Alonzo II (791-842), known as the Chaste, king of Asturias, there was discovered in the diocese of Iria Flavia (now Padron) the body which was believed to be that of St. James the Greater. By the king’s orders a church and a residence for the bishop were built where it was found, and thither was transferred the See of Iria.

In the break-up of the Visigothic Church and State which followed the invasion of the Saracens in 711, most of the episcopal sees ceased to exist. A precarious succession of bishops was, however, kept up in Toledo, Seville, and Granada, and there were survivals both in the north­east and north-west corners where Spanish independence succeeded in making headway against the Moslems. It is, therefore, not surprising that the bishop of a see which boasted the possession of the body of one who was at once an apostle of our Lord and the apostle of Spain disdained dependence. The better to express his idea of his exalted position, Cresconio of Iria-Compostela (1048-1066), who is described as a man of illustrious birth, assumed the title of apostolicus—a title which, in the West, was given only to the Popes. However, the excommunication launched against him at Rheims must have stifled his ambition, for we hear nothing more of the title. But the craving for enlarged authority was implanted in the hearts of the bishops of Compostela, and it was not satisfied till Calixtus II made Bishop Didacus (Diego Pelaez) a metropolitan (1120).

Before proceeding to formulate its decrees, the synod excommunicated those bishops who had been summoned to the council and who had neither come to it nor sent their excuses in writing. Certain nobles, too, were excommunicated for various serious breaches of the marriage laws; and the abbot of Poutières, in the diocese of Langres, was deposed for living so luxuriously that he was unable and unwilling to pay the annual tax due to Rome. Possibly in the interests of peace, but certainly because they were related, the Pope prohibited Baldwin V, count of Flanders, from giving his daughter (Matilda) in marriage to William of Normandy (the Conqueror) and the latter from accepting her. Baldwin had already shown himself a rebel against the emperor, and would, of course, be a more formidable foe if allied with William. Leo’s prohibition, however, proved vain. Had it not, the course of English history would have been very different, for William Rufus and Henry I would not have sat upon the throne of England.

The formal decrees of the synod, of which Anselm has preserved a summary, condemned simony in all its branches, the incontinency of the clergy, as also usury and the carrying of arms by the clergy. Some of the sins “which cry to heaven for vengeance”, viz. sodomy and oppression of the poor, were also denounced, as were, moreover, the “new heretics who had arisen in various parts of Gaul”.

The letters of Gregory Magistros, who was commissioned to expel them, show that there were Paulicians in Armenia in this century. With their expulsion from that country some connect the appearance of heretics with Manichaean beliefs in the south of France. But by the discovery of the Paulician liturgy, entitled the Key of Truth, it seems to have been made clear that its votaries were rather Adoptionists than Manichees. Whereas the “new heretics” were no doubt the upholders of the doctrines, apparently Manichaean, which had been already condemned at the council of Charroux in Poitou (1027), and which are obviously akin to those of the Bogomils of Bulgaria. These latter, holding as they did that there were two equal principles, one good and the other bad (God and Satan), may certainly be set down as Manichees; and so it is to them that others trace the sectaries to whom Ademar gives that name.

But if it be the fact that Basil, the founder of the Bogomils, was put to death under Alexis Comnenus (d. 1118), his doctrines can scarcely have spread to Aquitaine in 1027. If the “new heretics” were Manichaeans, they must be taken as indicating a revival of an old smouldering heresy. A year or two later (1052), we find the emperor hanging “Manichaean heretics” at Goslar.

At the conclusion of the synod, after carrying on his own shoulders the relics of St. Remy to the place prepared for them, Leo set out for Mainz to hold another council. The last echo of the synod of Rheims was a papal bull, in which, after recounting what he had done there, the Pope exhorts the people of the whole kingdom of the Franks to pay great devotion to their patron saint.

From his bulls it is easy to trace the route of the Pope to Mainz. They show him weeping over the ravages of war at Verdun, and consecrating churches at Metz. A contemporary painting at the beginning of a Vita Leonis, now preserved at Berne, represents the abbot Warin of Metz (domnus abbas Warinus) offering a church (basilica Sancti Arnulfi) to the Pope (dominus papa Leo nonus), and by means of two verses sets forth the fact of its consecration by him:—

“Hoc ut struxit opus Warinus nomine dictus

Contigit ut nonus leo benediceret almus”.

On the 19th of October, in presence of the Emperor Henry II, the synod of Mainz was brought to a close. Some forty bishops assisted at it. Besides local matters, they occupied themselves with devising remedies for the same great disorders as had been discussed at Rheims.

Although indeed neither simony, which was the vice principally at first attacked by Leo, for clerical incontinence was at once crushed by these synods it is not easy to overestimate the moral effect they produced. The multitude returned to their homes, and told how the conduct of the greatest bishops had been examined in public by the Pope, how the emperor was acting with him, and how even the hand of God Himself seemed to be visibly supporting the Pontiff in his efforts to root out simony. The germs of a strong public opinion against that most corroding vice had been widely sown; the reformation of the eleventh century had received a powerful impetus.

The synod over, the Pope began his return journey to Rome, making of it a sort of splendid spiritual progress, as he had done when he left it only a few months before. As might have been expected, he passed through his beloved diocese of Toul. Here, as elsewhere, we find him consecrating churches, and exempting monasteries from episcopal jurisdiction, usually exacting in return some suitable acknowledgment. Thus the abbess of Andlau had to send to Rome every year, for the use of the Popes, three pieces of fine linen; the abbess of Holy Cross at Donauwerd, a chasuble, a gold-embroidered stole, a maniple, and a girdle; and the abbess of Woffenheim, the foundation and last resting-place of Leo’s parents, “a golden rose of two Roman ounces in weight”, “as a memorial of the liberty” he had granted the convent. It had to be sent to Rome eight days before the fourth Sunday in Lent (Laetare Sunday), on which day the Popes, says Leo, are wont to carry it.

A short digression on so sweet a subject as the rose may perhaps be here allowed. The symmetry of its form, the richness of its colour, and the delicacy of its perfume may well entitle it to be regarded as the queen of the flowers. To it all that is loveliest in mankind is wont to be compared. It should not then come as a surprise to anyone either that the rose was largely used by the pagans in the worship of what they believed to be gods, or that the use of so charming an object for the same purpose was retained by the Church in its services devoted to the honour of the Almighty. Hence we find that in the twelfth century, at least, on the Sunday before that of Pentecost, roses used to be cast from the roofs of the churches on to the congregation below. Perhaps later this custom was transferred to the day of Pentecost itself, which explains the origin of the Italian name of Pasqua rosa for this festival. And to this day in Dominican churches roses are blessed and distributed to the people on Rosary Sunday, i.e., the first Sunday in October. That the Roman Church might have an abundant supply of roses for pious purposes, Constantine gave to Pope Mark a “fundus rosaries” (rose farm). At some date previous to the pontificate of St. Leo IX, there had been instituted for Mid-Lent Sunday some ceremony in connection with the rose, in which it was carried in procession by the Pope. In the twelfth century, as we learn from the Ordo of Canon Benedict, the Pope sang High Mass on Laetare Sunday in the Church of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, “holding in his hand a golden rose, (scented) with musk. After the Gospel he preached about the flower, and showed it to the people, before his regular discourse on the Gospel itself. After Mass he rode on horseback, with his crown upon his head and the rose in his hand, back to the Lateran, and there gave the golden flower to the prefect of the city”. Nowadays an artificial rose is blessed in the Sistine chapel, and, after being incensed, sprinkled with musk and holy water, and anointed with balm, is sent to some distinguished person, who is requested to “accept this mystic rose bedewed with balm and musk, typifying the sweet odours that should exhale from the good deeds of us all, especially of those in high places”. The giving of the “golden rose” to those in high places, in token of the good-will of the Pope, and in recognition of “signal services towards this Apostolic See”, can be traced to Urban II, who in 1096, at Tours, bestowed it upon Fulk IV (Rechin) of Anjou. The last king to receive it in this country was Henry VIII, to whom it was granted by Pope Clement VII, who noted: “I see too that on account of its charming properties the rose is the glorious symbol of England”.

The rose sent to Henry is thus quaintly described by Stow: “This tree was forged of fine gold, and wrought with branch leaves, and flowers, resembling roses, set in a pot of gold, which pot had three feet of an antique fashion of measure half a pint. In the uppermost rose was a fair sapphire, loup pierced, the bigness of an acorn. The tree was of height half an English yard, and in breadth a foot”.

Not unnaturally the shape of the “golden rose” was not always the same. I have seen the one which was given by Clement V at the beginning of the fourteenth century to the prince-bishop of Basle. It is in that most interesting museum in Paris known as the Musée de Cluny, and is really a little golden bush, with a full-blown rose on the highest stem, and with five others on different stems in divers stages of development

These grants of privilege, of which mention has just been made, and very many others which Leo issued, but which want of space compels us to leave unnoticed, show that throughout all his pontificate he was, though not a monk himself, a great patron of monks and nuns. Justly did he regard them as the guardians of virtue and of learning, and as the helpers and protectors of the poor. He looked to the example of their quiet but ceaseless toil, of their sweet and tender piety, of the purity of their lives, of their boundless hospitality, and of their essentially peaceful careers to serve as a powerful auxiliary in his attempts to reform an idle, selfish, impure, and bellicose world

But though he was ever endeavouring to increase their numbers, their prosperity, and their influence, he was careful not to be a partner to any of their shortcomings. And so, when it was reported to him that some of them went about with the object of inducing men to bestow all their charities on religious houses to the detriment of their parish churches, he ordained that such, at least, as contemplated becoming monks should give half of what they intended to give to the Church to which they belonged, and that they might then enter any monastery they pleased. He approved of what the monks did “out of love”, but not what they were trying to do “out of greed”. 

History of the church and state in Norway from the tenth to the sixteenth century

Before he left the North, the subject of Christianity in the Scandinavian countries came up for discussion between him and Adalbert of Bremen. In the course of the tenth century Christianity was established in Norway. This had been effected by missionaries from Sweden and Denmark, countries which had profited by the labours of St. Ansgar, from the archiepiscopal See of Bremen, under the spiritual jurisdiction of which the Popes had long ago placed all the Scandinavian countries, and particularly from this country, where some of its rulers had been educated and baptised. The swords of the two Olafs were the final factors in the work. During the interval which elapsed between the time when Harold Fairhair (863-934) made Norway one kingdom under one ruler, and when Olaf II, the saint (1015-1030), organised the Church in Norway, there were frequent struggles between the three Scandinavian kingdoms; and Norway was occasionally for a brief space subject to the crown of Denmark. But under Magnus the Good, the son of Olaf II, the situation was reversed, and Denmark was, for a few years (1044­-1047), united to the more northern kingdom. On the death of Magnus (1047), however, the two countries were again divided; and a fierce struggle for supremacy was commenced between Harold Hardrada (1047-1066), king of Norway, a name with which our own history renders us familiar, and Sweyn (or Svend) II, known as Ulfsson from his father, or as Estrithson from his mother (1048-­1075). To render his independence still more secure, Sweyn desired to have the bishops of his kingdom subject to a Danish metropolitan, and not to the German archbishop of Bremen. He, accordingly, made known his wishes to the Pope. It was this very intelligible attempt on the part of Sweyn that roused Adalbert to try to get himself made a patriarch. He realised at once that the other Scandinavian kings would follow the example of Sweyn, and he saw that the Dane’s request was entertained by the Pope, and that, too, although the king was not very favourably known to him, as he had had to bring pressure to bear upon him, to make him put away a near relative he had taken to wife. The only way to save the honour­able position of his see was to have it endowed with patriarchal rights over the various metropolitan sees which he foresaw would soon come into existence, and which he knew would otherwise become wholly independent of Bremen. As he no doubt feared that the good-will which the Pope entertained towards him might not carry him to the desired lengths, he unwillingly agreed to the establishment of an archiepiscopal see in Denmark, on condition that “Rome would grant him patriarchal honours”. The deaths of Pope Leo and the Emperor Henry in the midst of the protracted negotiations on the subject, and the struggle between the Church and the empire which followed on them, caused the matter to drop for a time. But in the end Denmark gained the day; and Paschal II, in 1104, constituted Lund in Skaane (south Sweden), then belonging to that kingdom, the metropolitan see of the North.

Wild and weird must have seemed to the Pope the stories which Adalbert had to tell him of the countries which his genius proposed to weld into a northern patriarchate, and of the men who peopled them. He must have told him of Iceland, a land where there was a midnight sun, a land of snow and fire; of Greenland, a most inhospitable shore, but blessed with an attractive name. For its wily discoverer, Eric the Red, argued, when he “went to settle that land which he had found and which he called Greenland, that many men would desire to visit it if he gave it a good name”. And, strangest of all, he must have told him of a land far away to the West, which is called Vinland, because vines grow there wild, producing excellent wine, and (where) fruit abounds which has not been planted. He must have told him of all these lands, for there had long been Christians in all of them, and he himself, at the request of distant Iceland and Greenland, had sent preachers there. He must also have told him of the men who inhabited them—men whose home was on the sea, “who never slept beneath the sooty roof timbers”, whoever lusted for battle, and whose one dread was lest they “might come to die of old age, within doors, upon a bed of straw”.

One such sea-king at least stood before Leo IX. Among the Orkneys is an island, now from its superior size known as the Mainland, but to the Norsemen of old as Hrossey or Horse Island. Close to it is an islet (Birsay) which at low tide is joined to it. On this small spot of ground are pointed out the ruins of the castle of Earl (jarl) Thorfinn, of whom “it is soothly said, that he has been the most powerful of all the Orkney earls”. To show the extent of his sway, his biographer quotes Arnon earlskald :—

“All the way from Tuskar-skerry,

Down to Dublin, hosts obeyed him,

Royal Thorfinn, raven-feeder;

True I tell how liegemen loved him”.

This formidable chieftain became sole ruler of the Orkneys in 1046; and, after visiting Harold Hardrada of Norway, Svveyn of Denmark, and the Kaiser Henry, “fared to Rome and saw the Pope there, and there he took absolution from him for all his misdeeds”. Though Leo had been a soldier himself, he must have been shocked at what the sea-king had to tell him of his burnings and his slaughterings. However, with all the earnestness of his saintly soul he exhorted the earl to a better life. His words were not lost on the brave heart of Thorfinn. “The earl turned thence to his journey home, and he came back safe and sound into his realm; and that journey was most famous. Then the earl sat down quietly and kept peace over all his realm. Then he left off warfare; then he turned his mind to ruling the people and the land, and to lawgiving. He sate almost always in Birsay, and let them build there Christchurch, a splendid minster. There, first, was set up a bishop’s seat in the Orkneys”. And although, says Adam of Bremen, “they had before been ruled by English or Irish bishops, our primate (Adalbert), by command of the Pope, consecrated Thorulf, bishop of Blascona (Bersay?), to take charge of all of them”.

Iceland.

The most interesting country of which Adalbert, must have spoken to Leo was Iceland, the home of Scandinavian history, a country of the early origin of which there are extant authentic records second to none in dramatic interest. The first men to take up their abode in Iceland were certain Irish monks or hermits. “Before Iceland was peopled from Norway”, writes Ari (d. 1148), the Bede of Iceland, “there were in it men whom the Northmen call Papar (fathers); they were Christian men, and it is held that they must have come over sea from the West, for there were found left by them Irish books, bells, etc.” But, discovered accidentally in the second half of the ninth century by the Norsemen (c. 861), it was colonised soon after by many of their best families. Only the most uncompromising love of personal independence could have induced the jarls of Norway to go and live in such a desolate region as Iceland. But at the time of which we are speaking there was a king (Harold Fairhair, 863-934) in the land who was resolved to be king in fact as well as in name. The sort of man he was is well set forth in the contemporary Ravensong about him by Hornclofe:—

“Out at sea he will drink Yule if he may have his will,

That eager prince, and play Frey’s game.

From his youth up he loathed the fire-cauldron, and sitting by the hearth,

The warm corner, and the cushion full of down”.

A typical example of his doings will show his method of effecting his purpose and its results. “He sent Thororm, his kinsman, to claim taxes from Asgrim, but he yielded none; so the king sent Thororm a second time for his head, and then he slew Asgrim. At that time Thorstein, the son of Asgrim, was out on Viking journeys ... Some time afterwards he came back from the wars and laid his ship against Thruma (where Thororm lived) and burnt Thororm in his house, together with his household; the stock he cut down and sold the chattels. Whereupon he went to Iceland”. Some of the earliest settlers and their slaves were Christians, for the most part probably of the type of Helgi, who “was very shifty in his faith; he believed in Christ, but made vows to Thor for seafaring and hardy deeds ... Some of these”, continues Ari, “held faithfully to their belief unto the day of their death; but in few cases did this pass on from parents to children, for the sons of some of these reared temples and did sacrifices, and wholly heathen the land remained for well-nigh a hundred and twenty winters (861-981)”. At the end of that period a sea-rover, Thorvald, brought a Saxon bishop, Frederick, to preach Christianity in Iceland. The good that the bishop effected (981-986) was undone by the violence of Thorvald, and he returned to Saxony in despair.

As well-meaning as Thorvald, but as violent, was the next notable preacher of Christianity in Iceland. “When Olaf Trigvesson had been two years king of Norway”, writes Snorri, “there was a Saxon priest in his house called Thangbrand, a passionate, ungovernable man, and a great man-slayer; but he was a good scholar and a clever man. The king would not have him in his house on account of his misdeeds, but gave him the errand to go to Iceland and bring that land to the Christian faith”. He had as companion the Icelander Gudlief, who is also set down as “a great man-slayer”. Whatever else was wanting to these two preachers of the Gospel, they had energy and the courage of their convictions. By the strength of their right arms, and of their arguments, and by biting satire and invective, they soon had the whole island in a blaze of excitement. Blows were given and taken, lampoons were freely exchanged, and if many were embittered against Christianity, many embraced it. A civil war was averted only by the whole question’s being referred to the Althing or Parliament.

Of what took place at the famous Althing of the year 1000 we have the most graphic details. The Christians marched in a body to the Law-mount with crosses and incense, and earnestly explained their faith. Unable to gainsay them, the pagans proposed that two men from each quarter should be sacrificed to stop the spread of Christianity. Not to be outdone, two of the Christians, Gisur and Hjalti, made this startling proposal: “Let us select, on our side, some of our most worthy men, whom we may truly call victims to our Lord Jesus Christ, that so we may live more blamelessly. Gisur and I offer ourselves as victims for our province”. Others at once offered themselves from the other quarters. Then it was suggested that pagans and Christians should live apart, each party under its own laws, and such an uproar arose “on the Hill of Laws that no man could hear another’s voice”. In the midst of this confusion, a messenger came running to tell the assembly that the subterranean fires had broken out, and were pouring forth their fiery cinders. “No wonder”, quoth the pagans, “that the gods are angry at language such as we have had to hear”. “But what”, quickly retorted a pontiff-chief, “made the gods angry when the ashes on which we stand were all aglow?” That, all well knew, must have been when the soil of Iceland was as yet untrodden by the foot of man. The pagans were silenced, but not convinced, and all hope of peace seemed lost, when the Law-man, Thorgeir, proposed a compromise. All were to be baptised, but might be allowed to expose children, and eat horse-flesh. Sacrifice might be offered to the gods in private, but if witnesses convicted anyone of so doing, he was to be exiled. The compromise was accepted, and “it is certain that these and other evil pagan customs were abolished after a few winters”, concludes Ari the Learned.

As then Christianity had been established by law in Iceland some fifty years before Leo came to the throne of Peter, there cannot be a doubt that Adalbert, who was destined to consecrate (c. 1055) the first native Icelander, Isleif by name, for a definite see (Skalholt) in Iceland, spoke to him on the ecclesiastical affairs both of that country and of Greenland. For he had already sent missionaries to both those places. “So affable was he”, wrote Adam of Bremen “so bountiful, so hospitable, so anxious to stand well in the eyes both of God and man, that men, especially of the North, eagerly drew to his side. Among them came envoys from the remotest coasts, Icelanders, Greenlanders, and men from the Orkneys, to beg that he would send them preachers of the faith. This he did”.

At any rate, whether Adalbert did or did not speak to the Pope about Iceland, it is certain that an Icelander did. When the Icelandic priest Isleif (or Islaf) had reached his fiftieth year, we are told that “he was bidden to go abroad, and was chosen bishop by the whole commonweal in Iceland. Then he went abroad and southward to Saxland, and went to see the Emperor Henry Conradson, and gave him a white bear that had come from Greenland, and this beast was the greatest treasure, and the emperor gave Isleif his writ with his seal to go over all his dominions. Then he went to see Pope Leo. And the Pope sent his writ to Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen, that he should give Isleif the consecration of a bishop on Whit Sunday; and the Pope said that he was in hope that by God’s grace this bishopric should be a long-enduring office, if the first bishop were consecrated to Iceland on the day in which God blessed the whole world with the gift of the Holy Ghost. And Isleif was consecrated bishop on that day according to the Pope’s command (at bothe páva, at the Pope's bidding) by Adalbert, archbishop in Bremen, fourteen nights before Columba’s Mass-day (May 26, 1056?). And the archbishop gave him all the insignia that he needed to have with the office of a bishop, according as the Pope and the emperor sent him word”.

It may, then, be taken for granted that the Icelanders were acquainted with the position and authority of the Pope in the Church. Their annals, it may be noted, had already begun to enter their names, and they tell how their second native bishop of Skalholt, Gizur, was consecrated (c. 1080) by Hardvig, archbishop of Magdeburg, “at the command of Gregory VII”.

Though, as we have seen, Leo did not raise the See of Bremen to the dignity of a patriarchate, as the large-minded ambition of its prelate desired, he issued a bull confirming its privileges in the style of his predecessors from the time of the establishment of the See of Hamburg by Gregory IV, and of its transfer to Bremen under Nicholas I. Although objections are urged against the Hamburg-Bremen series of papal bulls, from that of Gregory IV to the one in question, there can be no doubt that, if some of them have been interpolated in the matter of details as to the exact countries subject to the united see, they are substantially authentic. The bulls of Gregory and Nicholas, subordinating to it the Danes, Swedes, Slavs, and adjoining peoples, were preserved in its archives in the days of Adam, its canonical historian. Hence, after what we have seen of the relations between Adalbert and such distant people as the Greenlanders, we may safely accept the verdict of the majority of historians that Leo’s bull regarding the See of Bremen is authentic, and that he subjected to him not only the Swedes, the Danes, the Norwegians, and the Slavs from the river Penis in Sclavania, which formed one of the boundaries of the March of the Billungs, to the Egdore (Eider in Schleswig-Holstein), but also Islant (Iceland), Gronlant (Greenland), and Scridevinum (Scritefingi). On the same conditions of obedience to the Apostolic See as had been laid down by it for “the most blessed Boniface”, he was to take the place of the Pope in those regions, and was to ordain bishops for them according as they were brought “into the fold of Christ”. And as a matter of fact, as we learn from his younger contemporary, the canon of Bremen, Adalbert did consecrate bishops both for Norway and Iceland, and sent letters both to the Icelanders and the Greenlanders, promising to come to them soon, so that they might rejoice together.

History of the Northmen up to the conquest of England by William the Conqueror

The Romans, ever unhappy when the Pope was not in their midst, and ever turbulent when he was, gave Leo a royal welcome when he came back. On his first journey to Rome he had brought with him Hildebrand of Cluny; and this time, in furtherance of his plan to surround himself with the cream of the monastic order, he brought with him Humbert from the famous Lorraine abbey of Moyenmoutier in the diocese of Toul. Both by word and deed he was to prove himself one of the greatest of the great men whom Leo gathered around him.

Hardly had he returned to Rome when the cries of the people of south Italy called him away. Their condition had long been heartrending, for they had long been the prey of Greeks, Saracens, and their own princes. Now they were feeling the sting of another serpent, which, however, was fortunately destined to eat up the others. From about the year 1030 the Normans had been steadily increasing their hold on southern Italy. Fresh recruits joined them from Normandy, among others the famous Robert Guiscard, and his numerous brothers, sons of a poor knight, Tancred of Hauteville, near Coutances. After they had seized (1041) Melfi, “the head and gate of all Apulia”, as Leo of Ostia calls it, they naturally made more rapid headway. With all the ideas of “gathering property” held by their pagan Viking ancestors, they waged war as cruelly as the Saracens. What they could not keep they destroyed, and what they could not seize by force they obtained by treachery. Nor did they care whether they laid “iron arms” on the lands of priests or people, prince or Pope.

By letter and by envoy Leo begged the Normans to be more considerate in their treating of the people; but he soon found that he got nothing from them but smooth words. Accordingly, as well for the sake of reinvigorating the Church in Apulia, which in the midst of the horrors of war “seemed to have well-nigh perished”, as to take the Normans to task for their conduct, he determined to go thither in person. Outwardly displaying the greatest respect for him, “the whole race of the Normans” went to meet him. To the Pope’s exhortations and threats they promised on oath that they would do as he wished, and declared, should he order it, that they would at once return across the seas. “When the Pope heard this, thinking that others were as single-minded as he was himself, he gave them his blessing and leave to depart”. While he was in the South, the crafty Normans held their hands; but their conduct soon showed that they had but sworn with the lips, and that they had resolved to do all that their hearts desired.

Passing through Capua, Salerno, and Melfi, Leo reached Benevento; and when its rulers, Pandulf III and Landulf VI, refused to tender to him the obedience which he maintained was due to him from the donations of the city which the emperors had made to the Popes, the people promptly “expelled them and their men of law”. Evidently there was then in Benevento a party which had more faith in the Pope’s protection than in that of their own princes. The city was soon to pass definitely into the hands of the Popes. The father of its last Lombard ruler was the latter of those just expelled

From Benevento Leo went on to Mount Gargano; and when he had refreshed his soul with prayer at the shrine of St. Michael, he proceeded to hold a synod in the ancient town of Siponto hard by. This council, held on Greek territory, at which it is supposed the bishops of Calabria and Apulia assisted, deposed two archbishops who had obtained their positions by bribery and corruption, and were endeavouring to override one another. “And then”, continues Aimé, “he turned him back to Rome, and once more betook himself to the road to correct other cities”.

However, before he again started on another journey he held his usual Paschal synod at Rome. What makes this one of special account is the fact that it formally condemned the doctrines of Berengarius of Tours on the Blessed Eucharist. Over fifty bishops from Italy and from the different kingdoms of Gaul, and over thirty abbots assisted at its deliberations. Compared with the numbers present at his first Paschal synod, those at his second may serve to show the rapid advance of Leo’s influence. After disposing of a question of precedence, and excommunicating the bishops of Brittany for their simony and their refusal to submit to the archiepiscopal jurisdiction of Tours, the council proceeded to adopt a new mode of attacking the marriages of priests. It forbade all, as well clergy as laity, to have any intercourse with priests and deacons who failed to keep their vows of chastity. The successors of Leo, especially St. Gregory VII, persisted in this plan, which was ultimately crowned with success.

But the most important question dealt with by the synod was the heresy of Berengarius of Tours. Born towards the beginning of the eleventh century, Berengarius was educated at the famous school of Chartres by the no less famous bishop of the same city, Fulbert, the heir of the teaching of Gerbert of Rheims. Of this he was reminded by an old schoolfellow, Adelmann, in a most touching letter which he wrote to him when the report had reached him “that he had torn himself from the unity of Holy Mother Church, and that he seemed to be holding views which differed from Catholic faith regarding the Body and Blood of the Lord which throughout the whole world is daily immolated on the altar”. “The words of the report”, the letter continued, “set forth that you hold that we have not the true Body and Blood of Christ, but a mere figure and image”. The elder man called to the mind of the younger their “most sweet companionship” under their “venerable Socrates” (Fulbert) at Chartres, and the private little colloquies which he used to hold with them of an evening in the garden, when he was wont, with tearful fervor, to exhort them to follow in the footsteps of the Fathers, so that they might never tread a new and deceitful path. Did the good old bishop augur ill from what he saw of the character of the youthful Berengarius, or was he simply one of his favourite disciples? Whether Fulbert regarded him with apprehension or with trustful love, it is certain that, while he made friends among his companions, who admired him for his attainments, which seem, however, to have been more external than intellectual, more attractive than profound, he engendered in a larger number distrust of his mental abilities and of the sincerity of his actions. Guitmund, “the most eloquent man of our times”, who later on wrote a treatise against the teach­ing of Berengarius, says, on the testimony of those who then knew him, that “whilst a youth at school, puffed up by an ability that was wanting in ballast, he had but little respect for the judgment of his master, and none for that of his fellow-students. He even despised the works on the liberal arts. Unable to rise to the higher flights of philosophy, for his mind was not keen enough, and the liberal arts throughout the Gauls were then in a state oi decay, he strove, by giving new meanings to old words (a habit he has kept up even to the present day) to win for himself in one way or another a reputation for special learning. Moreover, by pompous gait, by using a higher chair than those employed by the others, by striving to assume the dignity of his master rather than to acquire his learning, by withdrawing his head far back into his cowl, as though in deep thought, by speaking in a very slow and plaintive voice, so as to deceive the unwary—by all these means did he endeavour to insinuate that he was a master in the arts”. Here, of course, we have the views of those of his fellow-students who had no special love for Berengarius. But they certainly show that, consciously or unconsciously, he was an eccentric and affected young man. After the death of Fulbert (1029) he went to Tours, and became scholasticus or master of its cathedral school, and even after he had been made archdeacon of Angers (c. 1040), continued to give lessons there. As a teacher he attached to himself many devoted disciples, who admired not only what he said and the way in which he set forth what he had to say, but also his abstemious life. But, among scholars at least, eloquence will never prevail over learning, at any rate with the greater number, nor sophistry over real philosophy. The solidity of the teaching of Lanfranc, who is said to have been the fellow-student of Berengarius, was drawing the more earnest students from Tours to Bec. It was about the time when the latter was named archdeacon that the cultured Italian, who was destined to do so much for France and England, left his native Pavia and came to Normandy. For the sake of leading a retired life, and of serving God in obscurity, he withdrew to the little abbey of Bec, which had just been founded by one who, when in the world, had been a distinguished soldier (Herluin). But when, after a year or two, Herluin named him prior (1045), he had to teach, and before long he caused “the school of Bec to become the most important intellectual centre of Normandy and of France”, and attracted even some of the pupils of the scholasticus of Tours.

According to some authors, it was chagrin at the loss of his students that caused Berengarius to put forth his heretical views on the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. “Anxious to draw to himself the attention of all, he preferred to be a heretic and the cynosure of all eyes rather than live as a Catholic known only to the eyes of God”.

For many centuries no attempt was made to set forth the belief of the Church regarding the sacrament of the altar fully and in scientific terms. It was, however, inevitable that the attempt should be made. Monothelism in the seventh century, and Adoptionism in the eighth, had resulted in a very definite presentment of Catholic doctrine with regard to the union of the human and divine natures in the Person of God the Son. The ninth century witnessed the first effort to unfold the belief of the Church on the Eucharist, and to clothe it in scientific language. The difficult task was essayed by a monk of Corbie, Paschasius Radbert (d. 865). He had not to deal with the Real Presence; he had not to prove that the Eucharistic bread was something more than ordinary bread. Unless we are to regard the Discipline of the Secret as childish, the mysterious words of the Fathers on the subject of the Eucharist as inept, their sublime language regarding it as gross exaggeration, all the Eucharistic ceremonies as misleading, and Christian symbolism as an utterly baseless and groundless figment of puerile imaginations, we must conclude that it had always been the firm belief of Christian men that there was very much more beneath the form of the sacramental bread than the mere product of wheat. Radbert, then, did not set himself to explain that that was Christ’s body, but to develop the import of that proposition. This he did in terms, some of which not unnaturally, as obviously tentative, were not altogether unexceptional. In insisting, for instance, that the Eucharist was the true Body of Christ, and in developing its identity with that born of the Virgin Mary, he used expressions which were easily capable of being understood in too carnal a sense. His treatise caused some stir. Among the works which it called forth, those which at one time or another attracted most attention were the productions of Ratram (d. 865), also a monk of Corbie, and of John Scotus Erigena. The work of the former is most obscure, as it seems at one time to teach the doctrine of Transubstantiation with Paschasius, and at another to call in question even the Real Presence. The book of John the Scot, however, though now lost, appears to have denied the doctrine even of the Real Presence with no uncertain voice. Such teaching was only to be expected from that pantheistic and rationalistic writer. But even the voice of theology cannot make itself heard amid the din of arms. The first contro­versy on the Eucharist was stifled in the dire political troubles which distressed the West as the power of the Carolingians declined; and, when Berengarius started the second, the simple Catholic faith was that the Eucharistic bread was really and truly the Body of Christ. But if the first controversy concerned the mode of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, the second, for a brief space at least, concerned the fact of His presence. But as the controversy progressed, Berengarius began to hold that the Body of Christ was present in or with the Eucharistic bread (i.e., the doctrine of impanation or companation), and this second controversy on the mode of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist ended in the definite enunciation of Transubstantiation as the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

Following in the footsteps of John the Scot, as he himself allowed, and feeling secure in the friendship of the bishop of Angers and in that of Geoffrey Martel, count of Anjou, Berengarius proclaimed (1047) that the Eucharistic bread was not really the Body of Christ, but merely a figure of it, and that after consecration the bread was exactly what it had been before. His old friend Adelmann wrote to implore him “for God’s sake and by the sweet memory of Fulbert to love Catholic peace, and not to disturb the republic of Christ, so well founded by our ancestors”. Lanfranc lectured against him, and then set out to assist at the Roman council whence, we have digressed.

As soon as he was informed that Lanfranc had condemned his teaching as heretical, Berengarius wrote to him deprecating what he called his precipitation, but stating his approval of the opinions of John the Scot. What this letter brought upon its author shall be stated in the words of Lanfranc: “Your heresy was brought to the notice of the Apostolic See in the days of Pope Leo. Whilst he was presiding at a synod, surrounded by a great multitude of bishops, abbots, and pious persons of divers ranks and countries, the letters you had sent to me on the Body and Blood of the Lord were ordered to be read in public. The messenger you had commissioned to deliver them to me, finding I had left Normandy, gave them to some clerks. They apprised themselves of their contents; and, when they discovered that they were not in harmony with the general belief of the Church, were moved by zeal for the cause of God to have them read to others, and to make known their contents to many ... A clerk of Rheims brought them to Rome. After they had been read, and it was clear that you adhered to John the Scot, condemned Paschasius, and held doctrines concerning the Eucharist which were opposed to the common faith, you, who would deprive the Church of Holy Communion, were yourself cut off from communion with the Church”. However, to give him an opportunity to clear himself, Berengarius was summoned to appear before a council to be held by the Pope at Vercelli in September.

The fact that, in the first instance, he had been condemned, as it were, unheard, enabled him meanwhile to pose as a victim to malice. He spoke of the Pope in contemptuous language, calling him sacrilegious; disseminated his doctrines “by means of poor scholars, whom he allured by daily hire”; and denounced those who did not see “eye to eye” with him as blind, or as for the most part incapable of comprehending the matter in hand. Still, he made up his mind to present himself at the council of Vercelli, and went to the king of France, who was also abbot of Tours, to obtain his permission to leave the kingdom. But Henry was alarmed at the growing excitement caused by the spread of the new doctrines; and he was, moreover, as we have seen, under the influence of men who were anxious to limit the power of the Pope in France. He accordingly threw the scholasticus of Tours into prison, and made arrangements to have the affair examined in France.

Meanwhile, as the heresy of Berengarius was still spreading, the book of John Scotus was read and condemned at the council of Vercelli, as was also the doctrine of its latest advocate.

Released from confinement—in all probability not long after the closing of the synod just mentioned—we next find him making a vain attempt to win over to his doctrines the young duke of Normandy (the Conqueror). Vanquished soon after (1051) in a public disputation at Brionne, he was condemned at a council which King Henry caused to assemble at Paris (October 16, 1051). Deoduinus of Liège had written to warn Henry that no good could come of his council unless it were held with the authorization of the Holy See, as it would probably be necessary to condemn Eusebius Bruno, bishop of Angers, also; and “you know”, he wrote, “that a bishop can only be condemned by apostolical authority”. Hence he begged the king not to cite them before him “until the See of Rome has granted you the power of condemning them”. Besides, he concluded, their doctrine is already condemned enough. It is their punishment that should be thought about. Although the council decreed that if Berengarius did not repent, he and his should be seized, and made to retract, or put to death, their resolutions remained a dead letter. Berengarius was safe under the protection of Bishop Bruno and the powerful Geoffrey (II) Martel, count of Anjou, the son of the dreaded Fulk the Black. It was convenient to that noble to defend those in opposition to the Holy See, as he was under sentence of excommunication himself for keeping in prison the bishop of Le Mans.

But the power of Geoffrey was on the wane. He had brought upon himself the enmity of the “stark” William. And so, not to have too many foes, he released bishop Gervase at the end of 1053 or at the beginning of 1054. This he at once made known to the Pope by a letter in which he strove to show that the whole blame of what had occurred between them rested with the bishop, since he personally had done all that lay in his power “not to show himself a rebel to the authority of the Holy See and not to fail in respect to the ecclesiastical dignity”. The letter concluded by a request that the Pope would provide for the interests of the See of Le Mans, inasmuch as Gervase had fled to Normandy as soon as released, and had refused to return to have his case tried even under a safe-conduct. To take further cognisance of this matter, and at the same time to take additional steps with regard to the affair of Berengarius, Leo sent into France his trusted Hildebrand. At a council which he summoned at Tours, Berengarius, whether in fear because abandoned by Geoffrey, or because he was won over by the kind and patient hearing accorded him by the legate, swore, per­chance, it is to be feared, rather with the lips than with the heart, that he professed the general faith of the Church; or, to use his own words, that “after the consecration the bread and wine of the altar are the Body and Blood of Christ”. He was, he also tells us, to have gone to Rome with Hildebrand to justify himself before Leo, when word was brought that that great Pontiff had died. The after history of Berengarius will prove at least that he again changed his mind on the subject of the Holy Eucharist; and this he could the more readily do, as he held the convenient doctrine that, if he had not been properly treated, or if threats had been used against him, he could take an oath and then break it.

During the interval (May to September) between the two councils, Leo was occupied in visiting and seeing to the good order and prosperity of monasteries both in north and in south Italy; in strengthening his temporal authority by bringing to subjection the neighbouring barons (perhaps the adherents of the house of Tusculum); and in receiving princes of certain “foreign nations” who came to him, “as to an apostolic man”, to do him homage. This last item is a very disappointing piece of information, as it would be very interesting to know for certain whence came these strange rulers, whether they were Christian or pagan, Slav, Saracen, or Hungarian. But, unfortunately, no other historical passage can be found which sheds any further sure light on the matter. While, however, it is possible that these embassies may have been in connection with the second expulsion of the Saracens from Sardinia, which took place in this year, and which was the result of the joint action of the Pisans and the Holy See, it seems far more probable that they were from the Hungarians.

Among those with whom Leo had to contend for the temporalities of his see was Hunfrid of Ravenna. Raised to that see by the emperor, and trusting in the support of some of his courtiers, he began to act, as others in his position had sometimes done before him, as though he were the independent temporal as well as the spiritual ruler of his archdiocese. In vain called to account by the Pope, he was at length excommunicated by him at the synod of Vercelli. This resulted in his falling under the displeasure of the emperor, who summoned him to Augsburg to meet the Pope. There he was compelled to restore what he had usurped, and to beg for absolution (February 1051). But, as Leo observed that he had asked for it with scarcely disguised mockery, we are assured by Wibert that he predicted the speedy death which overtook him after he had but just returned to his see. Immediately after the synod of Vercelli, Leo for the second time crossed the Alps, once again to visit Toul for the purpose of solemnly translating the relics of Gerard, bishop of that city, whom he had just canonised at the Roman synod, and to interview the emperor. Crossing the great St. Bernard, and resting on the way at St. Maurice’s at Agaune, at Romainmoutier, at Besançon, and at Langres, he reached Toul soon after the middle of October. As he moved along, he did all that he could, by word and deed and by grant of privileges, to revive the faith of the people, or to improve the status of the monasteries at which he rested. And, as usual, wherever he had passed, order and justice revived.

Arrived at his beloved Toul, he found awaiting him the same enormous crowds of people as at Rheims, and with them various bishops, “as so many columns of the Church”. Among the latter were Ulf, bishop of Dorchester, and George, bishop of the Hungarian See of Colocza, who had come on a special deputation to the Pope. Mindful of what had occurred on a similar occasion at Rheims, Leo decided that the translation should take place at night, and in presence of the monks and clergy only. Between October 20 and 21, they assembled in church, and “in alternate choirs” sang Matins far into the night. Then amid the light of candles and the smoke of incense the Lord Pope, surrounded by bishops, came to see the stone removed which covered the sacred tomb. When the venerable body, more precious than priceless treasure, was exposed to view, it was seen that no corruption had altered the beauty of the face. The closed eyes seemed those of a man who was slumbering in peace; the beard had grown, and full locks of hair hung down on each side of the head. The pontifical vestments were in an equally good state of preservation. The attitude of the body did not so much suggest death, as of one risen from the dead. He appeared to be lying in reposeful expectation of the voice of the angel which was to bid him come forth from his tomb. The limbs, which exhaled an aroma more fragrant than that of nectar, were found to be almost intact. The nerves and muscles still held the joints together; but the flesh seemed to present but little more than lines of dust. The precious remains were wrapped with all the care imaginable in linen cloths, and exposed to the veneration of the faithful, who came flocking in from every side. On the following day (October 22) the solemn feast of the saint was celebrated; and the Pope consecrated an altar ... where the memory of St. Gerard was honoured”

Soon after the beginning of the new year, Leo left Lorraine to go to meet the emperor. The birth of a son and heir (afterwards to be the famous Henry IV, who was to cause so much trouble in the world) had brought joy to the heart of Henry the Black, and he showed himself very gracious to the Pope. He restored, at his request, to its rightful owners, land alienated by the crown, and, as we have seen, made Hunfrid of Ravenna submit to him. The relations between the Pope and the emperor at this time seem to have been cordial in the extreme. But one cannot help wondering whether Leo was satisfied with the imperial policy with regard to the Hungarians, or if he expressed his disapproval of Henry’s personal immoralities? No means, however, exist of gratifying this laudable curiosity. Still, it is far from unlikely that he was displeased that the efforts which the emperor was making to subdue the Hungarians left him unable to undertake anything against the Normans, whose cruelties and successes in south Italy were filling him with sorrow and apprehension.

After celebrating at Augsburg the feast of the Purification with the emperor and a large number of bishops and princes, Leo and Henry parted with every demonstration of friendship. The Pope seems to have returned direct to Rome. When he arrived there, his first act was to appoint a successor to himself in the See of Toul. Whether the papal finances had now so improved that he could afford to do without the revenues of Toul, or whether his stay there had shown him the need of a bishop on the spot, he at any rate appointed his chancellor, Udo, to succeed him in his first see.

His next important act in Rome was to hold the annual Paschal synod. At this assembly judgment was passed on certain episcopal offenders; a dispute between the bishop of Sabina and the monastery of Farfa was settled in favour of the latter; it was decreed that monks were to be anathematized who would not return to their monasteries, and the question of reordinations was discussed. The matter had already been brought up twice for discussion, and this time the Pope begged the bishops to pray that God would reveal what should be decreed on the subject. Leo’s request resulted in the appearance of two pamphlets: one by Cardinal Humbert against the validity of ordinations conferred by simoniacal bishops, and the other by St. Peter Damian, in which he showed that bishops are always bishops, and that, as long as they used the correct form, their ordinations were valid. The doctrine enunciated by the saint is that of the Catholic Church today.

Scarcely had Leo returned to Rome, when envoys came to him from Benevento, begging him to come to their city, probably because they were harassed either by the princes (Pandulf III and Landulf VI) whom they had expelled (1050), or by the Normans, or by both. With a view to making himself thoroughly acquainted with the state of affairs, and to ascertaining how far his presence was really desired by the people, he sent thither as legates Dominic, patriarch of Aquileia, and Cardinal Humbert. They found that the people were really anxious to place themselves under papal rule. They proved their sincerity by taking an oath of fealty to the Pope, by formally making over their city to him by deed, and by sending to Rome twenty of the most distinguished of their number as hostages. Satisfied, accordingly, of their good faith, Leo, passing through Capua and his well-loved Monte Cassino, entered Benevento in July to receive in person the homage of its citizens Splendid was the reception accorded him both by the native inhabitants of the city, and by the strangers, Jews and Greeks, within their gates. All came forth from the city to greet him, singing the customary “laudes” in their respective languages.

Full of the stories of Norman violence and cruelty which the Beneventans poured into his ears, Leo left them and went on to Salerno to interview in their behalf its prince, Guaimar. All his efforts, however, for the amelioration of the condition of south Italy were spoilt by the people themselves. Urged on, not, as some without any grounds have imagined, by Argyrus, the son of the patriot Melus, who had now taken service with the Greeks, and had been named Catapan by their emperor, but by a fierce longing for revenge, the Lombards of Apulia planned a general massacre of the Normans on a given day. Their vile design was accomplished, but only in part. Unfortunately, however, among the slain was Drogo, one of the best of the Norman chiefs, who had been recognized as their leader by Henry the Black, and who had promised the Pope to defend Benevento. If the Normans had been cruel oppressors of the native population before the murder of Drogo and their other companions who fell by the daggers of the infuriated Lombards, they were, not unnaturally, much more cruel after it. Feeling powerless to effect any good, Leo, with a heavy heart, returned towards Rome.

Never losing an opportunity of effecting a reform by a personal inspection, he went round by Subiaco, as he had heard of some scandals of which its abbot had been guilty. But before word reached the monks that the Pontiff was ascending the wild gorge in which is situated “the cradle of the Order of St. Benedict, patriarch of the monks of the West”, the guilty man had taken to flight. Replacing him by the Frank Humbert, who, until he alienated himself from the curia of the Roman See, did so much to increase the glory of the monastery, Leo then turned his attention to the temporalities of the monastery. Finding that the inhabitants of the little town of Subiaco (the Sublacenses) were endeavouring to push their claims against the monastery by a number of forged documents, he caused “the greater part of them to be burnt in his presence”. Then once again confirming the monastery in its possessions, he proclaimed: “By the power of God Almighty this spot is almost miraculous, and this monastery is the head of all the monasteries of Italy”.

Between the months of October 1051 and May 1052, we find Leo now in Rome and now in one of the adjoining cities. During that period he was engaged not only in the normal work of elevating everywhere the state of religion, but in receiving appeals for help against the Normans, and in endeavouring to induce some of the powerful ones of the earth to grant him assistance against them. The Normans were the great cross of Leo’s pontificate, just as the Lombards had been the heavy trial of the life of Gregory the Great. On behalf of the Greeks, Argyrus sent messenger after messenger to implore his cooperation against them. The people of Apulia sent secret envoys to him, entreating him to bring an army to help them. “The Normans”, they said, “had become worse than ever… Fortified cities can scarcely hold out against them ... A miserable death is impending over each and all of us”. Their mutilated bodies furnished terrible evidence to the truth of their words. They were suffering at the hands of the cruel Normans what the English were soon to have to endure from the same hard conquerors. “Many were the men who came to the Pope from Apulia, whose sightless eyes and amputated limbs told the sad story of Norman barbarity”. It is not difficult to imagine how deeply the tender heart of Leo was affected by the contemplation of so much misery. He wrote to the emperor, to the king of France, to first one ruler and then another, to beg them to come and free the land “from the malice of the Normans. But, as some feared the power of the Normans, and as others were y well disposed towards them, no one paid heed to the Pope’s prayers”.

Failing to obtain the aid of another's sword, Leo resolved to try once more the effect of his own words. This time he took with him, as his “envoy of peace”, his friend the saintly Halinard, archbishop of Lyons; for he expected much help from his great linguistic attainments. But though he visited one great city after another (May to July), Capua, Naples, Benevento, Salerno, it was all to no purpose. The princes would not combine against the enemy who was soon to destroy them all, and the Normans, who had resolved to be masters of south Italy, would not stop their aggrandizements. As a last resource, Leo determined to raise an army and attack the intruders himself. In a letter sent some time afterwards (January 1054) to the Greek emperor, Constantine Monomachus, he explained at some length the motives which urged him to come to this strong decision:

“When, looking round with that anxious solicitude with which I have to watch over all the churches, I saw a lawless and alien people raging with incredible and unheard-of fury, and with more than heathen impiety, against the churches of God, butchering Christians, and sometimes putting them to death with new and horrible tortures, sparing neither children, old men, nor even weak women, and, making no distinction between sacred and profane, plundering, burning, and levelling with the ground the basilicas of the saints, I very frequently remonstrated with them. I besought them to amend; I preached to them; I pressed them in season and out of season; I threatened them with the vengeance of both God and men. But, as the wise man saith, ‘No man can correct whom God hath despised’; nor is the foolish man corrected ... Hence, ready not only to spend worldly goods to succour the sheep of Christ, but to be spent myself, I thought it best, as a protest against their wickedness, or, if needs be, for the purpose of repressing their contumacy, to gather together forces from every quarter. For I was mindful of the saying of the Apostle, ‘that princes bear not the sword in vain, but are avengers to execute wrath upon him that doth evil, and are not a terror to the good work but to the evil’; and that kings and dukes are sent by ‘God for the punishment of evil-doers’.”  

Hungary. 1052.

At this juncture the cry of another distressed people, rose up to the Pope. Envoys reached him from Andrew, king of Hungary. Reminding him that their country was subject to him, they implored him to come and procure for them from the emperor the blessings of peace. Leo looked on the summons as a heaven-sent opportunity. He would go and persuade Henry not to molest the Hungarians, who only wished to be left to themselves, but to turn his arms against men bent, at any cost to others, on forcing forward their own interests. Leaving Halinard behind him in Rome to await his return, he set out for Germany (July 1052), and found the emperor encamped before Brezisburg, on the Maraha (Pressburg on the March), one of the border towns of Hungary.

To regain the throne from which undue favouring of the foreigner had caused him to be expelled, Peter, the successor of St. Stephen, had placed Hungary under the suzerainty of the emperor. This led to his second expulsion by an indignant people, and to the frequent invasion of their country by Henry in order to wring from their new ruler, King Andrew (1046-1061), the submission promised by Peter. To induce the emperor to leave him in undisturbed possession of his throne, Andrew endeavoured to secure the intercession of the Pope on his behalf, and, as we have seen, sent George of Colocza to meet him when he crossed the Alps in 1050. Leo was in a delicate position. True to the noble papal idea of the empire, he was anxious to increase its influence; and yet, on the other hand, the relations between Hungary and the Papacy naturally filled him with a warm sympathy for this, the youngest among the kingdoms of Christendom. However, he came to the conclusion that the tribute promised to Henry by the Hungarians ought to be paid, and, to induce them to pay it, he sent them various legates. Though one of these envoys was no other than the young but already famous Hugh, abbot of Cluny, and though his biographer assures us that he succeeded in his mission, it would seem that no more than a mere momentary improvement in the relations between the two disputants had hitherto resulted from the strenuous efforts of the Pope. The Hungarians, indeed, had agreed to pay tribute, if the emperor would accept the situation and leave them with the king in whom they trusted. But, “disdainfully refusing to accept the conditions offered by King Andrew”, Henry had made an unsuccessful invasion of the country in 1051. His failure only made him more than ever determined to be master of the country. He prepared for another and greater expedition. In despair Andrew begged (1052) the Pope to come and save him from the impending blow. Leo, as we have seen, at once accepted the invitation. But again were his efforts in the cause of peace unavailing. The party at the court which was opposed to him persuaded the emperor not to listen to his moderate counsels; and another success in the field gained by the Hungarians rendered Andrew no longer disposed to offer any terms at all. Nor could even a threat of excommunication on the part of the Pope induce him to promise again the concessions he had formerly tendered. “And so”, concludes Wibert’s narrative of these events, “the Roman republic lost its rule over the kingdom of Hungary, and to this day sees with sorrow its borders harried with fire and sword”.

In company with the Pope, Henry withdrew from the Hungarian frontier to Ratisbon (October 1052), having acquired from his expedition “neither honour nor material advantage”; and, if we read in Herman that in the following year peace was concluded at the diet of Tribur between Henry and the Hungarians, we must take care not to believe that hostilities between them ceased for any appreciable time.

During the four months that Leo remained in Germany after the failure of his efforts to bring to a conclusion the differences between the empire and Hungary, he spent much of his time in going about from place to place—for his goodly and saintly presence was everywhere desired—consecrating churches or altars, translating or verifying relics, granting privileges, and settling disputes, as well secular as ecclesiastical.

But, of course, he did not forget that the Norman question was one of the chief motives that had brought him into Germany. He had many discussions with the emperor on the subject; and at length the matter was brought up for settlement before a great assembly of the bishops and nobles of the empire at Worms (Christmas 1052). As the outcome of the deliberations which ensued, two important decisions were arrived at. In view, no doubt, of the ancient imperial donations, and of the recent acts of submission on the part of the Beneventans themselves, Benevento was declared to belong to the Pope, and it was agreed to furnish him with the troops necessary to render that donation effective. On his side Leo consented to surrender his feudal rights in connection with Fulda and Bamberg.

Thinking that the poor Apulians were already delivered from their oppressors, Leo took a grateful farewell of the emperor, and, feeling strong in the army which accompanied him, advanced towards Rome. But his joy was short-lived. Deep in the counsels of the emperor was Gebhard, bishop of Eichstadt, who, as Victor II, was destined to succeed Leo in the supreme pontificate, and who is described as “a man of the greatest prudence, and a master of state-craft”. Whether his knowledge of history had taught him that the fever of Italy, if not its armed forces, had ever proved fatal to the German expeditions in that country, or whether, wholly disapproving of the Pope’s policy, he thought it desirable that the Normans should be allowed to exhaust themselves with their wars against the Greeks and the other powers, in south Italy before their subjection by the empire was attempted, at any rate, as the result of his advice, the vassals of the empire were forbidden to leave Germany.

Consequently, when he entered Italy, Leo was only accompanied by a small troop, consisting of his relations and friends, with their dependants and of a mixed company of adventurers, many of whom were attracted to the expedition not by the goodness of the cause, but, as always happens in such cases, by the hope of gain or of escaping from the hands of justice at home. Where Leo had had many thousands he had now but a few hundreds. No wonder that, when he reflected that he had failed to accomplish nearly everything which had brought him into Germany, he felt down-hearted. No wonder, too, that his lowness of spirits caused him to dream uncanny dreams in which his biographer sees a divine premonition of the misfortunes which were to cloud the closing years of his pontificate. He seemed to see himself sheltering within the ample folds of his cope his friends who were flying to him for protection, and then finding them wounded, and that his garments were all stained with their blood.

Leo’s dream was destined to be realised almost to its details first at Mantua, and then at the battle of Civitella. Never for a moment losing sight of the one supreme object of his life, the reform of the Church, he summoned the bishops of certain parts of north Italy to meet him in council at Mantua (February 21, 1053). If there was one country where, at this period, ecclesiastical discipline was more relaxed than any other, that country was Lombardy. Accordingly, on the present occasion some of its bishops, “fearing Leo’s just severity”, took steps for rendering any reforming action on his part impossible. Whilst they were sitting solemnly in synod inside the church, their armed retainers fell upon the followers of the Pope, who were standing in fancied security in front of the building. The appearance of the Pope himself on the steps of the church, whither he had promptly betaken himself when the noise of the tumult reached him, did but add to the turmoil. Many of his unarmed attendants were slain, and others were driven away from the church, so that they might not take refuge therein. Stones and darts flew in all directions. Some even fell round the person of the saintly Pontiff himself, actually wounding some of those who crowded round him. Though the riot was with no little difficulty at length quelled, the object of those who had brought it about was gained. The council ended in nothing; and on the following day the authors of the disturbance were pardoned by the over-indulgent Pope, “lest he might seem to be punishing them from a desire of vengeance”.

Sick at heart, no doubt, but with spirit yet unbroken, Leo returned to Rome by Ravenna and Rimini. About Easter-time (April 1053) he held his usual Paschal synod. Except that he therein confirmed the privileges of the See of Grado, we know not what business was transacted during its session. Whether the Norman question came up before it for discussion or not, it is certain that it must have been occupying the Pope’s attention ever since he returned from Germany. The situation had been daily growing worse. Guaimar IV of Salerno, who had had, perhaps, some influence with the Normans, had, like many other Italian princes of this period, been assassinated (June 1052), and while the tyranny of the strangers grew daily more oppressive, the resentment of the people, not only of Apulia, but of the territories of the Roman Church, became hourly fiercer. A delegate of the Pope was ill-treated and robbed not far from Rome itself, though he explained his character and “invoked the protection of the Apostolic See”. Complaining to Leo of the barbarity displayed towards him, he wrote: “The hatred of the Italians to the Normans has become so intense and deep-rooted that it is almost impossible for one of them to journey in Italy, even if he is on a pilgrimage, without exposing himself to the danger of being assaulted, robbed, stripped naked, cast into a dungeon, and of there dying miserably after a long confinement”. Leo felt that the only remedy for all these evils was the sword. He had exhausted every other means, and had got nothing from the wily Normans but words. He accordingly entered into negotiations with various princes; received promises of considerable support, and in the May of 1053 left Rome for the South. He was destined to return to it in a year only to die.

Passing as usual by Monte Cassino, Leo moved forward to Benevento, gathering recruits as he went along. He was joined by Adenulfus, duke of Gaeta; Lando, count of Aquino; Landulf, count of Teano, and “many others both of low and high degree”. But the object of the Pope was, if possible, rather to overawe the Normans into complete submission by a display of great military force than really to subdue them by its actual use. For “I desired not the destruction of the Normans nor of any other men; but I desired that those for whom the thought of the judgments of God had no terrors might be brought to repentance by the fear of man”. Hence, instead of advancing south against Melfi, the centre of the Norman power, he turned north with the object of meeting Argyrus, the Greek Catapan, then residing at Siponto, and of securing his active cooperation. By the 10th of June he had reached a place called Sale (perhaps Salcito), on the river Biferno. Then, turning south, he crossed, a few days later, the river Fortore, which then, as now, through much of its course, served as the western boundary of Apulia. He crossed it just above its junction with the little stream known as the Staina, and identified with the Astagnum of the annals of Benevento. When the papal army encamped on the rivulet, it was not far from the little town of Civitas, now a heap of ruins, and was on the direct road to Siponto.

It was, however, no part of the idea of the Normans to allow the Pope to effect a junction with the Catapan. They succeeded in crushing Argyrus before he joined the Pope. Then they marched north, and at length stood between the papal forces and the town of Siponto, separated only by a small hill from the Pope’s army. Up to this point all is clear enough; but from the strongly partisan character of the sources upon which we have to draw, the truth with regard to the subsequent events is not so easily discovered. There is doubt with regard even to the relative strength of the two armies, and as to the character of the negotiations between them which preceded the battle. Numerically the papal forces were perhaps the stronger, but they were much inferior both in unity, discipline, and equipment. The Pope’s German contingent, while well armed and brave, despised their allies and the Normans alike. However numerous were the rest of his troops, they were short of weapons; and, in their want of discipline, lacked even that courage which it imparts. The Normans, on the other hand, were fellow-countrymen, were inured to war, were well equipped, and were, to a large extent, mounted. If the English military leaders of the year 1053 had studied the battle of Civitella, they would have seen the advantages of cavalry, and might have avoided the disaster of Senlac (Hastings, 1066).

Neither side was anxious to begin hostilities. The Pope was really wishful to avoid bloodshed, and was sufficiently skilled as a commander to mistrust the fighting quality of most of his forces. The Normans were Christian enough not to desire to fight with their spiritual father, and were, moreover, apparently misinformed as to the numbers of their opponents. They therefore sent to treat for peace on condition that they might retain, under the suzerainty of Leo, what they had already won by the sword, and that the Pope would not furnish any help “to their enemies (no doubt the Greeks) who were still in Apulia”. In this sham offer of peace we may recognise the wiliness of the Norman chiefs, Humfrey, and Richard, count of Aversa, but especially of Robert, surnamed Guiscard, another of the Hauteville family, whose renown was destined to eclipse that of his brothers, and who received his nickname of Wisehead “because in craft neither Cicero nor the wily Ulysses was a match for him”.

Delusive as the terms were, the Pope was disposed to accept them; but his tall and powerful countrymen, either because they were clever enough to see that no real peace was intended by the Normans, or, what is more likely, because they despised their slighter frames, would listen to no conditions. “If they will not leave the shores of Italy, let them taste of German steel”, they said. It was to no purpose that Leo endeavoured to moderate their haughty self-reliance. And so, “with more zeal than knowledge”, as Bruno of Segni thought likely, he gave his word for war. But realizing only too well that his Italian troops had not the courage of his countrymen, he endeavoured to fire them with a little of his own. “Is it not better to live a life full of honour and glory for one day, and then, if need be, to die, than to lead a lengthy but wretched existence beneath the feet of a foe? Rouse ye, then! Defend your fields, your vineyards, and your homes, your wives, your children, nay, your very selves! Am I asking you to fight that you may win what is another’s? No! It is for your country that I bid you fight. If any man should fall this day, it will be well for him. He will be received into Abraham’s bosom”. With these words ringing in their ears, after they had confessed their sins, and received Holy Communion, the papal army prepared for battle, while the Pope, unwillingly indeed, retired to the town of Civitas or Civitella.

The battle of Civitella. June 18,1053

The conflict opened by the Normans unexpectedly, seizing the hill which separated the two armies. Down this they rushed. Checked at first, they succeeded by a ruse in isolating the Germans. Then, like sheep, the Italians fled incontinently, and the Normans surrounded the devoted little company of Teutons. Though hemmed in on every side by horsemen, they refused to yield, and the fight began in earnest. Sweeping their long sharp swords around them, as did the men of Kent at Hastings their battle-axes, the heroic Germans long repelled the fierce onslaught of the Norman knights with their lances. “Sweat and blood flowed in streams”. But for every Norman that fell there were a dozen to take his place, while the doomed circle of their foes waned at every moment. At length, when nearly all of them had fallen where they stood, the Norman horsemen, sweeping the remnant before them, rode hot for Civitella. “Having slain the sheep, they longed for the blood of the shepherd”. Improvising engines of war, they poured into the place showers of stones and darts; and, firing buildings in the neighbourhood of the town, threatened it with complete destruction.

Fearing lest the town should be burnt to the ground, Leo resolved to give himself up to the foe, and with the cross before him approached the gate of the city, already half burnt through. When lo! “as though caught by the wind”, the furious flames veered round, and rushed towards the Normans. The people, who a moment before had, in their terror, thought of surrendering the Pope to his enemies, now implored him not to trust himself to them; and the Normans, threatening to level the town to the earth on the morrow, had to draw off for the night.

At dawn Leo sent to offer to yield himself into the hands of his victorious foes; for, said he, “My own life is not dearer to me than are those of my friends whom ye have slain”. The blood-fury of the Normans had passed away, and they replied by making their usual promises of submission to him. When he actually came among them, they lavished upon him every demonstration of respect. The common soldiers prostrated themselves on the ground before him; and the chiefs, with their silken surcoats stained with the dust of battle, saluted him on bended knee. In tears they promised him that they would themselves be his soldiers in place of the slain.

We are next told how the broken-hearted Pontiff went to the field of battle, and how, while praying for the dead, he kept calling out by name those who had been specially dear to him, “as though to lessen the grief in his heart”. For two days he superintended the burial of the slain in a ruined church that stood hard by. Later on the Normans afterwards renovated it in splendid style, and attached to it a community of monks. They were anticipating the founding of Battle Abbey.

Escorted by the Normans, and “with a mortal wound in his heart”, Leo returned to Benevento. The news had preceded him that “the soldiers of Christ and the army of the saints had been overcome”. In mournful procession the whole people came out to meet him, and with loud cries of grief escorted him within their walls. He remained with them for some eight months, and only left them to die.

In his own time there were many who condemned Leo for his appeal to the sword, and their views have been endorsed by many since. Herman of Reichenau was of opinion that his countrymen were vanquished “by a secret judgment of God, either because so great a Pontiff ought to have contended for spiritual treasures, and not to have fought for the goods which perish; or because, to war against the wicked, he led with him men just as wicked—men eager for plunder or anxious to escape justice”. To the same effect wrote St. Peter Damian, and, after him, naturally enough, the Norman, Romuald of Salerno. But if men are agreed that to commit a cause to the decision of the God of Battles is sometimes justifiable, it would seem that there can be but little doubt, after what has been said of the causes which drove him to draw the sword, that Leo was pre-eminently justified in so doing in the present instance.

One conclusion, at any rate, regarding this battle is certain. The Popes ultimately reaped more profit from Leo’s defeat than they would have done had the battle resulted in a victory for him. Among the unexpected results of the fight at Civitella was that the Papacy secured in the Normans very formidable allies. We have seen how, after the battle, they professed themselves the Pope’s soldiers, that is, they acknowledged him as their feudal superior. Under the circumstances, Leo had no alternative but for the time tacitly to accept the situation. Malaterra, indeed, even states that he not only pardoned the Normans their offences, and gave them his blessing, but “granted to be held in fief of St. Peter, of himself, and of his successors, all the territory which they had already acquired or might hereafter acquire in the direction of Calabria and Sicily”. Though the unsupported testimony of this Norman monk is not regarded as evidence enough to make his assertion credible, the action of the Normans after Civitella certainly laid the foundation of the relation of “lord and man” which afterwards existed between them and the Popes. But as to Leo himself, so far was he from ratifying their conquests, that he did not cease making efforts to oust them from them.

As another result of the battle, Wibert wishes us to believe what he gives as a fact, viz. that the Normans henceforth treated the native population more humanely, and ever after showed themselves faithful servants of the venerable Pope. In this remark there is truth, for, after Civitella, opposition to them largely ceased, at least throughout most of Apulia. And in 1060 it is recorded  that “all Calabria, in the presence of Guiscard, the duke, and Roger, his brother (yet another of the Hautevilles who had come to Italy in the meanwhile), settled down in peace and quiet”.

Arguing from Leo’s prolonged sojourn at Benevento, and from a passage of a German chronicle, it has been thought that the Normans compelled him to stay there. There does not seem, however, any reason to come to this conclusion. After the Normans had escorted him to the city, they seem to have marched away; and there is nothing to show that he could not have left it at any time. Having experienced the respect the Normans had for his person, he may have remained to prevent them from attacking the city, which they did immediately on his death. And, later on, it may easily have been the unsatisfactory state of his health which detained him. The disaster of Civitella had inflicted a wound on his tender heart which was fatally to undermine his health.

However all this may have been, feeling no doubt that he had not long to live, he redoubled his austerities. Clad in a hair-shirt, he took his rest on a carpet spread on the ground, and used a stone for his pillow. Most of the night he passed in prayer, and during the day he devoted to the Psalter, and to even excessive alms-deeds, the time he could economise from the cares of his position. And these were greater than ever. For while he was at Benevento, sick in mind, if not at first in body, he was engaged in transactions with Constantinople which were to end in the final religious separation of the East and the West; and, through the increased political isolation of the Eastern Roman Empire thereby effected, in the fall of that city, and in the profound modification of the history not only of Europe, but of the world to the present day.

The Extinction of the Churches in North Africa

But before we touch on these momentous events, we have something to say in connection with the decaying Church in Africa—a church of which we have heard no word since the days of Sylvester II. Feeble as were at this period, beneath the dead hand of Mahometanism, the wretched remnants of the once glorious Church of Africa, they were rendering themselves still more helpless by internal dissensions. Of the five bishops who were now sufficient for the needs of the once populous African Church, one of them, the bishop of Gummi, or Gummasa, in the old province of Byzacena, usurped the metropolitan rights which belonged to Thomas, the archbishop of Carthage, then a collection of “fine, wealthy, and populous villages” located in different parts of the vast ruins of the ancient city. The archimandrite, Nil Doxopater, who lived at the court of King Roger of Sicily in the twelfth century, alludes to this usurpation when he tells us that “the Roman patriarch obtained the province of Byzacena, in which Carthage now is, and Mauritania”. In letters now lost, Thomas himself and two of his suffragans, Peter and John, appealed to the Pope. In his reply to Thomas (December 17,1053), after bewailing the terrible shrinking of the Church in Africa, Leo expresses his pleasure that in its difficulties it turns, as it ought to turn, to the Roman Church. He then lays down that, “after the Roman Pontiff the first archbishop and first metropolitan of all Africa is the bishop of Carthage” (who alone in Africa is wont to receive the pallium from the Apostolic See), and that the bishop of Gummi has no right to consecrate bishops or summon councils without the consent of his metropolitan. But he also lays down at the same time that a general council cannot be celebrated without the consent of the bishop of Rome; nor, without it, can final sentence be pronounced in the case of the deposition of any bishop.

From Leo’s letter to Peter and John it appears that his zeal for reform had spread even to Africa, and that at his orders the sad remnant of the African Church had met together in council. He exhorts them to do the like every year; reminds them that the bishop of Carthage is the metropolitan of Africa, and that “he cannot lose a privilege which he has once received from the Holy Roman and Apostolic See, but must keep it to the end of the world ... whether Carthage remain in ruins or ever again rise gloriously from them”. In both letters he affirms that it is the teaching of the canons “that all the greater and more complex cases arising in any of the churches must be referred for settlement to the holy and chief See of Peter and his successors”.

The latter letter is remarkable, as it contains the first direct appeal by a Pope to the False Decretals. And it may be noted how natural it was that Leo should have been the first to quote them. They were the decrees with which, as bishop of Toul, he was familiar, and their binding force was everywhere acknowledged. With the Roman canonical tradition he was unacquainted, and, even had there been any need of his making himself familiar with it, he had been too much occupied to make good his short­comings in this direction. Hence, when questioned by the African bishops as to the rights of metropolitans, it was only to be expected that he would answer in the words of the decrees “of our venerable predecessors, Clement, Anacletus, Anicetus, and the others”, with which he was familiar, and which, with the rest of the Western world, he regarded as genuine.

This faint light from the feeble African Church was promptly obscured, and some time had to elapse before another flickering ray from it pierced the surrounding gloom, and showed that it had not been quite extinguished.

 

The final rupture of the East and West

By way of introduction to the important events concerning the definite suspension of spiritual communion between the East and the West which we have now to chronicle, a few words on the causes which led to so disastrous an issue will be to the point. Passing over such powerfully predisposing circumstances as differences of race and language, we may fix as the beginning of the Greek schism the transference by Constantine the Great of the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople. If that event enabled the Popes to exercise their spiritual headship of the Church with greater freedom, and facilitated their acquisition of temporal power which is necessary to secure them that freedom, it also ensured the ultimate breaking away of the Eastern Church from the Western.

During the first three centuries of the Christian era, every shred of ecclesiastical history singles out Rome as the chief authoritative centre in the Church. It is impossible to point to any see that then stood out as a rival to its universal authority. But after the establishment of the “New Rome” by the Bosphorus, a rival is easily detected. Constantine, as is well known, gave all bishops large civic powers. Hence self-interest or business naturally brought many of them into immediate contact with the emperor. He formed a number of them into a sort of permanent synod ever at his beck; and some of them, of course, obtained considerable power over him. The influence exerted over Constantine the Great in the matter of the Arian heresy by Eusebius of Caesarea in particular has caused him to be marked out as the father of the Greek schism.

Obviously the bishop who came most into contact with the emperor was the bishop of Constantinople. His influence at court soon fired his ambition. And the emperor, both for the sake of being attended by the greatest dignitaries, and because he correctly judged that the more the power possessed by one whom he could make his creature, the more he would have himself, favoured his advance. After the time of Constantine, too, we find mention of the rule in the Church, first of the three great patriarchs (Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria), and then of the five (the same, with the addition of Jerusalem and Constantinople); as though the kingdom, Christ came to found on earth was to be an oligarchy. At any rate, under one pretext or other, the patriarch of Constantinople never lost an opportunity of pushing himself in front of his Oriental brethren, whose power was also woefully reduced by the conquest of the Saracens. Before the ninth century his spiritual position in the East had become paramount Meanwhile, in the West, the influence of the Roman Pontiffs had greatly increased by the conversion of the Teutonic nations in the seventh and eighth centuries. Often, indeed, before had Pope of Rome and patriarch of Constantinople had serious differences; often before had the bishop of Old Rome been compelled to excommunicate the bishop of New Rome for heresy; but it was in the days of Photius that the East and the West, as such, fairly confronted each other. The astute patriarch of Constantinople, in his attack on Pope Nicholas, made use of the lever of racial feeling—a lever of the most contemptible material, but always the handiest and most effective, if applied judiciously. To win the sympathy of the learned, Photius strove to show that the Latin Fathers were at variance with the Greek on the abstruse question of the Descent of the Holy Ghost; and, to catch the ignorant and unreflecting, he had no difficulty in establishing that the Latins differed from the Greeks in many points of liturgical practice, and in some secondary deductions of dogmatic teaching. It was the Latins who were endeavouring to corrupt the Church; it was for the Greeks to save it. This evil seed was sown on soil ready to receive it; and, though Photius and his schism died, it remained in the ground ready to burst forth into renewed life under conditions in any way favourable.

Despite some trifling disagreements, however, harmony reigned between Rome and Constantinople after Photius ceased to be its patriarch; and once more was the supremacy of the former see acknowledged by the latter. The Popes’ names appeared on the diptychs of the Eastern Churches; and though it was generally known during this period that diverse liturgical practices and customs obtained in the East and West, the greatest teachers in the latter Church correctly declared that they were of absolutely no moment. Certainly when Michael Cerularius succeeded to the patriarchal throne of Constantinople (March 25, 1042), there was every sign of peace and communion between the two Churches. The Latins had churches at Constantinople, and there were monasteries of Latin monks in the Greek Empire, and even in Constantinople itself, and they were in full communion with its ecclesiastical authorities. Writing to the Latin abbot and monks of the monastery of St. Mary at Constantinople, St. Peter Damian reminds them that, though in a foreign country, they are in “the bosom of Holy Church ... and that where there is the one rule of the true faith and a good life, slight differences (of forms and customs) and a diversity of tongues are of no account”. Parts of the service, too, in Greek churches were said in Latin.

In the West, on the other hand, there were monasteries of Greeks under the protection of Latin bishops. Those in Rome were under the patronage of the Pope. The princes of the West sent monetary assistance to Greek monasteries in the East. Pilgrims from the West, who in the beginning of this century crowded in great numbers through Constantinople to Palestine, were invariably treated by the Greeks as in full ecclesiastical communion with themselves. Every fact, indeed, that bears on the subject goes to show that up to 1042 there was no tendency to schism in the Church among the people. It was brought about by ambition and politics, in which, as usual, the interests of the people were neglected. Not only, too, was there religious peace between the two races during the period in question, but between their spiritual chiefs there was at least official communion. The Popes continued to approve of the professions of faith duly sent them by the Eastern patriarchs, whilst they on their side regarded it as needful to send notice of their enthronization to the See of Peter, and to shelter their own prestige under this high authority.

But on the advent to power of Michael Cerularius, “all the fountains of the great deep were broken up”, and the deluge of passions he let loose has not yet subsided. Although it is certain that he was one of those ecclesiastics whom the patriarch Veccos afterwards stigmatised as men who disturbed the peace of the Church by their worldly intrigues, it is not altogether easy to form a correct judgment on his character. In any effort to do so, we are largely dependent on Psellus, and upon two of his writings, both of which, from their very nature, are liable to supply highly coloured portraits; and which, in the. present instance, equally naturally, furnish pictures showing quite different features. The documents are first the public indictment of Cerularius, drawn up by Psellus after the former’s fall (1059), then a funeral oration pronounced (c. 1062) by the very same man a few years after the patriarch’s death (December 17, 1059). Still, in much that he advances regarding the patriarch, Psellus has the support of other authorities. In what follows that only will be set down which seems indubitable.

The powerful mainspring which kept in full action the consuming energies of the aspiring spirit of Michael Cerularius was his fixed resolve not to be second. “I will not serve” was his motto. Born of a senatorial family, he was blessed with a good father and mother; and we read of the assiduity with which his father used to impress upon him to be circumspect, not to make friends of casual acquaintances, and to love religion. Perhaps his subsequent haughty, “touch-me-not” attitude and his over­weening pride may be traced to his having pushed too far the former portion of his father’s advice. The means of the very best education were placed at his disposal, and he soon manifested a taste for serious studies, for logic, philosophy, natural science, and theology. His love of natural science, however, seems to have been rather a love of the marvellous, and led him to consort with astrologers, seekers after the, philosopher’s stone, and hypnotisers.

In his early years he does not seem to have felt any inclination to devote himself to the service of the Church, but began life by attaching himself to the court. Love of power at once took hold of him. He would himself be emperor. It was not long before he found an opportunity of trying to gratify his evil ambition.

The last descendants of the family of Basil the Macedonian were three sisters. Of these the youngest, Zoe, after reigning with one husband, Romanus (d. 1034), was now on the throne with her second, Michael IV, the Paphlagonian (1034-1041). His tyranny made him many enemies. With his brother and many other notables, Cerularius entered into a conspiracy against him. The plot was discovered, and the brothers were exiled. The suicide of his brother, who was unable to endure the hardships to which he was subjected, had precisely the same effect upon Michael as the death by lightning of a companion had upon Martin Luther. Both became monks, but when they put on the lowly garb of the cloister, neither of them clothed himself with the lowly, retiring spirit which becomes a monk. On the death of the Paphlagonian, his nephew, Michael V (1041-1042), possessed himself of the empire, and granted an amnesty by which Cerularius profited. But the people were true to the Macedonian dynasty, and rose in revolt. Michael V was deprived of his eyes, and Zoe, called again to the throne, took to herself a third husband in the person of Constantine. For this pur­pose she recalled him from the exile into which Michael IV had sent him for treason. To emphasise his views on the Paphlagonian, Constantine signalised his advent to power by receiving into favour men whom his enemy had condemned. Among others who benefited by this course of action was Michael Cerularius, who soon found himself once again in a fair way to satisfy his unholy thirst for power; for Constantine, to attach so strong a man to his person, at once began to push forward his interests. Over his sovereign, feeble in body, weak in mind, easy-going, extravagant, and lustful, Cerularius gained complete control; and, as we shall see further on, he had no scruple in rousing the people against his benefactor, when he did not find him sufficiently subservient to his will. The third time he raised his hand against his sovereign (Michael VI, Stratioticus), he succeeded (1056) in driving him from his throne into a monastery. But at last his vaulting ambition had over-leaped itself. In Michael's successor (Isaac Comnenus) he found he had fashioned not a tool, but a master. Before he could strike him down, he found himself in exile and in prison (1059), and was only saved by a speedy death (December 17, 1059) from public degradation, or worse.

Such was the man who, on March 25, 1042, became patriarch of Constantinople, and, if we are to believe the indictment, proceeded to lead a life that befitted neither a monk nor a bishop of the Holy City. Psellus gives a graphic picture of a morning at the patriarch’s palace: “Its halls are never for a moment quiet. First one comes in and then another. At one moment it is a dyer, at another a skilled artificer; then come a vendor of spices, a water-carrier, a knife-grinder, and a confectioner; presently appear a goldsmith and a lapidary. One brings one thing to show him another and another. One offers him a costly cup of translucent crystal, a second a vase of Thericles, both enhanced by new epithets and a wealth of phraseology. Afterwards it is the turn of the fish­mongers. Anon he is asked to listen to silver blackbirds and golden blackcap-warblers pouring forth their peculiar notes by means of some pneumatic contrivance. Then are presented to his view scent-bottles embossed in gold, diamonds, lychnites, carbuncles, and pearls, either natural ones, perfectly round and translucent, or such as had been fashioned by fire. All these things the patriarch used to admire, some for their beauty, or for their form, and others for their mechanism. In their turn, too, come astrologers, and those who in the eyes of the ignorant are accounted prophets, not indeed because they know anything of prophecy, but because it is their nationality that is trusted and not their skill, because one is an Illyrian and another a Persian." In all this there is no necessity to see more than the magnificent prelate of the type of our own Cardinal Wolsey. But if in the brighter side of his character he resembled that great English church­man, if he was like him in his dignified bearing, in the grandeur of his ideas, in his commanding influence over men and things, and even in some of his ambitions, another phase of his disposition presents him in quite a different light. His love of power made him utterly unscrupulous as to the means he used to gain his ends. He could be revengeful and cruel, and, like Photius, could even stoop to forgery; and, to win for himself the headship of the state, he did not hesitate to sunder Christ's seamless garment. For his ultimate object in throwing off all subjection to Rome, and in making himself the untrammelled ruler of the Greek Church, was the attainment of absolute power. It was with that object in view that he deliberately began a quarrel with the Pope.

Soon after his accession to the patriarchal throne, Cerularius seems to have initiated a misunderstanding with Rome by striking the name of the Pope off the diptychs. Then in private conversation he began to attack the Latin custom of using unfermented bread (azyms) for the sacrifice of the Mass. But till the very close of Leo’s pontificate there was no public knowledge either in the East or the West of any want of cordiality in the relations between Rome and Constantinople. Peter III, who became patriarch of Antioch about 1052, sent as usual his synodical letter to Rome. To this document, now lost, Leo sent a reply in the early part of the year 1053. He spoke of the blessing of unity in the Church, and expressed his pleasure that Peter had, in accordance with ancient custom, sent notice “to the apostolic and first see” of his election and of his faith. After setting forth the supremacy of the See of Peter, he declared that that of Antioch ranked as the third of the greater sees, and exhorted him not to be deterred “by the pomp or arrogance of anyone whatsoever” from defending the honour of his see. He confirmed Peter’s election on the understanding that he had passed through the regular ecclesiastical grades, and that it had not been obtained by simony. The profession of faith of the new patriarch is declared “to be thoroughly sound, catholic, and orthodox”; and then, in conclusion, Leo’s own profession of faith is given.

The time, however, came at length when Cerularius thought he might attack Rome with advantage. Word reached him that the Pope was in difficulties with the Normans. Accordingly, a letter was at once dispatched by him, bearing the name of Leo, “archbishop of Bulgaria,” i.e., of the See of Achrida, to John, bishop of Trani, in Apulia; but, as the letter itself stated, really “to all the bishops of the Franks, and to the most revered Pope”. The Latin Church, through its use of azyms, and its custom of fasting on Saturday, is denounced as Jewish, and, through its allowance of the eating of blood, as barbaric. At the same time, the patriarch distributed all through the Greek Church a violent pamphlet against the Latins, written for him in Latin by a monk of the Studium named Nicetas Stethatos (Pectoratus), and then proceeded to close the Latin churches in Constantinople. This was accomplished by the Greeks with a brutality which was in accord with the violence of their language. They went to the outrageous length of trampling on the hosts which had been consecrated by the Latins.

When the letter of the archbishop of Bulgaria was brought to the notice of the Pope, understanding at once whence it proceeded, he addressed to Michael Cerularius and his associate a letter both long and strong. Of its length its author was fully aware, but excused it thus: “As you do not blush at your loquacity, nor fear to indulge it, it behoves us not so much to blush at taciturnity as to fear to be guilty of it; for many souls depend upon us, which through the calumnies of false brethren would perish, if we were silent”. With a complete grasp of the situation, the Pope devoted neither time nor space to replying to the various charges, most of them, in comparison with unity at least, absurdly trifling, but developed the position in the Church of the bishop of Rome, and the absolute need of submission to him, as to the head, on the part of its various members.

The letter opened with a eulogy on the blessings of peace and unity, and a denunciation of those who sow tares, and hence of Cerularius and Leo, “most dear to us, and still to be accounted our brethren in Christ”. For “with a presumption altogether new, and with incredible audacity”, they had openly condemned, as report had it, “the Apostolic and Latin Church” for its use of azyms. “As though our Father who is in heaven had hidden from Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, the rite of the visible sacrifice ... to whom He had deigned to reveal the ineffable mystery of the invisible divinity of His Son”. The respective attitudes of the See of Rome and of that of Constantinople towards heresy are then contrasted. “Have not”, he asked, “all the false doctrines of heretics been combated and condemned by the See of Rome; and have not the hearts of the brethren been confirmed in the faith of Peter, which has never failed and never will fail?” On the contrary, has not the Christian world been scandalised by the heresies and ambition of many of the patriarchs of Constantinople? It must have been, for it has seen Eusebius and others supporting the doctrines of Arius, Macedonius blasphem­ing the Holy Ghost, Nestorius denying that Mary was the mother of God, Anthimus teaching Eutychianism, and more than four hundred years of usurpation by the patriarchs of Constantinople of the title of Ecumenical. He would not, he said, speak of the heresy of Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paul, but added that, “unmindful of what you are doing”, you are arraigning that see which the emperors themselves have often declared to be the Head of all the Churches of God. Then to show how far the Eastern emperors had gone in honouring the Roman Church, he proceeded to cite at length the document now known as the “False Donation of Constantine”, but then universally believed to be genuine. “But”, continued Leo, “we have on this matter a testimony greater than that of Constantine, ‘who is of the earth, and of the earth he speaketh’ (St. John III. 31). Scarcely do we accept man’s testimony, we who are filled with the witness of Him who came down from heaven, and is above all, and who said, ‘Thou art Peter’, etc.”

They must then cease to speak of the Latins, whose faith is that of the world, as azymites; and the See of Constantinople must submit to that of Rome as to its mother. For, as “no divine or human sanction made it (originally) more honourable or more illustrious than any of the other churches”, it owed its position among them to the recognition of the Roman Church. Let it not then envy us. “For lo! we regard your glory as ours. Why then do you strive to destroy what has been given to us both by God and man? Does not the hand or the foot count as its own the honour or dishonour which falls on the head? ... If you felt not in you what we have said about the harmony of the body ... you live not in the body; and if you live not in the body which is Christ, you are none of His. Whose then are you ? You have been cut off and will mortify, and, like the branch pruned from the vine, you will burn in the fire—an end which may God's goodness keep far from you”

Whether this vigorous letter produced any effect on Cerularius or not, it is certain that the news he received from Italy caused the greatest alarm to the emperor. John, bishop of Trani, had been sent by Argyrus to tell him that he had himself been worsted by the Normans, and was lying wounded at Viesti, and that his defeat had been followed by that of the Pope at Civitella. Fearing lest the Pope should cease to oppose the Normans, and that they would soon be masters of the whole of south Italy, Constantine not only wrote to the Pope encouraging him to continue to resist the Normans and promising help, but induced Cerularius to do likewise.

In reply to these two letters, now lost, Leo sent other two by the hands of Cardinals Humbert and Frederick (chancellor of the Roman Church), and of Peter, archbishop of Amalfi. The emperor was thanked for his endeavours to make peace, and at the same time was assured that the Pope would never cease to oppose the Normans, and that he expected help against them from both Germany and Constantinople. He was, moreover, asked to restore the rights and patrimonies of the Roman Church in the imperial portion of south Italy, and was told of the aggressive conduct of Cerularius. In his letter to the last-named, while thanking him for his peaceful overtures, and impressing on him that it was his desire to have peace with all men, and especially with him, “who he perceived could be a most valuable servant of God if he would not strive to transgress the limits laid down by the Fathers”, he blamed him for encroaching on the rights of others, and said : “You have written to us that if, through us, your name is venerated in one Roman Church, you will make ours held in honour throughout the whole world. What is this monstrous idea, dearest brother? Has not the Roman Church, the head and mother of the churches, (devoted) members? Hence anybody that is not in agreement with her is no church, but a collection of heretics, a conventicle of schismatics, and a synagogue of Satan”.

Anguish for the disaster at Civitella had evidently not completely broken the spirit of Leo IX. He would yield neither to the swords of the Normans nor to the over­bearing insolence of an Eastern patriarch. To be more completely in touch with the course of events, he found heart enough to devote himself to the study of Greek.

His legates, whom as usual he had accredited to the emperor and not to the patriarch, reached Constantinople before his death (April 19, 1054), and made it plain to the haughty patriarch that they had come in the name of a superior to receive the submission of a subordinate. They entered the imperial palace with cross and crosiers, offered no obeisance to Cerularius, and would not suffer him to treat them as his inferiors. This was gall and wormwood to the proud patriarch, and he was utterly unable to conceal his soreness. Of course, he wrote, if they were insolent towards the emperor, it was no cause for wonder that they would not bend their heads “to our mediocrity”

Received with the greatest honour by the emperor, the legates were lodged, not, according to custom, in the “Placidia” Palace, but in the Fountain or Pigi Palace, an imperial pleasure-resort outside the walls of the city, near the health-giving sacred spring now in the little village of Balukli, some half-mile from the Selivri Kapoussi Gate, formerly known as the Gate of the Spring. As early as Justinian's time there was a church there (S. Mary at the Fountain), as Procopius says, “in the place which is called the Fountain, where there is a rich grove of cypress-trees, a meadow whose rich earth blooms with flowers, a garden abounding with fruit, a fountain which noiselessly pours forth a quiet and sweet stream of water—in short, where all the surroundings befit a sacred place”. The irony of fate, that that which was destined to be the most bitter and enduring quarrel ever waged between the East and the West should be so closely con­nected with such a peaceful spot!

One of the first acts of the papal legates was to take cognisance of the pamphlet of the monk Nicetas, in which, while saluting the Romans “as the glorious eye of  the Church of God and of the whole world”, he exhorted them, in a very superior tone, to abandon their use of azyms—for it was not bread at all, but a dead substance lacking the life that comes from fermentation—their Jewish habit of fasting on Saturdays, and the practice of clerical celibacy. It will be observed that not a single article of Christian belief held by the Latins, not even the doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Ghost, is challenged. But the points urged, however, were carefully chosen. They were calculated to unite the mass of the Creeks against Rome. The Greek clergy as a body, not unnaturally dreading the stricter discipline of the West, would be turned against it by the question of celibacy; while the populace, unable to comprehend the difference between what was of revealed truth, what was part of the inviolable deposit of faith, and what was of mere temporary practice or discipline, were taught to look with horror on those who, through their use of what was not bread, would deprive them of the Body of their Lord.

Both of the cardinals issued tracts against that of Nicetas. Two from the pen of Cardinal Humbert have come down to us. The first, in the form of a dialogue between a Greek and a Latin, is moderate enough in tone, and replies in detail and in general terms to the propositions of Nicetas. But the second is a violent invective, and is directed in a very personal manner against the monk himself. He blamed him for breaking the decrees of the council of Chalcedon by not attending to his monastic duties, and by mixing in public affairs. “Led on by your own will and inclinations, you have snarled snappishly at the Holy Roman and Apostolic Church, and the councils of all the Holy Fathers, and, more stupid than the ass, have endeavoured to break the lion’s skull, and a wall of adamant”. He showed himself especially indignant that the Greeks, whom he accused of shocking carelessness in their treatment of the sacred species, should have the effrontery to wish to teach the Latins how to celebrate the Eucharistic sacrifice.

This castigation had a good effect upon Nicetas. At a public disputation in the monastery of the Studium, in the presence of the emperor and his court (June 24, 1054), he at first upheld his doctrines against the Roman Church. That the whole assembly might follow the discussion, all the documents had been translated into Greek. However, at the close of the debate the monk anathematised his own writings, and “all those who denied that the Holy Roman Church was the first of all the churches, and who presumed to question in anything its ever-orthodox faith”

Meanwhile, the Pope, who died on April 19, 1054, had already played his last part in this important drama. In an effort to attach to himself the patriarch, Peter of Antioch, he seems to have caused his friend Dominic, patriarch of Grado, to write to him towards the beginning of the year 1054 a very flattering letter, in which he unfolded the attack that had been made upon the Latins. Displaying a broad-mindedness which was conspicuous among the Greeks by its total absence, he pleaded that the East and the West should be allowed to follow in peace their respective customs in the matter of the use of leavened or unleavened bread. “For while the mixture of wheat and leaven which is used by the churches of the East, typifies the nature of the Incarnate Word, the simple unleavened bread used by the Roman Church clearly represents the purity of our human flesh assumed by the Divinity”. The letter closed with an exhortation to Peter to work for unity, touchingly reminding him that by the words of our Lord we have not life in us if we do not eat of His body, and that, “if the oblation of unfermented bread is not the body of Christ, then have we no life in us”.

To this brief, admirable, and conciliatory letter Peter returned a very lengthy and unsatisfactory answer. Though acknowledging his own unworthiness, he cannot understand Dominic’s claim to the title of patriarch. There are only “in the whole world, by the dispensation of divine grace, five patriarchs, viz. those of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem”. Now the body of man has five senses, and that of the Church five patriarchs. Where, then, is there room for a sixth? Then follows a long diatribe against the use of unleavened bread, and an assertion that those who use it are in danger of falling into the heresy of Apollinaris. In fine, he says, he would be glad if Dominic would forward his letter to the Pope, in order that he might accept the ideas therein set forth, and that all might offer the same oblation in the same manner. The intervening hand of death in all probability prevented Leo from ever seeing this letter of Peter, patriarch of Antioch.

What has yet to be related of the doings of Leo’s legates took place, for the most part, after his death, and during the subsequent vacancy of the Holy See. Their efforts to induce Cerularius to withdraw his attacks on the Roman Church concerning, not the deposit of the faith, but mere matters of local observance, were unavailing. They saw him with the emperor; they interviewed him at his own palace. But at length, accusing them of overweening pride, he absolutely refused to have any further communication with them. If in these meetings there was indeed a display of haughtiness of word and mien, the greater manifestation of these unamiable qualities will assuredly have been made by the patriarch himself. For he equalled in pride, we are told, even a particularly proud emperor. And we know that, later on, maintaining that from any point of view there was very little difference between the priesthood and royalty, while from the point of view of higher things the former was of more account than the latter, he suited the action to the word, and assumed the distinctive mark of the imperial dignity, the purple buskins.

After the legates had waited at Constantinople for the greater part of a month (June 25 to July 15), finding that they were no nearer coming to any understanding with the patriarch, they resolved publicly to excommunicate him. Betaking themselves to the great Church of S. Sophia “at the third hour”, just as Mass was about to begin, they denounced to the assembled people the obstinacy of their patriarch. Then they placed on the altar a deed of excommunication against him, which Cerularius would have us believe was immediately snatched from it by some of the attendant subdeacons, and thrown on the ground. As the legates refused to take it back, “it fell into the hands of many persons. Whereupon our mediocrity took possession of it, that the blasphemies in it might not be (further) promulgated”.

The bull of excommunication proclaimed that the legates found “the columns of the empire and its honourable citizens” most Christian and orthodox, but Michael, “falsely (abusive) styled patriarch”, and his supporters, disseminators of heresy. They were accused of practising simony, of promoting eunuchs even to the episcopacy, of rebaptising the Latins, of failing to observe clerical celibacy, of denying the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, and of many other things of less moment. Consequently, because furthermore they despised the letters of Pope Leo, refused to meet his legates, and would not allow them a church in which to say Mass, the legates declared excommunicated, Michael, Leo of Achrida and all their adherents.

After shaking off the dust from their feet as a testimony against them, sending copies of the excommunication in all directions, and reopening the Latin churches in the city by the aid of the emperor, the legates hurriedly set out for Rome loaded with presents (July 18). Scarcely had they departed when Cerularius feigned a great anxiety to have a conference with them, and brought such pressure to bear on the emperor that he found himself compelled to recall them (July 20). On their return, the patriarch invited them to attend a synod he had summoned in the Church of S. Sophia. But the emperor had discovered that it was his intent to incite the people against the legates, and to cause them to be killed. He accordingly insisted on being present himself, and, as Cerularius would not agree to this, he bade the legates once more depart.

Baulked of his prey, the patriarch raised a sedition against the emperor, who succeeded in saving himself only by sacrificing to his anger the unfortunate men who had served as interpreters to the legates. Then, in concert with his permanent synod, i.e., “with the bishops who daily sit with us”, and a few metropolitans who chanced to be in the city, Cerularius, in turn, anathematised the authors of the bull of excommunication against himself. This done, he set deliberately to work to turn the of the other Eastern patriarchs against Rome. To accomplish his purpose he did not hesitate to lie in the most barefaced manner, and this he was the better able to do successfully because some of his correspondents were wholly ignorant of Latin; and because, utterly unable to find anyone in their entourage who could supply the deficiency, they were compelled to send their Latin letters to him to have them translated. Soon after Leo’s death, Cerularius had written to Peter of Antioch an epistle in which he pretended that letters he had written to the holy and learned Pope (Leo) “on certain scandals concerning the orthodox faith which had arisen among them (the Latins)” had fallen into the hands of Argyrus, “magister and duke of Italy”, and had been read by him. He had then, continued the inventive patriarch, forged others in the Pope’s name, which he had sent to Constantinople by three disreputable persons. These forgeries, translated into Greek, are being forwarded to Antioch. He concluded by impressing on Peter that they must turn away from the Latins, not only on account of the question of the azyms, but because they shave their beards, eat what has been strangled, have added the Filioque to the Creed, forbid their priests to marry, do not venerate relics, etc. etc. Men who do such things are not to be accounted orthodox.

After his excommunication, Michael wrote Peter a second letter, telling him that heterodox impostors had dared to excommunicate him, and that he had written to him in order that he might know how to treat with Rome, should occasion arise. He begged him, in conclusion, to forward to their proper destination the letters he had enclosed. They were of precisely the same import as the one addressed to him, and were inscribed to the patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem.

The reply which Michael received to these letters was certainly not of the nature he expected. Whatever else it was, it was the manifest expression of one who was inspired by a horror of schism, and of breaking away from “the great and first apostolic throne” (Rome). If it had been thought out before it was committed to writing, it would have to be regarded as the production of one who, while most anxious to preserve peace and unity, was, at the same time, a finished diplomatist. But in all probability it is a faithful record of the evolution of Peter’s feelings. He is astounded at the presumption of Argyrus. Of the Latin customs some are bad, some curable, and others negligible. If, for example, the Latin bishops wear rings “to show, as you write, that they are wedded to the Holy Church of God, we wear the garara (tonsure) on our head in honour of the supreme chief of the apostles, Peter, on whom is built the great Church of God”. The introduction of the Filioque into the Creed is certainly “an evil and the worst of evils. Still, where there is no danger to the faith, we must ever incline towards peace and brotherly love, the more so because the Latins are rude and ignorant. Moreover, while it has always been a received maxim that old customs have to be followed, no doubt, just as often happens among ourselves, many things which are improper are done without the knowledge of the Pope and the bishops. After all, the only matters of importance are the questions of the Filioque and of the celibacy of the clergy. Michael must explain matters to the new Pope. Therefore I beg, pray, and beseech you, and, in spirit embracing your sacred feet, exhort you to be accommodating. For there is a danger lest, whilst one tries to close a rent, it may be made worse ... From this long separation and dissension, and from the rending of this great first apostolic throne (Rome) from our Holy Church, is there not manifest danger that every evil on the earth will grow worse, that the whole world will grow sick, every kingdom in it become disorganised, that everywhere there will be lamentation and unnumbered woes, everywhere famines and pestilences, and that success will never again attend our armies”.

With his mind now swept clear by the flood of his own eloquence, Peter finally declared that “if the Latins would set right the addition to the Creed”, he would seek for no further concession from them. He begged Michael to take the same view, lest “in seeking all they might lose all”, and, as a very last word, entreated him “to approach the subject with greater moderation and condescension”. This was also the attitude of another Eastern prelate, contemporary with Peter, the learned Theophylactus, archbishop of Achrida. In a pamphlet addressed to one of his friends regarding the accusations brought against the Latins, he begins by denying that their errors are numerous, and asserts that what are urged against them do not, as many aver, tend to divide the Church, because not one of them concerns “the head of the faith”. He says that their chief error is the insertion of the Filioque into the Creed, which ought not to be adulterated, and that for his part he will not allow that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, even if there are adduced to him the words of " that sublime throne (Rome) whom the sublime thrones place above the others”.

But the flood-gates of racial hatred had been opened; and neither the wisdom of the learned nor the wishes of the moderate could stem the torrent. Cerularius was to triumph. Though his excommunication was never confirmed at Rome, he flourished it before the people as a clear proof of its oppressive treatment of the Greek Church, and managed to fix deep in the minds of the Easterns a suspicion of the Papacy which subsequent events, such as the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders (1204), were to turn to bitter hatred. At the time, indeed, neither Greeks nor Latins regarded the events of 1054 as inaugurating a final schism between East and West. They may be said to have been ignored by Greek writers, and were looked upon by Latin writers merely as another of the temporary schisms which had so often before divided Rome from Constantinople, but which the excommunication of the patriarch had successfully closed. But every subsequent attempt at reunion served to prove to sad demonstration that the die had been irrevocably cast, and that it was the hand of Michael Cerularius which had finally thrown it.

Ignorance or jealousy of Rome, the power of the patriarch of Constantinople, community of civil and religious customs or of language, were the principal causes which induced most of the great ecclesiastical rulers of the East one after another so far to range themselves with Constantinople as to throw off all allegiance to Rome. Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Achrida followed first the lead of the City by the Golden Horn, and then its example, it was not to be expected that, having refused to bend the knee to the successor of St. Peter, whom they had ever acknowledged as the head of the Church, they would long pay court to one who, like themselves, was but an inferior member of the Church Catholic, and was, indeed, originally a much less important member than most of them. Severed from their head, they soon severed themselves from Constantinople, and from one another.

But what was the attitude of the archbishop of Kiev Russia and of the Russians in this unhappy affair? In the dearth of documentary evidence regarding the early Russian Church, it is very difficult to say. Some writers hold that the Russians remained in communion with the See of Rome till the fifteenth or sixteenth century, with the exception of a few brief intervals of intervening schism. They point out that though Russia was converted by Greeks, their conversion took place whilst the Greeks and the Latins were united; that their liturgy (Slavonic) was the work of SS. Cyril and Methodius, who were devoted sons of Rome, and that the numerous marriages which took place in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries between Russian and Western princes and princesses is a practical proof that Kiev (called by Adam of Bremen “the rival of Constantinople and the great glory of Greece”) and Rome were still in ecclesiastical communion. During the reign of Demetrius or Isiaslaf, the son of Iaroslaf the Great(d. 1054), his son (Sviatopolk) made his appearance in the Eternal City. Isiaslaf had experienced in his own person the difficulty of succeeding to the throne merely because he happened to be the eldest son; and so, to facilitate the accession of his own eldest son, he sent him to Rome to receive his kingdom at the hands of Gregory VII. It is impossible to suppose he would have followed such a course as this if his people had not viewed Rome with friendly eyes. “One of the most convincing proofs of this union between Russia and the Holy See is the establishment by Ephrem, the metropolitan of Kiev (d. 1102), of the feast of the translation of the relics of St Nicholas of Bari. This feast was established in Russia in conformity with a bull of Urban II. As this feast is not observed in the Greek Church of Constantinople, its papal origin in Russia is obvious. The real founder of the Russian schism seems to have been the second successor of Ephrem, viz. Nicephorus I., who addressed to Prince Vladimir II, Monomachus, a work on the “Separation of the Two Churches”, in which he aimed at showing the faults of the Latins, and at exalting the Church of Constantinople

However, despite the evil work of Nicephorus, the final separation of the Church of the Russians from that of Rome was not immediately effected. As late as 1227 we find the Grand Dukes of Russia declaring that they had fallen away from Rome merely “from a want of preachers”, and in the course of that century it is certain that various Russian princes embraced the Latin rite. The bishopric of Caffa (formerly Theodosia, now Feodosia), established by John XXII in the Crimea, proved a great centre of Latin influence, and during both the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries many of the metropolitans of Kiev were in union with the See of Rome. But in the beginning of the following century they definitely separated themselves from it, and left Russia in the state of schism we find it in today.

However, there are not wanting writers who maintain that in the eleventh century the Russian Church was simply a submissive province of the patriarchate of Constantinople ; and who, without perhaps attaching due weight to the facts above rehearsed and to other similar ones, hold that, after the defection of Cerularius, a state of schism was the rule with the Russian Church, union the exception.

Though Cerularius failed to draw the Armenians, at any rate, into his schism, he accomplished enough to bring about the ruin of the Greek Empire and the Greek Church. The former, deprived through the schism of the help of the West, nay, even in one instance seriously injured in consequence by it, disappeared for ever in the middle of the fifteenth century; and the latter, enslaved first by the Greek emperors, arid then by the Turkish Sultans, has survived indeed to the present day. But its once living waters have ceased to flow, and have become corrupt, and now it doth “cream and mantle like a standing pond”—a thing of loathing to those who gaze upon it.

Before telling of the last moments of Pope Leo, something must be said of his relations with England. Whilst at this period the whole Church was being ruled and edified by a saint, our own country had the good fortune to be similarly blessed. Its sceptre was held by one under whose wholesome laws it was the one ardent wish of many a generation who came after him to live. When Edward was brought from his exile in Normandy to the throne of England, it may be said without any exaggeration that all power in the country was in the hands of a few earls, notably in those of Earl Godwin of Wessex and of his two sons, Harold and Sweyn. During his long residence in Normandy, the new king had of course made many friends there; and it was only natural that he should bring some of them with him, and should advance their interests. No doubt, too, in placing not a few of them in important posts, he would have in view the formation of a party round him which he could oppose to the too powerful influence of the earls. Besides, where there was question of church preferment, it seems to be generally admitted that “the ecclesiastics of Normandy were, as a class, superior to those of England in Edward’s time”. Unfortunately, however, for he was a man of greater simplicity than discernment, all his nominations of Normans to positions of trust were not good.

Among these was his appointment to the great diocese of Dorchester, which stretched from the Thames to the Humber, of one of his Norman chaplains, named Ulf. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle adds that he “ill-bestowed it”, and that the new bishop “was afterwards driven away because he performed nothing bishoplike therein, so that it shames us now to tell-more”. This expulsion took place in 1050, and Ulf at once set out for Italy to lay his case before the Pope. Other English bishops, Hereman of Sherborne and Aldred (or Ealdred) of Worcester, had preceded him thither, and had presented themselves at the council of Rome in 1050 “on the king’s errand”.

From later authors, the substantial accuracy of whose statements in this particular there is no reason to doubt, it appears that the errand on which they were sent was to obtain from the Pope for their sovereign a dispensation from a vow he had made when young to go on a pilgrimage to Rome. When Edward proclaimed his vow to the Witan, and, reminding them of the words of the Psalmist, “Vow ye, and pay to the Lord your God”, expressed his intention of fulfilling it, the assembly with one voice declared that the time was not ripe for such an undertaking, and bade him send to Rome, and obtain from the Pope a commutation of his vow. This his envoys were successful in obtaining from Leo. The bull which the Pope forwarded to the king, and which contained the conditions of the dispensation, had received the approval of his council:—

“The witness to it was sure and full:

Then a guarantee was put to the writing,

Where the bulla hangs by the silk.

And then, by the advice of the legists,

There was a counter-writing in the great register”

The bull set forth that, as it was clear that there was danger to the country from the departure of the king, he was absolved from his vow “by the authority of God, of the holy apostles, and of the holy synod”. The money he had set apart for the journey was to be given to the poor, and to the erection or reconstruction and endowment of a monastery in honour of St. Peter, which was to be subject to no other layman but the king. In consequence of this decision Edward remained in England, repaired and endowed a monastery in honour of St. Peter, which had been built long before outside the walls of London on the west, and obtained for it extensive privileges from Pope Nicholas II.

Bishop Ulf's case did not come off until September, at the synod which the Pope held at Vercelli. Examination only revealed how utterly unfit he was for his position, but, because he knew that the Romans coveted, “as a leech does blood, the red gold and the white silver”, he saved himself from degradation by gold. “For well-nigh would they have broken his staff if he had not given very great gifts”. As it was, he returned to England again to rule Dorchester for a brief time longer

The intercourse between Pope Leo and King Edward on ecclesiastical matters was very considerable, and was no doubt facilitated by the esteem which each of them felt for the other. English bishops were sent to assist at Leo’s councils to keep the Catholics in England in closer touch with those abroad, and a papal legate was sent to our country to make the mind of the Pope more clearly known to the king.

As the Anglo-Saxons drove the Britons further West, they caused the ancient British ecclesiastical organisation to be replaced by a new one. And so in 909 Archbishop Plegmund founded a see embracing Devonshire and part of Cornwall, and established its seat at Crediton. This he did with the special intent of enforcing the usages of Rome among the Britons. Some fifty years later (viz. in 1046), St. Edward appointed his chaplain, Leofric, to the See of Crediton. Finding that his diocese was much harried by pirates, Leofric determined to try to effect the removal of his episcopal see from the unimportant Crediton in the north of Devon to the larger and hence safer city of Exeter in the south. “And because”, to quote a more or less contemporary entry in a missal he presented to his cathedral of Exeter, “he was a man of sound understanding, he knew that this could not be done without the authority of the Roman Church”. Accordingly, he sent to request Pope Leo to ask King Edward that he might be allowed to make the proposed change. As it was in accordance with the general law of the Church that episcopal sees should be established in the larger towns, the Pope at once agreed to Leofric’s petition, and addressed (1049-1050) a letter to the king in which he praised him for the good account he had received of his piety, and exhorted him to persevere in the course he had entered upon. Then, after telling him that he had been informed that Leofric’s see was not in a city, he begged him “for the sake of God and for his love” to transfer it to Exeter.

“With great devotion Edward gave his consent in accordance with the terms of this letter”, and the charter is still extant in which he authorised the translation of the see, and “made known what he had done in the first instance to the Lord Pope Leo, and confirmed it by his authority”.

If King Edward’s appointment of Ulf to Dorchester brought him discredit, two of his other nominations brought him trouble. Towards the close of this same year (October 29, 1050) died Eadsige (or Eadsy), archbishop of Canterbury. Setting aside the candidate of the monks, though they had secured in his interest the support of Earl Godwin (1051), the king nominated to the vacant see Robert of Jumièges, then bishop of London. Edward had known him in Normandy, and had brought him over to England as one of his chaplains. The new archbishop’s first act was to signify his subjection to the Pope by going to Rome for his pallium. During his absence the king nominated Spearhafoc (Sparrow-hawk), abbot of Abingdon, to the vacant bishopric of London. It would appear that there was something irregular about his promotion. To judge from his subsequent conduct in running away (perhaps in the beginning of 1053) with the gold and jewels which the king had given him to make a crown—“for he was a most skilled worker in gold”—and with moneys belonging to the diocese of London, he was, no doubt, generally unfit to possess a bishopric. At any rate, when, on his return from Rome, he presented himself, “with the king’s writ and seal”, to the archbishop for consecration, the latter “refused and said that the Pope had forbidden it”. Spearhafoc persisted in repeating his request, and the archbishop his refusal, all during the summer and the autumn. Then at length the abbot gave way, and William, a Norman, one of the king’s chaplains, was appointed to the vacant see.

In the party struggle between Godwin and the archbishop, who is credited by the panegyrist of the former’s family with endeavouring of set purpose “to annoy the duke”, Godwin was at last victorious. Ulf, Robert, and others of the king’s Norman friends fled across the seas. The archbishop at once betook himself to Rome; and, after laying his case before Leo, obtained from him a decree for his restoration to his see. But “as he was returning through Jumièges, he died there, and was buried in the Church of St. Mary, which for the most part he himself had built at vast expense”. His enemy Godwin had died before him, and our old chronicler evidently had grave doubts of his salvation, for “he did all too little penance for the property of God which he held belonging to many holy places”.

It is more than likely that, even had Robert not died as early as he did (1053?), he would not have been allowed to return to his see under any circumstances, as long as the party of Earl Godwin and his sons was in power. For, soon after his flight, at a great council near London, he had been “without reserve declared an outlaw, and all the Frenchmen, because they had chiefly made the discord between Earl Godwin and the king. And Bishop Stigand succeeded to the archbishopric of Canterbury”. Physical force can cause a man to be called an archbishop or anything else, and it can put him in possession of property; but it cannot give him that power which the Church alone has a right to bestow upon its own officers. Stigand, a man utterly unfit for such a position, both from his illiteracy and from his ignoble character, was proclaimed archbishop of Canterbury, and endowed with its revenues by the political party to which he belonged, and of which he was a very prominent member. But not a bishop in England would recognise him, or get consecrated by him, or profess canonical obedience to him, and he was promptly excommunicated by Pope Leo. His subsequent history and his final downfall must be reserved for another place. It has been suggested that Stigand’s schism was probably the determining cause of the help that Rome gave” to William in his invasion of England; and certain it is that the Conqueror put forth the expulsion of Archbishop Robert as one of the reasons which led him to take up arms against this country.

Macbeth in Rome, 1050.

Contemporary with Leo and Edward was Macbeth, a character more famous on the stage of the theatre than on the larger one of the world. He succeeded to the crown of Scotland after having, at least, been a party to the murder of his predecessor Duncan (1040), and ruled the country well (1040-1058). With a view, no doubt, to make atonement for his sins, we have it on the authority of a monk (Muiredach mac Robertaigh, generally known as Marianus Scotus), who was alive at the time, was a Celt himself, and took special note of the doings of the Scotch and Irish, that this king made the Roman pilgrimage, or at any rate gave money to the poor in Rome. In this Macbeth only did what we have already seen done by many other princes, and what is done to this day by every Catholic pilgrim who visits the Eternal City; and it is a mere idle flight of an unbridled imagination to convert, as some have done, his pilgrimage into a diplomatic mission, and his alms into bribes.

St. Peter Damian tells us a curious story which may have its foundation in the visit of Macbeth to Rome, or, possibly, may be the history of some Irish prince otherwise unknown. The saint says he was told the story by an old man, Bonizo, the rector of the monastery near St. Severus. This is no doubt the church and monastery of St. Severinus on the Via Merulana, not far from the Church of St. Matthew. As the Via Merulana cuts the line of the old wall of Servius Tullius, St. Peter Damian describes the monastery on the said via as “near the old city”.

A young Scotch prince (or Irish?—Scotigenarum rex) on succeeding to his father’s throne, and reflecting on the vanity of this world, left his crown and wife. On the pretext of a pilgrimage, he went to Rome, and when there contrived to evade his followers, hid himself in a monastery, and became a monk. Soon after he was taken ill and died, constantly begging of God on his death-bed to “fulfil what He had promised”. He was asking, concludes the saint, for his reward for his work in the vineyard.

Death of Leo IX

After the battle of Civitella, Leo returned, as we have seen, to Benevento. Thence he directed the controversy with Michael Cerularius, and there was he seized with his last illness. Grief for the slaughter of Civitella never left him; he redoubled the fervour with which he said Mass for the repose of the slain. This it was that preyed upon his mind far more than the indifference of Henry to his troubles, or than the quarrel with the Greeks—the gravity of which no man then realised. As the year 1053 drew to its close, the powers of his body so far gave way that all desire for food left him, and a little water was all he could take. On the anniversary of his enthronization (February 12, 1054) he managed to muster sufficient strength to say Mass. Never again was he to have that privilege. Feeling that his end was nigh, he had himself conveyed to Rome in a litter (March 12). As far as Capua, where he remained twelve days, he was escorted not only by his own followers, but by a company of Normans who came at his call.

April had just begun when he entered the Lateran Palace. There, however, he stayed not long, as he had learnt from God that he should die by St. Peter’s. Accordingly he caused himself to be carried first to the oratory of the saint, and then to the Vatican Palace hard by. There, in the presence of a number of bishops, abbots, and faithful people who had crowded to see him, did he receive Extreme Unction. When the Holy Viaticum had been given him, he prayed “in his native German” that, if it was not God’s will that he should recover, he might be released with all speed from the dwelling-house of his body.

Whilst lying on his bed of death, he is said by Bonizo to have entrusted the care of the Roman Church after his death to Hildebrand. But at this time Hildebrand was in Gaul, and it is, perhaps, scarcely credible that in the then critical condition of affairs in Rome, the Pope would have entrusted the government of the Church to an absentee. The statement, however, may be enough to show that Leo did not overlook the practical side of his duty even till his last hour. But he spent most of the days of his last agony in prayer. At times he would be carried into the church, and there, lying beside his marble coffin, he would point out to those around him how his own case ought to show them the vanity of tlit world, and induce them not to tamper with the goods of the Church, nor break the laws of God. He prayed for the Church and those who had shed their blood at Civitella; for heretics and Jews, and for every province he had visited. Then, rising from his couch, and throwing himself on his sarcophagus, he signed it with the sign of the cross, and prayed that on the day of retribution it might present him before the throne of resurrection, “For I believe that my Redeemer liveth”.

At length, on Wednesday, April 19, lying on his couch before the altar of St. Peter, soon after he had received “the Body and Blood of Christ” from a bishop who was saying Mass, he gave back his sweet soul to its Creator at the very hour he had himself predicted.

“At the very hour that he commended his soul to Christ”, the bell of St. Peter’s began to toll of itself; and a citizen of Todi, named Albert, with five others, declared that they saw, as it were, the road all bedecked with resplendent coverings and gleaming with gems, by which he was led by angels up to heaven. Moreover, so great was the calm at the moment of his death, that not a leaf moved ever so little”.

Many are the miracles cited by our authorities which he wrought both in life and in death, but for which, “for the sake of (here) sparing the busy or the incredulous”, reference must be made to the said authorities.

In the marble sarcophagus which he had himself prepared for them were laid to rest the mortal remains of Leo IX. Then, with the concurrence of all the Roman people, it was placed within the basilica of St. Peter, close to the gate of Ravenna. Later on, an altar in honour of the saint was erected over the sarcophagus. When, in 1005, that portion of the old basilica was unfortunately destroyed in the building of the new one, the relics of the saint were placed in a fresh coffin of cypress wood. This, with an inscription recording the act of translation, was put in a sarcophagus of white marble, and the whole placed beneath the altar now dedicated to the Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi.

In the case of Leo IX his memory was not interred with his body. It has been kept green in the Catholic Church. Honoured as a saint in his life-time, he has been revered as such ever since. Churches were dedicated in his honour even by his contemporaries, and his name is enshrined in the Roman Martyrology.

“Leo is dead! Victorious Rome doth mourn.

Long will it be before his like she sees”.

Among other losses brought about during Rome’s Dark Age, we have to deplore that of almost all the papal money coined during three-quarters of the century preceding the accession of Leo IX. Of the money struck by him, only a single denarius seems to have escaped the great destroyer. On the obverse it shows, running round near its edge, a cross, and the letters Henricus Imp, and in its centre, in three lines, Romanoru; and on the reverse a cross and Scs Petrus round a square in which are enclosed in two lines the letters Leo P. Another fifty years will have to roll by before we shall meet with the corns of another Pope (viz. Paschal II.).

“Leo the Great” are the words with which the author of Rome’s annals begins his account of the successor of Damasus II. And though among the Leos of Rome the title of Great is officially, as it were, reserved to St. Leo I, the anonymous writer we have just cited was guilty of no exaggeration when he called the ninth Pontiff who bore that name, Leo the Great. For he was great in the amount of work to which he put his hands, and still more in its importance as well to the Church as to the world at large. The moral reform which he carried so far forward was, of course, accompanied by an intellectual advance which could not be confined to the ecclesiastical body. Great was he also in his self-abnegation. That he might serve God more utterly, he put to one side the splendid career which was held out to him by the world, nor would he accept the most glorious position there is to be found on this earth, till he was imperatively called to it by those who had the right so to do. And throughout his whole life never do we see him hesitating between self and his duty, or between self and the benefit of others. At Monte Cassino we behold him on his knees washing the feet of the monks, and at Mainz bearing most meekly with a rude and ill-timed display of independence on the part of its archbishop. He was great, too, in piety, useful for all things, towards God, and in his tender love of God’s Blessed Mother. Hence it was that men believed that God was with him, and that he was one of those who were destined by the Almighty to display signs and wonders. “In my name they (viz. those that believe) shall cast out devils: they shall speak with new tongues . . . they shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover.” And so we find that all who wrote of Pope Leo connect him with the working of miracles.

Nor has this been a mere posthumous greatness; he was great in the eyes of all who knew him, even to those who had complaints to make to him, ay, or of him. The clergy and the people of Nantes, in addressing to Leo a letter of remonstrance on account of a bishop he had sent them, do so as to one “who in their time had so gloriously occupied the Apostolic See”. The abbot of Fécamp opens a letter to Leo as follows : “May the whole Roman world rejoice, seeing that it is adorned with so great a Pope, who, resplendent with a piety as deep as it is new, has risen glorious like the morning star to drive away the clouds of error from the face of the Church. Since those golden ages when the Roman Church possessed a Leo and a Gregory, sources of spiritual doctrine brighter than crystal, what Pope has arisen so earnest and watchful as you, most holy of prelates, you who feed the sheep of the Lord on the giving pastures of the hills? To substantiate what I have advanced, who is not filled with joy and admiration at the vigilance of a Pontiff who, with a zeal unheard of in our times, would see everything for himself, and, not content with consulting at Rome in his own see the interests of one people, ... has moreover visited the churches beyond the Alps, and has by the holding of synods and by ecclesiastical censure corrected and amended what was wrong and abnormal? Hail! Pontiff of pontiffs, hail!”

In fine, as “he that instructeth his son shall be praised in him”, so Leo IX must be called great in his spiritual children whom he trained up, and whose glory must be reflected back on their spiritual father. One after another of those whom he had summoned around him from the cloister or the court succeeded him in the Chair of Peter, and carried on triumphantly the work of the reform of the Church and the people he had so well initiated. Chief of these was the immortal Hildebrand, who is not only distinctly stated by those who knew both of them well to have been “trained” (educatus) by him, but himself proclaimed “our Lord Leo of blessed memory” to have been “our father”. By all, then, who have more at heart the spiritual than the material progress of mankind; by all who can admire the victory of moral over physical force, the heroic efforts made by Gregory VII to lift up the world’s standard of virtue will be regarded as the brightest gem in the glorious halo which surrounds the name of the great Alsatian Pontiff, Bruno of Egisheim.

 

 

 

VICTOR II.

A.D. 1055-1057.

 

 

Emperors of the East.

              Theodora, 1055-1056. Michael VI. (Stratioticus), 1056-1057.

Emperors of the West.

             Henry III (The Black), 1039-1056. Henry IV (only King of Germany), 1056-1106.

King of England.

            St. Edward the Confessor, 1042-1066.

King of France.

            Henry I, 1031-­1061.

 

At the time of the death of St. Leo IX. (April 1054), the cardinal-subdeacon Hildebrand was in France inquiring into the doctrines of Berengarius of Tours, and, in the words of that innovator, “treating in the name of the apostolic authority on various ecclesiastical affairs”. Nothing could, of course, be done in Rome without the Pope-maker, to whose care the dying Leo is said to have entrusted the Church. But those in Rome to whose charge the government of the Church had been committed in the meanwhile were able to repel a final attempt of the ex-Pope, Benedict IX, to seize the papal throne by force. This would appear to have been the unhappy man’s last great crime; for it is probable that he presently retired to the monastery of Grottaferrata to bewail his sins to the hour of his death. No sooner was Hildebrand returned than, according to Bonizo at least, both clergy and people made it plain to him that it was their wish to make him Pope. Not only, however, had he not wish to sit on the chair of Peter, but he did not think that the time had yet come when the Church could prudently attempt to vindicate her right to elect her head freely. The Black Emperor was at once too good a friend and too powerful a master to be put lightly aside. Though with very great difficulty he at length succeeded in convincing the people of this, and in arranging for a deputation to accompany him to Henry. His idea was at one and the same time to please the emperor and to safeguard the election rights of the Romans by endeavouring to obtain the nomination of the candidate on whom they had previously fixed their choice.

Accordingly, accompanied by a number of the most distinguished Roman clergy and laity, Hildebrand crossed the Alps and found the emperor at Mainz (November 1054); and, if we are to believe Bonizo, induced him to abandon what he called his right, as Patricius of the Romans, of appointing the supreme Pontiffs. Certain it is, at any rate, that he was specially honoured by the emperor, and that the Romans demanded Gebhardt, bishop of Eichstadt, and chancellor (economus) of the empire, as the successor of St. Leo IX.

For information concerning the chancellor’s career up to this point, we must turn to the anonymous biographer of the bishops of his see, who has some pretty things to tell us regarding him. He was the son of Beliza and Hartwig, count of Calvi, situated between Baden and Stuttgart, and on the borders of what was at this period the Duchy of Swabia. To this day the ruins of the castle of the counts of Calvi look down upon the town of the same name, upon the river Nagold on which it stands, and over many of the fir-clad heights of the Black Forest.

The future Pope was a distant relative of the emperor; but, when Henry reminded him of the fact, he used to say that his parents were illustrious enough, but were not quite so aristocratic as that. In 1042 he became, while still very young, bishop of Eichstadt under the following curious circumstances. The emperor’s uncle, Gebhardt, bishop of Ratisbon, had asked his nephew to bestow the See of Eichstadt on a relative of his. Henry was disposed to consent till he discovered that the candidate was the son of a priest, whereupon he firmly refused. Very much annoyed, the bishop declared that the real reason of the emperor’s action was his contempt for him. To show that this suspicion was false, Henry assured him that if he would present to him any other of his relations who was a fit and proper person, he would grant him the bishopric. Gebhardt at once brought forward his name­sake. Prejudiced against him on account of his extreme youth, the emperor asked the advice of one bishop after another, and at length turned to St. Bardo, archbishop of Mainz, who, as was his wont, was sitting quiet and recollected with his cowl drawn over his head. Looking at him earnestly, the archbishop replied : “My lord, you may well bestow on him this power, for one day you will grant him a greater”. At a loss to understand the holy man’s meaning, but satisfied with his permission, the emperor “gave the ring and pastoral staff” to the young Gebhardt. When his father heard the news he was overjoyed, and at once asked who was the patron saint of his son’s diocese. When he was told St. Willibald, he exclaimed : “Bah! my dream has deceived me”, for he had once dreamt that his son was to be a bishop under St. Peter. “But”, adds his biographer, “his time had not yet come”.

Despite his youth, Gebhardt showed himself an able Counsellor bishop, so much so indeed that he soon became “better than many bishops in the empire, and inferior to but few”. Especially was he remarkable for his skill and dispatch in deciding cases. His well-deserved fame soon reached the ears of the emperor, who associated him with himself in the administration of the empire. In office he succeeded in overcoming envy by virtue—“a most exceptional accomplishment”. And he gave evidence of his varied ability by showing that he could be as able a general as an administrator. When Duke Conrad was exiled into Hungary (1053), Gebhardt took over the government of his Duchy of Bavaria; and during his term of rule inflicted such chastisement on the freebooting Schirenses that up to our author’s days they had not forgotten it. When he was now at the height of his power, and second to the king, “it seemed both to the emperor himself and to many others that St. Bardo’s prophecy concerning the greater power had been already fulfilled”."

But what the greater power was to be, became plain enough to Henry and to Gebhardt when Hildebrand and the Romans presented their petition. It is hard to say whether it was more distasteful to the emperor or to the bishop. The one was loth to lose his favourite minister; the other to take upon himself a burden which had in so short a time proved fatal to so many of his countrymen. But the Romans would have no other than Gebhardt, and the more he refused the proffered dignity, the more were they determined to have him. It was even said that he secretly sent envoys to Rome with instructions to defame his character; and he certainly employed learned men at home to try to save him from the position he dreaded.

But, as the historian of his See reminds us, “there is no wisdom, there is no counsel against the Lord”, and, in a great diet at Ratisbon, Gebhardt brought the whole affair to a close “by a few but very noteworthy words”. “Behold”, said he to the emperor, “I give myself up body and soul to the service of St. Peter, and, although I know myself to be unworthy of so holy a See, I will obey your commands on condition that you restore to St. Peter what belongs to him”. To this the emperor agreed, and Hildebrand carried off the unwilling bishop in triumph to Rome. No wonder he used to declare half in jest and half in earnest that he did not love monks!

Following the narrative of Leo of Monte Cassino, we may go on to say that it was Hildebrand who procured the assent of the Roman people to his choice of Gebhardt as Pope, who suggested to him to assume the name of Victor, and who did not rest till he was enthroned on Holy Thursday, April 13, 1055. “For three years Victor ruled the Apostolic See most gloriously, and, among his other virtues, displayed such liberality that the Romans glorified him both in life and in death”.

Gebhardt’s arrival in Italy was followed almost immediately by that of the emperor. He was both annoyed and alarmed that Godfrey, duke of Lorraine, who had long been a rebel to his authority, had married his cousin Beatrice, the widow of Boniface, marquis of Tuscany, and had thus become the most powerful noble in Italy (1054). He feared lest, through the influence of the new marquis, the Italians, “ever ready for revolution”, should turn against the empire; and his apprehensions were deepened by the arrival of an embassy from the Romans, which came to beg him to enter Italy to check the power of Godfrey. His prompt action disconcerted the marquis, who hastily quitted Italy, and left his wife to try to pacify him. Taking her daughter Matilda along with her, she went boldly before the emperor, and, while assuring him that in marrying Godfrey she had no thought of doing anything against the interests of the empire, plainly told him that she had only done what the “law of nations” gave her every right to do. Utterly failing not merely in magnanimity but in justice, the emperor simply replied that she ought not to have married without his knowledge, kept both her and her daughter in honourable captivity as hostages, and brought them back with him to Germany. He also took action at the same time against Godfrey’s brother, Cardinal Frederick, who had just returned to Rome from Constantinople with a large sum of money and valuable presents, of most of which, however,—a fact perhaps unknown to the emperor—he had been robbed by Trasmund, count of Teate. Fearful lest this treasure should come into the hands of Godfrey, Henry wrote to the Pope, and bade him seize the cardinal, and send him to him at once. But hearing through his friends of the emperor’s ill-will against him, Frederick left Rome, and became a monk at Monte Cassino.

Meanwhile the emperor had advanced as far south as Tuscany, and was in the month of May joined by Victor at Florence. On Whit Sunday (June 4), in presence of the emperor and the Pope, a synod was held at which one hundred and twenty bishops assisted. Through the active agency of Hildebrand, further steps were taken to carry on the work of reform inaugurated by Leo. Not only were the decrees against simony and the incontinence of clerics reaffirmed, but several bishops, convicted of breaches of them, were deposed. It was no doubt, too, on this occasion that, reminding the emperor of his promise, Victor obtained through him, sometimes even against his inclinations, the restoration of no small amount of papal property. In 872 Louis II had granted the Holy See Nursia and other towns, which involved the grant of a large portion of the Duchy of Spoleto, which seems to have then included the March of Fermo, Camerino, or Ancona, as it is variously called. And it would appear that Henry the Black made over the whole Duchy with its dependent March to the Roman Church. At any rate, various documents have been preserved which show that Victor II at least was its duke and marquis. In all these negotiations with Henry there was naturally much that disappointed the Pope, and, calling to mind how he had himself been the cause of baulking the policy of Leo IX, he would sigh and exclaim, “I am well served, inasmuch as I myself opposed my lord”.

It would appear that for some months after the council of Florence, the Pope and Hildebrand remained with the emperor in central Italy, probably engaged in establishing on a firmer basis the imperial and the papal authority in the northern half of Italy. But with the Normans and southern Italy, Henry was prevented from interfering by having to return to Germany (November), in order to cope with the difficulties which Godfrey was causing in Lorraine, and to subdue a conspiracy formed against him by many of the powerful nobles of his kingdom.

In the beginning of the new year, the Pope dispatched Hildebrand to France in order to continue the work of reform from which the death of St. Leo had recalled him. Especially had he to combat simony, encouraged unfortunately by the French king (Henry I), who paid no heed to the admonitions on the subject addressed him both by Leo IX and Victor. The intrepid monk resumed his task with his accustomed energy, and we find it recorded that the “apocrisiarius Aldebran” presided at various councils at which the suppression of simony was a med at. In one of them, held apparently at Embrun, its archbishop, Hugo, accused of simony, continued against all evidence to deny his guilt. To bring matters to a head, Hildebrand, acting on the advice of the other bishops, thus addressed him : “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, whose gifts you are accused of buying, I adjure you to confess the truth on this subject. May heaven prevent you from pronouncing the name of the Holy Spirit as long as you persist in denying the truth”. A man of ready speech, the archbishop at once proceeded to pronounce the sacred names. But, to the profound amazement of all, he was unable, after repeated efforts, to enunciate the name of the Holy Ghost. Utterly stupefied, the archbishop humbly confessed his fault, and along with six other bishops was deposed.

When Hildebrand had to return to Rome, the work of purifying the Church of France was continued by the Pope’s orders, under the presidency of Rimbaud, archbishop of Arles, and Pontius, archbishop of Aix, whom he had appointed his legates. Nothing will show so well the nature of the cleansing to be effected than “a complaint” which was addressed “to the assembly of the vicars of God (at the council of Toulouse), and to the legates of the supreme Roman Pontiff who holds the place of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles”, by Berenger, viscount, or proconsul, as he called himself, of Narbonne. During the days of his uncle, Archbishop Ermengaud, the church of Narbonne, so the complaint set forth, was “one of the most flourishing between Rome and Spain”. Its possessions of all kinds were great, and its church library was full of books. On the death of Ermengaud, Guifred, count of Cerdagne, a relation of whom Berenger had married, approached the viscount himself and his parents, as well as the count of Rodez, with a view to having his ten-year-old son elected to the archbishopric, and offered to divide the sum of 1oo.ooo solidi between Berenger’s father and the count. At first the viscount’s parents were unwilling to have anything to do with so base a transaction; but when their son, through love of his wife, threatened to kill them if they did not consent to Guifred’s wishes, they and the count of Rodez took the money, and the boy, Guifred (he had the same name as his father), became archbishop of Narbonne. As might have been expected, he showed himself altogether more like one of the ordinary nobles of the period than a priest. He had no sooner come to man’s estate than he quarrelled with Berenger, who had no doubt counted on making him his creature. He raised troops and made open war on the viscount, in the course of which thousands of men, we are told, were slain. For the purposes of his campaigns, and to raise 100,000 solidi to buy the bishopric of Urgel for his brother, he absolutely ruined his diocese and his cathedral church. Books, relic-cases, chalices, everything found their way into the hands of money-grabbing Jews. No match apparently for the truculent archbishop, Berenger wished to have their differences settled “by the decision of the apostolic legate”. To this Giufred refused to agree; and when his enemy appealed to the Pope, he excommunicated both him and his wife, and laid his territory under a cruel interdict. Were it not for the fear of God, Berenger assured the assembled Fathers that he would have disregarded Guifred’s sentence, the more so that the archbishop had himself been already excommunicated by Pope Victor. And though, in concluding his complaint, the viscount declared his readiness to go to Rome, he bluntly told the Fathers of Toulouse that if they did not give him the justice he sought, he would treat the archbishop’s excommunication with con-tempt, never keep the peace nor continue his appeal to the Apostolic See.

It is no concern of ours here to inquire as to exactly how far the complaint of Berenger was well founded. His own words about himself, combined with Victor’s and other Popes’ condemnation of Guifred, are enough to show that the picture it presents is accurate enough, at least in its dark outlines, and lets us see what need there was, in the interests of the weak and of law and order, that the results of the reforming zeal of the Domnus Apostolicus should be felt everywhere. Evidently it was only for the Pope of Rome that the turbulent clerical and lay nobles of the age had any respect at all.

Passing on to Spain, whither found its way most of the church plate of the cathedral of Narbonne, we shall find that two facts at once call for notice. The first is that the demand for a reformation of manners was being heard, even amid the clash of arms, in that peninsula, and that the Spanish bishops were endeavouring to meet it. The other is the steady progress of the Christian kingdoms at the expense of the Moors. This was chiefly due to the valour of one of the greatest of the sovereigns who have ruled in Spain, viz., Ferdinand I, king of Castile and Leon. Elated by his successes, and by the fact that he ruled over more than one kingdom, he was induced to assume the title of emperor. This assumption was not unnaturally resented by the Emperor Henry, who sent ambassadors in order to denounce it first to the assembled Fathers at the council of Tours (1055), which was being held by Hildebrand, and then to Pope Victor and the council of Florence. Both Pope and council decided that the German emperor’s contentions were just; and envoys were dispatched by them to remonstrate with the Spanish monarch in their name, and to threaten excommunication and interdict if their decrees were unheeded by him. Ferdinand at once assembled the bishops and nobles of his kingdoms; and while, through the influence of the famous Roderic Diaz, the Cid, the assembly declared its complete independence of the empire, it resolved, in deference to the Roman Pontiff, that it was desirable that their sovereign should lay aside the imperial title. These recommendations were accepted by Ferdinand, who dismissed the ambassadors with the assurance that he would obey the behests of the Pope.

The activities of Victor were not confined to the continent of Europe. He was equally interested in those “who inhabited the isles of the sea, to wit, the Irish (Scoti) and English”. Sending “health and apostolical benediction to his most beloved son King Edward and to all the nobility of the English”, he confirmed, in response to a request of the king, the ancient privileges which the Roman Church had already conferred on the monastery of Ely. To Archbishop Kynsie (Cynesige), who had come all the way from York for the purpose, he presented his pallium, and he had to take action in the affair of Archbishop Strand. If the reader will turn to a preceding page of this work, he will see how, by the influence of the party of Earl Godwin, the unworthy bishop of Winchester, Stigand, was put in possession of the See of Canterbury (1052), though its legitimate occupant, Robert of Jumièges, was still alive, and had not been canonically deposed. The usurper had been excommunicated by St. Leo IX, whose example was followed by four of his successors. And if “bishops-elect sought consecration abroad”, the reason was that Victor II had forbidden the bishops of the province of Canterbury to seek it at the hands of the intruder Stigand. This illiterate pluralist who had obtained the archbishopric by force was destined to lose it by the same means at the hands of William the Conqueror.

The East

Before retracing our steps to follow the movements of the Pope himself, attention may here be called to one more of his letters, viz. to the one which by mistake was formerly attributed to Victor III, and which was addressed to the aged Empress Theodora, who was placed on the throne of the Byzantine Caesars in the same year as Victor II took possession of the chair of Peter. The document would seem to be another illustration of the fact that contemporaries did not realize that an impassable gulf had been formed between Rome and Constantinople by the acts of the papal legates and of the patriarch Michael Cerularius in 1053. At first Theodora allowed herself to be ruled by the ambitious patriarch, who is thought to have favoured her promotion for the furtherance of his own ends. But her short reign of eighteen months was not far advanced when she spurned the yoke which he was placing upon her. It may well be that knowledge of this fact was not without its influence on the letter which the Pope wrote to her. Reminding her that it was his duty to admonish both great and small, especially indeed the great, as they can do so much more good or harm “to the poor of Christ”, he begged her to abolish the insupportable tax which was placed upon pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre by the imperial officials. Not only was a heavy tax of three aim levied on each of their horses, but the horses themselves were liable to be seized for the public service, and a sum of like amount was exacted from every two persons on foot. He reminded her that the delinquencies of subordinates were visited on their superiors, wished her every blessing for this life and the next, and exhorted her ever to be mindful of and to venerate the Roman Church “as her first and proper mother”, just as she had ever honoured her and her family before her. Death (August 1056) prevented Theodora from carrying into effect her designs against the all-powerful Cerularius, and the tax remained to swell the feelings of bitterness against the Greeks which showed themselves in the conduct of the Latins towards them in the Crusades.

Very little is known of the doings of the Pope from the time that Hildebrand went to France till the summer of 1056, when he betook himself to Germany. During this interval, however, he had a difference with the monks of Monte Cassino. The abbacy of this great monastery had become vacant in December 1055; and, as the Pope complained in various letters to the monks, they (a majority of them) had acted very wrongly in electing the monk Peter as their new abbot without either consulting him or obtaining the emperor’s permission. The fact perhaps was that Peter, though a very holy man, was regarded both by a number of his brethren, and especially by the Pope, as wholly unsuited to rule the abbey and its great domains at a time when a strong will and a clear intellect were needed to cope with the aggressive Normans. To explain their conduct, the brethren at once dispatched some of their number both to the Pope and to the emperor. It seemed to them that it was Victor’s intention to get the monastery into his power. However, they boldly declared that even by papal privilege it belonged to the monks to elect their abbots, and to the Popes only to consecrate them. Settlement of the affair, delayed by the Pontiff’s journey to Germany, was brought about by the resignation of Peter, and the subsequent election of Frederick, the cardinal of Lorraine, a candidate as satisfactory to Victor as to the monks (May 1057).

In July 1056 the Pope was in his March of Firmana at Aprutium (Teramo), no doubt on his way to Germany. We there find him restoring property to its bishop, and decreeing, “in the name of King Henry and his own”, that any breach of his decision would be punished by a fine of fifty pounds to the royal exchequer, and of a like amount both to his treasury and to the bishop.

We have no means of saying whether or not he had previously visited the southern portion of Italy. But in any case the story of the sufferings which the people were there enduring from the ravages of the Normans was poured into his ears. It was more than he could bear. This cry of distress, and perhaps, too, indications of unrest on the part of the Romans, caused him to lend a favourable ear to the repeated requests of the emperor that he would come to him in Germany.

Accordingly, about the month of August he moved northwards from Aprutium and found the emperor at Goslar, (1056, September 8). He would have been greeted with a splendour altogether unprecedented, had not God, who wished, we are told, to show how empty was all such display, sent a furious storm of rain at the very moment of the Pope’s arrival. On account of the feast, the Nativity of Our Lady, and to welcome the sovereign Pontiff, the wealth and power of the empire had assembled at Goslar. But the deluge of rain converted what was to have been a most glorious and solemn procession of magnates into a disorderly flight.

Despite the weather, however, attention was given both to business and to pleasure. The Pope succeeded in reconciling Hanno, the new archbishop of Cologne, with the emperor, and then the court migrated to Bodfeld in the Hartz Mountains for hunting purposes. But unfortunately the emperor’s days were numbered. A fever attacked him, and, feeling that the hand of Death was upon him, he prepared to meet his end like a man and a Christian. He asked pardon of all whom he could, restored certain ill-gotten goods, forgave those who had injured him, confessed his sins to the Pope and to the other bishops and priests who surrounded his bedside, and received absolution (indulgentiam) from them, as well as the holy viaticum of the Body and Blood of the Lord. To provide as far as possible for the maintenance of order in his kingdom after his demise, he entrusted it and his successor, Henry IV, a child six years old, to the care of the Pope; and, after an illness of about a week, gave up his soul into the hands of its Maker (October 5, 1056). His body was transported to Spires, where, according to the arrangements made by the Pope and the widowed Empress Agnes it was buried on the anniversary of the day on which he had been born (October 28), in order that, on the very day on which he had come forth from the womb of his mother, he might be laid in the bosom of the earth, the common mother of every mortal.

Through the general uprightness of his character, and especially through his uncompromising hostility to simony, Henry had in many ways deserved well of the Church, even though he occasionally acted as its master. And so Hildebrand, whose life was devoted to freeing it from the thraldom to which he and his predecessors had reduced it, always spoke well of him. But his early death, though disastrous for the empire, was advantageous for the Church. Her path to freedom was greatly smoothed thereby. Meanwhile, now supreme in both Church and State, Victor exerted himself with striking success to preserve the empire from the calamities to be naturally expected on the accession of a child. The occasion called forth all the skill of the former minister. In the East the Slavs had just defeated an imperial army with great slaughter, and, in the West, Godfrey of Lorraine and his allies were still in arms. The first care of the Pope was to cause the boy-king to be solemnly enthroned at Aix-la-Chapelle and the nobles to swear fealty to him, and his next to reconcile Godfrey and Baldwin of Flanders with Henry at a council which he held in December at Cologne. Still in company with the Pope, Henry met the princes of the empire on Christmas Day at Ratisbon. His position was secured, and the Tope, with the empire deeply in his debt, returned to Rome in the beginning of the Lent of 1057.

On his arrival in Rome, Victor occupied himself not only with holding councils, settling various matters in connection with bishoprics, and granting privileges, but also with the Norman question. Unable to bring the pressure of arms to bear upon the Agareni (for so, regarding them as equally vicious as the Saracens, the people called the Normans), he seems to have tried diplomacy, and, according to the Annals of Augsburg, succeeded in inducing them to have a greater regard for peace. His energy indeed at this period was such that we can have no reason to call in question the soundness of the conclusion of his anonymous admirer to the effect that if he had lived longer, “he would have made both the ears of many people tingle”. But his pontificate had not much longer to run. He left Rome for Tuscany, never to return, towards the end of May.

One of the objects of this, his last journey from Rome, was in no doubt to examine for himself on the spot the causes of the perennial dispute between the bishops of Arezzo and Sienna, which was brought before him also. Another reason would be to take further steps towards drawing still closer the bonds of union between the Papacy and the House of Tuscany. Even if he had not been joined by Hildebrand in Germany, it is certain that he was accompanied by him on this occasion.

We have already seen how, emboldened by the death of the emperor, the monks of Monte Cassino had, to the entire satisfaction of the Pope, elected Frederick of Lorraine as the abbot. In the month of June the newly elected abbot followed Victor into Tuscany, and was in the first place ordained by him cardinal-priest of St. Chrysogonus (June 14), that fourth-century basilica of which the late Pope Leo XIII, of glorious memory, was titular when he was elected supreme Pontiff. Ten days later he consecrated him abbot. Assured of the goodwill at least of Beatrice, Duke Godfrey’s wife, who had been restored to him, and of her stepdaughter Matilda, Victor was evidently bent on attaching to the Papacy by the strong bonds of friendship the now most powerful House of Lorraine-Tuscany. In Italy there was no family comparable in influence to that of Godfrey, who received or assumed about this time the titles of “standard-bearer of the Romans, patricius of Rome, marquis of Italy, prefect of Ancona, and marquis of Pisa”. The fruit of Victor’s attention to this influential family was to be garnered by the Papacy at no distant date. The great Countess Matilda was to prove the strongest barrier to the tyrannical designs of Henry IV.

Before the new abbot returned to Rome, he assisted, along with Hildebrand, the provisor of the monastery of St. Paul, outside-the-walls, and with several bishops of different Tuscan cities, at a council which the Pope summoned to settle the dispute between the bishops of Arezzo and Sienna regarding jurisdiction over various parishes (July 23). The assembly met in the palace of St. Donatus, near the city of Arezzo, and would appear to have deeded in favour of the claims of Arezzo.

Five days after the closing of the council, its chief was lying dead in the city near which it had been held. Anxious to have the body of their illustrious countryman buried in their midst, a number of Germans set out with it for “the toparch of Eichstadt”. In the neighbourhood of Ravenna, however, they fell into an ambush prepared for them by a number of its inhabitants, and were robbed of all they had. They were forced, therefore, to bury the remains they so jealously guarded outside Ravenna, “in the basilica of St. Mary, which is of the shape of the Roman Pantheon, and with sorrowful hearts to make their way back, as best they could, to their country”. The basilica in question was the well-known round mausoleum of Theodoric, which had been converted into a monastic church. These distressing circumstances connected with the Pope’s burial serve well to illustrate the lawless condition of the age, and may be looked upon as a complement to the disregard shown by the emperors to the canon law in their elections of Popes. In the sudden and premature death of Victor we have to mourn the loss of another of those German Popes whose lives were an honour to themselves, an advantage to the Church, and a credit to those who nominated them.

Neither epitaph nor coin of Victor seems to be extant. There is a story that on one occasion, when he was saying Mass, the subdeacon put poison into the chalice along with the wine. Wishful after the consecration to raise the chalice, the Pope found to his astonishment that he was unable to do so. When, with the people, he prayed to God to know the cause of this strange circumstance, the poisoner was possessed by the devil. At once divining the cause, the Pope ordered the chalice with the blood of the Lord to be enclosed in an altar and preserved for ever as relics. Then he continued praying until the unfortunate subdeacon was delivered from his possession.

 

 

 

 

 

STEPHEN (IX) X

A.D. 1057-1058.

 

Emperor of the East.

           Isaac Comnenus, 1057-1059.

 

One of the distinguished group of men whom Leo IX gathered round him, and inspired with his own ardent zeal for the reform of the Church and of the world, was Cardinal Junian Frederick. Born probably towards the beginning of the eleventh century, he was the son of Gothelon or Gozelon, duke of Lotharingia or Lower Lorraine, and of Junca, the daughter of Berengarius II, the last king of Italy. The rebellious attitude of his brother, Godfrey the Bearded, towards the empire soon caused him to become an object of suspicion to the Emperor Henry III, and the marriage of the same brother with Beatrice of Tuscany brought him into relationship with the most powerful house in Italy.

The learning for which he was distinguished from his youth upwards, he acquired at the school of St. Lambert of Liège, which at that time was in a most flourishing condition. In due course he became a canon and then archdeacon of St. Lambert’s. It was in all likelihood while he was holding that office that Leo IX, on the occasion of his second visit to Germany, took him into the service of the Roman Church. He made him chancellor and librarian of the Apostolic See; and in March 1051 we find his signature appended to papal bulls as deacon, librarian and chancellor of the Apostolic See, holding the place of Herimann, arch chancellor and archbishop of Cologne.

As chancellor he accompanied Pope Leo in his apostolic journeys, thus gaining a personal knowledge of many parts of the Church he was destined to rule. We find him on the plains of Hungary; reading aloud before emperor and people at Bamberg the privileges of its Church; and witnessing the discomfiture of Leo’s troops by the Normans.

The most important work in which he took a share before occupying the chair of Peter was the famous embassy dispatched by Leo to Constantinople, which terminated the disastrous schism of the East and the West.

We have already seen how Frederick was robbed of his treasures when he returned from the Greek capital, and how, robbed, to avoid falling into the power of the emperor, he cast off the previous robes he was accustomed to wear and became a monk at Monte Cassino. To put a greater distance between himself and his enemy, it was not long before he betook himself to the monastery which had been recently founded on the smallest of the Tremiti Islands. Taking umbrage at certain abuses he found there, he incurred the dislike of the abbot. This caused him to return to the mainland, and to seek an asylum in the monastery of St. John de Venere in the county of Lanciano. He did not, however, remain long there. Hearing that the abbot of Monte Cassino (Richer), returning from Ancona, where he had been to see the Pope, was at the monastery of St. Liberator, he went to him, begged pardon of him for his restlessness, and obtained his permission to return to Monte Cassino. It must have been about the end of the year 1055 that he once again climbed the steep hill which that venerable abbey still crowns.

The death of the emperor Henry III, not many months after this (October 1056), left Frederick a freer hand, and when Pope Victor returned to Rome from Germany (April 1057), he went to him to obtain justice from Trasmund, count of Teate (Chieti), who, as we have seen, had robbed and imprisoned him on his return from Constantinople. The brigand-noble, after having been excommunicated by the Pope, confessed his crime, and restored not only the property of the legates, but also other ill-gotten goods as well. According to the so-called chronicle of Penna, however, it was only when Frederick, as Pope, led an armed force against him that the count yielded up his ill-gotten gains. It is quite possible, if the entry is correct, that Stephen X undertook this expedition either because Trasmund did not fulfil all the promises he had made to Victor, or because he had resumed his old plundering habits.

Soon after the death of the emperor, Richerius, abbot of Monte Cassino, and Frederick’s friend, died also (December 11, 1055). Thereupon most of the monks elected as his successor Peter, the dean of the monastery, an old man indeed, but one in every way worthy of the position, a man whom the emperor Henry III had pronounced to be the most perfect monk he had ever seen. For some reason Pope Victor did not approve of this election. Perhaps he thought that Peter was too old to occupy so responsible a position in such difficult times, or perhaps he had set his mind on having another abbot. At any rate, at first with honied words, and then with sharp ones, he gave the monks to understand that they had no right to proceed to an election without consulting him, and without inquiring into what might be the will of the emperor. Then, taking advantage of the fact that the monks who had not voted for Peter assured him that the election had been uncanonical, he dispatched Cardinal Humbert to Monte Cassino to inquire into the election on the spot. But the monks boldly proclaimed that, by their rule and by papal sanction, the right of election belonged to them alone, and that in the present case all the forms required by canon law had been properly complied with.

The investigation would have terminated favourably for Peter, had not some of his partisans, unknown to him, and acting with more zeal than discretion, roused the dependants of the abbey, and attempted to settle the trial by the sword. Peter felt that his cause was lost; and no sooner had he succeeded in dispersing his armed supporters than he placed his resignation in the cardinal’s hands. A unanimous vote of the monks caused Cardinal Frederick to be acknowledged as his successor (May 23, 1057).

Joining the Pope in Tuscany, the newly elected abbot was first made cardinal-priest of St. Chrysogonus, and then consecrated abbot by him. He also received from Victor the privilege of wearing the sandals, gloves, and dalmatic—the usual insignia of a bishop—and of taking rank above all other abbots.

When he returned to Rome he was escorted both to his titular church and to his residence in the monastery of St. Stephen in Pallara, among the ruins of the Palatine, with the customary honours by a vast crowd (July 27).

He went to his titular church in great state, clad in a cope and wearing a mitre, riding on horseback, attended by a body of horsemen, and accompanied by the primicerius, the schola cantorum, the regionary sub-deacons, the ostiar; and such of the magnates (majores) as he had invited. Boys walked in front of him, bearing palms and flowers, and, as he rode along, an acolyte among them kept continually intoning his name, to which the choir responded, “St. Peter has chosen you”. When he arrived at his church, and before he dismounted, the primicerius and the choristers formed around him, and the paraphonista (the arch-chorister) in a loud voice intoned his name. Thrice the choir responded, “May God preserve you! Holy Mary! help you. Holy Michael! help you”. When the laudes were finished, Frederick dismounted, and gave his hand to the paraphonista, who led him into the church. During the Mass that followed he was assisted by the primicerius.

After the sacrifice was over, he adjourned with his company to the Palatine, and there entertained them and dismissed them with largess (presbiterium).

After spending a few days in procuring the ornaments required by his new dignities, he was preparing to leave the city when Boniface, bishop of Albano, brought the news of the death of Pope Victor. Thrown into consternation at this unexpected catastrophe, Frederick at once gave up all thoughts of leaving Rome for the time. He was immediately beset both by clerics and laymen anxious to know his opinion as to what was best to be done, and as to whom he considered most fit to be Victor’s successor. He suggested to them the names of five persons, among which were those of John of Velletri, afterwards the antipope Benedict X, and of Hildebrand, subdeacon of the Roman Church. But the Roman people would have none of them. Some indeed were of opinion that they should await Hildebrand’s return from Tuscany, where he had been staying with the late Pope. The majority, however, thought that there was no time for delay, and that there was no candidate so likely to be able to maintain himself in his position when freely elected than Cardinal Frederick himself, the brother of the powerful Duke Godfrey. To secure a free election, it was necessary to anticipate the action of the imperialists or of any powerful family at home. Consequently Frederick was taken by force from the monastery on the Palatine to the basilica of St. Peter ad vincula, and there he was duly elected, and called Stephen, as his election had taken place on the feast of St. Stephen I, Pope and martyr (August 2, 1057). From St. Peter’s he was taken in triumphal procession to be enthroned in the Lateran palace, and on the following day was consecrated “supreme and universal Pontiff”, as Leo expresses it, in presence of “all the cardinals, the clergy, and the Roman people”.

Though the new Pope realized that the carrying out of the measures of reform to which the Papacy had committed itself would meet with much fierce opposition, he followed resolutely in the steps of his immediate predecessors. During the first four months of his reign he remained in Rome, and held several synods with a view to promoting the celibacy of the clergy and to checking marriages between near relations. And when the Greek custom with regard to clerical celibacy was urged against his action, he answered that the customs of the Greek and Latin churches were different, and that the custom of the latter church was that all clerics, from the subdeacon to the bishop, should refrain from marriage. St. Peter Damian tells us that he expelled from Rome, in order that they might do penance, even those clerics who had left their wives; for many of them only ceased to transgress the discipline of the Church in order to break many of the commandments of God. And, to serve as a warning to evil-doers, he recounts the sudden death of a priest who would not separate from his wife, and the advice which he himself gave on that occasion, viz., that no solemn rites should be offered for the repose of  his soul.

To help him in his arduous task, the Pope had summoned the teller of this story from his quiet Umbrian retreat at Fonte-Avellana to Rome in order to make him cardinal-bishop of Ostia. So stoutly, however, did he refuse the preferred dignity that the Pope, putting him under holy obedience, seized him by the arm and “affianced him to the Church of Ostia by forcing the ring on his finger, and the crozier into his hand”. In announcing to his episcopal brethren his accession to their number, the new cardinal took occasion very bluntly to remind them of their duty. After bewailing the general decay of morals, he points out that in the midst of the flood of iniquity, “the holy Roman Church is the only harbour, and that it is the net of the poor fisherman which alone is able to gather together those who are boldly struggling against the angry waves, and to br.ng them safely to shore ... And since from all parts of the world crowds flock to the Lateran palace, there ought to be conspicuous there, more than in any other part, irreproachable morals, exemplary lives, and strict discipline ... What makes a bishop is a good life, and an unceasing effort to acquire the virtues of his state, and not turret-like headgear made of foreign ski is, nor gaudy marten furs worn beneath the chin, nor jingling golden bangles, nor companies of soldiers, nor high-spirited and prancing chargers”.

Another uncompromising monk whom Stephen advanced was Humbert, cardinal-bishop of Silva-Candida, and his colleague in the famous embassy to Constantinople regarding Michael Cerularius. He was made “librarian of the Roman Church and of the Apostolic See”. His strong, and in parts unmeasured, treatise against simony was published about this time, and may be taken as another indication of the reforming zeal which animated the breast of his patron. After going to the length of declaring null all ordinations effected by simoniacal means, Humbert asserted that, especially in Italy, ecclesiastical property had been absolutely ruined by simony; and that, as he had seen with his own eyes, it had led even to the ploughing up for gain of the sacred enclosures of churches, to the consequent unearthing of the bones of those who had died in the Lord, and to the very basilicas themselves being used as cattle stalls. As the principal cause of this detestable sin of Simon Magus, he denounced the investing by laymen with the ring and crozier of those whom, against the canons, they had chosen, or caused to be chosen, bishops or abbots. Here he laid his finger on the root of the evil, and pointed out to the Popes the main stronghold which they would have to attack. “Three books against simony” were the opening of the fierce war of investiture which was the predominant note of the Gregorian epoch.

Stephen’s choice of Hildebrand for the delicate mission of announcing his elect on to the German court is a proof that he, equally with his predecessors, placed the fullest confidence in his judgment, and shared his views on the needs of reform, and on the means to be employed to effect it. The cardinal was also commissioned to exhort the empress-mother, Agnes, to impress upon her son to see to it that ecclesiastical benefits were bestowed for virtue and merit, and not for money. By “the eloquence and sacred learning” for which he was distinguished, Hildebrand succeeded in his mission, and spent the Christmas of 1057 with the young Henry at Goslar. Two days after the feast itself he was at Pohlde, assisting at the consecration of the illustrious Gundechar as bishop of Eichstadt.

Hildebrand had left Rome with commissions to execute in Italy and France, as well as in Germany; and on his of Milan, way to the imperial court had done important work at Milan (c. August 1057). Even in Lombardy there was no place where the laws not merely of the Church but of God regarding purity were more openly set at defiance than in that great city. From its illiterate archbishop downwards, the whole body of its clergy were stained with simony. Bonizo doubts if there were five out of a thousand not guilty of it; and, owing to the fact that most of the clergy were married, or, what was worse, lived in concubinage, and that their children followed largely the occupation of their fathers, the number of clerics in Milan was very considerable. And if we are to believe Landulf the elder, the contemporary historian of the city, the respectable married clergy were held in at least as much esteem as those who observed the discipline of the West in the matter of clerical continency. The unremitting efforts of the former to obtain benefices for their offspring was one of the principal causes of the simoniacal practices which were devastating the Church of Milan. As they profited pecuniary by these breaches of law and discipline, the Lombard nobility were ardent supporters of the married clergy. But the very magnitude of the disorders provoked a reaction; and an earnest attempt at reform was initiated. At the head of this movement was a young priest, Anselm by name, who belonged to a good family at Baggio near Milan, and who had been trained in learning and virtue by the famous Lanfranc at Bec. Hoping to crush the new spirit which was manifesting itself in his archiepiscopal see by removing its originator, Guido had contrived to induce the emperor and Pope Stephen to consent to Anselm’s being made bishop of Lucca. But the archbishop was no nearer the accomplishment of the end he had in view. Anselm’s work was taken up by two clerics of noble birth, Ariald and Landulf, who, in language at times more strong than judicious, denounced the clerical vices of the city. The people, especially the poor, inflamed by their addresses, showed themselves vi0lently hostile to the married and simoniacal clergy. Milan was soon in an uproar. From the fact that many of the reformers were dwellers in that quarter of the city —the Pataria— where old rags (patari) were sold, they were dubbed “Patarines” or “Ragbags” by the clergy and their aristocratic supporters. But if they called names, the people used force. They compelled many of the clergy to promise in writing to give up their wives or concubines, and seized their property. Thus driven to extremities, the harassed clerics appealed for protection first to the bishops of their province, and then to the Pope.

Stephen wrote at once exhorting the people to keep the peace, and ordering Guido to summon a synod for the settlement of the affair. A numerous assembly of bishops accordingly met together at Fontaneto in the diocese of Novara; but, as Landulf and Ariald failed to put in an appearance, they were duly excommunicated. None of the Patarines, however, took the slightest notice of the excommunication; Landulf and Ariald became greater heroes than ever, and the nobility were thoroughly overawed by the demonstrations made by the people in their behalf. Still, as their adversaries had turned to Rome, the Patarines determined to do likewise. In company with a number of “honourable men”, Ariald presented himself before the Pope, and begged him to send legates back with him to reform the Church of Milan. Stephen, after a careful examination of all the circumstances, gave him a favourable hearing, and sent him home in company with such ardent champions of reform as Bishop Anselm of Lucca and Cardinal Hildebrand.

Guido did not await the coming of these upright and inflexible judges, but fled to the court of the emperor. How thoroughly they manifested their approval at least of the principles which animated the Patarine party may be gauged from the bitter words of Landulf. The legates, he says, “owed broadcast ruin, discord, and dissension”. Leaving the Patarines, overjoyed at this their first victory, to propagate their ideas throughout Lombardy and to prepare for the severer struggle of 1059, Hildebrand went north to fulfil his other commissions in Germany and in France.

Meanwhile the health of Pope Stephen was declining. Unable to bear the climate of Rome, he went among the hills to the monastery on Monte Cassino (November 1057). There, for he was still its abbot, he applied himself, not only to the correcting of certain abuses which had crept in among the monks, but also to negotiating with the eastern emperor with regard to the schism.

As Christmas drew near his illness increased. Thinking his end was approaching, he bade the monks elect a new abbot, and was pleased that their votes were unanimously given to his friend, the famous Desiderius. However, as he wished to keep for himself the abbatial power, and as he had determined that Desiderius was to be one of his legates to Constantinople, he told the newly elected abbot that if, on his return from the East, he found the Pope still alive, he was merely to be a  titular abbot, but, under the opposite supposition, was to have the power as well as the honour attached to his title. The mission on which Desiderius was dispatched came to nothing, as the Pope had died before the delegates left Italy, and the abbot-elect was recalled to rule his monastery.

At length (February 10), feeling himself somewhat improved in health, and anxious to be back in Rome, to prepare for the great council he had determined to hold after Easter, Stephen returned to the city. One of the first acts which he accomplished on his return showed why he had determined to remain abbot of Monte Cassino, and what large designs he had been maturing. Whilst at the great monastery, his ears had been filled with stories of the dreadful deeds of the Normans, and, as Leo IX had done, he came to the conclusion that they must be expelled from Italy. But the history of his predecessor’s failure had taught him that little help was to be hoped for from Germany, and from even a strong emperor. Still less could be expected from a child. He would then bestow the imperial crown on his powerful brother, Duke Godfrey of Lorraine and Tuscany, and raise money for the war by borrowing the treasures of Monte Cassino. So at least ran a wild story. At any rate, he had not been long back in Rome before he sent word to the provost of the monastery to bring to him with all possible speed and secrecy its gold and silver, promising in a short time to return a far larger sum. Obedient, but sorrowful, the monks laid their treasure at the feet of the Pope. Touched at the sight of their grief, pleased at the sight of their prompt obedience, and, it may be, doubtful of the justice of what he had thought of doing, he bade them return home with their property, only keeping for himself a single statue (icona) out of the presents he had himself brought from Constantinople.

Unfortunately, his residence at Monte Cassino had not effected any material improvement in his health. He felt the hand of death was upon him, and, with statesmanlike instinct, that trouble was in store for the Papacy. But he was wise enough to devise a remedy for the evil he had wit enough to foresee. He called the Roman clergy and people together, and adjured them not to proceed to the election of a new Pope before the return of the subdeacon Hildebrand, should his own death supervene in the meantime. The succession was to be regulated by his advice. “For I know that after my death there will arise among you men, self-seekers, who will endeavour to obtain possession of the Apostolic See, not in accordance with canon law, but by force”.

After he had obtained a promise from all present that in any papal election which might take place, the canons should be faithfully observed, Stephen once again left Rome and set out for Tuscany (March 1058). Whether he went thither for his health’s sake, or to meet his brother, or for some other purpose, is uncertain. Anxious to have his last hours comforted by the presence of a saint, he sent word to John Gualbert to come from his monastery at Vallombrosa and meet him. But John was himself too ill to be able to obey the Pope’s summons.

However, if he could not secure the services of one saint, he was fortunate enough to obtain those of another. His deathbed at Florence was attended by St. Hugh, the great abbot of Cluny, a man whom Stephen had ever esteemed and loved, and of whom he used to say that the devil went out when Hugh came in, and returned when the worthy abbot departed. Solaced by the saint, and surrounded, as he had always been in life, by several of his brethren from Monte Cassino, the Pope had himself laid out in sackcloth and ashes, and, after receiving the last rites of the Church, expired in the abbot’s arms. He breathed his last on March 29, 1058. He was buried in the Church of S. Reparata, which was erected in the seventh century on the site of the Church of S. Salvatore, and was afterwards demolished (in the beginning of the fourteenth century) to make way for the present glorious Duomo, or Cathedral of S. Maria del Fiore. Whilst excavations were being made (August 1357) in the course of the erection of the existing church, we are assured by the Florentine historian Matteo Villani that there was found by the side of the altar of St. Zenobio, the patron saint of Florence, the tomb of Pope Stephen. The inscription on it made identification easy. On the breast of the corpse was found the papal brooch adorned with gems and with a golden clasp; on its head was a mitre, and there was a ring on its finger. “The relics were all entrusted to the Calonaci to await honourable burial”. Whether they ever obtained it, however, does not seem to be known.

The epitaph, which, according to Paccinelli in his history of the Abbey of Florence, used to be in the possession of Christina of Lorraine, grand-duchess of Tuscany, is a comparatively modern and insipid production in the renaissance style. It simply says, in many words, that Duke Godfrey in tears joins his tribute of affection to his brother with that of others, and that the monks of the Abbey of Florence do likewise

In conclusion, we may regret with Lambert of Hersfeld that Stephen’s early death disappointed those who had hoped great things from his pontificate, inasmuch as “for many years back no one had assumed the government of the Roman Church with greater satisfaction to all men, and amid more universal expectation of a glorious reign”. Esteemed by all the people in life, he was regarded by them as a miracle-worker in death.

 

 

 

 

NICHOLAS II.

A.D. 1059-1061.

 

Emperors of the East.

                 Isaac Comnenus, 1057-1059

                Constantine X, Ducas, 1059-10O7. 

 Kings of France. 

                Henry I, 1033-1060.

                Philip I, 1060-1108.

 

No sooner did the news of the death of Stephen X (March, 29) reach Rome, than that lawless party of the Roman barons, whose interference in papal elections had in the past epoch brought such disgrace upon the Papacy, made a last effort to keep their usurped power. Headed by Gregory de Alberico, count of Tusculum, Gerard or Girard, count of Galeria, and the sons of Crescentius of Monticelli, an armed band took possession of the city; and, at night, amidst scenes of the wildest disorder, despite the canons, the promises made to the late Pope, and the protests and anathemas of the cardinals, they elected John, bishop of Velletri, as the successor of St. Peter (April 5). By scattering broadcast the money which they had seized in the treasury of St. Peter’s, the nobles succeeded in getting , their puppet acknowledged by a number of the Romans. They could not, however, get a bishop to enthrone him in the prescribed manner. St. Peter Damian, whose office it was, as bishop of Ostia, to perform that ceremony, had fled with the other bishops; so that they were compelled to have the function carried out by an illiterate priest of the Church of Ostia.

The bishop who had after such a fashion been proclaimed Pope was a Roman of the region of St. Mary Major’s, and the son of one Guido. As he had been named by Cardinal Frederick as a possible candidate for the Papacy, he can scarcely have been the fool depicted by St. Peter Damian in the indignant letter which narrates the circumstances of his elevation. If he had no hand in bringing about his selection by the Tusculan faction, nay, if was against his will that he was promoted by it, he sinned, as St. Peter Damian pointed out, by striving to maintain himself in a position in which he had been illegally placed.

Fortunately the day of the counts of Tusculum was over. They had to reckon not only with Hildebrand outside the city, but with a strong opposition in Rome itself, especially in the Trastevere. There it was headed by a noble of the name of Leo, the son of Benedict known as “the Christian”, who seems to have been a convert from Judaism, and to have been the founder of the house of Pierleoni, which was to become so famous in the beginning of the following century.

But the more formidable opponent of baronial anarchy and insolence was Hildebrand. When he returned to Italy from his triple embassy, he was greeted with the sad news that the armed violence of the counts of Tusculum had gone far to undo the work of reform he had so well inaugurated. But the sword had no terrors for Hildebrand. He halted at Florence, and at once began to take steps to foil the blustering doings of the party of misrule. He put himself in communication with those in Rome who were anxious for the reform of Church and State; and, if we are to believe the Roman Annals, sent money to Leo the son of Benedict. Encouraged by his letters, strong opposition was offered by them to the dongs of the Tusculan counts and their creature, and Hildebrand was assured that what he did would meet with their consent.

Then, securing a promise of armed support from Duke Godfrey, he designated as Pope, Gerard, bishop of Florence. He was selected not only on account of his worth, but also, no doubt, because it was thought he would not be unacceptable to the German Court, as he had been nominated to his bishopric by the emperor Henry III. For Hildebrand had resolved to endeavour to secure the adhesion of the empress-regent to his plans. He could not look to her for troops, seeing that it was as much as she could do to maintain her own authority against disaffected Saxons and ambitious nobles. But he realized that her consent to his wishes would not merely avoid complications in the future, but help to the general acceptance of his candidate. It is far from unlikely that he went on this mission himself. At any rate a number of Romans approached the empress on the matter, and obtained from her a commission to Wibert, the imperial chancellor of Italy, and to Duke Godfrey to co-operate with Hildebrand in securing the appointment of the bishop of Florence. On the return of the embassy, the cardinals who had escaped from Rome met together at Siena, probably in December, and duly elected the Burgundian Gerard.

In the first month of the following year Wibert and Godfrey assembled their forces at Sutri. After holding a council there, in which the usurper Benedict was condemned, Gerard and his supporters advanced on Rome. Their friends in the Trastevere forthwith admitted them into that part of the city. After some fighting Gerard became master of Rome, and Benedict, henceforth contemptuously dubbed Mincius, fled to Passarano, and placed himself under the protection of Regem or Regetellus, the son of Crescentius.

After the prefect Peter had been replaced by John Tiniosus, one of Hildebrand’s Trasteverine followers, a solemn assembly of the people was held at the Lateran, and the circumstances of Benedict’s election thoroughly inquired into. Some of those who were interrogated at once acknowledged that the election of Benedict was a crime, but declared that it had been effected despite them; others, however, maintained that, as Benedict was a wise and good man, they had done well in electing him. However, the greater part both of the clergy and the laity were of the same mind as the archdeacon, and accordingly deposed Benedict, and elected Gerard.

Thus duly “chosen by the Roman clergy and people”, the Burgundian bishop, learned, bright, pure, and charitable, was solemnly enthroned in St. Peter’s as Nicholas II, and received from his subjects the usual oath of fidelity. But some, we are told, took it holding up their left hands; for, they said, they had already sworn to Benedict with their right. The same authority insinuates that all this was not accomplished without bribery and the personal solicitations of the Pope.

The position of Nicholas, however, was anything but safe. Benedict had left Passarano, and had betaken himself to the strong castle of Count Gerard of Galeria. It was necessary to have him dislodged, and Hildebrand could not think of any who were at once able and willing to effect that task but the Normans. They had ever shown themselves wishful to approach the Papacy. The time had come, then, to reverse the policy of Leo IX, and to make the best of the Norman occupation of south Italy, which was now an accomplished fact. After the battle of Civitella, the Norman hold of the southern portion of the Italian peninsula had rapidly tightened. Encouraged by his successes against the town, Richard of Aversa assumed the title of Prince of Capua in 1058, though he did not obtain full and final control over it till the middle of 1062. It was to him that Hildebrand, “by command of Pope Nicholas”, betook himself in the first instance. His mission was crowned with complete success. Richard promised fealty to the Pope and to the Roman Church, and dispatched three hundred men with Hildebrand to seize the castle of Galeria. The place, however, was strong, so that after ravaging the district the Normans returned without effecting its reduction. This was in the spring of 1059. The Norman alliance had made a beginning, and was quickly to be extended.

One of the agents who helped to strengthen the good understanding between the Papacy and the Normans was Desiderius, whom we have seen made honorary abbot of Monte Cassino by Stephen X. Prevented by bad weather from sailing to Constantinople for the purpose of carrying out the commission entrusted to him by that Pope, he had had to throw himself upon the generosity of the Norman Guiscard in order to secure a safe return to his abbey when Stephen died. He was fortunate enough to find favour in the eyes of the fierce Norman, who assisted him to reach Monte Cassino in safety, and ever remained deeply attached to him. Duly installed as its abbot on April 18, 1058, it was not, however, till about a year later that Desiderius was consecrated by Pope Nicholas at Osimo (March 7), after he had been ordained cardinal-priest on the preceding day. And, in a bull in favour of Monte Cassino which he praises as the model of monasteries and as allied to the Holy See, Nicholas bestowed on Desiderius, but for his own lifetime only, jurisdiction over all the monks in Campania, and in the Principality of Benevento, and in Apulia and Calabria. With the aid of the local bishops he was commissioned to restore discipline, which, in some monasteries, was relaxed. Such in south Italy was the position of the man whose high intelligence and gentleness of character was to make him the acceptable intermediary between the Papacy and the redoubtable Robert Guiscard.

Whilst Nicholas was utilizing the good understanding which existed between Desiderius and the Normans to effect reforms in the South, he was, about the same time, employing the zeal of St. Peter Damian in the North to continue the good work commenced by Hildebrand in Milan. It was a deputation of its citizens that had moved him to send his legates there. To the fiery saint he joined the milder Anselm da Baggio, or Badagio, bishop of Lucca, and destined to be Alexander II. But this second papal mission was not to be accomplished as quietly as the first. The simoniacal clergy had not been idle in the meantime. They had organized a party in opposition to that of the Patarines. The legates were received, indeed, with the honour which was due to representatives of the Holy See; but no sooner had they proceed to deal in synod with the matter which had brought them to the city, than there arose among the people a regular tumult, organized by the clergy in opposition. This rapidly increased in intensity when Archbishop Guido was seen to be seated on the left of St. Peter Damian, while Anselm was on his right. Many went about shouting that the Church of St. Ambrose ought not to be subject to the jurisdiction of Rome, and that the Roman See had no right to act as judge within that of Milan. The people crowded towards the episcopal palace, where the synod was assembled; they made the whole city reverberate with the harsh clanging of its bells, and threatened Damian with death. Quite unmoved, however, he arose and calmly addressed the angry mob.

What province, he asked them, was outside of the rule of him who had the keys of the gates of heaven itself. Patriarchs and bishops, emperors and kings, have been made by man, but the Roman Church was founded through Peter by Christ Himself. Milan, he reminded them, had received its first apostles from Rome, and their great patron St. Ambrose had ever acknowledged its pre-eminence. “Search”, said he in conclusion, “your own records, and if you do not find there recorded what I have stated, you may account me a liar. But if you discover that I have spoken what is true, then resist not the truth, assail not your mother, but be ever ready gladly to receive the solid food of heavenly doctrine from the one from whom, you first drew the milk of apostolic faith”.

Overcome by the character and eloquence of Damian, the people were not only quietened, but were moved to promise the saint to do whatever he should require of them. “Then”, moralizes the legate, “I saw plainly how all-important it was in ecclesiastical cases to understand the prerogatives (privilegium) of the Roman Church”.

He insisted in the first instance that the archbishop and the principal clergy should sign a declaration to the effect that in future holy orders, ecclesiastical benefices, etc., should be bestowed freely, and that the Western discipline with regard to clerical continency should be strictly upheld. He obtained a similar oath from the majority of the people. Then he imposed suitable penances in the old canonical style on the various delinquents, which they were allowed to redeem by the payment of a fixed sum of money, or, in other cases, by the recitation of prescribed prayers, or the performance of certain works of charity. With all this, however, it will not surprise any who know the world that evils which had struck deep and wide roots were not eradicated by one effort even of a saint.

Lateran Council, April 13, 1059

Soon after the mission of St. Peter Damian to Milan, there met in Rome a synod of one hundred and thirteen bishops, which was destined to exercise a lasting influence on the history of the Papacy. The chief business which occupied the attention of the assembly was the formulating of legislation calculated to prevent the repetition of such elections as that of Benedict X, and to affirm the lawfulness of that of Nicholas. Unfortunately, the struggle between the Popes and the emperors, which occupied no little portion of this period, caused the wording of the principal decree propagated by the council to be afterwards tampered with. Such a version of it will be given here as seems best supported by other documents of acknowledged authenticity which bear upon it.

Besides issuing decrees against simony and clerical and lay incontinency, the council ordained “that, on the death of the Pontiff of this universal Roman Church, (1) the cardinal-bishops shall together and with the greatest care consider who is to be his successor; (2) that they shall then attach to themselves the cardinals of the other orders (clericos cardinales); (3) and that the rest of the clergy and the laity shall next express their adhesion to the new election. To put down all attempt at venality, let the religious men (religiosi viri), the clergy, i.e., the cardinals, take the lead in the election of the new Pope, and let the others follow them. If the ranks of the (Roman) Church can show a suitable candidate, let him be elected; but, if not, let one be taken from another church—saving the honour and respect due to our most beloved son Henry, now king, and one day, by the blessing of God, it is to be hoped, emperor, according as, by the mediation of his envoy, Wibert or Guibert, chancellor of Lombardy, we have granted to him, and to such of his successors as shall have individually obtained this privilege from the Apostolic See”.

“And if the power of the wicked is such that a proper and gratuitous election cannot be made in Rome, let the cardinal-bishops, along with the pious clergy (cum religiosis cleris), and with the Catholic laity, even if few in number, have the right of electing the Pontiff of the Apostolic See where they shall think best. And when the election has once been made, should war or the malice of the wicked prevent the enthronization of the newly elect, let him, as true Pope, have authority to rule the Roman Church. If, despite these decrees, anyone shall have been elected or enthroned by sedition, or by any other means, let him be regarded not as Pope, but as Satan, and let him be degraded from the position he held before such election; and let his aiders and abettors be punished in the same way. In fine, such as should dare to set at naught these decrees were laid under the most dreadful anathemas”.

Although this new legislation on papal elections did not aim at securing absolute freedom of choice, as it allowed the emperor some undefined right of interference, it was a great stride in that direction. It took initiative in the matter out of the hands of emperor, noble, or populace, and rested it finally in the hands of a special section of the Roman clergy, viz. the cardinals, especially the cardinal- bishops, and required that their choice should be simply ratified by the rest of the Romans, cleric and lay.

But it must be borne in mind that this new decree, aimed primarily against the unruly Roman nobility, only made applicable to the Roman See the procedure in episcopal elections then in force in every other see. The early method of election “by clergy and people” had led to such disorders that, outside Rome, it had long been abolished, and the right of election had been vested in the clergy. In order, then, to do away with the tumultuous elections caused by the Roman nobles, this decree committed all future papal elections mainly to the clergy. It was not, however, till our own day, after the election of our present glorious Pontiff, Pius X, that any interference whatsoever of the secular power in the election of a Pope was finally forbidden.

Notice of the work of this synod, which the bishops of the conciliabulum of Worms (January 1076) assign, no doubt correctly, to the promptings of Hildebrand, was sent by Nicholas to the bishops of Gaul, and of Amalfi, as well as to the clergy of the Catholic world in general.

Berengarius of Tours, 1059

Besides endeavouring to promote the canonical or community life among the secular clergy, the council dealt with the heresy of Berengarius. Since his condemnation at Tours in 1054 he had not ceased to propagate his peculiar views. At length (1059), pressed by Hildebrand, he set out for Rome to lay his teaching before the Pope. Because Hildebrand had been considerate towards him, he affected to believe that the great cardinal was in sympathy with his doctrines. He accordingly induced his patron, Geoffrey Martel, count of Anjou (1040-60), and son of the dreaded Fulk Nerra, to write to Hildebrand and induce him to defend the assertion that the bread remains on the altar after the consecration. When he arrived in Rome, and he was called upon himself to unfold what he had to say on this proposition, he would not speak, either because, according to his own version, he was frightened by the threat of death, or because, as Lanfranc asserted, he had no arguments to adduce.

His teaching was therefore condemned; and he had both to burn his own books and to accept a profession of faith touching the Holy Eucharist drawn up by Cardinal Humbert. The main contention of Berengarius was that substance and its appearances or accidents are absolutely inseparable, and that, consequently, where there are the external resemblances of bread, there bread must be. Hence his teaching (if it be supposed that at this period at any rate he believed in the Real Presence) was now equivalent to the impanation or companation theory of Martin Luther. With a view to compelling Berengarius to show his true colours, and to preventing him from continuing his tergiversations, Humbert undoubtedly used terms which modern Catholic theologians would not employ; but which, due regard being had to the doctrines of Berengarius, were well calculated to bring out clearly the teaching of the Church. “The unworthy deacon of the Church of St. Maurice at Angers”, as he called himself, accordingly anathematized the assertion that “the bread and wine after consecration are only a symbol (or sign, sacramentum), and not the true body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and that this body cannot, in fact (or really, sensibly, sensualiter), and apart from the symbol (in solo Sacramento), be handled by the priest or eaten by the faithful”. On the contrary, his profession proclaimed that “the bread and wine of the altar after consecration are not merely a sign (sacramentum), but are the true body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and are actually (sensualiter), and not in figure but in truth (non solum sacramento sed in veritate) handled by the priest, etc”.

No sooner, however, was he back home in safety, than, heartily abusing Cardinal Humbert, “the Burgundian”, as he chose falsely to call him, he began anew to propagate his heretical opinions regarding the Blessed Eucharist. Summoned to Rome a second time by Hildebrand, now Pope Gregory VII, he again confessed before a council (February 11, 1079) that he had taught error, and signed a yet more exactly worded profession of Catholic faith than he had done before.

With such patent evidence of want of character in the “unworthy deacon”, it is curious that Archbishop Trench should have to condemn a disposition to overrate Berenger, and this both intellectually and morally, and should have to emphasize the fact that “he was from the beginning restless and vain ... Then, too, there is a passionate feebleness about him. He scolds like an angry woman. A much smaller man than Abelard ... he shares with him in a very unpleasant trait, namely, that he cannot conceive of any opposing or even disagreeing with him, except as impelled to this by ignorance or dishonesty or personal malice”.

If anything said with regard to Hildebrand by Bishop Benzo of Alba, who was present at this synod, can be accepted as true, it was not broken up before “Prandellus” (such is his designation of his enemy), “after corrupting the Romans with money and lies, placed a regal crown upon the head of his puppet (hydolum). On its lower circlet it bore the words : ‘The crown of the kingdom from the hand of God’, and on its upper one, ‘The diadem of empire from the hand of Peter’. ” Whatever may be thought of the details of this narrative, there is no reason to doubt the main fact; for it is certain that the Popes were crowned in this century.

The difficulties against which the Popes had to contend in their efforts for reform may be judged from this. Most of the Lombard bishops, “obstinate bulls”, as they are called by Bonizo, as soon as they returned home, took care not to publish the decrees of the council. They had received too much money from the incriminated clerks. The only one who ventured to make them public, viz., the bishop of Brescia, was almost beaten to death by them. This sacrilegious violence, however, had one good result. It led to a considerable increase of the party of the Patarines, and to the number of those who cut themselves off from such of the clergy as were living in concubinage.

After this important synod had finished its sittings, and whilst, to the great grief of Nicholas, the pontifical authority was being set at naught by the Roman barons (Romanorum capitanei), an embassy arrived from the Normans. Among those who had most distinguished themselves on the field of Civitella was Robert, one of the many sons of Tancred of Hauteville. Because he was the wiliest of the wily Normans, “second in craft neither to Cicero nor Ulysses”, he was known among them as the wiseacre (Guiscard) par excellence. According to the Eastern royal poetess, Anna Comnena, who both feared and hated Robert, he was a man “of ruddy complexion, light hair and broad shoulders, and possessed of a voice like to that of Achilles, of a shout which could put to flight myriads of enemies”. This re­doubtable warrior, the real founder of Norman rule in Italy, became the chief of his countrymen in Apulia after the death of his elder brother Humphrey (1056 or 1057), and soon made his younger brother Roger the associate of his power. What that power became may be gauged from the fact that in the same year his arms, or the terror of his name, put to flight the emperor of the East and the emperor of the West.

Realizing how much more easily he would be able to accomplish his ends if he had the goodwill instead of the enmity of the Pope, he sent to Nicholas the embassy just mentioned. The ambassadors, in Robert’s name, begged him to come to Apulia, and to effect a complete understanding with their countrymen, reconciling them to God’s church. Nicholas and his advisers resolved to accept the invitation; they too came to the conclusion that it would be better to have the goodwill of the Normans instead of their enmity. The time had come to reverse the policy of Leo IX and Stephen (IX) X. The position of the Normans in south Italy was now assured, and they were anxious to be at peace with the Church.

Accordingly, as well to hold a council for the promotion of discipline as to meet the Normans, the Pope, along with Abbot Desiderius, betook himself to Melfi, the headquarters of their power in Apulia. Robert, who was then engaged in the siege of Cariati on the coast, at once abandoned it. Besides the Normans, some hundred bishops gathered round the Pope in synod. Of the latter, several were deposed for simony and other crimes, and decrees were issued, with not altogether satisfactory results, against the prevailing laxity in the matter of the celibacy of the clergy, which in those parts was encouraged by the example of the Greeks.

When the ecclesiastical business of the synod was finished, the Norman question was discussed. To prove his wish for a thorough reconciliation with the Roman Church, Robert restored all its patrimonies which he had seized. In return, he was not only absolved from whatever ecclesiastical censures he had incurred, but, “at the request of many”, was recognized by the Pope as duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, on condition of his taking an oath of fealty to him, and paying a yearly tribute of twelve denar for every yoke of oxen. At the same time, William de Montreuil, known as the Good Norman, said to have been constituted the armed advocate or standard-bearer of the Roman See.

To seal his compact with the Holy See, Robert took an of oath to Nicholas in the following terms: “I, Robert, by the grace of God and of St. Peter, duke of Apulia and Calabria, and, by like grace, hereafter of Sicily, will from this hour be a true vassal (fidelis) to the Holy Church of Rome, and to thee, Pope Nicholas, my lord. In the counsel or in the act whereby thy life or liberty shall be endangered will I not share; the secret (consilium) which thou shalt have confided to my keeping I will never knowingly reveal to thy hurt; I will steadfastly assist the Roman Church in the protection and extension of the royalties (regalia) and possessions of St. Peter to the best of my power against all men; and I will support thee in the safe and honourable possession of the Roman Papacy, of its territory, and of its privileges (principatum); and I will not aim at harrying or plundering (thy domains), nor will I take possession of any of them without thy express consent or that of thy lawful successors. I will honourably see to it that the Roman Church each year receives the revenues of such of its patrimonies as I now hold or may here­after come into my hands. All churches in my dominions I put, with their possessions, into thy power, and I will consider the defence of them an obligation resulting from my fealty to the Church of Rome. And shouldst thou or any of thy successors depart this life before me, I, under the directions of the better-disposed cardinals, the clergy, and the people of Rome, will do my best to secure the election and ordination of a Pontiff to the honour of St. Peter. All these things do I swear that I will loyally observe in thy sight, in that of the Roman Church, and in that of thy lawful successors who shall continue to me the investiture granted by you”.

In thus acting as the suzerain of south Italy, Nicholas was partly recognizing the status quo, and partly bestowing on another rights which had been given to his predecessors by the Carolingian and Saxon donations, but which they had never themselves exercised. Nevertheless, we may be prepared to find that the Germans will bitterly resent the action of the Pope. They could justly point out not only that his predecessors had often acknowledged the imperial claims over south Italy, but also that even the Normans themselves had in presence of a Pope sworn fealty to the emperor (1047). However, neither Greek nor German had been able to uphold their power in face of the Normans, so that it is hard to blame the Pope for accepting the suzerainty over a country which its actual owners practically put into his hands. It may be true that the connection with south Italy brought more curses than blessings to the Papacy right down to the nineteenth century, but still the legalizing of the de facto owner’s possession of the two Sicilies by one who had claims to a large portion of them was a blessing at least to the people in that kingdom. With the Normans came comparative peace and order where all had been chaos and war.

This papal recognition of their claims was promptly followed by important results. The following year (1060) saw a beginning made by Count Roger of the expulsion of the Saracens from Sicily, and the time immediately following the holding of the council saw the end of the evil sway which the barons had long held over Rome.

When the Pope began to retrace his steps, there accompanied him a strong force of Normans (c. September 1059). The counts of Tusculum, Praeneste, and Sabina were soon subdued, and the Norman army advanced on Galeria, the retreat of the antipope and the chief stronghold of Count Gerard. One of the old domuscultae of Pope Zachary, this fortress, some fifteen miles from Rome, was situated on the Arrone, and was a little south of the Via Clodia. After considerable loss on the part of the Normans, and after they had ravaged the count’s territories as far as Sutri, Galeria was reduced to the last extremity. It was then that the antipope offered to give up his claims, if his personal safety was guaranteed. After this had been done by thirty Roman nobles, Benedict gave himself up, went to Rome with the Pope, and retired to his home near S. Maria Maggiore to lead a quiet life. The power of the Campanian barons was completely broken.

It would not have been natural if Nicholas had forgotten the man who called him to the Papacy, and who had been mainly instrumental in bringing his rival to his knees. Ingratitude, however, cannot be laid at his door. He no sooner returned to Rome than he made Hildebrand oeconomous and archdeacon of the Roman Church. It seems to have been about this year that, perhaps for the second time, he took over the management of the monastery attached to St. Paul’s outside-the-walls, in which he had long dwelt as a monk.

Among the signatures to the decrees of the Roman synod of April is that of “Airard, bishop and abbot of St. Paul’s”. Whilst in the latter capacity, he had been nominated by Leo IX (1049) to the See of Nantes, but had been rejected by its people, had returned to Rome, and had again resumed his government of the abbey of St. Paul. However, about this time (1059 or 1060) he returned to France and made further vain efforts to obtain possession of his see. He was certainly still alive in 1064. Following Paul Bernried, it would seem that Hildebrand had been “set over” the monastery of St. Paul when Airard left it in 1049. Owing to the latter’s incompetency, it was in a wretched condition both temporarily and spiritually. It would not appear that Hildebrand had then the title of abbot; but he at once reformed it, and handed it back to Airard on his return from his fruitless journey in a very different state to that in which he had found it. Even on Airard’s second departure, he seems for a second period to have governed the abbey at least for some time, probably till the death of Airard, merely as its procurator.

A memorial of his zeal for the external as well as the internal beauty of his monastery has come down to our times in the famous panelled bronze doors of St. Paul’s, which were saved from the disastrous fire of 1823. Standing at present in the sacristy of the great basilica, they are a solid memorial of the renaissance in art which was actually in progress at Constantinople about this time, and of the yearning in western Europe for better artistic work, which accompanied its intellectual awakening in this century. Inscriptions on the doors themselves let us know that they were made in the year 1070, “during the times of His Holiness Pope Alexander II, and of the Lord Hildebrand, venerable monk”, and that they were fashioned at Constantinople by one Stauracius. The expense of their production was borne by Pantaleon, “patricius and consul”, one of the sons of Count Mauro of Amalfi, and an ardent partisan of the Greek cause against the Normans. They were covered with fifty-four embossed bronze plates, ornamented with enamel work and inlaid with gold and silver thread. Needless to say that from one cause and another they are no longer in perfect condition.

From several of Nicholas’s letters it is clear that he had very early in his pontificate formed the design of imitating Pope Leo IX and of going to France. Unable, however, to carry out his intention as soon as he had hoped, he manifested his interest in the affairs of that country by the dispatch of letters and legates. The council of 1059 was no sooner over than he sent notice of its decrees “to the bishops of Gaul, Aquitaine, and Gascony”, along with a copy of the retractation of Berengarius.

Perhaps about this also, Nicholas sent to the same country another letter which is worth mentioning, as it puts us in touch with that Franco-Russian alliance of which we have of late years heard so much. In 1051 Henry I of France married, for her great beauty, the Princess Anne, daughter of Jaroslav the Great, grand-duke of Kief (1015-54). Writing to this interesting lady, the Pope tells her that he rejoices to hear that manly virtues have taken up their abode in her womanly breast. He exhorts her to persevere in their exercise to the last hour of her life, and to use her influence that her husband may govern his kingdom well and may protect the Church. In fine, he would have her bring up her children well in the love of their Creator, and remind them that, if they are noble because they belong to the royal family, they are still more noble because they have the Church for the mother.

Whether or not on account of any representations made to him by his wife, Henry appears at this time to have viewed Rome with less suspicion. At any rate the first mentioned among those present at the coronation of his son, the little Philip (May 23, 1059), are Hugh, archbishop of Besançon, and Ermenfrid, bishop of Sion (in the Valais). And they were, the first after the consecrator, Gervais, archbishop of Rheims, to give their assent to the choice of Philip as king, though this privilege was accorded them “out of deference to the person they represented, for it is well known that the election can take place without the consent of the Pope”.

We have several letters of Nicholas to the consecrator of the boy-king of France. In one of these the Pope notes that Gervais has been accused to him of favouring the party of the antipope, and of not paying sufficient attention to the mandates of the Apostolic See. He has, however, taken no notice of these charges, because a person of good standing has assured him of the archbishop’s “loyalty to St. Peter”. He looks to Gervais to help to raise the Church of the Franks, “which has almost sunk to the ground”, and begs him to use all his influence that the king may not allow himself to be led by designing men who hope, by promoting dissensions between their spiritual and temporal rulers, to escape the censure of the Pope. Gervais must strive especially that Henry do not insist on giving the bishopric of Macon to a man who is utterly unfit for the position.

Though in another letter Gervais commanded to make good damage done to the Church of Verdun, we find by yet another that the archbishop succeeded in convincing the Pope that the suspicion he entertained against his devotion to the Holy See was unfounded. Consequently Nicholas was not slow to express his intention of supporting Gervais. “For we have no wish to be lacking in justice, in support of which, were it necessary, we should think it again to die”

Reforms

Passing over the fact that it was Nicholas who removed the interdict from Normandy, and gave William the Conqueror permission to retain Matilda as his wife, we must notice his pressing on of reform in France. Feeling now more sure both of the king and of the archbishop of Rheims, and strong in the support of the great order of Cluny, he sent at the close of the year (1059) Cardinal Stephen, a Frenchman, a monk of Cluny and the bosom friend of Hildebrand, to continue the struggle against simony and clerical incontinency. Early in the following year the new legate presided over councils at Vienne and at Tours, while the famous Hugo, abbot of Cluny, also acting in the Pope’s name, did the same in the provinces of Avignon and Toulouse.

The progress of the good work was, however, troubled by the death of the king (August 4, 1060). Formally announcing this event to the Pope, Gervais begged for his counsel. “You know how impatient of control our people are, and how hard to rule. I am afraid their dissensions will mean misery for the country. Help me by your advice to avoid it. As you are the father of all, it is for you to give it to every kingdom, but especially to ours, as it is the duty of good men to aid their native land first and foremost”. He longs for the Pope to come to France, for he has brought honour to it, seeing that Rome has chosen him “to make him her own ruler and that of the world”. He would honour the Pope as Our Lord honoured Peter when he made him head of the Church.

When Stephen passed from France into Germany, he was very far from finding sentiments such as these animating the breasts of many of the bishops of the latter country, especially the aulic prelates. Though they were no doubt angry at the Norman alliance effected by Hildebrand, and at the tone of the new papal election decree, it seems to have been personal feeling that caused them to act against the Pope. This seems to be established by what we are told of the general taint of avariciousness which seems to have infected them all, and of the action of Anno of Cologne. It is Benzo who tells us that it was Anno who starred up others to avenge injuries which Hildebrand had inflicted both upon him and them. The injuries of which they complained were the well merited censures which Nicholas had meted out to them.

Accordingly, during the course, it would seem, of the summer of the year 1060, the chief officials (rectores) of the royal court, along with, forsooth, some holy bishops of the Teutonic kingdom, conspiring against the Roman Church, collected a council. Therein, with an audacity wholly incredible, they passed sentence upon the Pope and declared all that he had decreed null and void. It is not then to be wondered at that when Cardinal Stephen, of whose great virtue and patience St. Peter Damian has much to say, arrived in Germany, the court officials, as well clerical as lay, would neither admit him to their deliberations nor allow him to present to the king the documents he had brought with him. After being kept waiting some five days, he had to return to Rome without accomplishing his mission.

Whilst, by means of his legates, Nicholas was endeavouring to forward the work of reform in distant lands, both among clergy and people, he was moving about Italy himself with the like intent. His beloved Florence saw him several times, and we have traces of him at Fano, Farfa, and other places.

In April 1060 he assisted at a tragic ceremony, viz., at the public degradation of the papal pretender, Benedict X. Unfortunately, knowledge of this event has come down to us only through the antipapal author of the Annales Romani. From an incidental remark made by him, however, it would appear that it was suspicion, at least, of some new movement in his favour which was the cause of this fresh proceeding against him.

At any rate he was brought by the archdeacon Hildebrand into the Lateran basilica before the Pope and a number of bishops assembled in council. He was stripped of his sacerdotal vestments by Hildebrand, and was compelled despite his tearful protestations, to read aloud a list of crimes laid to his charge. By his side stood his aged mother, with bare bosom and dishevelled hair, weeping and wailing, and along with her were his relatives, striking their breasts and tearing their cheeks with their nails.

Unmoved by such a spectacle, the archdeacon cried aloud, “Hear, ye citizens of Rome, the evil deeds of the man you chose as Pope”. Then was the unfortunate forced to clothe himself in the robes of a Pope, only to have them torn from him.

After this humiliating ceremony was concluded, the unhappy man was sent to a hospice attached to the Church of St. Agnes, “that there he might live miserably”, deprived of the right to exercise any of his sacred functions. However, some little time later, at the intercession of Suppus, the archpriest of St. Anastasius, and “spiritual father” of the Pope, he was at length allowed to act as deacon. He died about the time that Hildebrand became Pope Gregory VII, and, if we are to believe the author we are quoting, was buried with papal honours. Gregory, it is suggested, granted this distinction to atone for the uncharitable way in which he had ever regarded him.

The last year of Nicholas’s life found him still full of activity. A brief entry in the Beneventan Annals records that in February he was besieging the castle of Alipergum, probably bringing some refractory baron of the duchy to a sense of reason and duty.

Lateran synod, 1061.

The next month saw him back in Rome holding another synod in the Lateran. Strong decrees were passed against simony; but, owing to the wide spread of the disorder, it was decided that those who before the holding of this synod had been gratuitously ordained by simoniacal bishops were not to be molested, but that in future those who were ordained by a bishop known to them to be simoniacal were to be deposed, along with those who ordained them. And, as though anticipating trouble at the next papal election, owing to the unsatisfactory attitude of the German Court, the election decree of 1059 was renewed.

The presence of Englishmen at this council naturally turns our thoughts to the relations of England with Rome. We have seen that Stigand, who was intruded into the See of Canterbury, had been excommunicated by Victor. The sentence had been renewed by Stephen; but the antipope Benedict, possibly at the request of Earl Harold, who was in Rome on a pilgrimage about that time, sent the pallium to the usurper. Nicholas could not but renew the sentence of his predecessors against Stigand. He had also to act with severity towards the would-be occupant of the other archiepiscopal see of England. Along with Harold’s brother, Tostig, earl of Northumberland, and his wife, there came to Rome for episcopal consecration Gisa and Walter, bishops-elect of Wells and Hereford, as, owing to the prohibition of Pope Victor, they could not apply to Stigand for it. In their company also was Ealdred, bishop of Worcester, who on the death of Cynesige (December 1060) had been nominated to the See of York, and wished to hold it along with the See of Worcester. He had secured his appointment by “playing upon the simplicity of King Edward” and by gold. The “bishops received their consecration, but Nicholas refused to recognize Ealdred as archbishop of York, because he had been transferred to a greater see without the permission of the Pope, and because he wanted to hold two sees.

On their return home the pilgrims fell among thieves. One of the last acts of Gerard of Galena, the main support, as we have seen, of Benedict X, was to plunder Earl Tostig and his company of all their possessions “to the value of a thousand pounds of the money of Pavia”. For this last outrage he was excommunicated by Pope Nicholas and the synod of which we have been speaking. Lighted candles were extinguished when the sentence was pronounced to show that he was under a perpetual anathema

Utterly forlorn, the pilgrims returned to Rome. Tostig was more than indignant, and gave free vent to his feelings in words. “How could the Pope expect men in far-off lands to fear the excommunication which banditti at his very doors despised? He would induce the king of England to withhold Peter’s Pence (tributum S. Petri) till the losses of the pilgrims had been made good”. Tostig was anxious to secure the pallium for Ealdred, and seized his opportunity. Terrified at the thunder of his angry threats, the Pope’s attendants begged him to grant the earl’s request. To show that he was really grieved for what had happened, Nicholas both gave great presents to the pilgrims and granted the pallium to Ealdred, on condition that Worcester received a bishop of its own.

The Pope also entrusted them with two bulls. One was for Wilwin, bishop of Dorchester, confirming him in the privileges and possessions of his see, and the other was for the king. It praises Edward’s love for St. Peter, and prays that the Apostle may be his guardian in every difficulty. “For it is obvious that it is through the reverence and devotion which the kings of the English have ever shown to Blessed Peter that they have lived in honour at home, and have been victorious abroad”. The commutation of his vow granted by St. Leo IX is confirmed, and the abbey, of Westminster, which Edward was engaged in restoring, is declared to be the place where, for ever, the kings of England shall be consecrated, and the royal insignia shall be kept. Edward and his successors are, in fine, declared the “advocates and guardians” of the abbey, its cemetery, and other surroundings.

But the days of Nicholas, all too short for the good of the world, were numbered. Not long after the departure of the English, he went to Florence about the end of May, and there, taken suddenly ill, died on July 27. He was buried, like Pope Stephen (IX) X, in the Church of St Reparata. His epitaph proclaims that for his learning and chastity he was illustrious before the whole world, and that he practiced himself the virtues he taught to others; and it prays that heaven may receive him, in order that amid the blessed he may adore the God of Ages.

The illustrious deeds of Nicholas are celebrated not merely by an epitaph; their fame merited the praise of that severe judge, St. Peter Damian. The same saint also gives us, on the authority of Mainard, bishop of Silva Candida, a striking proof of the Pope’s humility. He assures us that a day never passed without his washing the feet of twelve poor men. If he had not time to perform this lowly act while it was light, he did it by night. Though the influence of Hildebrand was deservedly paramount during his pontificate, what he accomplished in its course is enough to show how baseless are the impertinent judgments of Benzo. If choice of him to be Pope was a credit to the discernment of Hildebrand, his splendid activity and his shining virtues were his own.

 

 

ALEXANDER II.

A.D. 1061-1073.

 

King of France.

                 Philip I., 1060­1108.

Kings of England.

                St. Edward the Confessor, 1042-1066.

               William I., the Conqueror, 1066-1087.

Emperors of the East.

             Constantine X (Ducas), 1059-1067.

             Michael VII (Ducas), 1067-1078.

             Romanus IV. (Diogenes), 1068-1071.

Emperors  of the West.

           Henry IV (only King of Germany and of the Romans, 1056-1106).

 

However obscure are some of the facts connected with the election of Alexander II, there is no doubt that it was a matter of the greatest moment to the Roman Church, and through it to the world. For, as St. Peter Damian realized at the time, and as is now acknowledged by all classes of historians, its good estate at this epoch was essential to the well-being of Christendom. It was a question whether, softened and enervated by the loss of a celibate clergy, and held in base subjection to the great ones of this world by the bonds of simony, the Catholic Church was to be kept stamped in the mire by the iron heel of feudalism, or whether it was to arise and renew its youth by again forming a ministry at once strong through its celibacy, and free through being gratuitously chosen for its merits. Was the Roman Church to remain the one safe harbour for the poor and for the oppressed, or were its breakwaters too to be broken down by the violent passions of men? Was it to be free to work for the moral and intellectual elevation of Europe, or was it to be bought over to connive at the violation of its own rights, and those of the weak and the down-trodden in every country of the West?

In the year 1061 the forces behind these alternatives met in conflict over the election of a successor to Nicholas II. On the one side were many of the German statesmen, who were little disposed to give up the power they had acquired of nominating the Popes; many of the bishops and priests of Lombardy, who were equally disinclined to abandon their simoniacal and unchaste habits; and lastly, many of the Roman barons, who were determined, if possible, to retain the Papacy as an appanage to their families. Prominent among the leaders of this party were the imperial chancellor Guibert (or Wibert), afterwards an antipope, Gerard of Galeria, the bandit who despoiled Tostig, and Cardinal Hugo Candidus, of whom Bonizo thinks that the less said the better, but whose conduct was as crooked as his eyes. The apologist of the party was Benzo, bishop of Alba, one of the “headstrong bulls” of Lombardy whom Nicholas II tried in vain to tame, and to reclaim from his simoniacal habits. Though a lower type of pamphleteer than even Liutprand of Cremona, he will be sometimes here cited, because he has incidentally preserved some facts which are worth knowing, and because his production serves to show the lengths to which party faction was prepared to go. While “Brother Benzo”, as he is fond of styling himself, “is another Aristeus, binding his enemies with his arguments”, whilst he is “universally beloved” and “dear to everybody”, Pope Alexander “is the heretic of Lucca”, is “Lucencis (of Lucca), or rather Lutulensis (muddy), has “a face like the damned”, and is an ass of every kind —Asinandrellus, Asinelus, Asinander. Hildebrand is even more reviled. Not only is he Prandellus, or Folleprand, but he is a false monk who not merely “consults devils”, but a “cowled devil” and a “limb of the devil”.

On the other side, the material force of the empire was somewhat balanced by that of Godfrey, duke of Tuscany, and of the Normans, who were both prepared to aid the Papacy, at least so far as by so doing they could advance the cause of their own independence. But the former was liable to be swayed by his wife and his daughter, Beatrice and Matilda, who supported a reforming Papacy from purer motives; while over the latter, Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino, was able to exert an influence sometimes sufficient to induce them to give help which was not wholly selfish. But the heart and soul of the party of reform was the monk Hildebrand, archdeacon of the Roman Church, a man hated by some with the same intensity with which he was loved by others. For men felt themselves either strongly attracted towards him or disposed to be bitterly hostile to him. They were either for or against Hildebrand. Among the former in Rome mention has already been made of Leo the son of Benedict the Christian, Cencius Frangipane, and John (or Gerard) Brazutus. Nor were Gregory and his friends in want of a pen at this period. The literary ability of St. Peter Damian was at their disposal. And if his style and character were very far removed above those of Benzo in dignity and truthfulness, he could at times dip his pen in gall, and say severe things, while his zeal was occasionally only too ardent.

Between the death of Nicholas II and the election of his successor more than two months intervened. What was the cause of this delay? What were the cardinals doing in the meantime? The fact that Nicholas had died outside Rome would account for some delay in the appointment of his successor, but not to the extent noted. There can be little doubt that the hesitation to proceed to the election was due to the schismatical attitude which had been taken up by the German Court when it caused Nicholas to be declared excommunicated. But while the party of reform were waiting to see what the empress and her advisers would do, or were anxiously deliberating what they should do themselves, their hands were forced by the Crescentii and the counts of Tusculum. As they dare not now directly impose one of their creatures on the chair of Peter, they resolved that the men who were striving to put an end to their lawlessness should not elect another reformer. They accordingly surreptitiously possessed themselves of the pontifical insignia and of the ornaments of the patricius, and sent off to Germany a deputation, headed by Gerard of Galena, to request “the boy-king to bestow a pious ruler on the Roman Church”. This decided Hildebrand. The Roman Church must not lose its undoubted right of choosing the supreme Pontiff, and action must be taken at once, as the people were being stirred up to sedition. But as it was felt to be necessary to do all that was possible to avoid trouble with the German Court, a candidate was selected who was both suitable, and known to be on good terms with it. Anselm, bishop of Lucca, the friend of Duke Godfrey, was the object of the choice of the reforming party, and Hildebrand was sent to bring him to Rome for election. At the same time Abbot Desiderius was commissioned to bring up Richard of Capua and his Normans to keep order in the city.

Quite against his will, Anselm allowed himself to be persuaded by Hildebrand, and to be offered to the Romans as a candidate for the Papacy. By a large assembly, gathered together in the Church of St. Peter ad vincula, he was declared duly elected, and was escorted to the Lateran and solemnly crowned. On the following day Richard of Capua again renewed his oath of fidelity to the new Pope, who had taken the name of Alexander, and then withdrew his forces.

The new Pope belonged to the family of Baggio da Baggio, of which mention is found in documents of the ninth century, and which took its name from Badaglum (Badagio, now Baggio), a village some three miles west of Milan. His father’s name is variously given in the catalogues as Anselinus or Ardericus. Part of his studies were made under Lanfranc at Bec; and the favour which throughout in his pontificate he showed to monks may be traced to his early connection with that famous monastery. A glance at the Regesta of Jaffé will show him continuing the policy of his predecessors, and confirming monasteries in the possession of their property, protecting them from the encroachments of bishops and nobles, taking them under his protection, and sometimes exempting them from episcopal control. And this he did in every country in Europe.

Becoming in due course attached to the clergy of Milan, he was, at least, one of the first supporters of the Pataria, and was, even according to Landulf, a diligent preacher of the Word of God. His zeal, especially against the married clergy, was too disturbing for Arch shop Guido, and so he procured his nomination to the See of Lucca (1057). By this device, however, he did not altogether get rid of the influence he dreaded. Anselm continued to encourage the Patarines, and, as we have seen, even appeared in Milan as apostolic legate along with Hildebrand. The first letter he wrote as Pope was to the Milanese, exhorting them to lead purer lives; and he devoted no little of his pontificate to working for their betterment.

Whilst, on the one hand, the new Pope was rejoicing at the congratulations he was receiving from loyal souls, who prayed that he might show himself a worthy representative of God in his government of the Church, he was, on the other, saddened by the news that reached him from Germany. Gerard and his associates had been joined by Cadalous, bishop of Parma. Pretending that he was unaware that a successor to Nicholas had been elected, and taking with him, so the story went, an immense sum of money, he betook himself to the king’s court at Augsburg. Nor did he cease pushing his case with the empress-mother, with the (young) king, and with the bishop of Augsburg (Henry), till he had secured his appointment to the Apostolic See.

Cadalous was the nominee of a number of Lombard bishops who, on the death of Nicholas, had assembled in council under the presidency of the chancellor Guibert. They had decided that the only Pope they would accept would be one “from the paradise of Italy who could com­passionate the infirmities”. The principal supporters of Cadalous. were the bishops Dionysius of Piacenza and Gregory of Vercelli, men whom St. Peter Damian denounces as of a very unepiscopal character, and of whom he says that their habits made them better judges of female beauty than of the proper men to choose as Popes.

The man on whom men of that description fixed their choice was, of course, either like unto themselves, or of such a pitiable character as easily to be made their tool. He was of the family of the counts of Sabulonus, a castle not far from Verona, and, on the death of his father, took up his abode in the city, along with his brothers, at the court of its duke. In 1042 he joined the ranks of the clergy; and three years later, becoming bishop of Parma, he founded the monastery of St. George ex (or in) Braida, on the banks of the Adige, just outside the city, whence Dom Cajetan drew these particulars of his early life. In allowing himself to be made an antipope, and thus “the ruin of the people”, as St. Peter Damian is fond of calling him, he displayed anything but a virtuous character; and that act seems to have been but the climax of an ill-spent life. The last-named author says he was worse than Saul, for he from being good became bad, whereas the bishop from being bad became worse. And he further declares that those who had been present affirmed that it was only the clemency of the Roman Church that saved him from condemnation by the synods of Pavia (1049), Mantua (1052), and Florence (1055). If these words are, however, too vague to allow us to do more than suspect him of simony or concubinage, specific charges of the former crime, at least, are definitely brought against him by the same writer

To give some show of canonical action to their proceedings, the supporters of Cadalous convened a synod at Basle. The first act in its proceedings was the crowning of the young king as Patricius of the Romans, by Gerard and his associates, with the golden circlet they had brought from Rome. Then, despite the opposition of at least a considerable number of the archbishops and bishops, Cadalous was declared Pope by the young king, was invested with the mitre and the customary red cloak or cope, and took the name of Honorius II. “These doings”, regretfully note the Annals of Altaich, “were the beginnings of troubles”, and were possible “because the king was a boy, and his mother, inasmuch as she was a woman, was easily swayed first by one adviser and then by another; whilst the other chief men of the palace were all slaves to avarice, and would do no justice without money, so that right and wrong were confounded together”.

It is true that by the election decree of 1059 some ill-defined right in connection with papal elections had been left to the emperor. But whatever that right was, it is certain that it was the survival of the right which had been given to him originally with a view to preventing disorderly elections, and that there was no idea in the minds of the framers of the decree that a regular election would be nullified if the right was not exercised. They did not regard the emperor or anything that he might do or not do as essential to a valid election.

But the action of the German Court in its opposition to Nicholas II made it plain that it was not content with the right of exercising a kind of police supervision over papal elections. It had been so long in the habit of exercising a predominating influence over them that it was not disposed to give up its usurped rights. Hence in the matter of the election of Alexander II there was no formal protest on its part against the violation of such rights as had been left to it by the decree of 1059, but a violent attempt to keep a position to which it had no intrinsic claim. It was not even dignified in its violence. It allowed itself to be induced, by whatever means, to sanction the patently uncanonical election of an unworthy candidate, the representative of a base cause, and to allege groundless charges to discredit the obviously canonical election of a desirable candidate, who stood for reform in the best sense of that much-abused word.

Whilst this unwarrantable election brought the greatest joy to that section of the clergy that was devoted to simony and concubinage, “the eye of the Papacy and the immovable support of the Apostolic See”, St. Peter Damian, was filled with anguish of soul. He at once dispatched a long and earnest letter to the intruder. Reminding him of the mercy the Roman See had shown him in not punishing him for the faults of which he had been guilty when he pretended to be nothing more than bishop of Parma, he indignantly asked him how he could dare to allow himself to be elected bishop of Rome, and that too without the co­operation of the cardinal-bishops and the Roman Church? In the strongest language of the Sacred Scriptures he tried to impress upon the usurper the evil he had done and the trouble he was about to bring upon the world. He endeavoured to shame him by reminding him that up to this time his transgressions had been known to but few, but that, now he laid claim to be Pope, they were being discussed everywhere. “They are being talked about in markets where the merchants most do congregate, and by the workers in the fields. Boys at school are engaged in pulling your character to pieces, and the citizens who meet together in the streets are condemning you”. He even ventured, in a few verses at the end of his letter, to assert that the intruder would die in the course of the year.

It was all to no purpose. Cadalous at once began to make preparations to establish himself in Rome by force; and instructions were given by the court to its Italian officials to afford him all the necessary help. Meanwhile the notorious Benzo was dispatched to Rome with large sums of money to weld together by its means a strong opposition. In passing through Tuscany, he tells us himself how he bought the support of various counts; and when he had been received in Rome by the malcontents within the city, and lodged in the palace of Octavian, near S. Maria in Aracoeli, he gave them also gold in plenty and promised them mountains of it. If we are to believe his own account of his doings, he displayed the greatest activity for the antipope, not only in a more or less secret manner, but openly. And he has left us quaint pictures of his private conferences with his aristocratic supporters in their tall white mitres, and of his public addresses to the people in the Coliseum or the Circus Maximus. He avers that Pope Alexander himself was present at one of these latter, that he objurgated him for leaving the see given him by King Henry, and for usurping that of Rome by the aid of money and the Normans; that the Pontiff meekly replied that he would send an embassy to Germany to explain his action, and that he then took his departure amid the hootings of the multitude.

As soon as he had formed a more or less strong party, Benzo sent word to the antipope to make is descent on Rome. With a strong force, drawn for the most part from his bishopric, and paid for by its goods, Cadalous began his southward march by way of Bologna, gathering recruits as he went along. Despite the opposition of the Countess Beatrice, he reached Sutri on March 25. Here he was joined by Benzo with “his Roman senators and Galerian princes”.

Meanwhile Hildebrand had not been inactive. He had gathered together some troops, but had failed to induce either the Normans or Godfrey of Tuscany, both intent on their own schemes, to come to his aid. However, when the forces of Cadalous encamped on the Neronian fields, they were assailed by the Romans (April 14). Victory was at first with the antipope, and he all but gained possession of St. Peter’s; but, unable to hold his ground in the Leonine city, he withdrew by the ford at Fiano (Flajanum, the ancient Flavian), some twenty-six miles from Rome, to the other side of the Tiber. The castle of St. Angelo, nevertheless, remained in the power of one of his partisans, Cencius or Crescentius, the son of the prefect Stephen.

At Fiano, Cadalous received some fresh recruits, and then moved to Tusculum, where he was joined by its counts, and where—a most unexpected remark from the artificial Benzo—all “were delighted by the most fragrant scents of herbs and flowers”. Whilst still encamped beneath the towers of Tusculum, the party of the antipope were greatly elated by the arrival in their midst of three gorgeously attired envoys from the Eastern Emperor. It would appear that Benzo had already been trying to effect an alliance with the Greeks against the Normans, through the agency of Pantaleon, patricius of Amalfi. At any rate, besides carefully discussing the situation, the ambassadors are credited by Benzo with having handed to Cadalous the following letter : “To the patriarch of Rome, by royal charter raised over the universal Church, Constantine Doclitius (Ducas), basileus of Constantinople, health”. The emperor expressed his desire of forming an eternal friendship with the young Henry with the double object of their together striving for the recovery of the Lord’s sepulchre, and for the expulsion of the Normans. As a guarantee of his good faith he offered to put his son as a hostage into the hands of the king, and to place his treasury at his disposal.

But the joy of Cadalous on hearing the contents of this Arrival of this epistle was quickly damped, not only by his receiving another stinging letter from St. Peter Damian, but by the arrival on the scene of Godfrey of Tuscany with a large army (c. May). Pitching his camp by the Ponte Molle, he commanded both Alexander and Cadalous to cease their contentions for the Papacy, and to retire to their respective bishoprics, till such times as the king and the Empress Agnes should pass an authoritative decision on their claims. Though convinced that Godfrey was acting in the interests of his opponent, Cadalous could not resist. His money was exhausted, and his mercenary followers were falling away from him. He had to return to Parma as well as he could, while Godfrey escorted Alexander to Lucca.

Kaiserswerth, April 1062

Godfrey’s action on this occasion was but one act of a conspiracy to bring to an end the existing regency in Germany. He was in touch with Anno of Cologne, and other ecclesiastics who were jealous of the power possessed in the councils of the empress-regent by Henry, bishop of Augsburg, and with Otho, duke of Bavaria, and other lay nobles who were equally envious of the favoured bishop, and who bore uneasily the yoke of a female ruler. By a clever ruse the malcontents contrived to possess themselves of the person of their youthful sovereign at a place on the Rhine where now stands the town of Kaiserswerth. He was at once conveyed up stream to Cologne by the boat into which he had been entrapped.

There was considerable excuse for Anno’s share in this affair, if it be the fact that he had been named by the emperor “the guardian of the kingdom and of his son”. At any rate, he was now master of the situation. Nicholas II, against whom he had had a personal dislike, was dead, and Cadalous was the nominee of the party of the empress. And, as the archbishop at once replaced her chancellor of Italy, Guibert, by Gregory, bishop of Vercelli, policy, at least, if not conscience, dictated to him the advisability of supporting Alexander. It was decided to hold a great diet at Augsburg in October. St. Peter Damian prepared the way for this assembly’s passing a judgment in favour of Alexander by the arguments which he set down in his Disceptatio synodalis, and with which the reader has already been made familiar.

It is very unfortunate that but few facts with regard to the diet of Augsburg have been transmitted to us. Besides a number of German and Italian bishops and nobles, there were present at it Anno and his protégé, King Henry, as well as, probably, Godfrey of Tuscany. The more conscientious among the bishops seem to have felt themselves in the same awkward position as did many of the successors in the Great Schism of the West. They realized that the case seemed to be one of disciples sitting in judgment on their master, and would appear to have come to a decision that was rather practical than theoretical in its nature. This would seem the most satisfactory inference from a comparison of what actually took place immediately after the diet, viz., the restoration of Alexander, with the fact of the legality of his elect on being rediscussed at the council of Mantua. It is true St. Peter Damian says that Cadalous was “condemned and deposed” at Augsburg, but the statement cannot be said to be more than practically correct. The better informed Annals of Altaich give it as the decree of the assembly “that he who had been consecrated (Pope) should again return to the Apostolic See, until such times as a canonical and synodal decision should definitely rule whether he was to retain it or to be deposed from it”. And they add, “Alexander returned to Rome not long after this”.

Anno’s nephew, Burchard of Halberstadt, was meanwhile commissioned by the diet to proceed to Rome and “to satisfy himself regarding the truth of what had been alleged for and against Alexander’s election. Burchard’s declaration that he had been properly elected was followed early in the year 1063 by his restoration to Rome under the escort of Duke Godfrey.

In accordance with ancient custom, Alexander ordered a synod to meet soon after Easter (April, 20). Over a hundred bishops answered to his summons. The first matter which occupied the attention of the assembly was the aggress on of Cadalous. Examination soon showed that he had endeavoured to obtain possession of Rome, “the mother of the churches”, both by gold and steel. And as he had neither come himself nor sent a representative to plead his cause, it was unanimously decided to declare him excommunicated. The synod next turned itself to the work of reform, and published twelve canons against simony, whether on the part of priests or people, against clerical and lay concubinage, against marriage within the forbidden degrees of kindred, and against laics taking orders without due preparation in the clerical body. To help the observance of these decrees, the faithful were forbidden to hear the Mass of a priest who did not obey the decrees of the Church with regard to clerical chastity.

This action of the Lateran synod with regard to Cadalous would seem to have galvanized his party into new life. Gathering together “what bishops and clerics he could at Parma”, the antipope declared that he was the true Pope, inasmuch as “he had been elected and installed by the king as patricius of the Romans”, and he anathematized Alexander, who, he maintained, had not been canonically elected by the Roman clergy and people, but fraudulently by the Normans, “the enemies of the Roman Empire”.

Then, after he had gathered together a large sum of money, which he scattered freely in all directions, he again marched on Rome. Contriving to elude the troops stationed by Duke Godfrey to watch him, he succeeded in surprising the Leonine City by night, “with the aid of the capitanei and certain pestiferous Romans”. Compelled, however, to abandon it on the following day, he took refuge with Cencius in the castle of St. Angelo, for both and Johannipolis were in the hands of Alexander’s enemies.

Once again the streets of Rome resounded with the notes of battle, and its great buildings re-echoed the fierce battle-cry, War! War! of the Normans, whom Hildebrand had again summoned to Alexander’s assistance. Though they failed to carry the castle of St. Angelo by assault, they succeeded, with the help of Godfrey, in reducing Cadalous to extremities. It was in vain that Benzo appealed to the Greeks, and visited Germany on his behalf. He obtained nothing but words. Even Cencius wearied of fighting for the antipope, who was at length compelled to give his host three hundred pounds of silver, and to take his departure in secret from the castle. He reached Berceto in the early part of the year 1064.

It appeared to many in Rome that the only way to put an end to these unseemly conflicts was to obtain from the German Court a formal declaration as to the legitimacy of the election of Alexander or of his rival. An embassy was accordingly dispatched to Germany to make these views known. About the same time, St. Peter Damian, who was on a mission in France, and who was always strongly, if unreasonably, opposed to clerics supporting their rights by arms, wrote to Archbishop Anno in order to induce him to complete the work begun at Augsburg. To put an end to the evil which was being wrought by Cadalous, “the devil’s herald and the apostle of Antichrist”, he adjured him to cause the assembling of a general council as soon as possible, so that the thorns which were troubling the wretched world might be eradicated.

The king and his advisers accordingly decided to hold a synod at Mantua, where both Popes, if it be right to use such a phrase, along with the German, Roman, and Lombard bishops, might meet together. The synod was fixed for the feast of Pentecost; “and although”, as Bonizo notes, “the proceeding was derogatory to the dignity of the Roman Pontiffs, nevertheless, seeing that it was a case of hard necessity”, Alexander not only agreed to be present at the assembly, but actually summoned it himself.

On the appointed day a great many important personages met at Mantua, and were received with the greatest honour by the Countess Beatrice. In the first place came Pope Alexander, “who ever strove to comply with the canons”; then Archbishop Anno, with a number of German bishops and nobles; and, finally, “innumerable” bishops, abbots, and princes “from all parts of Italy”.

Cadalous, who had promised to present himself at the synod, failed to do so, but took up a position close at hand, with a number of armed men, at Aqua nigra. Hence he sent to Anno to say that he would not come to the assembly unless he were allowed to be its supreme president. Of this impertinent announcement the king’s representatives took no notice, as they regarded Alexander as at least Pope de facto. Thus rebuffed, Cadalous contented himself with sending a number of spies into the city, in order that he might be kept well informed as to what went on.

The first session of the synod was held in the church on Whit-Monday, and it was obvious that there was considerable difference of opinion amongst its members. However, after the invocation of the Holy Ghost, when all had taken their seats, Alexander addressed them on the need of peace and harmony, and then ordered him to speak who had anything to say. Thus adjured, Anno rose and said that it had come to the ears of the king that Alexander had been elected by simony, and had been maintained in his position by the Normans, enemies of the Roman Empire. To this Alexander is said by the annalist of Altaich, who professes to give his very words, to have made the following reply : “What truth there is in my accusers you may judge from this, that, unlike me, they have not dared to present themselves before this assembly. But to what has been alleged against me I am willing to make answer, not upon compulsion, but of my own accord; for all know that it is not the proper thing for disciples to accuse or to judge their masters. Hence, that God’s Holy Church may not be scandalized through me, I call to witness the Holy Spirit, whose coming we are now celebrating, that my soul has never been stained with simony, and that I was duly installed in the chair of Peter quite against my will. And this was done by those who are acknowledged to have the right, according to the ancient custom of the Roman Church, of electing and consecrating the Pope. With regard to friendship with the Normans, there is no need that I should say anything. However, when the king, my son, comes to Rome to receive the imperial crown, he will be able to discover for himself what measure of truth there may be in what is said concerning it”.

These simple words of Alexander were enough for the assembled prelates. They acclaimed him Pope, and intoned the Te Deum. Then, on the motion of the sovereign Pontiff, they unanimously condemned Cadalous.

Another session was held on the following day. Emboldened by the fact that for some reason Anno was not present at it, a number of armed supporters of the antipope burst into the church, denouncing Alexander as a heretic, and threatening to kill him. Most of the bishops fled in terror. But Alexander boldly kept his place, guided by the advice of the abbot of Altaich, Wenceslaus, who, says our annalist with ill-disguised contempt, knew well the ways of the Lombards, which were to threaten much more than they had the courage to accomplish. And so it happened on this occasion; for the opportune arrival of the Countess Beatrice with her soldiers caused an instantaneous resumption of order.

After two more sessions, and after he had conferred certain privileges on the bishop of Mantua, Alexander returned to Rome by way of Lucca, and was acknowledged by all.

Though now almost universally discredited, Cadalous in retirement continued to style himself Pope, and ceased not till the hour of his death issuing decrees as though he were the supreme Pontiff, and constituting himself a center of disaffection. He died either at the close of the year 1071 or at the beginning of 1072. And while on the walls of the Lateran there was to be read an inscription to the effect that Alexander reigns, whilst Cadalous falls, in Parma ascriptions were erected in which the positions of the two were reversed. An ancient sepulchral epitaph found by Affó, and composed as an address to Rome, set forth that Parma in tears had interred in a narrow tomb her duly elected Pope. With him as her ruler she would with great power have won back the honours of the world for the Apostolic See. The Normans would have been expelled, and Apulia and Calabria would have been freed from the servitude in which they are now lying; while Rome, the head of the world, would have set her foot upon the haughty. But, as it was, unhappy in the ruler she retained, she acted against the one who conquered her, strong as she was, but who, with her, would have subdued the world for her, had long enough life been granted him.

According to Rangerius, it was in prison that Cadalous expiated the crimes of his life by his death.

If the coming of Anno to Italy had been advantageous to Alexander, it was not so to the archbishop himself. His absence from the court had been utilized by his rivals. It was only natural that Henry should remember that Anno had taken the principal part in the outrage which had been put upon him at Kaiserswerth, and he had found him a more severe mentor than he wished to have. He, therefore, favoured the advances of another who left him more to himself and his passions; and when Anno returned to Germany, he found that his place had been taken by the able and aspiring Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen, of whose splendid ambition mention has already been made. The empress-mother Agnes returned to court; but such influence for good as she exercised over her wayward son was more than neutralized by that which the young dissolute Count Werner exerted over him in an opposite direction.

To increase his influence over the youthful Henry, the patriarch of Hamburg-Bremen, for so Adalbert loved to be called, caused him to be proclaimed of age when he was only fifteen years old (March 29, 1065).

One result of the advent of Adalbert to power would seem to have been that encouragement was again given to Cadalous by the German Court. This action called forth a strong letter from St. Peter Damian to “Henry, son of the emperor Henry (II) III, king of the Romans”. In prophetic language he warned him that the man who should divide the Church would be himself divided; he suggested that the empire’s treatment of the Roman Church was perhaps the reason of the losses it was sustaining at the hands of the Normans and others; and he exhorted him to let the force of his wrath fall upon Cadalous, that enemy of man’s salvation, that sink of vices, that fuel of hell.

This letter was not without its effect on the king’s council, and an expedition into Italy was decided upon. Owing, however, it would appear, to the diplomatic manoeuvrers of Adalbert, ii was first postponed, then abandoned altogether. And, despise is own wishes, Alexander was, as we shall see, forced to endeavour to strengthen the papal alliance with the Normans.

Though fortune-tellers, in whom he trusted, had assured that he would be the head of the government for a long time, a coalition of his enemies brought about his fall as early as the beginning of the year 1066. The party of Anno once again became all-powerful in the realm; and while archbishops and dukes contended for the chief place in his kingdom, the young king was made to remain a mere cipher in its government, but was allowed to become an adept in every ignoble vice.

With a view to putting a term to the growing licentiousness of their youthful monarch, his councillors insisted on his marrying Bertha, the daughter of Adelaide, countess of Turin, to whom his father had long before caused him to be betrothed. The ceremony was accordingly gone through at Tribur, July 13, 1066; but for many months Henry refused to consummate the marriage. Although Bertha was amiable and beautiful, and, as the sequel abundantly proved, loved her husband, he conceived the greatest dislike to her—partly, no doubt, because pressure had been put upon him in the matter by Anno.

The history of the early years of the reign of King Henry IV furnishes an admirable illustration of the truth that it is an evil thing for a nation to have a child-ruler. During that period the whole of Germany was kept in a turmoil by the unchecked self-seeking of its chief men. Whilst Anno’s nepotism was causing, as one of its results, the violent death of one of his nephews, a bishop-elect, the quarrels of Adalbert with Magnus, duke of Saxony, were ending in the ruin of his diocese, in an outburst of paganism, and in his own great humiliation.

In their struggles for influence the heads of the various parties strove to secure the support of the Pope. There is still extant a letter to Alexander from Siegfried, archbishop of Mainz or Mayence, in which he begs his paternity, inasmuch as he is the crown of their kingdom, and the diadem of the whole Roman Empire, ever to have his son, their sovereign lord Henry, in his good memory, and with apostolic constancy to continue, as he has done in the past, to support him with his advice and help till he secure the imperial crown. The part soon to be taken by Siegfried in the affair of the king’s divorce throws light on this rapprochement between Henry and the archbishop of Maine.

Whilst the German king was passing his time in gratifying his passions, Italy was slipping away from the empire. Godfrey of Tuscany was much more powerful there than was the Franconian Henry. To reassert imperial influence in the peninsula, it was again decided that the king should lead an expedition into it, and with that object he came to Augsburg (February 2, 1067). But most of the great princes of the empire had their own ends to work out in Germany. Knowing that he would not be loath to return to his pleasures, they easily persuaded Henry that his ideas on the subject were those of a boy, and that he had better go back himself to Saxony, and send an embassy into Italy instead. It seems to have been the intention of the princes that Duke Godfrey should accomplish the mission. But, as we shall see later, he chose to work (1067) rather for his own interests and those of the Papacy than for those of the empire.

Accordingly, in the following year (1068), Anno of Cologne, Bishop Henry of Trent, and Otho, duke of Bavaria, entered Italy in then sovereign’s name, and at once incurred the displeasure of the Pope by freely holding intercourse with Cadalous and with his equally excommunicated partisan, Henry, archbishop of Ravenna. Another reason that made Alexander disposed to treat Anno coldly was that he had been informed that he was aiming at the Papacy; and he was, moreover, annoyed at the way in which, despite his prohibition, he was harrying the monks of Stavelo or Stablo. Hence, when the ambassadors reached Rome, Alexander for some time refused to see them. However, after they had humbly offered satisfaction, the Pope granted them indeed a hearing, but apparently refused to conform at least to all their wishes, and, taking up a firm stand, bade them lay his views before the king.

How far the embassy was successful in impressing upon the people of Italy the power of Germany, or the advantage or necessity of union with it, may be gathered from what the Annals of Altaich tell us of the return of the ambassadors.

Instead of going back to Germany with the bishops, Otho of Nordheim, duke of Bavaria, remained behind, as though to treat with the princes of Italy on its affairs. With a great multitude of Italians, Duke Godfrey went to meet him on the plains round Piacenza. When, however, Otho attempted to enter upon business, the Italians, moved by their pride, and, as it were, inborn hatred of the Germans, refused to give him a hearing, shouted him down, and compelled him to depart without accomplishing anything.

Another matter to which Henry and his advisers failed to induce the Pope to agree was his wish to divorce Bertha. Whether because she had in a sense been forced upon him, or because he objected to the restraints of married life, or because he had taken a personal dislike to her, he desired to procure a divorce from her. It was in 1069 (June), and to Siegfried of Mainz (Mayence), that Henry first opened his mind on the subject, and, according to a conjecture of Lambert, offered to force the Thuringians to pay him the tithes, if he would help him to attain his end. When, by whatever means, he had secured the adhesion of the archbishop to his base designs, he began to speak publicly of his relations to Bertha with much the same loathsome hypocrisy as our own Henry VIII spoke of his towards Catherine of Aragon. He had no fault to find with her, but could no longer keep from men that “by what judgment of God he knew not”, he could not live with his wife, and that he had never treated her as such. It was accordingly decided to hold a synod on the matter at Mainz in the week following the feast of St. Michael. Meanwhile the queen was relegated to the abbey of Lorsch.

Whether because he hoped to beguile Alexander into sanctioning his action, or because he feared the consequences if he did not communicate so important a matter to him, Siegfried forwarded to him a garbled account as to what had taken place up to that moment regarding the projected divorce. He pretended that he had opposed the king’s wishes in the matter until both king and queen had assured him that she was incapable of becoming a mother; and he declared that nothing should be done without the Pope’s authority.

The practical reply of the Pope was to send the fearless and inflexible ascetic, St. Peter Damian, as his legate to the appointed synod.

Full of hope of a speedy release from the matrimonial bond, Henry had set out for Mainz (Mayence), when word was brought to him of the arrival in that city of the Pope’s legate, and of the fact that he had already threatened to excommunicate Siegfried for the part he had taken “in this wicked attempt at separation”. Made a coward by his conscience, and filled with bitter disappointment, the king was at first disposed to return to Saxony without presenting himself before the synod. It required all the persuasive powers of his friends to induce him to face the legate. It was pointed out to him that the attention of all was directed to the synod; that by his own command the great ones of the empire would assemble at Mainz, and that he must meet them. However, when he reached Frankfort, he gave orders that the gathering should be held in that city instead.

The synod was accordingly held there in the beginning of October (1069), and it was soon evident that Henry had no case. Supported by justice, by the commission of the Pope, and by his own character, the authority of the legate was irresistible. The divorce was not to be. When the king had heard the princes of the empire express their adhesion to the words of the legate, and declare that the decision of the Roman Pontiff was just, “broken rather than convinced”, he said, “he would bear as best he could a burden he could not lay down”. Then, without waiting for the queen, he hurried back to Saxony with an escort of barely forty men. Bertha, however, regained her rights both as a queen and as a wife.

It would appear that St. Peter Damian utilized his stay in Germany to examine into the state of its Church. At any rate, in obedience to the Pope’s summons, the arch­bishops of Cologne and Mainz and the bishop of Bamberg betook themselves to Rome in the beginning of the year 1070 to answer a charge of simony. The bishop of Bamberg extricated himself out of his difficulties, not by giving presents to the Pope, as Lambert suggests in one place, but by perjury, as the same author shows in another place. The great archbishops, now humble enough before the Pope, were only permitted to return home after they had taken an oath never again to be guilty of the vice of simony.

The opposition which Siegfried and others offered after this to the simoniacal practices of King Henry shows that the spirit of the Gregorian reform was beginning to sink deep.

For a second time was a journey to Italy fatal to the ascendancy of Anno. No sooner did Henry see that he had fallen under the displeasure of the Pope than he re­called Adalbert of Bremen to manage the affairs of state. But the brightness and brilliancy of the archbishop had departed, and left behind them only a senile cunning. He thought merely of acquiring wealth for his church, of leaving the king to work his will, and of avoiding coming into adverse contact with the magnates of the realm. He had no concern how badly the weak and helpless were treated either by himself or others. Of all his great powers, his ready speech alone did not desert him; so that at this declining period of his life it might have been said of him, as it was of an English king, viz., that he never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one. But his end was near. He died on March 18, 1072.

After what has been said of the last doings of Adalbert, the condition of things at his death may be easily imagined. Murmurs were loud and deep. The king was alarmed, and succeeded in inducing Anno to take up once more for the general good the reins of government. To help the archbishop in his efforts to bring Henry to some sense of his duty, his mother left Italy, and came to add her exhortations to those of the new minister. It was all to no purpose. Roused for a time by the vigour of Anno’s administration, Henry soon fell back, and continued his career of vice and folly, wantonly offending great and small alike. Unable to check him, Anno begged to be allowed to retire and to apply himself exclusively to the affairs of his diocese. Henry was nothing loath, “and, as it were delivered from a most severe master, at once burst all the bonds of moderation and plunged headlong into every kind of wickedness” (Christmas 1072).

There was, however, one firm barrier at least in his way, and against it he soon struck. It was the Holy See. His counter struggle with Hildebrand was about to begin. But the first blows in the deadly combat between the monarch and the Popes were struck by the dying hand of Alexander. In a Roman synod held in Lent a month or so before he died, he publicly excommunicated, at the request of the empress-mother Agnes, some of the king’s advisers whose counsels were eminently calculated to lead to his being cut off from the communion of the Church. Ekkehard of Aura (Urach), indeed, goes much further. He pretends that Anno, who had gone to Rome to receive some moneys due to the king, returned with papal letters summoning Henry to Rome to answer the charges of simony and other crimes which had been lodged against him. These accusations, as we learn from the same author, had been preferred against him by the Saxons, whom he had been fiercely oppressing. Their statements of their wrongs had won over Siegfried of Mainz, and many others, and through them had enlisted the sympathy of the Pope. But it would seem more likely that in this instance Bonizo was more correct, and that it was Henry’s counsellors and not himself who received the summons to present themselves before the Pope to answer for their inquiries. Still, whatever be the truth in the matter, it is evident that the power of the Papacy is beginning to make itself felt in the immediate vicinity of the king’s person. It will not be long before it will fall upon him.

Affairs of Italy. Milan

Now that we have sketched the relations between the empire and Pope Alexander to the day of his death, we may turn to other events in different parts of the Church with which he was connected. It is only natural that we should begin with the affairs of Italy, and with those of one of its most important cities, Milan. The reform inaugurated in that city by St. Peter Damian was not final; but as long as the authority of Alexander hung in the balance, and papal interference was scarcely possible, Guido, its refractory archbishop, was content to acknowledge that Pontiff as head of the Church. No sooner, however, was his position rendered secure than he went over to the party of Cadalous. The Patarines, however, headed now by the deacon Ariald and the knight Herlembald, who took the place of his deceased brother Landulf, resumed their old activity against the married clergy (1066). Herlembald had, when in doubt, been encouraged to attach himself to Ariald by Pope Alexander and the cardinals, “who gave him, in the name of St. Peter, a wondrous standard, that, when the storm of heresy raged furiously around him, he might, by holding his banner in his hand, be able to allay it”.

As Guido showed himself false to the promises he had made to St. Peter Damian, and resumed his simoniacal practices, Ariald sent Herlembald to Rome for instructions as to what should be done. Whilst he was away, party feeling was intensely aroused. On the one hand, the archbishop had persecuted two clerics who had given up their former mode of irregular living and had joined the Patarines, and, on the other, the latter had, in the name of the liturgical rites of the Church of Rome, attacked certain Ambrosian customs. This caused quite a popular commotion, and of this the archbishop made good use when Herlembald returned to Milan with a papal bull declaring him excommunicated. He declared that Milan had never obeyed the Roman Church, and called upon the people to do away with those who would destroy their liberties. No more was needed to inflame the passions of men. By the friends of the archbishop Ariald was attacked, and left for dead; and by the supporters of the deacon, Guido’s palace was sacked, and himself nearly done to death. But a lavish distribution of money provoked a general feeling against Ariald. He was compelled to fly from the city, was captured by the partisans of the archbishop, and put to death in a manner too horrible to be here described.

 Such a crime could not long remain hidden, and Ariald conquered in death. His mutilated body was brought back in triumph to Milan (1067), and soon after two cardinals arrived there from Rome to restore peace and order to the distracted city (August). Their one object was to put a term to the factions whose terrible reprisals were causing such misery in the city. Hence, they said nothing about the death of Ariald, and, though they renewed the decrees which St. Peter Damian had issued (1059) regarding simony and clerical celibacy, they absolutely forbade those who had banded themselves together to eradicate those vices to proceed in the future by any measures of violence. They must act canonically, and denounce delinquents to the archbishop or the bishops. The legates would also seem to have allowed the excommunication of Guido to lapse, perhaps on condition that he should resign his office. For, on the one hand, we know that Hildebrand had declared that the only remedy for the sad state of affairs in Milan was the resignation of Guido, and the canonical election of another archbishop, with the consent of the Holy See; and, on the other, that he did actually resign about this time.

But if the legates of the Holy See showed by their moderation that their one aim was the establishment of peace, the conduct of Guido evinced plainly either that the general good was of little concern to him, or that he had no idea of how to work for it. When he resigned his see, instead of committing the choice of his successor to the clergy and people of Milan, and giving the Holy See an opportunity of expressing its approval of their choice, he sent his crozier and ring to the king of Germany, and asked him to appoint as his successor a subdeacon of the name of Godfrey. He preferred to surrender the liberties of his church into the hands of the empire, rather than into those of the Papacy. Godfrey, who had schemed to secure his nomination by Guido, was equally successful with Henry, to whom he gave money, and a promise to destroy the Patarines. But though he was consecrated at Novara, Rome would have none of him, nor would the people of Milan. And even Guido, before he died (August 23, 1071), abandoned him, and made his peace with the reform party.

All during the interval between the nomination of Election of Godfrey and the death of Guido, active opposition was kept up towards the former by Herlembald. On the demise of the old archbishop, Herlembald put himself in communication with Rome, and it was decided to proceed to choose a new archbishop. Cardinal Bernard was sent from Rome to watch the election; and the party of the Patarines selected a young cleric of noble blood named Atto (January 6, 1072). But he was scarcely elected before he was seized by the opposite faction, wounded, and compelled to swear that he would renounce the bishopric. He was, however, rescued by Herlembald, and his oath was declared null by the Pope. But, unable to maintain himself in Milan, he went to Rome, and though Gregory VII took up his cause, he was never able to obtain his see, as King Henry supported a second intruder, Theobald, on the death of Godfrey.

In many other cities of northern Italy besides Milan did struggle for reform in their bishops resist the efforts of the Holy See to reform them, and many other cities witnessed tragic scenes, when a large section of the people seconded the zeal of Rome. But the event which made the greatest sensation was the trial by fire which took place at Florence to prove that its bishop, Peter of Pavia, was guilty of simony (February 1068). A monk passed unscathed between two blazing pyres, each ten feet long by four and a half wide, and separated only a foot or two from each other. This monk, since known from this fiery ordeal as Peter Igneus, afterwards became cardinal-bishop of Albano.

It will be readily understood that this uprising of the people against even worthless men in authority was not without its dangers. While many acted from the purest motives, and were well able to understand how to obey a properly constituted authority, and when an unlawfully imposed one might be resisted, many evil-minded men opposed the simoniacal bishops merely for the satisfaction of thwarting authority, and many, in ignorance, began to think that, if an official was personally wicked, he lost his powers and might be disobeyed with impunity. And so the cry was raised in Florence: “There is no Pope, no King, no Archbishop, and no Priest!” Hence, says the saint, who lets us know of this black side of the work of reform, “it is said that some thousand people, deceived by these childish sophisms, died without receiving the sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood”.

The epoch of which we are writing will not have passed away before some at least of these “sophisms” put forward by the dangerous, because impractical, eloquence of Arnold of Brescia will have wrought a world of mischief.

In the north of Italy, then, many of the bishops on whom the Pope, in his efforts to effect a general reformation of morals, ought to have been able to rely, proved themselves his most bitter opponents. And, at the same time, in the south of Italy the Normans showed that their help could not be securely counted on by the Papacy, but that they were as ready to use their swords against it as for it, according as best suited their interests. Whilst Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger were securing their conquests in Apulia and Calabria, and were beginning to rend Sicily from the Saracens (1061), Richard of Aversa turned his arms northward. Capua fell completely under his sway in May 1062, and he made the fact that the Pope had accepted services of William of Montreuil, who had shown himself a disobedient vassal, his excuse for invading his territory.

Taking no account of the fact that William had returned to his allegiance, and not considering the efforts Alexander had made to prevent William from repudiating his wife, who was Richard’s daughter, the Norman count seized Ceprano and advanced on Rome (1066). He had conceived the idea of making himself Patricius of the city, and ruling the Pope like the Alberics of the tenth century. It was to no purpose that Alexander, who had sent letters and messengers to ask Henry for help, threatened the advancing Normans with the vengeance of the German king. They had grown quite accustomed to treating him with contempt. This time, however, Henry was in earnest; for he wished to receive the imperial crown as well as to chastise the Normans. His host assembled at Augsburg in the early part of 1067. But whether because the German princes did not desire an Italian expedition, or because Henry’s presence was required “in other parts of the empire”, or whether, more likely, because Duke Godfrey, who ought to have come to furnish the vanguard and to lead it into Italy, did not put in an appearance, the king disbanded his army.

But if the imperial viceroy in Italy was not anxious to see Henry and his Germans in Rome, he was far from desirous that Norman influence in Rome should outweigh his own. Accordingly, collecting a large army, he marched to Rome with his wife and his step-daughter, the famous Matilda; for they were touched by the troubles of their Tuscan Pope (May 1067). After a little fighting and some negotiation, the Normans surrendered their conquests, and secured the withdrawal of the duke by the payment of a large sum of money. “This”, notes Bonizo, “was the first service which Matilda, the most excellent daughter of Boniface, was able to offer the Blessed Prince of the Apostles; but it was not long before the many gracious services which she rendered in the same direction merited for her the title of Daughter of Blessed Peter”.

Peace being thus effected between the Normans and the Pope, he was enabled, in company with Hildebrand and others, to go about among them, and remedy some of the wrongs they were everywhere perpetrating. One of those he was anxious to help was Alfanus, archbishop of Salerno, a man whom Giesebrecht has pronounced to be worthy of the highest praise on many counts; for he was, he tells us, “a most fervent monk, a most zealous defender of ecclesiastical liberty, a most ardent lover of antiquity, and, for his age, a perfect grammarian”. He was, moreover, a great friend and admirer of Hildebrand; and among his verses, second to none of his time, there is a long poem in his honour. To Alfanus it seemed that Rome owed no more to the Scipios and to its other heroes than to Hildebrand, and that through him its ancient sway had returned.

Like so many others, Alfanus had been robbed by the Normans. William, one of the sons of Tancred, had taken violent possession of property belonging to the See of Salerno; and as before a synod held at Melfi (August 1, 1067) he refused to restore his ill-gotten goods, he was excommunicated. A short time afterwards, however, he and his followers restored them at Salerno and at Capua.

 With the exception of another brief misunderstanding with Richard of Capua, brought about again apparently by William of Montreuil, Alexander maintained satisfactory relations with the Normans during the rest of his pontificate. Their successes were in many ways a gain to the Holy See, and occasionally brought it curious presents. In his Sicilian campaign, Roger had gained a decisive victory over the Saracens at the river Cerami near Traina (1063). The count realized that it was to God and St. Peter that he owed this great victory. Not to be ungrateful for so great a favour, he sent by Meledius four camels to Pope Alexander, who was then holding in Rome the place of St. Peter and governing with prudence the Catholic Church. Delighted much more at the victory over the infidels which God had granted than at the presents he had received, the Apostolicus, in virtue of his power and with his apostolic benediction, granted to the count, and to all who might assist in wresting Sicily from the infidel, and in the work of its lasting conversion, the remission of their sins, on the condition of their being sorry for them and avoiding them in the future. He also sent them a standard, blessed by apostolic authority, that, full of confidence in St. Peter, they might fight against the Saracens with greater impunity.

If the reign of Alexander was to see the beginning of the end of Saracen rule in Sicily, it was to behold the complete dominion termination of Byzantine authority in south Italy. The last period of Greek power in Italy began by their seizure of Bari (876); it was closed by its capture by the Normans in 1071. Less than a year after, the taking of Palermo by the same redoubtable warriors (January 1072) gave the deathblow to the Saracen sway in Sicily. The most important result of these exploits, as far as the Pope was concerned, was the return of south Italy and Sicily to his spiritual jurisdiction. Through the action of the Greek emperors Leo III and his son Constantine Copronymous (741-775), their churches had been reunited to the synod of Constantinople, seeing that the Pope and Old Rome is under the domination of the barbarians. Through the action of the Norman rulers they again fell under the authority of Rome. In Sicily the speedy establishment of that authority was simple. The Saracens had destroyed all its episcopal sees by the end of the ninth century; it was therefore merely a question of reconstituting them. But in south Italy the sees were in the hands of Greeks, and the Greek rite was in general use. Change, therefore, in these matters could in those districts only be effected by degrees. Where there was a large Latin population of Normans and Lombards, the Greek bishops and the Greek rite were replaced by Latin ones as the sees fell vacant; and thus in less than thirty years the four metropolitan and seven suffragan sees were completely Latinized. But where the Greek population was numerous no immediate change was made. Hence we find that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there were still many Greek bishops. Even as late as the sixteenth century the succession had not quite died out, and the Greek lite, protected by the Holy See, was still surviving in the seventeenth century. But the fourteenth century may be taken as the date of the fusion of the Greek and Latin races. Though, therefore, the power of the emperor of Constantinople and of its patriarch in south Italy and Sicily came to end in the eleventh century, and was replaced by the authority of the Pope and of the Norman kings, Greek influence did not cease to make itself felt there. Indeed, through the monastic foundations of the twelfth century it experienced quite a renaissance.

The change of rulers in south Italy is noticeable in the of consecration of the new church at Monte Cassino. The eleventh century is justly regarded as the golden age of this glorious abbey, and Desiderius (1058-87), the most distinguished of its long line of abbots, as the Leo X of the Gregorian renaissance. From the total renovation of the buildings of the monastery which he effected, he is called its fourth founder. He naturally paid special attention to the church. To decorate it he brought from Rome columns, precious marbles, and other splendid architectural relics of imperial times; and from Lombardy, Amalfi, and especially from Constantinople, sculptors, mosaists, and painters. When the church was finished, and its walls were all aglow with mosaics, and its pavement gay with slabs of coloured marbles arranged in geometrical patterns, Desiderius begged the Pope to come and consecrate his new building. Alexander at once summoned all the bishops of Campania, the Principate (of Capua), Apulia and Calabria. In consequence of the summons of the Pope, there assembled in and around the abbey not only an enormous number of the nameless crowd, but all those who in that part have left their mark on the world. With the Pope were Hildebrand, St. Peter Damian, and other cardinals, ten archbishops, and over forty bishops, several of whom were from Greek sees. With Richard, prince (or duke) of Capua, were the principal Norman and other princes of southern Italy, except f Robert Guiscard, who was then besieging Palermo. The high altar —that of St. Benedict— was consecrated by the Pope himself, who granted to all who throughout the octave came to Monte Cassino and confessed their sins a full absolution. The number of people who flocked to the abbey was such that its great resources were taxed to the utmost. But Benedictine hospitality rose to the occasion, “so that scarce one of that countless multitude could be found who did not declare that he had been supplied with all that he needed to eat”.

Speaking of Pope Alexander, a Frenchman, who was contemporary with him, says of him that he was “one who France, well deserved to be consulted and obeyed by the universal Church; for his decisions were fair and sound. The sun held not more exactly to its assigned course than did he to the path of truth, everywhere correcting whatever evil he could, and never showing himself a respecter of persons”. Anyone who examines his relations with the country to which William of Poitiers belonged must form the same conclusion. After carefully surveying the history of the fourteen ecclesiastical provinces into which France was then divided, Delarc’s inferences quite bear out the statements of the Conqueror’s chaplain. He writes: “By his letters and by his legates Alexander II was perpetually intervening in the difficulties and in the multifarious incidents of the inner life of the Church in France. And it cannot be called in question that this intervention of his was most beneficial, nay, in some cases, even providential”.

By the ancient canon law of the Church, a bishop was to Episcopal be freely elected by the clergy and people of the diocese; but at this period throughout almost the whole of France, freedom of election was a thing of the past. Bishops were imposed on clergy and people by the power of the king or of some feudal overlord; and, as money was the sole aim of most of these men, it will be readily understood that most of the bishops of France held their sees because they had paid the price. And when once the civil magnates had secured their price for a bishopric or an abbey, they cared nothing about the character of the man who through them became a bishop or an abbot, nor about the subsequent fate of the diocese or monastery. Simony and its attendant evils stalked with sardonic smile from one end of France to the other. And those who had to suffer under the oppressive tyranny of the simoniacal invaders of bishoprics and abbeys had no other resource, but in person, or by letter, to implore “the justice of St. Peter, and consolation from his successor in the midst of the wrongs they had to endure”. The archbishops who ought to have been the most strenuous opponents of simony were its open or secret allies; for, as Alexander pointed out, no one would buy a bishopric if he knew he could not obtain consecration from his metropolitan. It was then but natural, it was but proper, that the head of the Church should try to provide a remedy for this sad state of things, and should strive to wrest the right of election from the hands of worldly -minded men, and take it as far as possible into his own. With a view to effecting this transfer, we find Alexander declaring that to the Popes alone belonged the right of settling the boundaries of bishoprics, and not unfrequently assuming the right of approving the selection of episcopal candidates.

If at this period, owing especially to the countless evils caused by simony, the Church in France did not fall into complete chaos, it was due to the reforming intervention of the Holy See. It exerted its influence to a very large extent by the legates it dispatched thither one after another. They summoned and presided over councils, encouraged local efforts at reform, deposed unworthy bishops, and authoritatively settled the disagreements which they found in the French clerical world—differences among the clergy themselves, or between divers churches, or again between the seculars and regulars. Even the most powerful prelates of France were fain to beg the Pope to send a legate a latere to aid them in the midst of their troubles. And appeals to the Pope for his help came to Rome from every rank of men throughout France :  from simple priests oppressed by their bishops; from women robbed of their property and of their good name by lustful husbands; from monasteries which had been plundered of their relics, of their rights, and of their possessions by bishops of the baronial type; from abbots and monks forcibly expelled from their monasteries by simoniacal intruders; from broken-hearted sinners who came to beg from the successor of the apostles pity and penance for their great transgressions; and from bishops struggling against the savage tyranny of brutal barons.

It is not a little curious to find that one of the appeals to Rome for help came from Berengarius of Tours. When he returned home after his retractation at Rome (1059) with regard to the Blessed Eucharist, he is said to have continued to propagate his views, as though he had in no way compromised his position. But he was soon to find that others had changed, if he had not. His former friend, Eusebius Bruno, bishop of Angers, would no longer support him, but reminded him that his opinions had been condemned once and for all “by the synod of the Apostolic See”. What was felt much more keenly by Berengarius was the death (1060) of his powerful lay patron, Geoffrey Martel. The new count, Geoffrey the Bearded, the nephew of Martel, disliked Berengarius just as heartily as his uncle had loved him; and he would have been no Angevin if he had not made his dislike felt by its object. He soon rendered the position of Berengarius as archdeacon of Angers untenable.

In sorrowfully making the fact known to Cardinal Stephen, Berengarius says that he is aware that it is open to him to appeal “to the dignity and sublimity of the Roman Church”, but he would be glad if the cardinal himself would present his respects to the Pope, and approach him on his behalf. Alexander had already, he assured his correspondent, sent him his blessing. “The divine clemency would, through you, grant me a very great favour if you could induce the Pope to write to the archbishop (of Tours) and to the bishops of Le Mans and Angers, bidding them defend me against the presumption of the envious and the stupid”.

Presumably ignorant that Berengarius had, despite his retractation of 1059, continued to teach as before regarding the Blessed Eucharist, Alexander, besides sending a kind letter of sympathy to the archdeacon himself, wrote to the bishops of Tours and of Angers. He bade them not to allow Geoffrey to persecute Berengarius on pretence of defending the Christian faith, as that was their affair, and not his. He also addressed two letters “to his very dear son Geoffrey, count of the Angevins”, one before and one after he had dispatched Cardinal Stephen to France on this and other business. In both he very paternally exhorted Geoffrey to cease to molest Berengarius, of whose unbounded charity especially he had received a very good account. But, like the rest of his house, Geoffrey “neither feared God nor regarded man”. He took no heed either of the Pope’s letter or of his legate, Stephen, and if he had had his own way he would have continued to play the tyrant not only towards Berengarius, but towards the monks of Marmoutier and the whole diocese of Tours. Of this we have proof in the letter which Bartholomew, archbishop of Tours, wrote to Alexander denouncing the oppressions of Geoffrey, “this contemporary Nero who surpasses in impiety all the counts his predecessors”.

But Geoffrey was destined to get less of his own way in life than most men. His brother Fulk, Rechin, or “the Quarreller”, wished to possess himself of his inheritance, and in the Lent of 1067 succeeded in securing Geoffrey’s person. The bearded count was now himself in the position of needing the Pope’s aid, and was fortunate enough to secure it. Stephen, Alexander’s legate, induced Fulk to set his brother at liberty.

No sooner, however, was he a free man than he recommenced oppressing the Church. Naturally irritated at such ingratitude, the cardinal summoned a council, excommunicated him, and “in virtue of the authority of St. Peter”, gave the county of Anjou to his younger brother Fulk. Not long after the publication of this sentence, Geoffrey again fell into his brother’s hands (1068), who, undeterred by papal excommunication, kept him prisoner in the castle of Chinon for twenty-eight years. At the close of that period the unhappy man was released through the efforts of Urban II. Shattered in mind and body, he only regained his freedom to die.

It is characteristic of the vain weakness of Berengarius  that about the very time he was appealing to the See  of Peter for help, he appears to have been perpetually abusing its doings and its occupants. From fragments of his writings which have come down to us in one way or another, and which are believed to have been published at this period, we see how little his vanity could brook opposition. “It was either in 1068 or 1069” that he wrote his Liber prior de sacra coena, and it was seemingly some four years later that he brought out a second book on the same subject in answer to Lanfranc’s Liber de corpore Domini, which his first publication had provoked. In both works the archdeacon descends to abuse, and in both decries the council of 1059, Cardinal Humbert, and Nicholas II. Humbert is a vagabond and an imbecile who does not understand his adversary; Lanfranc, if learned, is a knave who, like Paschasius Radbert, falsifies texts; and Pope Nicholas is an ignoramus, unworthy of his position, a prophet of lies.

Cardinal Stephen was not the only legate sent into France by Alexander. One of the first of those whom he dispatched thither seems to have been St. Peter Damian, who volunteered to go in order to settle one of the many disputes which were then being carried on between the seculars and regulars.

When we reflect that, on the one hand, the spirit of reform at this period had its home among the monks, that the monastery was its centre, and that not only its chief exponents, but its authoritative supporters in the Church, were monks, and that, on the other hand, the bishops were not unfrequently the representatives of feudal domination and license, we may be prepared to find the abbot’s crook and the episcopal crozier in frequent opposition. And if the bishops generally had might on their side, the abbots usually had right. To adjust these differences without destroying the energetic life which gave them birth was one of the most vital duties of the Popes and their agents.

There had appeared before the Roman synod of 1063, Hugh, surnamed the Great, abbot of Cluny, and the real founder of its congregation. He had come for protection against Drogo, bishop of Macon, in whose diocese Cluny was situated, and who by force of arms wished to deprive that famous monastery of its privilege of exemption from episcopal control. Alexander listened readily to Hugh’s appeal, accepted the offer of St. Peter Damian, “the eye and immovable foundation of the Apostolic See”, to mediate between the two parties, and warmly recommended him to the archbishops of France.

Undaunted either by his great age, his weak health, the terrors of the Alps, or by the wiles of Cadalous, who, like a tiger, was thirsting for his blood, the saint set out for France. On foot and without guides he crossed the great St. Bernard, and at length reached the famous abbey, where he was received with the greatest honour and joy. Without loss of time letters were dispatched to the neighbouring bishops, ordering them in the name of the Pope to meet in synod at Châlons-sur-Saone. Most of the bishops came prepared to support their colleague of Macon; but the eloquence and authority of the saint prevailed. And when the deeds of privilege granted to Cluny by its founder William, duke of Aquitaine, and by many of the Popes were read, the opposition of the bishop of Macon broke down. He declared that he had sinned in ignorance, and had no wish to oppose Pope Alexander or any of the Popes. Various other affairs were settled at this council, and certain simoniacal intruders condemned, so that “the synod which was convoked for one case, turned out to the profit of many”. Refusing the presents which the grateful monks would have pressed upon him, “lest temporal reward might destroy the eternal”, the saintly legate of the Apostolic See returned to the solitude of Fonte Avellana (October 1063).

Mention has already been made of the embassies of the cardinal subdeacon Peter, and of that of Cardinal Stephen.

Spain

It remains to speak of yet another, viz. of that of Cardinal Hugo Candidus, who proved as faithless to his duty on this occasion as he had been previously untrue to Pope Alexander. Finding that in the service of the antipope (Cadalous) he was suffering much and receiving but little, Hugo sought and obtained not only Alexander’s forgiveness, but some measure of his confidence. And out of respect for the memory of St. Leo IX, who had advanced him, Alexander sent his former adversary on an important embassy to the country on both sides of the Pyrenees. As we shall see, however, the falseness of his character reasserted itself; and “when acting as legate in Spain, he pulled down whatever he had built up; for he first prosecuted the simoniacs, and then on receipt of money condoned their offences”.

Hugo began his mission on this side of the Pyrenees, and in the archdiocese of Auch—a province remarkable for the number of its pluralist bishops. He held his first synod at Auch itself. Merely noting that it condemned “symbolic feasts in churches”, and that “by order of Pope Alexander”, he held another council at Toulouse, we shall pass on with him into Spain. There, after furthering the movement of reform and of the Truce of God in public assemblies at Gerona and Vich, he entered upon a campaign against the liturgy that is known as the Mozarabic. Seeing, however, that it is the rite which had been in use in Spain since the time of the conversion to Christianity of its Visigothic invaders in the fifth century, i.e., for some seven hundred years, it would be better called the Visigothic liturgy. Still, as it survived longer among the Mozarabs, or Mostarabes, as they should properly be called, it received their name. They themselves were Christians who, from the fact of their continuing to live amongst the Moors, came to receive a name which denoted that they had, in some respects at least, become Arabs.

Until the second half of the eleventh century, the Mozarabic liturgy was in general use throughout Spain, as well among the Catholics of the independent northern  Christian states as among the Mozarabs. But before then it had begun to be viewed With suspicion by the former. Naturally influenced by their Frankish neighbours, who, from the time of Charlemagne, had adopted the Roman liturgy, they too had commenced to turn towards it, and insensibly to be alienated from the Mozarabic. It was remembered that the Adoptionists had essayed to support their heresy by quotations from it; and, moreover, it was the Liturgy employed by the Mozarabs, of whose orthodoxy the Spanish kings would naturally be as suspicious as they were of their patriotism.

The great Christian conquests over the Moors began after the eleventh century had passed its zenith, and it was doubtless felt by the Christian kings that to take away their liturgy from the Mozarabs would be to break one more of their links with a mode of life which they wished them to forget. Whatever force there may or may not be in this reflection, it must not be pushed too far; for not a few, at least, of the bishops and many of the people were in favour of the national liturgy. And so when about the year 1065 legates of Pope Alexander were anxious for its suppression, the Spanish bishops in anger sent three of their number, viz., the bishops of Calahorra, Alava, and Auca (or Oca, then transferred to Burgos) to the Pope himself with their liturgical books, the Liber Ordinum, the Liber Missarum, the Liber Orationum, and the Liber Antifonarum. The volumes were carefully examined by the Pope and a council, and pronounced free from heterodoxy. Moreover, so at any rate it is said by a contemporary Spanish document, “apostolic authority forbade anyone in future to attack the office of the Spanish Church”.

But, despite this pronouncement, the attack continued, and it is certain that Frankish influence and the desire of the Popes and of the great churchmen for orthodoxy and unity were potent factors in the abolition of the Mozarabic liturgy. Of the combined action of the Holy See and distinguished ecclesiastics in this matter we have an example in the letter which Alexander II wrote about this time (October 18, 1071) to Aquilinus, abbot of the famous monastery of S. Juan de la Peña in Aragon. Understanding, he said, that in Spain the unity of the Catholic faith had lost its integrity, and that almost all had erred in the matter of ecclesiastical discipline and the divine worship, he had sent thither the cardinal-priest Hugo Candidus, who had restored the integrity of the faith, had expelled simony, and had unified the divine worship. King Sancius (Sancho Ramirez, king of Aragon, 1063­1094), embracing the perfect faith, had submitted himself to the apostolic dignity, had placed all the monasteries of his kingdom under the jurisdiction of the Roman Church, and had dispatched you (Aquilinus) to Rome to obtain for your monastery the special protection of the Roman Church, agreeing to pay to it an annual tax of an ounce of gold. This patronage Alexander professed himself pleased to bestow, and informed the abbot in conclusion that he granted him “the glory and protection of the apostolic privilege”.

One result, then, of the mission of Hugo was the abolition of the Mozarabic rite in Aragon and Navarre in 1071; another was that the manner in which he conducted his embassy brought upon him the opposition of St. Hugh and the monks of Cluny. Recalled to Rome, the cardinal succeeded for the time in defending himself against their accusations, so that Gregory VII, in sending him once again into Spain (1073), declared it to be his belief that he was practically innocent. The second legation of Hugo, and a letter of the Pope to the kings of Leon and Castile, had not the same rapid success against the old liturgy in their kingdoms as corresponding acts had had in those of Aragon and Navarre. But it was doomed, and was soon in the position of being barely tolerated in a few churches. Revived at the close of the fifteenth century by the great Cardinal Ximenes, it is still followed, as a liturgical curiosity, in some churches in Toledo.

A second defection of Hugo from the line of the true Popes caused his whole conduct to be thoroughly examined. He was degraded in 1075 and anathematized at the Roman Council of February 1078, not only on account of his adhesion to first one antipope and then another, but also on account of the unfaithful manner in which he had discharged his office of apostolic legate.

In the successful expeditions against the Moors which the Spanish kings were carrying out at this period, many of the nobles of France took part. Among others who were desirous, moreover, of striking a blow against the infidels on their own account was Ebles or Eboli (Evulus) count of Rouci, near Rheims.

Certainly for over three hundred years the idea of the paramount position of the Pope in the West had been steadily growing; and here there is question not of his spiritual position merely, but of his position among men from every point of view. This sentiment, which no doubt had its origin in the contemplation of his spiritual supremacy, and of the Christian faith and civilization which the Western nations had received through him, was deepened by many political considerations. The decision of Pope Zachary had legalized the extinction of one dynasty, and the establishment of another. Charlemagne, the greatest ruler whom the new nations had seen, had received an imperial crown at the hands of Pope Leo III. And when, through the failure of the line of his descendants, the empire which a Pope had inaugurated had faded away, the West saw rise up, at the touch of his hand; a new creation, “The Holy Roman Empire of the German nation”. Ever since the sixth century, men in every Western land had become accustomed to seeing emperors and kings, bishops and abbots, dukes and counts, asking the Pope to take their religious and philanthropic foundations under his protection, to give his sanction to important political transactions of all kinds, and to grant them his assistance in extricating themselves from difficulties which more powerful neighbours or other circumstances had brought upon them. Through the action of the princes of the Hungarians, of the Slavs, and of the Normans, it had become no uncommon spectacle to see kingdoms placed under the patronage and protection of the Holy See. Even in the reign of Alexander himself, Ramiro I (king of Aragon, 1035-1063), beset with political difficulties, made his kingdom “tributary to the Holy See”, and in sign thereof paid it an annual tax. Then, was it not definitely asserted in the supposed Donation of Constantine, to which public appeal had at length begun to be regularly made, that the first Christian emperor had made over the whole West to the Popes? It is only natural then to find the opinion gaining ground that the West was subject to the suzerainty of the Popes, and that lands newly acquired by Christians should be held of him in feudal tenure.

At any rate we shall find Gregory VII boldly asserting that “the kingdom of Spain” was subject to St. Peter; while, to gain the support of Alexander, Ebles of Rouci, before undertaking his expedition against the Spanish Moors, agreed to hold his conquests “of St. Peter”.

Among those who suffered from the swords of the Franks Alexander in Spain were the ever-unfortunate Jews. In Alexander, however, they found a friend. Both bishops and counts were given to understand that he highly disapproved of the ill-treatment which had been meted out to them. It seems, too, that the Spanish bishops had also done their best for the Jews, for their conduct is praised by the Pope. “We have just heard with pleasure”, he wrote to them, “that you have protected the Jews who dwell in your midst, preventing them from being killed by those who have entered Spain against the Saracens. Through brutish ignorance or blind cupidity, these men wished to kill those whom, it may be, the divine clemency had predestined to eternal salvation. So the blessed Gregory forbade the killing of Jews, pronouncing it impious to wish to slay those whom God had preserved in order that, after the loss of their country and their liberty, they might, in lasting penance for the wrong done by their fathers in shedding the Saviour's blood, live dispersed throughout the world. The case of the Jews and the Saracens is very different. War is justly waged against the latter, who attack the Christians, and drive them from their homes and from their country. But the former are everywhere ready to live in subjection”

St. Wulstan

Now that the royal houses of Spain and England are united by marriage, transition in thought from the one country to the other is easy. Alexander will probably ever be thought of by Englishmen as the Pope who countenanced the invasion of this country by William the Conqueror. He had had, however, other relations with the English before that event. We have already seen that Nicholas II consented to grant the pallium to Ealred of York only on the condition that he resigned the See of Worcester. To watch the due performance of this agreement and to transact other business, two legates (Ermenfried, bishop of Sion, and another) were dispatched to England by Nicholas’s successor, Alexander (1062). King Edward received them with the profound reverence with which he was wont to bestow on all that was Roman. Then, in obedience to the command of the Pope, Ealred accompanied them in a visitation which they made of nearly the whole of England, and finally left them at Worcester in charge of Prior Wulstan, who spared no pains “that they might experience the unbounded hospitality of the English”. Through the representations of the legates, supported by those of the archbishops of Canterbury and York and of Earl Harold, Wulstan himself was elected to fill the see which Ealred had vacated. But it was only when put under obedience to the Pope that the saint would accept the bishopric. He was in due course consecrated at York by Ealred; because, as we have already noticed, “the Roman Pope had interdicted Stigand of Canterbury from exercising the functions of his office”.

The king, who, in his inimitable manner, was so devoted to the customs of Rome, died on January 5, 1066, and for “forty weeks and one day” was succeeded by Earl  Harold. But if he became king de facto, William, duke of Normandy, claimed to be king de jure, and at once prepared to make good his claim by appealing both to the Pope and to arms. The ambassadors he sent to Rome assured Alexander that the Confessor had promised that he should succeed him, and that Earl Harold, who had now usurped the throne, had already sworn fealty to the duke as his liege lord. When Gislebert, archdeacon of Lisieux, William’s chief envoy, arrived in Rome, he did not find any one from England to oppose him. For Harold had neglected to send ambassadors thither to justify his pretensions, “either because he was proud by nature, or distrusted his cause; or because he feared that his messengers would be obstructed by William and his partisans, who beset every port”. He did not, however, stand in want of friends, and a fair hearing was given to the question. But, unfortunately for Harold, his case was opposed by Hildebrand. It was to no purpose that some pointed out that the expedition would cause great blood­shed. Hildebrand’s motto was fiat justitia, ruat coelum; and with the prevailing notions of feudal equity, he had no difficulty in showing that Harold was William’s liegeman and must submit to him. The debate finished by the Pope’s encouraging the Norman duke boldly to take up arms against the perjured Saxon, and sending him a banner of St. Peter.

Strong in the papal approval of his enterprise, William had no difficulty in raising an army for the invasion of England. When his arms had been crowned with success, and the last Anglo-Saxon king had fallen on the field of Senlac, he displayed his appreciation of what the Pope’s decision had done for him. He sent to Alexander untold gold and silver, ornaments “which would have been reckoned splendid even at Constantinople”, and Harold’s great standard with the figure of an armed man woven upon it in gold.

Naturally gratified by this display of the Conqueror’s goodwill, the Pope took occasion to ask for the renewed payment of Peter’s Pence, as the troubles consequent on the death of Edward the Confessor had resulted in a suspension of its collection. In the fragment of the letter in which this request is made, Alexander makes a statement which we shall find more strongly urged by Gregory VII, and firmly contradicted by William. “Your Prudence”, wrote the Pope, “is aware that, from the time when the name of Christ was first made known in England, that kingdom remained under the protection and patronage of the Prince of the Apostles, till certain men, imitating the pride of their father the devil, broke the bond of God, and turned the English away from the path of truth ... As you well know, whilst the English were faithful, in order to show their religious devotedness, they were accustomed to pay an annual charge to the Apostolic See. Of this money, part went to the service of those attached to the Church of St. Mary which is called the School of the English, and part to the Roman Pontiff”.

William, it would seem, made no difficulty in agreeing to pay the Peter’s Pence which had been paid by Edward the Confessor, and at the same time asked the Pope to send legates solemnly to crown him again, and to help him to settle the affairs of the Church in England; for his original coronation by Ealred of York had been anything but auspicious. By the year 1069 he had become really master of England. He wished, therefore, to have the sanction of the Pope for the completion of his undertaking, as for its commencement. Alexander, accordingly, dispatched to England Ermenfried, bishop of Sion (Sitten), a man already acquainted with the affairs of this country, and two cardinals.

Received by William as angels of God, their first act was to confirm the Conqueror’s position as king of England by solemnly crowning him at Winchester (Easter 1070). They then proceeded to help him in dealing with the Church. As no little of the opposition which he had encountered in his efforts to render the country completely submissive to him had been brought about by churchmen, he made it his policy “to deprive of their ecclesiastical positions as many of the English as possible, and to fill up their places with men of his own nation, in order to confirm his power in a kingdom which he had but recently acquired”. Besides, the Conqueror was a man who wished to be obeyed in matters spiritual as well as temporal. However, as he was really anxious to have the Church holy, and endeavoured to appoint pious and learned men to bishoprics and abbacies, speaking generally, more good than harm was the immediate result at least of his arbitrary conduct, for “he was mild to those good men who loved God, and beyond all bounds stark to those men who withstood his will”. And there is no doubt that the action of the Normans on the Church in England was greatly to its benefit. It put new life into its dry and decaying bones. This much is allowed even by William of Malmesbury. The Normans, he says, “revived by their Coming the observances of religion which in England were everywhere grown lifeless. You might see churches rise in every village, and monasteries in the towns and cities, built after a style unknown before, and you might behold the country flourishing with renovated rites”.

After William’s coronation by the papal legates, “at his command and by consent of Pope Alexander, a great council was holden at Winchester ... In this council Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, was degraded on three grounds: because he was unlawfully holding the bishopric of Winchester, together with his own archbishopric, and because during the life of Archbishop Robert he had not only taken possession of the archbishopric, but for some time during the celebration of Mass had worn his pallium, which had been left at Canterbury after his violent and unjust banishment from England, and because he had afterwards received the pallium from Benedict, who had been excommunicated by the Holy Roman Church for having simoniacally obtained possession of the Apostolic See”. For Stigand, whom the Conqueror had hitherto treated with diplomatic respect, and for the other bishops and abbots who were deposed at this and at a subsequent synod held in the following month (May), nothing can be said. They deserved their fate. And in the case of Stigand in particular, it must be borne in mind that he had been already condemned by the Holy See. For “nineteen years had he remained in his obstinacy of heart”, and during that period no fewer than five Popes, from St. Leo IX, had sent their legates into England to deal with that recalcitrant prelate. But in some of the depositions decreed by these synods, justice was not always done. Among others who were thus unwarrantably driven from their sees even into dungeons was Egelric or Alric, bishop of Chichester.

The unjust deposition of bishops, however, could not be tolerated by the Pope, and in 1071 a letter reached William on behalf from Alexander in which he pleaded for the oppressed in bishop of general, and for Alric in particular. After praising the king for his zeal against simony and for his love for the liberties of the Church, and reminding him that the crown was only given to those who persevered to the end, he exhorted him to adorn the churches of Christ with sound regulations, to govern his kingdom with justice, and mercifully to protect from injuries ecclesiastical persons, widows, orphans, and the oppressed generally. To this end he is to follow the counsels of Archbishop Lanfranc, “one of the first sons of the Roman Church”. “Moreover, we wish to inform your eminence that the case of Alric, formerly bishop of Chichester, and deposed by our legates, does not seem to us to have been properly discussed. Accordingly, in accordance with the canons, we have decided that he must first be restored, and then have his case carefully re-examined by our brother, Archbishop Lanfranc ... In deciding causes he will represent us, so that whatever just decisions he shall form shall be held to be final, as though defined by us.” This letter was brought by Lanfranc from Rome, whither, in company with Thomas, archbishop of York, he had gone for his pallium. Certain, it is that for some time it produced no effect; for, somewhat later, we find Alexander asking Lanfranc if the continuance of the captivity of the bishop was due to his negligence or to the disobedience of the king. Whether or not the Pope’s remonstrances were finally hearkened to or not, does not appear to be recorded. What evidence there is seems to show that they were not.

Lanfranc had written to Rome to request that the pallium might be sent to him; but he was politely informed by Hildebrand that the old rule must be observed, and that he must come in person to receive it; that if an exception could be made for any one, it should be made for him, but that it could not; and that besides the Holy See wished to consult him on various matters.

Arrived in Rome with Thomas of York and Remigius of Lincoln, he was received most cordially by the Pope, not merely as an archbishop of an important see, as the learned instructor of many of his relations, and as his own master, but as a great and holy man, and as the champion of the Church against the heretic Berengarius. When he came before Alexander, the Pontiff rose from his seat to greet him, not because, as he said, he was an archbishop, but because he had been his master. “And now”, continued the Pope, “that I have given its due to honour, do you pay what is owing to justice, and, like all archbishops, prostrate yourself at the feet of the vicar of St. Peter”. Then with his own hand did he put round the arch­bishop’s neck his own pallium, afterwards presenting him with another from the confession of St. Peter in the usual manner.

But the reception accorded by the Pope to Thomas and Remigius was very different. They were deprived of the emblems of their episcopal office, of their croziers and rings, because the one was the son of a priest, and the latter was judged to have purchased his bishopric from William by the assistance he had supplied him in his invasion of England. However, as Lanfranc interceded for them, the Pope bade him act towards them as he thought fit. They were at once reinvested.

This act of kindness on the part of Lanfranc did not prevent Thomas of York from appealing to the Pope against the claim for precedence set up by the archbishop of Canterbury. According to Malmesbury, he resisted Lanfranc’s demand for an oath of obedience because, being a stranger, he did not understand the customs of England. Although Lanfranc supported his pretensions “with strong sayings”, Alexander would not settle the matter himself, but decided that it must be referred for final judgment to the united bench of the bishops and abbots of England.

Consequently, on Lanfranc’s return a council was called at Windsor “by the command of Pope Alexander, and the permission of King William”, and it was decided that the Church of York was subject to that of Canterbury, and that the archbishop of York was to take an oath of canonical obedience to him of Canterbury. The council was overcome by the logical eloquence of Lanfranc. “When our Lord and Saviour”, he contended, “said to St. Peter, ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church’ etc., He might, had it so pleased Him, have added, ‘the like power I grant to thy successors’. But the omission of such words in no wise diminishes the dignity of the successors of that apostle ... Do you advance anything in opposition to this? It is impressed on the consciences of all Christians that, no less than if the acts were those of St. Peter himself, they should tremble when his successors threaten, and reverently rejoice when they show themselves serene. And then only is the arrangement of any ecclesiastical matters ratified and binding, when the successors of St. Peter have given it their sanction. And what causes this but the power of divine grace diffused through the Lord Jesus from St. Peter among his vicars”. “As Christ”, continued the southern metropolitan, “said to all the bishops of Rome what he said to Peter, so what Gregory (the Great) said to all the successors of Augustine he said in the person of Augustine, hence it is that as Canterbury is subject to Rome because it received its faith from it, so let York be subject to Canterbury, which sent its preachers to it”

As soon as the council was closed, Lanfranc, “bishop Lanfranc of the holy Church of Canterbury”, at once dispatched a letter “to the Lord Pope Alexander, supreme guardian of the whole Christian religion, with all subjection and obedience, in which he gave him an account of what had been done in the council summoned by his authority”.

The history of Bede, “a priest of the Church of York and the doctor of the English”, had been brought before the assembly, and from it extracts had been read which proved that, from the time of the conversion of the English to the days of Bede himself, Lanfranc’s predecessors” had had the primacy over the Church of York, over the whole island which is called Britain, and over Ireland”. Some of the bishops of the sees over which Thomas of York claimed jurisdiction had even, “with the authority of the Roman See”, been deposed by archbishops of Canterbury. Councils too had proclaimed the primacy of that see. “Finally, as the very core and foundation of the whole argument were adduced the letters and privileges of your predecessors, Gregory, Boniface, Honorius, Vitalian, Sergius, Gregory, Leo, and John, which, at different times on diverse topics, were sent to the archbishops of Canterbury and to the kings of the English. The authentic letters and their copies which had been sent by other Pontiffs were burnt in the fire which destroyed our Church four years ago”.

Along with this letter, the archbishop forwarded another to Hildebrand, whom he spoke of as the honour and support of the Church. He informed him that he had sent to the Pope an account of the synod, and begged him, with his accustomed kindness, to read it over most carefully.

That Alexander confirmed the decision of the council at Windsor is clear from the fact of his afterwards calling the Church of Canterbury “the metropolitan see of all Britain”. The letter which contained this phrase was written to Lanfranc, because the Pope had been informed “by certain people from England” that some of the clergy, seeking the aid of the secular power, were endeavouring, on the pretext of a relaxation of discipline, to expel the monks not merely from St. Saviour’s Church in Canterbury, but from every episcopal see.

To this new party Lanfranc had offered effective opposition; but, lest it might prevail after his death, he appealed for the support “of the authority of the Roman and Apostolic See”, particularly with regard to the monks of Canterbury. The result of his appeal was the letter just quoted, in which Alexander renewed the decrees of St. Gregory the Great and Boniface IV in favour of the monks, and “in the name of the Apostles” repeated the anathemas they had pronounced against such as contravened their decrees.

If to what has now been told of William’s dealings with the Holy See be added his requests for its confirmation of his religious foundations, it will be an obvious conclusion that he acknowledged, in theory at least, its spiritual supremacy over the whole Church, and so over himself and his people. But at the same time many of his acts show not merely that he understood that the spiritual supremacy of the Pope was one thing and his temporal supremacy quite another, but also that his practice was often not logically consistent with a proper acknowledgment of the Pope’s spiritual power. Without ever going to the length of regarding himself as the spiritual head of the Church either in Normandy or in England, he would not brook interference with his will, whether in matters spiritual or temporal. St. Anselm’s biographer, Eadmer, well sums up this phase of the stark conqueror’s character: “All things, human and divine, were dependent on his will. Briefly to explain this, I will set down some of the novelties which he introduced into England. ... He would not suffer any one throughout all his dominions to acknowledge the duly constituted bishop of Rome as Pope, unless he sanctioned the submission, nor to receive his letters unless they had previously been submitted to him. Nor would he permit the archbishop of Canterbury, when presiding in council over the bishops of the province, to issue any synodal decrees which did not meet with his approval, and had not been first laid down by him. And as little would he allow, without his express sanction, any of his barons or ministers to be accused by a bishop of adultery …  or of any capital offence, or to be bound by any ecclesiastical penalty”.

Norway, Denmark.

The fact that, after having continued for some three hundred years, the terrible Viking expeditions came to an end during the reign of Alexander, is one proof that Christianity had at length begun to take a firm hold of the Scandinavian countries. And, despite immense difficulties, it was at this period bringing forth exceptionally good fruit in Norway; for the men of that country “had learnt to love peace and truth, and were now content with their poverty, nay, were ready to give what they had got, and no longer, as formerly, to gather in what they had not sown”. This change in the character and habits of the Norwegians had been brought about especially by missionaries from England. It is only natural then to find them disposed to turn towards this country in their religious needs.

As we have already seen, ecclesiastical jurisdiction over all the countries of the extreme north of Europe had been conceded to the See of Bremen. And the famous Adalbert, its occupant at this time, “relying on the authority of the Roman Pope”, was throwing himself with great ardour into the work of organizing the Church in his vast arch­bishopric. For Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Orkneys and Ireland, he consecrated no fewer than twenty bishops, in some cases “even against the will of princes”." One of the kings who gave Adalbert trouble was the fierce Harold Hardrada, who from 1047 to kept a heavy hand on Norway, and “extended his bloody rule even to Ireland”. The archbishop was especially annoyed that he sent the bishops of his country to be consecrated in Gaul or in England, whereas the Pope had bestowed the right of their consecration upon himself. He accordingly sent an embassy to protest against the king’s action. But the haughty monarch drove the legates from his presence in a fury, declaring, “The only archbishop or ruler of any kind that I know in Norway is Harold”.

Adalbert turned to the Pope for support, and Alexander at once dispatched a letter to Harold, “king of the North­men”. “Because you are still untrained in the faith, and walk somewhat haltingly in the way of ecclesiastical discipline, it behoves us, to whom has been committed the rule of the whole Church, frequently to admonish you. But inasmuch as distance prevents us from doing this in person, know that we have entrusted the doing of it to Adalbert, the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, our vicar. Now the aforesaid venerable archbishop, our legate, has complained to us that, in contravention of the Roman privileges which have been granted to his church and to himself, the bishops of your province have either not been consecrated at all, or have been simoniacally, and so wrongfully consecrated in England or in Gaul. Hence by virtue of the authority of the apostles Peter and Paul, as is your duty to show respectful reverence to the Apostolic See, so we exhort you and your bishops to display proper submission to the venerable archbishop who is acting in our stead”

This letter probably produced very little effect on the savage ruler of Norway. However, Adalbert managed to consecrate two bishops for his country, and, in one way or another, to secure some promise of obedience from those who were consecrated for it elsewhere. And when in 1066 Hardrada obtained the seven feet of land for a grave promised him by Harold of England, Christianity was able to make more regular progress under his son Olaf Kyrre, or the Peaceable.

Whilst Hardrada was ruling, or oppressing, Norway, the southern Scandinavian kingdom (Denmark) was under the dominion of Sweyn (or Svend) II, Estrithson (1047-1076), of whom mention has been made already. He was a man of very different character from the bellicose and sanguinary Harold. If he was a slave to incontinence, he was “the most illustrious among the barbarian kings ... and was adorned with many virtues”. Among Sweyn’s good qualities, Adam of Bremen specifies his learning, his liberality, and his zeal for the propagation of Christianity. It was from his “truthful and charming narrative that the industrious canon gathered a large portion of the matter for his little book”. The zeal of Sweyn for the spread of the gospel was surpassed by “our archbishop”, as Adam loves to call the “magnificent” Adalbert. “In a more lordly style than his predecessors, he extended his archiepiscopal powers among the outlying nations and at one time formed the design of making a visitation of all the North, i.e., of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Orkneys, and even of Iceland, the extremity of the earth”. But as he was advised that in the then state of Christianity in those parts such a plan was not feasible, “relying on the authority of the Roman Pope, and trusting to the ready help of the king of the Danes, he wished, with his wonted splendid ideas, to hold a council of all the bishops of the North”. Finding, however, that some of the northern bishops were not disposed to recognize his authority, he appealed for the support of the Pope. By way of response, “Alexander, servant of the servants of God”, sent a letter wishing health and the apostolic benediction “to the bishops in Denmark in communion with the Apostolic See and our vicar”. They are commanded to do their best to induce “Edbert, bishop of the Faroe Islands”, against whom various charges are made, to come up for trial to the synod to which Adalbert had in vain often summoned him. By another letter Sweyn and his people are exhorted not to communicate with Edbert until he makes satisfaction to the Pope’s vicar. At the same time, with a view doubtless to keeping Adalbert in his place, Alexander notified the bishops of Denmark “that no archbishop nor patriarch could canonically depose a bishop without a previous sentence of the Apostolic See”.

From a fragment of another letter of Alexander addressed to Sweyn which has come down to us, we gather that, even before this time, the Danes had been in the habit of paying Peter’s Pence. The Pope begged Sweyn, for reasons with which we are already familiar, to cause his offering to be placed not on the altar of St. Peter, but “in our hands or in those of our successors, that more certain cognizance may be taken of it”.

Croatia

On the east of the Adriatic is a province of the Hungarian Empire which bears the name of Dalmatia. This district, with its broken coast-line, its many islands lying parallel to its shores, its deep gulfs, narrow channels, rapid currents, and sunken rocks, is almost identical in area with that which was known to the Romans under the same name in the days of our Lord. From the time when, during the Roman Empire (fourth century), the province of Dalmatia included, besides the modern province, Herzegovina and parts of Bosnia and Montenegro, and its destinies were directed by a perfectissimus president acting under the Praetorian prefect of Italy, it has been the battle-ground of many nations, and has known many masters. Soon after Gregory I was Pope (590-604), it appears to have been governed by a duke who was dependent upon the Exarch of Ravenna; and it was in the century in which that great Pope first saw the light that Slavs began to make inroads into it. On the authority of the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, it used to be said that the Greek emperors employed the Avars to drive out these marauding Slavs, but had to use other Slavs, viz. the Chrobati, the present inhabitants of the country, to subdue the Avars. Now, however, it seems to be held that the first Slav invaders were subdued by other branches of the Slavonic family, the Croatians and Serbs, acting on their own behalf. The country occupied by the Croatians lay for the most part between two tributaries of the Save, the Kulpa and the Verbas, and included, besides the present Croatia, part of Bosnia, and northern Dalmatia down to the river Cetina.

For a while the Chrobati or Croatians, and the conquered Slavs of Dalmatia were content to acknowledge the supremacy of the emperors of Constantinople, and during that time they appear to have begun to embrace the faith of Christ. The ninth century, however, saw independent Slavonic dukes of the Croatians, whose power, as we have seen, extended over northern Dalmatia.

But during the first few centuries of the history of the Croatians, the political situation was complicated by the fact that several of the coast towns and islands of Dalmatia contrived to resist the power of the Slavs, and remained more than nominally subject to the Basileus at Constantinople. For a season too, about the beginning of the ninth century, the Franks exercised some authority in Croatia. In the course of the eleventh century, Venice began seriously to interfere with the designs of the Croatians, taking possession of such places as her ships could approach. However, in the midst of the darkness of early Croatian history, we find that the dukes who had won independence in the ninth century began, in the course of the tenth century, to call themselves kings. The most famous of these Croatian kings, Cresimir II, or Cresimir Peter, as he generally styles himself (1058-1073), took the title of king of the Croatians and Dalmatians. During his reign and that of his father, Stephen I (1035-1058), communications with Rome were frequent, and records of them have been preserved by authentic letters of the Popes, and by the narratives, more or less confused, of the presbyter of Dioclea (in the second half of the twelfth century), and of Thomas, the archdeacon of Spalato (or Spalatro).

The invasions of the Slavs into the Balkan peninsula had the effect of almost completely breaking up its ecclesiastical organization throughout the greater part of the ancient civil dioceses of Illyricum, Dacia, and Macedonia; and the province of Dalmatia was no exception to the rule. When in 639 the Avars burnt Salona, the chief city of the Roman Empire in Dalmatia, where it had its arsenals for weapons, its weaving-houses, its dye-houses, and its store­houses, and where the Roman Church had its chief see in Dalmatia, the remnant of the inhabitants ultimately took refuge in the enormous and splendid palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalato, only a few miles away. Here for many years they held out against the barbarians, and here founded the modern city of Spalato. Through this harbour of refuge the Popes contrived to keep in touch with Dalmatia. About the year 650 the reigning Pontiff sent a legate, John of Ravenna, to the shores of the Adriatic with instructions to reorganize the Christians throughout Croatia and Dalmatia. Promptly elected their archbishop by the people of Spalato, John was consecrated by the Pope, and obtained for Spalato all the privileges that had belonged to the Church of Salona. John appears to have been a model bishop (d. 680). “He traversed Dalmatia and Sclavonia, restoring churches, consecrating bishops, forming their dioceses, and gradually attracting the barbarians to the Catholic faith”.

After giving us this account of the revival of Catholicity in Dalmatia, the worthy archdeacon of Salona proceeds to inform us that “all the bishops" of Dalmatia, both north and south of the Cetina, obeyed the archbishop of Salona-Spalato”. With the conversion of the Slavs to Christianity other bishoprics besides those of Dalmatia were established among them. But in the course of the century following that in which the Popes revived the hierarchy of Dalmatia, the iconoclastic emperor, Leo the Isaurian, forcibly withdrew the countries east of the Adriatic from the jurisdiction of Rome. In the ninth and tenth centuries, however, as the Slavonic chiefs began more and more to assert their civil independence of the Basileus at Constantinople, they turned more and more to Rome for ecclesiastical guidance. Various Popes, such as John VIII and John X, were in frequent communication with them during that period.

Whilst the bonds, never very strong, which united the Slavs with the eastern Roman Empire gradually became slacker, the cleavage between their different branches grew more pronounced. This caused the Popes to have to modify the ecclesiastical hierarchy which had relations with them, and we shall see Dioclea-Antivari cut off from Salona-Spalato to please the Servians, and later (c. 1145) Zara, in the north of Dalmatia, made into a metropolitical see to satisfy the Venetians. The sovereign Pontiffs were also called upon to intervene in the disputes which arose concerning the language in which the Church’s liturgy was to be said. Besides the natural wish on the part of the Popes to favour the use of the Latin language in order to deepen the sense of Christian unity, there were in its favour the desires of those places whither the Roman fugitives from all parts of Illyria had concentrated, such as Zara, Veglia, Arbe, Spalato, etc. “In these cities, despite all the Slavonic incursions, Latin, and later Italian, always remained the official language; it was also the language of the people all down the coast”. On the other hand, the Slavs were not unnaturally anxious to have the liturgy in Slavonic. The questions, then, of language, reform, and metropolitical jurisdiction in the Slavonic countries that touched the Adriatic occupied the attention of the Popes for many centuries.

About the year 1045 there ascended the arch-episcopal throne of Salona-Spalato a man of the same character as sat on many another episcopal throne in the first half of the eleventh century—a man of a powerful noble family who thought that right which he wanted to do. “He had a wife and children like a layman, and kept them in the archiepiscopal palace, so that his residence for ever resounded with the wailings of children and the shrill voices of servant-maids”, says the indignant archdeacon of Salona. Occupied, too, with worldly affairs, he had very little time left for spiritual duties. Pope Leo IX was not the man to tolerate such “enormities”. He dispatched a legate to Salona, “a very prudent man”, John by name, perhaps John, bishop of Porto. Summoned before a synod, Dabralis, for such was the archbishop’s name, urged that in taking a wife he was simply following the custom of the Oriental Church. “Regarding these excuses as of no account, the legate by apostolic authority definitely deposed him from his see”.

Other legates of Leo’s successors followed John in the work of introducing law and order into the Church of the Croatians.

Among the smaller kingdoms with which Alexander also was in regular communication was Dalmatia. The call for reform raised by the Pope was responded to in that country, but the effort to meet it was complicated by the question of the use of the Slavonic language in the liturgy. Apparently in the year 1060, Mainard, bishop of Silva Candida, had been sent to Dalmatia by Nicholas II to deal with various questions of reform. In conjunction with John IV, archbishop of Spalato, he caused various decrees to be passed relative to clerical continency, discipline, and immunity. It was also decided that “Slavs ignorant of Latin were not to be ordained”, and, as we learn from the archdeacon of Spalato, that the divine mysteries were not to be celebrated in the Slavonic tongue, but only in Latin or Greek. These decrees were confirmed both by Nicholas II and by Alexander (1062), in a letter addressed to the king (Peter Cresimir) and bishops of Dalmatia.

As usual, there was no trouble about the more serious questions; but when, continues Thomas, the decrees about the liturgy had been confirmed by the Apostolic See, all the Slav priests were much troubled, for their churches were closed, and they themselves suspended. They, therefore, appealed to the Pope, who, according to the archdeacon, replied to them as follows: “Know, my children, that I have often heard much said in favour of what the Goths request; but because this liturgy was framed by Arians, I cannot depart from the tradition of my predecessors, nor give the Slavs leave to celebrate the divine mysteries in their own language”. If the Spalatan, who was not born till one hundred and forty years after this, has correctly preserved the words of Alexander, there must have reigned a strange ignorance at Rome which could identify SS. Cyril and Methodius with Arian heretics, unless, indeed, the Pope is simply referring to the Glagolitic characters in which the liturgy was written and of which the origin is still obscure. This decision of Alexander did not settle the question, nor did the action of the legate whom he sent “to extirpate the unspeakable schism”.

In the beginning of the eleventh century Venice had obtained some authority over Dalmatia; and although Peter Cresimir, who became king of Croatia in 1052, took the additional title of “king of Dalmatia”, and replaced Venetian influence over most of it by his own, the republic was still master of a portion of the country even during Peter’s reign. Where Venice held sway, the use of the Slavonic tongue in the liturgy was suppressed, but it was preserved in the other parts of the country; and, as we have already noticed, was finally approved by Innocent IV (1248).

In the reorganization of the provinces of the Roman Empire effected by Diocletian towards the close of the third century, Dalmatia was divided into two provinces, into Dalmatia proper and Praevalitana. Of this latter province, which only just touched the sea (Adriatic), the central portion was Zenta, or the modern Montenegro, and its chief city from about the sixth century was Dioclea (or Doclea, now Duklia, a mass of ruins), situated between the rivers Zenta (or Zetta) and Moraka, just above their junction a mile or two north of Podgoritza. In harmony with this political partition, there were originally two ecclesiastical provinces, one under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan of Salona-Spalato, and the other under that of the archbishop of Dioclea. When, however, Leo the Isaurian forcibly withdrew Illyricum from the western patriarchate, he subjected Dioclea itself and other cities to the jurisdiction of the metropolitan of Dyrrachium in Epirus Nova. But, as time went on, Byzantine influence on the eastern shores of the Adriatic declined before the advancing power of the Slavs, and Dioclea was brought under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Spalato. In the century of which we are now writing, viz., the eleventh, Dalmatia was again divided for ecclesiastical purposes into two provinces, and the metropolitan see of the southern portion was fixed first at Antivari, and, as will be noticed later on, afterwards at Ragusa. The cause of this re-establishment of the southern province of Dalmatia is thus given by Archdeacon Thomas in his history of Salona. In obeying the summons of its archbishop Dabralis (1030­1045) to a council, four of the bishops of upper or southern Dalmatia were drowned at sea. Thus deprived of their pastors, the people of the bereaved dioceses petitioned the Pope to constitute a separate province for them, “as it was dangerous for them to visit so remote a church”. Wherefore the Roman bishop granted their request, freed all the bishops from Ragusa upwards  from subjection to the old metropolitical see (Salona-Spalato), and made them depend on the new one of Antivari.

But it is believed that what the archdeacon sets down as a cause was really only a pretext. The destruction of the Bulgarian Empire, then the first non-Greek power in the Balkan peninsula, by Basil II (Bulgaroctonus) in 1018, and his subsequent occupation of Bosnia and upper Dalmatia, had not, however, led to the more complete submission of their Slavonic inhabitants to Constantinople. Under the leadership of a Servian Zhupan, Stephen Boitslav (or Dobroslav), the Serbs defeated the Byzantines in a great battle close to Antivari in the defiles of Jeni-bazaar. This took place during the reign of the unwarlike emperor Constantine IX Monomachus, about the year 1043, and laid the foundation of the Servian monarchy.

It was only to be expected that Boitslav would wish to have the bishops of Servia dependent on one of themselves, and that, after throwing off the imperial yoke, he would turn to Rome rather than to Constantinople for the establishment of a local hierarchy. And as Dioclea had been destroyed during the wars (1027), it was proposed to erect the new metropolitan see at Antivari on the coast. Whether, then, the petition for a south Dalmatian or Servian archbishopric proceeded from prince or people, it is certain that it was granted by Rome.

In 1067 Alexander issued a bull to Peter, “the venerable archbishop of Dioclea and Antivari”, in which he decreed that his jurisdiction should extend over the sees of what then constituted the kingdom of Servia, and over the monasteries therein, whether of Latins, Greeks, or Slavs: “in order that you may know that all these form one church over which you are to have episcopal control”. He, moreover, in accordance with custom, sent him the pallium, and permitted him to have the cross carried before him “through Dalmatia and Slavonia”, i.e., through Dalmatia south of Ragusa, and through the rest of his archdiocese in Servia, etc.

But though, like their bitter enemies, the Bulgarians, with whom to this day they have ever been at war, the Servians were very glad to turn to the Popes whenever their patronage was of use to them, they finally, again like the Bulgarians, after long playing off Constantinople against Rome, joined the Greek Church, but secured an independent patriarch of their own. The Servian Church may be said to have become thus definitely autocephalous under Stephen Dushan (1336-1356), the most powerful ruler that Servia has ever known.

From the ninth century the Bohemians had been to a greater or less extent dependent on their Teutonic neighbours; but the princes of Bohemia very seldom lost an opportunity of striking a blow for complete freedom from the yoke which ever galled them. Spytihniev II (1055-1061) inherited from his father a fierce hatred of the Germans, and drove them out of Bohemia, as though he were clearing his garden of nettles. To strengthen his hand against them he turned, like so many other Slav princes, to Rome, and begged Pope Nicholas II to grant him the insignia of a king, in order that they might serve as a sign of his absolute independence. It is possible, however, that his request may have been merely to hold his country of the Pope instead of the emperor. At any rate, Cardinal Deusdedit assures us that he found it recorded in a Lateran codex  that Spytihniev was authorized by Pope Nicholas to wear a mitre, “which is not wont to be bestowed on lay persons”, and that the prince promised to pay him annually a sum of a hundred pounds of silver “as a tax”.

The curse of Bohemia was the ever-recurring dissensions in the reigning family. Spytihniev was succeeded by his brother Vratislav (1061-1092), who, among other reasons, because he was rather well-disposed towards the Germans, was soon involved in a long and bitter struggle with his brother Jaromir, and was through it drawn to side with the empire in its war against the Papacy.

In accordance with a common custom, Jaromir, the youngest of the five sons of Bracislav, had been destined by his father for the Church, and to succeed Severus (d. December 9, 1067) as archbishop of Prague. He had, therefore, been devoted to a life of study; but when his brother Vratislav discovered that he had no taste for either study or the Church, but wished to inherit some of the power of Spytihniev, he caused him to be ordained deacon by force. But Jaromir, “despising the grace which had been given him by the imposition of hands, put on the dress of a soldier, and fled with his followers to the duke of Poland (Boleslaus II), and remained with him till the death of Bishop Severus”.

No sooner had that taken place than Jaromir’s two brothers, Conrad and Otho, summoned him from Poland, and bade him resume the tonsure and his clerical attire, with a view to his succeeding the deceased bishop. Despite the opposition of the crafty Vratislav, who wished to nominate a German partisan of his own, Jaromir was elected by the clergy and people (June 1068), was confirmed in his appointment by Henry IV of Germany, and, changing his name to Gebehard, was consecrated.

Thus installed against his brother’s will, it was not to be expected that he would live in harmony with him. Quarrels soon broke out between them. Both parties turned to the Pope, who wrote to them over and over again, begging them to live in peace with one another. He then, at the request of the duke, sent legates to try to settle the matters in dispute between them, and ended by excommunicating Jaromir.

The principal cause of trouble between the brothers was connected with the bishopric of Moravia.

At the request of Vratislav, Severus of Prague had agreed to a partition of his diocese. A new bishopric of Moravia was established at Olomouci (Olmutz) in 1062, and a certain John became its first incumbent. As a recompense for the concession, the bishop of Prague was to receive a sum of money from the duke, and certain properties in different parts of Bohemia. Unable, after four years and more had passed in vain effort, to obtain from his brother either the money or the suppression of the new diocese, the warlike Jaromir swore: “By God! I will either unite the dioceses or lose both of them”. He accordingly paid John an unexpected visit, and is credited with having maltreated him in the most barbarous manner (1073).

Vratislav at once appealed to Rome on behalf of the outraged bishop, and Pope Gregory replied by promptly dispatching legates to Bohemia. But finding that Jaromir paid no heed to them, he ordered him to present himself in Rome by April 13, 1074. Vratislav was also to come to Rome, or to send John and some representatives. Jaromir duly presented himself before the Pope, and, denying some of the charges urged against him, and offering satisfaction for such as he admitted, gained Gregory’s goodwill. He was reinstated in his see, and his brother was asked to restore what belonged to him. It was further decided that the quarrel between the two bishops was to be settled in a synod at which they were both to be present, and to which the duke was asked to send delegates.

But no sooner had Jaromir returned to Bohemia, than, making a false use of Gregory’s letters, he endeavoured to rob both his brother and John. This conduct brought down upon him a severe letter from the Pope, and a peremptory order to present himself along with John at the synod already appointed. In due course the two bishops duly presented themselves before the Pope, and a council assembled in the Lateran basilica (March 1075). Fortunately for Jaromir, there was also present at this council “the most powerful lady Matilda ... whose nod, as though she were their own sovereign, the whole senatorial order obeyed, and with whose advice Pope Gregory himself transacted all his business, both spiritual and temporal; for she was a most wise counsellor, and in all its troubles and difficulties the greatest support of the Roman Church”. According to Cosmas, she was in some way related to the family of Jaromir, and saved him from being condemned by Gregory as absolutely as he had been by Alexander. Though the Pope says nothing of this intercession of the illustrious countess, he does tell us that Jaromir was pardoned by him, and that, as he could not at the time arrive at the truth in the matter of the disputed points between the two bishops, he ordered them to live at peace with one another, each keeping half the property in litigation between them. He fixed, how­ever, a period of ten years during which either party might make good what he believed to be his just claims.

The last mention of the two bishops made by Gregory is in a letter in which he exhorts Vratislav to keep his dominions in peace, and himself to live at peace with John and Jaromir.

Simony in the church of Germany

If greed of power and gold on the part of the bishop of Prague kept the Church of Bohemia in a state of unrest, similar causes were producing a like result in the Church in Germany. The great bishops of the empire had, for the most part, more in common with lay princes than with churchmen. They were desirous of independence, whether of Pope or king. They acknowledged, indeed, as we have seen in the case of Siegfried of Mainz, that the Pope was their superior, and that with him lay the final decision of important matters, but they strove to prevent them from being referred to him; and in the struggle between the Papacy and the empire many of them were more ready to side with the emperor than with the Pope. So far from co-operating with the Popes in their efforts at reform, they resisted them. Guilty of simony themselves, they were not likely to co-operate in an earnest effort to stamp it out of the German Church. They imitated their temporal rather than their spiritual ruler, for Henry IV was deeply stained with simony. It is true that in a passing mood he acknowledged and deplored his guilt in this direction, but his repentance was but transitory, his sin a habit. He was as reckless in the manner in which he dealt with ecclesiastical appointments as in the way in which he made or unmade the feudatories of the empire. With the utmost contempt for proper legal procedure, and with a total disregard of consequences, he wantonly deprived of his dukedom the powerful Saxon, Otho of Nordheim, duke of Bavaria, and gave it to Welf (or Guelf), the son of an Italian marquis, Azzo, and son-in-law of Otho himself. He was to live to rue his heedless folly.

He lived to find out, also, that he could not treat the Church with impunity. The efforts of the Popes to effect a reformation of manners were telling upon the people, and they were not long before they convinced both king and bishop that the laws of the Church must be respected. Here we purpose, in proof of this, merely to give details of the singularly dramatic case of the double abbey of Stablo-Malmedy, both of which were some twenty miles south of Liege and Aix-la-Chapelle. Both Stablo, in the diocese of Liege, and Malmedy, in that of Cologne, owed their foundations to Sigebert II, acting under the advice of St. Remaclus (c. 651). For a while the saint governed both monasteries, which came to be regarded as one, and sometime after his death (c. 664) was recognized the patron-saint of Stabio.

Brusquely brushing aside all rights, privileges, and precedents, King Henry gave the monastery of Malmedy to Archbishop Anno in 1063. The abbot of the twin houses at once betook himself to Rome, and was well received by Alexander “and by the consuls of the republic”. At his request, and by reason of his duty to the universal Church, the Pope wrote a strong letter to Anno. Telling him that he was surprised that a man of whom he had had such a good account should be guilty of injustice, he bade him respect the rights of others. But Anno paid no heed to the Pope’s words, nor to a promise of amendment which he made to the Pope in person when he was humbled before him in the year 1068. Nor would he listen to the king when he wished to undo the wrong of which he had been guilty. He would not, he said, give up his possession if St. Remaclus himself were to appear before him, and ask him to do so.

Not indeed in the manner conceived by Anno, but the saint did appear before him, and, despite the obstinate archbishop, obtained justice for his monks. Unable to obtain his rights from Pope or king, the abbot had turned to God and his patron-saint and bethought him of a striking scheme.

On the evening of Easter Day (May 8, 1071) the king and queen and the great spiritual and temporal lords of the empire were holding a grand state banquet at Liege. The hall in which they were sitting feasting was brilliant with lights and the splendid dresses of the company. Wine and wit, the fragrance of flowers and savoury viands were doing their work, and the guests were in the highest spirits. Suddenly a low and melancholy chant makes itself heard amid the noise and revelry; it rings louder and louder, and bright cheeks grow pale, and laughter dies away on the lip, when a body of dark-robed monks slowly enter the banqueting-hall, and solemnly set before the king the massive shrine which contained the relics of St. Remaclus. “Look on him, O king!” they exclaimed, “whom you have wronged. Return to him what the world acknowledges to be his. Give him justice now, lest he seek it against you from God”. Panic seized the whole assembly; the queen was in tears, and the king was profoundly moved. “It is through you”, he cried to the arch­bishop, “that this has fallen upon me”.

A scene of great disorder followed. Unmoved by the entreaties of the king and the bishops, or by the objurgations of Anno, the monks refused to remove the body of the saint till justice was done them. Thereupon Henry and his guests hurriedly deserted the banqueting-hall, which was immediately filled by a crowd of excited people crying out: “Why, O just God, do you allow this injustice to be perpetrated upon the earth?”. Their excitement became intense when the table on which the shrine of the saint had been placed, giving way beneath its weight, broke a man's leg, which was seen to be healed instantly by the intercession of the saint. The crowd grew in numbers; miracles were worked all through the night. The king’s officers made a vain attempt themselves to remove the shrine. It could not be stirred.

Thoroughly perturbed by all these events, Henry at length restored to the monks the monastery which he had forced the reluctant archbishop to return to him (May 9, 1071).

During the first few years of his reign, Alexander witnessed two striking renunciations of high station, one in the Church and one in the world. He was not long Pope before he received a request from St. Peter Damian to be allowed to resign his See of Ostia. What Nicholas had refused, Alexander might have granted at once but for the strenuous opposition of Hildebrand. The archdeacon, who knew that the days were evil, believed that it was the duty of all such as were able and willing to oppose wrong not to abandon positions of importance, but to remain in the world, and meet the powers of darkness face to face. Such, however, were not the views of Damian, and he wrote a remarkable letter “to his most beloved the elect of the Apostolic See, and to Hildebrand, the rod of Assur, ... who are the Apostolic See, the Roman Church”. He declared himself ready to be put in prison if only he were released from his office. “But perchance that smooth tyrant, who has ever for me a sort of Neronian pity, who soothes me with blows, and, so to speak, strokes me with an eagle’s talon, will break out into this querulous complaint: ‘See, he seeks a place of refuge, and, under the pretext of doing penance, would shun coming to Rome; by disobedience he would win leisure, and, while others are in the thick of the fight, he would secure for himself an inglorious repose. But to my holy Satan (adversary), I would answer in the words of the sons of Reuben and Gad to their leader Moses: 'We ourselves will go armed and ready for battle before the children of Israel, until we bring them in unto their places ... But we will not seek anything beyond the Jordan, because we have already our possession on the east side thereof' (Num. xxxii. 17 ff)”. Pleading his old age, the difficulties of ruling, and other reasons, he concluded: “May He deliver the wretched Peter from the hands of Hildebrand, at whose order Herod’s prison was thrown open for the great Peter”.

Hildebrand, however, was not in the least disposed to entertain Damian’s wishes, and would seem to have expressed in no uncertain voice his disapproval of the saint’s intentions, and to have induced the Pope to accept his view of the situation. Accordingly, Damian wrote to Hildebrand directly, and, after affectionately upbraiding him for the cooling of his love for him, concluded by saying: “By these letters I return you the bishopric which you gave me, and I cut off from myself all rights and power which I have over it”. Whether Damian’s resignation was accepted is uncertain; but, whether he henceforth ceased to act as bishop of Ostia or not, it is certain that no other person was named its bishop till after the saint’s death (1072).

In the year 1067 Rome, says the same saint, was edified by seeing the Empress Agnes riding into the city on a wretched steed, scarcely larger than a little ass, and clad in a miserable dark-coloured linen garment. She had changed a crown for a veil, and fine purple for sackcloth, and the hand which had grasped a sceptre clasped a prayer-book.

Bereft not only of power, but of the guardianship of her son, whose dissolute courses she bitterly deplored, full of grief for her share in the schism of Cadalous, the empress-mother conceived a disgust for the world. She retired first to the abbey of Fructuaria in Piedmont (1066), and then came to Rome to learn “the folly of the fisherman.” Henceforth an ally of the Papacy, she spent her time till the day of her death (1077) serving the poor of Christ. She was buried in the chapel of St. Petronilla.

Some four years before the death of the lady, whose repentance for the wrong she had done him he lived to see, Alexander II closed in death his arduous struggle against the vices of the clergy, and the naturally still greater ones of the laity. This ardent defender of the rights of the Papacy—the source of consolation in the midst of the ills of life—this uncompromising opponent of simony and clerical incontinence was buried in the Lateran basilica near Sergius IV. Like several of his predecessors, he had helped to prepare the way for Hildebrand, and has derived no little of his renown from the cooperation of that master-spirit. Under his guidance, to quote the words of Otto of Frising, “he restored to her pristine liberty the Church, which had long been in a state of servitude”.

 

 

 

ST. GREGORY VII.

A.D. 1073-1085.

 

I.

Hildebrand before he becomes Pope

EMPERORS OF THE EAST.

Michael VII. (Ducas), 1067-1078.

Nicephorus III. (Botaniates), 1078-1081.

Alexius I. (Comnenus), 1081-1118.

 

The man whose genius, zeal, and piety were to be so powerfully instrumental in effecting the greatest and most enduring reformation of manners ever effected in Europe from within the Church itself was, like most of the great men of the world, a man of the people.

In passing through what are now the Tuscan malaria plains, through what may be called the Tuscan Maremma, the train from Grosseto to Rome stops at the little port of Orbitello. Not many miles inland from this once famous town is another, Soana (Sovana), which also in days gone by held up its head among the cities of medieval Tuscany. Now it is but a ruinous village in the fever-stricken valley of the Fiora. Near it was the hamlet of Rovaco, and there, apparently during the pontificate of Benedict VIII, and possibly in the year 1020, the wife of Bonizo gave birth to a son.

A writer who was himself inconvenienced by the heat caused by the Gregorian reformation has told us that, when Hildebrand was archsubdeacon of the Roman Church he was seen by St. Leo IX, with his cloak (cappa) all on fire, and flames issuing from it in all directions. The saint thereon with prophetic soul exclaimed : “If ever you are Pope, which God forbid, you will set the whole world in a blaze. The parents too of the future archsubdeacon, as though also forecasting his destiny, gave him a name, Hildebrand, of which one part at least is indicative of fire, and which his friends decided to mean “a burning of concupiscence”, and his enemies a “brand of hell” (Hoellebrand).

From the many legends connected with fire which Paul found interwoven with the story of Hildebrand’s early years, he compared him to the prophet Elias. Sparks of fire were, he says, often seen to spring from his clothes, and on one occasion flame was observed to issue from his head. Hildebrand himself is said to have seen fire coming from his mouth which consumed the whole earth; and when, as Pope, he had on Maunday Thursday consecrated the holy oils at the famous abbey of Nonantula, they were suddenly ignited by a bright flame which fell from heaven. Finally, appealing to the chronicles of venerable men, Bernied assures us that Gregory extinguished by the sign of the cross a conflagration which Henry IV had caused when he was besieging Rome, and which was driving their defenders from the city walls.

Another pretty legend tells how, while still ignorant of letters, the little Hildebrand, playing in his father’s work­shop, is said to have formed with the shavings he found there the words of the Psalmist: · I will rule from sea to sea. (Ps. LXXI. 8).

Even if we include all the data of legend, very little is known of Hildebrand till his coming to Rome with St. Leo IX. It would appear that he was sent there, in the first instance, whilst still a child, during the pontificate of John XIX, for we are told that he had been trained in Rome under ten of his predecessors. And when in 1075 he wrote himself that he had been living in Rome for twenty years under compulsion, we may suppose that, bearing in mind his leaving Rome with Gregory VI, and his comparatively long period of absence from the eternal city during the reign of St. Leo IX, he must have been speaking of the second period of his practically continuous residence therein, and of the compulsion put upon him by one Pope after another to attach himself to the Roman Church. That he had indeed been brought up in Rome is clear from his own words, as well as from those of others.

On the west of the now unfrequented Aventine Hill, not far from the Tiber, the consul Alberic possessed a house; for in the tenth century the Aventine was the aristocratic quarter. Charmed by the virtues of St. Odo (879-942), the great reforming abbot of Cluny, and its real founder, Alberic gave him his house, and the monastery of St. Mary, now represented by the Church of S. Maria Aventinense, became one of the twenty abbeys of Rome. To the abbot of this monastery, who was his uncle, the little Hildebrand was entrusted by his parents to be trained in learning and virtue, and we are assured that he soon showed that he profited by the instruction he received. Here, it would seem, he embraced the monastic profession; here, in converse with the famous abbots who ruled the mother-house of Cluny, and who in their visits to Rome took up their abode on the Aventine, he imbibed the reforming spirit of that illustrious monastery, and here he laid deep the foundations of those virtues and of that strength of character which were to be so necessary for him in accomplishing the work that was in store for him.

Fortunately, Hildebrand’s training was not confined to the necessarily somewhat narrow groove of his monastery. His promising parts caused him to be sent to the pontifical schola cantorum in the Lateran palace, where he came in contact with many of the most distinguished youths in Rome, and with some of its best masters; with men of the school of Pope Sylvester II, such as Lawrence, archbishop of Amalfi, and John Gratian, afterwards Pope Gregory VI. Of these men, the first was highly prated by those who knew him both for his virtue and for his learning, especially for his mastery both of Greek and Latin; and the second was distinguished for his chaste life, and generally upright character.

So pleased was Gratian with the talents of his pupil that when he became Pope he made him his capellanus. i.e., not his chaplain in the modern sense of the term, but one of the palace officials who were guardians of the fabrics of churches. In his capacity of capellanus he became one of the guardians of the altar of St Peter.

When Gregory VI ascended the Throne of the Fisher-man, Rome, reeling from the disorders of the pontificate of Benedict IX, was in a state of anarchy. The sword of the robber and the dagger of the assassin held the city in terror. The public revenues of the Papacy had been seized by the nobility; its private resources had been filched or dissipated. Pilgrims from other lands, who, even at the peril of destruction, longed to offer their prayers at the tomb of the apostle, were waylaid; and if they succeeded in escaping the barons of the Campagna, and the bandit nobles who beset the forum, they became a prey to further horrors. Even over the very bodies of the holy apostles and martyrs, even on the sacred altars, swords were unsheathed, and the offerings of pilgrims, ere well laid out of their hands, were snatched away and consumed in drunkenness and fornication.

Realizing the uselessness of trying to suppress such flagrant abuses with words, Gregory authorised his capellanus to put them down by the sword. He could not have addressed himself to a better man. Ever on fire with a love of justice, and ever full of feeling for the poor and the oppressed, the young monk studied the art of war, raised men and money, and soon made the profligate nobility feel that there was a master among them. By a display of wisdom and prudence above his years, he was not long in acquiring the greatest influence with all classes of the community. And though the reign of Gregory VI was but short, a good beginning of suppressing the barbarous licence of the Roman feudal nobility was made during his pontificate by his able and energetic capellanus. The worst violences of the tenth century were not to return again; while the finances and civil authority of the Popes began to give evidence of greater stability.

When, through the action of the council of Sutri, Gregory VI had to resign the Papacy, and to return with the Emperor Henry into Germany, his faithful capellanus would not leave his side. During the long, weary journey from the Tiber to the Rhine, the condition of the Papacy, to which the congregation of Cluny was especially loyal, must have largely occupied his thoughts. The pontificate of Benedict IX had shown him to what it could be reduced by the petty tyranny of local nobles; the council of Sutri had proved that it could fare even worse at the hands of an imperial master. He had already begun the work of freeing it from the former; but though with all his soul he longed to see it once again no longer in slavery but in honour, he had little thought or intention of himself striking the blows that were to break its fetters. Like his great predecessor (St. Gregory I), who had enjoyed the peace of the cloister before he became Pope, Hildebrand had no wish for anything but his monastery. It was against his wish that he left it to be the adviser of Gregory VI, and to accompany him across the Alps; and it was still more against his dearest wishes that he left it to return again to Rome with St. Leo IX.

The unfortunate Gregory VI did not long survive his exile at Cologne. And although by his deeds and by his sermons his capellanus, Hildebrand, had made a profound impression upon the Emperor Henry III, who treated him with the greatest consideration, he did not remain with him after the death of his master, but betook himself to Cluny, the mother-house of his monastery on the Aventine. There for a few months, during the course of the year 1048, he tasted again of that monastic peace he loved so well. This was whilst St. Odilo, who had known him at Rome, was still abbot, and whilst the high-born St. Hugh, who was to succeed to the abbacy in 1049, was grand-prior. A quasi-contemporary, Rainald, abbot of Vezelay, and afterwards archbishop of Lyons (d. 1129), has left us a picture of the young Hildebrand assisting at a chapter held at Cluny by the grand-prior, who was a few years younger than himself, and to whom he was to be attached in the closest bonds of friendship all the days of his life. It was an all-engrossing love of justice, which they saw everywhere so outraged, that drew these two souls together.

Business on behalf of his monastery took Prior Hugh to the imperial court, and, knowing that Hildebrand stood well with the emperor, he caused the young Italian monk to go with him. It was at Worms that Hildebrand met Bruno of Toul; there that his destiny was decided, for there he agreed to return to Rome.

It is hoped that the foregoing narrative has told at sufficient length the rise of Hildebrand under St. Leo IX and his successors, and how far he succeeded, as their adviser and agent, in reaffirming the authority and prestige of the Papacy both at home and abroad. We have noted his being made subdeacon of the Roman Church by St. Leo IX, and archdeacon by Nicholas II; we have beheld him, as director of St. Paul’s outside-the-walls, making it as bright with monastic virtue as with marble and the precious metals; we have seen from his signature attached to various bulls that he belonged to the papal chancellary since the days of Pope Victor; we have accompanied him on his missions of reform to France, and on his diplomatic journeys to the German Court, so to arrange the papal elections that they should be freed from imperial control; and we have watched the growth of law and order in Rome through his vigorous administration. There was much of the character of Oliver Cromwell in the young Hildebrand. No man ever trusted more in God; and at the same time no man ever less despised the power of the sword; for he believed it was the duty of the rulers not to bear the sword in vain. His soldiers, whom he sometimes accompanied in person, curbed to some extent at least the tyranny of the Roman nobles, and the nations once again crowded to the tomb of the Apostles. For much of what was accomplished under Leo IX and his successors, Hildebrand received due credit; for if some allotted all the praise to those who were at the head of the Church and State in Rome, the enlightened and the thoughtful knew from whom proceeded the wisdom that devised the reforms, and the vigour which carried them out. To them he was the eye of the Papacy, the shield of the Roman Church, the pillar of the Apostolic See. They declared that the archdeacon’s voice had more power than the soldiers of Julius Caesar, and that Rome owed more to him than to the Scipios. “If I obey the Lord Pope”, said St. Peter Damian, “still more do I obey the Lord of the Pope”. Nor was the saint alone in this, for the Popes themselves obeyed the dark little monk on whom they leaned. He was the confidant of St. Leo IX, who discussed all important matters with him; and he was equally trusted by Popes Nicholas and Alexander.

Hence, if St. Peter Damian, in writing to those Pontiffs, did not hesitate sometimes to couple with their names that of “Hildebrand the venerable archdeacon”, so they in their turn had no hesitation in joining his name to their own when they sent their greetings to distinguished personages. Hildebrand himself too, when Pope, occasionally lets fall in his correspondence a few words which throw out in the clearest light the fact of his great influence in the councils of the Holy See. Surely no man had ever served a better apprenticeship to the Papacy.  

 

II.

Hildebrand is elected Pope

 

Whilst Alexander lay dying, his archdeacon made unobtrusive but effective preparations to secure a peaceable and free election after his death. He caused not only the regular fortifications of Rome, its walls, its gates, and its bridges, but also such monuments of antiquity as the old triumphal arches which the Roman nobles had long been using as castles, to be occupied by soldiers. So well arranged were his precautionary measures that, when the Pope died (April 21), the Roman people, “contrary to the custom”, remained perfectly quiet, and entrusted to Hildebrand the task of carrying out the details for the election of his successor. The archdeacon at once proclaimed the usual three days’ prayer and fast which had to precede a papal election. On the following day he assisted at the funeral obsequies of Alexander in the Church of St. John Lateran, to which in life the deceased Pontiff had been a great benefactor.

Suddenly, in the midst of the hush of the solemn funeral service, a cry arose : “Hildebrand bishop”. It was at once taken up by the vast assembly of clergy and people that filled the great basilica, and, anticipating the archdeacon in his efforts to reach the ambo and calm the excited multitude, Cardinal Hugo Candidus, who was afterwards to betray him, fanned the flame of the people’s desires. “My brethren, you know that from the days of Pope Leo it is Hildebrand who has exalted the Holy Roman Church, and freed the city. Since, then, we cannot have a better Pope, or even so good a one, we bishops and cardinals elect him to reign over us, who has received sacred orders in our midst, and who is known and approved by all of us”. A unanimous shout: “St. Peter has chosen Gregory”, followed the cardinal’s words, and, despite his sorrowful protestations, Hildebrand was clad in the customary red cloak or cope, and, with the papal mitre on his head, was hurried off in triumph to the Church of St. Peter ad vincula, and enthroned.

Before this eventful day had reached its close, a notary of the Roman Church had drawn up and deposited in the archives of the Lateran the following official document: “In the year 1073 of the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the eleventh year of the indiction, and in the eleventh moon, on Monday the 10th of the Calends of May (April 22), and on the day of the burial of the Lord Pope Alexander II of good memory, in order that the Apostolic See [deprived of a pastor] might not long remain in grief, congregated in the basilica of Blessed Peter ad vincula, we, cardinals, clergy, acolytes, subdeacons, and deacons of the Catholic and Apostolic Church, in the presence of venerable bishops and abbots, with the consent of the clergy and the monks, and amid the applause of a multitude of both sexes and of every rank, chose for our pastor and supreme Pontiff a religious man, distinguished for his learning, both sacred and profane, most remarkable for his love of equity and justice, strong in adversity, but temperate in prosperity— a man, according to the dictum of the Apostle, of good behaviour, blameless, modest, sober, chaste, learned, given to hospitality, one that ruleth well his own house, and who had been from his youth well brought up in the bosom of this mother church, and had for the merit of his conduct been raised to the archdeaconate, to wit, the Archdeacon Hildebrand, whom now and henceforth we wish to be and to be called Gregory Pope and Apostolicus. . . . Done at Rome on the 10th of the Calends of May, in the eleventh indiction”.

When the inevitable, which hitherto he had contrived to shun, had come upon him, when it was borne in upon him that he would now have to bear the responsibility of the acts he had long been advising, and when he thought of the magnitude of the evils he believed he was called by God to redress, and of the small means at his disposal wherewith to combat them, he was completely overwhelmed. He was filled with fear, his strength gave way, and the fire of fever exhausted him. From his bed of sickness he wrote to tell his friends how very much against his will he had been made Pope, and to implore their prayers. Indeed, not only then, but throughout the whole of his pontificate he continued to beg for prayers, declaring that they were the one thing of which he stood in need : prayers not for himself only, but for his enemies also. “I am come”, he cried in the words of the Psalmist, “into the depth of the sea, and a tempest has overwhelmed me, I have laboured with crying : my jaws are become hoarse”.

No sooner did he begin to recover than he commenced to prepare for a more vigorous war against the vices which were eating away the life of Christendom than he had hitherto waged upon them. He endeavoured at once to rally his friends around him. Some, such as Desiderius of Monte Cassino, and Gisulf, prince of Salerno,7were asked to come to him without delay; and others, the empress-mother Agnes and Guibert, archbishop of Ravenna, were entreated to give him their patronage and support. He lost no time in endeavouring to reconcile those able men whose little misunderstandings so often retard the advance of good. He implored Hugh, abbot of Cluny, to come to an understanding with Cardinal Hugo Candidus, whose feeble character seems to have been better understood by the abbot than by the Pope.

Nor did he delay to inform in the usual way the great ones in both Church and State of his election to the supreme pontificate. But among his extant letters on this subject there is no note of his having sent any information to Henry of Germany regarding it. Are we then to conclude that none was sent? Certainly not. The only explanation of his putting off his consecration till the end of June, and till then styling himself “Gregorius in Romanum pontificem electus”, is that the king might thus have an opportunity, not of confirming his election, but of satisfying himself that it had been canonical, and of sending representatives to his consecration. But those who feared the just judgments of Gregory, or who wished to see the Church in subjection to the State, urged Henry not to recognize Hildebrand’s election. Chief of these was “that devil Gregory (bishop) of Vercelli”, the imperial chancellor for Italy. However much he may have been moved by the representations of Gregory’s enemies, Henry did not feel justified in making any attempt to prevent his retaining the chair of Peter. He seems to have simply acquiesced in the situation.

Accordingly, on the Saturday of the Ember week which follows Whitsunday, Gregory was ordained priest (May  22), and received episcopal consecration on Sunday, June 30, in St. Peter’s, in presence of the Empress Agnes, the Countess Beatrice, and the Chancellor Gregory of Vercelli.

On the new Pope were now fixed the eyes of the world, of the bad and of the good alike. The dissolute glared upon him with looks of sullen hate, because they knew he would try to check their lawless careers; while all those who longed for a reformation of manners realised that it must come from Rome, and regarded Gregory as its glorious champion. “If the Roman Church leads not the way back to the path of rectitude”, declared St. Peter Damian, “the whole world will assuredly remain sunk in its miserable errors. That must be the beginning of the renewal of our salvation which was its first foundation”. “God”, wrote William of Metz to Gregory himself, “then especially shows mercy to His people when He sets at their head one whose life may serve them as an example. This He has now done when He has set you on that chair from which the light of virtue is shed on the whole earth, and to which, as do its rays to the centre of a circle, all things converge. But the more you please the good, the more you will displease the wicked, though to be hated by them is no small mark of uprightness. Now, most powerful of men, gird thy sword on thy thigh, that sword which the prophet declares (Jeremiahs XLVIII. 10) must not be withholden from blood, and which the Lord promises shall devour flesh. You see how against the camp of Israel, the Amalecites, the Madianites, and so many other pests conspire. What care, what prudence, what ceaseless zeal must you employ to be able to stay or tame such monstrous brutes! But let no fear nor threats hold you back from this holy conflict. . . . On you, set on the highest pinnacle, are fixed the eyes of all men. They know the glorious combats you have sustained in an inferior station, and one and all long now to hear great things of you”.

III.

Christendom, ecclesiastical and civil. Gregory’s attitude towards it

BEFORE we enter into the details of Gregory’s pontificate, it will be well to take a glance at Christendom, to see what conditions therein called for amelioration, especially from an ecclesiastical point of view. We will examine Gregory’s position, and how far that position justified him in undertaking to reform the world, and inquire into his aims, and into the motives for his endeavours, into his views with regard to the powers for or against him, and into the means he adopted for putting into effect the ideas of reform which he conceived in his mind.

If the moral condition of Christendom in the year 1073 were to be gauged from that of its principal rulers, it would have to be rated low indeed. Henry IV, the heir-at-law to the Western Empire, was a dissolute young man, twenty-three years of age. In his private life he was a slave to sexual immorality, and as a consequence was deceitful, cruel, flippant, and greedy of gold, to gain which he sold in the most unblushing manner the ecclesiastical offices of the empire. Making advisers of the companions of his base pleasures, he chose as his counsellors men who were foolish and young and of no standing. Encouraged by them, he behaved in the most irresponsible manner to the great nobles of the empire, and derided those who came to complain to him of the wrongs his favoured subordinates had inflicted upon them. Especially, but to his own great disadvantage, as he was to live to find, did he flout the Saxons, against whom he had conceived a violent prejudice. He was, in short, a capricious tyrant, who could not endure that anyone should have the will or the power capable of opposing his own. “That he might be the lord of all, he would not have another lord live in his kingdom”. Nor can it be said that Henry’s deep-seated vices were adjusted by personal activity and bravery, by perseverance and fertility of resource, and by transient fits of penitential piety or generosity.

The nominal ruler of France was the feeble Philip I, strong only against the weak, and like a typical French monarch in his lewdness. Surrounded by mistresses, he finished by discarding his lawful wife and marrying one of them. He trafficked in ecclesiastical preferments in the most cynical manner, and did not blush to adorn his concubines with what he had filched from the merchants who came to his territories. His reign was the longest and most disreputable which the annals of France have known. It need not be added that both in the empire and especially in France the nobles waged war on one another as they listed, and that the one who finally bore the heavy weight of misery caused by all this misconduct was the man who wielded the hammer or followed the plough.

Though William the Conqueror was “very rigid and cruel, so that no one durst do anything against his will ... though poor men were greatly oppressed by him, and though he took many a mark of gold from his subjects for little need”, he was the best of the great rulers of Christendom, and for that reason had ever a friend in Hildebrand, both before and after the latter became Pope.

But if misery was largely the lot of the people in the countries the rulers of which we have just glanced at, how awful must have been their lot in that part of Spain at least where Christian and Moslem were ever at war, and where that extraordinary national hero, the Cid, was ravaging with mercenary impartiality the lands of friends and foes alike!

With the east of Europe, or with the Eastern Empire, the biographer of Gregory will have little concern. The Empire Byzantine power had indeed just (1071) received, if not its coup de grâce, at least a mortal wound at the battle of Manzikert, where the Seljukian Turks defeated the emperor Romanus Diogenes. It would seem that Gregory, when bewailing the falling away of the East “from the Catholic faith”, alludes to this terrible battle, when he writes that “the old enemy, the devil, by his members (the Turks?) is killing the Christians of the East, and is thus destroying them spiritually and temporally”. This blow, which sent the eastern Roman Empire reeling, was felt in all its provinces; and Bulgaria and eastern Europe generally suffered in the shock. The East had just broken with the centre of Catholic unity, and experienced the first pressure of the Turkish heel which was to crush it.

Gregory, then, was justified in declaring that in his time there were no princes who preferred the glory of God to their own, or justice to filthy lucre; and that, with regard to those at least in the midst of whom he had to live, Roman, Lombard, and Norman, they were in some ways, as he used to tell them to their faces, “worse than the Jews or the pagans”.

From this alone we might at once safely conclude what was his opinion about the bishops of the world. Like priest and ruler, like people. But he has not left us to make deductions about them for ourselves. Through being brought into the councils of kings; through accepting the lands, privileges, and the duties of barons; through being chosen by princes, instead of by the clergy and the people; and through the relaxation of discipline caused by the anarchy of the tenth century, they had become, speaking generally, the counterpart of their secular peers. “Whether, throughout all the regions of the West, I look north or south, I scarcely find any bishops worthy of their positions by their lives or by the manner in which they have acquired their offices, or who rule Christ’s flock from love and not from worldly ambition”. As their own lives would not bear inspection, stained as so many of them were with the vices especially of simony and of impurity, they not only made no effort to check the vices of their subordinates, but rather encouraged than fought against them. Pre-eminent among the delinquents were the bishops of Lombardy, who were singled out for reprobation by Manasses, archbishop of Rheims, who was far from being a model of virtue himself. Hence in the great struggle between Henry and Gregory, who in the eyes of most of the men of their time stood for vice and virtue respectively, if many of the German bishops adhered to the former, nearly all the Lombard bishops did. No doubt Gregory’s bitterness of soul did not lead him to understate the case against the bishops; but the colours he selected with which to paint their doings were the suitable ones, though perchance they were laid on too heavily at times.

The contemplation of this sad state of things made Gregory think that the barque of the Church was well-nigh shipwrecked. He believed that the times had never been worse since the days of the blessed Pope Sylvester I, when the Church was freed; and the barbarity which he beheld in all countries caused him to see Antichrist everywhere. His sorrows at the sight of the world’s misery were so great that, adopting the words of the prophet, he declared that “every hour he suffered the pains of a woman in labour”.

But Gregory was not the man to stand idly by uttering vain lamentations when the ship in his charge was in danger. He had an intelligence quick to see the perils with which the Church was surrounded and to devise remedies against them; he had a heart to feel for the oppressed, and courage and energy to work for their liberation.

He was consumed with a violent hunger and thirst for justice. “Right, not might”, was his motto. The “justice of God” he would not give up for gold, nor leave for kings. No bribe can make him swerve from the right line of justice. “Truth and justice” he must announce, and from this course he cannot be turned away. “To abandon justice would be for him to make shipwreck of his soul”. If his views were not just, he would not wish to be followed. If his legates would be like him, they must pursue justice. The advice he gave to kings was that they should be slaves of justice. He would not tolerate a breach of justice even in his dearest friends, the Countess Beatrice of Tuscany and her daughter, the great Matilda. Even if his predecessors have granted any privileges which trench on the domain of justice, he would have them quashed. Constancy in working for justice is what he impresses on his friends; punishment for injustice is what he threatens to those who are knowingly unjust, even if they are the great ones of the world. “Justice! justice!” was his incessant cry during life  it was on his lips in his death.

Now to Gregory’s mind the first step in the way of reform which justice demanded was to free the Church. She was the natural mistress of souls. He was determined she should cease to be the “worthless bond­woman” which the kings of the earth had made her. For this he would fight with both his hands, and as if they were both right hands; for this no fear should ever prevent him from crying out; for this he would resist to the shedding of his bloods or even unto death itself, for which indeed he not unfrequently sighed.

If the Church was to be free, its members must be freed : its bishops freed from dependence on princes, and from solicitude for the things of the world. Simony and clerical marriage must be wholly eradicated. These evils had been growing worse from the latter part of the ninth century, and so far the reforming action which had set in strongly with St. Leo IX had not effected much.

In his determination to enforce continency on the part of the clergy, from the subdeacons upwards, Gregory believed he was acting in accordance with what had been enacted by the canons in the West, at least, from very early times. Besides, in what other way was it possible to check the growing worldliness of the clergy, and to preserve for the poor and for divine worship the resources of the Church which were being squandered on their families? Men who openly flouted the laws of the Church on this important matter of celibacy were not likely to be particular about the commandments in general.

The other great evil which was choking the Church was simony. The princes sold bishoprics and abbacies to any who would pay their price for them, and imposed their nominees on the Church often without allowing the semblance of an election; and in their turn the bishops, “heretical brigands”, as St. Peter Damian called them, sold every ecclesiastical office in their power. It requires no imagination to guess what sort of men bought themselves into authority in the Church. The crushing of simony, as practised by the offering of money, of obsequious servility, or of flattery, was naturally the second great item on Gregory’s programme of reform. This he would effect not merely by direct prohibition of the degrading vice, and by making every effort to render ecclesiastical elections really free, but by striking at their root, by anathematizing lay investiture.

Through the lands that had been bestowed upon bishops and abbots, and through the large share in the affairs of government that had been given them, inasmuch as they were at once the most capable and the most willing to work for law and order, kings had begun to look upon them in much the same light as they regarded the secular nobility. This tendency became more marked with the complete collapse of the Roman Empire in the West under the blows of the barbarian, and with the replacement of Roman organization and of Roman codified law by barbaric disunity and traditional customs. Owing, therefore, to the importance in their kingdoms of the ecclesiastical aristocracy, sovereigns endeavoured to secure to themselves the appointment to bishoprics and abbacies. And when they had found a candidate whose knowledge of statecraft, whose gold or whose strong right arm would be useful to them, there was no question with very many of them as to whether by moral character and piety and learning he was fitted for the cure of souls. But by force or by the exercise of undue influence in one form or another, they placed him in the vacant post, presenting him in sign thereof with what were the recognized symbols of spiritual jurisdiction, the crosier and the ring, i.e., they invested him with the words, “Receive the Church”. The bishop or abbot before being thus invested took an oath of fealty to his prince, and did homage to him after the manner of the holders of secular fiefs. And if his loyalty was not thought satisfactory, the hand that gave the ring and the crosier took them away, and the prelate was deposed. Action of this sort caused both prince and cleric to lose sight of the source of spiritual jurisdiction, with what resulting degradation of the Church we have seen.

This practice of lay investiture sprang up in the ninth century. But, as the real quest, on underlying the quarrel about lay investiture was freedom of election, the practice of such investiture may be said to have been already prescribed; for the general council of Nice (787, can. 3) condemned all ecclesiastical elections made by the secular authority. Some, indeed, at this period were quite alive to the fact that the real issue between the Church and the State was the question of freedom of election. Our northern author, Hugh the Chantor, in his history of certain archbishops of York, relates that the distinguished canonist Ivo of Chartres used to point out that it mattered not by what symbol investiture was given, if only freedom of election and consecration were safeguarded. Many, however, wholly failed to appreciate the true bearings of the investiture dispute, and well merited Hugh’s reproach that in laying all the stress on the symbols of investiture, and in not putting prominently forward the question of freedom of election, they were swallowing the camel, and straining at the gnat. Gregory, at any rate, had the real end of the controversy well in view when, to give a definite point to the prohibition of Nice, and other similar prohibitions, in 1075, and more explicitly in 1078, he forbade lay investiture, “investitura episcopatus”, as he called it. The quarrel over investiture was only settled by the compromise effected at the council of Worms in 1122. Round it the struggles in the first great contest between the empire and the Papacy may be said to have crystallised. The “age of Hildebrand” was “the age of the investiture dispute”. The Popes of this epoch attached such importance to this question because “to have left to princes the investiture of bishoprics, with the significance that then attached to that act, would have been to laicize the Church, to crush the episcopacy, and to make of the priest only the chaplain of the great”. To the men of the eleventh century it appeared that “the bishop had become the man of the laic, and that the power of the lord extended over both the bishop himself and over the goods and effects of his bishopric”.

An outline of the career of Godfrey, archbishop of Trier, may serve to illustrate the evils inflicted on the Church when monarchs, like Henry IV and his son, could trample despotically on her laws. Arnold, provost of Trier, we are told, had a young clerical nephew, Godfrey, who fell into vicious ways. Accordingly, because, “on account of his evil life, his uncle saw that there was no hope of his obtaining promotion in the regular way, he sent him to the court of King Henry IV, in order that he might be intruded by the royal power into a position which he could not hope to obtain canonically”.

When once the king’s authority had put Godfrey in an important position, he soon obtained a large sum of money by the practice of the grossest simony, and then, by the gift, “it is said”, of more than 1100 marks of silver, he procured the archbishopric of Trier, though his ignorance was on a par with his other vices (1124). The money he had had to pay for his promotion, and his attempts at fulfilling the promises of bestowing favours he had had to make, caused the whole diocese to fall into confusion. The distracted people at length appealed to Rome. Honorius II took up the matter, and his legate, Cardinal Peter, held a synod at Toul (March 13, 1127). Calling upon witnesses to speak “by the obedience they owed to the Roman Church”, the truth about Godfrey’s evil courses was brought to light and he was at last compelled to abdicate (May, 1127).

To fulfil his burning desire that, “for God’s honour, and the renovation of Christendom”, there might be a true pastor in every church to rule God’s people, and that the clergy, free from lay control, might be conspicuous for their virtues, Gregory felt compelled “to rise up against many and to rouse them up against his soul”. Of the difficulties in his way he was not ignorant, and what toil and trouble he was preparing for himself he knew full well. But he believed it was his duty to fight the good fight for the souls of men, because he believed he was the head of Christ’s Church on earth and was responsible for the souls of the highest and the lowest, of cleric and lay alike.

In his famous letter “to all the faithful in Christ who truly love the Apostolic See”, he reminds them that “all those who throughout the whole world are accounted Christians, and have a true knowledge of the Christian faith, know and believe that Blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, is the father and the first shepherd after Christ of all Christians, and that the holy Roman Church is the mother and mistress of all the churches”. She is ever firm and without spot. As the mother of all, she must be obeyed by all; for the Apostolic See has the power to bind and loose whomsoever and wheresoever it pleases. As men, the king and the beggar are equal; hence when he speaks in accordance with the statutes of the holy fathers, kings must obey him like anyone else. Bishops, inasmuch as they have the same faith as the Pope, and, moreover, know their duty from the Writings of the fathers, must devotedly, lovingly, and faithfully attach themselves to the Apostolic See, and submit to its commands, which “neither patriarch nor primate may contravene”. Such of them as prefer to follow the king rather than the Pope are confounding the Christian religion with kingdom and country. If they are not in agreement with the Apostolic See, he must remind them that St. Ambrose has laid it down “that he is a heretic who is not in concord with the Roman Church”; and he must therefore impress upon them that they are in imminent danger of damnation, if they are outside the circle of its unity. And what was Gregory’s belief as to his position in the Church, was, as he asserts himself, the belief of Christendom. And one of its most distinguished representatives in the days of Hildebrand declares that “beyond all doubt Rome is the bead of the entire holy Church, and its principal see”.

It was then Gregory’s conviction that, in the spiritual order, he was the father of all Christians without exception, and that, while he owed them all the thoughtful care and affection he could bestow upon them, it was their duty to love and obey him, and to submit as dutiful children to such correction as he believed he was in duty bound to inflict upon them. “God is my witness”, he wrote, “that it is not any hope of the applause of men that impels me to oppose myself to wicked princes and unholy bishops, but the thought of my duty and of the power of the Apostolic See which is ever urging me”.

Believing that to him had been committed by Christ the supreme direction of the Christian people that he was a debtor to the believer and to the unbeliever;  and that it was his, in the last resort, to decide what Christians had to believe and practise if they would attain to eternal life, he admonished kings and princes of their duties as a father would his sons. And when, relying on their position, they thought they could break the laws of God and man with impunity, and attempted to put their beliefs into practice, he did not hesitate to let them know, first by words and then by deeds, that they were not above the law. They were Christians equally with their subjects; and when they outraged Christianity, he avenged it as its lawful and recognised head. In the manner in which he vindicated it, he generally followed precedent, though occasionally no doubt he created it. But even in those exceptional cases it would seem that he did not act in violation of the ideas of his age, and that consequently he had with him the sympathy of the great bulk of the intelligent and of the virtuous of his time. And it may well be asked whether his methods of dealing with unsatisfactory rulers which won their approval have not at least as much to be said in their favour as many of those which have been practised in modern times. As Viscount Llandaff has well observed : “Almost all moral writers are agreed that there is some point of oppression and misconduct at which subjects are justified in throwing off their allegiance to a sovereign whose rule has ceased to be legitimate by his misdeeds”. But it is another thing to decide when that point has been reached. During the last hundred years every country in Europe has seen that question settled by secret meetings of conspirators, by violence, and by bloodshed. It appeared to Gregory and to the more weighty thinkers of his time that such a moral difficulty should be solved by the judicial decision of the one who was universally recognized as the great censor morum.

Again, it must be repeated that it would be a mistake to suppose with some writers that Gregory claimed a right to rebuke and even to punish kings, because he regarded all the kingdoms of the earth as his, because he looked upon himself as the king of kings. He believed with the great men who had gone before him, both in Church and State, that there were two powers in the body politic, one spiritual for dealing with the affairs of the soul, the other temporal for the care of the body. He wished the sacerdotium and the imperium to work together in harmony, to be as the two eyes which guide the body. And as, on the one hand, “the Roman Church was the universal mother of all Christians”, and, on the other, Henry “had been placed by God in the very highest position”, Gregory was ready to greet him as “the head of all the laity”, and “his lord, brother, and son”; and that, not on any condition of temporal subjection to himself, but simply on the understanding that he honoured God. Henry, on his side, had at one time no difficulty in calling the Pope “his lord and father”, and there is no reason to doubt that, if he had acted in any way becomingly as a man and a sovereign, Gregory would never have interfered in the least degree with the temporal affairs of the empire.

At the same time, considering from a Christian stand­point the superiority of the soul over the whole world, he contended that spiritual authority was of higher importance in itself than temporal. Following in the wake of Gregory the Great and other earlier writers, he maintained that “gold is not so much more precious than lead as the sacerdotal dignity is higher than that of kings”. It becomes them, therefore, to look up to the more honorable, to the head (magister) of the Church, i.e., to Blessed Peter, and, so far from regarding the Church as their handmaid, they must consider it as their mistress.

Even from their respective origins, the dignity of the spiritual power is, according to Gregory, obvious. Princes, he said, have sprung from those who, unmindful of God, by the perpetration of every crime, and with intolerable presumption, succeeded in lording it over their equals, i.e., men. Shall such a power, be asks, not be subject to that dignity which God Himself gave to the world through His Son, the great High Priest, who despised the power of this world, and of his own accord embraced “the priest­hood of the Cross”?

But Henry IV, whom in all this Gregory had chiefly in view, was not an Alfred the Great, who, if we are to credit Ailred, abbot of Rievaux (d. 1166), understood his position as a Christian king, and knew how to expound it in beautiful words. “He realized”, records Ailred, “what few nowadays seem to be willing to profess, viz., that the greatest kingly power has no manner of authority in the Church of Christ. True kingly dignity”, he used to say, “requires that I should acknowledge that in the kingdom of Christ, which is the Church, I am no king, but a citizen, and that it is not for me to rule the priests by my laws, but humbly to submit to the laws of Christ which they have promulgated”. If Henry was ever animated by similar sentiments, it was but in one of those brief and rare moments during which he allowed virtue to make some impression upon him. His normal attitude towards the Church was that of one who would rule it as a master, and crush it as he would a viper if it turned upon him. And it may be safely affirmed that the tyranny of Henry IV was one of the factors which brought about, towards the close of this century, a change in the theories of ecclesiastical writers as to the origin of temporal authority. Up to the epoch named, they had assigned God as its source, but from the eleventh to the fourteenth century they held that the people were the source of the power of governments.

But with such a man as Gregory VII as its head, it was not easy for Henry to make a bondwoman of the Church; and it was not long before a struggle which was to outlast the life of Gregory began between the empire and the priesthood. And when once a contest had broken out between powers which ought to have been equal, because each ought to have been supreme in its own domain, it was inevitable that the struggle should issue in a fight for supremacy. But though in the heat of battle Gregory may have given utterance to propositions that were capable of very great extension, there is no evidence that he wished to establish a theocracy, and “obtain supreme dominion over all nations”. It is true he claimed an altum dominium over some countries, as he did over many monasteries, and that too on much the same grounds, viz., because those who had power over them had either really commended them to the Holy See to secure its protection, or were believed to have done so. Sometimes, indeed, he would appear to have based his pretensions on documents which were not authentic, but which were accepted as genuine by the whole world. But if he made claim to Spain and Hungary, to Bohemia, Russia and Croatia, it was because those countries had previously placed their rising liberties under the aegis of the authority of the bishop of Rome, and in feudal style acknowledged their dependence on him by a payment of an annual tax. By degrees this payment came to be regarded in Rome as a sign that the place whence it came was placed under the suzerainty of the Pope. This idea was in the main true, and may have been the reason which moved Gregory to claim the altum dominium over England also—a claim indignantly rejected by the Conqueror. Possibly, too, he may have regarded William’s action in appealing to Rome, and accepting the banner from Alexander II, as betokening some manner of dependence on the Holy See. In any case he did no more than repeat a claim which had been made by his predecessor.

Gregory was naturally led to try and revive old rights to temporal suzerainty when he saw new ones bestowed upon himself. He received the donation of Provence from its count, Bertram II; and his supreme jurisdiction over Sardinia, if not over islands in general, was acknowledged by the numerous requests made to him for permission to invade that island. Perhaps Gregory was as anxious for princes to place themselves under his suzerainty as some of them were to submit themselves to it. But if that were so, his object was not merely that the pecuniary advantages arising therefrom might help to replenish the depleted papal treasury, but that the good of Christendom might be thereby promoted. “Religious bishops”, he said himself in his famous apologetic letter5to Bishop Herimann of Metz, “who, led by divine love, wish to rule, do so that God’s honour and the salvation of souls may be thus advanced”. And if Gregory’s overlordship had been everywhere respected as it was with regard to Sardinia, there can be no question but that the peace and happiness of Europe would have been very greatly extended.

In his untiring efforts to better the temporal and spiritual condition of his children, on what had the Father of Christendom to rely? Certainly not on those who ought to have been his natural allies; not on kings and princes; for they, as usual, were, for the most part, the principal agents of the degradation against which he was struggling; and not on the bishops, who, as a body, were little better than the secular princes. And of those in the episcopal order who were not wholly bad, the greater number would not act. He could not even count on the members of his own household. Beno has left us a list of cardinals and other functionaries of the pontifical court who abandoned their master in the time of stress in 1084. Among the deserters were over ten cardinal priests and deacons, the primicerius of the schola cantorum, with all his subordinates, the oblationarius, the prior of the regionary subdeacons, the archacolyte, the subpulmentarius (an almoner), the primicerius of the judges, and all the banner-bearers of the different regions, the prior of the scriveners, and many others.

He had to rely, then, in the first place, on God and on himself. We have seen how he begged for prayers; for he trusted in God more than in man, and believed that He was with him and worked with him. Writing within a year or two of his death to the clergy of Gaul, he took occasion to thank God for having protected him from the violence of his persecutors; for having defended in his person that justice for which his conscience had made him contend; for having strengthened his weakness, and for never allowing either bribes or threats to turn him to iniquity.

In his efforts to defend the oppressed and to uphold justice, obligations which he believed his position as successor of St. Peter forced upon him, he was ever upheld by confidence in the prestige of Rome—he was fond of repeating that Rome, through its faith or through its arms, was ever invincible—by the glorious idea of duty, and by the hope of eternal rest with Christ our Lord.

But with all the self-reliance which the thought of duty and of working in the cause of God and man inspired, he knew he must have fellow-workers. The vineyard of the Lord was so vast, and was so woefully overgrown with weeds! His first care was to multiply himself by his legates, by men whom he strove to animate with the same spirit as himself. “Ever act with becoming dignity”, he used to tell them, “as though I were with you, or rather because I am with you, my representatives”. He would have them at once heroes and sages, all on fire with charity, so that the oppressed might find in them defenders, and that oppressors might learn that they were lovers of justice. He sent them north and south, east and west, they were seen in England and in Denmark, as well as among the Normans in south Italy; they found their way not only into the more civilized lands of the Eastern Empire, into Germany, France and Spain, but also into Hungary, Poland, and Russia. And wherever they went they were followed by Gregory with eager interest; and he strove to secure for them a favourable reception everywhere. “He who receives you, receives us, i.e., receives Blessed Peter himself”, he used to declare. As he pointed out to the bishops of southern France and Spain: “From its very foundation it has been the custom of the Roman Church to send legates to every land that boasted the name of Christian; so that through them the ruler of that church might effect what he could not in his own person, viz., instruct the churches throughout the world in apostolic faith and practice”.

But if he strove to make the path of his legates smooth, and to punish any interference in the commissions with which he entrusted them, he never ceased to impress upon them that they must use the power entrusted to them with the greatest moderation and prudence; and he occasionally made them feel the necessity of so doing by revising or by annulling their decisions.

Other allies on whom he confidently reckoned were the Gregory monks. Amid the general defection which he was constantly deploring, he thanked God that among those who still feared Him were the monks. Hardly a monastery can be cited which adhered to the cause of Henry, simony, and clerical concubinage. There was Farfa in Italy, which was imperialistic by tradition; and among those which had been forced to accept creatures of Henry as their abbots, and were thus pressed into his service, may be named those of St. Gall in Switzerland, and Hersfeld in the diocese of Halberstadt. A monk himself, Gregory protected and favoured the monastic orders—the more so since no care was taken of them by the great ones of the world. “Do you think”, he wrote to Bishop Cunibert of Turin, “that bishops have received with their pastoral staff such an amount of power and licence that they may oppress as they please the monasteries which are in their dioceses, and diminish religious fervour there by capricious and unlimited requirements? Are you then ignorant that popes have frequently freed the monasteries from the rule of bishops, and from that of metropolitans, on account of the vexations inflicted by superiors? Do you not know that it has been their object, by the gift of lasting liberty, to attach the churches to the Apostolic See, as the members are attached to the head? Consider the privileges granted by our predecessors, and you will see that it has been forbidden even to archbishops to fulfil their office in abbeys unless invited by the abbots, lest the peace of the cloister should be disturbed by the influx and the conversation of secular visitors”.

The monks were not ungrateful for his care. They everywhere showed themselves staunch and able friends of the Papacy, and gave up their most promising subjects to its use. From them Gregory drew his best bishops, his counsellors, and his legates. First among his confidants was Hugh, the great abbot of Cluny, whom we may call the patriarch of the monks of his day, who had been the trusted friend of the emperor Henry III, and who was the godfather of Henry IV. He was a man whose moderate and am able character well enabled him, without sacrifice of principle, to act as mediator between Henry IV and Gregory, whom, like St. Peter Damian, he regarded as a gentle tyrant, a lion in striking and a lamb in pardoning. Also from Cluny there came to the service of Gregory, Gerald, its grand-prior, to be made cardinal-bishop of Ostia, and its prior Odo, who was to succeed Gerald in the Sec of Ostia, and to become Pope Urban II. The legate Hugh de Die, who in Gregory’s name practically ruled the Church of France for ten years, had been prior of St. Marcel-lez-Châlons, and Jarenton, who brought Guiscard and his Normans to save Gregory from Henry, had been educated at Cluny, shared Gregory’s exile at Salerno, and for his sufferings in the cause of justice merited to be called by the Pope his fellow-captive. The dearest of Gregory’s friends, one who as his legate in Germany suffered exile and imprisonment in his cause, was Bernard, abbot of St. Victor at Marseilles. Monks also were such steady allies of Gregory, as Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino; Alfano, the famous archbishop of Salerno; Cardinal Stephen, who, with Gregory himself, deserved to be called by St. Peter Damian “an impregnable buckler” of the Holy See; Bruno of Asti, bishop of Segni; St. Anselm of Lucca, the adviser of the great countess; and William, abbot of Hirschau, who in his last agony exhorted his monks to persevere till death in subjection to the Apostolic See.

Also on the side of Gregory were not merely such comparatively few bishops as were by virtue and learning fitted for their office, and such rare secular princes as Matilda of Tuscany (at once almost a nun and a knight), who had a thought above their own sordid interests, but generally the great mass of the people. Even the fickle populace of Rome, as was proved by their conduct during the siege of their city by Henry, were exceptionally loyal to Gregory. The devotion of the people at large to the Pope is set down as a fact by contemporary historians; and in full faith of its truth we see Gregory himself finding his consolation.

With these allies, such as they were, “monks, simple priests (sacerdotes), the lower order of the nobility, and the poor”, Gregory assayed iniquity in high places; and, as he declared only a few months before his death, strove with all his might (to bring it about that the Church should hold the honoured position that was its due, and “should remain free, chaste, and catholic”.

That, in truth, Gregory’s aim was as pure as he professed it to be, that it “was a righteous one, few”, writes a non-Catholic author, “will now venture to dispute”. The most eminent modern writers on the age of Hildebrand are generally agreed that Gregory’s struggle was that of spirit against matter, of moral against physical force, of the laws of love and justice against those of selfishness and might.

Now that we have seen something of the motives which animated the great Pontiff, and of the forces which were at work for or against him in his gigantic efforts to secure the independence of the Church, we may now let the course of the narrative of the events of his pontificate run freely on, unchecked by reflections on the intentions which inspired his several actions.

IV.

First two years of Gregory’s pontificate.

As Pope, Gregory continued the administrative work on in and which he had been engaged as a capellanus and as the oeconomus of the Holy See. In the first place he persevered in his efforts to make the Roman barons and those of the Campagna respect the law, and to force the Normans to confine themselves to their own territories. To effect these ends he paid as before no little attention to the armed forces of the Roman Church. With their aid and with that of Landulf, prince of Benevento, and Richard, prince of Capua, who had taken the oath of fealty to him, he not only garrisoned the cities and towns, and held what was still left of the papal inheritance, but recovered much of what had been lost of it by violence, fraud, or negligence. So actively was this police work carried on that in a few months there was no one bold enough to touch the property of Peter. Even before his consecration he had to defend the temporal rights of the Holy See against the usurpations of Guibert, archbishop of Ravenna, who to the prejudice of the Roman Church endeavoured to subject certain towns of the exarchate to his own authority.

But it was even more necessary that order should be restored in Peter’s own home. The great Roman basilica that bore his name was under the care of over sixty mansionarii or sacristans. These men were laics, of whom some were married, and who at this period were one and all scoundrels. Shaved and wearing mitres, they gave out to the simple that they were priests and cardinals; and during the day received money from the peasants in return for their prayers, and during the night committed robbery, murder, and adultery. The behaviour in St. Peter’s of some of the cardinals themselves was not above reproach. They only had the right to say Mass at the high altar, or altar over the body of the Prince of the Apostles. For the sake of gain, they came to the basilica and began to offer the great Christian sacrifice before the dawn. To put an end co these most disreputable customs, Gregory, after expelling with no little difficulty the lay mansionarii, replaced them by good priests, and forbade the church to be open before daylight, and the cardinals to say Mass till nine o'clock.

By encouraging the payment of Peter’s Pence and other means, he endeavoured to raise the funds necessary for the purposes of government. Through his good management of the monies at his disposal, it resulted, not that the poor were robbed, but that, as always happens when revenues are well expended, there was enough for necessities and for charity. Hence even Guido of Ferrara praises him as “the protector of the widow and the young, the helper of the orphan, and the advocate of the poor”, and also for his profuse liberality to the needy and the helpless.

Full of enthusiasm and of the hope begotten of it, the energetic pontiff resolved to approach Robert Giscard and the Normans, trusting to be able to induce these enterprising and warlike neighbours to leave his dominions in peace. Leaving Rome in July, he spent a day by the sea at Laurentum, a town now no more, which lay between Ostia and Ardea, and seemingly in the neighbourhood of the existing hamlet of Capocotta. Thence he betook himself, by Albano, first to Monte Cassino to secure the company of its abbot Desiderius, ever a persona grata to the Normans, and then to Benevento. There, on August 12, he received from the Lombard prince Landulf an undertaking that, on pain of being instantly deprived of his position, he would be faithful to the Roman Church, and would not in any way lessen the integrity of his duchy by granting investiture of any portion of it without the consent of the Pope. But though Gregory had given proof of his goodwill towards Guiscard when a false report of his death had reached him, the wily Norman contented himself with promising in general terms that “he would serve the Pope faithfully”. It is true that in 1059 Robert had taken an oath of fidelity to Nicholas II, but his lust of conquest had gone on increasing, and he would not have his designs on Salerno, on Capua, and perhaps, too, on Benevento, hampered by further oaths. Gregory, like Leo IX, soon saw that arms alone would keep the ambition of Guiscard within bounds. To meet force with force, he endeavoured to ally to his own forces those of Gisulf of Salerno, of the Norman, Richard of Capua, and of Beatrice and Matilda of Tuscany. On September 14 he received from Richard an oath of fidelity, such as he had previously taken to Nicholas II (1059). He swore to do all that in him lay to help to recover the possessions of St. Peter; to pay annually the money due for the lands which he held of the Roman Church; and to restrict any oath of fidelity he might be called upon to take to King Henry by the clause saving the fealty he owed to the holy Roman Church.

Satisfied with what he had already accomplished, Gregory seems to have imagined that he had practically checkmated Robert. Writing a week or two later to the knight Herlembald, the leader of the reform party in Milan, he told him that he was at Capua in good health, and happy because he believed that his residence in that city had resulted in great advantage to the Church. “For the Normans, who, with manifest danger to the empire and holy Church, had been contemplating peace with one another, are obstinately continuing in the state of unrest in which we found them. It will only be through us that they will obtain peace. For if we had judged it for the advantage of holy Church, they would already have humbly submitted to us, and have displayed towards us their wonted reverence”. But he had strangely underrated the energy, ability, and power of Guiscard. Summoning his brother Roger, count of Sicily, to his aid, the Norman duke began at once to ravage the territory of Richard, and before the Pope had returned to Rome (c. December 17, 1073) had inflicted material damage on his Capuan ally.

About this time advices which he had received from Constantinople inspired Gregory with a new idea, and made him more anxious than ever to assemble troops. After the disastrous defeat of the Byzantine forces at Manzikert, and the subsequent irritating but impotent conduct of the imperial government towards the victorious Alp Arslan, the sufferings which the Turks inflicted on the helpless Christian population of Asia Minor surpass belief. And in the midst of their unspeakable afflictions the oppressed turned for help to the common Father of Christendom, whom their chief priests had rejected. When messenger after messenger reached him telling him that the heathen had laid waste the whole land almost to the very walls of Constantinople, and had slain many thousands of Christians as though they had been beasts of the field, Gregory’s heart was wrung with grief, and he longed himself to die to save his brethren. “He would rather” he declared, “lay down his life for them, than neglect them and have the whole world submissive to his will”.

Though convinced he could himself raise troops enough to bring the refractory Normans “to a sense of justice”, he tried to realize a plan which he thought would result in saving Christian blood, both in Italy and in the East. He would gather together a great Christian army, the very sight of which would bring about the submission of the Normans, and which would be powerful enough, under his own personal leadership, to stop the ravages of the Turks. These great plans we see unfolded in the following letter which he dispatched to William I, count of Burgundy, on February 2, 1074: “Gregory, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to William, count of Burgundy, health and apostolic benediction. Your prudence may remember with what a large-hearted welcome the Roman Church formerly greeted you, and what special love she has ever displayed towards you. It does not then befit you to be unmindful of the promise you made to God before the body of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, in the presence of our venerable predecessor, Pope Alexander, of a considerable number of bishops and abbots, and of a very great concourse of people of different nationalities, to the effect that when necessary your right arm would be ready to strike a blow for the defence of the possessions of St. Peter, whenever it was called upon to do so. Hence, mindful of the nobility of your faith, we admonish you to make ready your armies to lend aid to the liberty of the Roman Church, and, if need be, to march hither with your troops as servants of St. Peter. We beg you also to instruct to act in like manner, the count of St. Giles, the father-in-law of Richard, prince of Capua; Amadeus, the son of Adelaide; and the others you know to be loyal to St. Peter, and who, with hands raised to heaven, have given the same undertakings as yourself. If you have any definite response to make to us, let your messenger be so instructed as to be able to remove all doubt from our mind; and let him on his way to us call upon Beatrice, who, with her daughter and son-in-law, is an earnest worker in this matter.

“We are not labouring to collect this great number of soldiers because we wish to shed Christian blood, but that they (i.e., the Normans), seeing the strength of our forces, may fear to fight, and may the more ready submit to what is just. We have, moreover, a hope that perchance a further good result may follow from this expedition: viz., that, when the Normans are quieted, we may pass over to Constantinople to assist the Christians, who, suffering terribly under the repeated blows of the Saracens, unceasingly implore us to stretch out to them a helping hand. For were it a question merely of the rebellious Normans, we have ourselves sufficient forces to deal with them.

“Doubt not that, as we believe, Peter and Paul, the Princes of the Apostles, will bestow a manifold recompense on you and on all who with you will share in the toil of this expedition.

“Given at Rome on the fourth of the nones of February (February 2), in the twelfth indiction”.

A month later a circular letter, addressed “to all those who wished to defend the Christian faith”, and entrusted to the charge of one newly come from the East, informed the Western world of the terrible sufferings which the heathen Turks were inflicting on the Christians of the East. “Wherefore, if we love God and regard ourselves as Christians, we ought to be overwhelmed with grief at the misfortune which has befallen so renowned an empire, and at the terrible slaughter of Christian men. But we must do more than grieve; the example of our Redeemer must move us to sacrifice our lives for them. We ourself intend to do all in our power to help the empire. In the name, then, of that faith in which through Christ we are united by the adoption of the sons of God, we exhort you, and by the authority of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, we urge you to let the wounds and blood of your brethren, and the dire peril of the empire, stir up your sympathy, so that you may be ready to undergo the toil of bearing help to your brethren. Let us know without delay, and by reliable messengers, what the mercy of God shall move you to do”.

But Europe was not yet ready for a Crusade. The story of the Turkish atrocities had not yet been told often enough, and great masses are not moved at the first essay. The echo to Gregory’s resounding trumpet-call to arms was but feeble; and meanwhile Guiscard continued contumacious and threatening. In the Lenten council of this year (March 1074), Robert Guiscard, duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, with all his supporters, was excommunicated and anathematized, in the presence of Matilda of Tuscany, the Marquis Azzo, and Gisulf of Salerno.

Gregory, however, knew enough of the audacious nature of the duke to realize that no censure of the Church would put a curb on his ambition. The sword of Guiscard must be crossed with another of like temper and material. But whence was he to procure it? He had already discovered that the transalpine princes would not take up arms either against the Turks or the Normans. “You”, he wrote to Duke Godfrey, “have done like so many others. You have been false to your word. Where is the aid you promised? Where are the soldiers you promised to lead in person to bring honourable succour to St. Peter?”

His Italian allies were, however, truer to Gregory. Beatrice and Matilda undertook to force the enemy to restore what he had taken from the Prince of the Apostles. Accordingly, in the summer of 1074 an army from different parts of Italy assembled by the woods of Mt. Cimino, between Sutri and Viterbo. But the expedition came to naught. The Pisans would not fight with Gisulf, who had basely ill-treated some of their traders; an insurrection among some of their dependants necessitated the departure of Beatrice and her daughter; and Gregory himself fell grievously ill.

When, after about two months and a half of sickness, contrary to the prognostications of those around him, and to his “grief rather than joy”, Gregory recovered his health, there were reopened with Guiscard negotiations into which the military preparations of the Pope had caused him to enter, but which had been closed by the former’s illness. The Norman duke offered to renew under every guarantee of fidelity his allegiance to the Pope. But, seemingly on account of the difficulty of inducing Guiscard to respect his allies, Gregory delayed acceding to his offers; and in the beginning of the year 1075 relations between the two were so far strained that there is some ground for believing that the Pope thought of calling upon a son of the Danish king, Svend Estrithson, to measure swords with Robert for his duchy. He was the more anxious that the Norman duke should be reduced to peaceful subjection, seeing that fresh messengers had come from the East to implore his aid against the Turks. Not only had he made another effort to induce “all the faithful of St. Peter, especially those beyond the mountains”, to cease fighting for perishable goods, and to come to him in order that together they might defend the Christian faith, but he had asked the assistance of Henry IV. He had told him of the heart­rending appeals for succour which he had received from the East, and of the efforts he had made to move men to give their lives for their brethren. “Already”, he had written, “more than 50,000 men are arming themselves, and, if they can have me as their priest and leader in the expedition, are ready to attack the enemies of God, and, under His guidance, to march even to the Lord’s tomb. I am especially moved to undertake this expedition, because the Church of Constantinople, differing from us on the doctrine of the Holy Ghost, longs for reunion with the Apostolic See. Almost all the Armenians have fallen away from the Catholic faith. And most of the Orientals, in the midst of their diverse opinions, await the decision of the faith of the Apostle Peter. Especially in our time is fulfilled the injunction which our Holy Redeemer deigned to impose on the Prince of the Apostles : I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; and thou being once converted confirm thy brethren ... But as great designs need great forethought and the help of the great, I shall turn to you for advice and support, if God gives me to make a beginning of this undertaking; for if, under God’s favour, I shall go to the East, I shall entrust the care of the Roman Church to you, after God, to guard and defend it as your holy mother”.

But the time for the Crusades had not yet come; it was for others to reap what Gregory had sown. The princes were wrapped up in the pursuit of their own selfish ends; and knowledge of the sufferings of the Christians in the East had not yet spread deep enough to move the masses of the people. Gregory himself, too, had soon to cope with troubles nearer home than in Palestine. In little more than a year from the date of the dispatch of the letter just cited, he had written his last letter to Henry, had well-nigh lost his life at the hands of an assassin, and at the bidding of Henry IV had been declared deposed from the Papacy by a council of German bishops.

In the midst of all his exertions to effect local reforms, to put a curb on the grasping ambition of the Normans, and to carry through such a gigantic undertaking as a Crusade, Gregory did not lose sight of the necessity of furthering the general reform of the Church, so well inaugurated by his immediate predecessors. To this end, he began at an early date in his pontificate to make preparations for the holding of the first of the customary Lenten synods which occupy such an important place in his reign. They were assembled not merely to make laws, but to advise the Pope in questions of religion, law, and policy; for, as Gregory himself wrote when summoning the Patriarch of Aquileia to the synod of 1074, “the more securely and firmly shall we be able to work for the good of ecclesiastical liberty and religion, the more abundantly and closely we are supported by the society and provident forethought of many of our fellow-bishops”.

March 1074, First Lenten Synod

With the exception of a few from France and Spain, most of the bishops who were present at Gregory’s first synod, were Italians. Among the distinguished laity who assisted at it were Gisulf, prince of Salerno, and the Countess Matilda. The principal work of the council was to renew the prohibitions already issued against simony and clerical incontinence. All who had received holy orders or benefices by simoniacal practices were to lose them; and such as were guilty of incontinence were forbidden to exercise any sacred function. Should they presume to do so, the faithful were forbidden to assist at any celebration held by them. Various particular cases were also decided at this synod, and, as we have seen, Guiscard was excommunicated by it.

To secure the observance of these decrees, and, at the same time, to bring about a satisfactory understanding between Henry and the Holy See, and between the king and the rebellious Saxons, Gregory dispatched to Germany Cardinals Humbert and Gerald, bishops of Palestrina and Ostia respectively. With them went the Empress Agnes, full of anxiety for the spiritual condition of her son. Henry, as we shall see presently, seemed prepared to satisfy the legates in everything, and, outwardly at any rate, made no objection to their calling a council in order to deal with the bishops and abbots guilty of simony and incontinency. Headed, however, by Liemar, archbishop of Hamburg, the bishops at once raised a cry of “Privilege!”. They maintained that, in accordance with ancient custom, the archbishop of Mainz was the Pope’s representative in Germany, and that, therefore, mere legates could not hold a synod in the country under his jurisdiction. It would have to be held by the Pope himself. According to Bonizo, it was at Henry’s suggestion that the bishops put forward this specious argument, as he did not wish the synod to be held. But Lambert will have it that Henry was really anxious for the holding of the synod, because, as most of the bishops were tainted with simony, he hoped to bring about the deposition of his enemies, especially the Saxon bishops. And as Henry was not averse to abandoning a friend if he could serve himself, Lambert is probably right. The result, however, was that the synod could not be held, and that, after a time, Liemar was suspended by the Pope from the performance of his episcopal functions till he should present himself in Rome to explain his conduct. Liemar was furious, and gave vent to his feelings in a letter which he wrote to the bishop of Hildesheim : “A dangerous man wishes to order bishops about as if they were his stewards; and if they do not fulfil all his behests, they are summoned to Rome, and suspended before being tried”.

Before returning to Rome, loaded with presents from Henry, the legates instructed the metropolitans to put the decrees of the Roman synod into force. An attempt to  do so on the part of the archbishop of Mainz caused a furious outburst of indignation among his clergy. The Pope must be a heretic, they exclaimed, to want to force men to live like angels. They would give up their orders rather than their wives, they said, and the Pope might get angels to take their place. So strong, indeed, in certain parts of Germany was the feeling aroused by the attempt to enforce the law of celibacy, that some of the metropolitans, in endeavouring to do so, barely escaped with their lives. The opposition was the stronger since, no doubt, not a few of the clergy had taken to themselves wives, because they really believed that custom at least allowed them to do so.

Though similar disturbances took place in France also, Gregory was not the man to be daunted by displays of violence when there was question of his duty. If the bishops would not be reformed by the Pope, nor the clergy by the bishops, he would bring both to a sense of their duty by the people. Writing to the dukes, Rudolf of Swabia, and Bertulf of Carinthia, he reminds them that most of the bishops have done nothing to give effect to the decrees of council after council since the days of Pope Leo IX. As these decrees concern such weighty matters as simony and clerical incontinence, he will have to employ fresh means to see that they are observed. “It seems to us much better to reconstruct the justice of God even by new methods, than to suffer the souls of men to perish along with the neglected laws. We, therefore, exhort you and all men, whatever henceforth the bishops may say or not say, to refuse, nay, if possible to hinder by force, the ministrations of all those whom you know to be tainted with simony or incontinency. If any should protest that to take such action is outside your province, tell them that they must not interfere with your salvation or that of the people, and that they must come to us to complain of the obedience we have laid on you”. Another letter addressed to all the clergy and laity “in the kingdom of the Teutons”, bids them not obey those bishops who countenance want of chastity on the part of their clergy, since they themselves do not obey the orders of the Apostolic See, nor the authority of the Fathers.

There is no doubt that this “lay remedy” was a drastic one, and productive of some harm by its giving the laity the idea that they were the judges of their pastors; but then all severe remedial measures cause at least some temporary harm, and yet are justified by the permanent gain obtained by them. And so the firmness of Gregory ultimately triumphed over the frantic opposition which it aroused, for men and not angels have since been found in every land ready to serve God and His Church in the observance of that chastity on which he insisted.

As his relations with Henry IV constitute the most  salient feature in Gregory’s career, it is of importance that they should be clearly traced from their commencement. The first point in connection with them which makes itself at once manifest is the effort made by Gregory to develop in Henry a sense of responsibility, and to promote the harmonious working of the spiritual and temporal powers for the benefit of mankind. Understanding, however, that it was with them as with individual men, and that, therefore, each of them could work best when most free, he ceased not withal to strive for the full freedom of the Church.

He began his pontifical life, as we have seen, by notifying his election to Henry, and perhaps by a request, pro forma, that he would acknowledge it. At the same time, writing as Roman Pontiff elect to Duke Godfrey of Lorraine, he laid bare to him his mind and wishes with regard to the king. “No one”, he wrote, “is more anxious and solicitous for his present and future honour than we are. It is our intention on the first opportunity to approach him through our legates with paternal love, and to treat with him on what we believe of importance for the advantage of the Church, and the honour of his royal dignity. If he will listen to us, we shall rejoice in his salvation as much as our own, for he will certainly attain it, if, in maintaining justice, he will give heed to our admonitions and advice. But if, which we trust will not be the case, he returns us hatred for love, and, setting aside what is justly due to God, he repays Him with contempt for the honours He has bestowed upon him, the threat: ‘Cursed be he that withholdeth his sword from blood’, shall, by the mercy of God, not fall upon me. After the words of the apostle : ‘If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ’, we may not put aside the law of God for the sake of anyone, nor for man’s favour leave the path of rectitude”.

What was, at this time especially, distressing Gregory in Henry’s conduct was his continuing to consort with those worthless favourites of his who had been excommunicated by Alexander II; not to speak of his attitude towards the Saxons, and towards the Church of Milan. It was not, as he assured Rudolf of Swabia, that he was animated by any malevolent feelings towards Henry; for “we have chosen him king, and, among all the Italians at the court of his father, the Emperor Henry, of praiseworthy memory, we were specially honoured; and, when the said emperor came to die, he entrusted this son of his to the Roman Church in the person of Pope Victor, of venerable memory”. That there might be true harmony between the Church and the State, he thought it advisable to hold a conference with Rudolf of Swabia, the Empress Agnes, the Duchess Beatrice, and other God-fearing persons, in order that the relations with the king might be regulated by their advice.

Before this projected conference could be realized, the Pope received from Henry a letter “full of sweetness and deference, such as”, wrote Gregory, “neither he nor any of his predecessors ever, as far as we can remember, wrote to a Roman Pontiff”. The fact was that Henry had received a serious blow from the Saxons, with whom he had been at enmity for some time, and was anxious to secure the friendship of the Pope. His letter was addressed : “To the most watchful and most beloved Lord Pope Gregory, gifted from heaven with the apostolic dignity, Henry, by the grace of God, king of the Romans, loyally offers the homage which is his due.

“That the Church and the State, fitly directed in Christ, may endure, they have ever need of one another’s help. Hence is it proper, my lord and well-beloved father, that they should never quarrel, but should rather, by the bond of Christ, ever most closely adhere to one another”. Henry then proceeds to acknowledge that he has not always treated the Church as he ought to have done, and that he has not always used the sword of justice aright. Led astray by youth, by the possession of unlimited power, and by interested advisers, he has seized ecclesiastical property, and handed churches over to unworthy men. But now, touched by the mercy of God, he begs the Pope’s forgiveness and help to amend matters, and he would have him assist him in the first place to bring order into the Church of Milan.

Supposing Henry to be in earnest, Gregory was much touched, and began to look forward with confidence to the great reforms which could be effected by a Pope and an emperor working together. It was not, however, till after his Lenten synod (1074) that he was able to send legates to Germany to take advantage of the king’s good disposition, so that peace might be made between him and the Saxons, and that joint action for the reform of the Church might be concerted. He had been much distressed at the news of the slaughter of men, of the plundering of churches and the poor, and of the general devastation which reached him from the seat of war. And he had written both to the king and the Saxons, imploring them to refrain from hostilities till his legates could arrive, and bring about a lasting peace.

When Cardinal Humbert and the other legates of the Pope reached Germany, Henry was at Bamberg; but as its bishop was guilty of simony, and the legates would not, therefore, go thither, the king came to Nuremberg, where they had halted. He was the more anxious to meet them, seeing that he had been completely worsted by the Saxons. In demolishing the fortress of Harzburg, which he had built to overawe them, they had gone even to the length of digging up the bodies of his relatives which he had buried in the chapel within its walls (March 1074). Unable to avenge this sacrilegious violence, he had turned for help to the Pope and to the laws of the Church; for, as he said, both the civil laws and arms had failed him.

It may perhaps be remembered that it has already been pointed out that this embassy was not wholly successful. The legates were prevented from holding a council, and do not seem to have been able to effect anything towards settling the Saxon difficulties. But both they and the Pope thought that not a little had been done when Henry professed sorrow for the simony of which he had been guilty, and sought and obtained absolution from the general censures pronounced against all such as were guilty of that sin. Besides, he promised to remedy certain abuses at once, and professed the utmost devotion to the Pope. Some of these undertakings he carried out to the letter; but others, notably one with regard to the Church of Milan, he made little or no attempt to fulfil. The fact was that, so far as personal, or, indeed, any other kind of real reforms were concerned, Henry was not in earnest. His worthless counsellors, or rather companions of his base pleasures, were not dismissed; nor were any serious efforts made by him to be just, either towards the Church or towards the Saxons. It was impossible for him, however, to deceive the most watchful Gregory forever, although the Pope showed himself determined to believe the best of him and to close his eyes to his shortcomings as long as he could. But the second year of Gregory’s pontificate will not have closed ere we shall see him striking directly at Henry’s evil advisers and evil ways.  

V

The Beginnings of the Investiture Dispute.

In February 1075 Gregory held his second Lenten synod, at which assisted a multitude of archbishops, bishops, and abbots, and a very great number of clerics and lay­men. Knowing that constantly falling water wears away the hardest rock, the assembled Fathers renewed the decrees against the heresies of Simon Magus and Nicholas, and again forbade the faithful to attend the clerical functions performed by those known to be tainted by them. For various offences several bishops were suspended, among others, Liemar of Hamburg and Heriman, or Herman, of Bamberg. Philip, king of France, was threatened with excommunication for brigandage and simony, and Guiscard, with his nephew, Robert of Loritello, was again laid under the ban of the Church, as an invader of the goods of St. Peter.

But this synod derives its special importance from the steps taken by it against King Henry, and against the practice of investiture. Pope Alexander had declared some of Henry’s evil counsellors excommunicated, and Gregory had, in letter after letter, implored Henry to avoid those advisers who placed gain before justice. The action of Alexander, and the words of Gregory were both alike in vain. Accordingly, picking out five “of the household of the king of the Teutons, by whose advice churches are sold”, the Pope declared them excommunicated, unless they came to Rome, and made suitable satisfaction before the 1st of June.

But this synod of February 1075 took other work in hand which touched Henry more nearly than even the proceedings against certain of his youthful and dissolute counsellors. In estimating the causes of the evils which were stifling the life of the Church, the assembly concluded that the most deadly was investiture. Through it the Church was really ruled by the lay nobility, who used their power over it to replenish the coffers, exhausted by extravagance, the cost of war, and other causes. The powerful but too frequently sold the ecclesiastical positions under their control to the highest bidders, who, when in office, did likewise. Clergy thus appointed were naturally not men imbued with the spirit of their calling. They were laymen at heart, and acted as such. They took to themselves wives, and thought more of them and of their families than they did of the work of God. Were investiture killed, argued the synod, the most poisonous root which was infecting the garden of the Church would be destroyed. To effect its destruction, the following important decree was drawn up : “If anyone shall from henceforth receive from the hand of any layman a bishopric or abbey, let him not be accounted a bishop or abbot, and let no one treat him as a bishop or abbot. We deprive him, moreover, of the grace of St. Peter, and of the right of entry into the Church, until he shall have given up the position he has secured by the sin of ambition and of disobedience, which is as the sin of idolatry. And similarly do we decree concerning the lesser dignities of the Church. Further, if any emperor, duke, marquis, count, or any temporal lord, or indeed any secular person whosoever, shall presume to give investiture of any bishopric or of any ecclesiastical dignity, let him understand that he is bound by the same sentence”.

The Fathers of the synod, however, not unmindful that large numbers of ecclesiastics held lands of feudal chiefs, and would hence owe some kind of acknowledgment for them, realized that there was room for compromise in this matter of investiture. And so, after affirming, in accordance “with the decrees of the Fathers”, the rights of the Church with regard to the appointment of its officials, they would appear to have put forth their decree as it were tentatively, and not definitely, as they did in March 1080. It would seem, at any rate, that it was in connection with this decree that Gregory made an offer of negotiation in the last letter which he wrote to Henry. While affirming that in drawing up the decision in question there had been no innovation, the Pontiff wrote : “However, lest this decree should appear to you unduly severe, we have instructed those of your subjects who are here to beg you not to allow the change of a bad custom to disturb you, but to send to us some of the good and wise men of your country. If they can show how, without sacrificing God’s honour, or endangering our soul’s salvation, we can modify the decree of the Fathers which has been promulgated, we will willingly follow their opinions. And even if we had not made you this friendly offer, it would have been proper, before you violated the apostolic decrees, to have shown us in what we had aggrieved you or detracted from the honour which is your due. But your after conduct proclaimed how much you care for our admonitions, or for the observance of justice”.

In the interval, however, between his hearing of the investiture decree and his receiving this letter from the Pope, Henry’s position at home had materially improved. He had defeated the Saxons on the Unstrut (June), and bad received their submission (October). He was in a better position to set at naught the laws of God and man with at least temporary impunity.

Before the final surrender of the Saxons he had continued to temporize to some extent with the Papacy. Gregory had never ceased his efforts to reform the Church in Germany, exhorting its archbishops to enforce his decrees, summoning to Rome bishops accused of simony, and reminding all of them that “it has ever been the right of the Church of Rome, and ever will be, to devise against fresh disorders new laws and remedies which, put forth as they are with the sanction of reason and authority, may not be regarded as null by any man”. With the zeal of the Pope, Henry made some pretence of co-operating, and even succeeded in winning Gregory’s approval for his efforts. Moreover, “perceiving”, as he said, “that nearly all the great ones of his kingdom rejoiced more over any discord between the Pope and himself than over their good understanding”, he sent envoys to confirm that understanding, and to ask for the imperial crown. To this Gregory had replied that he desired to have Christ’s peace “not only with you, whom God has placed in the highest human position”, but with all men. He had begun, he continued, to conceive great hopes when he perceived that Henry had commenced to entrust the affairs of the Church to men who really loved the rulers of the Church and State, and not what they could get from them. “The counsel of these men I am prepared to follow, to open to you the bosom of the Roman Church, to accept you as my lord, my brother, and my son, and to help you as opportunity offers, asking nothing of you but that you should attend to the advice which is offered you regarding your salvation, and that you should not refuse to offer to your Creator the honour and glory which is His due”.

But although, as early as September 11, Gregory unfolded to Beatrice and Matilda certain reasons for distrust which Henry had already given him, no overt act of hostility had then taken place between them. Events that took place in Milan caused Henry definitely to throw off the mask, and to make it evident that he would not be thwarted by the laws of the Church if he could help it.

When Gregory became Pope, the See of Milan was in the hands of Godfrey, who had been simoniacally elected, while Atto, who was its legitimate bishop, was in exile in Rome. Headed by the knight Herlembald, who was vigorously supported by Gregory, the Patarines were able to deprive Godfrey of any influence. Unfortunately, however, Herlembald committed the great mistake of interfering in matters of comparatively trifling account when great issues were at stake. In attempting to enforce in Milan the use of the Roman liturgy, he was slain (May 1075) by the Milanese capitanei in accordance with a promise they had previously made to Henry.

The death of Herlembald was one of the greatest misfortunes which could have befallen the party of reform in north Italy. It was now without a head. The power of Gregory’s enemies there was further strengthened by the adhesion to their ranks of Archbishop Guibert of Ravenna. He had been deposed by Gregory for refusing to attend the synod of February. Despising excommunication, the shifty Cardinal Hugo Candidus also transferred his allegiance to the foes of the Church, and vainly endeavoured to induce Robert Guiscard to do likewise.

With the Saxons under his feet, and north Italy by his side, Henry felt that he was in a position to dictate. To extend, however, his influence in Italy, he sent thither, as his agent, Count Ebehard of Nellenburg (c. the end of November). Ebehard was one of the king’s counsellors who had been excommunicated by the Pope, and the choice of such an envoy shows the spirit in which Henry was acting. Ebehard’s first mission was to the Milanese. He congratulated them on having slain Herlembald, declared the Patarines public enemies, made war on some of them, and, as though wantoning in power, proposed to the capitanei of Milan to elect yet another archbishop. Nothing loath, they chose a cleric named Tedald (or Theobald), a man of noble family, but “of more stoutness than virtue”. It is to be presumed that Godfrey was for some cause or other not sufficiently active in the interests of the schismatical party. At any rate, though he had previously invested Godfrey, Henry now invested Tedald —“an extraordinary proceeding”, adds even the imperialist Arnulf, “and one altogether hitherto unheard of, that a city, which has one bishop elect, and a second consecrated, should have a third bestowed upon it”.

Ebehard, in his endeavours to increase his master’s hold on Italy, did not confine himself to north Italy. Like Hugo Candidus, he tampered with Guiscard’s loyalty, such as it was, to the Pope. In company with Gregory, bishop of Vercelli, he visited Guiscard, and endeavoured to persuade him that his possessions and prospects would be surer if he held his conquests of the king, and not of the Pope. But the wily Norman replied that to ensure his continuing to receive the aid of God and the holy apostles, Peter and Paul, he preferred to remain a vassal of the Pope; but that if the king, out of his abundance, were to grant him some additional lands, he would, without sacrifice of his fidelity to the Church, acknowledge the suzerainty of the king in their regard.

Though baffled by Robert, Ebehard was able to report to his master that he might count on north Italy, and need not be afraid of opposition from the Normans. Their duke was too much engrossed with his own plans to concern himself with the doings of the king or the Pope, so long as neither of them interfered with southern Italy.

Despite the fact that Gregory’s rights, both spiritual and temporal, had been so flouted by Henry, he still endeavoured to avoid a conflict. He wrote in a firm but conciliatory spirit to Tedald, reminding him of the previous election of Atto, exhorting him to come to Rome under a safe conduct, in order that his claims might be carefully examined, and forbidding him in the meantime to receive any sacred orders. “If you do not see fit to obey us now, you will regret it when, by your hastiness, you find your­self immersed in an abyss whence you will not be able to extricate yourself, even when you wish”. In fine, he warned him not to heed those who would persuade him to trust in the might of the king, of the nobility, and of his fellow- citizens. “The power of kings and emperors, and all the efforts of all men against the rights of the Apostolic See, and the omnipotence of the great God, are as a little ash and straw”. This letter was immediately followed by another to Gregory of Vercelli and the other suffragans of Milan, forbidding them, in the meanwhile, to bestow any sacred orders on Tedald, “whom the king has placed in the Church of Milan against his written and verbal promise”.

Tedald paid no regard to Gregory’s earnest exhortations, but took forcible possession of the archbishopric of Milan; and Henry, without the slightest reference to the Pope, and in defiance of all right, bestowed the Sees of Fermo and Spoleto on two of his clerics.

This outrageous conduct drew from Gregory a strong protest, which took the form of a letter to Henry. It is the last, to Henry, as far at least as we know, that the Pope addressed to him.

“Gregory, servant of the servants of God, to King Henry health and apostolic benediction, if he yields to the Apostolic See that obedience which is due from a Christian king”.

In the first instance, Henry is reminded that, if the report be true that he consorts with those who have been excommunicated, he is not in a condition to receive the blessing either of Heaven or of the Holy See. If he feels himself guilty in this respect, he should, by a prompt confession, secure the good advice of some holy bishop. The Pope assured Henry that he empowered the prelate of his choice to absolve him, and to impose a suitable penance upon him. With the king’s consent the said bishop could make known to the Pope the measure of his repentance. Henry is next upbraided because his honied words, and those of his envoys, do not in the least correspond with his action, for instance, with regard to the Churches of Milan, Fermo, and Spoleto. As he calls himself a son of the Church, it behoves him to show respect to its head, St. Peter, and his successors. Consequently, when the Pope speaks in conformity with the dictates of the Fathers, he who would obey the ordinance of God must conform to his admonitions.

Referring, then, to the synod of February 1075, and, seemingly, to a decree against investitures passed thereat, the Pope expresses his willingness to compromise in that matter as far as is at all possible.

This, one of Gregory’s very few long letters, concludes with the hope that the natural development of Henry’s intellect will lead him to obey the behests of Christ, and not to interfere with the liberty of the Church, His spouse. God has given him a great victory: let him not, then, imitate Saul, who, under similar circumstances, drunk with glory, despised the words of the priests, but rather let him copy the humility of David.

How little this paternal exhortation affected Henry, the sequel will show. But while his criminal administration was deservedly raising up life-long enemies against him, Gregory’s conscientious endeavours to promote the cause of God and man were having the same effect in his regard. One of the most bitter of his foes was Cencius, the son of Stephen, once prefect of the city. Cencius was a worthy survivor of the worst type of the Roman robber-baron of the tenth century. In the castle of St. Angelo he had given an asylum to Cadalous (1063); and in forts which he possessed in the Campagna and by the bridge of St. Peter he found both a coign of vantage whence to prey upon the weak, and a place of refuge from the hands of justice. Convicted at length of trying by forgery to obtain property that belonged to the Holy See, he would have been put to death, but for the intercession of the Countess Matilda. Hating the hand that had set him free, he spent the year 1075 in gathering round him other evil-doers who had suffered from, or who feared, the justice of Gregory. By the close of the year his plans were matured. He would slay the man who had granted him his life, and he would do the deed on the first convenient opportunity.

His chance came at Christmas time. On Christmas Eve a terrific storm burst over the city of Rome. The wind howled through its narrow streets, and brought down such a tempest of rain that the terrified people were not only unable to go to so distant a church as that of St. Mary Major, where the Pope was wont to inaugurate the devotions of Christmas time, but, while kept within doors, were led to think of the great Deluge, and of what a suitable day it was for the commission of a great crime.

The storm, however, did not prevent Gregory from leaving his palace and going to the exposed Church of St. Mary on the Esquiline Hill. There he sang Mass, and it is to be supposed partook, in company with all his court, of the special banquet which it was the duty of the cardinal-bishop of Albano to furnish on that day.

The accomplices of Cencius were on the watch. If there were few at the Pope’s Mass on Christmas Eve, there would be still fewer at his midnight Mass. When the darkness of night added to the horrors of the storm, Cencius gathered together his gang armed them, and provided them with horses, so that they might ride away in safety after they had slain the Pope or seized him alive. Gregory said his first Mass at the altar where, according to tradition, was preserved the manger in which our Saviour had been laid. He and the assistant clergy had just communicated, and were distributing the Body of the Lord to the faithful, when, on a sudden, there rang through the great, almost empty basilica the sound of the clash of arms and the fierce cries of bloodthirsty men. The ruffians who had thus violated the House of God made a dash for the chapel in which the Pope was celebrating. Those who opposed them or were in their way were struck down with the sword. One of the band even made a wild attempt to strike off the head of the Pope, but did no more than inflict a severe wound on his forehead. His comrades, however, seized Gregory, tore off with the utmost violence his pallium, his chasuble, his dalmatic, and his tunic, hurried him from the church, and forced him, still clad in his alb and stole, on to the back of a horse behind one of the gang, as if he had been a common thief. Then, as though the fiend were behind them as well as in their hearts, the whole troop charged through the blinding storm to one of the towers of Cencius by the Piazza Navona.

In the midst of all this brutal fury, we are told that Gregory, “like an innocent and gentle lamb”, did naught but raise his eyes to heaven. He gave his assailants no answer, upbraided them not, resisted them not, nor begged for mercy. But we are equally told that the wretch who had struck the Pontiff with his sword was possessed by the devil, and for a long time lay rolling on the ground foaming at the mouth in front of the atrium of the church, while his horse galloped away and was seen no more.

The news of the dread deed which had been done soon spread through the city, for the storm ceased as though “not to hinder the people who were zealous with the zeal of the Lord”. The altars of the churches were at once stripped, and all divine services were brought to an abrupt end. All the rest of the night the alarm bells rang out, and trumpets sounded, while soldiers patrolled the city to find whither the Pope had been carried, and men were set to watch the gates, lest an attempt should be made to carry him out of the city.

Meanwhile in his prison Gregory was being treated with sympathy and with insolence and violence. “A certain man, with a certain noble matron”, were carried off, we are told, along with the Pope. And while the man tried to warm him by covering him with his own furs, and placing his cold feet against his breast, the matron dressed the wound on his forehead, and fearlessly denounced his captors.

But while one woman tried to console him, another, the sister of Cencius, did not hesitate to revile him in the bitterest terms; and her brother’s bravos added their threats to her vituperations. Cencius himself stood over him with his drawn sword, and with all the fury of a mad­man threatened him with the direst extremities if he did not hand over to him his treasure and the castle of St. Angelo, and his other strongest castles.

At length, as a result of inquiries and searches eagerly prosecuted in every direction, word was brought to the people assembled in the Capitol that their beloved bishop was alive, but was a captive in a tower of Cencius. With loud shouts all encouraged one another to vengeance, and as soon as morning broke they precipitated themselves on the fortress with the utmost fury. “Not a man thought of his own danger, but, utterly forgetful of himself, fought with all his might”. Fire, battering-rams, and siege-engines of every kind soon reduced Cencius and his gang to straits. A javelin hurled from without by one of the assailants pierced a ruffian in the throat who was at the moment threatening to cut off the head of the Pope. “It threw his body”, adds Paul Bernried, “quivering in death to the ground, and sent his soul to hell”.

Overcome now with the fear of immediate death, Cencius fell upon his knees before the Pontiff he had so grievously outraged, and implored his forgiveness. For the injuries he had inflicted on himself Gregory freely granted him pardon, but to atone for his offences against God he commanded him to present himself to him again after having made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But there was not even a spark of virtue in Cencius. No sooner was he free than he threw himself into one of his castles in the Campagna, ravaged the property of the Roman Church, and continued till the hour of his death his machinations against the man who had with great difficulty succeeded in saving his life.

Masters of the tower, the people escorted the Pope at his own request back to the Church of St. Mary Major with feelings not only of joy, but of grief, for they realized when they saw him covered with blood something of what he had been made to suffer. When he reached the church, Gregory, supported by two assistants, calmly concluded before them all the Mass he had been prevented from finishing, and then returned to the Lateran in the prescribed manner.

As though nothing unusual had happened, Gregory allowed the crown to be placed upon his head by the archdeacon, mounted his horse, and proceeded to the Lateran Palace by the accustomed route. This was by the eastern side of the Church of S. Prassede, under the arch near the Church of St. Vitus in the modern street of S. Vito, and in the old market of Livia, and by the reservoir and fountain (Nymphaeum) known in the Middle Ages as Cimbrum, from its supposed connection with Marius. Thereabouts it turned south into the Via Merulana, which in part of its course was identical with the present street of that name, and ran direct to the Lateran Palace “in the neighbourhood of the fullery”.

At the head of this papal procession there proudly marched twelve soldiers (milites draconarii), who bore the twelve standards (pandora) of the city’s regions. With the draconarii was led for the Pope a second horse fully caparisoned. Next, carried aloft, was the cross. After the cross came the bishops, and behind them the notaries singing. Then followed the cardinals, and then the arch­deacon, the primicerius, and the deacons and subdeacons, two and two. Behind them, on horseback, rode the Pope. Following him came the prefect of the city, wearing a precious mantle and shod with buskins, one of which was ornamented in gold and the other in red. The procession was closed by the judges in great cloaks or copes. Its arrangement, and the preservation of its order, seem to have been in the hands of two captains of the fleet (praefecti navales), called Drungarii, who also wore great cloaks (pluviales) and carried batons. They were assisted by mounted majorentes or the schola stimulati, in silken mantles, and also carrying batons.

The cavalcade halted at the first of the great group of buildings which then formed the Lateran, viz., at the library called, from Pope Zachary’s additions to it, the Basilica Zachariae. The cardinals dismounted before the Pope, received his blessing, and, in the ordinary form of the laudes, wished Gregory “long life”, and called upon God and His saints to grant it to him, and to help him. In return for their good wishes they each received three solidi. After the judges also had wished the Pope “many years”, and that both he and all might have “a happy life”(tempora bona), the Pope dismounted, and was led into the palace by the primicerius and secundicerius of the defensors.

Gregory then distributed the accustomed largess (presbyterium) “to all the orders”, and, as also on Easter Sunday, a manus—that is, a double presbyterium—to the heads (priores) of the different orders or scholae. Thus the primicerius of the judges, the first (prior) of the bishops, and the first of the cardinals each received four solio and a manus. The prefect received the largest sum, twenty solidi and a manus, while the regionary prior only received two solidi with his manus.

When the presentation of the largess was over, the whole company adjourned to the great triclinium of Leo III to dine together. On the right of the Pope sat the bishops and cardinals, and on his left the archdeacon, the deacon, the primicerius, the prior basilicarius, and the prior regionarius. When the feast was nearly half over, at a sign from the archdeacon, a deacon read a lesson from a book of homilies which an ostiarius had placed in the midst on a stand. The cantors then sang, “in modulated tones”, the Sequence “Laetabundus”, and, after kissing the Pope’s feet, received from the sacellarius (paymaster) for their services not only a byzant apiece, but a cup of wine which the Pope had touched with his lips. “When the banquet was over”, concludes the Ordo of Benedict, “all returned, or, if cardinals, were escorted, to their homes”.

Meanwhile the people, after the Pope had completed his Mass, devoted themselves to wreaking vengeance on Cencius and his followers. As many of the latter as they encountered they put to death, “against the wishes of the Pope”. They plundered or destroyed their goods, levelled the towers of Cencius to the ground, and declared his property confiscated to the State.

VI

THE COUNCIL OF WORMS; CANOSSA.

GREGORY’S important letter of December 1075  to Henry had concluded thus: “With regard to the points in your letters on which we have not touched, we shall not give definite replies to them until your ambassadors, Rabbod, etc., and those whom we have attached to them, have returned to us, and more fully made known to us your intentions with regard to those matters on which we have commissioned them to treat with you”.

In the beginning of January the envoys met the king at Goslar. But they were unable to extract from him any satisfactory assurances of an alteration in his policy towards the Holy See, or towards the Saxon bishops he had imprisoned. Still less would he promise to reform his private life, or to abandon the society of those who had already been excommunicated. The envoys, thereupon, gave him to understand that he would be excommunicated, and hence deprived of his kingdom, in the approaching Roman synod (February 22), unless he made atonement for his misdeeds. Lambert of Hersfeld, indeed, declares that the envoys cited Henry himself, under pain of excommunication, to appear before the synod to defend his conduct in person. But in this respect, to judge from Gregory’s letters and from the chroniclers Bruno, Berthold, and Bernald, he is certainly mistaken. It is to be observed that Henry was threatened with excommunication not on any political count, but by reason of his personal crimes. The king, like the poorest of his subjects, was a member of the Church; and hence, if he sinned, was amenable to its jurisdiction just as every other one of its members. It was because he was a sinful man, because he was grossly and notoriously immoral, and consorted with the excommunicated, and not because he was a political offender, that Gregory claimed authority over him. This he makes very clear in his subsequent apology for his action addressed to the German people.

At any rate, Henry was infuriated at meeting with opposition from Rome, when he had humbled his enemies at home, and had just induced the nobility to promise to elect his son Conrad as his successor. In hot haste he summoned a diet, “especially of those bishops and princes on whom he could rely”, to meet forthwith at Worms. On January 24 there gathered round him in that ancient city the two metropolitans of Mainz (Siegfried) and Trier, twenty-four bishops, of whom one was from Italy, a great number of abbots, and not a few of the princes of the empire The most important ecclesiastic present was the degraded or excommunicated Cardinal Hugo Candidus.

Denouncing Gregory in a series of “tragic lies”, he declared that he had been improperly elected, had stirred up discord all over Europe, and had degraded the episcopal office. He even had the effrontery to denounce his relations with the Countess Matilda. Many of the bishops present, conscious of their own shortcomings in the eyes of the Pope, made no difficulty in accepting these assertions, and all were compelled to sign a declaration to the effect that they would not in future render him any obedience, and that, as he had often said that they were not bishops, they would not regard him as their apostolicus. One or two, indeed, resisted for a time. They pointed out that it was contrary to the canons to condemn any bishop in his absence, not to say the bishop of Rome, against whom no accusation, whether of bishop or archbishop, was valid. Under pressure, however, they gave way, and signed the document. But a deeper humiliation was in store for them, and for as many as had signed the general decree through fear. In most instances against his will each bishop was compelled to sign a private deed setting forth that he henceforth forbade any obedience to be paid to Hildebrand, and that he would nevermore acknowledge him as apostolicus. “Behold!” exclaimed Gebehard of Salzburg, “the source of all the troubles we are enduring ... the source of all our sorrows. ... Bishops decree that a servant of a king has a right to bid the supreme Pontiff come down from his episcopal seat”."

Henry had now fairly crossed the Rubicon. His intemperate action had kindled a fire which was destined to consume many. His first act was to send the decree of the diet of Worms to the bishops of north Italy, who heartily endorsed it at Piacenza and Pavia, but dared not take it to Rome. At length, however, a certain Roland, a canon of Parma, was found bold enough to carry Henry’s missives to the Pope.

Making the greatest haste, Roland arrived in Rome the day before the opening of the synod which Gregory had long previously fixed for February 14. He at once put in circulation a letter which Henry had addressed to all the clergy and people of the Roman Church, calling on them to be loyal to him, and to depose the monk Hildebrand, the oppressor of the Church, the enemy of the Roman Republic and of the German kingdom, the intruder who had attempted to humiliate the bishops of the empire, and had declared that at the cost of his life he would deprive the king of his existence and of his kingdom. It was, so the document reminded the Romans, in virtue of his power as patricius of Rome that he summoned Hildebrand to descend from the chair of Peter.

When the Pope had opened the synod at the Lateran in the presence of a hundred and ten bishops, and a large number of clerics and laics, among whom was the empress- mother Agnes, Roland stepped audaciously forward. “My lord the king”, he began, “and all the bishops beyond the Alps, as well as these of Lombardy, bid you quit forthwith the See of Peter, into which you have intruded yourself. No one has a right to this great honour except him who has received a mandate from the bishops and the approval of the king”. Then, addressing the clergy, he continued: “You, my brethren, are summoned to appear before the king on the feast of Pentecost, to receive from his hands a Pope and Father; for this man is no Pope, but a ravenous wolf”. “Seize him”, thundered out John, the cardinal-bishop of Porto. Instantly the great basilica rang with cries of “Death to the insolent knave!”, swords flashed from their sheaths, and but for Gregory’s throwing himself in front of him, the king’s messenger would have been cut to pieces by the prefect, the nobles, and the soldiers.

When order had been restored, the Pope commanded that the letter from the king which Roland had brought should be read aloud forthwith. It was with profound astonishment that the assembly listened to the following extraordinary epistle : “Henry, king, not by usurpation, but by the holy will of God, to Hildebrand, now no longer the apostolicus, but a false monk”. After asserting that Gregory had trampled upon the episcopal order, and, mistaking the king’s anxiety for the honour of the Apostolic See for fear, had dared to threaten to deprive him of his kingdom, he declared to him that he had lawfully received his power from Jesus Christ, whereas Gregory had gained the Apostolic See by fraud, by force, and by gold. “You have assailed me, though according to the tradition of the Fathers, I am to be judged by God alone, and not to be deposed except, which God forbid, I should fall away from the faith ... Condemned by all our bishops and by us, come down, and leave the apostolic chair you have usurped. Let another mount the throne of Blessed Peter, who, under cover of religion, will not teach war. . . I, Henry, by the grace of God, king, with all our bishops, say unto thee, damned for ever, come down, come down!”

When the Fathers of the council met on the following day, they called on the Pope to pass sentence on the rebellious bishops, and on Henry, the author of their revolt. Accordingly, invoking St. Peter, who had nourished him from his infancy, to bear witness that he had against his will been set over the Roman Church, Gregory declared it to be his belief that it was the will of the saint “that the Christian people, specially committed to thee, should obey me in thy stead. Through thy favour I have received from God the power of binding and of loosing in heaven and in earth. Relying on this, for the honour and defence of thy Church, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and by thy power and authority, I forbid to King Henry, who through unexampled pride has rebelled against thy Holy Church, the government of the whole realm of Germany and of Italy; I absolve all Christians from the oaths which they have taken or may take to him; and I decree that no one shall obey him as king, for it is fitting that he, who has endeavoured to diminish the honour of thy Church, should himself lose that honour which he seems to have. And because he has scorned the obedience of a Christian, refusing to return to the Lord, whom he had driven from him by his communion with the excommunicate; by spurning, as thou knowest, the admonitions given by me for his own safety’s sake; and by severing himself from thy Church in the attempt to divide it, I, in thy stead, bind him with the bond of anathema; thus acting in confidence on thee, that the nations may know and acknowledge that thou art Peter, that upon thy rock the Son of the living God hath built his Church, and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”.

The bishops of Germany and Lombardy who had co­operated with the king were suspended from the performance of their episcopal functions, and cut off from the communion of Christ’s body and blood. Those, however, who had yielded an unwilling consent to Henry’s acts were given till the feast of St. Peter to make satisfaction to the Pope, and so avoid the general sentence. And, even before the council had finished its sittings, letters were received from some of the German bishops, in which they acknowledged their fault, begged pardon for their offence, and promised henceforth the obedience of children to their father.

The council was no sooner over than, addressing a letter to all those who wished to be of the number of those sheep whom Christ had entrusted to St. Peter, Gregory called their attention to the outrage which the action of Henry had put upon the authority which had been given to the first of the of apostles; begged them to pray that the impious might be converted or confounded; and set forth the reasons why Henry had been excommunicated. He also took an early opportunity of protesting that, in what he had done, he had acted from zeal for justice, and not from any personal ill-feeling.

When this momentous piece of intelligence was made known to the world, there were some who did not hesitate to tell the Pope that kings could not be excommunicated. To these, however, he simply replied, “When with the words 'Feed my sheep', God thrice entrusted his Church to Blessed Peter, did He except kings? When chiefly to him He gave the power of binding and loosing in heaven and in earth, He made no exceptions; He did not withdraw anyone from under his authority. He who asserts that he cannot be bound by the Church’s bonds, confesses that he cannot be loosed by her authority. And he who makes such an assertion, separates himself wholly from Christ”.

 As soon as the news of Henry’s excommunication got abroad, “the whole Roman world trembled”. The king heard of it at Utrecht. His fury may be easily imagined, and he at once ordered a bishop to tell the people that the censure was impotent. But, to his chagrin, the bishop immediately fled from his court, and though William of Utrecht readily fulfilled his wishes, he quickly realized that the ground was crumbling beneath his feet. To the horror of everyone, William died soon after in despair of his salvation for his contempt of the Pope (April 27, 1076). Word, too, was brought to Henry that some of the bishops who had supported him at Worms were seeking to be reconciled with the Pope. And if by the assassination of Godfrey the Hunchback, of Lorraine (February 26, 1076), he gained a duchy, he lost his ablest general and most talented supporter. Furthermore, it was already hinted to him that the princes of the empire had begun to abandon him.

Nevertheless, he did not hesitate to summon them to meet him at Worms on the feast of Pentecost: “Our interests, and the interests of the bishops, ay, even of the whole oppressed Church, require it”, he wrote, “for Hildebrand has, against the will of God, made himself lord of the empire and of the episcopate, and has thereby ignored His will that those two powers should not be held in one hand, as He typically foreshadowed when He said that the two swords were enough” (St. Luke XXII. 38).

But, through insufficient attendance, the assembly of Worms was a failure, so that a new diet was appointed to be held at Mainz on June 29. The greatest lay princes of the empire, however, were conspicuous by their absence from this assembly also. Nevertheless, the king’s bishops again declared Gregory excommunicated, and his sentence against the king of no avail. But Henry was to learn that for him or his to declare the Pope deposed was one thing, but that it was another and a very different thing for the Pope to pronounce him excommunicated and deprived of his kingdom. The question of the justice of these sentences was soon being debated throughout the whole empire. And though there were some who would not admit that the Pope had a right to decide that the king had forfeited his crown, those who correctly comprehended the relations which then held between the Church and the State concluded that the Pope was within his rights. They remembered that when Henry was elected, it had been “on the understanding that he shall prove a just king”, and that it was a law of the empire that “if a man were not absolved from a sentence of excommunication within a year and a day, he was to be deprived of every dignity”.

The further the news of the king’s excommunication spread, the more rapidly did he lose supporters. Udo, the metropolitan of Trier, returned from Rome, where he had made his peace with Gregory, and induced other bishops to follow his example. Many more, both clergy and laity, abandoned Henry on becoming acquainted with the contents of one or other of the circular letters which Gregory kept dispatching “to all the bishops, abbots, and priests, to all the dukes, princes, and knights, and to all Christians who dwell in the Roman Empire and really love the Christian faith and the honour of Blessed Peter”. Some of the letters were addressed to the bishops, exhorting them to repent as they held the same faith as the Pope, and knew their duty.[ Others urged those to whom they were sent to do their best to induce Henry to return to the right path, and to avoid the society of such as held intercourse with the excommunicated monarch. Others again, of an apologetic character, established Gregory’s right to excommunicate the king. In them he quoted the examples of Pope Zachary’s deposition of Childeric III; of St. Gregory I imposing excommunication, with loss of dignity, on kings or anyone else who should violate the privilege he granted to a hospital at Autun; and of St. Ambrose excommunicating the great emperor Theodosius. He explained that from the time when he was a deacon he had endeavoured to turn Henry away from his evil courses, that he had made greater efforts after he became Pope, that Henry had only grown more wicked with advancing age, and that his exhortations had been merely met with promises of amendment. When at length he had been compelled to excommunicate those who were basely trafficking in churches, Henry openly received them into his society; and, when he had been still further rebuked for his dreadful crimes, he had caused almost all the bishops of Italy (Lombardy), and such German bishops as he could, to be false to the obedience they owed the Apostolic See. For these reasons he had excommunicated him : and he now forbade him to be absolved without his knowledge. Finally, he made it known that, “with due regard for justice”, he would support those who were talking of electing a new king.  

THE SAXON WAR

Perhaps the most serious blow which these letters inflicted on Henry’s cause was the encouragement they gave to the Saxons. To appreciate the force of this remark, a few words must be said regarding Henry’s dealings with these, the most warlike people of his dominions.

Whether the recollection that their country had given the first rulers to the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation made them naturally hostile to the Franconian line, it is certain that they were much attached to their local chiefs, liberties, and customs, and were ever ready to resent interference with any of them. But Henry, so far from attempting to respect their prejudices, acted as though he cared neither for their feelings nor their liberties. In the early part of his reign, he spent most of his time n Saxony, slighting its chiefs and outraging its maidens. This led the Saxons to appeal to the Pope and to rebellion. Acting on the advice of Adalbert of Bremen, who had his own reasons for not loving the Saxons, Henry began to erect fortresses all over Saxony and Thuringia, with a view to overawing the people (1069). His favourite one was at Hartzburg. He next irritated the Saxon chiefs by unjustly depriving Otho of Nordheim, a Saxon by birth, of the Duchy of Bavaria (1070), and by keeping young Magnus, the heir of their Duke Ordulf (d. 1073), a prisoner during two years for supporting Otho when he vainly endeavoured to resist the confiscation of his duchy.

At length, infuriated by the licentious behaviour of the garrisons which the king had placed in his castles, by his threat to cut off the heads of any who appealed to Rome, by his contemptuous disregard of the protestations and demands of their chiefs, and by the discovery which they had made that he was trying to rouse the Danes and others against them, the Saxons rose “as one man”, and marched straight on Hartzburg. Henry fled for his life to the monastery of Hersfeld, where Lambert was engaged in writing the annals we are constantly quoting. No sooner had he left their country, than the Saxons at once began to destroy his castles; and a conference between the Saxon chiefs and representatives of the king, held at Gerstungen in October, simply ended in a further loss of popularity by Henry, even among those of the princes who were supposed to be attached to him. It is also said that it was already proposed, if not decided, to depose Henry, and place the crown upon the head of Rudolf of Swabia. Odium was still further excited against Henry by the assertion of one of his followers that he had wished him to assassinate the Dukes Rudolf of Swabia and Berthold of Carinthia. His case would have been hopeless had he not found a powerful support in the loyalty of the citizens of Worms, to which city he had betaken himself in December.

At this junctures Gregory dispatched a letter to the Saxon leaders in the interests of peace. Henry had asked the Pope’s help in his difficulties,6 and there can be no doubt that, despite his threats, the Saxons had made the latter acquainted with their position.

Expressing his regret at the quarrel which had broken out between them and the king, at the consequent loss of life, conflagrations, pillage of churches and of the poor, and at the ruin of the country, Gregory conjured them to abstain from hostilities until he should be able to send legates to re-establish peace. He assured them that he had written to the same effect to Henry. “And since, as you know, for us to lie would be a sacrilege, and to abandon justice would be to make shipwreck of our souls, we would not have one of you doubt that, with the help of God, we will endeavour to decide and solidly to carry into effect whatever, after careful discussion of the question, shall appear to be just. Whichever party we shall find to be the injured one, and to be suffering from outraged justice, on that, without fear or respect of persons, will we bestow our favour and the protection of our apostolic authority”. But, unfortunately for themselves, the Saxons were too much elated by their success to listen to the Pope. Events were to take their course unrestrained by the guiding hand of Gregory.

Failing in an attempt to surprise the Saxons by a winter campaign, Henry was compelled to make peace with them, and to agree to their conditions (February 1074). One of these was that his Saxon castles should be surrendered and destroyed. Flushed with their success, and fired with the spirit of revenge, the Saxon people went beyond the legal fulfilment of the treaty. Having obtained possession of Hartzburg, they were not content till they had dug up the remains of Henry’s son and brother, and burnt them along, with the monastery and church he had erected in the interior of his fortress.

Unable at the moment to avenge these outrages by force of arms, he sent legates to Rome to make a strong appeal against their authors, and he resolved at the same time to take a bitter revenge on them as soon as circumstances would permit. Sparing no pains to secure allies, and scorning all attempts made by the Saxon chiefs to atone for the wanton destruction of Hartzburg, he was at length able to enter Saxony with one of the largest and best appointed armies that had ever obeyed a German king (June 1075). With him, besides the Dukes Rudolf, Welf of Bavaria, and Godfrey of Lorraine, marched Wratislaus with his Bohemians, and the Rhineland burghers. The Saxons were taken by surprise, and suffered a terrible defeat on the banks of the Unstrut (June 9). But the losses they endured on the field of battle were small compared with the miseries inflicted on them and their unhappy country after the battle was over. Henry’s troops acted as if every license was permitted them, and continued so to act until want of provisions forced the king to disband them with an order to reassemble in the autumn. In the interval the Saxons made the most piteous appeals to Henry for mercy. But if they made not the slightest impression on their cruel king, they did on many of his great feudatories, and when the autumn came, his army mustered without the contingents of Rudolf, Welf, and Berthold of Carinthia. They repented them, they said, of the terrible bloodshed at the Unstrut, and they were disgusted at the hard-heartedness of the king.

When in October the Saxons and the forces of the king once more stood face to face, the chiefs of both sides showed themselves averse to further fighting. After much negotiation, the Saxon leaders, both clerical and lay, relying on the pledges of the king’s principal nobles, gave themselves into his hands on the understanding that their surrender was simply to satisfy his honour, and that they were to be speedily released without suffering any other disabilities. No sooner, however, were they in his power than, entrusting them to the safe keeping of his adherents in different parts of the empire, he made it plain that their confinement was not to be of short duration, seized their goods, and again lorded it tyrannically over Saxony.

Whilst the Saxons were still unsubdued, Henry professed to listen with respect to the admonitions of the Pope, and, as we have seen, promised amendment; but now “he wholly set them at naught, and made it a point ostentatiously to hold intercourse with those of his counsellors and intimates who had been excommunicated in the synod at Rome and ceased not to harass the churches of God, as had been his previous custom”. His reply to a strong remonstrance on the part of Gregory had been to declare him deposed.

But after his unwarrantable conduct had brought excommunication upon him, he soon began, despite his victories, to find himself in great straits.

The oppressed Saxons were delighted when they heard of his excommunication, and their joy was intensified when they found first one and then another of their leaders returning to them. Some of them had escaped from the hands of their captors, but many more had been released when Henry’s excommunication was proclaimed (April-May). Under their old chiefs, the people once again flew to arms, and Henry’s castles were soon in their hands. An attempt which he made to subdue the rebels ended in complete failure, and in the autumn, at Worms, he heard that the Saxons had appealed to the Pope to come to the aid “of a nation well-nigh ruined”, and that the great ones of the empire, clerical and lay, had called upon the whole nobility to assemble at Tribur on October 16, “in order that, by common consent, they might decide what was to be done in this important crisis”.

While Henry in impotent anxiety moved forward to Oppenheim on the left bank of the Rhine, there assembled to the east of that river, at Tribur, near Darmstadt—a place already famous, for the deposition of Charles the Fat— the great bishops and lords of the empire, accompanied by powerful retinues of Saxons and Swabians. There were also present two legates of the Pope, viz. Sieghard, patriarch of Aquileia, and Altman, bishop of Passau. At first the assembly showed itself very bitter against Henry. His repeated promises of amendment of life were unheeded, and many wished to proclaim a new king[ and to attack Henry forthwith. Apparently, however, through the efforts of the Pope’s legates, more moderate counsels prevailed. The monarch was duly informed that it had been decided to leave the decision regarding his case to the Roman Pontiff, who was to be asked to meet the great ones of the empire at a diet at Augsburg on the Feast of the Purification (February 2, 1077). If, on the anniversary day of his excommunication, he was still under the Church’s ban, he was to lose his dignity for ever, for the law forbade further administration to anyone who had been under sentence of excommunication for a year. Should he accept these conditions, he was to dismiss his army and his excommunicated counsellors, and retire to Spires and await, living as a private person, the coming of the Pope. They, however, on the other hand, engaged, if he proved true to his promises, to accompany him to Italy that he might receive the imperial crown, and drive the Normans from Apulia and Calabria. With these hard conditions Henry was compelled to comply. Nor did his humiliation end even with them. He was required, moreover, by circular letter addressed to all the clerical and lay dignitaries of the empire, to repudiate his schismatical action at Worms, and to profess his readiness “unreservedly to obey the Holy See and the Lord Pope Gregory who presides over it, and to make due satisfaction for any serious wrong done to him”. In conclusion, he had to call on all those who had been excommunicated along with him to seek absolution.

It was also demanded of him that, by the hand of Udo of Trier, he should send to the Pope himself a corresponding declaration of submission. It seems, however, that “the promise of King Henry to Pope Gregory” which has come down to us is not the document which was authorized for transmission to Rome by the princes at Tribur, but a forged one which Henry contrived to forward in its place, and which, besides offering submission to the Pope, bade him take note of the scandal which he himself was giving to the Church.

The significance of the decisions of this remarkable diet has been admirably set forth by Voigt. “What had been 0f the diet there accomplished”, he says, “was the natural result 0f the policy of King Henry III. He had humbled the power of the great ones of the empire too deeply, and had made them feel the superiority of his house so keenly, that it was only to be expected that they would lift up their heads, and do all in their power to recover their ancient liberties when once his iron hand was removed. The foundation of German liberty rested on the authority of the Pope and the princes, who by their union put a curb on the imperial power. The power of the princes was as necessary as that of the Pope to prevent the emperors of Germany from becoming absolute monarchs and tyrants. It was well for humanity that the voice of the Papacy and religion found its support in that of the princes who supported freedom, and joined the authority of the sword to that of the sovereign Pontiff.

Naturally refusing Henry’s request to allow him to come to exculpate himself at Rome, Gregory intimated to his of advisers his intention to accept the invitation of the princes at Tribur, and to move north without delay. It was to no purpose that they tried to dissuade him by reminding him of the advance towards his dominions of the warlike Normans, of the unusual severity of the weather, and of the avowed hostility to him of the Lombards. Writing to all the Germans, and asking them to arrange for his reception, he assured them he was prepared to brave all dangers, and would be at Mantua on January 8, 1077.

Under the escort of that “most beloved and most faithful daughter of St. Peter”, Matilda, who had been one of the few who had encouraged Gregory to undertake the journey, the Pope reached Mantua in safety by the date he had appointed. But to his astonishment there were no troops there from the princes to conduct him thence to Augsburg. He had not, however, long to wait conjecturing the reason of this. An alarming piece of news soon reached him. It was said that Henry had crossed the Alps with a great army, and, as far as the king was concerned, the report was true. Already before this the princes had received authentic information of Henry’s flight; and the confusion into which this intelligence had thrown their counsels prevented them from dispatching the escort for the Pope.

Whilst Henry was living in enforced privacy at Spires, two conclusions forced themselves upon him: he must prevent the Pope from appearing in Germany, and he must succeed in having the excommunication removed from himself before the expiration of the year of grace. Many wild schemes passed through his brain for accomplishing these ends by the use of gold or force. But reflection on his utter abandonment quickly reminded him that of the latter he had none; and an abortive attempt which he made to raise money taught him that, as matters stood, he was as little likely to be able to procure the former. Realizing, accordingly, that his only hope lay in full submission to the Pope, he hurriedly left Spires with his wife and child and a small company, and made for those passes of the Alps which were in the hands of his mother-in-law, Adelaide, countess of Turin. Paying heavily for her support, he crossed the Rhone at Geneva, and began the ascent of Mt. Cenis. Owing to an exceptionally severe winter, the difficulties and dangers he had to encounter in the ascent were very great, but they were surpassed by those he met with in the descent. Often had the men of his party to crawl down some steep declivity on their hands and knees, or to be carried on the backs of their guides, while the peasants lowered the queen with her child and her female attendants wrapped up in the skins of oxen.

At length, after many hardships, and with the loss of most of his horses, Henry trod the Lombard plain in safety. No sooner was it noised abroad that the German king had crossed the Alps than all the numerous foes of the Papacy and reform were rejoiced. Believing that he had come to humiliate their foe, evil-living bishops and nobles flocked to him with their retainers. His cortège was, moreover, swelled by many who were in hopes that he had come to draw the peace of order out of the warlike chaos of north Italy. He seemed to be a king indeed once again. But he knew that, with Germany against him, the support of the greater portion of Lombardy was of little worth. Disguising from his adherents at Pavia the dire necessity he was under of getting free from the excommunication which weighed upon him, and leaving them under the impression that as soon as he had had an interview with Gregory he would co-operate with them “in quite ridding himself and the whole kingdom from so sacrilegious a man”, he advanced towards Reggio.

CANOSSA

When the news that Henry, faithless to his engagements at Tribur, had left Spires and had crossed the Alps in safety reached Gregory, he was for a moment at a loss what to do. Unwilling to return to Rome, he accepted the invitation of Matilda, and retired with her to her famous castle of Canossa—a fortress so strong that “a few soldiers could defend it against a host; that a ten years’ siege would not alarm it, for it was full of food, and was a mountain surrounded by walls; and that it feared no engine of war, nor the king himself”. Like a giant sentinel of the Apennines, it looked across the Lombard plain, over many a city, towards the misty Alps.

Leaving Reggio by a road which led to the south-west, and passing by Bibbiano, Henry and his small company soon caught sight of Canossa among the clouds on one of the high hills which here form the advance guard of the Apennines towards the great plain. Striking the broad roaring torrent of the Enza, they rode along its right bank to Ciano, and then began the steep ascent to the castle. As they mounted up, the tight of a few stalks, black and straggling, of some miserable vines protruding through the snow only served to throw out into greater prominence the utter barrenness of the hills all around them, on which not even the heats of summer could bring forth a blade of grass. Disregarding the cold blasts which swept down the mountain side, and forcing their way through the snow up a path like the dry bed of a torrent, they saw tower after tower on the brow of first one peak and then another, and realized how completely they were in the hands of the Great Countess, and how all their movements were being watched and reported. At length, far in front of them, on a solid mass of rock which itself sprang from the breast of a mighty cliff, towered the strong, gloomy walls of the fortress of Canossa. Arrived there at last, Henry gazed around him before attempting to enter it. To the north, through the opening in the hills whence poured into the level country the torrent of the Enza, and away round to the east over the lower hills at his feet, he gazed on the fertile plain of Lombardy which stretched away like the rolling sea to the mighty barrier of the Alps, through which at the peril of his life he had just made his way. He looked on the walls and towers of Parma, of Reggio, and of Modena. But to the south, and especially to the west, there was nothing on which his eye could rest but ridge after ridge of the rugged, snow-covered Apennines.

Today only a few fragments of the great castle are left standing. A column of marble is said to indicate the site of the chapel of the fortress, and the gateway, now known as the “Porta di penitenza”, before which Henry stood for days in penitential garb, still exists. Traces of the castle’s triple defensive wall may still be observed; but of the chapel of St. Nicholas, and of the dwellings which once clustered round the base of the castle-rock, there are now no remains.

In these buildings, which formed quite a little town, and even in 1449 were known as “i borghi di Canossa”, Henry found several of his bishops and laymen who had been excommunicated doing severe penance. They had crossed the Alps by different passes, had presented themselves to Gregory, and had received absolution from him after promising submission to his injunctions.

Making use of the good offices of Matilda and his god­father, the abbot Hugh, Henry begged the Pope through them to free him from excommunication, and not to trust the charges of the German princes. But Gregory replied that it was against the canons to judge an accused in the absence of his accusers. Let the king come to Augsburg, and the Pope would judge just judgment.

The fact was that the action of Henry had placed Gregory in a most awkward position. To absolve him without the knowledge of the German princes would not be fair to them, and yet not to absolve him would seem harsh.

As he had failed to gain his ends by negotiation, Henry resolved to follow in the wake of his subjects, and to appear in penitential guise before the Pope, in order to win from him as a priest what he could not as a diplomatist. Like them, with bare feet and clad in a coarse woollen shirt over his other garments, he stood in the courtyard of the castle, and craved to be admitted into the Pontiff’s presence. But Gregory wished to deal with him only in Germany, and, besides, with good reason, profoundly distrusted him. He would submit his sincerity to a severe test, and would for a time take no heed of the king’s petition. For three successive days did the unfortunate monarch wait in the cold for the Pope to relent. If Gregory was not moved by the sight of his touching humility, it affected all the others who saw it or heard of it. Many implored the Pope with tears to relent; all were astonished at his unwonted hardness of heart, and some did not hesitate to tell him that he was displaying not apostolic severity, but tyrannical ferocity.

At the close of the third day of his penance, Henry could endure his humiliation no longer. He would not, he said, break his shield any further. In response to his earnest appeals to her (for Abbot Hugh assured him that she alone could succeed), Matilda made another pathetic appeal to the Pope, and at length induced him to allow Henry to appear before him. Unable to resist the king’s ardent appeal for mercy, touched by his penance, and by the intercession of his friends, Gregory agreed to absolve him on certain conditions to which he was to swear on the following day; because, as Berthold notes, the Pope “was as unwilling to be deceived as he was to deceive”.

Profoundly convinced that Henry’s tears and professions did not spring from his heart, Gregory did what in him lay to ensure his fidelity to his engagements. He had to swear that he would abide by the Pope’s final decision in his regard, and that he would accord a safe conduct through his dominions to the Pope himself, or to any who were on his business. To add solemnity to the oath, which Henry had no doubt taken, after the manner of sovereigns, through his counsellors, it was witnessed on behalf of the Pope by seven cardinals, and on behalf of the king by three bishops, Hugh of Cluny, the Countess Matilda, and many of the nobility. Over and above this, he would seem to have promised to stand by the agreement he had made with the princes at Tribur, and to have been given to understand that the validity of his absolution depended upon his abiding by his oaths. After the taking of the oath, Gregory said Mass, and gave the king Holy Communion. In offering him the Sacred Host, the Pope amplified the usual formula, saying: “If you are approaching with a good heart, and intend to observe what you have promised, may this Sacred Body be to you the salvation it was to most of the apostles, otherwise you will receive it unworthily, and without doubt will eat judgment to yourself”. The king received the Body of the Lord, and after Mass was over was entertained to a banquet in the most friendly way by the Pope.

In taking a parting glance at this ever memorable scene, which has furnished even to our own age a common phrase to denote any surrender on the part of the temporal power to the spiritual, we shall confine ourselves to noting that historians see in the humiliation of the tall, powerful king before the small, frail Pontiff, a type of the “great victory of the moral power, represented by the Church, over rude despotism”. “No doubt”, remarks Floto, “Henry had to undergo a severe penance; but still, if there be taken into account the series of events after 1075, the faults he committed, and the natural consequences of those faults, we need not be astonished at their dramatic termination. Nor ought we to be surprised at the exterior forms of the penance done by Henry. The custom of those barbarous times required them, and all submitted to them. In 1074, at Nuremburg, Henry had already presented himself before the legates in a similar manner. Moreover, it is a great mistake to look upon Gregory as a tyrant, full of rancour, and enjoying the sight of the sufferings and humiliations of his victim. As a matter of fact, the penitence of the king threw Gregory into a state of embarrassment, and was regarded by him as an untoward event, seeing that what he desired was the assembly of the princes of the empire”.

VII

HENRY AGAIN EXCOMMUNICATED

When Henry returned to Reggio after his reconciliation with the Pope, he found that, if his action had disconcerted the councils of his enemies in Germany, had sown a feeling of distrust between them and the Pope, and had disappointed the Saxons, it had, on the other hand, infuriated against him the powerful bishops of Lombardy, who had hoped that he would have effectually curbed the power of Gregory. They affected to despise him for having paid any heed to the excommunication of one whom the bishops of Italy (Lombardy) had declared to be deposed for his manifold crimes, and they contemptuously bade him, if he could, get his kingdom back again by the aid of the Pope.

But if the hopes of the enemies of the Pope had been dashed to the ground by the lightning stroke of Canossa, those of his friends rose. The Patarines of Milan definitely took the upper hand. A deputation of its citizens, among whom was the now repentant historian Arnulf, came to the Pope to beg for absolution for having held intercourse with the excommunicated Tedald. Their request was granted through the agency of Anselm of Lucca and Cardinal Gerald of Ostia, who were dispatched by the Pope to Milan and other cities of Lombardy to take advantage of the reaction in his favour. But their mission was brought to an abrupt termination by the seizure and imprisonment of Gerald by the bishop of Piacenza.

This and other similar facts soon convinced “the Lombard bulls” that they had no cause to be dissatisfied with their champion. By his every act Henry made it plain to them that, if his lips had sworn, his heart was yet unchanged. It was rumoured that he had attempted to seize the person of the Pope by treachery, and that by night be held secret conferences with Guibert of Ravenna, with the Roman Cencius, and with other enemies of the Church. And it is certain that, when he came to Piacenza, he made no effort to procure the release of the apostolic legate Gerald, and that, too, despite the intercession in his behalf of his mother Agnes. He did not hesitate, however, to ask Gregory to name a bishop to crown him at Monza, with a view to appearing to have received from the Pope not only communion, but also his kingly rights (regnum). But Gregory gave him clearly to understand that as long as Peter, in the person of his ambassador, was in bonds, he would never authorize his coronation.

Meanwhile the Pope had written to tell the princes of the kingdom of the Teutons who were defending the Christian faith how it had happened that the king’s humble penance had compelled him to absolve him, but he assured them at the same time that the question of Henry’s civil position was untouched, “was still in suspense”, and could only be settled as arranged, viz., . by their decision in his presence. This letter and the explanations of its bearer, Rapoto, did something to restore to the princes the confidence of which the king’s escape and absolution had deprived them. Henry’s power in Lombardy, the severity of the season, and their own want of bold, prompt action caused the abandonment of the Augsburg meeting. A number of them, however, met at Ulm in Swabia about the middle of February, and arranged for the holding of a larger assembly at Forcheim on the 13th of March. They also sent to beg the Pope to be present at it, and to obtain, if possible, a safe conduct from the king.

But if it was Gregory’s earnest wish to preside at Forcheim, it was not really that either of Rudolf or Henry. The former, anxious apparently to be elected king himself, did not desire the presence either of an impartial judge or a rival; nor did the latter desire that the good understanding between the Pope and the princes should be strengthened. Hence he would neither go to the diet himself nor give the Pope a safe conduct.

Accordingly, the diet of Forcheim was opened without the assistance either of Pope or king, though the former was represented by two legates, the cardinal-deacon Bernard, and another Bernard, the abbot of St. Victor in Marseilles. But their commission did not extend beyond presenting the Pope’s letter to the assembly, and exhorting the princes to defer the election of a new king till he could be with them, “if they thought that that could be done with safety”. On the appointed day there assembled at Forcheim thirteen bishops and a great number of the princes of the empire. The papal legates, who were received by the assembly with the greatest respect, explained to them the little reason the Pope had had to be satisfied with the manner in which Henry had so far fulfilled the promises he had made at Canossa, but begged them, in the Pope’s name, to postpone, if it could be done with safety, the question of the election of a new king till he could join them.

When, however, the papal envoys had listened to the recital of Henry’s misdeeds, they could only express their astonishment that the people had endured his rule so long. Nor could they find it in their hearts to oppose the unanimous election of Rudolf of Swabia as king, especially after he had engaged not to interfere with the freedom of episcopal elections, and not to endeavour to make the kingdom hereditary (March 15).

Eleven days after the closing of the diet, Rudolf was crowned with great pomp in the grand old romanesque cathedral at Mainz by its archbishop, Siegfried (March 26, 1077). But the day of his coronation was not an auspicious one for the new king. In the course of it, as the result of some petty quarrel, a conflict took place between the citizens and the retainers of the nobles. The people were subdued and punished, but showed themselves so hostile that Rudolf and the archbishop made haste to leave the city. The first drops had fallen of that torrent of blood with which the election of Rudolf was to deluge the soil of Germany. And the new king had done more on the day of his coronation than alienate a great city. By causing a deacon, charged with simony, who had been appointed to sing the Gospel, to give place to another, he made it plain to the lax members of the clerical body that he was pledged to the Gregorian reforms. That was enough. His most bitter and powerful enemies were throughout the rest of his life the refractory spirits among the clergy, and, beginning their hostility to him at once, it was they who, according to Bernried and Bernald, brought about the disturbance on his coronation day.

Rudolf lost no time in informing the Pope of his election, begging of him to come to Germany, and promising to send troops to escort him—a promise which the difficulties of his of situation rendered him unable to fulfil. The precipitation of the princes in electing a new king was as disconcerting to Gregory as it was satisfactory to Henry. The Pope persistently declared that the election had been made without his knowledge or consent. Henry, however, at once put him into a dilemma, by calling on him to excommunicate his rival. But if Henry was “a shrewd and crafty man”, Gregory was himself not without the wisdom of the serpent; and he replied that he would do as the king wished, if, when called upon to do so, Rudolf proved unable to justify his conduct. Foiled and furious, Henry declared that the Pope was responsible for the election, and, realizing that he must now play the man, raised money and troops. Then definitely throwing off the mask which he had worn but clumsily since his penance at Canossa, he entrusted his son to the simoniacal bishops of Lombardy, and set out for Germany (April), to fight to the death for his kingdom.

THE DONATION OF MATILDA

For two or three months after the departure of Henry from Italy, Gregory remained in the neighbourhood of Canossa, hoping that an opportunity would be afforded him of going to Germany to arbitrate between its rival kings. Finding at length that there was no immediate prospect of his desire being fulfilled, he returned to Rome about the middle of September, and was received with every demonstration of joy by the citizens.

It would seem that the Great Countess followed the Pope to Rome, and in the chapel of the Holy Cross attached to the Lateran Palace proclaimed that the Pope was to be the heir of her great possessions. “For the good of her own soul and that of her parents”, she gave to St. Peter, in the person of Gregory, all that she then had, or might hereafter acquire, on both sides of the mountains, and in feudal style invested the Roman Church with her estates, which seem to have been chiefly situated in the dioceses of Parma, Reggio, Modena, and Mantua, and which, in part at least, were held by the Popes, down to our own times, “by knife and knotty twig, by glove, and by sod of earth and branch of tree”. In 1102 she renewed her donation at Canossa, as the charter of her previous one was not forthcoming. It is this confirmatory charter which has come down to us. Soon after engraved on marble, it may still be seen in part in the crypt of St. Peter’s.

But if, from the submission of Henry, and the donation of Matilda, the year 1077 was the most glorious of Gregory’s reign, it was not without its troubles, which foreshadowed or prepared the way for the evil days which were to come upon him. Just before he returned to Rome, his staunch supporter Cinthius, the virtuous prefect of Rome, had been murdered by the brother of Cencius; and not long after his return the empress-mother Agnes died (December 14, 1077).

From the time that Henry appeared in Germany till the death of Rudolf (October 15, 1080), i.e., for nearly three years and a half, there ensued between them an uninterrupted series of battles and negotiations. During most of that period, for well-nigh three years, Gregory persistently refused to favour either claimant, and used all his efforts to promote peace. For Rudolf stood the party of reform and the Saxons, while Henry could count on the larger clerical party which was opposed to reform, on the towns, which hoped to obtain from him an increase of their privileges, on much of southern Germany and Lombardy, on those who were instinctively loyal to the reigning house, and on Wratislaus and his wild Bohemians.

In the hope of preventing civil war, Gregory addressed a letter to his legates in Germany, the two Bernards, to call upon the two kings to guarantee him a safe journey to their country, so that, with the concurrence of the clergy and the laity of the kingdom, he might decide as to the rightful ruler of the country. Incalculable harm, he said, would accrue to the whole Church if he were in any way to be careless about the conduct of this most important matter. In another letter of the same date (May 31, 1077), addressed to all the faithful “in the kingdom of the Teutons”, he informs them of the instructions he had given to his legates, and begs them, as he had ordered his legates, to favor the king who should help forward the negotiations, and oppose the one who endeavoured to hinder them. “For if the See of Blessed Peter passes judgment on things spiritual, how much more on mere earthly concerns”.

The fact that Henry first agreed to attend a meeting in presence of the legates, and then violated his engagements, allowing even the abbot-legate to be held as a prisoner, caused Cardinal Bernard at Goslar to declare him excommunicated, and to pronounce in favor of Rudolf (November 12).

However much Henry may have been disposed to set at naught this sentence of the legate, he was anxious that it should not be confirmed by the Pope in his forthcoming Lenten synod, and so sent to Rome Bishops Benno of Osnabruck and Dietrich of Verdun to defend his cause.

Before nearly a hundred bishops assembled in the Lateran basilica, Henry’s envoys pleaded his case with great skill; but, while not endorsing the action of Cardinal Bernard, the Pope wisely insisted that the only satisfactory method of bringing the struggle between the rival kings to an end was by the decision of a great diet of the empire. To preside over it he would send distinguished legates; and, bewailing the damage which the confusion in the empire was daily inflicting on the Church, he declared that whoever should attempt to thwart the work of such an assembly was ipso facto excommunicated. “Moreover, by our apostolic power we will that the effects of the anathema should fall even on the body of such a one, and that victory should be taken away from his arms”.

Letter after letter notified this sentence to the German people, exhorting all to see that it was carried into effect. Insincere negotiations took place between the rivals, though their envoys swore before two Roman synods that their masters had not hindered, but were striving to arrange for the meeting of the assembly ordered by the Pope.

As Henry meanwhile did not refrain from inflicting  severe injuries on his enemies whenever he had an opportunity, the reserve of the Pope greatly irritated the Saxons and other supporters of Rudolf. Strong remonstrances reached him from various quarters, especially from the Saxons, who, says Bruno, had lost faith in the apostolic rock. They had believed, he adds, that the heavens would stand still before the Chair of Peter would lose the constancy of Peter. However, he continues, as he is afraid of the handmaiden of this world, they are sending him a letter which they trust will act on him, as the crowing of the cock acted on Peter, and will make him, after looking to Christ, return to his former constancy. The burden of their communication is that the Pope’s remissness in declaring in Rudolf’s favour is the cause of the terrible misery which war is bringing on the whole of Germany. They implore him not to turn back on the path he has had the courage to enter. These and similar remonstrances full of half-truths stung Gregory as only half-truths can, and we find him defending himself both before the Bavarians and the Germans generally. Writing “to all those in the Teutonic kingdom who are faithful to St. Peter”, he says: “It has come to my knowledge that some of you think that, under the pressure of circumstances, I have shown myself fickle. But in all this affair, except so far as the stress of actual battle is concerned, no one of you has suffered greater trials and injuries than I have. With but few exceptions all the Lombards are in favour of Henry, and accuse me of excessive harshness and uncharitableness in his regard. Up to this, however, disregarding their remonstrances, we have favoured neither party, except in so far as our conscience dictated to be just and proper. If our legates have acted contrary to our instructions, we are sorry for it; and we understand that they acted as they did partly because they were deceived, and partly because they were forced. We, however, had instructed them to arrange a suitable time and place, so that we might send fit and proper legates to examine your cause, to restore the exiled bishops, and to give the necessary instructions to avoid intercourse with excommunicated persons”. The letter concludes with an exhortation to perseverance under trial.

After the great but indecisive battle between the two kings near Melrichstadt on the Streu, August 7, 1078, the Saxons redoubled their appeals to the Pope, because they remembered, says Bruno, that it took a second crow of the cock to rouse Peter. They told him how difficult it was for them to send envoys to him, because the road to Rome, which “at all times ought to be open to all peoples, tribes, and tongues, was closed, and closed especially to those who had laboured not a little for the honour of him to whose body that road led”. And they begged him to confirm the excommunication launched against Henry by his legate Bernard, adding : “Your coming to us is as much longed for by us as it is necessary, but we know well that our enemies will never suffer you to come to us unless they are certain that you will act not according to justice, but in harmony with their will, and that you will favour them”. In another letter they ask with bitterness if Henry has improved during the three years since he was found incorrigible, and again assure the Pope that his idea of a general assembly can never be realized, and that he can and ought to stop the evils they are enduring.

So angry did the Saxons become that they declared that the new papal legates whom Gregory, in response to the Saxon appeals, had dispatched to Germany after the synod of February 1079 did nothing but go from one party to another getting money from each, “after the fashion of the Romans”, by promising the papal support first to one side and then to the other. This accusation, indeed, does not seem altogether void of foundation; for, in writing to these envoys, Gregory tells them that men are saying that one of them is acting with too great simplicity, and the other without simplicity enough.

Gregory’s wishes and work for the holding, in presence of his legates, of a great diet of the empire to settle the claims of the rival kings were not to be realized. He had striven to bring it about, because he felt that “the party which was found not to have justice on its side would, when overcome by argument and constrained by the authority of Blessed Peter, yield more easily, and, by the mercy of God, cease from causing the death of the souls and bodies of men. Whereas the party favoured by justice would have a fuller confidence in God, and, helped by the power of Blessed Peter and by the concurrence of all who loved justice, would have confident hope of victory, and would fear the death neither of soul nor body”.

But neither party really wished for a fair discussion of their claims on equal terms, least of all, perhaps, Henry. Accordingly, gathering together an army in the winter (1079-1080), he made an attempt to surprise the Saxons. He was, however, defeated at Flarcheim on the Unstrut, in Thuringia (January 27, 1080).

Confounded by his failure, conscious of having been false to the engagements he had entered into at Canossa, and convinced that Gregory would no longer tolerate his arbitrary and evil appointments to bishoprics, he was at pains to send envoys well supplied with money to the synod which Gregory had summoned for the beginning of March 3 (1080). Thither also were sent the ambassadors of Rudolf.

Some fifty bishops and a great number of abbots and inferior clergy met together in the Lateran basilica, and, after condemning investitures, gave audience to the envoys of Rudolf. They urged that Henry, deprived of his kingdom by the apostolic authority, had again taken possession of it, carrying fire and sword everywhere; that his cruelty had driven bishops from their sees, which he had at once given to his favourites; that bishops and thousands of men had lost their lives through him; that those princes who, not to put themselves in opposition to the Holy See, had refused to obey him, had had to endure every indignity; and that it was he who had hindered the assembling of the diet that was to decide on the merits of the rival kings.

Theodoric of Verdun pretends that the ambassadors of Henry, so far from being allowed to speak, were exposed to insults. No doubt the Fathers of the council had had enough of the deceitful words of Henry, who was as faithless as our own Charles I. However this may be, Gregory solemnly renewed the excommunication he had previously inflicted upon him. Telling the assembled Fathers of all his relations with Henry, he reminded them that, when he had seen the king’s humility at Canossa, and had listened to his promises of amending his life, he had restored him to communion, but not to his throne, and that he had acted in this way in order that he might make peace between him and his bishops and nobles. The promises which Henry had made to him to further this settlement of the question had been broken, and the princes of the empire, “giving up, so to speak, all faith in him, without any communication with me, as you know, elected Duke Rudolf as the king. The new sovereign at once sent word to me that he had been compelled to accept the reins of government, and that he was ready to obey me in all things—a promise he has repeated ever since”. Proceeding, he assured the synod that, when appealed to by Henry for help against Rudolf, he had always declared he was prepared to give it when he had been enabled to judge of the claims of the two rivals, and that up to this very time he had only stood for justice. Despite the sentence of excommunication which he had decreed against any who should hinder the meeting of the assembly which was to decide on the position of Henry, that monarch had incurred the excommunication by preventing the holding of the diet, and had been the cause of the death of a great multitude of Christian men, of the destruction of churches, and of the ruin of almost the whole kingdom of the Teutons. “Wherefore, trusting in the judgment and mercy of God, and of his most loving Mother, Mary, ever virgin, and relying on the authority of the apostles Peter and Paul, I subject to excommunication and bind with the bonds of anathema the above mentioned Henry called king, and all his supporters. And once again, in the name of Almighty God and of the apostles Peter and Paul, do I forbid him all authority in the kingdom of the Teutons and of Italy; I deprive him of all kingly power and dignity; I command all Christians to refrain from obeying him as king; and I absolve from their oaths all who may have sworn obedience to him as their ruler”. Then, after praying for defeat for Henry and victory for the new king whom he now recognized, he granted remission of all their sins to those who were faithful to Rudolf.

He brought this tremendous allocution to a close in words which might have come from the lips of the inspired Isaias: “Most revered Fathers and princes, act now, I beg you, in such a way that the whole world may know that, if you can bind and loose in heaven, you can on earth give and take away, in accordance with deserts, empires, kingdoms, principalities, duchies, marquisates, counties, and the possessions of all men ... Let kings and the princes of the world now learn who you are and what is your power; and let them fear to make light of the commands of the Church. And in the case of Henry, put your decision into effect so promptly, that all may see that he falls not by chance, but by your power. Let him be confounded, but to penance, that in the day of the Lord his soul may be saved”.

It was at the close of this eventful synod, if ever, that Gregory sent to Rudolf a crown with the inscription to the effect that “The Rock (which is Christ) gave a crown to Peter, and Peter gives it to Rudolf”.

Both parties now felt that the die had been finally cast,  and that it was war to the death. The king’s excommunication and his money, which his envoys distributed among the people, caused party feeling to run high in Rome. In Tuscany also, as they passed through it on their way back to Germany, Henry’s ambassadors succeeded in raising a formidable opposition to the Great Countess. Once in Lombardy, they invited its princes to assemble at Brixen.

On his side Gregory, through the agency of the abbot Desiderius, secured the support of the Normans. Journeying southwards, he had an interview with the formidable duke of the Normans at Aquino (June 29). Condoning some of Guiscard’s aggressions, he received his homage, and with a banner invested him with the duchy of Apulia and Calabria. But in declaring him possessed of the lands which his predecessors Nicholas and Alexander had granted him, he left Guiscard’s rights to Salerno, to Amalfi, and to part of the Mark of Fermo, an open question.

No sooner did the news reach Germany of the renewed papal excommunication of Henry than his bishops began to inveigh against Gregory even during Mass, and went about everywhere declaring that he was not to be recognized as Pope. Nineteen of them met at Mainz (May 31, 1080), and decreed (some of them only under pressure) that, as the only way to cure the evils of Church and State was “to cut off the head of the pestiferous serpent, by whose poisonous breath they had been caused”, Hildebrand, “the execrable disturber of the laws of God and man”, had to be deposed and a more worthy elected in his stead.

When the king and his bishops had taken this preliminary step, they hesitated for a long time before taking  the next. They feared the wisdom of the man (i.e., of Gregory); his resources confounded them; the quickness of his intelligence astounded them; and, what is wont, especially to strike men, his command of money made a deep impression upon them. So speaks even Guido of Ferrara. But they realized they had gone too far to retreat. Summoning the bishops of Germany to meet him at Brixen, a small town in Austrian Tyrol, conveniently situated on the great road which led by the Brenner pass from Italy into Germany, Henry found himself, on June 25, 1080, surrounded by thirty bishops, mostly from Lombardy.

After setting forth a wholly false sketch of Gregory’s career, the assembled prelates decreed that “the same most insolent Hildebrand, the preacher of sacrilege and conflagration, the defender of perjury and homicide, who, as an old disciple of the heretic Berengarius, has put in doubt the catholic and apostolic doctrine of the Body and Blood of the Lord, this observer of omens and dreams, and this undoubted necromancer who is under the influence of a pythonic spirit, and therefore out of the true faith, must be canonically deposed and expelled from his see”. The first to affix his signature to this childish decree was Cardinal Hugo Candidus, who impudently signed “for all the Roman cardinals”; the last was Henry, “by the grace of God king”.

It was, however, not so easy for the assembly to find a  successor to Gregory as to declare him deposed. Tedald of Milan refused the preferred honour. It was at length accepted by Guibert of Ravenna, whose ambition and  opposition to Gregory have been already noted, but who, we are assured by Guido, “was not less noble by his character than by his birth”.

After engaging to crown one another at Rome in the near future, Guibert, assuming the insignia of the sovereign Pontiff, and calling himself Clement III, entered Italy with the pomp of which he was so enamoured, while Henry devoted himself to the war against Rudolf.

Knowing, therefore, that Henry would be fully occupied, Gregory thought of bringing the rebellious archbishop to his knees by force. But those on whom he relied failed him. Matilda could do no more than hold her own against the schismatic, and Guiscard was too much occupied with his designs against the Eastern Empire to be led into a war in north Italy.

Not to be thwarted, the Pope sent envoys into Lombardy to induce the clergy and the laity of Ravenna to elect a new archbishop. This attempt was no more successful than the preceding one, so he himself nominated one Richard to replace the excommunicated Guibert.

Meanwhile the cause which Gregory advocated in Germany had been won and lost. On October 15 the forces of Henry and Rudolf met on the Elster by the marsh of Grona. Among the great prelates and nobles in the ranks of the former was Frederick of Hohenstaufen, to whom Henry had given the duchy of Swabia, and the hand of his daughter Agnes. The first and last heirs of the famous house of Hohenstaufen who have made their mark in history made it as enemies of the Papacy, and, it may be added, scored it against themselves.

The battle between the two armies was bloody and decisive. The troops of Henry were thoroughly worsted. But in the moment of victory, the brave Rudolf received a mortal wound. His sorrowing followers buried him in the neighboring cathedral of Merseburg, where his effigy, consisting of a “bronze plate in low relief, representing him in imperial attire”, may still be seen. The inscription which they cut on his tomb proclaimed that “for him death was life, for he fell for the Church”. “King Rudolf died and virtue was overwhelmed” is the sad wail of the poet.

VIII.

HENRY IN ITALY; GREGORY IS RESCUED BY ROBERT GUISCARD; HIS DEATH.

THE very day on which the death of Rudolf freed Henry from fear in Germany, a defeat of the troops of Matilda, near La Volta, in the territory of Mantua, freed him from anxiety as to his power in north Italy. Accordingly, full of hope of crushing Gregory forthwith, he crossed the Brenner Pass at the end of March (1081), and pushed on to Verona (April 4). In leaving the Saxons behind him, he trusted that their difficulties in selecting a successor to Rudolf would prevent any aggressive action on their part, even if, when left alone, they might feel disposed to take any. They had indeed declared to his envoys that they knew that his design was “to dishonour the apostolic dignity, and that he had promised them peace in order to be able to ill-use at his pleasure him who was their head”; and on their part they had let him know that if he should ill-treat the Pope, he would, on his return from Italy, find his affairs in a very different state from what he expected.

The threats of the Saxons, however, failed to alarm Henry, for he felt assured that, with the hold he had on northern Italy, the capture of Rome and of the Pope would take neither time nor trouble, and that he would soon be back in Germany.

Gregory meanwhile remained utterly undaunted, whether by the death of Rudolf, by the defeat of Matilda, by the news that Henry was preparing to advance on Rome, or, hardest trial of all, by the faint-heartedness of those around him. On the arrival of the terrifying news of the death of Rudolf, almost all his advisers implored him to make peace with Henry. They pointed out to him that the king had always professed himself disposed to yield to him in many points, and that, if once Henry appeared in Italy, he need not hope that his allies in Germany would be of any use to him. But Gregory would hearken neither to their reasons nor their fears. He had had proof enough of Henry’s faithlessness, and if, he said, he was left without German help, he cared not, for he reckoned nothing of his pride. “It was more glorious to fight through long years for the liberty of holy Church, than to submit to a miserable and diabolical servitude”. For his own part, “he despised alike the threats of his enemies and their offers of service. He was prepared, if need be, to suffer death rather than approve of the impieties of the king and of the archbishop (i.e., the antipope Guibert), or abandon the cause of justice”.

Animated, accordingly, by what he believed a zeal for justice, Gregory at length, in synod, solemnly renewed against Henry the sentence of excommunication from which he had absolved him at Canossa. Sentence was passed upon him as “a despiser of the law of Christ, a destroyer of churches and of the empire, and as an aider and abettor of heretics”. Soon afterwards, to justify his action, he replied, by means of a very long letter addressed to Heriman, bishop of Metz, “to those who foolishly maintain that an emperor cannot be excommunicated by the Roman Pontiff”. He endeavoured to show, by Scripture, by the words of the Fathers, and by historical precedent, that the power of the successors of St. Peter extended to all Christians, without any exceptions whatsoever, and that that power had, as a matter of fact, been already frequently exercised even over kings. Adapting the words of St. Paul, he argued : “Know you not that we shall judge angels? how much more things of this world”. After he had thus taken against Henry those steps which his ideas of duty seemed to require, Gregory calmly awaited the march of events, which, however, were destined to advance further than he anticipated.

Though, even after Henry had descended into the Lombard plain, Gregory did not believe he would be able to march on Rome, and though he cared not for himself, he was anxious about the position of the Countess Matilda. Hence he wrote to his friends in Germany to urge them to action should Henry make any serious attempt on her. They were to rouse Welf, duke of Bavaria, and to proceed to the election of a new king in place of Rudolf. They were not, however, to be in any haste about the latter matter, and were to be sure of electing one who would have the necessary qualities to make a good king. They were also to see to it that the object of their choice would undertake on oath to respect the spiritual and temporal rights of the Church. Finally, owing to the difficulties of the times, they were to temper for the present the rigor of the canons in regard to the clergy.

Working as usual through the Abbot Desiderius, he made great efforts to secure the active support of Robert Guiscard, should Henry make any hostile attempt on Rome. He was quite alive to the fact that the wily Norman cared but little for the interests of any other person than Robert Guiscard; and he knew that he was at the moment making preparations for the carrying out of no less ambitious an undertaking than the conquest of the Byzantine Empire.

Robert’s little daughter, Helena, had been sent to Constantinople and been betrothed (1075-1076) to the child Constantine, the heir of the Emperor Michael VII, Ducas. The reign of Michael, however, had been brought to an abrupt close by the aged Nicephorus Botoniates (April 1, 1078), and he had himself been incarcerated in the famous monastery of Studion. Guiscard seized the opportunity of the injury done to the interests of his daughter to prepare for the conquest of the Eastern Empire. To improve his chances of success, he caused to appear in his court at Salerno a monk who gave himself out to be the deposed emperor, and he appealed for the support of the Pope. This Gregory was ready to give, as he had already excommunicated Nicephorus for having unjustly deprived his friend Michael of his throne (November 1078). Accordingly, he bade the bishops of Apulia and Calabria exhort those who had taken up arms in Michael’s favour to be loyal and steadfast, and absolve from their sins such among them as did true penance.

Strong in the approval of the Pope, it mattered not to Guiscard that his monk was subsequently proved to be an impostor, and that his enemy Nicephorus was himself overthrown by Alexius Comnenus (April 1081). His plans were now matured; and if he would not allow himself to be gained over by Henry, he would not hearken to Gregory’s appeals to stop and help him against the German king. However, before he set sail to Aulon (Vallona), towards the end of May, he instructed his young son Roger, whom he had left regent in his absence, to render what aid he could to the Pope, should necessity arise.

Reckoning nothing of any assistance which a youth and the handful of Normans whom Guiscard had left behind him might bring to Gregory, Henry raised troops in Ravenna and the March of Ancona, and moved southwards, ravaging the territory of Matilda as he went along. His forces arrived in sight of Rome about the same time as those of Guiscard were setting sail for the East (viz., May 21, 1081).

To Henry’s profound disappointment, the Romans set at naught both his manifestoes and his soldiers. For once, a Pope could write with confidence: “The Romans and all those who surround me are full of faith and the spirit of God, and ready to serve me in everything”. Unable to carry the city by assault, Henry had to yield to the heats of summer, and to return “with his beast”, as Bonizo calls the antipope, to the north of Italy.

Meanwhile, with a view to weakening the power of Matilda, Henry took a step which, though of the first importance for the development of Italy, was destined to recoil on the empire. By granting charters of liberties to some of her more important cities, like Lucca, he succeeded in further crippling the resources of Matilda, but he helped onward the formation of those communes of Italy which were ultimately to put an end to Germanic influence in the peninsula. He had already somewhat hampered her by seizing such of her property as he could lay his hands upon, on the plea that she had been guilty of high treason.

Soon after Henry had been compelled to raise the siege of Rome, he received another blow through the election of a successor to Rudolf. As the result of an appeal by the Saxons to the whole German people to elect a new king, other than Henry or his son, who should unite them all together again, there was elected at Ochensfurt on the Main, Hermann, a scion, rich but indifferent, of the house of Luxembourg.

But these disadvantages were more than compensated by the success of his negotiations with the new Greek emperor Alexius. Anxious to secure allies against Guiscard, Alexius had written to different Western princes, to the Pope among others, promising them money if they would attack Robert. But his main reliance was not unnaturally on Henry, who, as we have said, had already been in negotiation with him, for an alliance against the Norman. To him he sent nearly 150,000 golden solidi, besides other presents, with a promise of a still larger sum when he should be in south Italy. With his credit restored in this way, Henry spent the winter in raising an army which was to be strong enough to lay formal siege to Rome.

Towards the close of March Henry was again before the walls of Rome, and again did the Romans despise alike his words and his arms; so that, despite his success in gaining over to his cause Jordan, prince of Capua, a nephew of Guiscard and liegeman of the Pope, he was once more compelled to abandon the siege. But though Desiderius of Monte Cassino pointed out to him that quarrels of the kind in which he was now engaged with the Pope “would be fatal to the empire and to the Papacy alike”, and though he reminded his bishops that “the Apostolic See was mistress, subject to none and above all”, neither Henry nor his prelates had any thought of giving up the struggle.

When, after his second failure to capture the city, the king returned to Lombardy (May), he left his antipope behind him at Tivoli. From this centre Clement ceased not to ravage the whole district, destroying both crops and people alike.

But his depredations were at length partially checked by the return to Italy of Robert Guiscard. In the midst of a victorious career in Greece, he received a letter from the Pope congratulating him on his successes, but calling on him for help against Henry. That which probably still more affected Robert was the news he received of Jordan’s alliance with the Germans, and the spirit of rebellion against his authority which was manifesting itself all over the south of Italy. Accordingly, leaving his son Bohemond in charge of his army in Greece, he returned to Italy (April 1082). Without troops, and with many against him, Robert was unable for some time to give any effectual help to anyone but himself. He made, however, some demonstration in force before Rome and Tivoli, which was not without good result for Gregory’s cause. But he was unable to render him any substantial assistance.

By the beginning of the new year (1083) the critical nature of his position was being steadily impressed upon Gregory. In December (1082) Henry had brought up fresh troops for the siege of Rome, though he himself did not then remain before it. Moreover, Gregory had heard that Hermann of Luxembourg, who had spent the previous twelve months in preparing to come to his relief and had left Saxony to do so, had been compelled to return thither by the death of his chief supporter, Otho of Nordheim. He had himself failed to raise money, without which he knew the unwonted loyalty already displayed by the venal Romans could not be maintained. A Roman council (May 1082), evidently only half-hearted in the cause of their master, had declared that the goods of the Church ought not to be alienated for military purposes. Certainly, in pleasing contrast to this traitorous conduct of many of the local clergy was the action of his supporters in Tuscany. Abbot Gerard of Canossa melted down the gold and silver of his church to send money to Gregory, and the faithful and warlike Matilda sent him what pecuniary assistance she could. But it was not much that he received from these sources. Still his courage did not desert him. Addressing all the bishops, abbots, clergy, and laymen “who were faithful to the Apostolic See”, he exhorted them to patience, fortitude, and hope. “We all wish”, he wrote, “that the ungodly should repent; ... we all seek that the holy Church, now trampled down throughout the world ... may be restored to her pristine comeliness and strength; we all labour that God may be glorified in us ... Marvel not, dearest brethren, if the world hate you, for we ourselves irritate it against us, while we set ourselves against its lusts ... Rouse yourselves, then, and be strong. Conceive a lively hope”.

One source of consolation he had at this time. It was the presence in Rome of the saintly Bruno of Segni, who, under circumstances very similar to those in which Gregory the Great executed a like task, wrote a commentary on Isaias, and again, like that Pontiff, tinged it with the historical colouring of his time.

In April 1083 Henry joined his troops in front of Rome, and in June managed to surprise the Leonine city, failing, however, to seize the city proper. To a fresh excommunication launched against him by the intrepid Pope, he replied by causing his antipope to be crowned in St. Peter’s. His success made many of the Romans, already weary of being so often in a state of siege, or always well disposed towards him, anxious for peace. Through the action of this party there was devised yet another scheme to bring about a definite settlement of the respective claims of the Pope and the king. Gregory was to summon a council which should go thoroughly into all the matters in dispute, while Henry was to engage not to place any obstacle in the way of the proper transaction of its business. A section of the Romans, moreover, who had been gained over by money or promises, added a secret clause to the treaty. Giving hostages to Henry, they engaged, on his return to the city in the winter, to have him crowned by Gregory, if he were alive or had not fled from the city. But if he were to die, or to leave Rome, they would with the king elect a new Pope, whom they would induce to crown him.

Leaving a small garrison to hold the Leonine city, Henry again went north to avoid the summer heats (July), and the Pope issued summonses to the synod which was to put an end to the strife between the empire and the Apostolic See. But the faithless monarch could not keep his word. He seized the envoys of Herimann as they were coming to the synod, and detained many important bishops and abbots who had set out from France and other countries to obey the Pope’s orders. He is even said to have put some of the captured monks to the torture. It was, however, a real annoyance to him that one of his militant bishops seized his godfather, Hugh of Cluny, who had been called to Rome by the Pope to make peace between him and Henry.

Owing to the action of the king, the council over which Gregory presided on November 20 and the two following days was not a numerous one, and was unable to bring about peace. Moved by the wishes of the assembled Fathers, Gregory did not again excommunicate Henry by name, but contented himself with excommunicating all such as had interfered with those who were coming to the council. And on the third day of the synod, addressing it, “with the face rather of an angel than of a man”, on the Christian life and on the constancy of mind so needful at the moment, “he moved almost the whole assembly to tears”.

There was, therefore, no other way of settling the quarrel but by the sword. But when Henry returned to Rome (December), and called on the Roman nobles to abide by their word, and by entreaties or force to make Gregory crown him, he found their minds had changed. His garrison had nearly all perished by fever, and Robert Guiscard had put the Pope in possession of money. They accordingly informed the king that Gregory had declared that he would only crown him if he made satisfaction for his faults; and they added sarcastically, on their own account, that if he was not prepared to do this, they would still keep their word by causing the Pope, with a curse, to drop the crown on his head by means of a stick from the walls of the castle of St. Angelo.

With greater zest than ever Henry devoted himself to the siege. Fortunately for himself, he received, in the beginning of 1084, the further sums of money which Alexius had promised him. With these, after he had made a show in February of a campaign against the Normans to satisfy the Greek emperor, he bribed the Romans. And just when, as he wrote himself, he had given up all hopes of capturing the city, the Romans made overtures to him, and admitted him within their walls on March 21, 1084. Had they been able to forecast the result to Rome of their action, they would have cut off their hands rather than have allowed them to open the gates of St. John to the German. They had signed the death warrant of old Rome!

When Henry entered Rome, Gregory retreated to the castle of St. Angelo, carrying with him forty hostages given him by the nobles. On this occasion most of them remained faithful to the Pope, and, holding many points of vantage throughout the city, carried on a terrible street war for over two months. Rusticus, a nephew of Gregory, held the Septizonium of Severus at the south corner of the Palatine Hill; the Frangipani were safe in the Turris Cartularia by the Arch of Titus; the Corsi dominated the Capitol, and papal troops held the bridges.

Evidently not feeling too secure of his position, Henry hurried on the formal election of his antipope and his own coronation. Whilst the beautiful columns of the Septizonium were falling beneath his battering-rams, and his troops were storming the Capitol, he held some kind of a synod in the Lateran Palace (March 22). Gregory was declared deposed, and Guibert elected in his place as Clement III; but not, as Henry falsely wrote, by all the cardinals and the Roman people. On the following Sunday (Palm Sunday, March 24), Clement was consecrated by three excommunicated bishops, and on Easter Sunday crowned Henry and Bertha as emperor and empress of the Romans.

Benzo has furnished us with a description of the rites of the coronation of an emperor in vogue at the time, which of he would fain have us believe were carried out at this coronation of his hero, who, “in intelligence, might, and arms” surpassed all the ancients and the moderns. He depicts the royal procession making its way to St. Peter’s, preceded by the holy cross and the lance of St. Maurice. After them came the clergy, and then the king clad in a long scarlet tunic or alb, wonderfully set out with gold and gems, and “terrible with his golden spurs”, girt with his sword, covered with the distinctly imperial garment, the Frisian cloak (Frisia clamide), and wearing linen gloves and an episcopal ring, and with the imperial diadem on his head. In his left hand he carried the orb (pomum), and in his right the sceptre “de more Julii, Octaviani”, etc.

Supported by the Pope (Clement III), by the archbishop of Milan, and by dukes and nobles, he was followed by five magistrates wearing variegated cloaks and patrician crowns.

When the procession started the clergy intoned, “Jam bone pastor”, the Germans adding, “Kyrrie eleyson, helfo (help), S. Petre heleyson”. Meanwhile the different nations who were looking on cheered according to the mode of their respective counties.

Mass was begun after the procession, and, in accordance with the canons, Henry was consecrated and blessed before the Gospel. After Mass was over, the new emperor adjourned to the palace for refreshment.

After the banquet, the emperor was vested in a green cloak, and a white mitre with the patrician circlet around it was set upon his head. In this style he proceeded to Vespers, and “again their voices knock at the gate of heaven to the glory of Him who reigns for ever and ever”.

On the following day the Pope put “the Roman crown” solemnly upon the head of Henry, who then, “crowned by the will of God and the prayer of St. Peter”, was received “by the senate” at the steps of the basilica in which he had been crowned. Mounting on horseback, the emperor, surrounded by German, Roman, and Lombard knights, went “by the triumphal way” to the Lateran. All along the route he was greeted with joyful song. In front of the Lateran the emperor was met by the scholae of the sixteen regions. Mass was then celebrated, and cries of Alleluia resounded everywhere.

This description of an imperial coronation, though quaint, is, like everything else that Benzo wrote, inaccurate; and, in any case, considering the disturbed condition of the city, it is wholly improbable that anything like such an elaborate ceremonial was employed for the coronation of Henry IV by his antipope Clement III.

Henry now devoted himself to the task of securing the person of his enemy the Pope. With this end in view he began to enclose St. Angelo within lines of circumvallation. “An emperor”, says Gregorovius, “now besieged a Pope who defended the freedom of the Church against the temporal power”. Realizing there was no time to be lost, Gregory contrived to dispatch an embassy to Guiscard, imploring his assistance. When Robert received the Pope’s message, he had already not only subdued the rebellious spirits of his duchy, but had gathered together a powerful army, including even Saracens from Sicily, and was about to embark for the East. Comprehending at once how dangerous for himself it would be if Henry should succeed in seizing both Rome and the Pope, he straightway set his troops on the march for the Eternal City.

Word of his movements was at once sent both to Gregory and to the king by Desiderius of Monte Cassino. His messenger was promptly followed by one from Guiscard himself to Henry, who was bluntly informed that “if he did not leave Rome of his own accord, he would be driven from it, and that there was no one who could pluck him from his hands”. Never distinguished by being willing to face fearful odds, Henry informed the Romans that he found it necessary to withdraw to Lombardy, and that he entrusted his crown and his honour to their hands. Then, levelling the Leonine City to the ground, he hastened north (May 21), leaving his antipope at Tivoli.

Six days after his departure the army of Guiscard was descried from the walls of Rome. It approached the city with due care. First came a thousand picked men, then three thousand, and lastly Guiscard himself with the main body. Meeting with no opposition, he encamped opposite the Porta Asinaria (now replaced by the Porta S. Giovanni), near the Claudian aqueduct. On the following day (Tuesday, May 28) he ordered a general assault, and, while some of his troops stormed the gate of St. Laurence, others entered by the Flaminian and Pincian gates, which had been thrown open to them. With the formidable cry of “Guiscard” on their lips, the Normans made a dash for the bridge and castle of St. Angelo, some of the less disciplined among them pausing to sack the churches of S. Lorenzo in Lucina and S. Silvestro in the Campus Martius. Gregory was released from his confinement, and on the following day was escorted with all the pomp and circumstance of war to the Lateran Palace.

Had the coming of the Normans been attended with no worse results than these, all would have been well for Gregory. But their subsequent action was to destroy his influence with the Romans forever. Three days after Guiscard’s entry into the city, in consequence of a quarrel into which the Romans entered either of set purpose or accidentally, a terrible fight took place between them and the Normans. Unable to drive the Romans out of the narrow streets, Guiscard acted on the advice of the consul Cencius, and fired the houses. Driven forth by the flames, the wretched inhabitants fell on the swords and spears of their enemies. Intoxicated by carnage, and furious at the death of their comrades, the soldiers of Guiscard gave themselves up to the most unbridled license. They slaughtered all the men they met, and violated the women, even virgins consecrated to God. When wearied of killing, they devoted themselves to plundering and to making captives. These they sold as slaves, “like Jews”. Guiscard was unwilling to check the excesses of his troops. He is reported to have said : “the citizens of Rome are worthless traitors; they are and always will be ungrateful to God and His saints for the innumerable benefits conferred upon them ... I will give the blood-stained city to the flames, and, by God’s help, I will restore it to a better condition, and fill it with inhabitants from the Transalpine nations”. Three days elapsed before Gregory could prevail upon the savage duke to bring his men to order, and stop the conflagration which was destroying the city.

Terrible was the damage done to old Rome by this sack of 1084. The flames consumed everything between St. John Lateran’s and the Colisseum. Other parts of the city also suffered. Guiscard completed the destruction which Henry had begun, and which, according to his biographer, money only had prevented from completing himself. The whole appearance of the city was changed. “Even after the lapse of so many centuries”, writes Lanciani, “we can still find traces of this Norman-Saracenic invasion. The Caelian quarter as a whole has never recovered from the state of desolation to which it was reduced in 1084. The few roads which traverse this silent region are practically the same as those through which Gregory VII had been hurried from the castle of St. Angelo to the Lateran; only their present level is higher, the layer of debris from the burnt edifices having considerably raised the level of the whole district ... The final decay of the city—the abandonment of the old level of streets and squares, the disappearance of the remains of private houses, and even of some public edifices—dates from this fearful conflagration”. With the altered physical aspect of Rome we may connect the changed position of the Papacy. At the time when the Eternal City lost its old world look, the Popes were becoming the pivot on which medieval Europe was to turn not only in the spiritual order, but also in the temporal.

Thoroughly cowed by the fearful blows which Guiscard had dealt them, the Romans submitted to their conqueror unconditionally. After he had secured in the castle of St. Angelo the hostages whom they gave him, Guiscard left Rome with the Pope to bring back to his allegiance the surrounding localities. Sutri and Nepi and other places were soon subdued; but, anxious to resume his eastern campaign, Guiscard would not stay long enough to drive the antipope from Tivoli. When, therefore, the Norman escorted Gregory back to Rome at the end of June, it did not seem possible for him to remain there. Clement was close at hand; and, unmindful that the real author of their cruel woes was Henry, the Romans, assigning them all to Gregory, because he had summoned the Normans, hated him accordingly.

Bowing before the storm, Gregory, in the deepest poverty, left Rome with Guiscard in the beginning of July; and in his company, halting at Monte Cassino and Benevento, reached Salerno, where he was soon to die. Meanwhile, however, with spirit still unsubdued, he gathered together what bishops he could. Once more he excommunicated Henry, Guibert and their adherents, and dispatched his legates to promulgate his sentence through France and Germany. At the same time he issued, “to all the faithful who truly love the Apostolic See”, what is justly regarded as the finest of his encyclicals. The princes, he said, have united against the Lord and against His Christ because we have been unwilling to keep silent when the Church was in danger, and give way to those who would reduce it to servitude vile. “Come”, he cried, “to the succour of your father and mother, if by them you would have forgiveness of your sins, and all blessings in this life and in the next”.

Not only, however, was no help for the afflicted Pontiff forthcoming, but one untoward event after another was to the cause of bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. If he was gladdened by the victory which in July Matilda gained at Sorbaria over Henry’s troops, he was saddened by the departure of Guiscard for the East in September, and by the fact that the antipope was by Christmas in possession of Rome. He was, moreover, much distressed by a fresh outbreak of war in Germany, to which Henry had returned before the close of the year 1084. The struggle was carried on with spiritual as well as with earthly weapons. Under the presidency of the uncompromising Otho, cardinal-bishop of Ostia, who had been sent to Germany by Gregory to promulgate the fact of Henry’s renewed excommunication, a synod was held at Quedlinburg (April 1085). King Hermann, along with a large number of Saxon bishops and nobles, was present at it. Putting forth the principle that no one has a right to judge the sentence of the Sovereign Pontiff, Otho led the assembly to declare Henry’s nominations to bishoprics null and void, and to anathematize the antipope and his adherents. Further, with an independence which cannot be too much admired, he did not hesitate to denounce both Hermann himself, because it was said that he had married within the forbidden degrees of kindred, and some of the Saxon nobles who during the war had appropriated the goods of the Church. About the same time the episcopal and other partisans of Henry assembled at Mainz, and in turn did not hesitate to act towards Gregory as the council of Quedlinburg had acted towards Clement (May).

But the noise of the fierce strife over his principles which was ringing throughout the whole empire was now making but a feeble impression upon Gregory. Already, in January, he had declared that he would die about the beginning of June. Nevertheless, he ceased not “to work for justice”, and spent much time in preaching to the people. At length, however, he could toil no longer; he could no more “think of many things, and give his attention to affairs of moment”. But great as had been his labours for God and man, he took no complacency in them when congratulated on them. “I have”, he said to the cardinals who surrounded his death-bed, “only one source of consolation. I have ever loved justice and hated iniquity”. When they next expressed to him their fears as to what would happen to them after he had been taken from them, he raised his hands and eyes to heaven, saying: “I am going thither, and there, with earnest entreaty, will I commend you to the God of mercy”.

Asked to name his successor in view of the special difficulties of the times, he mentioned three or four names, but recommended that Desiderius of Monte Cassino should be selected on account of his being at hand. And when questioned with regard to those he had excommunicated, he replied that, with the exception of Henry, Guibert, and their principal supporters, he absolved and blessed all those who firmly believed that, in the place of the apostles Peter and Paul, he had power so to do. His last will and testament did not require much making. He had only his vestments to leave, and of these he gave his mitre to Anslem of Lucca.

Finally, exhorting the cardinals only to regard as Pope the one who should be canonically elected, he received the Holy Viaticum, and with his dying lips cried out: “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile”. “In exile, Holy Father”, exclaimed a bishop, “thou canst not die; for in the stead of Christ and His apostles you have received from God the Gentiles for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession”.

It was on May 25 that “the Church on earth was thrown into great grief by the news of the decease” of him who was “the terror of the wicked and the shield of the good, who never ceased to lead the people from the paths of vice to those which lead to heaven, and whose own life was in accordance with his teaching”.

His death moved to tears even the stark Guiscard, who was destined in a few weeks to follow Gregory to that bourne whence no traveller has returned; and “it moved to tears all religious men and women, but especially the poor”. Of all the good who had grief for the death of Gregory, not one was so deeply affected as the faithful Countess Matilda. “Oft”, says Rangerius, “was she shaken in her sadness by her sobs; and when she saw his mitre, her love was wounded afresh; she dissolved in tears, and sought the cover of darkness. She faded away with the desire of being with Christ, and of enjoying her eternal reward with her friend. After his death she loved nothing but death”.

The body of the great Pontiff was laid to rest in the Church of St. Matthew, which had just been built to receive the relics of the evangelist, and which Gregory had himself consecrated this very year. Some two hundred years after the interment, John of Procida, a name ever to be connected with the “Sicilian Vespers”, erected a beautiful chapel over the tomb, which was at the right of the high altar, and “at which God had deigned to work many miracles”. Towards the close of the sixteenth century (1578), the marble tomb given by Guiscard had fallen into decay. Before erecting a new monument over the remains of “the guardian of pontifical authority”, Mark Anthony Colonna, archbishop of Salerno, ordered them to be laid bare. They were found still clad in the sacred vestments in which they had been buried, and entire. So says the archbishop himself, who assures us that “he saw the remains with his own eyes, and touched them with his own hands”. The official document drawn up by his order informs us that “on the head was a simple pontifical mitre, with crosses worked on its fillets. The stole was of silk, shot with gold, and had upon it both gold ornaments and the words Pax Nostra. The silk gloves were beautifully woven with golden threads and pearls, and with a cross on the back of each of them. On the ring-finger was a gold ring without a stone. The chasuble was red, shot with gold, and there was a silk tunic. The buskins, which were partially eaten away, were also shot with gold, had crosses on each of the feet, and reached almost to the knees. There was a girdle of gold, and a veil covered the face. There were also remains of the pallium. ... In a word, all the vestments of a Pontiff were there”.

In 1605 the tomb was opened again, and the cranium and right arm were taken out, the latter being sent to Gregory’s birthplace, Soana. In 1614 the remains were transferred to their present resting place beneath the altar of Procida’s chapel.

The tomb of Gregory on which the visitor to Salerno now gazes is that of Colonna, but his statue which he sees there was erected only by Archbishop G. Beltrano (1606­1611). The modern decorations of the chapel were the work of Pius IX. The poor fresco on the right of the wretched, anachronistic statue represents Gregory’s entrance into Salerno with Guiscard, and the equally indifferent one on the left depicts his reception of the canons of Salerno. The whole memorial is utterly unworthy of one of the world’s really great heroes.

The honour which had been previously paid to him as a saint by the people of Salerno was accorded to him throughout the universal Church by the order of Benedict XIII (1729).

IX

ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND SCANDINAVIA.  

ONE of those who were sincerely glad of the elevation of Hildebrand to the See of Peter was William the Conqueror, for he was mindful of the efforts he had made to secure the approval of Rome for his invasion of England. Besides, he realized that Hildebrand was a Conqueror too, and there was the sympathy of great minds between them. Though Gregory was very far from approving of all William’s acts, and from obtaining all he wanted from him, he always regarded him as the best of the civil rulers of the time. When he wrote to thank him for his expressions of sympathy concerning the decease of Alexander, and of joy at his succession, he assured him that “he was the king whom he took it to be his duty to love above all others”. At the same time, he did not lose the opportunity to exhort William to be just in all his dealings, to defend the churches committed to his care, to place the honour of God above all his worldly interests, and to look after the revenue of St. Peter in England, as he would look after his own. On the other hand, he lets him know that he has care for the interests of the Conqueror’s monastery of St. Stephen at Caen. In writing on the same occasion to William’s wife, Matilda, he entreated her never to cease endeavouring to inspire her husband with good intentions, reminding her that if “the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife”, a believing husband is made still better by a believing wife.

Gregory held that William was better than other kings, because he neither sold nor destroyed the churches of God, but endeavoured to promote the reign of peace and justice among his subjects, and because he refused to join himself to the enemies of the Apostolic See, and caused the clergy to dismiss their wives, and the laity to give up the Church tithes which they had seized.

If, with all this, Gregory did not find the Conqueror as “religious as he could have wished”; so, too, with all his virtues, he did not find Lanfranc as obedient as he could have wished. Learned and pious, Lanfranc was diplomatic, and from the day when he made peace between William and Rome on the subject of his marriage, he remained in the closest intimacy with his sovereign. Under his hands the Conqueror became something of a churchman, and under the masterful mind of William, Lanfranc learnt to take up, to some extent, the attitude of an independent statesman.

No sooner had Gregory been elected Pope than he informed “his most beloved brother” Lanfranc of the fact, and implored him to pray for him, because he felt that, if he wished to escape the judgment to come, he would have to oppose himself to kings and bishops who were not merely doing no good, but were actually leading the people to evil. Finally, recognizing in him, as Gregory I did in St. Augustine, a sort of patriarchal authority over the British Isles, he exhorted him to put down certain scandals existing among the Irish.

About the same time Lanfranc received another letter from the Pope, in which, assuring him that he had as little doubt about him as he had about himself, Gregory expressed his astonishment that he suffered the Holy See to be trifled with, by not preventing Herfast, bishop of Elmham, from harassing the abbey of St. Edmundsbury, which was under papal protection. Herfast was one of the most indifferent of William’s episcopal creations, and gave Lanfranc trouble by ordaining a married man deacon. How strongly he took up the defence of the abbey may be gathered from his letter to Herfast on the subject.

By degrees Gregory’s regard for Lanfranc began to cool. The bishops and abbots of England had been ordered to attend the Synod of 1075, “by virtue of the obedience which they owed to Blessed Peter”; because, said the Pope, the state of religion in England was not what it ought to be. But Lanfranc failed to comply with this and other corresponding summonses which Gregory addressed to him. At length, by the hands of his legate Hubert, “subdeacon of the sacred palace”, whom he was sending on an embassy to the king, Gregory forwarded a letter to Lanfranc which was very different in tone from its predecessors. He expressed his surprise that the archbishop, who had ever manifested affection for him, should have hitherto failed, despite frequent mandates, to visit him. Only the apostolic clemency and the remembrance of former friendship had prevented him from making his displeasure very apparent. He had learnt, indeed, that it was fear of the king which had prevented his journey, but he was not to allow himself to be swayed by fear of the powers of this world. He finished his letter by exhorting him to remind the king of his duty, and to warn him that he was not to attempt to hinder anyone from going to Rome.

To this letter of the Pope, Lanfranc returned a respectful but very evasive reply. It was the reply not of a thoroughly loyal son of the Church, but of a politician in sympathy with a master who was anxious to have the Church as subservient to himself as the State. “To Gregory, the reverend and supreme pastor of the Universal Church, Lanfranc, the sinner and unworthy bishop, offers his due submissive service”. He begins by saying that he has received the Pope’s letter, which is full of paternal admonitions, and which accuses him of not showing the same respect for the Roman Church as he had shown before he was raised to his present elevated position which he and everybody else understands that he owes to the authority of the Apostolic See”. He continues: “I must not, venerable Father, say you are labouring under a mistake; but, as my conscience is my witness, I can never suppose myself thinking that absence, or distance, or any exalted position could avail to prevent me from being completely submissive to your orders, in accordance with the dictates of the canons”. He promises when, by God’s help, he does meet the Pope, to show that the loss of love is rather on his side, and assures him that he has endeavoured, though without success, to forward the legate’s business with the king.

The business of the legate Hubert was to obtain from William for the Pope not only the Peter’s Pence which was due, but also that which Gregory supposed to go along with the payment of money, viz., an oath of fealty. How far the legate was successful in his quest will be best understood from the king’s letter on the subject to the Pope. “Thy legate Hubert, Holy Father, hath called upon me in thy name to take the oath of fealty to thee and to thy successors, and to exert myself in enforcing the more regular payment of the money which my predecessors were accustomed to remit to the Church of Rome. One request I have granted; the other I refuse. Homage to thee I have not chosen, nor do I choose to do. I never made, a promise to that effect, neither do I find that it was ever performed by my predecessors to thine. The money in question during the three years past, owing to my being frequently in France, has been negligently collected. Now, as I am, by divine mercy, returned to my kingdom, the money which has been collected is remitted by the aforesaid legate. As for the rest, it shall be sent, as opportunity shall occur, by the legates of our trusty Archbishop Lanfranc. Pray for us, and for our kingdom, for we always respected thy predecessors, and we would fain regard thee with sincere affection, and be always thy obedient servant”.

Gregory felt much annoyed at this reply, and at once recalled Hubert by letter, saying that he cared not for money unaccompanied by homage. At the same time, however, he expressed his dissatisfaction that another of his legates had ventured on his own authority to upbraid William, although, indeed, he wrote, the Roman Church had many causes of complaint against him. “He has not been ashamed”, wrote the indignant Pontiff, “to do what no pagan king ever has presumed to attempt against the Apostolic See, viz., irreverently and impudently to prevent bishops from coming to the threshold of the apostles (ad limina)”. So far, he continued, memory of former affection had caused him to stay his hand, but Hubert must let the king know that if he continued his present course he would be made to feel the wrath of St. Peter. Because William opposed simony and clerical incontinence, Gregory bore with his short­comings towards himself, as did Pius VI those of Napoleon I because he restored religion in France.

The letter just quoted contained another order for English and Norman bishops to present themselves at the Lenten synod of 1080. Their failure to attend and the continued disobedience of their archbishop at length (c. 1081) brought upon the latter a threat of suspension if he did not present himself before the Pope in the course of the four months following the receipt of the notice.

Fortunately for Lanfranc, however, a weapon fell into his hands which enabled him to parry the blows of the Pontiff. An antipope (Clement) had been elected at Brixen (1080). By his agent, Cardinal Hugo Candidus, he at once endeavoured to secure the allegiance of England. Lanfranc was not disloyal enough to throw off the obedience he owed to Gregory, but he was—shall we say—diplomatic enough to give out that it was quite possible that it might become necessary to do so. This cunning ruse and the difficulties into which Henry’s march on Rome plunged the Pope, enabled Lanfranc to pursue his career of independence unchecked. The letter, generally supposed to have been written to Hugo, in which Lanfranc unfolds this policy, does him credit as a diplomatist, if not as a Catholic bishop. It is true he objects to the disrespectful language towards Gregory used by his correspondent, as also to his excessive flattery of Clement. “Nevertheless, I fully believe that the illustrious Emperor would not have embarked in an affair of such importance (the deposition of the Pope) without good reason, nor can I suppose that he could have effected his purpose except by the Divine assistance ... Our island has not, as yet, rejected Gregory; it has not decided upon tendering obedience to Clement. When both sides have been heard, we shall be better qualified to come to a resolution of the case”. The result of this quasi neutrality, though it enabled William and Lanfranc to act very independently of Rome, still caused them to be “counted among the Gregorian party by its continental supporters”.

There is no doubt that this was the correct view for them to take, as is shown by the following fact. William, bishop of Durham, finding that his cathedral church and the body of St. Cuthbert were no longer served as of old by monks, consulted King William and Lanfranc as to what he should do, “in order that no one should hereafter set aside his arrangements on the plea that they were his own private acts”. “Anxious that a design of such utility should obtain general approbation, the king sent the bishop to the Pope in order to consult with him not only upon this particular piece of business, but upon some other matters, with the management of which he entrusted him”. After the bishop had “truthfully explained to the Lord Pope Gregory the former and present condition of the Church of Durham”, a bull was issued by which he was authorized to eject the secular canons from his cathedral, and to replace them by the monks of Wearmouth and Jarrow. By separate letters King William and Lanfranc were encouraged to assist in the carrying out of the bishop’s wish. “When the king heard that the Pope had assented in this wise, he was no little rejoiced, and he gave his license for its accomplishment”. Accordingly, after the exhibition of the papal bull “to the assembled multitudes”, the monks were restored to Durham (May 1083).

But Gregory was not the man to confine himself to granting favours to retain doubtful allegiance. In the very last letter in his Register we find him remonstrating with William on his imprisoning his brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux. This warlike and ambitious prelate, like another Wolsey, ambitioned the Papacy. He had accumulated large sums of gold, and, “by stuffing the scrips of pilgrims with letters and money, he had nearly purchased the Roman Papacy from the citizens”. But when rumour of his schemes brought soldiers to him from all parts of England, his brother the king took alarm, not knowing to what purpose he might turn his troops. He accordingly threw Odo into prison, saying that he did not seize the bishop of Bayeux, but the earl of Kent (1082).

The Conqueror’s sarcastic distinction between Odo as a bishop and as the second man in his kingdom did not recommend itself to Gregory. He accordingly wrote to the king, saying that the satisfaction he experienced in the contemplation of the king’s many virtues was dulled by the thought that in imprisoning his brother he had preferred reasons of State to the laws of God. Quoting the Holy Scriptures, the saying of the great emperor Constantine at the council of Nice, and the words of the Fathers, he enlarged on the sacerdotal dignity. Unfortunately, only a fragment of this letter is extant; but it is certain it had no immediate effect upon William. Only on his deathbed did he reluctantly grant the release of Odo, assuring the bystanders that he had kept his brother in prison because he was destitute of the virtues either of a bishop or of a prince.

In the very beginning of his pontificate, Gregory directed his attention towards Ireland. The ravages of the Danes, and the terrible losses sustained by the Irish at the great battle of Clontarf, in which they crushed the power of the Norsemen (1014), were fatal to Christian discipline in their country.  After Clontarf native unity and strength were over, and the reign of discord and chaos was about to begin. In his first letter to Lanfranc, Gregory exhorted him to endeavour to put down adultery and the selling of wives which were so common in parts of Ireland. As a consequence, Lanfranc wrote to Guthrie, one of the kings of the Danes in Ireland, whom he calls “a precious son of the Holy Roman Church”, encouraging him to hold fast to the faith, and bidding him put down throughout his kingdom offences against the laws of marriage. He wrote also to Turlogh O'Brian, a grandson of the hero of Clontarf, the great Brian Boru, “the most vigorous sovereign of the eleventh century” (d. 1086), and the overlord of the Danish king just mentioned. After congratulating Ireland on the possession of such a prince, he begs him to set his face against the practice of divorce and of other customs prohibited by the Gospel, the Popes, and the Canons.

It was to this same distinguished ruler that Gregory wrote in 1083. The tone of his letter may be better understood if it be borne in mind that Donogh O'Brian, one of the sons of Brian Boru, who survived the fateful day of Clontarf, went to Rome on a pilgrimage, “perhaps anxious to atone for his crimes”, and “is sad to have presented the crown and scepter of Munster to the reigning Pope”.

Impressing on Turlogh and all the people of Ireland the necessity of their practicing the virtue of justice, and of loving and preserving Christian peace, he lays it down that “the authority of Christ has founded His Holy Church on a solid rock, and has committed its rights to Blessed Peter, and He has also constituted it over all the kingdoms of the world. To this Church He has subjected principalities, powers, and everything else which is sublime upon earth, according to the prophet Isaiah : “They that slander thee shall come and shall worship the steps of thy feet”. Therefore to Blessed Peter and his vicars, among whom, by divine dispensation, we happen to be numbered, the whole world owes obedience and reverence, which, with a devout mind, you shall remember to show to the Holy Roman Church. If, therefore, any affairs shall take place among you which may seem to require our assistance, be careful to apply to us at once, and your just demand, with God’s help, you shall obtain”. In this letter, however, there is nothing to compel one to believe that Gregory does not refer simply to spiritual subjection.

Apart from vague appeals to Svend Estrithson, the king of Denmark, for help against the Normans, Gregory’s relations with Scandinavia were confined to efforts to develop its civilization, and to spread the faith within its limits. Hence he earnestly exhorted its kings to do their duty to their people, “with the royal name to manifest royal virtues, and to show that there ever reigned in their hearts that justice in virtue of which they ruled their subjects”. “You know”, he wrote to Svend (or Sweyn II.), “that the glory and delights of this world are fleeting and deceptive. You know that all flesh hastens day by day to its last end, and that death spares no one. You know that kings, just like the poorest, are only dust and ashes, and that all men will one day be severely judged. Both bishops, then, and kings have all the more reason to fear that they have to answer for their subjects as well as for themselves. So live, then, so reign that you may then look with confidence on the face of the Eternal King and Judge, and receive from Him an eternal crown in return for an earthly sceptre wielded with virtue”.

Quite similar was the advice he gave to Svend’s son Harald III. He would have him season his life with justice and mercy, and be the protector of the poor, the widow, and the orphan. Harald showed himself willing to profit by Gregory’s wisdom, and begged for more explicit direction as to the proper government of his kingdom. To be enabled to comply properly with the king’s request, Gregory asked him to send him a cleric who could inform him regarding the manners and customs of the Danes, and then carry back to Denmark the instructions of the Apostolic See. One result of Harald’s friendly communications with Gregory seems to have been that he became one of Denmark’s favourite legislators, and his successors, on their accession, were made to swear to observe his enactments. Another was that he obtained an ally who helped to preserve his kingdom for him intact.

Gregory also corresponded with the good King Olaf III of Norway, known as Kyrre, or the Peaceful, whom he regarded as living “almost at the extremity of the world”. He requested the king “to send to the court of the apostles some of the young nobles of his country, in order that, carefully trained under the eyes of the apostles Peter and Paul in the laws of God and the Church, they may be able worthily to teach and practice the word of God”. Besides exhorting Olaf to be just towards all, he warned him not to help any of those who were trying to disturb the country of Harald Hein.

Gregory’s keen vision extended even beyond the “furthest limits” of the world; for the annals of Iceland tell us that it was by his orders that the second native Icelander, Gissur, was consecrated bishop. It is not easy to over­estimate the advantages which accrued to these young and distant countries from their intercourse with Rome and Gregory. Civilization was in each case steadily promoted in both head and members.

X.

FRANCE AND SPAIN, AFRICA AND SARDINIA

Of the kings of northern Europe, Gregory, as we have seen, uniformly spoke well. He could, at times, even find a good word to say of Henry IV; but he had never anything but evil to write of Philip of France. And his judgment of that king has been endorsed by all subsequent writers. Weak and wicked, Philip was denounced by the Pope as the prince of his time who was the most stained with simony, and the most anxious to enslave the Church. Constantly false to his promises of amendment, Gregory found it necessary to threaten him. He declared he would lay all France under an interdict, the consequences of which would be that his subjects, “unless they were willing to give up the Christian faith, would refuse to yield him any further obedience”. Under the rule of such a sovereign, or rather tyrant, Gregory declared the once powerful kingdom of France had sunk lower and lower, till it seemed to have lost all sense of honour and decorum. Justice was trampled underfoot, and crime stalked with impunity through a country desolated by private wars. Its impotent king did nothing but set an example to his subjects of every crime. That he had been allowed to go so far along the path of vice was the fault, so Gregory declared, of the supineness of the bishops. They must warn their king, and if he would not hear them, they must lay France under an interdict. If that failed to bring him to a sense of his duty, he would strive in every way to take his kingdom from him.

In his efforts to purify the Church of France, Gregory was actively and directly seconded by the zeal and ability of Hugh, bishop of Die, who acted as his legate, and indirectly, as it were, by the prayers of St. Bruno, who founded the Carthusian Order during his pontificate (1084). The chief obstacle to the work of reform was Manasses, archbishop of Rheims, whose priestly character may be gauged by his remark that the archbishopric of Rheims would be worth having if it did not involve the saying of Mass.

Under Hugh synods were held, simoniacal bishops deposed, and monies due to the Holy See were collected. So zealous was Hugh in the work of reform, that his zeal sometimes outran his discretion, and Gregory occasionally found it necessary to annul or modify his sentences, and to urge moderation upon him.

Referring the reader elsewhere for an account of the manner in which Gregory was drawn into the interminable dispute about the respective jurisdictions of Tours and Dol; of his further dealings with the worldly and head­strong archbishop of Rheims; and of his recognition of the primacy of the archbishop of Lyons over the ecclesiastical provinces of Lyons, Rouen, Tours, and Sens, we shall close our narration of Gregory’s relations with France by the story of his dealings with Berengarius of Tours.

As the heresy of Berengarius still continued to cause unrest in France, it was again condemned at the synod of Poitiers (1075); for, despite recantations, and despite promises to maintain silence on the doctrine of the Eucharist, the archdeacon continued to propound his theories. When, in consequence, he was summoned by the Pope’s representatives in France to appear before them, not wishing to be tried by judges on the spot who could easily learn the truth, he threw himself on the protection of Gregory. Writing, accordingly, to the Pope, “who in the Lord Jesus has to be treated with the most profound reverence”, and to whom he offers “his sincerest affection”, he professes to be astonished that his legates should wish to proceed against him. He is surprised, because he has obeyed the Pope’s order to preserve silence on his doctrine, though he does add, ambiguously enough, “as far as he ought”. He declares that he has resolved to treat of his case only in presence of the Pope, in which he trusts soon to be. Finally, objecting to the local judges as prejudiced, or as men of no character, he begs the Pope not to subject him to them, but to grant him a protection worthy of the Apostolic See.

This and other letters which he received from France convinced Gregory that he must again examine Berengarius. He therefore summoned him to appear before him. If we are to believe Berengarius himself, there was some talk, when he arrived in Rome, of submitting him to the ordeal of red-hot iron, but the Pope decided that it was not to take place. However that may be, his teachings were thoroughly examined in the important synod of February 1079. The Father of this council, at which were present 150 bishops and abbots and a very large number of clergy, was Alberic, a monk of Monte Cassino. When hard pressed, Berengarius was in the habit of declaring that after the words of consecration had been pronounced the eyes saw upon the altar bread and wine, but faith told us that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Jesus Christ. His assertion, properly interpreted, is sound Catholic doctrine; but, when free to say what he believed, Berengarius held that it was man’s faith alone which supposed the body and blood of our Lord to be upon the altar, and that, de facto, really, or strictly speaking, they were not there at all. To put an end to this quibbling, Alberic proposed to add the word substantially to the declaration of Berengarius that, after the consecration, the body and blood of our Lord were present on the altar. Hence in the official version of the proceedings of the synod we read that “the great majority (maxima pars) of those present held that in virtue of the words of consecration pronounced by the priest, the bread and wine were, by the invisible cooperation of the Holy Ghost, converted substantially into the body and blood of our Lord”. After three days’ discussion, those who had maintained a mere figurative change gave way, and Berengarius asked and obtained pardon for his heretical teaching. He took an oath that he believed as the council had defined, and was commanded by Gregory never again to discuss the doctrine of the Lord’s body and blood with anyone, except for the sake of bringing back to the faith one whom his teaching might have led astray.

Satisfied with his submission, Gregory not only allowed him to return to France, but furnished him with a safe conduct as well, forbidding anyone to injure him, “a son of the Roman Church”, or to call him a heretic. It was this consideration for Berengarius that caused Gregory’s enemies to publish broadcast the accusation that “he called in question the catholic and apostolic faith concerning the body and blood of the Lord, and that he was a long-standing follower of Berengarius”.

No sooner was the archdeacon back in France, than, once more false to all his undertakings, he began again, it is said, to spread abroad his peculiar tenets. Condemned for the last time by a council at Bordeaux (October 1080), he ceased from that time till his death (1088) to make history. We may therefore hope that the unanimous assertion of his contemporaries is correct, and that he abandoned his private opinions on the subject of the Holy Eucharist, and died in the bosom of the Church.

Spain.

To judge from Gregory’s letters, it would appear that the need of reform in Spain was not so urgent as in some of the other countries of the West, or was perhaps not so possible. At any rate, in his known dealings with Spain, Gregory simply followed the policy of Alexander. He encouraged the expeditions which Ebles of Rouci and other French nobles were making against the Moors in Spain. This encouragement he accorded, as we have already seen, on condition that they should hold the lands they might conquer of St. Peter; for Gregory maintained, both to them and to the princes of Spain themselves, that the supreme dominion over the kingdom of Spain belonged to the Roman Church.

But he had more at heart strengthening the bonds of unity which formerly attached the kings of Spain to the Roman pontiffs. Hence, by his letters to both kings and bishops, and by his legates, he endeavoured to push forward the replacement of the Mozarabic liturgy by that of Rome. He congratulated Sancho Ramirez, king of Aragon, on his efforts to effect the cleared change, and he begged the kings of Leon and Castile to follow his example. He reminded them of the concord which connected “Spain with the city of Rome in both faith and liturgical practice” before heresy and the invasion of the Goths and Moors dimmed at once the faith of the Spaniards and their worldly prosperity; and he exhorted the two kings to receive that Liturgy which had been brought to the notice of the Spaniards long ago by Popes Innocent I and Hormisdas, and by their own early councils.

Up to the autumn of the year 1079 at least, Gregory's intercourse with Alfonso VI of Leon was most harmonious; for, in recognition of his cooperation with him, he sent him in the October of that year a golden key containing some filings from St. Peter’s chains. But before midsummer of the following year, Alfonso had given the Pope grave cause to be dissatisfied with him. In defiance of the laws of the Church he had contracted a second marriage with a relative, Agnes of Aquitaine, and, falling under the influence of an insubordinate monk of Cluny, had gravely slighted the Pope's legate. The monk seems to have been guilty of causing a great number of the Castilians, who were on the point of giving up their objections to the reception of the Roman liturgy, to hold fast to their accustomed one. Hugh of Cluny, who was the recalcitrant monk’s abbot, was commanded by the Pope to bring his rebellious subject to order. He was also instructed to make known to Alfonso how grievously he had offended the Pope, who was resolved, unless he repented, to take the extreme step of going himself to Spain, and stirring up opposition against him, if all else failed. At the same time he wrote to Alfonso, exhorting him to renounce both Agnes and his evil counsellor. These representations were not lost on Alfonso. In place of the monk he took as his adviser Bernard, abbot of Sahagun, afterwards archbishop of Toledo, and in place of Agnes he took to wife Constance of Burgundy, the niece of Hugh of Cluny. It was especially by the exertions of Bernard and Constance that the Mozarabic liturgy disappeared from Castile and Leon.

But in the meantime, when any Spanish bishops came to Rome, Gregory prevailed upon them to promise to take up the work of spreading the use of the Roman liturgy; and he strove by letter to move them to “labour that the Roman ordo might be more accurately observed throughout Spain, Galicia, and wherever their influence extended”. From these earnest efforts of Gregory it resulted that, speaking generally, by the end of the “Hildebrandine age” the Mozarabic liturgy ceased to be used outside of Toledo and Salamanca.

Africa

If, at this time, the lot of the Christians under the Moors in Spain was not all that could be desired, that of those under the Moslems in Africa was hard indeed. Since the Mohammedan invasion of that country in the seventh century their numbers had steadily declined; and the tenth and eleventh centuries especially witnessed a sad diminution in the number of their bishoprics and centres of work generally. With the decline of their material prosperity ensued a decline in their religious spirit. They became divided amongst themselves. We have seen how St. Leo IX endeavoured to check the ambition of the bishop of Gummi, or Gummasa, who wished to lord it over the bishop of Carthage, always accounted the first of the African bishops. Now we find a miserable section of the Christians of Carthage dragging their bishop, Cyriacus, before the tribunal of the emir because he would not work their will. Insulted by the Moslem, the unfortunate bishop turned to the sovereign Pontiff. Gregory, who had just been made Pope, at once dispatched two letters to Africa. One upbraided the people for their conduct, and exhorted them to repentance; the other consoled the outraged bishop, and prayed God to succour “the Church of Africa, so long troubled and buffeted by the waves”.

Another letter, which Gregory wrote three years later to the same prelate, gives us a picture, striking but melancholy, of the woeful decay of the Church in Africa ever since the days of the Vandals. Shortly after the overthrow of these barbarians by the troops of Justinian, over two hundred African bishops could meet together in council. A list of bishops, written some centuries later, probably in the tenth century, shows that there were still some forty bishops in Africa. By Gregory’s time (1076) the number of African bishops had sunk almost to the vanishing point, when El-Nacer, the grandson of the founder of the usurping dynasty of the Hammadites, sent to him an embassy with rich presents. Anxious, no doubt, to strengthen his dynasty, and to attract people to his new city of Boujoyah, he wrote to Gregory, requesting him to consecrate the African priest Servandus for the See of Buzea. In his reply to the Moslem prince, whom he calls Anazir, and describes as king of Mauritania Sitifensis, though his kingdom really extended beyond the limits of that ancient province, the Pope, after granting his request, thanks him for his presents, and especially for having set free a number of Christian captives. “This act of goodness has been suggested to your heart by God, the Creator of all things, without whom we cannot do nor even think any good ... For almighty God, who wishes all men to be saved and none to perish, approves of nothing in us so much as that after Him we should love our fellow-men, and not do to others what we would not have them do to us. This love ought to exist more between us than between other nations, seeing that we, though in a different way, acknowledge the one God, and every day praise and adore Him as the Creator and Ruler of the Universe. For, as the apostle says : He is our peace, who bath made both one”. In the concluding portion of this noble letter, the Pope devoted himself to promoting arrangements which might advance friendly relations between his people and those of El-Nacer.

This letter, and one to the people of Buzea, exhorting them to receive Servandus and to edify by their conduct the Saracens in the midst of whom they lived, inform us of the fact of the consecration of an archbishop for Africa by the Pope. But it is one to Cyriacus, archbishop of Carthage, which lets us know the sad truth that Christian Africa had fallen into such a state of distress that it could not furnish the three bishops canonically required to consecrate a new one. In the letter alluded to, Gregory bade Cyriacus, in conjunction with Servandus, send him a proper person to be consecrated as their assistant, so that the three of them may be able to duly consecrate fresh bishops and provide for the necessities of the African Church.

The good understanding between Gregory and El-Nacer seems to have been productive of lasting fruit, for in 1114 a Christian bishop was still to be found in the territory of the Hammadites. But the condition of the African Church only became blacker and blacker, and such valuable documents bearing on it as the letters of Leo IX and Gregory VII, rarer and rarer.

From the tenth-century list of African bishops just quoted, it would appear that, during the century in which the Moslems occupied Sardinia, viz., during the tenth, its Christian population was for church purposes included in the ecclesiastical province of Mauritania secunda. After the final expulsion of the Moors (1050), however, it reverted to the immediate jurisdiction of the Popes, and we find the indefatigable Gregory working to draw it closer to Rome temporally as well as spiritually.

At first, however, it would seem that the native Sardinian authorities were not deposed to acknowledge the civil suzerainty of the Pope. But when they found that various peoples, regarding the island after the expulsion of the Moors as a sort of no man’s-land, were writing to Gregory for permission to invade and seize it in his name, they were glad enough to acknowledge his claims.

XI.

THE EASTERN EMPIRE; HUNGARY AND VARIOUS SLAVONIC COUNTRIES.

GREGORY’S hopes with regard to the Eastern Empire were not destined to be realized. He aspired to reunite the Greek Church to the See of Rome, to deliver the Christians of the East from the thraldom of the Turk, and to bring the forces of Constantinople in opposition to those of the Normans. On the accession of Michael VII to the imperial throne (1071), Pope Alexander had sent St. Peter, bishop of Anagni, to congratulate him on his accession, and to labour for the reunion of the two churches. But his efforts were brought to nothing by that “able but intriguing pedant”, Michael Psellus; for Michael himself, though a literary, was a useless sovereign. The consequences of the terrible defeat of Manzikert (1071), however, were gradually impressing upon the Byzantine statesmen that they would have to look to the West for help against the advancing power of the Turks. Overtures in this direction would seem to have reached Gregory soon after he became Pope. In reply to the emperors expressions of devotion to the Roman Church, Gregory made known to him that it was his ardent wish to renew the ancient union between the Roman Church “and her daughter, the Church of Constantinople”, and that to promote this and other ends, he was sending him Dominic, the patriarch of Venice.

While these negotiations were pending, the bitter cries of distress which reached him from the Christians of the East, who were suffering cruelly at the hands of the Turks, caused Gregory to turn his attention, as we have seen, to procuring armed help for them. But his projects came to nothing; and he had to look on in anguish of heart while the Eastern Church drifted further from Rome, and the Eastern Empire hastened on to its destruction. Although Michael had not been able to bring the union of the Eastern and Western Churches any nearer, he certainly succeeded in securing the affection of the Pope. Hence we see Gregory not only excommunicating the voluptuary Nicephorus Botoniates who dethroned Michael (1078), but supporting Robert Guiscard in his efforts to avenge him.

When Gregory became Pope, Hungary, like Germany, was ruled by a young man (Solomon, 1063-1074), who was, moreover, a friend of the German monarch, and had married his sister Judith. When he was a mere boy he had been espoused to her by his father (Andrew I), who had hoped by a German alliance to strengthen him against his uncle Bela. But his German friends and his German sympathies proved far more dangerous to him than either Béla or his sons, Geyza and Ladislaus the Saint. They alienated his people, who naturally turned for guidance to the sons of Béla. In his distress, Solomon appealed for help both to Henry and to the Pope, but he did not succeed in obtaining either material aid from his brother-in-law or moral support from the Pope. The troops of Henry were discomfited, and the letters of Gregory brought him blame instead of consolation. In accepting his kingdom from Henry as a benefice, he had, the Pope declared, slighted the rights of St. Peter; for the elders of his people could tell him that King Stephen offered the kingdom of Hungary to the Holy Roman Church. If he hoped for the love of the Holy See, he must acknowledge that he held his sceptre “of the apostolical and not of the royal majesty”, and regulate his conduct as a king should.

Thus abandoned, Solomon had to fly for his life; and Geyza, the son of Béla, remained in possession of his kingdom. But though Gregory did not feel very keenly the misfortunes of the exiled king, it was otherwise with regard to his wife Judith. To her he wrote a letter full of sympathy and encouragement. “Let not”, he said, “the misfortune which has now come upon you terrify you, nor depress your noble mind, but with royal mind overlook your troubles, and, firmly trusting in God, bear your difficulties with the natural strength of your character ... At all times remember that you must ever strive to render your noble birth and name more illustrious”.

Solomon’s successor lost no time in commending himself and his cause to the Pope. In reply to his protestations, Gregory wished him such honour and glory as were consistent with justice, for he had heard much good of him. “We believe you know”, he continued, “that, like other most glorious kingdoms, that of Hungary ought to remain free, and not be subject to the king of any other kingdom, but only to the holy and universal mother, the Roman Church, whose subjects are treated as sons and not as slaves ... Since the power is in your hands, we exhort you to have a care for religion and the churches, and to obey our legates in such a way that you may reap benefit in this life and the next”.

Though in this letter to Geyza, whom here, as always, he only calls duke, Gregory salutes him as king de facto, still he did not forget the interests of Solomon. He laboured to make peace between the two on the basis of Solomon’s being allowed to hold the small portion of Hungary then in his possession. With regard to the whole kingdom, he maintained that Providence had taken it away from him for presuming to hold it of Henry and not of the Holy See.

Geyza (d. April 15, 1077) held the sceptre of Hungary only a few years, and was succeeded by his brother St. Ladislaus. It would appear that at first the newly elected king only communicated with the Pope by letters, and those, too, not very explicit. At any rate, having occasion to write to Neemia, archbishop of Gran, or Strigonia, Gregory bade him along with his fellow bishops and the notables of the country, approach Ladisiaus, and recommend him “to make his position and his attitude towards the Apostolic See more plainly known to us by means of suitable envoys”. At the same time, he undertook to support the king, to his own greater good and to that of his country, with the weight of the apostolic authority.

Ladislaus hastened to assure the Pope of his devotion towards him, and proved it in a practical way by giving his protection to such as were fighting the battle of the Church, and had fled into his country as exiles from Germany.

In his letters to Ladislaus, as to his predecessors, Gregory did not lose an opportunity of impressing upon him to be ever just, to protect the widow, the orphan, and the pilgrim, and to guard the Church. The king would appear to have taken the advice of the Pope to heart. Already great in body, “with hands and feet as large as those of a lion”, he became great in soul, and was called “by all his people the holy king”. The reputation of his valor and holiness spread all over Europe, and it is asserted that he was asked both by Pope Urban II and the people of the West to lead the first Crusade. If nothing else, death at least (1905) prevented his complying with this request.

If Gregory’s “apostolic authority” did not avail for anything more, it humanized the kings of Hungary, and did much for the independence of their country.  

Bohemia

In the documents which chronicle the reigns of Henry IV, and of Gregory VII, there may frequently be read the name of Vratislav II, duke of Bohemia. He and his wild followers fought on many a battlefield in Germany and Hungary in behalf of their liege lord Henry. Nor was it any concern of theirs whether he was under the ban of the Church or not. For many years, however, Gregory remained on good terms with Vratislav, as is shown by his letters relating to the duke’s brother, Jaromir, which we have already quoted. In April 1075 we find him begging “the serenity of Vratislav’s nobility” to have compassion on his nephew Frederick (who afterwards became patriarch of Aquileia), and to let him have the inheritance left him by his father, or some other satisfactory one. He asks the duke to listen to him, both because Frederick is of his own flesh and blood, and because appeal is made to him in the name of St. Peter. Frederick afterwards showed his gratitude towards Gregory for his efforts in his behalf by his devotion to him and to his cause—devotion which he was to prove with his life.

As time went on, and word reached Gregory of the outrages inflicted on the Saxons and the papal party in Germany by the troops of Vratislav, that prince incurred at length the enmity of Gregory. He was blamed for communicating with excommunicated persons, and exhorted not to prefer his own honour to that of God, or money to justice. He was, moreover, told that his request that the liturgy might be celebrated in the Slavonic tongue could not be granted. D'Avril is of opinion that a confusion in the mind of the Pope between the Arian Goths and the Slavs is the reason why he refused to concede what John VIII and other Popes had already allowed. But bearing in mind Gregory’s action with regard to the Mozarabic rite, it is perhaps better to assign, as the motive of his action, his wish to strengthen the unity of the Church. At any rate, he says nothing from which the former reason may be gathered. He writes: “When one reflects on the matter, it seems clear that it is not without reason that Almighty God has willed that the sacred scriptures should be obscure in parts, for fear lest, if they were completely clear to all, they might not be appreciated, or might even be despised; or again, wrongly interpreted by mediocre minds, they might lead men into error”. Then, briefly unfolding the idea of the development of doctrine, he continued : “It is no argument to the contrary that some pious men have tolerated or permitted to pass what in all simplicity the people have asked them. The primitive Church allowed many things which, with the development of Christianity, have in process of time been amended by the holy Fathers after careful examination”.

Although Vratislav remained faithful to Henry, and even received a kingly crown from him (1086), he obeyed the commands of the Pope with regard to the use of the Slavonic tongue in the liturgy.  

Dalmatia

Zvonimir (Demetrius or Sunimir), the last real king of Dalmatia and Croatia, was the son-in-law of Béla I of Hungary; and after his death, owing to a disputed succession, his country passed into the hands of Béla’s son, St. Ladislaus. He himself, however, to strengthen his position, had taken the precaution to acknowledge the Pope as his suzerain (1076). He experienced the benefit of being Gregory’s vassal during the rebellion of Wezelin, which seemingly came to naught. How far the rebel’s failure was due to the Pope cannot be stated, but no doubt the moral support he gave to the king was not without its effect. “We are exceedingly astonished”, wrote Gregory to Wezelin, “that, after having long since promised to be a vassal to St. Peter and to us, you attempt now to rise up against him whom the apostolical authority has appointed king of Dalmatia. We, therefore, in the name of St. Peter, prohibit you to take arms against that king, because, whatever you do against him, you do against the Holy See itself. If you have any grounds of complaint, you should ask justice of us, and wait for our decision; otherwise, know that we will draw against thee the sword of St. Peter to punish thy audacity, and the temerity of all those who shall favour thee in this enterprise”.

Poland And Russia

Some fifteen years before Gregory became Pope, Boleslaus II, surnamed the Bold, succeeded his father Casimir as duke of Poland (1058-1081). Of this prince Dunham says with much truth : “Before his expedition to Russia (1076), he was the model of sovereigns, ... afterwards he was the disgrace of human nature”.  Whilst he was still a creditable prince, he entered into communication with Gregory, and sent him presents. When thanking him for his kindness, the Pope urged him to cooperate with the legates he was sending him in putting the Church in Poland on a more satisfactory basis. He pointed out that the number of bishops in his country was too small, and that, through the want of a metropolitan, the few who were there were not under proper discipline. In the light of the fact that death might overtake him at any time, Boleslaus was urged to lead a good life, and to restore the money which he had taken from the king of the Russians (Dmitri Isiaslaf, the son of Jaroslaf, king of Kief).

On the death of Jaroslaf the Great, or the Wise (d. 1054), under whom Kief reached the height of its renown, and became the rival of Constantinople, his sons began to quarrel among themselves. “Through cupidity”, Swatoslaf induced another of his brothers, Wsewolod, to join him in attacking their eldest brother Isiaslaf, who was their over­lord, and ruled at Kief. Their undertaking was successful, and Isiaslaf had to fly from his capital (1073). In his exile, Isiaslaf devoted himself to obtaining allies against his rebellious brothers. He appealed both to Henry IV and to the Pope, to whom he sent his son Japorolla (1075), and to whom he offered his kingdom as a fief. In replying to the exiled king, Gregory signified his acceptance of his offer, in the hope that Blessed Peter, “by his intercession with God”, would guard him and his kingdom; would bring it about that he should hold his kingdom till his death, and would obtain for him life everlasting. He promised, moreover, that he would cooperate with him in whatever he wished as far as ever he could consistently with the claims of justice.

With his letters Gregory sent legates. The result of their representations, and of the Pope’s words, was that Boleslaus, who had previously plundered the exiled monarch, now came to his assistance, and Isiaslaf was re-established at Kief in July 1077. He died fighting on behalf of one of the very brothers who had driven him from his kingdom (October 1078). Except for what he says of his tall figure and handsome face, Nestor, in his panegyric of him, might be speaking of Gregory: “His moral character was irreproachable; he loathed injustice and loved justice; he was free from all double-dealing, was kind, and rendered not evil for evil”.

Elated by his success in restoring Isiaslaf, and seeing Poland and the difficulties in which Henry IV was involved, Boleslaus severed the slender cord which held him in subjection to the empire, and proclaimed himself king (December 1077).

He would appear also, about the same time, to have cut the bonds which bound him to his Creator. Speaking of him after this Russian expedition, Dunham notes that “his character—outwardly at least—had changed; his industry, his love of justice, his regal qualities had fled, and he was become the veriest debauchee of his dominions”. His excesses, however, were opposed by St. Stanislaus, bishop of Cracow, who at length had recourse to excommunication and interdict against him. Unable to overawe the courageous bishop, Boleslaus with his own hand6 (1079) slew him whilst he was saying Mass.

News of this atrocious crime soon reached Gregory. At first he refused to give it credence. Assured at length of its truth, he at once, we are told, excommunicated Boleslaus, put his kingdom under an interdict, and declared him deposed. For some considerable time Boleslaus braved the papal ban, but at last was forced to leave Poland, and to fly into Hungary. Here he is said to have gone mad, and after his death to have been devoured by dogs. His brother Ladislaus, who succeeded him, lost no time in sending an embassy to acquaint Gregory with what had happened. Understanding that Boleslaus was dead, the interdict was removed; and to further that reform of the Church of Poland on which he was intent, the Pope consecrated one Lambert for the See of Cracow (1082).

 

XII.

GREGORY THE MAN; HIS AIMS AND THEIR REALISATION.

 

To those who, through the medium of the preceding pages, have seen something of the great deeds of Gregory VII, there may come a desire to know more of the inner character of their doer, more of this just man and devout servant of God. They will have gathered from his words and his works that he was of the number of those who would sooner see the heavens fall than that justice should miscarry. They will not require to be reminded that he was fearless; nor, when they think of him as concerned about arctic Iceland and burning Africa, about Ireland in the Western Ocean, and the lands of the rising sun, will they need to be told that he was energetic, or that day and night his busy brain and pen were ever at work.

But they may be tempted to think that, in his hunger and thirst after justice, he was simply concerned that he himself might get his fill of it. It may not, therefore, be out of place to note that, if “he was anxious that the rights and dignities of the Roman Church should be preserved”, he professed to be desirous that “by its foresight and authority the privileges of its members, i.e., of the other churches, should be equally preserved”. If, in working to safeguard the liberties of Hungary, he might be said to be toiling to defend his own suzerainty, the same cannot be said of “the enmities of princes and nobles which he had to endure” for his efforts on behalf of Venetian independence. Men felt that he was possessed of justice, and came to him for it; and they came to him with equal confidence whether they were of the lower ranks of the clergy or of the higher orders of the nobility. If he was ready to pour out his life’s blood for the Church, he was also prepared to shed it for the good of the empire; and if he did not hesitate to send others where danger lay, he proclaimed that he was willing to go east or west at duty’s call.

We have said that he was prepared to see the heavens fall rather than that justice should not be done. But when, in his great struggle with the empire, this frail little man began to see, as it were, the very foundations of human society commencing to quake beneath the violence of attack and defence, we need not wonder that we occasionally detect a slight hesitation on his part in pushing matters to extremities—a hesitation for which he was vigorously challenged by the Saxons. His chief adversary (Henry IV) was bold and unscrupulous; some even regarded him as “a modern Nero”, and described him as “the most criminal man on the earth”. He was the centre to which were attracted the reckless, the daring, and the irreligious. With their aid, it was his aim “to subject to himself the Roman Church as he had subjected the other churches” of the empire. In dealing, then, with such a man, Gregory stood sometimes appalled at the consequences of his acts, and hesitated to strike the next blow. Still, when his conscience told him that the time to strike could be deferred no longer, he struck with all his might, and braved the consequences. When he beheld in vision Simon Magus lording it over the barque of Peter, he rushed in, and ceased not to wrestle with him till he had bound him hand and foot. Here we have typified the one aim of Gregory’s life, which was to purify the Church. We have seen him, indeed, aiming to extend the temporal suzerainty of the Roman Church. This he did, not from any tangible advantage brought to him by this overlordship, which was little more than nominal, but from a wish to increase the prestige of the Church and his influence for good in those countries of which he was the suzerain. The great ones of the world had made the Church their bondwoman. But Gregory, knowing that it could not do any good among the people if it were not independent, strove for that reason to make it their mistress. Further, in condemning investiture, he had not in view the withdrawing from their sovereigns the temporal power wielded by ecclesiastics and the subjecting of it to himself, but simply the rendering of the episcopate completely spiritually independent. It is true that this action of his was almost as destructive of the feudal system as the growth of the communes; but since he restored the election of the bishops to the people, his decree was far more calculated to increase the local influence of the people than his own.

With all Gregory’s yearning for justice, he was not a hard man. He was not a man to stand rigidly by his bond, to exact his full pound of flesh. His letters show that the troubles of his friends touched him to the quick, that as a good shepherd he was distressed when any of his flock were in difficulties, and that a cry for help always attracted his sympathetic attention. Full of paternal feeling, it was his wish to care for all, even for the very least Christian. He would not even have anyone treated with discourtesy, still less with cruelty. When on one occasion he saw the bleeding corpse of a monk who had been a pronounced opponent of the pontifical cause, and who had been assassinated, he tenderly covered it with his own cope, and himself sang the Mass for the repose of the soul of the murdered man. He was ever pleading for the poor, and in his solicitude for the helpless we hear him anathematizing wreckers.

Although, as we have seen, Gregory could at times brandish the terrible weapon of excommunication, and at times even strike with it, he did not himself use it anything like as often as would seem to be popularly supposed; nor did he approve of its frequent use. On the contrary, he was ever anxious for peace and honourable compromise, and ever wishful to be merciful. So much so, that, if some said he was cruel, others declared he was too pitiful.

Amid the bustle and din of arms in which Gregory was compelled to pass most of his pontificate, he found time to promote learning. Not only did he encourage literary effort, and refuse to accept as bishops men who lacked learning,0 but he passed a decree in synod that “all bishops must see to it that literature is taught in their churches”." Such a man was naturally an opponent of superstition.

Though Gregory was compelled to lead a most strenuous life, he was nevertheless a man of prayer. He had a tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose image is said to have shed tears before him when he was in difficulties, and to have smiled upon him in his successes. Acting as spiritual director to the Great Countess, he exhorted her to have a great love of the Blessed Sacrament of the altar, and to have great confidence in Mary. To her intercession he attributed his recovery from fever; and it was from her that he learnt that an attack of spiritual dryness which he experienced on one occasion was due to what ordinary men would call an innocent enough familiarity with his niece. To divert her sorrowing thoughts from his sufferings, he had on one occasion played with her necklace, and asked her if she would like to get married. A conscience, the lustre of which could be dimmed by such a trifle, could only belong to a saint; and in consonance with this estimate of his character, we read of the power of working miracles being attributed to him. At any rate Gregory’s piety was solid and practical. He recognized no repentance as genuine which did not bring forth worthy fruits of a change of life. His piety was practical also. He knew that human means must not be neglected if human ends were to be accomplished. He had no hesitation himself in drawing the sword to put down violence. He would have tyrants attacked “by arms both carnal and spiritual”. He considered that for the love of God to help the wretched and the oppressed was of more value than prayers and fasts; for “with the apostle he did not hesitate to put true charity before every other virtue”.

To the plunderer of the priest, the poor, or the trader, Gregory proved himself a formidable opponent. Whether the offender was a king or a noble, he did not spare him, but endeavoured to make him submit to restitution or punishment. By his vigorous defence of the Church’s laws with regard to matrimony, he did much to preserve and extend that high standard of sexual morality to which the Western nations long aspired; and he has a title to the gratitude of all who realize what the strict observance of the marriage laws means to the good of the individual and of the community. He forbade kings and nobles to marry relations; for, as he truly said : “The nobility of the race is destroyed when children are begotten of illicit unions”. The breaches of the matrimonial law which he opposed in the individual he opposed also in communities. English, Irish, and Genoese were in turn upbraided by him for laxity in this direction. Evidently there was not any beneficial influence on European morals in his age to be compared with that wielded by this democratic Pontiff. For it must be remembered that his influence was exerted not merely by letter and by legate, but personally, as it is by the Popes of today, on the crowds who, he tells us, flocked every year to Rome.

There are, however, authors who, while recognizing the necessity of emancipating the Church from the political power, find their interest in his “salutary reform” lessened, and their judgment terrified by “the exaggerated programme of papal infallibility and supremacy which Gregory put forward”. It is no part of our object to decide whether the programme of papal infallibility and supremacy put forth, whether by S. Gregory I, S. Gregory VII, or Pius X, is or is not exaggerated, but we have to note that many who consider the claims of Gregory VII extravagant are influenced by the twenty-seven curt propositions of the so-called Dictatus Papae. Though Gregorovius, for instance, allows that their author “is doubtful”, he regards them as “enunciating clearly and plainly the aims of Gregory”. But, certainly in the bald and crude form in which they are set forth, they would never, in their entirety, be acknowledged by any theologian as Catholic doctrine, and it is the opinion of the greater number of the best historians, whether Catholic or not, that they are not the production of Pope Gregory VII. Though, as we have already pointed out, some of the assertions of that Pontiff made in the heat of the contest with Henry IV might be interpreted to cover many extravagant propositions, Gregory nowhere categorically sets forth “that he alone had the right to wear the imperial regalia (n. 8); that his name was the only one which should be mentioned in the prayers of the Church (n. 10); or that a canonically consecrated Pope becomes holy by the merits of St. Peter (n. 23)”. With the memory of Benedict IX before him, Gregory was not so foolish as even to think the last proposition; and, with his ideas of justice and ecclesiastical custom, he was not the person to have enunciated the other two. Though he did maintain that circumstances might arise to justify his declaring that king or emperor had lost his right of ruling his subjects, it is incorrect to say that he regarded it as a broad general truth that “it was lawful for the Pope to depose emperors” (n. 12). Many of the other propositions, indeed, had in substance, if not quite in the unconditional style of the Dictatus, been proclaimed long before his time, and are accepted today as simple Catholic belief. It is and always has been the belief of Catholics that the Roman Church, i.e., the See of St. Peter and his successors, owes its origin to God (n. I); that consequently it cannot err (n. 22); that those only are to be accounted Catholics who are in spiritual agreement with it (n. 26); that the Pope cannot be judged by anyone (n. 19); and that the more important causes must be referred to it (n. 21).

However, as Gregory was no innovator, but in all he said and did ever supported himself by the words and examples of those who had gone before him, we may, with the majority of the best authorities, non-Catholic and Catholic, safely deny to Gregory the authorship of the Dictatus Papae. They may be dismissed with the words of Bowden : “The propositions are not mentioned by any writer of Gregory's own age, or of that which immediately followed it: not even by Benno, or any other of those foul-mouthed and infuriated opponents of Gregory and his cause, who could scarcely have failed, had they been acquainted with it, to inveigh in the strongest terms against a document so extraordinary, and so manifestly open to censure ... Gregory does not, in any of his numerous epistles, urge on any of his numerous correspondents the reception of these Dictatus, or even allude, in the slightest manner, to their existence. We may, therefore, it seems, in accordance with the most learned critics of ecclesiastical history ... unhesitatingly decide against their authenticity”.

In seeking a reply to the question as to how far Gregory was successful in the work he set himself to accomplish, we must, we believe, reject the view that “he did not succeed in his end, at least in the investiture quarrel, because he knew not how to measure his blows, and because he wished to impose upon the world ideas that were too absolute”. In the successful treatment of a loathsome disease, greater credit is due to the bold and skilful surgeon who vigorously plies the lancet, even to the great temporary distress of his patient, than to those who afterwards dress the wounds he has made, and assist at their final healing. Urban II, Calixtus II, and others merely reaped what Gregory had sown, or quietly promoted the eking of the health-giving cuts given by that immortal Pontiff, whom, in parting, we may hail with Gibbon “as a great man, a second Athanasius, in a more fortunate age of the Church”.

 

 

 

 

B. VICTOR III.

A.D. 1086-1087.

 

For nearly a year after the death of Gregory VII the Church remained without a head, it was not that his ideas had been interred with him at Salerno. It was, in fact, owing to the vigorous manner in which they lived after him that the Church was so long a widow. In Rome, in north Italy, and in Germany, they were indeed opposed even to the shedding of blood by the antipope Guibert, by the simoniacal bishops of Lombardy, and by King Henry IV. But they were upheld in the Eternal City by the consul Cencius, and by the people of the Trastevere, who have ever been the most devoted to the Papacy of all the inhabitants of Rome. The “Lombard bulls” were kept in check by the Tuscan sword of the Countess Matilda, and by the eloquence and prayers of the papal vicar, St. Anselm of Lucca; and the tyranny of Henry was prevented from running riot by the Saxon party of Herman of Luxembourg. In the midst of the general strife and slaughter it was almost impossible for the cardinals to meet for the election of a Pope.

On his death-bed Gregory had named three or four men whom he regarded as fit and proper to succeed him, and of these he had singled out Cardinal Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino, as the most suitable. He had come to this conclusion because he was near at hand, and because he had always had great influence with the Normans, who at least gave to the Holy See what little concern they could spare from the close prosecution of their own interests. The eyes of all the leading men in the Church consequently turned to the abbot, who had immediately, on Gregory’s death, showed himself very energetic in taking steps to provide him with a successor. But when the cardinals and bishops straightway began to remind him of Gregory’s views in his regard, and implored him to take upon himself the burden of the Papacy, he declared that, while ready to help the Roman Church in every way he could, he would not become Pope himself.

Whilst these negotiations were going on, that is, seemingly in the early summer (1085), the way was being paved for an election in Rome. The death of Gregory had greatly elated the partisans of the antipope. But their joy was destined to be brief; for the Romans forced Guibert to quit the city and return to Ravenna. Thereupon Desiderius hastened to Rome with two of the Norman princes, met some of the cardinals there, and endeavoured to secure the cooperation of the Countess Matilda in forwarding the election of a new Pope. Discovering, however, that all were anxious to force the Papacy upon himself, he returned to Monte Cassino. His flight and the summer heats put off the possibility of the election’s taking place till the autumn, and even then nothing could be done, as the electors were resolved that Desiderius should be Pope, and he was equally determined not to be.

At length, after nearly a year had elapsed from the death of Gregory, a number of cardinals and bishops assembled in Rome (about April 5, 1086), and commanded Desiderius to come to the city with the bishops and cardinals who were staying with him, in order that they might all deliberate on the needs of the Roman Church. The abbot obeyed the summons, and once more found himself besieged with requests that he would accept the burden of the Papacy. With his more than ordinary Benedictine love of peace, Desiderius firmly rejected their petition. Overcome by his humble perseverance, the electors gathered together in the deaconry of St. Lucy, near the Septizonium, and promised they would choose the man of his selection. He accordingly named Otho, bishop of Ostia. But when to this choice it was objected that translations of bishops were against the canons, the assembly could contain itself no longer. Clergy and people threw themselves on Desiderius, hurried him off to the adjoining Church of St. Lucy, and elected him Pope under the name of Victor (May 24). Struggling in vain, the red cope, which distinguished the Popes, was put upon him; but he would not assume the other papal insignia.

But immediate trouble was in store for the unhappy, peace-loving abbot who had thus been forced upon the papal throne. He had no sooner made his election known to the world, declaring that he would act in accordance with the decrees of the Fathers, and confirming Gregory’s action against Henry, than he found himself exposed to the bitter hostility of the imperial prefect of Rome. This official had been taken prisoner by Robert Guiscard when he seized Rome, but had been liberated by his son and successor, Duke Roger, because he was annoyed that his candidate for the archiepiscopal See of Salerno had not been confirmed by Rome. Taking possession of the Capitol, the prefect hired ruffians to persecute the Pope. Unable to bear the annoyance, and unwilling to meet force with force, the Pope left Rome four days after his election, laid aside the cross and cope (clamidis) and the other pontifical insignia, refused, despite every argument, to resume them, and retired to Monte Cassino. He had not, however, long enjoyed the quiet of his abbey before Jordan of Capua appeared before it with a large army. Knowing his enmity to Duke Roger, the cardinals had requested him to establish the authority of the new Pope in Rome by force. But he was induced to abandon his enterprise, partly by the entreaties of Victor, and partly by fear of the summer heats.

 This unsatisfactory state of affairs lasted for nearly another year. But about the first week in the March of 1087, those concerned for the welfare of the Church, and especially Desiderius, as papal vicar in those parts, brought about the meeting of a council at Capua. To that assembly came not only Desiderius and the other cardinals who were true to the legitimate line of Popes, as well as a number of bishops, including Hugh, archbishop of Lyons, but also Cencius, “the consul of the Romans”, with other Roman nobles, Jordan of Capua, and even Duke Roger with most of his nobles. The adhesion of the last-named prince had possibly been secured by an undertaking that his candidate for the archbishopric of Salerno should be officially recognized by Rome. However that may be, after the situation of the Church had been formally discussed, the great majority of the assembly, not taking any heed of the ambitious opposition of Hugh of Lyons, turned to Desiderius, and implored him to resume the burden of the Papacy. For two days he held out against their earnest entreaties; but at length, on Palm Sunday (March 21), he yielded, and “confirmed the previous election by resuming the cross and the purple”.

He who had thus most reluctantly but definitely decided to rank among the successors of St. Peter was a member of the illustrious family of the dukes of Benevento, and was related to the princes of Salerno. Born in 1027, his early piety soon showed that “the nobility of his soul was greater than that of his birth”. The death of his father enabled Dauferius, for that was the proper name of Desiderius, to carry out without great let or hindrance the design he had formed of abandoning the world. As the only hope of his race, his father had destined a splendid marriage for him. But the mind of the young man, now about twenty years of age, was set on other things, and he privately unfolded his wishes to a monk of his acquaintance. He was forced to act with secrecy, as his relatives were anxious to prevent him from entering the cloister.

After he had tried the youth for some time, the monk promised him his assistance. Leaving the city one evening, as though on a hunting expedition, Dauferius stopped before the church of St. Peter Major, and, committing his horse and sword to the charge of his attendants, entered the sacred building, as they supposed, for a few moments’ prayer. Under cover of the darkness he contrived, unknown to them, to leave the church by another door, and to betake himself to the cell of a solitary. Furious at being tricked, his relations scoured the whole country. Discovering at length the object of their search, they tore his religious habit into shreds, clothed him once more in secular attire, and escorted him back to Benevento in triumph. After nearly a year’s confinement, he contrived to escape to Salerno, and to secure the protection of his relative, Guaimar IV. Strong under that protection, he only agreed to leave the monastery of La Cava, to which he had withdrawn, and to return to Benevento, on condition that he should be allowed to become a monk in the famous monastery of St. Sophia. It was the abbot of this celebrated house who changed his name to Desiderius, because, as he said, he was universally beloved.

Whilst at Benevento, he was introduced to the notice of St. Leo IX by Cardinals Humbert and Frederick, to whom he had been previously known (1053). The Pontiff soon became much attached to the amiable young monk, and often made him assist him at Mass. When Leo returned to Rome after his defeat by the Normans, Desiderius betook himself to Salerno, already famous as the home of medicine, to recover the health of which his fastings and long vigils had deprived him. At Salerno he met the cleric Alfanus, who was to be its archbishop and the great ally of Gregory VII, and who was already distinguished for his skill in music and medicine. Desiderius soon acquired the greatest influence over Alfanus, and persuaded him to become a monk. So strongly did he feel the attraction of the charming character of Desiderius, that he declared he wished never to be separated from him.

The peace of the retirement at St. Sophia, rendered doubly sweet by this mutual friendship, was rudely broken by the news that Pope Victor II was coming into those parts (1055) to examine into the assassination of Guaimar IV of Salerno (1052). Fearing lest some of his relations might be charged with complicity in the deed, Alfanus induced his friend to go with him to the Pope. Trusting that his medical knowledge would help him at the court of the Pope, he took with him his medical books and a number of medicines. Alfanus was not mistaken in his hopes, and the two friends soon acquired the greatest influence in the papal curia. Finding, however, that the Pope did not intend to move in the matter of Guaimar’s death, they obtained leave from him to retire to Monte Cassino. Here they were warmly welcomed by the brethren, and once more gave themselves up to the enjoyment of monastic peace in that abode where it has so fully dwelt even to our own day.

Peter the Deacon has put on record a dream which Desiderius had at Monte Cassino whilst still a simple monk there. Behold! he seemed to be standing in the tower which was beside the chapter-house, and to be in the presence of St. Benedict, who was seated on a glorious throne. As he stood afraid to move, the saint made a gracious sign to him to come and sit by his side. Subsequent events, says Peter, showed the import of the vision; for Desiderius became abbot of the monastery, and practically renewed the whole of it during his period of office.

By Pope Stephen (IX) X he was summoned to Rome (August 1057), and destined to go as his legate to Constantinople. That Pontiff’s death, however, prevented him from sailing to the East, and was followed by his election as abbot of Monte Cassino in the stead of the deceased Pontiff; for Stephen had retained the abbacy whilst he lived, though he had sanctioned the succession of Desiderius (1058).

Desiderius had reached Bari, and was on the point of leaving it for Constantinople, when he received word of the death of Pope Stephen and notice of his election to succeed him as abbot of Monte Cassino. It was whilst returning to his abbey that he encountered the dreaded Robert Guiscard, and by his winning personality obtained that favour with him and his followers which he never lost. He was installed as abbot on Easter Sunday (April 19,1058).

In the schism which followed the death of Pope Stephen, Desiderius attached himself to Pope Nicholas, who not only himself bestowed the abbatial benediction upon him but made him a cardinal (March 6), and his vicar over the whole of Campania, the principate of Capua, Apulia, and Calabria from the river Pescara. After taking possession of his titular church (St. Cecily in Trastevere) amid the greatest rejoicings of the Roman people, he returned to Monte Cassino.

Leo of Ostia opens the third book of the chronicle of his abbey with the following words: “Desiderius, the thirty- seventh abbot of this monastery, and its fourth restorer, ruled for twenty years and five months. Its first founder was our father the saintly Benedict, the second Petronax, and the third Aligernus”. Under Desiderius began the golden age of Monte Cassino, and by him also was advanced that renaissance of Italian art which, begun in this century, was to culminate so gloriously in the sixteenth. If to the Benedictines in general the praise is given of having considerably contributed to the preservation of Italian art, no small portion of that well-deserved praise must be assigned to Abbot Desiderius.

When the abbey came under his control, it was from age and neglect in a ruinous condition. Without loss of time the new abbot began in a modest manner to put some of its smaller portions into a state of repair. He began by completing a building (palatium) which one of his predecessors had left unfinished; then he erected a small library, and next turned his attention to the abbot’s house, which had been built up against the church, and was propped up from beneath with some wretched beams, and seemed all overgrown with brushwood. When he had altogether renewed this last building, he embarked on larger works. He built a new spacious dormitory for his monks, and decorated its walls with pigments of various colours. He then levelled the old chapter-house to the ground, and erected another one on a much finer scale, adorning it with plaster urns, glass windows, and with a pavement of variegated marbles, and colouring its walls.

Unfortunately, the good abbot was not to be allowed to pursue his peaceful occupations undisturbed. He had to turn his attention to checking the aggressions of some of his neighbours, who broke in pieces and threw into an adjoining ditch the stone lions that marked the boundaries of the property of the monastery, and then pretended that certain other “lions” that adjoined a church were the real boundary stones between their property and that of the abbey. But fear of one of the Norman noble friends of Desiderius, and a strong castle which he built, taught them at length to respect the domains of their neighbours. Not content with simply preserving the abbatial property as he found it, he increased it by recovering part of what had been taken from it, and by the presents he received from the Empress Agnes and others; for he was one of those persons, attractive on the one hand, and hard-working and devoted on the other, to whom men willingly give.

“When, therefore, the venerable abbot looked around. and saw that, through the merits of our ever-blessed Father church, Benedict, our prosperity was great and the peace in which we lived unbroken—for in such honour was he held that not only the lesser folk, but also their princes and dukes were eager to obey him and, as though he were their father and lord, to follow his dictates—the notion came upon him, not without suggestion from above, to throw down the old church, and to erect a more beautiful and glorious one in its stead. Sore discontent at this proposal were very many of our priors; they feared he would never live long enough to be able to complete his designs. But their arguments and entreaties were lost upon him; for, with full confidence in God, he looked for His help in what he was about to do for His glory”.

Accordingly, in the ninth year of his rule as abbot (1066), after putting up a temporary chapel, he began to pull down the old church, and to level a large portion of the mountain top on which the abbey stood. Then he betook himself to Rome for materials, and, by influence and money, procured a large number of columns, plinths, and capitals, and a considerable quantity of marble of all colours. All this valuable material he conveyed by the Tiber to Portus; by the sea to the Torre Garigliano, which Richard of Capua had previously given him; by the Liris (Garigliano) to Suio, and thence, with immense toil, on wagons to his mountain top.  “But that you may admire the zeal of the faithful who assisted at the work, they dragged the first pillar to its place up the steep and wretched mountain path by the unaided strength of their arms; for Desiderius had not then constructed the commodious road which he made afterwards”.

To work the marble he had thus laboriously collected on the summit of Monte Cassino, Desiderius hired from Constantinople artists skilled in mosaic-work and in the constructing of that variety of marble pavement known as opus Alexandrinum; and he took advantage of the presence of these master-craftsmen to train many of his young monks under them and under the other workers in stone and metal whom he brought together. So well did the Byzantine workmen execute their task, that, according to Leo, their marble animals seemed to live, and their stone flowers to bloom.

In the course of the excavations in connection with this new church, the workmen unexpectedly came upon the tomb of St. Benedict. However, out of respect for the saint’s remains, and for fear lest “anyone might venture to steal any portion of so great a treasure”, the abbot would not have it touched, but straightway covered it with precious stones, and erected over it a splendid monument of Parian marble.

When at length, during the course of five years’ work, he had added to his great basilica altars and chapels to Our Lady, to Blessed John the Baptist, to the archangel Michael, and to SS. Gregory, Nicholas, and Bartholomew; had built on to it sacristies, a campanile, an atrium or paradise, with a great cistern below it; had laid down variegated marble pavements, the like of which had never been seen in those parts before; had gilded the beams of the roof; had decorated its walls with mosaics and frescoes depicting scenes from the Old and the New Testament, and had set up inscriptions in great letters of gold which set forth that he had dedicated to God this great basilica which on its mountain was to be a Mount Sinai of the new law—when he had accomplished all this, he betook himself to Pope Alexander (1071), and begged him to come and solemnly dedicate the new church. This, as we have already seen, he did with great readiness and pomp.

The number of those who flocked to the dedication of the new basilica, and the impression made upon them by its manifold beauties, brought it about not only that the abbey of Monte Cassino became more famous than ever, and that the reputation of Desiderius spread everywhere, but that strangers came from all parts to see the great abbot, and to gaze upon the glories which he had produced, or to take the monastic habit under him. Presents, too, poured into the abbot’s hands from the great ones of the earth, and, adds Leo, they sent to implore his prayers and those of his brethren.

All this praise and encouragement only served to stimulate Desiderius to still greater exertions. He spent the money he had received in buying ornaments for the church or in causing them to be made. For one hundred and eighty pounds of silver he secured nearly all the ecclesiastical treasures of the late Pope Victor II, which were held in pledge by different people in Rome, and with thirty-six pounds of gold he purchased at Constantinople an antependium of glass mosaic, adorned with precious stones, which represented scenes from the Gospel and from the life of St. Benedict. Many of the beautiful images and specimens of different kinds of church work which came from Constantinople he caused to be copied by his own monks. Among the many other rich and beautiful objects which Desiderius caused to be made for the church were its service books. He had them beautifully illuminated, and bound in gold, silver, and ivory.

The success which had attended his efforts to raise a magnificent basilica moved Desiderius to treat the whole monastery, even that part of it which he had rebuilt himself, as he had treated its old church. He swept away entirely the whole monastic buildings. More of the mountain top was levelled, and there arose, after several more years of labour, new cloisters and dormitories, a new chapter-house, guest-house, and infirmary furnished with baths and all necessaries for the sick, and a new refectory, with kitchen, bake-house, cellars, and cisterns. Finally, that as many as possible might benefit by his work, he improved the approach to the monastery, and, that it might endure as long as possible, he fortified it with strong walls and towers.

With all his zeal for the external beauty of his monastery, and for the material comfort of his monks, Desiderius did not lose sight of the fact that the first aim of a monastery ought to be the spiritual improvement of its inmates. To train the minds of his monks he not only built a library, but caused books to be copied for it. Among the volumes he caused to be copied were registers of the Popes, e.g., those of Leo and Felix, various works of St. Augustine and other Fathers, the histories of Gregory of Tours and others, Sacramentaries, the poems of Virgil, Ovid, and others, both sacred and profane, Cicero, De natura deorum, and the Institutes and Novella of Justinian. At the same time he ceased not to endeavour to engage the monks in a more and more strict observance of their rule.

Men so trained were naturally thought highly of by the Popes, who scarcely required the instigation of Hildebrand to look to Monte Cassino when they required a good bishop or abbot. They even allowed Desiderius to appoint bishops and abbots himself. Seeing that he had found such favour in their eyes, it need scarcely be added that he obtained from them confirmation of the privileges of his abbey, that he was himself employed by them on important commissions, or that he should have been marked out by Gregory as the man most suitable to succeed him.

Desiderius did not confine his attentions to Monte Cassino. He did for other churches what he had done for that of his own monastery. He renewed and decorated in his grand style not only the church which, from a temple of Apollo, St. Benedict himself had turned into the Church of St. Martin, and which stood close to his monastery gate, but rebuilt and adorned with mosaics the monastery of St. Benedict at Capua, and the country Church of S. Angelo ad Formas (or in Formis), near Capua. The walls of this edifice were covered with frescoes inside and out. “A fair number of them have been preserved, albeit”, add Crowe and Cavalcaselle, “in a poor state of preservation. In the apsis”, they continue, “is the Saviour enthroned in benediction. The book is in His grasp; the symbols of the Evangelists are at His sides; and the hand of the Eternal appears out of an opening surrounded by a fan-like ornament. Beneath the semidome, and on the wall of the apsis, three archangels separate the Abbot Desiderius, erect and receiving the model of the church, from a figure of St. Benedict, now almost obliterated”.' While all the figures are crude, “the painters of Sant' Angelo-in-Formis succeeded much better in representing the realm of Satan than the joys of Paradise. Their idea of the Saviour is inexpressibly painful”.

However imperfect were the pictorial results actually obtained by Desiderius, his work in the domain of art was none the less important. He gave it a much-needed impetus; so that it may be said with truth that among the benefactors of European cultivation few are more deserving of eternal benediction than Abbot Desiderius of Monte Cassino.

But it must not be supposed that it has been reserved for moderns only to appreciate the character and worth of Desiderius. They were highly esteemed by those who knew him, whether they were Italians or Normans. They moved “the illustrious” Gregory, consul of the Romans, and his son Ptolemy to free, throughout the whole extent of their jurisdiction, the ship of the monastery of Monte Cassino from all dock and harbour dues; they deposed the Countess Matilda to free all Cassinese monks from taxes; and they moved the Popes to entrust weighty commissions to him, and the Normans to bestow great possessions on his monastery, and to incline their ears towards him when he endeavoured to mediate between them and the Holy See. He is justly credited with being the first ecclesiastic who realized that the Normans had become too powerful to be expelled by force, and who to an unequal and useless struggle with them preferred an understanding, which soon resulted in bringing great advantages to Monte Cassino at least.

Understanding his great influence both with the Pope and with the Normans, Henry IV wished to use him for his own purposes, and threatened him with all manner of evils if he did not come to him. While realizing that if he did not obey the king’s behest, he would endanger the safety of his beloved monastery, and that, if he did accomplish the king’s will, he would jeopardize his life, he nevertheless decided to go to him, and expose himself to danger and death. During his journey to Henry, he would not communicate with any of the king’s followers who were under the papal ban; nor would he, despise the royal threats, consent to accept his monastery from his hands. However, through the good offices of Jordan of Capua, an understanding was arrived at between them. Henry declared himself content that Desiderius should promise him his friendship, and such help as he could conscientiously offer him towards his attaining the imperial crown. The abbot also engaged to accept his monastery from the king when he had received that crown.

Whilst he was at Henry’s court, Desiderius never lost an  opportunity of impressing on such bishops as he met there claims of the rights of the Apostolic See. And when in self-defence they brought forward the decree of Nicholas II, and urged that, in virtue of it, a Pope could not be made without the emperor’s consent, the abbot simply replied that if such a conclusion followed from the decree, then it itself was valueless; for, said he, “the Apostolic See is our mistress, not our handmaid; nor is she subject to anyone, but, on the contrary, is set over all of us ... By the mercy of Heaven”, he boldly concluded, “never again shall a Roman Pope be made by a German king”. He even drove the anti-pope to admit that the position he had taken up was the result of his fear lest Henry should deprive him of his rank.

Reviewing now the work and character of Desiderius up to the date of Gregory’s death, and mindful of that discerning Pontiff’s choice of him as his most fitting successor, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the vacillating course he pursued about accepting the papal crown was due, not merely to a becoming unwillingness to accept the great responsibility of the Papacy, but also to ill-health. Though naturally amiable and gentle, and more disposed to try and induce men to take up the yoke of Christ because it is sweet and light, than with cords to drive evil-doers out of the house of God, he had not, up to the death of Gregory, shown any sign of weakness. But before that event, and frequently after it, we find notices of failure of his bodily health. Indeed, after his consecration his health seems to have given way altogether. Ordericus assures us that he was taken ill whilst he was singing his first Mass after his consecration, and that from that time he was hardly ever able to offer the holy sacrifice. We shall probably then not be wrong if we ascribe the hesitation he displayed in accepting the Papacy more to weakness of body than to timidity of conscience.

A few weeks after Desiderius had definitely taken on his shoulders the heavy burden of the Papacy, he appeared before Rome with a Norman escort, to find that the anti-pope had returned from Ravenna, and was in possession of St. Peter’s. From this he was promptly driven by Jordan; and on May 9, Pope Victor III was formally consecrated there by the bishops of Ostia, Tusculum, Porto, and Albano, in presence  of nearly all the inhabitants of the Trastevere, and of many of the other Romans (May 9). However, as Guibert was still in arms on the other side of the Tiber, the Pope, not feeling himself safe, or not wishing to witness further bloodshed, returned to Monte Cassino.

The month of May, however, had not run its course before he had again to leave his peaceful home, and go to Rome. This time it was in answer to a summons from the Countess Matilda, who had determined to drive Guibert out of the city altogether. At first her arms were successful, and the Pope took up his abode on the island of St. Bartholomew; but the appearance of an envoy from the king put fresh vigour into the party of the antipope, and for a brief space St. Peter’s was again in their hands. Unable to bear this miserable state of things, Victor once more left Rome, never to return to it, and retired to Monte Cassino (July or August).

Besides feeling distressed at the sight of sacred edifices and ancient monuments being transformed into fortresses, and of the streets of Rome being turned into battle-fields, Victor was sore disturbed at the rebellious attitude of Hugh, the great archbishop of Lyons, one of those whom Gregory had designated as suitable men to sit in the chair of Peter. Summoned to Rome, Hugh arrived there after the election of Desiderius; but, as he acknowledges himself, he gave in his adhesion to it. Then, whether it was that the thought of his nearness to the papal throne fired his ambition, or that he was irritated at the vacillation of Desiderius, he pretended to discover from the Pope’s public pronouncements how utterly unworthy he was of the Papacy. He had heard him, he said, unblushingly proclaim himself the partisan of Henry, and he had witnessed his denunciations of Gregory, and his opposition to his policy. Pretending, too, that he had observed that, at the gathering at Capua, Victor was craftily trying to bring about his re-election, he induced the bishop of Ostia and others to support him in opposing it, although, according to Desiderius, he had himself been one of those who had urged him to resume the pontificate. That his opposition proved unavailing, Hugh does not hesitate to ascribe to the power of Duke Roger, who, he says, was won over by Victor’s consenting to consecrate his nominee, Alfanus, to the archbishopric of Salerno. Despite his being abandoned by the cardinal of Ostia, and most of those whose support he had secured, Hugh withdrew from communion with Victor, and seems to have done all he could to thwart him. As we shall see, his conduct earned for him condemnation of some kind at the council of Benevento. But he must have quickly made his peace with the Holy See, for whilst Urban II was Pope, we find him writing to the Countess Matilda and saying that, however he may have opposed the re-election of Victor, he had never “separated himself from that one body in which God’s mercy has joined us to serve Blessed Peter, and by God’s will never would, but that, on the contrary, his mind was made up to advance in every way the interests of the Apostolic See”.

Despite the difficulties under which he laboured at home, Victor could be affected by the troubles of others. With the double object, no doubt, of helping on the expulsion of the Saracens from Sicily by the Normans, and of checking the predatory habits of these infidel pirates, Victor succeeded in rousing most of the Italian peoples against them, especially the Pisans and Genoese, whose sea-power was now increasing enormously. Furnished with the banner of St. Peter, and with a promise of a plenary indulgence, the Christian fleet sailed for the African coast. The expedition met with no small measure of success. The loss of a large number of men and the taking of El Mehadia seem to have made Temin, the king of Tunis, anxious for peace. By payment of a sum of money he became tributary to the Apostolic See, agreed to set free his Christian captives, and to refrain in future from harrying Christian countries. Unfortunately, the refusal of Roger of Sicily to cooperate in the expedition prevented it from producing lasting results as far as the peace of Europe was concerned, though the churches of Pisa benefited largely by the enormous booty which the fleet brought back to Italy.

About the very time that El Mehadia fell into the hands of the Christians (August 6, 1087), Victor, though sick unto death, was holding a council at Benevento, and showing therein that he had inherited the ideas of Gregory not only with regard to armed opposition to the Moslems, but also with regard to the means to be adopted to free the Church from the thraldom of the State. The synod, which was attended by the bishops of southern Italy, anathematized Guibert as even at the moment engaged in devastating the city of Rome, and also Hugh of Lyons for his contumaciousness, and then strongly condemned investiture. Copies of the conciliar decrees were disseminated over both the East and the West.

Even before he became Pope, Victor had interested himself in Sardinia. We have seen how, as abbot of Monte Cassino, he had received presents from two out of the four kings or judges who ruled, or were supposed to rule, that island. The long struggle which, in this century, had ended in the final expulsion of the Moors from Sardinia, had left the country in a very unsettled state. Conscious of this, one of the judges had implored Desiderius to send some monks to Sardinia. His first effort to comply with the judge’s request was not successful. The monks whom he sent, well supplied with books and all necessaries, had been seized by the Pisans, who long entertained designs against the independence of Sardinia. It was not till pressure had been brought to bear on the practical Pisans by Pope Alexander that they made satisfaction for their barbarous conduct. Desiderius, meanwhile, undaunted, sent other monks to the island, and when he became Pope did a great deal for the moral improvement of Sardinia. Indeed, we are assured that he spread the benefits of law and order not only in that island, but in all the West.

But Victor’s opportunities for working for the spiritual good of the world were but few. After the council of Benevento, he hurried back to Monte Cassino, for he was very ill. His first act was to lay down a number of regulations for the future good of his beloved monastery. Then, after gathering around him the bishops and cardinals who had accompanied him, he grasped Otho of Ostia by the hand, and, presenting him to the others, said : “Take him and set him at the head of the Roman Church, and do you yourselves take my place in everything until you can do this”. Otho’s opposition to his re-election was evidently not remembered by the Pope. Two days after making this last solemn will and testament, Pope Victor died (September 16, 1087), “when the sun was in the sign of the Virgin”. He was buried, according to his desire, in the apse of the monastic chapter-house; but in the sixteenth century his remains were transferred to the chapel of St. Berthairius, in the great church of the monastery. There they still remain, though his epitaph, which was to be seen in the days of Mabillon, has disappeared. With its text, which, in elegant diction, gives a brief account of his life, we bring his biography to a close:

 

Quis fuerim, vel quid, qualis, quantusque doceri

Si quis forte velit, aurea scripta docent.

Stirps mihi magnatum, Beneventus patria, nomen

Est Desiderius, tuque Casine, decus.

Intactam sponsam, matrem patriamque, propinquos

Spernens huc propero, monachus efficior.

Interea fueram Romana clarus in urbe

Presbiter ecclesias, Petre Beate, tuae.

Hoc senis lustris minus anno functus honore,

Victor apostolicum scando dehinc solium.

Quattuor et senis vix mensibus inde peractis

Bis sex lustra gerens, mortuus hic tumulor.

Solis virgineo stabat lux ultima signo,

Cum me sol verus hinc tulit ipse Deus.

 

 

B. URBAN II.

A.D. 1088-1099.

 

CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS.

Emperor of Germany: Henry IV, 1056-1106.

King of France: Philip I, 1060-­1108.

King of England: William II, Rufus, 1087-­1100.

Emperor of the East: Alexius I, Comnenus, 1081­-1118.

 

I.

THE EARLY LIFE AND ELECTION OF URBAN II

Otho bishop of Ostia, who, on the recommendation of his two immediate predecessors, was to succeed Victor III, was born about the year 1042 at Châtillon-sur-Marne, not far from Rheims, in the province of Champagne. He belonged to the knightly family of Lagery, and had for his father and mother Eucher of Lagery and Isabella. Lovers of monks themselves, like so many others of the nobility of their times, they would seem to have inspired their son with love of the religious life. At any rate, after studying under the saintly Bruno at the famous school of Rheims, to which the learning of Gerbert had restored the title of the “Gallic Athens”, and after being a canon and archbishop of the diocese, he betook himself to Cluny.

In that “cloister of the angels”, as it used to be called, “which shone on the earth like another sun”, he not only acquired that love of monks and monastic orders of which he gave practical proofs all his life, but was brought in touch, especially through his famous abbot Hugh, with all the important events that were in progress throughout Christendom. For it was largely owing to the personal characters of its first abbots that it became true that Cluny was “by far the most potent international influence of the eleventh century”. The friends he made whilst a monk at Cluny, Urban never forgot. Especially dear to him was his novice master Peter Pappacarbone; and he was never tired of expressing his love and gratitude to Cluny and to Abbot Hugh, “once his father”. “You and yours do I love particularly”, he wrote to him, “for through you did I learn the elements of the monastic life, and in your monastery was I born again by the vivifying grace of the Holy Spirit”.

Hence, when he became Pope, he chose monks for his helpers—monks not only from Cluny, but also from Bec and Monte Cassino, which last he proclaimed to be “the head of all the monasteries of the West”, and to which he professed his gratitude for the help it was ever ready to afford to the Roman Church. Of the monks he drew to his side from Monte Cassino, special mention must be made of John of Gaeta, whom he made a cardinal and his chancellor, because he was destined to become Pope Gelasius II. Another justly celebrated monk whom he summoned to the help of the Church was his old master Bruno, the Carthusian.

But the most striking proof which he gave of his love for monks and monasteries, and of his appreciation of the great work they were doing for the uplifting of the world, was the number of exemptions from episcopal control to which he affixed his signature. Privilege after privilege did he grant, not only to Hugh and to Cluny, but to monasteries all over Christendom. In testimony of their having received “this liberty from the Roman Church”, they were generally called upon to pay an annual sum of money “to the Lateran Palace”. Sometimes, in place of money, they had to give to the papal exchequer cloth, vestments, etc.; and sometimes again the granting of a privilege was used as an opportunity of reminding the monks of their duties towards the poor.

These deeds of exemption, and of other favours which Urban issued so lavishly in behalf of different monasteries, not only generally secured for the houses which received them that freedom from molestation and interference, whether by bishop or baron, which was necessary for them to accomplish their end, and to procure which they were primarily granted, but also served to bring some financial aid to the dire needs of the Pope, so often driven from Rome. They served also to reward faithful service, and to attach closely to the Pope a devoted band of adherents in every land.

It cannot fail to strike even a casual reader of Urban’s bulls that very many of them are in favor of monasteries in Germany. With Henry’s habit of appointing to bishoprics any unworthy person who would pay him well enough, and of imposing his own creatures on monasteries as their abbots, it was only proper that Urban should do all he could to preserve the monasteries from the contaminating influences of Henry’s favourites. Hence the frequent concessions to them of freedom from episcopal control, and his reiterated declaration of their rights in the matter of the election of their own superiors. Whatever after evils arose from this freedom, its grant was at the time absolutely necessary, if the monasteries were to be agents of good.

After a few years of life as a simple monk, Otho was named grand-prior by his abbot, Hugh. In virtue of this office, he was the second in command of the great abbey, and evidently proved himself as fitted to rule as he had been to obey. So well had he acquitted himself of  his duties both as a subordinate and as a superior, that, when Gregory VII asked Abbot Hugh to send him some of his subjects whom he might raise to the episcopacy, Otho was one of those at once selected. The Pope at once made him his chief adviser and bishop of Ostia (1078). To use the impudent words of Beno, “Turbanus was his footman”.

During the years 1082 to 1085, Otho was moving backwards and forwards between Rome and France and Germany, acting as Gregory’s legate. It has already been told how Henry, in violation of his word, seized Otho when making his way to Rome to attend the November synod of 1083. Released because his captor had discovered that his seizure had proved what was to him worse than a crime, viz., a mistake, he was again sent into Germany (1084) to spread abroad the news that Gregory had reiterated his excommunication of the king and his antipope. In sending him on this important mission, Gregory dispatched a letter “to all the faithful”, assuring them they might have full confidence in Otho and his companions. “They are”, he wrote, “most faithful to Blessed Peter, and each in his own rank is among the most distinguished in his house­hold. They cannot be moved from their loyalty to him nor torn from the bosom of Holy Mother Church by threats or promises”.

Besides occupying himself with filling up vacant sees in Saxony, or in replacing such bishops as Gregory had condemned with men who were loyal to the Church, he presided, by order of the Pope, over an important synod which was held at Quedlinburg (Saxony) in April 1085. At this council matters were discussed that had previously been treated of at a conference at Gerstungen between representatives both of the papal and the imperial parties, at which Otho had also presided. The conference had ended in nothing, and at the synod in question, composed of the adherents of the Pope, and of those Saxon bishops, “torches which, in the midst of an evil and perverse people, no whirlwind had been able to extinguish”, it was first established that the decisions of the Popes are irreformable. Then, after the passing of disciplinary decrees anent the continence of the clergy, etc., the antipope Guibert and many of his followers were anathematized by name.

When Otho returned from Germany, Desiderius had already been elected to the See of Peter. Annoyed, perhaps, at the continued unwillingness of the abbot to accept the honour which had been thrust upon him, Otho seems for a time to have joined Hugh of Lyons in endeavouring to take from him what he had no wish to keep. Such brief opposition, however, as he had displayed towards him, did not prevent Victor from recommending him as his successor.

On the death of that amiable Pontiff, the star of the Gregorian party seemed far from being in the ascendant. In Germany, Hermann was no match for Henry, who was preparing to send his son Conrad into Italy to make head against the Countess Matilda, and Rome was for the most part in the power of the antipope. But the friends of the Papacy, especially the Countess Matilda, were not idle. Messengers were dispatched in all directions to exhort the bishops not to be wanting to their head. At length a definite summons was issued for as many as possible to meet at Terracina in the first week of Lent, and for those who could not be present in person to send word that they would acknowledge as Pope the one who was there elected.

Accordingly, on the 9th of March 1088, there assembled in the Church of SS. Peter and Caesarius, attached to the palace of the bishop of Terracina, some forty bishops and abbots, Benedict, the papal prefect of Rome, and a certain number of representatives of ultramontane bishops and of the Countess Matilda. After the wishes of Popes Gregory and Victor as to their successors had been made known to the assembly, the usual three days of fasting and prayer were proclaimed, and the meeting adjourned till Sunday. On that day, when the prelates were again gathered together in the same church, the bishops of Tusculum, Porto, and Albano mounted the ambo together, and together proposed that Otho, bishop of Ostia, should be elected. Mindful of the wishes of the two late Popes, and attracted by his amiable character, his ability, and his fine tall figure, the whole assembly, “with wonderful and complete accord, and with loud voice”, signified its assent. Then, no sooner had the bishop of Albano announced that the new Pope wished to be called Urban, than all rose to their feet, crowded round the object of their choice, stripped him of his mantle of wool, clothed him in purple, and with acclamations of joy and invocations of the Holy Ghost hurried him to the altar of Blessed Peter the apostle, and placed him on the pontifical throne. Nor did the assembly break up till after Urban had said Mass, and had been duly installed (March 12, 1088).

The bishop who had thus been raised to the supreme see of Christendom was, we are informed, a man of commanding presence, of polished manners, of distinguished piety and ability, and possessed of remarkable powers of eloquence. Though both by word and deed he proclaimed himself to be imbued with the reforming views of Gregory VII, and though he was said so to be by others, he was perhaps more disposed than his illustrious model to have regard to the weakness of human nature, or at least to bow his head a little to circumstances. But he kept the memory of Gregory’s great deeds in front of him as his guide and his spur. He proclaimed in his bulls that he acted through devotion to this, his “most reverend Father and predecessor”, whose “heroic life, whose distinguished learning, and whose admirable constancy is the theme of the Roman Church and of the whole West, and is acknowledged by the obstinacy of tyrants at once endured and overcome”. The piety with which, on the testimony of his contemporaries, we have credited Urban, showed itself in his actions in two ways at least. He had thought for the poor, and devotion to Our Lady. He endeavoured not only to raise money for his own poor of Rome, but generally to safeguard the interests of the poor everywhere. Of his devotion to the Mother of God he gave evidence both by his repeated declarations in his letters that he was moved to act “out of devotion and love to Blessed Mary ever Virgin”, and by writing a Preface in her honour.

One of the first of Urban’s pontifical acts was to notify to the Catholic world his election, and his determination to walk in the footsteps of Gregory. Some of the letters in which he made these announcements have been preserved. In one of them, addressed to Gebhard, archbishop of Salzburg; to the bishops of Passau and of Worms, and to a few other German bishops who were still loyal to the Roman Church; to Duke Welf, and to the faithful generally, he tells how he had been elected against his will, and how a sense of obedience only had compelled him to take up the burden of the Papacy in the present perilsome circumstances. He exhorts them to continue to stand by the Roman Church, and to be assured, as far as he was concerned, that he was desirous of following in the path marked out by Gregory. “All”, he said, “that he rejected I reject, what he condemned I condemn, what he loved I embrace, what he regarded as Catholic I approve of, and to whatever side he was attracted I incline”.

Writing to his old abbot, Hugh of Cluny, on the same day, he implores him, if he has any pity, if he has any remembrance of his son and his pupil, to come to him, or, if that cannot be, to send someone in his name from whom he may learn the abbot’s mind, and from whom he may learn how all the brethren are. He concludes by begging Hugh to cause all the brethren to pray for the needs of the Church.

Writing a little later to Lanfranc, “the noblest and truest of the distinguished sons of his mother, the Holy Roman Church”, he begged him to give “due obedience” and help to her in this her time of great stress. Reminding him of the special debt that the church over which he presided owed to the Roman Church, because it had received from her “the elements of the Catholic faith”, he urged him to link the two distant churches together in the bonds of Catholic unity, and to the best of his power to correct “anything he might find to be contrary to the Apostolic See or opposed to its authority”. He was also to ask the king to stand by the Roman Church, and to send to Cluny as soon as possible, through Roger, “cardinal subdeacon of our Church”, the money “which Blessed Peter’s wont to receive from his kingdom”.

We may pause to note here that William the Conqueror, over whom Lanfranc had no little influence, had died September 9, 1087, and that the king referred to in this letter is that unworthy tyrant, the Red William II. That Lanfranc, had he lived, would have been able to curb the excesses of Rufus may be doubted. At any rate, when this letter reached Lanfranc, he was nearer ninety years of age than eighty, and had not long to live (d. May 24, 1089). In any case, there is no reason to suppose he would have succeeded in altering the neutral position towards the rival Popes which William the Conqueror had caused England to assume, even if he could have been persuaded to make the attempt.

Among the many congratulatory messages which must have reached Urban after the dispatch of these letters, the  bantering epigram of St. Peter Damian will at least have caused him some amusement. He Urbanely congratulates him on being made a poor bishop at Rome. “I find”, he wrote, “that what Peter was at Bethsaida, he is now in Rome, the same when holding the sceptre as when mending his nets. He is ever cleansing his fishing tackle, and ploughing the waters of the deep. He who of old on the waters was destitute of everything, contrives here on earth to place a heavy burden on me, and would refresh with husks one who had at least a little fish to nourish him”.

II.

HENRY AND HIS ANTIPOPE DOWN TO THE DEATH OF POPE URBAN.

REALIZING that the Normans were the only earthly power on which he could count, Urban’s first care was to bring them to peace among themselves. Roger and Bohemund, the two sons of Guiscard, were fighting for their father’s inheritance. To mediate effectively between them Urban betook himself to Sicily in order to secure the co-operation of their uncle, Count Roger, in the work he had at heart Though engaged in the siege of a town held by the Moors, Roger, “like a true Catholic”, at once left it, and hurried to Troina to meet the Pope, who was too much fatigued by his journey to proceed further. Unfortunately, we have not a full record of what took place between them. There can, however, be little doubt that among the subjects which engaged their attention were, besides the treatment of Latin Christians in the East by the Emperor Alexius, the relations between the Papacy and the Normans, and the internecine strife of the latter; for in the following year peace appears to have been brought about between the brothers through the mediating of the Pope and Count Roger.

In November, for the first time since his consecration, we find Urban in Rome, whither, according to the conjecture of certain writers, he had been escorted by Norman troopers. If, indeed, his introduction into his episcopal city was due to them, they must either have abandoned him at once, or else have attempted to establish him with a very inadequate force. Not only was the antipope’s party not driven from the principal places of Rome, but Urban had to take up his abode on the island of St Bartholomew, where he was protected by “the most famous and illustrious Peter Leo (Pierleone)”, who had converted the theatre of Marcellus into a fortress which guarded the approach to the island from the Rome of the left bank of the Tiber. Confined to this insignificant portion of the Eternal City, Urban was reduced to such straits that he was dependent for his support on the charity of Roman matrons, and sometimes even on the poor ones among them. Still, in the midst of his poverty, Urban consulted for the dignity of the Apostolic See. “A man of literary tastes”, he was anxious that the documents which issued from the apostolic chancellary should not be wanting in style. He accordingly made brother John of Gaeta his chancellor, that he might restore “the old polished diction which his see had well-nigh lost, and might promptly reintroduce the Leonine cursus”.

Meanwhile, in war-ridden Germany, Henry, despite some reverses, was gradually getting the upper hand. His cause was greatly helped by the death, during the year 1088, of the warlike Saxon bishop, Burchard of Halberstadt, and of the learned Gebhard of Salzburg. Weary of war, dispirited by the constant devastation of their land, and by the loss of many of their leaders, many even of the Saxons now abandoned Hermann, the king of their own choice, and submitted to Henry. Thus deserted, Hermann withdrew to Lorraine, where he also died this same year.

Bad as all this news was for Urban cooped up on the island of the Tiber between the faithful people of the Trastevere and Pierleone in his theatre fortress, it did not paralyze him. He was the heir of Gregory’s spirit as well as of his throne, and he made known to his legate in Germany, viz., Gebhard of Constance, and to the German bishops, that after holding a synod, he had confirmed the sentence of excommunication issued by Gregory against “the Heresiarch of Ravenna”, against Henry, “the author of his obstinacy, and against all such as gave them active support in any way”. But with regard to those who entered into relations of one sort and another with such as had been excommunicated, Urban was more merciful. He would not, he said, excommunicate them, but he would only allow them to be received into the society of the faithful after they had done penance and received absolution. A smaller penance was to be imposed on those who had offended by ignorance or necessity, but a severe one on such as had done so of their own free will. With regard to those who had been ordained by excommunicated, but properly consecrated, bishops — if simony had not entered into their ordination, if their character was good, and if the necessity of the Church required it,—he allowed such to remain in the grade to which they had been ordained, but only in very rare cases, and under the greatest, necessity, to be raised to a higher rank.

The example of Urban in holding a synod was followed by the antipope. He held a council in St. Peter’s, before which he summoned Urban to appear; for to the Pope’s party he attributed the blood which was being shed all over Italy and Germany. It is a sign of the times that even Guibert and his bishops, unable to withstand the voice of the people, dissatisfied with a married clergy, were compelled to enforce the laws of the Church regarding clerical continency.

But for the time, at least, the days of Guibert in Rome were numbered. Urban’s own troops, supported by a number of his vassals from the Campagna, attacked the forces of the antipope under his nephew, Count Odo of Sutri, and the imperial prefect. After three days’ fighting (June 28-30), the antipope was compelled to abandon the city, leaving his treasure chest in the hands of the papal party. On the 3rd of July, accompanied by the clergy and people of Rome, and by a force of horse and foot, to the sound of the cymbal and the lyre, through streets bedecked with flowers and palms, and covered with carpets, Urban made his triumphant way to St Peter’s, where he said Mass. Thence with the crown on his head he returned to the city proper.

With this severe blow given to the fortunes of Henry in Italy, we may associate another which also took place this year. Opposition to his power was far from being dead even in Germany. Duke Guelf IV (or Welf) of Bavaria was still in arms against his king. To consolidate the opposition against him, Urban persuaded Matilda to accept the hand of Guelf, the younger son of the Duke of Bavaria. Many suitors, enamoured of the character or possessions of the great countess, had sought her hand after the death of her first husband, Godfrey of Lorraine. Among these was Robert, the son of William the Conqueror, who vainly sought to win her that he might the better oppose his father. The youthful Guelf would probably have fared no better in his suit than Robert, had it not been for the intervention of Urban in his behalf. Realizing how much it would strengthen his hands if the house of one of the strongest supporters of the papal cause in Germany were united with its most powerful stay in Italy, Urban did not hesitate to urge Matilda to accept the proffered hand of Guelf, youth though he was.

Eminently satisfied with the success of his negotiations in this delicate matter, Urban left Rome to promote an enduring peace among the Norman nobles, and a higher standard of ecclesiastical discipline among the clergy of south Italy. At his command seventy bishops met him in synod at Melfi (September 10). Besides passing the usual decrees regarding clerical celibacy, and against investitures and lay interference in ecclesiastical affairs generally, the assembly issued various regulations relating to the clergy. For instance, they were forbidden to dress extravagantly, and it was prohibited to ordain men priests before they were thirty years of age. Abbots were also warned not to encroach on the rights of parish churches.

The synod, however, did not confine its work to matters clerical. Political affairs also occupied its attention. The brothers Roger and Bohemund were drawn into satisfactory amicable relations, and the former, as his father had done before him, took the oath of fealty to the Pope, became the liegeman of Urban, and by the gift of a standard received from him his lands with the title of duke.

After the close of the synod, the Pope, often in the company of the two Norman chiefs, spent the greater part of three months in going about from one town to another in Apulia, consecrating churches or bishops, and arranging ecclesiastical affairs of all kinds. He returned to Rome in December.

Greatly annoyed at these successes scored by the Pope, but especially at the marriage of Matilda, Henry at once seized her property north of the Alps, and in the spring of 1090 entered Italy. Devastating the territory of the great countess as he went along, he reached Mantua in April, and at once laid siege to it. His arrival in Italy inspired the party of the antipope with fresh courage, and they began again to make themselves troublesome in Rome. Unwilling, if we are to believe Bernald, to reduce them to obedience by force, Urban left Rome (1090) for the Campagna. It was three years before he could return.

Meanwhile the arms of Henry were not making any great progress in the north. But in the year following his entry into Italy, fortune smiled more favourably upon him. Treachery enabled him to make himself master of Mantua after a siege of nearly a year (April 1091); and his antipope Clement was about the same time readmitted into Rome. The adherents of the latter got possession of St. Angelo, which they held for seven years, and “he so entrenched himself near St. Peter’s that he could not be easily dislodged”.

The position of Urban after he left Rome in 1090 was anything but enviable. Behind him, in the north of Italy, Henry was subduing the forces of Matilda and her youthful spouse, and in Rome the turbulence of the antipope’s faction made residence therein practically impossible for him. In front of him one of his Norman friends, Jordan of Capua, who, however, had not long to live (d. November 20, 1090), was quietly annexing all that part of Campania in his neighbourhood which belonged to the Apostolic See. He had to be a wanderer in the midst of strife. But while most men would seem to have acquiesced in the conclusion that there was nothing for it but continued appeal to the sword, some ceased not endeavouring to bring about peace. There were some who addressed themselves to the general public. Railing against Clement, who could not exercise clemency because the power of the keys had not been given to him, they called upon Urban either to change his name or to return to his urban see. They proposed that a council should be summoned to adjudicate on the respective claims of the two Popes. Others in Germany addressed themselves to Henry, and promised him their allegiance and assistance in subduing all rebels if he would only abandon Guibert, and return to communion with the true Pope. But this he was hindered from doing by the opposition of the schismatical bishops, who had by this time possession of all but four or five of the sees of Germany, and who foresaw their own deposition in the event of peace between Henry and the Pope. They, accordingly, prevented him from coming to terms, and thus putting an end to the dreadful struggle which was rending in twain every province and every episcopal see in the empire. An appeal to him on the same lines in Italy was equally fruitless. He deserved the description given him by Urban as “the overthrower of Christian peace, and the sacrilegious seller of churches, the destroyer of the Roman Empire, and the cause and protector of heretics”.

With prospects, therefore, anything but bright, Urban went about south Italy striving to raise the standard of ecclesiastical discipline. For this end he celebrated a council at Benevento, though he did not neglect to use the opportunity to renew the condemnation of Guibert and his accomplices. Whilst thus an exile from his episcopal see, with nowhere to lay his head, he was nevertheless consoled by the proofs which he was daily receiving that he was the Pope generally acknowledged by the Catholic world, and he was encouraged by many signs to believe that his position was slowly improving. By the capture of Noto in 1091, Count Roger brought to an end the Saracen domination of Sicily, and replaced it by the Norman. And any advance of Norman influence was on the whole to the advantage of Urban.

 In the north of Italy Henry’s success had at first been overwhelming. The vassals of Matilda, thoroughly cowed, compelled her to enter into negotiations with the German monarch. But “the ears of the countess would not listen” to the condition that she must acknowledge Guibert, who had now joined his king, as Pope of Rome. Reanimated by the eloquence of a hermit who promised that the prayers of St. Peter would bring them victory, the followers of the countess decided to continue the struggle, and soon after inflicted a severe defeat on Henry at Canossa. The memory of what he had suffered at that famous castle made him anxious to raze it to the ground. But once more Canossa was fatal to him. He was completely worsted, lost his royal standard, had to retreat across the Po, and watch his fortunes in Italy steadily decline (October 1092).

He was not at the end of h s troubles in Italy. On the death of his outraged but faithful wife Bertha (1087), he had married Praxedis, the daughter of the Russian prince Vsevlad of Kiev (1089). He soon conceived a greater hatred of her than he had at first done against Bertha, and undoubtedly treated her in a much more abominable manner than he had his first wife. Donizo refuses to speak of the foul manner in which he exposed her chastity to violation, lest the mere mention of it should defile his poem. Imitating the poet in this respect, we will merely observe that if we are to be guided by contemporary evidence, it was Henry’s attempt to make his son the partner of his deep depravity that was the cause of Conrad’s rebellion against him at this time; but that, if we are to follow the assertion of some modern authors, it was the persuasion of Matilda, or of “the priests”.

At any rate, in 1093, Conrad did throw off allegiance to his father, and attached himself to Matilda and Guelf. Their party was still further strengthened this year by the adhesion of the first Lombard League. Milan, Cremona, Lodi, and Piacenza banded themselves together for a term of twenty years against Henry. The passes of the Alps were promptly seized by them, and the king, abandoning all hope of receiving succor from Germany, shut himself up in a fortress. Here, while his son was being crowned at Monza and at Milan, he would have put an end to his  wretched existence, had he not been prevented by his attendants.

All this success of Urban’s friends in the north of Italy had its effect in the south. Urban, who had spent the greater part of the year 1093 in going about southern Italy  from one town to another, holding a council at Troya, and promoting the observance of the Truce of God, was able to make a peaceful entry into Rome in November. Unhappily for him, however, though Guibert was with Henry in the north talking about resigning in order to bring peace to the Church, his party held the castle of St. Angelo. Again helped by Pierleone, Urban took up his abode in a fortress near S. Maria Nuova, viz. in the massive Turris Cartularia of the Frangipani. Again, too, because he was unwilling, says Bernald, “to take up arms against Roman citizens”, he patiently endured the trouble which the antipope’s followers caused him, and lived in great distress and poverty under the protection of John Frangipane. This time his wants were supplied by the famous abbot Geoffrey of Vendôme, who in a very touching letter has modestly left on record what he did for the Pope. Although his own abbey was but poor, he at once set out for Rome when he heard of the straits to which Urban was reduced, “that he might share his toils and troubles and relieve his needs as far as he could”. During the Lent of 1094 the generous abbot remained with the Pope. Before its close, Ferruchio, Guibert’s governor of the Lateran Palace, offered to surrender it to Urban for a sum of money. As Urban and all his bishops and cardinals were unable to raise the required amount, Geoffrey gave him what money he had, and, selling his horses and mules to raise more, had the pleasure of handing over the Lateran to the Pope, “where I was the first to kiss the foot of the Lord Pope, seated on the apostolic throne, on which for a long time previously no Catholic Pope had sat”. The charity of the worthy abbot brought him the affection of the Pope, who treated him, as Geoffrey tells us himself, “like an only son”.

It was in this year that the unfortunate Praxedis made her escape to Matilda from the durance vile in which she had been retained by her husband. The countess at once took her to the Pope, who had come north in the summer. Throwing herself at his feet, she poured forth to Urban her sad story amidst the tears and sobs which her shame wrung from her. The whole empire was soon ringing with the story of her wrongs. Men had no difficulty in forgiving her flight from such a husband as Henry; they forgave the rebellion of tis son, and abandoned his cause in crowds.

Feeling that the time had come not merely to strike a well-deserved blow at Henry, but to push forward the ideas of his great predecessor both in the direction of reform and  in the matter of sending help to the oppressed Christians in the East, Urban summoned a council to meet at Piacenza in the spring of 1095. The story of the wrongs of Praxedis had spread widely; and, while many came to Piacenza hoping to see her cause taken up, many more came trusting that the interests of peace and reform would be advanced. Very great were the numbers that appeared to assist at the council. No church could hold them. It was said that nearly four thousand clerics and thirty thousand laymen attended the synod. It had to be held in the open air. The case of Henry’s unhappy queen was first investigated. As Henry made no attempt at defence, and the proofs of his guilt were convincing, Praxedis was publicly declared innocent, and not liable to the penance assigned to adultery. Passing over in this place the council's treatment of Philip of France, and Urban’s first suggestions of the Crusades, we may here note that as usual simony and the marriage of priests were condemned, as well as the antipope and his accomplices, and the heresy of Berengarius. Various disciplinary decrees were also passed by the synod. That Urban was able to hold such a council in the very middle of Lombardy is proof enough that the Gregorian reformation was taking deep root even there, and that the power of Henry and his antipope in north Italy was of no account.

After the council was over, Urban proceeded to Cremona to meet Conrad. The young king came out to greet him, and, in accordance with the usual custom of the time, for a brief space led the Pope’s palfrey. After he had taken the customary oath, under which he guaranteed the Pontiff’s personal security, and undertook to defend his claims to the Papacy, and his temporal rights both within and without Rome, Urban adopted him as a son of the Roman Church. He, moreover, agreed to help him to have and to hold the kingdom of Italy which had been given him by his coronation, and to bestow upon him the imperial crown when he came to Rome, always supposing that he observed the papal decrees, especially regarding investiture.

To strengthen Conrad’s position, and to enable him to obtain the money he stood in need of, the Pope and the Countess Matilda advised him to seek the hand of the very youthful daughter of Count Roger of Sicily. Urban pointed out to the count how honourable such a marriage would be for him, and how Conrad, aided by the money he would receive with his wife, would then be able to overcome the enemies of the Church. Yielding to the Pope’s persuasion, and to the advice of his barons, Roger consented to the proposals made to him, and Conrad was duly married to the richly dowered daughter of the count of Sicily.

With Henry and his antipope now hopelessly discredited, with the one attempting to kill himself, and the other and returns talking of resigning his usurped dignity, Urban thought he might safely go to France to crown the work he had begun at Piacenza. Of his doings among the French (August 1095-September 1096), which placed him more than ever in the forefront of European estimation, and which resulted in hurling the West on the East, we shall speak in the next chapter. Meanwhile we shall follow the course of the relations between Henry and the Pope till the latter’s death (1099). When Urban returned to Italy (September 1096) after having set on foot the first Crusade, he found that the wheel of fortune had taken a turn in his great enemy’s favour. The ill-assorted union between a spiritually-minded experienced woman of forty-three with a young man of less than half her age had broken, and Matilda was to all intents a widow again. It would seem that it was the hope of securing her estates that had induced the youthful Guelf to take the hand of the Great Countess. But when he found that his wife was determined to abide by the donation of her lands which she had already made to the Church, Guelf no longer found her attractive. It was in vain that the youth’s father came into Italy, and tried to bring about a reconciliation. Unable to accomplish his purpose, he threw himself into Henry’s party in the hope that he might be able to compel Matilda to leave her property to his son. For some time, however, his change of front did not bring much advantage to Henry’s cause. His regular adherents did not at first trust their new-found ally, and the loyalty of the great mass of Rome’s supporters was not shaken by the selfish desertion of their cause by Guelf and his son.

Meanwhile, on his return to Italy (September 1096), Urban passed through Milan, and there preached against simony before an immense multitude and, to impress upon them the great dignity of the priesthood, he assured them that the least cleric was a greater person than a king. And though our sources say nothing about : we may be sure that, as was his wont now on all occasions when he addressed great bodies of men, he urged upon them “the Jerusalem journey”.

Making his way to join the Countess Matilda, Urban reached Lucca in November. Near this city, which may still be called ancient, he was met by a number of French Crusaders, headed by Robert, duke of Normandy, Hugh of Vermandois, the brother of Philip I of France, and Stephen, count of Blois. After an interview with the chiefs, and with as many others as wished to see him, he gave them his blessing and sent them on their way to Rome rejoicing.

Escorted by the Great Countess at the head of her troops, Urban moved on towards Rome, where, during his absence, the state of parties had remained much the same. It was not that there had been peace; there had been fierce fighting in Rome and in the adjoining country, and we read of a certain John Paganus, perhaps a noble of the Campagna, “who had inflicted a great deal of suffering on the Romans” of Urban’s party, being beheaded and ignominiously buried in a dunghill. But Urban entered the city surrounded by a very great number of people, without any fighting, though the troops of the antipope were still in possession of the castle of St. Angelo. This we learn from Urban himself. It is often stated on the authority of later writers that it was the arms of the Crusaders which introduced the Pope into his city. This is a mistake. Though some of the Crusaders who passed through Rome were grossly outraged by the followers of the antipope, they do not appear to have retaliated. What happened to them we learn from an eye-witness. “When we entered the basilica of St. Peter”, says Fulcher, “we found the followers of the imbecile Pope Guibert with swords in their hands, plundering the altars of the gifts placed upon them. Others, mounting on to the beams of the church, pelted us with stones as we knelt in prayer; for they wished to kill every faithful adherent of Urban”. Though the Crusaders were shocked at these outrages, Fulcher expressly assures us that they did nothing but pray God to punish them.

With all Europe hanging on Urban’s lips and obeying his behests, the extinction of the influence of Henry and his creature followed as a matter of course. So that Ivo of Chartres, contemplating northern and central Italy in the power of Conrad and Matilda, could congratulate the Pope that the kingdom of Italy was almost wholly at peace.

The material prospects of the Pope continued to improve. He was able to hold a council in Rome in January (1097), and in May was gladdened by the news that Henry, alter an almost continuous residence in Italy of seven years, had quitted it. Whether he was driven out by Matilda, or took advantage of the opening of the passes of the Alps by his new ally Guelf, he was, at any rate, never to set foot in it again. His return to Germany brought him but little improvement in his position. In Italy, shut up in Verona, he had had hardly more power or state than a second-rate baron; and when, with a few followers, he moved from one place to another in Germany, he was wholly unable to assume the status of a sovereign. Instead of being the revered leader of Christendom arising in its might against the Moslem, he was a despised wanderer, in whose affairs nobody was concerned, and himself taking no interest in the great movement which was agitating Europe from end to end.

The state of turmoil in which the action of Henry had kept Germany for so many years resulted in astounding manifestations not only of cruelty and impiety, but also of a piety and charity. Horrified at the deeds of violence they saw all round them, men began to loathe the ways of the world around them, and to tire of its barbarities. While many in high position left the world altogether, and sought the peace of the cloister, many more, both men and women, whilst remaining in the world, led the life of religious, often attaching themselves to some monastery to be directed by its monks or nuns. This kind of community life in the world was taken up even by whole villages, and there was seen the edifying spectacle of an innumerable multitude of both high and low, men and women, devoting themselves to religious exercises, and to the daily service of their neighbours. As Urban had himself when in Germany been a witness of the good which this widespread movement was effecting, he had no hesitation in approving of it, and setting it down as holy and Catholic. It was an anticipation of the “third order” of St. Dominic and of St. Francis.

While Henry was in the forlorn condition we have described above, some of his adherents were working more for themselves than for their king. The selfish Duke Guelf of Bavaria was vindicating for himself against his brothers in Italy the inheritance of his father Azzo (d. 1097). But if that was to some extent an advantage for the cause of Henry, the loss of Argenta by Guibert more than counteracted it (1098). This strong castle, “on which the antipope greatly relied”, was situated to the north of Imola, on the Po de Primaro, and gave to its owner the control of the river Po in its neighbourhood.

After celebrating Christmas (1097) and Easter in Rome with great pomp, Urban left the city to seek help among the Normans to enable him to render his position safe by securing the castle of St. Angelo. He had pacified the outlying districts of Rome, and if that galling thorn of Crescentius were removed, the whole city itself also would be at peace. But to get aid in men from the Normans was out of the question. Like the rest of Europe, south Italy was preparing for the Crusade, but those of the Normans who were not occupied with it were, with their Duke and Count Roger, besieging revolted Capua.

But if he could not induce the Capuans to come to terms with the Normans, and if, consequently, the latter could not go to fight for him, they could give him money. Of this his agents in Rome made such prompt use that the castle was surrendered to Pierleone on the vigil of St. Bartholomew (August 23, 1098). Gold, compromise, and steel soon completed the little pacification required after the surrender of “the house of Crescentius”.

Urban, however, did not return to Rome immediately after he had learned that he was master of St. Angelo. He had still work to do in south Italy. In return for the assistance he had received from the Normans, and as a practical proof of the gratitude he was always professing to them for having expelled the Saracens from Italy and Sicily, and, moreover, no doubt, as a concession to importunate demands on the part of the powerful court of Sicily, he felt called upon to show them some special mark of his favour.

The Normans had always shown themselves friends of the Holy See, but they were calculating friends. They measured their friendship almost exactly by what advantages they were likely to win out of it for themselves. Their kings liberally professed respectful obedience to the Popes, but were careful, as far as ever they could, to keep all power, both of Church and State, in their own absolute hands.

The Church in Sicily had, it may be said, been entirely swept away by the Saracens. Hence, on the conquest of the island by Roger, it fell to the lot of Popes Gregory and Urban to reorganize its hierarchy. But the count began immediately, both overtly and with true Norman wiliness, to try to arrange everything in his own way. He brought about the election of Robert as bishop of Troina without waiting for the presence at it “of the legate of the Apostolic See, or for the consent” of the Pope. Gregory, it is true, confirmed the election, but he gave the count distinctly to understand that such elections were not to occur again. After this pronouncement of Gregory, the next bishopric, that of Syracuse, seems to have been canonically re-erected (1093). But Roger soon returned to his arbitrary ways, and even went the length of arresting Robert, bishop of Troina-Messina, whom Urban, “without consulting him”, had named his legate in Sicily. At what period Roger thus imprisoned the bishop who had been the object of his own selection is as uncertain as nearly everything else connected with the refoundation of the episcopal sees of Sicily. At any rate, Urban cancelled his nomination, and some satisfactory solution of the affair was arrived at between the count and himself; for we find the latter not long after conferring extraordinary privileges upon Roger. These are contained in a document addressed “to his most dear son, Roger, Count of Calabria and Sicily”. It begins by declaring Roger adopted as a special and most dear son of the universal Church, because of the manner in which God had deigned to exalt him by his victories; because of his having by them extended the Church of God; and because of his having ever shown himself devoted to the Apostolic See. It then went on to say that, “having full confidence in the count’s uprightness”, no legate of the Roman Church should, against his will, be established in “any portion of his dominions during his lifetime or that of his son Simon, or other legitimate heir of his body”. The count was further authorized to control with legatine power such legates as the Pope might send “ex latere nostro”, seeing that he had hitherto been obedient to the Apostolic See and had “strenuously and faithfully helped it in its necessities”. Finally, should the Pope notify him to send the bishops and abbots of his country to a council, it was to be within his power to send such as he thought fit. From the words of Malaterra which immediately precede his quotation of this identical bull, it would appear that the document in question was rather a summary of the deed which left the papal chancellary than the actual deed itself. The words of the monk to which we refer show that there were various modifying clauses in the original papal bull which do not appear in the abridgment which has come down to us. Thus, though the Pope undertook not to send a legate to Sicily, it was arranged that to deal with what concerned the jurisdiction of the Roman Church, he should send chartulari (no doubt legal officials), who, “with the assistance of the bishops of the province”, should settle the matter in dispute. And though the Pope authorized Roger to decide what bishops he would dispatch to a council, this privilege of his was limited by the clause which stated that he would have to send a particular bishop if any question was to be treated of concerning him which could not be settled in his province.

Some authors, in fact, dwelling on these differences between the bull as we have it, and the arrangements made between Urban and Roger, as detailed by Malaterra, and arguing from the unwarrantable deductions which later Sicilian monarchs drew from this bull, have altogether denied its authenticity. But, if the explanation just given of the language of Malaterra be allowed, the objections to the bull drawn from his words fall. Moreover, the document seems to harmonize in parts with another bull of Urban on Sicilian affairs, and explains the fact that, in a mosaic of the Church of La Martorana (built 1143) in Palermo, our Lord is seen crowning King Roger, “who is represented in Byzantine costume, and wears the Dalmatian tunic, a strictly ecclesiastical garment, to show that the kings of Sicily were what Urban II made them, hereditary apostolical legates, and therefore at the head of the Church in the island”. Though Urban did not make the kings of Sicily in general “hereditary apostolical legates”, the mosaic, no doubt, does show that they claimed to be.

After thus settling the affairs of the Church in Sicily by a compromise largely in favour of Count Roger, Urban made his way to Bari, and held a council where St. Anselm so much distinguished himself (October 1098). Before the close of November, Urban was in Rome, where he was to pass the few remaining months of his life in honour and glory. The city was wholly under his control, and the one dear object of his life’s work, the recovery of Jerusalem from the Turks, was in sight. It was to take place (July 15, 1099) before his death (July 29), though so soon before it that he was not to have the pleasure of knowing that it was in Christian hands.

The last important act of his pontificate was to be marked by a final effort on his part to promote and advance the cause of the Crusades. He summoned a council to meet in Rome the third week after Easter (1099). One hundred and fifty bishops and abbots and “an innumerable number of clerics” responded to his call. After the confirmation of the acts of his predecessors condemning Guibert “and all his accomplices”, and after the passing of various disciplinary decrees, Urban once more raised his eloquent voice in behalf “of the Jerusalem journey”. He threw his soul into the long and earnest pleadings by which he besought his hearers to go and help their brethren in their arduous toils. His words did not fall on deaf ears; and from Lombardy itself, hitherto the centre of the opposition to the Hildebrandine reform, there set out a body of Crusaders (1100-1102), among whom was the very brother of Guibert himself. It was indeed the last triumph of Urban II.

Within three months of the close of this council “the venerable Pope Urban” had breathed his last (July 29), while his praises were beginning to ring throughout the world”. He died in the house which had often given him shelter in life, viz., in the house of Pierleone, a little to the south-east of the theatre of Marcellus, and quite close to the Church of S. Niccola in Carcere. Owing to the presence in the city of a number of the followers of Guibert, it was not thought advisable to take the Pope’s body for interment to the Lateran, where his immediate predecessors had been buried. It was transported through the faithful Trastevere to St. Peter’s, and there, beneath a handsome monument, laid to rest by the side of the tomb of Pope Hadrian I.

Three several sets of verses are cited as epitaphs of Urban; but it is not known if any one of them was ever actually to be read on his tomb. Ordericus Vitalis quotes two of them in the beginning of his tenth book, and Dom Ruinart the third. The longer one of the two, which we shall extract from Ordericus, is said by him to have been the work of an “eminent versifier” other than Pierleone, to whom he assigns the shorter epitaph. But some assert that he is mistaken, and that the longer one is the work of that “special son of the Holy Roman Church” just mentioned. In any case, the poem runs thus: “Odo, a canon of Rheims, who was made a monk of Cluny by (abbot) Hugh, became an excellent Pope. While he lived he was the light of Rome; when he died it was eclipsed. The city flourished while he lived, and languished at his death. O Rome! the laws which he gave you, and the peace he cherished, filled you with happiness, preserving you from vices within and from foes without. He was never swayed by the wealth of the rich, nor elated by praises and fame, nor terrified by the threats of the powerful. His tongue was remarkable for eloquence, his heart for wisdom, his conduct for worth, and his carriage for dignity. Through him the way is open to the holy city; our religion triumphs; the pagans are conquered, and the faith is spread through the world. As the rose, the most brilliant of flowers, is soon plucked, so fate swept off this distinguished prelate. Death possesses his mortal part, rest his soul, the tomb his corpse; nothing is left to us but his glory”.

“Urban”, sings Donizo, “was not like a reed shaken by the wind, but by his word did he cut down evil as with a knife. Heretics feared him as the snake does the stag ... The liberty of the Roman See suffered no decrease in his days ... He was a golden bishop of the finest lustre. It was an evil hour for Rome when it lost such a shepherd”.

III. 

THE EAST AND THE FIRST CRUSADE.

ALTHOUGH Alexius Comnenus manifested the usual tendency of the Caesars on the Bosphorus to interfere in matters religious, the difficult is in which he was placed by the attacks of the Turks and other more or less barbaric foes soon caused him to put himself on good terms with the Pope and the West. At an early period in his reign, he had forbidden the Latins who dwelt in the empire to use unleavened bread in the sacrifice of the Mass. With considerable tact Urban dispatched to remonstrate with the emperor the Greek abbot of Grottaferrata. So well did the abbot conduct the negotiations, that Alexius not only withdrew his obnoxious edicts, but in letters written in gold proposed to the Pope that a council should be held at Constantinople to settle the question as to what kind of bread should be used in the Mass. He begged the Pope to come himself with a number of learned Latins, in order that “the one Church of God might follow the same custom”, and suggested that the council should be held in the course of the next eighteen months. According to Malaterra, to whom we owe this interesting item regarding the ecclesiastical relations of the East and West, Count Roger of Sicily advised the Pope to accept the emperor’s invitation. Unfortunately, the state of Rome prevented the advice from being carried out, at least to the letter.

But the idea of reunion between the two churches, or of a more close union between the eastern and western portions of the one church had been started, and was to go forward. Even yet it would seem that many were blind to the fact that the East was finally cut off from the Church. To facilitate the progress of negotiations, Urban formally absolved the emperor from excommunication.

At length, in October 1098, a council was held at Bari in presence of the Pope and of our own St. Anselm, who had come to Rome to tell his story of the stark tyranny of the Red William. At the feet of the saint sat his faithful biographer Eadmer, from whom alone we know any of the particulars of this council, for its acts are lost. One hundred and eighty-five bishops met together. Among them were a number of Greeks; but whether they were Greeks of Magna Graecia, or Greeks from the East, is not certain. From the silence of Byzantine historians, some have inferred that they were only “Italian Greeks”. But though it may be conceded that such was the nationality of most of the Greeks, it would seem more probable, judging from the zeal of Alexius for reunion both before and after this council, that there were also Greeks from Constantinople present at it.

The council was held in the immense, fortress-like cathedral of St. Nicholas, with is three aisles divided by screens of granite or marble columns, and with its great central aisle spanned by three vast arches. This great basilica, Romanesque in plan, but showing “Saracenic colour and ornament, combined in the most bizarre manner with the wild energy of Norman feeling”, was a suitable place for the assembling of a number of bishops differing widely in nationality, speech, costume, and personal appearance

After many points of Catholic doctrine had been illuminated by the Pope with his brilliant and well-reasoned eloquence, the question of the Filioque was mooted. In his reply to the Greeks, who attempted to show that the “Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father only”, Urban quoted from De incarnatione Verbi, a work which Anselm had once sent him. Pressed hard on the matter by some subtle objections from the Greeks, he called out in a loud voice, “Father and master, Anselm, archbishop of the English, where art thou?”. The archbishop, who was seated in the same row with the principal members of the assembly, on hearing that the Pope called for him, rose and answered, “Lord and Father, what are your commands? Here I am”. “What are you doing?” resumed the Pontiff. “Why do you keep silence like the rest? Come hither, I pray you, and take your place at my side. These Greeks would fain rob the Church of her integrity, and drag me down into their own pit of impiety. Help, therefore, help; it is for this that God has sent you hither”. The prelates round about the throne of the Pope were now all in a bustle, changing seats and preparing a place for the stranger, who was with all ceremonious courtesy conducted to a seat on the steps of the throne. “Who is this?” “Where does he come from?" so ran the  whisper round the church. When silence had been restored, the Pope addressed the council on the learning and piety of their visitor, and in subdued tones told of the many persecutions he had suffered for justice’ sake, and of his unjust exile.

“Rising up before the assembly, Anselm, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, so carefully argued the subject, that one and all expressed themselves satisfied with his reasoning ... When he had finished speaking, the Pope, earnestly gazing on him, said: “Blessed be thy heart and thy mind, and blessed be thy mouth and the eloquence thereof”.

The opponents of the Catholic doctrine were condemned by the council, and, as we shall see later, it was only the intercession of Anselm that averted the indignation of the assembly from falling on the Red King. Whether the work of this council produced any effect in the East is not known, but of the Filioque controversy no more was heard in Greater Greece.

But Urban did not look upon the East with the eyes of a theologian only; he regarded it as a politician also. The outcome of his mingled gaze was that he hurled the Catholic West against the Moslem East; he launched the Crusades.

Like every other great event, the Crusades had their roots in a distant past. Their remotest origin may be sought both in the natural feeling which has ever prompted Christians of every time to visit the scenes of our Saviour’s toils, and in “the brotherhood of Christ”. The Holy Places were surely visited during the three centuries of persecution. After Constantine’s edict of toleration gave freedom to Christianity, they were thronged by devout worshippers from the most distant shores. Conspicuous among them were men from this island. “The Briton”, writes St. Jerome, “separated from our world ... leaves the western sun and seeks Jerusalem”. There has come down to us an itinerary of a pilgrim from Bordeaux who visited the Holy Land before the death of the emancipator of the Christian faith. Some were not content to see Jerusalem, they would live there. St. Jerome’s distinguished penitent, St. Paula, who followed him to Palestine, wrote thence to a friend in Rome: “No doubt there are other good people elsewhere than here, but I stoutly affirm that here the foremost men in the world are gathered together”. Examples of different virtues are set us by Gauls, Britons, Armenians, Persians, Indians, Ethiopians, and men from every part of the East. “They speak with divers tongues, but in their hearts there is but one faith”.

But in 637 Jerusalem was taken by the Arabs, and became a Moslem city. Christians could live therein only by payment of a heavy tax, and by submitting to humiliating conditions as to dress, customs, and the like. The stream of pilgrims to the Holy Land almost dried up during the next century and a half. But before the end of the eighth century better times began to dawn on the oppressed Christians of the Holy City. The warlike fame of Charlemagne lent weight to the petitions which he addressed to the great caliph Haroun-al-Raschid. He obtained from him the protectorate of the Christians of the Holy Land, and full rights over the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. After this the alms of the faithful began to pour into Jerusalem; monasteries, churches, and hospices were built or restored, and once again the flow of pilgrims to the holy places began to swell. With the general revival of faith which began in the eleventh century, and with the conversion at the same time of Hungary to the Christian faith which reopened the overland route to Palestine, the pilgrimages grew in number and size. Checked by the persecution of the mad Hakem, the Nero of Egypt, (1005-1021), and his destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (1010), “the Jerusalem journey” was again resumed when his tyrannical treatment of his Christian subjects ceased. It was now indeed often undertaken by such numbers of pilgrims travelling together as to constitute veritable armies. Even the renewed persecution of Al Mostancer (1036-1094), Hakem’s second successor, did not daunt those who longed to see where their Lord had lived.

But if during the eleventh century the Moslem frequently oppressed the Christians who dwelt in the East, and took his money and not infrequently his life from the Western pilgrim who came to visit the land which he kept in his fanatical grip, many a Western warrior was learning the way to Palestine, and many a Western palmer, on his return to Europe, told the tale of Moslem exactions and cruel oppressions. The West was being gradually aroused. Already, about the time of the destruction of the temple of the Holy Sepulchre, there were wild rumours of armies of Westerns throwing themselves upon the East.

The sullen discontent with the Mohammedan sway in the Holy Land, which had permeated Europe before the third quarter of this century was over, was fanned into activity by the rise of the Seljukian Turks. Fear and indignation filled the breasts of the thoughtful men of the West when they heard that wild hordes of Turks from Siberia had put an end to the temporal power of the Caliphs of Bagdad (1053), had broken the power of the Byzantine Empire in the fatal battle of Manzikert (1071), and, after a terrible destruction of Christian churches and people, had made themselves masters of the Holy Land, and of Asia Minor to within sight of Constantinople.

But long before the banners of the Sultanate of Rum had been stirred by the breezes of the Black and Mediterranean Seas, the bitter cry of the suffering Christians of the East had been heard in Rome. The Popes hearkened to their sighs, and endeavoured to stir up the nations of the West to their help. Gregory VII longed in person to lead an army against the Turks, and Pope Victor III actually succeeded in bringing about a united expedition of various Italian states against the Moslems of Africa.

The Seljuks had reduced the empire of Constantinople to such pitiable straits that the emperors themselves began mediate at length to look for help where their stricken subjects had already besought it. After sustaining a severe defeat in Thrace at the hands of the Patzinaks (1088), Alexius I secured from Count Robert of Flanders, who was returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the promise of a support of 1500 knights. A year or two later (1091), his ambassadors found the Pope in Campagna, and begged him to use his influence that armed assistance might be sent to their master. For a similar purpose his ambassadors appeared before the council of Piacenza (1095). Moved by the sad tale they had to tell of the cruel ravages of the Turk and Patzinak, Urban induced many to promise on oath to go to the defence of the Eastern Empire.

It was now that reflection on the needs of empires and of pilgrims began to lead Urban to entertain wider views with regard to the East. He saw that the battle of Manzikert, leading to the loss by the Eastern Empire of practically all its Asiatic possessions, and to the establishment of a Moslem kingdom within sight of Constantinople, had dealt a fatal blow to Byzantine power. He had to listen every day to the distressing story of continued Moslem oppression of the Christian pilgrim to the Holy Land, and of the Christian resident therein. Nor could he be unmindful that, since the consummation of the Greek schism, even the Greeks had begun to treat the Western pilgrims with an injustice which had called forth a strong protest from Pope Victor III. By no powers of eloquence could he hope to arouse the West to fight for the Byzantine Empire. But the faith with which it was then burning would move it to fight for unrestricted access to the scenes of its Saviour’s sufferings. For that he would urge the entire West to take the sword against the Moslem. The road of the pilgrim would then be made secure, and the Eastern Empire would be saved.

As he moved along from Piacenza to France, his ideas and aims became more definite to himself, and he no doubt unfolded them to others both by word and writing as he journeyed on. The news of the great things which Urban was maturing went before him. The minds of men became full of what was to come, and when it was noised abroad that he was to hold a council in Auvergne, bishops and priests, nobles and commoners began to move towards its mountains from all parts and parts of France.

Leaving Italy in the month of July, Urban was at Valence  on the Rhone on August 5. The reception he met with in France was altogether unprecedented, and he began at once to issue orders for the assembling of a council at Clermont on November 18. While awaiting that date, he went to different towns and monasteries, confirming the privileges of the latter, and consecrating churches and altars.

The fateful time arrived at last, and the old lava-built town of Clermont welcomed within its walls Pope Urban and his cardinals, thirteen archbishops, two hundred and twenty-five bishops, over ninety abbots, and a great number of secular princes. To proclaim a war which was to stir up the West from its very depths, and for generations to hurl its living, fighting masses on the shores of Asia, no better site could have been chosen than the volcanic city of Clermont. Perched on a hill well-nigh fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, it rests at the foot of a range of extinct volcanoes which rear their conical crests all round it.

The synod would appear to have been held in the ancient Romanesque Church of Notre Dame du Port. The official acts of the council are lost, but much can be gathered regarding its doings and its canons from contemporary historians. The decisions of Urban’s previous councils against simony, clerical marriage, and investiture were re­affirmed, and Philip of France was excommunicated because he had put away his lawful wife, and was living in adultery with the wife of another.

Then the great question of the state of the Holy Land was discussed; and it was decided that an army of horse and foot should march to Jerusalem “to rescue it and the churches of Asia from the power of the Saracens”. To encourage men to join the expedition a plenary indulgence was offered to such as took part in it, purely from the motive of the love of God, and not for glory or wealth. For the same object the Truce of God was extended, and it was decreed that the goods of those who took the cross were to be inviolable. At the same time, or soon after, Urban decided who were not to undertake “the Jerusalem journey”. We find, for instance, that monks and clerics were forbidden to join the expedition, at least without the leave of their superiors, and that young married men were to be discouraged from leaving their homes without the consent of their wives. In general, the bishops were enjoined to see to it that their subjects took the advice of their priests before taking up arms. What misery would have been averted had the sober counsels of the Pope been followed!

When the work of the council was over, Urban went forth from the church to a large open space behind it. There, from a lofty platform, exerting his powers of eloquence to the full, he told the assembled multitude how word had been brought to him again and again, both from Jerusalem and Constantinople, that the Turks had invaded the lands of the Christians of the East, and had enslaved them, tortured them, and destroyed or appropriated their churches. The Holy Places were polluted. It was for the Franks, renowned for their warlike prowess, to cease turning their arms against one another, and in their teeming thousands to march to free the city of God from the yoke of the infidel.

No sooner had Urban finished speaking than there thundered forth from the multitude, in Latin and in the common tongue of the people, the cry of “God wills it! God wills it!”. Those present pressed forward to promise the Pope that they would themselves fight for the deliverance of the Holy Places, and that they would engage others to do the same. They made haste, at the Pope’s behest, to attach a cross to their cloaks or tunics, in silk, in cloth of gold, or in any material which came to hand, as a sign that they had taken up the cross of Christ in earnest. Then, whilst the immense multitude prostrated themselves on the ground, striking their breasts, Cardinal Gregory said the Confiteor, and all together begged the Pope’s absolution for the sins they had committed. This, with his blessing, all received before they returned to their homes.

One of the first to take the cross was Adhemar of Monteil, bishop of Le Puy, who, named his legate by the Pope, was to take a foremost part in the expedition. August the 15th, 1096, was fixed as the day when the march to Palestine was to begin, and Constantinople was named the trysting place.

To stir up those who could not be present at the council, Urban sent synodal letters relating to the Crusade in all directions and at his command special preachers, among them Peter the Hermit, aroused the people all over Europe. Urban himself, travelling from one city in France to another till the close of August 1096, preached the Crusade wherever he went. Indeed, it was never off his lips till he died. Council after council heard his call to the Holy War. The maritime states were urged to furnish their ships, inland cities to supply soldiers. The note of war resounded throughout the West. Everywhere the great nobles began to enlist and drill men and to manufacture arms. At the word of the Pope, Europe became a barracks, an armoury, and a camp; while in town and country, over hill and dale, rang out the song of the Crusade.

So great was the excitement which the thought of fighting for the deliverance of the Holy Land engendered throughout Europe, that many would not wait till the more regular armies were ready, but set out under any one who would lead them. “The Welshman”, says William of Malmesbury, “left his hunting; the Scot his fellowship with lice; the Dane his drinking party; the Norwegian his raw fish. Lands were deserted by their husbandmen, houses by their inhabitants; even whole cities migrated”. The peasants shod their oxen like horses, and, placing their children on carts, set off to drive to Jerusalem; and you might hear the children asking whether any large town which they approached was not Jerusalem. Within three months of the close of the council of Clermont, hordes of these undisciplined people began to move through Hungary towards Jerusalem. Some five such hosts, under Peter the Hermit, Walter the Penniless, and others, followed one another to Constantinople, proving a source of misery and dread both to themselves and others as they straggled onwards. They plundered and pillaged, massacred the Jews, slew, and were slain, so that but few of them saw even the continent of Asia. Those few were soon cut to pieces by the Turks.

At length, about the time designated by the Pope, the more disciplined bands began to march by deferent routes towards Constantinople. There were Lorrainers, Germans, and Frenchmen from the north under Godfrey de Bouillon and his brother Baldwin. Normans, other Frenchmen, and English were under the command of Hugh of Vermandois, brother of Philip of France, Robert, duke of Normandy, and Stephen of Blois. Raymond of St. Giles, count of Toulouse, led the French of the south, with whom went Adhemar, the papal legate, whom all were supposed to obey. The Normans of south Italy were led by the astute, self-seeking Bohemund, and his nephew, the generous and heroic Tancred. “The light of the sun from the world’s creation”, says our own historian, Henry of Huntingdon, “never shone on so splendid an array, so dread, so numerous an assemblage, so many and such valiant chiefs—the most illustrious men that the Western world had given birth to in any age, all bearing the sign of the cross, all the bravest of their several countries ... It was the Lord’s doing, a wonder unknown to preceding ages, and reserved for our days, that such different nations, so many noble warriors, should leave their splendid possessions, their wives and children, and that all with one accord should, in contempt of death, direct their steps to regions almost unknown”.

When the Crusaders had entered on “the way of God”, Urban lost no time in communicating the fact to the Emperor Alexius. He told him that, in virtue of the general decision at Clermont to wage war on the Saracens, some “300,000 men had assumed the cross”, among them 7000 “of the picked youth of Italy”. He impressed upon the Byzantine monarch that the one important thing was that he should assist the Crusaders with men and provisions, and should help on in every way he could “this most just and glorious war”.

This is not the place to tell the history of the first Crusade. Suffice it to note here that though he did not live to know it, the desire of Urban’s heart was in part, at least, fulfilled. Despise the distrust and suspicion with which Alexius viewed the Crusades, and the utter want of any hearty and effective co-operation with them on his part; despite the difficulties of distance and climate; despite the strenuous opposition of the Turks; despite the ambitious designs of several of the Christian leaders, which led them to abandon their comrades-in-arms in order to carve out principalities for themselves; and despite the lack of that discipline among the Crusaders themselves which can only be secured by one man in a position to enforce obedience to his orders—despite these almost superhuman obstacles, the Crusaders carried Jerusalem by assault a few days before the death of Urban (July 15, 1099).

Godfrey de Bouillon was chosen to rule the country they had conquered, but he would not take the title of king, for he would not, he said, wear a crown of gold where the King of kings had worn a crown of thorns. He became “the defender (advocatus) of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre”. The chiefs did not, however, proceed to elect a patriarch, as Adhemar, the papal legate, had died in 1098, and they considered that the new patriarch should “be appointed by the determination of the Roman Pontiff”. It is true that on the death of the bishop of Le Puy, Urban had at once sent out a new legate in the person of Daimbert, or Dagobert, bishop of Pisa; but owing especially to difficulties of every sort put in his way by Alexius, he did not reach Jerusalem till the beginning of the year 1100.

Meanwhile, however, a small clique of the clergy, who since the death of Adhemar had got a little out of control, elected a certain Arnulf de Rohes, a capellanus of Robert, duke of Normandy, as patriarch in succession to the Greek patriarch Simeon, who had died at Cyprus6 (1099). It would seem, however, that the chief clerical and lay lords of the Crusaders would not recognize this election of Arnulf. Though learned, he was the son of a married priest, had not received all the major orders, and was, according to some authorities, a man of loose character. Besides, as we have seen, they did not think it right to act in such an important ecclesiastical affair without the consent of the Pope. They would appear, however, to have recognized him in the meanwhile as chancellor of the Church of Jerusalem.

On the arrival of the papal legate Daimbert at Jerusalem, the election of Arnulf was examined and declared void, and the legate was himself chosen as the first Latin patriarch of Jerusalem. His first act was to grant, in the name of the Pope, the investiture of the kingdom of Jerusalem and the principality of Antioch to Godfrey and Bohemund respectively.

It had been the wish of Urban, as it had been that of Gregory, to go himself with the Crusaders to Jerusalem. But the one was prevented from accomplishing his desires by his troubles with Henry IV, the other by the opposition of all his advisers. Through the presence of his legate, however, the Crusaders fought “under his leadership and that of St. Peter”. Besides, he never ceased working for their success, both by his words and his letters. In every way he could, he encouraged men to assume the cross; and though the taking of it was everywhere left an absolutely voluntary act, he did not easily dispense from their obligations those who had once affixed it to their right shoulders. “Pope Urban”, says Ordericus, “had sanctioned by his universal authority, and by his apostolic commands had insisted that it should be the rule throughout all Christendom that all who had taken the cross of Christ, and had changed their minds and had not gone to Jerusalem, should in the name of the Lord undertake a corresponding journey, or pay the penalty by incurring excommunication”.

As the Crusaders pursued their long and arduous way, Urban ever kept in touch with them. One of their letters to him has come down to us. It is addressed by Bohemund, Raymond of Toulouse, Godfrey, Robert of Normandy, and others, “to the venerable Pope Urban”, and offers him their greetings and true homage in Jesus Christ. They tell him of the siege of Antioch and of the discovery of the Holy Lance, and how at length “our Lord Jesus Christ had subjected all Antioch to the Roman religion and faith”. After informing him of the death of his legate, they beg him to come to them himself with as many as possible. “What is more fitting than that you, who are the father and head of the Christian religion, should come to the original city of the Christian name (Antioch), and should bring to a successful termination the war which is yours. ... If you come to us, and with us finish the way we have begun through you, the whole world will be obedient to you”.

Although, as we have seen, Urban was not permitted to carry out his own wishes and those of the Crusaders, and betake himself to the Holy Land, he never ceased till his dying day labouring for their interests both by word and work. The success of the first Crusade was the work of Urban II; its shortcomings were the result of the human weakness of the many. We may take our leave of it, thanking God with Urban “for deigning, especially in his time, after so many ages, to relieve the stress under which the Christians were suffering, and to exalt the faith. For in our days, by the might of the Christians, has He struck down the Turks in Asia and the Moors in Europe, and graciously brought many once famous cities under the worship of the true faith”.

IV.

FRANCE

At a time when almost the whole of his native land “lay buried beneath the mists of confusion” and anarchy caused by the evil deeds and example of a weak and vicious monarch, the influence of Urban wrought the same beneficial effect upon it as do the rays of the summer sun on the morning haze. The Pope’s most pronounced move towards clearing the moral atmosphere of France was perhaps his opposition to the loose conduct of its king. For twelve years (1092-1104) did Popes Urban II and Paschal II employ every device of kindness and severity in trying to bring the adulterous Philip to a sense of his duty.

Between the years 1071 and 1074 Philip married Bertha, the daughter of Floris (or Florence) I, count of Holland, by whom he had a son and a daughter. Some twenty years after, he became enamoured of the wife of his near relative Fulk Rechin, count of Anjou. His base passion was reciprocated by the lady, Bertrada de Montford, whose sole title to praise, according to the author of the Gesta of the counts of Anjou, was her beauty, but who at least possessed in an eminent degree the art by which men as wise as Solomon are rendered fools, and by which foolish men like Philip I of France are made veritable slaves. She eloped with the king (May 1092), who in the course of a few months found a bishop worthless enough to pronounce the marriage service over them (October).

But the French episcopate as a body were not as subservient as William of Rouen. The proud and honourable position of the most uncompromising opponent of the king’s baseness was held by the learned canonist, Bishop Ivo of Chartres. His courageous opposition soon brought him into trouble. Though he assured the king that, in opposing him, he was really giving him a proof of his fidelity, inasmuch as what he was attempting would endanger his soul and imperil his crown, Philip nevertheless cast him into prison.

Affairs of such scandalous moment could not escape the notice of the Pope. On October 29 he dispatched a letter to the bishops of the province of Rheims, in which he severely blamed them for allowing Philip to contract an adulterous marriage. “What has been done”, he wrote, “redounds to the confusion of the whole kingdom, to the discredit of your churches, and to your personal infamy”. He commanded the archbishop to approach the king at once, and to urge him, in his own name, in name of God, and in that of the Pope, to cease from his sin forthwith. If he will not, then must he and they prepare to do their duty; and if Ivo is not released from prison immediately, they must excommunicate his captor, and lay an interdict on any place in which he may be detained.

This strong letter was followed by the release of Ivo, who made use of his liberty to betake himself to Rome towards the close of 1093. One result of the conferences between the Pope and the bishop of Chartres was that the former ordered that a council of French bishops should be assembled thoroughly to investigate the whole question of the king’s marriage. Despite the efforts of Philip, Hugh, archbishop of Lyons, the Pope’s legate in France, duly convened a council at Autun (October 15, 1094); and though Bertha had died in the meantime (1094), her false husband was by it declared excommunicated.

As soon as this sentence was published, Philip dispatched envoys to Rome to get it annulled. To accomplish the end of their mission they were to spare neither promises nor threats. They were to declare that, unless their master were reinstated in his rights, he would withdraw himself and his kingdom from the obedience of Urban. But “the seat of justice”, after granting Philip a respite at the council of Piacenza, reaffirmed the excommunication at the council of Clermont. Moreover, to show publicly to Fulk how much he felt the shameful way in which he had been outraged, he took occasion of the presence of Fulk at his Mass in the Church of St. Martin at Tours to present him with the Golden Rose (Lent 1096). This we learn from the count himself, who adds that he at once made a law that it should in future be carried by himself and his descendants in the procession on Palm Sunday. The sequel will show how little Fulk deserved honour from anyone. The Pope will not suffer any interference with his excommunication.

Kings have ever been able to buy the consciences of some men, and Philip was not more incapable than the rest of his class in this respect. He had secured some partisans among the episcopate, who would appear at the council of Tours (March 16-22, 1096) to have put forth that it was in their power to absolve the king from his excommunication. But the Fathers of the council, over which Urban presided in person, at once proclaimed that no one could loose where the supreme Pontiff had bound. And the Pope himself issued a circular letter to the French bishops, reminding them that if the just excommunications of even simple suffragans could not be removed by their metropolitans, still less could any bishops undo the act of the Pope, who has no superior, but to whom even the patriarchs are subject.

Finding at length that submission was all that was left for him, Philip sent Bertrada away, promised amendment, and was absolved by the Pope at the council of Nimes  (July 1096). But of his oaths or solemn promises the miserable monarch thought but little. Bertrada was soon with him again; and again, through the action of the papal legate. Hugh of Lyons, was he placed under the censure of the Church (1097). A fresh act of perjury on his part procured from the Pope a suspension of Hugh’s censure  (1098), just as proof of the perjury brought a renewal of the archbishop’s interdict by the Pope not long before his death. But for ecclesiastical censures neither did the infatuated king nor some of the members of the hierarchy seem to care very much. When the church bells, which on Philip’s arrival in a town all became mute, rang out joyfully on his departure from it, he is said to have laughingly observed to Bertrada : “Do you hear, my pretty, how they are driving us away?”. And when Urban died the bishops of the province of Rheims ventured to behave towards the king as though he were no longer under the ban of the Church; “as if”, said Ivo of Chartres, “they fancied that justice had died with its herald”.

But Urban’s successor, Paschal II, was the successor of his policy as well as of his throne, and at once sent two cardinal-priests, John and Benedict, into France, that they might vindicate the claims of that justice which never dies. They held councils, and they tried by personal interviews to move the abandoned king. Seeing, however, that their pacific efforts were useless, they resolved to excommunicate Philip once more in a council at Poitiers (1100). This they boldly did at the risk of their lives, for Poitiers was one of the king’s cities, and his agents stirred up the people against the assembled Fathers. Some of them were seriously injured, but the heroic fearlessness displayed by the papal legates brought their assailants to reason and repentance.

After this council the canonical rules regarding interdict and excommunication were put into operation more universally and strictly than before, and, what affected the wretched king still more, disunion and strife now began to show itself in the midst of his family. His son (afterwards known as Louis VI, the Fat) by Bertha now arrived at man’s estate, and seeing how royalty was falling into contempt, began, only naturally, to conceive a strong dislike to Bertrada. His hostile feelings were more than reciprocated by the would-be queen. She tried to do away with him.

This domestic trouble especially seems to have made Philip once again wishful to make his peace with God and the Pope, at any rate in appearance. Ivo of Chartres, however, doubted his sincerity, and wrote urging the Pope, if he absolved him, “so to bind him with the keys and chains of Peter, that if, when absolved, he returned to the vomit, as he had done before, he might be immediately refettered”.

In 1102 Paschal sent into France Richard, cardinal- bishop of Albano, as his legate to arrange for the king’s absolution. Different councils were held touching the matter, but nothing was decided. At length, however, came a letter from the Pope enjoining the bishops to accept Philip’s protestations of repentance, if he “and the woman for whom he had been excommunicated” would swear that “they would for the future avoid all carnal intercourse, or indeed intercourse of any kind, except in the presence of persons above suspicion” (October 5, 1104).

Philip lost no time in assembling the bishops at Paris,  and, on December 2, took, with bare feet and most solemnly, the oath required of him by the Pope. But after he had been formally reconciled to the Church, it seems certain that if he had sworn, his heart was yet unsworn. He allowed himself apparently to be irrevocably ensnared by the charmer. So successful were the wiles of this medieval Delilah, who to gain her ends is said not to have hesitated at any prostitution of her charms, that she even succeeded in inducing her husband, Fulk Rechin, to acquiesce in the disgraceful position in which she had placed him. Whether because Philip’s case was regarded as hopeless, or because be covered it over with lies, no further steps seem to have been instituted against him by the Church. And as typical of the situation we will reproduce a scene left us by the Abbot Suger, and with it take our leave of Bertrada and her two conjugal slaves. It is the autumn (October) of the year 1106. Bertrada is seated as queen by the side of Philip, and on a footstool at her feet sits Fulk Rechin, obedient, as though fascinated, to her every behest, and looking to her as a handmaid to her mistress.

As we have already seen, one of the scenes of the tragedy of Philip's divorce was played whilst Urban himself was in France. After the council of Piacenza the Pope spent more than a full year in his native land, viz., from August 1095 to the end of the same month in the following year. Whilst there, the question of the king’s marital relations occupied but a small portion of his time. His principal concern was the Crusade and all that was closely connected with it, such as the Truce of God. It is known that he preached the Crusade himself at Limoges, at Angers, and at Nimes, as well as at Clermont. And during his triumphal progresses from one end of the country to the other, we find him visiting and reforming monasteries, settling disputes, and purifying the episcopate. He had also to bring to obedience some of the archbishops of the country. The archbishop of Vienne had to be taught to obey the Pope’s judicial decision regarding the extent of the jurisdiction of the bishop of Grenoble, and regarding the bishop to whom the monastery of Romainmoutier on the Isère had to be subject. And the arch­bishop of Sens had to be made to yield due submission to the Pope’s legate, the archbishop of Lyons.

The most important link that connected Urban with France after he left it was his relation with the monastery of Citeaux, for ever famous, if only because it was the home of St. Bernard. Robert, abbot of Molesmes, finding that the monks of his monastery were not disposed to submit to the very strict regulations which he wished to impose upon them, left them with some twenty of their number who were desirous of a stricter observance of the rule of St. Benedict. With these he retired to a desert spot, and on March 2, St. Benedict’s Day, 1098, founded the new monastery, afterwards called Citeaux, and “that order whence were to issue unnumbered Popes, cardinals, and prelates, to say nothing of more than three thousand affiliated monasteries”. But the monks of Molesmes could not live without their late abbot, so they sent some of their number to Rome, and very strongly urged the Pope to compel Robert to return to them. Moved by their importunity, Urban wrote to his legate, Hugh of Lyons, to try to arrange the matter. This the archbishop succeeded in accomplishing, while the Pope, with a view to giving stability to the new state of things, issued the following decree : “The utmost care must be taken lest a horrible schism be nourished in the house of God, ... and, on the other hand, that the grace which is given from on high for the salvation of souls be not impiously extinguished. We, therefore, ... ordain, by our apostolical authority, that the monks of Molesmes who prefer the general rules of the monastic order shall inviolably observe them, and not presume to desert their own monastery or adopt other customs. As for the Cistercians who make profession of keeping the rule of St. Benedict in all particulars, let them not by another change return to a system which they now hold in contempt”.

When Urban issued this decree to give stability to the new order, he who was to be known for ever as St. Bernard of Citeaux was about seven years old, and by his devotion to the Holy See was destined more than to repay it for what it had done for his community.  

ENGLAND

Accepted as king of England by the goodwill of Arch­bishop Lanfranc, William II, the Red, was crowned by him (September 25, 1087) on the understanding that he would govern the land with justice, and protect the Church. During the life of his benefactor, William observed his promises to some extent, but after the archbishop’s death he proved in his public capacity an oppressor both of Church and State, and in his private life a model of the basest vices. He “was never married”, says Ordericus, “having abandoned himself without restraint to lewdness and debauchery, setting his subjects an example of gross lasciviousness”.

The early days of his reign were disturbed by a rebellion in which most of the Norman notables in England were engaged. Odo of Bayeux was its chief instigator, and one of its important adherents was a favourite of the king, William of St. Calais, bishop of Durham. The rising was suppressed mainly through the loyalty of Rufus’s English subjects; and much of the property of the diocese of Durham was alienated. Summoned before the king to answer for his treason (c. May 1088), the bishop of Durham, who had already written to remind him that “it was not within the competence of everybody to judge bishops, and that he would make answer to him according to his order”, refused to be tried like a layman, and insisted on the privileges of his order. Again summoned a few months later before a mixed tribunal in presence of the king (November), William once more declined to allow the laity any jurisdiction over him. Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances was disposed to argue that the accused ought to be restored to his full rights before he was called upon to defend himself. But Archbishop Lanfranc and the others, clerics as well as laymen, held that he must acknowledge the jurisdiction of the mixed court before any restorations were made him. This, as “against the canons and against our law”, the bishop refused to do.

Finding, however, that Lanfranc continued to press the validity of the jurisdiction of the court, William, in imitation of St. Wilfrid, turned to Rome, “because”, he said, “I perceive that the hatred of the king towards me causes all of you to hate me. I appeal to the Apostolic Roman Church, to Blessed Peter, and to his vicar, to whom the ancient authority of the apostles, of their successors, and of the canons has reserved all important ecclesiastical causes and all decisions regarding bishops”. While granting the bishop's request to be allowed to proceed to Rome, the court declared that his fief was forfeited. Again rejecting its jurisdiction for that of Rome, “where justice rather than violence was meted out”, William forwarded his appeal to the Pope, and left England after some enforced delay, in the eighth year of his episcopate.

Not having a good case, he did not on this occasion go to Rome in person; but from the court of Robert, duke of Normandy, where he took up his abode, he sent to Urban his own version of his dispute with the king. Writing to Rufus on receipt of the bishop’s appeal, Urban confined himself to stating the case as it had been put to him, and to insisting on the fulfilment of the ordinary requirements of canon law. “We have heard that, without just cause, you have driven the bishop of Durham from his bishopric; that, contrary to the canons, you have stripped him of his goods, and then forced him to appear before your court; and that, when he appealed to Rome, you in many ways prevented him from coming to us. Conduct such as this, as you doubtless are aware, is an outrage on us, as we perceive that it is wholly opposed to God and to the decrees of the holy Fathers. We therefore implore your charity, and by apostolic authority order, that he be restored to the full rights of his bishopric, and that you suffer him to come to us with such properly qualified accusers of his conduct as may exist”.

As this letter is the last echo of this affair which has reached our ears, we may conclude either that William ceased to press his appeal, or that Urban, better informed, declined to offer any further support to the rebellious bishop. At any rate, after a year or two (1091) William contrived to reinstate himself in the king’s favour, and lived long enough to prefer it, in the case of St. Anselm, to that of the Pope. But in thus thinking “to save his life” he lost it; for he died under the king’s displeasure when about to be tried for treason.

Before treating of the relations of that great saint with bishop of Rufus and with Urban, we may glance at an episode in the career of Herbert of Losinga, first bishop of Norwich. It will serve still further to define the attitude of the English hierarchy towards the Holy See both in theory and in practice. It helps to show that, despite the efforts of tyrannical monarchs to usurp ecclesiastical authority, the only spiritual head of the Church which our bishops acknowledged at this time was the Pope of Rome. It, moreover, throws light on the working of the Gregorian reform.

When the See of Thetford became vacant in 1091, the promise of a thousand pounds to Ralph Flambard, the vile, usurious minister of Rufus, enabled the Englishman, Herbert of Losinga, to become its occupant. But as he was possessed of that which “makes cowards of us all”, he was at length filled with remorse for his simony, and resolved to resign his bishopric into the hands of the Pope. Ever keeping before his mind the saying of St. Jerome, “we have sinned in our youth, let us repent in our age”, he repaired to Hastings, intending to cross from there to the continent (February 1094). Though his intention was for a time frustrated by the king, he contrived to elude his watchfulness and to make his way to Urban. Into his hands he resigned his pastoral staff and his episcopal ring, humbly confessing his guilt at the same time. His humility touched the Pope, and he at once restored him to his see. On his return to England he devoted himself with renewed zeal to learning and good works. With the approbation of Pope Paschal II, he removed his see to Norwich, a town “celebrated for its trade and populousness”, and left an enduring monument of himself in the cathedral we behold today.

The learned but somewhat Erastian bishop of whose sin and repentance we have just spoken was one of those archbishop bishops who assisted at the consecration of Anselm of Aosta as archbishop of Canterbury. In telling the story  of the struggle between this profound philosopher, this gentle teacher and loving friend, this saintly prelate, and that greedy, lustful tyrant, the Red William II, we are really narrating the beginnings of that great struggle for English liberty which was to be secured by the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, and those other great charters which, during the course of the centuries, were to be wrung from our kings. In appearance Anselm was simply contending for the freedom of the Church from the temporal power; in reality, he was working for the liberty of all, for he was engaged in putting a bridle on the arbitrary exercise of the monarch’s will.

By the death of Lanfranc (May 1089) the last restraining influence seemed to have been removed from the Red King, and he resolved not to be fettered again. By keeping the archbishopric vacant, he could fill his coffers by appropriating its revenues, and he would at the same time lessen the chances of opposition to his illegal conduct.

For nearly four whole years, despite all remonstrance, was the See of Canterbury kept widowed. Before the end of that period, fortunately both for himself and the nation, Rufus fell ill (1093). With sickness came reflection, and he determined, on the advice of the one whom he was to name archbishop, to amend his conduct both as a man and as a king. The good angel of the king on this occasion was Anselm, abbot of Bec. Born about 1033 at Aosta he became a monk at the famous abbey of Bec, in Normandy, in 1060. Soon made its prior, he succeeded Herluin, its founder, as abbot in 1078. In this position, business often brought him to England, where he promptly secured the affection and esteem of all who came in contact with him. Even Rufus lost his ferocity in presence of Anselm. As he chanced to be in England when the king lay sick, he was brought to him as the one most likely to prepare him well for death, and he was the one selected by him in his illness to fill the vacant See of Canterbury. The king’s nomination was eagerly ratified by the clergy and laity; but some months elapsed before Anselm could be induced to accept what was thrust upon him. Refusing to accept his crosier from the hands of the king, he, however, did homage to him for the lands of the see and was consecrated on December 4, 1093.

Rufus no sooner recovered from his illness than he went from bad to worse. It would appear that the devil which Anselm had helped to drive out of him returned to him and with seven others worse than himself. Differences soon arose between “the untamed bull and the weak old sheep”, as Anselm described the king and himself. They came to a head when the archbishop wished to go to Rome to receive the pallium from Pope Urban. Now one “of the novelties” which the Conqueror had introduced into England was that no one should be acknowledged as the Roman Pontiff without his order. William accordingly declared that he had not as yet himself accepted Urban as Pope, and would not allow any of his subjects to do so without his permission. He would consider the man who made the attempt a traitor to the crown. After further angry remarks from the king, it was agreed that a council should be summoned to decide whether, “saving the reverence and obedience due to the Apostolic See, one could preserve the fidelity he owed his temporal sovereign”. “And if it is proved”, added the saint, “that the two things are incompatible, then do I confess that I prefer to leave your territory till you acknowledge the Pope, than for the space of a single hour to deny obedience to Blessed Peter and his vicar”.

A great assembly of the lords spiritual and temporal of the country was accordingly held at Rockingham “on the northern edge of Northamptonshire” (March 11, 1095). Soon finding that he could get no support from the bishops, who either hoped or feared all things from the king, Anselm proclaimed his intentions and position to the prelates and peers in no uncertain tones: “I will resort to the Chief Shepherd and the Prince of all. To the Angel of great counsel will I turn, and crave the counsel I must follow in this affair: an affair which is not mine, but His and His Church’s. Hear, then, what he says to the most Blessed Peter, 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it: and I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven': and to the general college of the twelve, 'He that heareth you, heareth me, and he that despiseth you, despiseth me', and 'He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of my eye'. As these words were first and primarily addressed to Peter, and through him to the other apostles, so do we hold them to be said now first and primarily to St. Peter’s vicar, and through him to the episcopate, who take the place of the apostles, to him and to them, and not to the emperor, whoever he may be, not to king or duke or count. Whereas in what concerns our service and subjection to earthly princes, the same, the Angel of great counsel, instructs and teaches us, 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s' ... Know, therefore, that in the things which appertain to God I will yield obedience to the vicar of St. Peter, and in those which by law concern the territorial rank of my lord the king I will give faithful counsel and help to the utmost of my power”.

The position taken up by the archbishop was one in which his bitterest enemies, least of all William of St. Calais, the most crafty of them could find no flaw, so that to gain time the king gladly agreed to postpone the question till the octave of Whitsuntide. No sooner was the assembly broken up than Rufus dispatched two clerks of his royal chapel to Rome, first to ascertain for certain who was the true Pope, and then to induce him, when found, to send the pallium to him for the archbishop of Canterbury. His crude idea was that, as no mention had to be made of any person’s name, he might be able to give the archbishopric and the pallium to whomsoever he wished after he had got rid of Anselm.

The envoys had no difficulty in finding out that Urban was the true Pope, and they so far succeeded in the matter of the pallium that it was entrusted to Walter, cardinal bishop of Albano, for the king. They were even able to bring the legate secretly straight to the king. Not a word did he say to or for Anselm. The king was delighted. His clumsy plan was going to be successful. He caused Urban to be proclaimed throughout his dominions as the true Pope.

But his evil cunning was at fault. He was no match for the papal legate, who was at once good and astute. His refraining from intercourse with Anselm, and his holding out hopes to the king, had caused men to say hard things about his master. “If Rome”, said they, “prefers gold to justice, what hopes have those of justice who have nothing to give?”. But when Urban had been proclaimed Pope, Rufus could not prevail upon the legate to help him to depose Anselm, though he offered him and the Roman Church an enormous bribe. Nor did his disappointment end there. He could not prevail upon Anselm to purchase peace with him for money, nor even to accept the pallium from his hands. “That gift”, the archbishop pointed out, “was not the king’s to give; it could come only from the special authority of Blessed Peter”.

Completely checkmated, and harassed moreover by rebellion, there was nothing for it but restore Anselm to favour. It was decided then that the legate should place the pallium on the altar at Canterbury “as from the hand of Blessed Peter”. Accordingly the cardinal went to Canterbury (May 27, 1095), “carrying the pallium in a silver casket”. When he drew nigh the city there went forth to meet him not only the monks of Christ-church and of St. Augustine’s and a great number of clergy and lay-people, but the primate himself, barefooted, though clad in his sacred vestments, and supported by a number of bishops. Anselm then took the pallium from the altar on which it had been solemnly laid, and gave it to the people to kiss “to show their reverence for St. Peter”.

Although, after he had thus presented the pallium to Anselm, “Bishop Walter remained in this land during a legate, considerable portion of this year”, he does not appear to have been able to cultivate much friendship with our archbishop, who no doubt believed, and not without reason, that the cardinal had given a great deal more attention to the interests of his master than to his deserts. He did not, however, bear him the smallest ill-will; but, when the cardinal was leaving the country, begged him to assure the Pope of his loyal affection for him, to ask his prayers for him, and to beg him to be ready to show him mercy, “should he ever have to fly to him in his anxieties”. “May Almighty God”, he wrote in conclusion, “send you his good angel to bear you company and speed you happily on your way”

At the same time he wrote to “the venerable Urban, respectfully to be acknowledged supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church”. He thanked him for the estimable legates and for the pallium he had sent him, and expressed his great desire to visit him, not only because he was in duty bound, but because he wished is advice in the difficult position in which he was placed. Unfortunately, however, war held the country in a state of apprehension, and the king had hitherto refused to allow him to leave the country; but when there was peace he would strive to obtain permission to go to him. “And if ever, set as I am in danger of shipwreck; if ever, buffeted as I am by the blasts, I should be compelled in my distress to run for the haven of Mother Church, then for His sake who shed His blood for us may I find in you a kind and ready help and sympathy”.

In the early part of the following year there appeared in England another apostolic legate, Jarenton, abbot of St. Benignus at Dijon, the one who succeeded in escaping from the castle of St. Angelo, and in bringing Robert Guiscard to the rescue of Gregory VII.

Hostilities were on the point of breaking out between Robert of Normandy and his brother Rufus. To avert this catastrophe, the Pope sent Jarenton to England. Taking advantage, as it would seem, of his opportunity rather than commissioned for that purpose by the Pope, as Hugh asserts, he upbraided Rufus for keeping bishoprics and abbacies vacant, and meanwhile confiscating their revenues, and for his encouragement of simony and clerical incontinence. He next proceeded to denounce certain concessions which, according to Hugh, had been granted Rufus by Cardinal Walter, against whose integrity our chronicler makes insinuations rather than specific charges. The episcopal legate is asserted to have agreed that no legate from Rome to whom Rufus objected should enter England, and to have insisted that in the oath of fidelity which Anselm had to take to the Pope there should be inserted the words, “saving the fidelity he owed to his lord the king”. With the archbishop’s principles before him, we may be sure that Walter would never have ventured to suggest the insertion of any such clause. Anselm would certainly never have repeated it.

Before the monk’s bold, incisive denunciations of his shortcomings Rufus quailed, and promised amendment; the Church in the country took heart, and “the liberty of the authority of Rome” once again received fresh life. Whether the king suspected or not that Jarenton was exceeding his powers in treating of other matters besides the impending war between his brother and himself, he sent, Hugh says, to the Pope, and for “ten marks of pure gold” procured the services of a nephew of his. This man, only a laic, gave out that the Pope had granted a postponement till Christmas of the discussion of the questions in dispute between Jarenton and the king on condition that part at least of the Peter’s Pence due was paid him. To cover his ruse, as one may well suppose, Rufus pretended to be very indignant that Urban had suspended Jarenton’s mission in such a summary way, and by such an unworthy agent. “In both public and private”, says Hugh, “he railed against the Pope for treating a man so distinguished, and commissioned, too, by himself, in such a dishonourable manner as to suspend his legatine functions through the agency of a layman, neither furnished with proper credentials, nor commendable by his dignity or learning”.

It is satisfactory to learn that, however unsuccessful were his efforts to reclaim the Red King, the abbot was at any rate fortunate enough to prevent war between the two brothers. For a large sum Robert pledged Normandy to Rufus, and set out for Palestine as one of the most distinguished leaders of the first Crusade.

Between men with such different ideals as Rufus and Anselm, and occupying such correlated and responsible positions, there could be no lasting peace. Again the archbishop fell under the king’s displeasure, and again, when he asked permission to go to Rome, the bishops sided with the king. Nor did they make any secret of the interested motives that caused them to cleave to him. “Go then you to your lord”, broke out the saint, “and I will hold to my God”. After he had repeated his request several times over, he was simply told by the king that he must swear not to appeal to the Pope any more. “That”, replied the archbishop, “is a demand which, as a Christian, you ought not to make. To take such an oath is to forswear Blessed Peter; and to forswear Blessed Peter is to forswear Christ, who made him the Prince of his Church”.

Wearied out at length with the archbishop’s importunities, Rufus, like the unjust judge in the Gospel, bade him begone and be out of the country in ten days. Only too glad to obey, Anselm blessed the king, and left the country in November. Spending Christmas with the great abbot Hugh at Cluny, he reached Rome in the spring (1098), as the Pope had expressed a wish that he should make no delay.

Arrived in Rome, he was most honourably received by the Pope, who lodged him beside himself in the Lateran Palace, and declared him, as it were, his “compeer, and the patriarch of another world”. When he had heard Anselm’s story, he promised to help him, and at once wrote to Rufus, bidding him leave intact the property of the archbishop, and reinvest him with what had been taken away.

Although the English king tried both by letters and by gold to injure Anselm in the eyes of the Pope, his efforts were all in vain. Wherever went Urban, to Capua, to Aversa, to Bari, went Anselm. The opportunities of intercourse with the Pope which this intimacy gave to our archbishop, he used to endeavour to induce him to relieve him of his episcopal burden. To this request, however, Urban would pay no heed, but, again promising him his assistance, bade him present himself at the council of Bari.

We have already seen how Anselm distinguished himself at that council against the Greeks. After the question of the Procession of the Holy Ghost had been argued, the affairs of England came up for discussion. Not only were the public crimes of Rufus discussed, his simony, his treatment of Anselm, but the infamies of his private life were noted. “Of these”, said the Pope, “complaint has been frequently made to the Apostolic See, and on these subjects have I frequently admonished him”. It was only the earnest supplication of Anselm that prevented sentence of excommunication from at once being passed on the wretched king.

After the council was over the archbishop returned with the Pope to Rome. At the close of the year an envoy arrived there from Rufus. Though he had received the letter of the Pope in Anselm’s behalf “with what grace he could”, he would not receive Anselm’s at all. When Urban learnt from the envoy’s own lips that the king did not put forth any other reason for appropriating the whole property of the archbishopric than that Anselm had left England without his leave, he bade him return, and let his master know that, unless he made restitution before the meeting of the council that was to be held in the third week of Easter, he would be therein excommunicated. Before the envoy left Rome, however, he contrived, by presents and promises of the same to various members of the papal court, to get the period of grace prolonged till Michaelmas (1099).

Though the known recklessness of the character of Rufus, and the straits in which Henry and his antipope kept him, may excuse the temporizing policy of Urban, it could not fail to sadden and disappoint Anselm. He asked leave to return to Lyons. This the Pope would not grant, but he made more and more efforts to soothe the archbishop’s wounded feelings. He made him use the Lateran as though it were his own dwelling, and ever treated him as the next to himself. Not only was he thus specially honoured by the Pope, but the English who visited Rome strove to kiss his feet as they did those of the Pope, and even “the vast number” of Henry’s supporters in Rome were afraid to do him outrage.

When the Vatican council which the Pope had summoned for April was held, and investiture and the doing of homage for ecclesiastical preferments had been forbidden, suddenly the assembly was electrified by the poet Ragnerius, bishop of Lucca. “From the world’s most distant boundary”, he thundered forth, “there is one amongst us here ... whose very silence is a thousand tongues, and his humility and patience as grand and as eloquent in God’s esteem as they are meek and gentle in our own. There is one here, I say, whose afflictions have reached the utmost verge of cruelty, whose wrongs the utmost bounds of injustice. Robbed of all he has, there is one here come to invoke the justice and equity of the Apostle’s See in his behalf. It is more than a year since he first came to Rome, and what help has he got? If you do not all know whom I mean, it is Anselm, archbishop of the English land”. Despite the splendid indignation of the bishop, the synod had to rest content with the Pope’s assurance that good counsel should be taken on the matter.

On the conclusion of the council Anselm obtained permission to return to Lyons. Whilst there news reached both Anselm and Rufus that Urban was no more (d. July 29, 1099). “May he who cares for that be hated of God”, was the unfeeling remark of Rufus. “But what sort of man”, he added, “is the new Pope?”. Told that in some respects he resembled Anselm, he coarsely exclaimed : “By God's Face, then he is not of much account. But let him keep himself to himself; for, by this and that, he shall not come his papacy over me. I have won my liberty, and I will do as I like”. Within a year he was lying dead in the New Forest with an arrow through his heart.  

SPAIN

Whilst England, under the profligate and tyrannical hand of the Red King, was moving rapidly on the down grade, the Christian countries of Spain were expanding their frontiers, consolidating their kingdoms, and, especially by the aid of the monks of Cluny, elevating their peoples. Alfonso VI, the energetic ruler of the united kingdoms of Castile and Leon (1074-1109), had in 1085 reconquered from the Moors the important city of Toledo, the old ecclesiastical centre of the country, after it had been lost to Christendom for about 370 years. Thanking God and the king’s exertions for this happy result, Urban proceeded to cooperate with Alfonso in settling the ecclesiastical affairs of his kingdom. To occupy the recovered See of Toledo, there was chosen by the clergy, people, and king, one Bernard, a monk of Cluny (1086). In due course the new bishop went to Rome for his pallium. Not only did Urban willingly bestow that upon him, but he also made him primate of Spain, and exhorted the king to hearken to his words, and the bishops, saving the authority of the Roman Church and the rights of individual metropolitans, to refer all disputed questions to him as to their primate. All the rights which the Church of Toledo had ever possessed were to be restored to it as the country should in the course of time be won back from the Moors.

But, as we have seen already, Alfonso was not always prepared to conform to papal ideas of what was right and wrong in ecclesiastical matters. Diego Pelaez, who had been made bishop of Compostela under Sancho II of Castile in 1070, was imprisoned by Alfonso in 1088, “on account of his deserts”. What those deserts were we are not told; we can only conjecture that they were political, as we are informed that he was so wrapped up in the affairs of the world that his spiritual duties suffered in consequence. That the Church of Compostela might not suffer by being without a bishop, Alfonso caused Diego to appear before a council which Cardinal Richard, abbot of St. Victor at Marseilles, was holding at Fuselli. In fear of the king, and hoping to be released from prison, the poor bishop declared himself unworthy of the episcopacy, and placed his crosier and ring in the hands of the cardinal. Following the king’s nomination, the cardinal consecrated Peter, abbot of Cardena, to succeed the unfortunate Diego, who was sent back to prison (1088).

It was not long before word of this unfeeling treatment of a bishop reached Rome. Urban was very indignant, and in the very letter in which he congratulated Alfonso on his capture of Toledo, he reminded him that the two great powers in the world were the sacerdotal and the royal; but that the former was the more important, seeing that it had to give an account of kings themselves to the King of kings. Alfonso was therefore pressed to restore Diego to his dignity through the archbishop of Toledo, and then with his own envoys to send him to Rome to be canonically tried.

This letter does not seem to have effected much, so that an interdict was laid on the diocese, and another legate, in the person of Cardinal Rainerius (afterwards Pascal II), was dispatched to supersede Richard, and to examine into the affair afresh. At a council held at Leon, Peter, after two years’ rule, was “justly and canonically deposed because he had been promoted to so great a dignity without the consent of our holy mother, the Roman Church” (1091).

A whole year elapsed before an agreement could be  come to about the filling of the see, as the king would not yield with regard to Diego. Rome at length suggested that a new bishop altogether should be chosen. To this Alfonso agreed, and with the consent of the clergy and people, there was consecrated for the vacant see one Dalmatius, a monk of Cluny, whom its abbot had sent to visit the monasteries of north Spain, which depended upon it. Unfortunately, the new bishop only lived long enough to attend the council of Clermont, and there to obtain the privilege of his see from Pope Urban. He died eight days after his return from the council (1095).

Thinking this was his opportunity, Diego Pelaez, who had been liberated from prison, betook himself to Rome, and contended that he had been unjustly deposed. The case dragged on for years. When at length the envoys of Alfonso arrived in Rome, they found that Urban was no more, and that the legate Rainerius whom they had known was Pope Paschal II. Thoroughly understanding the case, he at once decided that Diego was unworthy of the bishopric. This he duly notified to Alfonso and to the bishops of the province of Compostela, bidding them elect a bishop, and send him to him for consecration. Diego Gelmirez, who had in the meantime administered the see, and was destined to be one of its most famous or notorious occupants, was elected its bishop. He was ordained subdeacon by Paschal. Owing, however, to the troubles that the Moors were causing the Church in Spain, the Pope did not insist on his return to Rome to be made bishop, but authorized his consecration in Spain.

The influence in Spain exercised by Pope Urban II was really most remarkable; and it was exercised not only in the spiritual, but in the temporal order as well. Moved “by the love of God”, as he sets forth himself, and urged, as he also specifically states, by the desire of keeping himself independent of such ambitious princes as Alfonso VI, Raymond Berenger II, count of Barcelona (1076-1093), placed the whole of his dominions, and especially the city and district of Tarragona, which he had just reconquered from the Moors, under the suzerainty of the Pope (1091). “I, Berenger, count of Barcelona”, he inscribed, “moved by the love of God, have given to Him, to the Prince of the Apostles, the most blessed Peter, and to his vicar, the apostolicus of the Roman See, all my hereditary possessions ... and I especially give him in God’s name the city of Tarragona, with all that pertains or ought to pertain to it, in such wise that I and all my successors hold everything from the hands and voice of St. Peter and his vicar, the apostolicus of the Roman See, paying (in token thereof) a tax of twenty-five pounds of the purest silver every five years. ... I also wish to have this deed ratified that the aforesaid dominions may never pass to the power of another, but that only I myself and my successors may ever hold them from the hands of the Princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, and of his vicar, the Lord Urban II, and his successors canonically ruling the See of Peter. This offering I make to God ... for the remission of my sins and those of my father Raymond ... by the advice of my bishops and nobles, and by the hand of Rainerius, cardinal of the Roman Church, who is now filling the office of legate in our territories”.

The letter of Pope Urban is extant in which he accepts this donation, transfers Berengarius of Ausona (Vich) to the See of Tarragona, grants him the pallium, and exhorts him by his words and example to win the Moors to the faith.

But Barcelona was not the only kingdom of Spain that was subject to the temporal jurisdiction of Urban. Following the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who, for the same reasons as the counts of Barcelona, had subjected themselves to the suzerainty of the Popes, Peter I (1094­1104) reaffirmed their donation of Aragon to Urban, and their annual tribute of “500 golden aurei”. But at the same time he begged Urban to prevent the bishops of his kingdom from interfering with the monasteries and churches which had been placed under the special jurisdiction of the Popes, “that they might enjoy greater freedom”. He also complained that the bishops were attempting to take from his nobles, when they were fighting against the Moors, the non-parochial churches, with their tithes, which were on their estates and belonged to them. In his reply to this complaint of the king, Urban granted to the king and his nobles the rights of patronage over such churches as they might capture from the Saracens, or over such as they might build themselves, provided that they were properly administered.

Leaving out of our consideration the large extent of the Christian Spain over which Urban was temporal suzerain, we may well assert that he refounded the church in that country. We have seen him name the archbishop of Toledo its primate; he also appointed him his legate in Spain. He subjected certain sees and monasteries to the exclusive jurisdiction of the See of Rome; he altered the sites of episcopal cities, and regulated the boundaries of different dioceses, and founded new bishoprics. He rearranged the boundaries of the dioceses because they had become utterly confused, as he pointed out, “partly by the oppression of the Saracens, and partly by civil war”. By his labours in thus organizing and unifying the Church in Spain, Urban should ever rank as one of the great benefactors of that country. Everything which made for Christian unity was a factor in the great work of the expulsion of the Moors from Spain.

DENMARK

About the close of the year 1096, Urban was visited by one who must have been regarded by him with no little curiosity, his visitor was Eric III of Denmark, surnamed Eiegod, or the Ever-good (1095-1103), the son of Sweyn II Estrithson, one of the correspondents of Gregory VII. When the Pope, a man of no mean stature himself, looked on the Danish king, he saw a man taller by head and shoulders than the great men of the North, a man of such strength that even when seated he could throw a spear further than the most skilled soldier when standing up, and, when in the same position, could overthrow and bind any two men who attacked him. A voice, both powerful and sweet, rendered his eloquence irresistible, and so well educated was he that he needed no interpreter when passing through the different countries on his way to Rome. Had it not been for a very regrettable ancestral weakness for women, he would have been an almost flawless monarch.

On some charge unknown to us, Liemar, the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, the ecclesiastical chief of the whole North, thought fit to excommunicate the king of Denmark. Regarding the sentence as unjust, Eric made his way to the Pope, and appealed against it. After a careful examination of the case, Urban annulled the excommunication, and Eric returned to Denmark to reflect on the hierarchical arrangement that brought him under the jurisdiction of a bishop subject to a power often hostile to himself. He decided to push a request which his predecessors had already made, viz. that Denmark should have a metropolitan of its own.

He accordingly retraced his steps to Rome. In the quaint language of the Icelandic poet: “It shall be told how the king went the long path to Rome to win a share in its glory”. Passing by “the fenced land of refuge” (Venice), he made his way to Bari, where he found Urban in October 1098. The Pope listened favourably to his request, and promised to grant it, but died before he could give effect to his promise.

But Eric had no thought of letting the matter drop.  His envoys reminded the successor of Urban of that Pontiff’s promise. Paschal immediately dispatched to the North a legate, who, after a careful inspection of the cities of Denmark and their bishops, finally decided that Lund should be the new metropolitan see. Though Lund was in Skaane (Sweden), it was subject to Denmark. The legate made choice of Lund, both because it was a fine city and easy of access, “both by land and sea”, and also on account of the excellent character of its bishop, Asterus. He, moreover, subjected Norway and Sweden, with Iceland and Greenland, to the new metropolitan, who received his pallium in the year 1104. “Denmark”, concludes Saxo, “owes no little to the kindness of Rome, which both gave it liberty and gave it dominion over other nations”.

After the close of the council of Bari, Eric accompanied the Pope and “visited the halidoms (relics, etc.) in Rome; he adorned the rich shrines with rings and red gold; he went with weary feet round the realm of the monks (Rome) for his soul’s good ... Our spiritual state is the better by his adventure ... The Pope, Christ’s friend, granted all that he asked of him”.

 

 

PASCHAL II.

A.D. 1099-1118.

 

CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS.

Kings of England. William II (Rufus), 1087-1100. Henry I (Beauclerc), 1100-1135.

Emperors of Germany. Henry IV, 1056-1106. Henry V, 1106-1125.

Kings of France. Philip I, 1060-1108. Louis VI, 1108-1137.

Emperors of the East. Alexius I (Comnenus), 1081-1118.

 

I.

The new pope. His early career and consecration as pope.

 

The successor of Urban II was also a “golden Pope” but of a more malleable variety than his predecessor. Of noble birth and pious, learned and a promoter of learning, and, though poor, free from avarice, he was “an honour to the Church”, and, in many ways, “a beautiful model for posterity”. How much this “father of the widow and the orphan” did for the needy among both the clergy and laity is told us by Pandulf towards the beginning of his biography of Pope Gelasius. In subordinate positions he had proved himself equal to the charges that had been put upon him; and, no doubt, had his lot as Pope fallen on quieter times, he would, as far as mortal can, have fulfilled with credit to himself, and advantage to the Church, the onerous duties that devolve upon its head. But he was no match for such a cunning, strong, and unscrupulous monarch as Henry V. Violence and the clash of steel, which did but put fire into the brave heart of Hildebrand, unnerved the “gentle-natured monk”. Paschal was, however, no coward. He proved it, as we shall see, by both word and deed. But dread of possible disastrous consequences to those around him unmanned him. Fear for the lives of others led him to concede what no thought of danger to himself would ever have wrung from hum. He was a man in whom the kindlier and more winning qualities of our human nature were more conspicuous than those firmer and stronger ones with which, to some extent at least, a ruler must at all times be endowed. He was too prone, it would seem, to lean to the side of mercy and forgiveness. At any rate, that was the opinion of some of his contemporaries. Begging him not to be angry at his speaking to him as a son to his father, Ivo of Chartres wrote to tell him : “There are many good men who, seeing you have pardoned or condoned the faults of many, have either taken refuge in silence or have lost all hope of correcting vice”.

To carry out a programme of universal reform in the midst of tyrannical German emperors, of antipopes, of a largely recalcitrant clergy, and of unruly subjects in Rome, there was need of a succession of Hildebrands. But if Paschal was not a Hildebrand, he could and did follow in his foot­steps, and his reign saw the beginning of that emancipation of the Church from the State which Gregory had striven so hard to effect. That clear-sighted Pontiff had condemned investitures because he perceived that they were the strongest fetters that held the Church in bondage. Paschal saw them given up by Robert II, count of Flanders, and by the king of Hungary; and, what was more important, the compromise on the subject worked out between St. Anselm and Henry I of England, to which he agreed, pointed out the way by which the terrible controversy was to be ended by the concordat of Worms (1122).

Rainerius, the future Paschal II, the son of Crescentius and Alfatia, was born in the village of Blera, situated in the mountainous district of Galeata, in the upper valley of the Ronco, south of Faenza. He was offered to a monastery whilst still a boy. It is generally said that the monastery was Cluny; but according to Ordericus it was the well-known woody Vallombrosa, near Florence. At any rate, so highly was he esteemed by his superiors that he was sent to Rome at the age of twenty on the affairs of his monastery. “His conduct of the business, the gravity of his deportment, the uprightness of his character, and the quickness of his understanding attracted the notice of Gregory VII. He kept the young monk by his side, and in due course made him cardinal-priest of St. Clement”. He had also been made abbot of St. Lawrence outside-the-walls

The same qualities which moved Gregory to make the young monk a cardinal, moved Urban to employ him as a papal legate, and the clergy and people to elect him Pope.

On the death “of the magnanimous Lord Pope Urban of solemn memory”, the electors assembled in the Church of St. Clement, apparently in the old basilica, which had been irrevocably injured by Guiscard, but which seemingly had not yet been replaced by the present church, which was erected by Cardinal Anastasius (d. 1126-1127). The electors are stated by Pandulf to have been “the cardinals and bishops, the deacons and the chief men of the city, the secretaries, and the regionary scribes”. After some discussion of different names, the cardinal of St. Clement, perceiving that the thoughts of the assembly were being turned towards himself, endeavoured to escape and hide himself. Soon discovered, he was brought back and upbraided for his action. “Nay”, said he, “it is better to fly than presumptuously to take up a burden for which one’s shoulders are unequal”. “It is for you”, they replied, “to follow whither the will of God would lead you, and as the people desire you to be Pope, and the clergy have elected you, it is God’s providence which calls you”. In vain did he hold out. He heard the notaries thrice proclaim: “St. Peter has elected Pope Paschal”. Whilst the customary lands were being sung, he was clad with the red cope and a tiara was placed upon his head. Then on horseback he was solemnly escorted with canticles of joy to the Lateran Palace. There he dismounted, and took his seat on the stone chair which was in the portico of the basilica, i.e., on the so-called sedes stercoraria, whilst the choir sang from the Psalms (No. 112): “Raising up the needy from the earth, and luting up the poor out of the dunghill, that he may place him with princes”. Then he was led to the episcopal chair in the apse, where he received the homage of the cardinals. Leaving the basilica by the door which opened into the palace, and which still exists, he ascended to the chapel of St. Sylvester on the first floor of the palace. At the entrance of the chapel were two porphyry seats, called by Pandulf sedes curules, or symae. Brought from some ancient Roman bath, they were of the nature of easy-chairs on which the Pope reclined rather than sat. When Paschal had taken up his position on one of them, a girdle was put upon him, from which depended seven keys and seven seals; when seated in the other chair, a rod was put into his hands.

In these ceremonies, originally simply designed to typify the new Pope’s taking possession of the temporalities of the Roman See, both Pandulf and Cencius see a spiritual symbolism. Thus the former tells us that the keys were given to the Pope that he might be reminded that, in his binding and loosing for the interests of the Church, he should be guided by the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Ghost. And the latter notes that, in taking his seat on the two chairs, he should reflect that he should ever remain between the primacy of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and the preaching of Paul, the doctor of the Gentiles.

Paschal was consecrated in St. Peter’s on the day following that of his election (August 14). The consecrating bishops were Otho (Oddo) of Ostia, who, as the principal consecrator, wore the pallium, Maurice of Porto, and Walter of Albano, assisted by some other bishops. When the ceremony was over, the Pope was solemnly crowned on the steps of St. Peter's before mounting his horse, and returned in state to the Lateran amidst a delighted populace.

One of the first things which the new Pope did was to write to inform Hugh of Cluny of the death “of our Father Urban”, bewailed by the whole Church, and of his own accession. He knew that he could adopt no better method for having himself promptly recognized as the true Pope by the Christian world. Nor was he mistaken. Letters of adhesion soon reached him, and hopes were freely expressed that he would better the good promise he had already given.

II.

TWO ANTIPOPES. LOCAL DIFFICULTIES.

In Rome all went well for the Pope. Won over by his affability, the people seem for once to have united in loyalty to their priestly ruler. They became anxious to drive away the antipope from their neighbourhood; and a timely gift to the Pope of a thousand ounces of gold from Roger I, count of Sicily, enabled the enterprise to be set on foot. Driven from Albano, Guibert betook himself to Civita Castellana, where a sudden death put an end to his ambitious career (c. September 1100). As his followers soon gave out that a miraculous light was seen at his tomb, and that miracles were worked thereat, Paschal put an end to both by causing his body to be dug up and thrown into the Tiber. Ordericus has preserved a few verses on Guibert which may serve as his epitaph. They were the work of Pierleone, destined himself, strange to say, to become the father of an antipope. The poet reminds Guibert that, expelled from both Rome and Ravenna, he has earned an abode for himself in hell by his use of a name without its substance.

The death of Guibert did not, however, unfortunately, bring peace to Paschal and to Rome. The party of the German king was not dead either in Germany or in Italy. By a free use of bribes and threats, Henry had, on his return to Germany, succeeded in once more rehabilitating his party, and in depressing that of the Church. “We have few friends in this country”, wrote Udalric of the monastery of St. Michel-sur-Meuse to Urban II; “for fear of the tyrant has drawn to his communion those who formerly obeyed you. But we know that you have the word of life, and with you we will not shrink either from a laborious life here below, or from a glorious death”. To strengthen himself still more, as he thought, Henry had also caused his younger son of the same name as himself to be crowned king (January 5, 1099).

His party, therefore, did not hesitate, on the death of Guibert (Clement III), to elect another antipope. Some night towards the close of September, a number of them met secretly in St. Peter’s and elected a certain Theodoric, known to the schismatics as bishop of St. Rufina. He is said to have held a council on September 30. It is certain, however, that he did not retain his usurped position very long. Not daring to remain in the city, he left it to make his way to Henry, but was seized “one hundred and five days” after his election. Brought before the Pope, he was condemned and consigned to the monastery of La Cava, and there died in the course of a year or so (1 102).

No sooner was he dead than Henry encouraged his partisans to elect yet another antipope. Again was there another mock election in St. Peter’s. But no sooner did word of what was there being done spread abroad than the whole city was in an uproar, and the crowd rushed to the basilica. In great alarm the assembly hastily broke up; but while Albert, the newly elected antipope, who is called bishop of Sabina, contrived to make his escape to the basilica of St. Marcellus, many of his party were seized and very roughly handled. A sum of money quickly bought Albert from his patron. He was stripped of the pallium he had just assumed, put on a horse behind its rider, and taken before the Pope at the Lateran. After a short incarceration in a tower, he too was sent to a monastery, and ended his days as a monk in St. Lawrence’s at Aversa. As we shall see presently, yet another antipope was to disturb the peace of Paschal.

Throughout the whole of his pontificate Paschal was driven to engage in petty warfare either with the antipopes, or the Roman lay partisans of the German kings, or with nobles who, pretending a zeal for the interests of a distant suzerain, wished to do as they listed. Pandulf, indeed, speaks in glowing terms of a peace of nine years which, “though posterity will scarcely believe in it”, he himself saw and felt—a peace for which the trembling peasant longed, and which the audacious robber dreaded. He supposes this period of blessedness to have begun after the departure of Henry V from Rome (1111), and after his restoration to the Pope of all the territories of Blessed Peter. But, as this narrative will show, Pandulf must have been contented with a very comparative kind of peace. It is true that for about the last seven years of Paschal’s life, viz., from the deposition of Maginulf (1111), he was freed from the rivalry of an antipope. We must therefore suppose that this is the vaunted golden age of Pandulf. But it is certainly true that any one period of Paschal’s troubled pontificate was as little peaceful as any other.

Despite the great natural strength which the deep gorge of the Treja gives to Civita Castellana, where the antipope Guibert had died, it was soon in the hands of the Pope (1100). The important town of Benevento, which thought to find its independence midst the troubles of the Papacy, was laid under an interdict at a synod held by the Pope at Melfi (October 1100), and captured by him in the following year with the aid of Duke Roger and his Normans. Paschal made his triumphal entry therein on September 23, 1101.

An imperial partisan who caused the Pope much trouble in the early years of his pontificate was Peter de Colonna. With this turbulent noble the family of the Colonna makes its appearance for the first time in the pages of history. Peter’s family was a branch of that of the counts of Tusculum, and, like other branches of that remarkable family, furnished the chair of Peter with some of its distinguished occupants, and with some of its bitterest opponents. Peter himself was the son of Gregory, count of Tusculum, and brother of Benedict IX. Ptolemy, count of Tusculum, and a grandson of the same Count Gregory, will also be found among the foes of Paschal. Peter took his name from the fortress of Colonna, five miles from Tusculum, which, with the little village around it, still exists under the same name, still towers above the Via Labicana, and, strange to say, is still antipapal. This brigand noble began his operations by attacking Cavae (Cave, some four miles east of Palestrina), which is described as a town “belonging to Blessed Peter (de jure B. Petri)”. But he miscalculated either his own strength or the weakness of the Pope. Paschal sallied forth from Rome, and attacked the rebel, with the result that Peter not only failed to take Cavae, but of his own possessions lost Colonna and Zagarolo.

III.

Paschal, Henry IV (August 7, 1106), and Henry V to the year 1111.

In the midst of the troubles and annoyances just enumerated it was impossible for Paschal to forget their principal author, the German Henry, “the heretics’ chief”, as he called him. With an energy worthy of a better cause, the king, called emperor by his partisans, had once more made himself strong in Germany, and his cause in north Italy had been greatly strengthened by the death of his son Conrad (July 27, 1101). The greatest praise is given to this young prince by Ekkehard, not only because he was “a true Catholic, and most devoted to the Apostolic See”, and more given to piety and study than to arms and pleasures, but because, withal, he was tall, handsome, and brave, merciful and just to all, following in all things the counsels of Matilda and the Pope.

But although weariness of the strife on the one hand, and Henry’s bribes and threats on the other, caused many to go over to his side, the faithful remainder severed themselves yet more strictly than ever from the excommunicated. They were mindful, says the historian, that when Judas fell away from our Lord, the other apostles cleaved yet more strongly to Him. Besides, the princes of the empire on both sides were tired of the long conflict between Church and State, and gave Henry to understand that he must take steps to put an end to it. Never unwilling to prostitute his kingly word, he promised the princes that he would go to Rome, and summon a great council to assemble there about the beginning of February 1102, in order that after the differences between the Pope and himself had been duly discussed, “catholic unity between Church and State might be restored”. But, continues the same well-informed historian, not only did he not fulfil his undertakings, nor offer his submission “to the apostolic dignity”, but he made efforts to have Paschal replaced by another antipope.

Under these circumstances, the Pope determined to take action. He gathered round him, about the middle of March, not only the bishops of Italy, but a number of ultramontane prelates as well. Henry was once more declared excommunicated, and that heresy, too, was condemned “which is now troubling the Church, and which asserts that its anathema is to be treated as of no account”. A few weeks later, when the multitudes had as usual come together in Rome for Holy Week, Paschal proclaimed the excommunication of Henry before them all. Among the thousands who listened to the Pope’s denunciation on that Holy Thursday was Ekkehard, the chronicler we are quoting. “Because Henry has not ceased to rend the robe of Christ, i.e., the Church, by his robberies, his luxuries, his perjuries, and his homicides, he has been excommunicated by Popes Gregory and Urban. We, too, in our late synod, have, by the judgment of the whole Church, condemned him to perpetual anathema. This we would make known to all, especially to those beyond the mountains, that he may refrain from his wickedness”. The synod also renewed the previous prohibitions against investitures. “Clerics had not to do homage to laymen, nor receive ecclesiastical property from their hands”. “For this”, as Paschal explained to St. Anselm, “is the root of simony, when, to gain ecclesiastical honours, foolish men stoop to please seculars”.

Of this action of the Pope, Henry took not the slightest heed. But, to lessen the growing ill-feeling against him, he proclaimed his intention, some months later (Christmas 1102), of taking the cross. By this announcement he instantly acquired immense popularity among all classes, and great preparations were made on all sides to accompany him to the Holy Land. But, as time went on, it became apparent that he had not the least intention of putting his declaration into effect. The nobles who came to his court with a view to preparing for the Crusade did nothing there but waste their time and substance. Everything went from bad to worse. Conspiracy against the deceitful tyrant soon became rife, and the conspirators began to tamper with the loyalty of his crowned son. In December 1104 their plans were complete. The youthful Henry abandoned his father, raised the standard of rebellion, and wrote to the Pope for advice regarding the oath he had taken not to aspire to supreme power without his father’s permission. He gave out that he could not consort with one who had been excommunicated by the Church, and rejected by the nobles of the empire.

Paschal, “hoping”, says the monastic annalist of Hildesheim, “that these events had been brought about by God”, sent the young king the apostolic benediction, and, through his legate, Gebhard of Constance, promised him absolution at the judgment seat of God if he would undertake to be a just king, and would make good the injuries his father had done to the Church. On the required pledges being given, Gebhard imparted to the young king the Pope’s absolution.

It would have been much better for Pope Paschal if he had not had anything to do with Henry V. It is true that by the laws or customs of the empire Henry IV, as having been under excommunication for more than a year, was not legally emperor; it is true that under his misrule  both the Church and State were going to ruin; and it is further true that his personal crimes were such that, had it not been, says the annalist, that God spared him in order that he might do penance, the earth would have swallowed him up alive. All these things are true, and in time of war men are not very particular with what kind of arms they slay their adversaries. But some weapons are, if possible, best left alone. They cut the hands that use them. Rebellious sons are weapons of this kind, as Paschal was to learn to his cost. If Henry IV had scourged the Papacy with whips, Henry V, a greater dissembler, and in many ways, if possible, a man of inferior moral fibre to his father, scourged it with scorpions.

Meanwhile, however, he was respectful to the Pope and dutiful to the lawfully elected bishops of the empire. He persisted in declining to have anything to do with his father till he was absolved from his excommunication, “reconciled all Saxony to the communion of the Roman Church”, and at the council of Nordhausen (May 1105), he supported its reforming decrees, and declared with tears that he had no wish to reign, and that, if his father would only offer due subjection to St. Peter and his successors, he was ready either to cease to be king altogether or to reign under him.

Henry, though at first overcome with grief by the rebellion of his younger son, as he had been for a time by that of his elder, soon recovered himself, and began with fire and sword to ravage the lands of his son’s adherents. Meanwhile, giving out that he would obey the Pope, he wrote to him whose rights he had outraged by his encouragement of the antipopes, telling him that his son, following the advice of wicked men, had rebelled against him, and that, because he had heard that the Pope was a lover of peace, and desirous above all things of the unity of the Church, he was sending him an envoy to arrange an understanding between them. He wished for a peace which would preserve his own dignity and the honour of the Pope.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any record as to how these overtures were received by Rome. Not too favourably we may no doubt conclude from the fact that an imperial agent in Italy had, before the close of the year, joined in a plot for the election of another antipope. This imperial supporter of the conspiracy was Werner, duke of Spoleto and margrave of Camerino. He was the son or grandson of the Werner who had commanded the German contingent of St. Leo IX at the battle of Civita, and who had succeeded in making himself master of a large section of what used to be called the Pentapolis. This territory, which then became known as the March of Werner, he had handed on to his children. To the margravate of Ancona which Werner II had received from his father, Henry IV had added the duchy of Spoleto and the margravate of Camerino.

A number of malcontents, nobles outside Rome who, by Henry’s power, had obtained possession of papal property, and naturally feared to be driven out of it, and nobles and clerics within the city who had been disappointed in their expectations of obtaining the Pope’s favour, applied for the armed support of Werner. After this had been promised them, they secured the services of a certain Maginulf. According to the Pope, this man was a stranger in Rome, and reported to be a necromancer, who gave himself out to be a priest, but whose ordination at the time of Paschal’s writing had not been traced. Taking advantage of the Truce of God, when the Pope’s men were not under arms, and of the fact that Paschal himself was at the moment residing “in the portico” of St. Peter’s, the conspirators elected their puppet Pope in S. Maria Rotunda (the Pantheon) on November 18, forcibly introduced him into the Lateran Palace, and hailed him as Sylvester IV. On the following day, when Paschal left the Leonine City and entered Rome proper, the antipope abandoned the city. But from the Annales Romani it would appear that there was previously a good deal of fighting between the Pope’s troops under the prefect Peter, and those of the antipope under Berto, “the chief of the Roman militia”. The struggle began in the neighbourhood of the Lateran, and extended to the Coliseum and the Septizonium. According to the same authority, it would appear that victory attended the arms of the antipope. But the fact that he had to quit the city the day after his pretended election would seem to show that his success was Pyrrhic at best. He first withdrew with Werner to Tivoli, and then to Hosmum (Auximum?). There he remained till Henry V came to Rome, whither he at once went to join him. However, after peace had been made between Paschal and Henry, Maginulf was deposed (c. April 11, 1111), but allowed to end his days

In Germany events were to work out as unsatisfactorily for Henry IV himself as they had done in Italy for his lieutenant Werner. As his troops would not face those of his son on the Regen (August 1105), he had to take refuge in flight to Mainz. Though, as a rule, the great cities on the Rhine had remained faithful to him, he had, on the approach of his son, to abandon that ancient city, and retreat towards Cologne. He then devoted himself to endeavouring to hinder the assembling of the great diet which the new king had summoned to meet at Christmas. However, at an affecting interview which he had with his son at Coblentz (December), when the latter again declared his readiness to obey him if he would repent, he put off the discussion of the points at issue till the meeting of the diet. Meanwhile, as the two kings were moving towards Mainz, the elder continued secretly making efforts to undermine the loyalty of his son’s adherents. This breach of the safe conduct being discovered, he was seized at Bingen (December 22), and confined in the strong castle of Bockelheim to await the assembling of the diet at Christmas. “This”, continues Ekkehard, “caused the foolish report to be spread about that the father had been treacherously seized and imprisoned by his son”.

Whilst, then, on Christmas Day (1105) the father lay imprisoned, unwashed and unshaven, exposed to insults, privations, and threats, and, what he said he felt most, deprived of spiritual consolations and of the Body of Christ, the son was presiding at the greatest gathering of the notables of Germany which had assembled for many years. Besides the legates of the Pope, Richard, cardinal-bishop of Albano, and Gebhard of Constance, there were present more than fifty-two of the princes “of the Teutonic kingdom”, all of them, in fact, except Magnus, the aged duke of Saxony. The sentence of excommunication, so frequently pronounced against the elder Henry, was solemnly confirmed by the papal legates. But later, when, prompted by fear, he proposed to meet the princes, and to resign in his son’s favour, they agreed to grant his petition. They decided, however, that, “as the people were wont to favour his cause rather than that of his son”, the meeting should take place at Ingelheim on the last day of the year.

Accordingly, the older monarch was there brought before the assembled princes. On his knees before them all, he resigned his power into the hands of his son, confessed his guilt, and begged the cardinal to release him from the sentence of excommunication under which he lay. Though he was told that this could only be done by the Pope himself, the unhappy monarch proceeded “with many tears to commend his son to the princes, and to promise that henceforth he would take thought for the good of his soul in accordance with the decrees of the Pope and the Church. In this way did Henry, the fifth of that name, begin to reign, chosen first by his father, and then elected by all the princes of Germany, and confirmed in proper Catholic style by the legates of the Apostolic See”. Before the assembly broke up, it was decided to send a most dignified embassy to the Pope to beg him to come in person, to bring order to the disturbed German Church.

Seemingly in the interval between the closing of this important diet and the young king’s coronation, Paschal wrote to him, congratulating him on his abhorrence of his father’s wickedness, and assuring him that if he would show him that obedience which other sovereigns had shown his predecessors, he would recognize him as “the catholic emperor”, and would not merely go to Germany, but would expose himself to any risk of body in his behalf.

When the imperial insignia, the crown and the sceptre, the lance and the sword, the cross and the globe, had been delivered up by the deposed monarch, his son was solemnly crowned at Mainz. And it is recorded that as its arch­bishop, Ruothard, placed the crown on the young king’s head, he prayed that “what had befallen his father might happen to him if he did not prove a just ruler of his kingdom, and a defender of the churches of God” (February 1, 1106).

After his coronation Henry V seems to have left his  father at Mainz under little or no restraint. At any rate the dethroned king had no difficulty in escaping first to Cologne and then to Liege. There the people had ever been loyal to him, and he had no difficulty in rousing them, and in once more forming a party. Again was the empire disturbed by the din of war. There was fighting on the Meuse; and Cologne, which as usual declared for Henry IV, was besieged by the young king’s troops. The aid of the king of France was invoked by the elder Henry, as was also that of the kings of England, Denmark, and other countries.

At the same time his cunning kept pace with his energy. While, by his orders, the deputies of the great diet of Mainz, on their way to the Pope, were seized, plundered, and imprisoned by a Count Adalbert, he was professing to Hugh of Cluny that he was prepared to follow his decision with regard to his relations with the Apostolic See. “Would”, he wrote, “that I could see your apostolic face, and, bewailing my sins, lay my head on your bosom. Hasten to come to me, for I promise that, saving my honour, I will do whatever you decide ought to be done to effect our reconciliation with the Pope, and to further the peace and unity of the Roman Church”. In another letter to the same holy abbot, he promises that, if he will only come, he will do his best to repair the harm he has caused, and that “if we can bring about the unity of the empire and the Papacy we will go to Jerusalem, and there more earnestly adore Him who for us endured the scourge and the cross, who for our sakes died and was buried”.

Further, when, as the summer came on, the young king had collected an army of twenty thousand men (June), Henry IV, to put off the evil day, tried the effect of an appeal to Rome. He accordingly wrote to the princes of the empire, complaining of the manner in which he had been seized and despoiled, but declaring his readiness to make amends, by their advice and that of Abbot Hugh of Cluny, to his son or to any one whom he had injured. He professed his willingness to give due obedience to the Pope, and to put the Church and State in order. If they will not hear him, he asks them, “by the authority of the Roman Church, to which we commend ourselves and the honour of the empire”, to leave him and his undisturbed. Then, speaking no doubt with true natural insight, for Henry V was a worthy son of Henry IV, he went on to urge that his son was not acting from any zeal for the divine law or for love of the Roman Church, and that, consequently, as no intervention will move him, “we appeal to the Roman Pontiff and to the holy universal Roman See”.

But the princes wrote back to tell him that they had renounced the obedience of “the incorrigible head of the schism”, by which the empire had been torn for forty years, and by which it had been made a desert, forced to apostatize from the Catholic faith, and almost reduced to paganism. They reminded him that he had himself commended to them the king they had elected, and that he was once more agitating the Church, which had begun freely to breathe again. However, under any terms of security he chose to name, he might come to plead his cause before princes and people, so that peace might be at once restored to Church and State.

The only tangible result of this and other proposals which were made to the dethroned monarch was that the bearers of them were maltreated by him. But while both sides were making preparations for a decisive battle, Henry suddenly fell ill and died (August 7, 1106). According to Ekkehard, those who were present at his death-bed said he made a good end, confessing his sins, receiving the Holy Viaticum, and sending messages of peace and goodwill to the Pope and to his son.

Whatever was the death he died, “the news of it brought joy to the hearts of all true Christians everywhere”, and furnished food for reflection to the thoughtful. St. Anselm bade the count of Flanders “look round and consider the fate of princes who attack the Church and trample her underfoot”. And even the dead monarch’s godfather and faithful friend, Hugh of Cluny, writing to move Philip of France to leave the paths of sin, bids him “think and tremble at the fate of the princes, his neighbours, William of England and Henry of Germany. See what evils they have suffered, what dreadful deaths they have died. The first falls stricken by an arrow... The other, you must know, has just died, after having endured cruel agonies, and after having borne the weight of miseries untold”.

After recording the death of him who, out of the fifty-six years of his life, bore the title of king for fifty, and who was known to his partisans “by the appellation of the Emperor Henry IV, but to Catholics, i.e., to all who, in virtue of the law of Christ, offer fidelity and obedience to Blessed Peter and his successors, by the appellations of archrobber (archi-pyrata), heresiarch, apostate, and persecutor rather of souls than bodies”, Ekkehard says a few striking words about his character. No one, he insists, by birth and ability, endurance and courage, and every bodily advantage, would, in our times, have been more fitted to wear the imperial crown, if he had known how not to yield to vice. To these pregnant words of the abbot of Aura we will only add that Henry was the selfish and cruel tyrant that he was because he was utterly given up to gross sensuality, and this vice never begets aught but the cruel and the selfish. Henry IV was like our own Henry VIII, for the vice that fashioned both of them was the same—lust.

Henry IV had requested on his death-bed that his son might be asked to allow him to be buried at Spires by the side of his parents. Meanwhile the loyal people of Liége buried him in their Church of St. Lambert. When, however, the young Henry consulted the princes regarding his father’s burial, they advised that, as he died under sentence of excommunication, his body should be dug up and placed in an unconsecrated building, whilst envoys were dispatched to ask the Pope to remove the excommunication. This advice was followed, and the body, according to the commonly received account, was placed on an island in the Meuse. Were we to believe the author of the Life or panegyric of Henry IV, there was deep and general mourning after his death, and ceaseless prayers were offered at his tomb. Whatever truth there may be in this statement, when his body was placed on the island, no one was found to watch by it but a monk who had returned from the Crusades, and who by day and night sang psalms by its side.

If it is not quite clear where the body of the unhappy king was first taken after its removal from St. Lambert’s, all authors agree that it was transported from one unconsecrated place to another before it was finally allowed to rest by the tombs of the kings of Germany in the cathedral of Spires (August 7, 1111). For it seems certain that for some lane, at any rate, Paschal would not suffer the body to be bur1 id in the cathedral. “If we will not communicate with the saints in life, we cannot in death”.

It may have been observed by any one reading the foregoing narrative of the rebellion of Henry V, that not a single document from the papal chancellary has been quoted in connection with it. The simple reason is that but one or two such documents, and those only indirectly treating of it, have come down to us. This unfortunate circumstance, which to some extent leaves us in the dark with regard to the attitude of the Pope during that eventful but difficult time, is due principally to the loss of Paschal’s register, but partly also to the fact that trouble at home with the antipope Maginulf and rebellious nobles prevented him from paying full attention to the course of events in Germany. This is especially true of the year 1106.

Once or twice, however, we do find Paschal alluding to the rebellion. Exhorting Ruothard of Mainz to renewed efforts against simony (November 11, 1105), he reminds him that “divine providence has provided the opportunity of a new rule”. He asserts that it is his wish to let kings have their rights, provided they will leave full liberty to the spouse of Christ. But what, he asks, have they to do with the episcopal crosier? Let kings have what belongs to them, and bishops what is their due.

But the Corsi drove the affairs of the empire from the Pope’s thoughts. The Etna of the wicked, i.e., of Maginulf and his supporters, was still smoking, although, says the papal biographer, its fire had been put out by the virtues of Paschal. Among other nobles who had supported the third antipope were the Corsi. In consequence of their treason the Pope had levelled their strongholds on the Capitol to the ground. Stephen Corsi, however, the head of the family, contrived to seize St. Paul’s outside-the-walls, and its adjoining fortress, Johannipolis. Thither all the malcontents, ever a large class in Rome, betook themselves. Once more in the unfortunate reign of Paschal did law and order leave the city. “There was no security inside or outside of it”. No wonder that the bishop of Florence, seeing the miseries in Germany and Rome, began to teach that antichrist was born. The robber stronghold was, however, soon stormed by the Pope. Stephen fled, assumed the habit of a monk, and was on that account allowed by the Pope to remain free.

But no sooner did Paschal leave Rome for the north of Italy and France with a view to arranging for the peace of the empire, than Stephen threw off his monk’s cowl. Resuming his sword and soon making himself master of the Upper Maremma, he fortified Montalto (north-west of Corneto, and near the mouth of the sparkling river Fiora), and Pontecele, not far from it, both cities belonging to the Pope. As soon as he returned from France (September 1107), Paschal attacked the rebel and captured Pontecele. But the castle of Montalto, which still towers above its melancholy little town, defied his efforts, and he found it necessary, before he had completely subdued his rebellious vassal, to return to Rome. Thence in the following autumn he set out for Apulia (September 1108). On his departure, he entrusted Bovo, bishop of Labicum, with the care of the churches; Pierleone and Leo Frangipane with the government of the city and its suburbs; and Ptolemy with the control of the patrimony outside the city and of his nephew Galfred, the commander of the forces.

Unfortunately for himself, Paschal was possessed of very little ability to judge of the characters of men, and still less of that firmness which is necessary to keep the lawless in check. Ptolemy proved false to his trust. Instantly there was rioting in the city. Anagni, Praeneste, Tusculum, and the Sabine territories were in revolt; and Peter of Colonna, the abbot of Farfa, the Corsi, and a crowd of others had attached themselves to the count of Tusculum. Want of energy at any rate was not a fault of the Pope. With the aid of the Norman Richard, duke of Gaeta, he made his way to Rome (1109); trusting to kill the rebellion by stabbing it in the heart, he laid siege to the fortified mansions and towers which the rebels possessed on the Capitol and in other parts of the city. Nor was he disappointed in his expectations. When their  fortresses fell into the Pope’s hands, the rebels succumbed, gave hostages, and promised amendment. With this, unfortunately for himself and the cause of order, Paschal was content. At any rate there was present peace, and “it lasted until God’s anger brought into Italy that devastator of the earth, Henry, the son of Henry”.

In the midst of all the civic troubles caused by the Corsi and their adherents, Paschal left Rome several times. On  one occasion (September 1106) he did so with the intention of going to Germany, whither, as we have seen, the great diet of Mainz (January 1106) had called him. “All”, says Donizo, were anxious for him to traverse the world, binding, loosing, and healing”. His first care was to visit the great Countess Matilda, who received him with all honor. Under her protection he held councils first at Florence, and then (October 22) at Guastalla, a town under the control of the countess at the confluence of the Crostolo and the Po. At this latter synod, at which were present many clerics and laymen from different countries, along with the envoys of Henry V, decrees of both mercy and justice were passed. Owing to the very great number of ecclesiastics in Germany who, by their adherence to the cause of their late sovereign, were in a state of schism, it was necessary to deal leniently with them. It was accordingly decreed that such clergy, of whatever rank, as had been ordained during the schism, and were not intruders or guilty of simony or any other crime, but were men of virtue and learning, were to be allowed to remain in the office to which they had thus been raised.

Then, to punish the long-standing rebellious attitude of Ravenna, which had culminated in the schism of the anti- pope Guibert, it was decided that that metropolitan city should, for the future, cease to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Emilia, with its cities of Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, Modena, and Bologna.

Finally, in order to destroy what the Fathers of the council call the causes “of the schisms and heresies which have sprung up in our times, investitures of churches by laymen were absolutely forbidden”.

As to the rest of the work of this important synod, we may say with Ekkehard, “it would take too long to tell how Paschal, that prudent and faithful steward of God’s household, daily most liberally nourished his servants with the bread of God’s word; how he deposed pseudo-bishops, and instituted such as were truly Catholic; how to arch­bishops he granted palliums and to monasteries privileges; how he addressed with honeyed words those shepherds of Christ’s flock who were present, and sent letters of paternal warning to those of them who were absent; and how he again engrafted into the living tree of the Church branches which had been cut off from it, and finally rejected such as seemed to be wholly rotten”.

Among those present at this council were the ambassadors of the new king, Henry V. They had come to ask the Pope “to grant their master the rights of empire” and to promise him true filial obedience. The favourable answer which Paschal returned to their request won the approval of the whole council, and of the Countess Matilda.

Elated by the good which the Pope had accomplished at Guastalla, the faithful in Germany were looking forward with great joy to his coming into their country. They expected that he would keep Christmas at Mainz with the king and all the princes of the empire. But both they and the king waited in vain; and while Henry, who had come as far as Ratisbon to meet the Pope, celebrated Christmas there in presence of the papal envoys, Paschal kept the feast with the monks of Cluny. Ekkehard of Aura lets us know some of the reasons which caused the Pope to alter his plans. He had learnt, after he came to the north of Italy, that the young king had not the slightest intention of giving up the right of investiture, that his character was anything but disciplined, and, likely enough, that his dealings with his late father had not been quite such as he had represented them at Rome. Finally, a tumult, which the anti-papal party had been permitted to raise on the occasion of a visit that he had paid to Verona, filled him full of mistrust of the young king. It would be safer to meet him anywhere than in north Italy. Saying “with a groan that the road to Germany was not yet open to him”, he turned aside into France. What was soon to happen at Chalons-sur-Marne showed that he was wise in thus deciding not “to trust the insolence of the Germans”.

With the general history of the doings of the Pope in France, or with his action on the Church there, it is not our intention to deal at present. We will continue our account of his relations with Henry of Germany. He had betaken himself into France, “in order to take counsel with the kings of France (Philip and Louis), and with the Church of France, on the difficulties and on the new ecclesiastical investiture troubles with which he had been met by the Emperor Henry (V), and on the greater ones with which he was already threatened by him”. The abbot Suger, who gives us this information as to the object of Paschal’s journey to France, sets it down as his opinion that the said Henry was “a man wholly destitute of filial piety, or of the common feelings of humanity”.

When Philip and his son came into the presence of the Pope, “out of love of God they bent the knee before him, as kings are wont to do at the tomb of Peter the Fisher­man”, continues the abbot. Reminding them of what Charlemagne and others of their ancestors had done for the Church, Paschal begged them to help him against its enemies, “and especially against the Emperor Henry (V)”.  This they promised the Pope, and went with him, along with several of the higher clergy, including the abbot Suger, to meet the German envoys at Chalons-sur-Marne.

Paschal had already caught a sufficient glimpse of the character of Henry V to enable him to realize that he stood in need of all the assistance he could obtain. Before Henry’s position was secured, no one could have been more dutiful to the Pope, more respectful to the bishops, or more suave and just towards everybody. The Church in Germany felt that the days of its freedom had returned. Schismatical bishops fled from their sees or were expelled from them, and Catholic bishops were elected to replace them. “The torn tunic of Christ was resewn”. Even Paschal himself at Guastalla had expressed his belief that the Church had again arisen in its native freedom.

But with the security of power had come its insolence. And now Henry’s real character—in which avarice, selfishness, and overbearing tyranny were conspicuous qualities—began to betray itself. Peace meant, with him, nothing less than the absolute submission of the German nobility, the commonalty, and the Papacy. He reasserted the claims which he had condemned his father for making, and began to invest new bishops with the ring and crosier, as his father had done. The manners of such a king were, of course, repeated in his servants, and with true Gallic wit the abbot Suger has painted us a graphic picture of the insolent envoys of a domineering lord.

When the ambassadors of Henry, both bishops and counts, arrived, they came with a numerous escort and with great pomp and circumstance. There was no display of mock modesty about them, but they showed themselves stiff and assertive. One of them, the corpulent Welf II, duke of Bavaria, “quite wonderful in his length and breadth”, was typical of the embassy. He had a sword always carried before him, and, with a voice like thunder, seemed to have been sent more to inspire terror than to propound an argument. The only gentleman among them, and he was largely French in his manner, was the archbishop of Trier. After offering the Pope the emperor’s service, “saving the rights of the empire”, he claimed for his master as an ancient due, not only the right of approving or rejecting all candidates for the episcopacy, but of investing them with ring and crosier for the regalia, and of receiving their homage. For the regalia, concluded the archbishop, i.e., such things as towns, castles, and tolls are dependent upon the imperial authority. Should the Pope acknowledge these rights, the Church and State will work together in peace and harmony for the honour of God. To this came the answer: “The Church, bought by the precious blood of Christ, and made free, may not again become a slave; if she cannot elect a bishop without the emperor’s consent, she is no better than his servant, and the death of Christ is of no avail. If the prelate-elect is invested by the lay power with the crosier and ring which belong to the altar, it is a usurpation of the rights of God; and if the prelate subjects his hands, consecrated by the body and blood of our Lord, to the hands of a layman, blood-stained from his sword, he derogates from his orders and his holy unction”. At this the Germans burst out into a fury; and, had they dared, would have used violence. As it was, they went their way muttering: “Not here, but at Rome, and with the sword, shall this quarrel be ended”.

While they returned to Germany to sharpen that ineffectual weapon, Paschal betook himself to Troyes in order to reaffirm in council the condemnation of investitures. Fresh envoys from Henry followed the Pope thither, but could obtain nothing more than the grant of a delay of a year during which their master could come to Rome to have the question definitely settled in a general council. Meanwhile Paschal seems to have excommunicated some at least of the bishops who had accepted investiture at the king’s hands. Of one such, Richard of Verdun, the chronicler of that see tells us that the story was current that Paschal had said: “Richard of Verdun has given himself up to the king, and we give him up to Satan”. Even Gebhard of Constance, so long the energetic and faithful legate of the Holy See in Germany, was blamed for a certain slackness in the cause of God, and for lending some indirect countenance to the pretensions of Henry.

After he had completed the work of the important  council of Troyes, Paschal moved slowly towards Rome, Italy, followed by the love of the French and the fear and hatred of the Germans, and was received in his own city with as much joy as though he had returned from the dead.

The difficulties which Paschal encountered from rebellious vassals when he came back to Italy, and the manner in which he overcame them, have already been set forth. They had scarcely been disposed of, ere negotiations began which were to terminate in the crisis of his career. The year assigned by the Pope as the period during which Henry was to make good his contentions, or give them up, had much more than passed, when the young king sent another pompous embassy to Rome, to effect an understanding with the Pope and to arrange for his reception of the imperial crown  (1109). When Paschal had been duly informed of Henry’s intention to come for the imperial crown, he promised he would receive him with all paternal solicitude if only “he would show himself to the Holy Roman See a Catholic king, a son and defender of the Church, and a lover of justice”.

Content with this reply, Henry, at a diet at Ratisbon (January 6, 1110), announced his determination to cross the Alps in order to receive the imperial consecration at the hands of the Pope; to weld by peace, justice, and law the broad provinces of Italy into closer union with the German empire; and, in accordance with the wishes of the Pope, to do all he could to promote the interests of the Church. Fired by love of the Church of God and of their country, the assembled princes received the announcement with enthusiasm. He was not thought to be a man, says the abbot-historian we have so often quoted, who was not desirous of taking part in so glorious an expedition.

In the month of August a powerful and well-equipped German army crossed the Alps into Italy. One division marched with the king over the Great St. Bernard; the other made its way through the valley of Trent. And knowing that the Roman Empire of old was governed not only by force of arms but by wisdom, Henry surrounded himself with a number of men learned in the law, among whom was the Scotchman David, the historian of this expedition.

Novara and other places which were not anxious to be welded closely to the empire were forced to submit to Henry’s will. Most of the cities of Lombardy, however, with the notable exception of populous Milan, offered him of their own accord their homage, their men, and their money. Even the great Countess Matilda, although she would appear to have suspected him, did not attempt to oppose his march, though she would not undertake to accompany him against Peter. She was now too old for war, and was ready to believe that Henry meant peace. Besides, her power was not what it had been. Whilst emperors and Popes were at war, the cities of north Italy were quietly creeping on towards independence of all feudal superiors. The communes of Italy were coming into being, and even the great countess found before the close of her life that her authority was waning.

By Christmas Henry had crossed the Apennines and reached Florence. Two days later he was at Arezzo, but had to destroy its citadel before its citizens would receive him (December 27).

Paschal, meanwhile, had been endeavouring to his policy plain, and his position secure. Not content with his previous solemn condemnations of investiture at the councils of Benevento (1108) and of Troyes (1109), he again proscribed it at a council held in the Lateran (March 7). Then, in the summertime, he went into Apulia and Calabria to meet Duke Roger I and the other Norman princes, and to exact from them an undertaking to assist him in case of need: and on his return to Rome he required the Roman nobility to make the same promise on oath. These precautions taken, he awaited with what tranquillity he could the arrival of a monarch who was bearing down all opposition with fire and battering-ram.

From Arezzo Henry sent envoys to the Pope, and a letter to the consuls, senate, and people of Rome, both great and small, assuring them that his mission was peace, and that his end in coming to them was to arrive at a just understanding between the Church and them on the one hand, and himself on the other. Henry’s real object in coming to Rome was twofold. It was to obtain the imperial crown and to force the Pope definitely to concede to him the right of investiture. How these two ends were to be obtained was matterless to Henry; for the faithless son of Henry IV was prepared to employ fraud or force; in a word, any means, either fair or foul.

 

IV.

The year 1111

The negotiations begun between Henry and the Pope, when the king was at Arezzo, were continued as he advanced by Acquapendente to Sutri. The chief intermediary on his part was, as in France, the chancellor Albert, the archbishop-elect of Mainz; while Pierleone, the grandfather of the antipope Anacletus II, was Paschal’s principal envoy. The final arrangements were made in the portico of St. Peter’s. Finding that Henry was not disposed to yield the right of investiture, which he maintained had been exercised by his ancestors for more than three hundred years, and had been recognized by sixty-three Popes, Paschal proposed, or accepted the proposal, that the Church should be content with its tithes, and with the offerings which persons in their private capacity had made or should make to it, of what was absolutely theirs to give, and that the king should take back from it the regalia, i.e., the property, rights, and privileges, such as cities, duchies, manors, castles, tolls, markets, the right of coining money, etc., which churchmen held from the king as their suzerain. Paschal also agreed to bestow the imperial crown on Henry, who, on his side, was to give up the right of investiture.

Henry, indeed, accused the Pope and his plenipotentiaries of bad faith in these negotiations. He asserted that they knew that the proposal of the Pope that the bishops of the empire should give up the regalia could not be put into effect. But while the subsequent conduct of Paschal makes it plain that he was honourably, even if quixotically, in earnest, Henry, on the other hand, knew that the German prelates, strong in their rights, would never yield them. He knew that so much secular power had been granted them, partly because it was felt that they would make a better use of it than the lay nobility, and partly, in later times, to act as a counterpoise to the authority of the great feudatories of the empire. He knew further that, even if the Pope were able in the end to enforce his will, the secular princes of the empire would never allow their ecclesiastical compeers to give up their temporal authority into his hands. Such an accession of power as he would thereby have received would have made him absolute, and that the lay princes would never tolerate. Hence we find it generally asserted by both native and foreign contemporary annalists that it was Henry who was guilty of double dealing in his relations with Paschal in this eventful year 1111.

Whatever attempts at over-reaching were being made, the concordat was duly signed both by the Pope and the king between February the 5th and 12th. Hostages were given on both sides, and Henry advanced towards Rome, after having sworn that he would not make any attempts on the Pope’s life or liberty, and that he would leave intact the patrimonies and possessions of Blessed Peter. On Saturday, February 11, the king’s army, still very formidable despite its great losses in crossing the Apennines, encamped on Monte Mario, the hill of joy or woe.

Here Henry received two embassies. One came from the people of Rome, requiring him on oath to guarantee the honour and freedom of the city; but the Caesar, craftily desiring to outwit them, took an oath in German to do his own will. This was, however, understood by some of the envoys, who returned to the city declaring that foul play was intended.

The other embassy came from the Pope. After hostages had been given and received by them, Henry again swore to respect the life and liberty and the rights and patrimonies of the Pope, and to give up the right of investiture, leaving undisturbed the private property of the churches.

On the following day the people of Rome, divided according to their regions, and, grouped under their crosses and distinctive gonfalons, displaying eagles, lions, wolves, and dragons, went forth to meet the German king. Many of them, clad in white, bore wands or tapers in their hands, while the great mass bore flowers and branches of trees.

As the king of the Romans approached the city, he had, according to custom, twice to swear to preserve the rights of the Roman people. The first time the oath had to be taken was at the little bridge where the stream was crossed which comes down from the Valle dell' Inferno, dividing the Vatican from Monte Mario; the second time was at the Porta S. Peregrini, the gate in the wall of Pope Leo IV. at the point where it cut the via di Porta Angelica.

Before and at the gate of St. Angelo, by which Henry entered the Leonine City, he was welcomed with song by the Jews and by the Greeks. Inside the gate he was met by the inferior clergy in their chasubles, or dalmatics, and birrettas, and, dismounting from his horse, was escorted to the steps of St. Peter’s by them and the nobles to the acclamation: “St. Peter has chosen Henry as king”. At the top of the steps he was received by the Pope, who was surrounded by a number of bishops, by the cardinals, and by the schola cantorum. After Henry had first kissed the Pope’s feet, the two rulers thrice kissed each other on the face, and embraced each other. Then hand in hand they approached the Silver Gate. In front of it the king swore to be loyal to the Pope, and to defend the Holy Roman Church. Then, after he had been designated as emperor by the Pope, and again kissed by him, the first prayer was said over him by the bishop of Labicum or Tusculum.

They were now to enter the basilica. Henry, however, would not do so before it and all the fortifications by Peter’s, which it was protected were handed over to his soldiers. He then gave hostages, entered the sacred edifice, and, along with the Pope, took his seat on one of the thrones, which had been placed on a large circular disc of red porphyry “ in the centre of the nave, between the altars of St. Simon and St. Jude, and that of St. Philip and St. James”. There were other smaller such discs about this large one, and their site, spoken of as “ad quatuor Rotas” (the four discs), was the traditional spot on which the emperors were crowned.

When the Pope and the king had taken their seats, the former demanded the formal ratification of the concordat by which he was to require the bishops to surrender the regalia, and Henry was to renounce the right of investiture. Instead of at once complying, as he had engaged to do, the king withdrew with his bishops and nobles to the corner of the basilica near the sacristy. It is not at all improbable that the majority of the German notables now heard the details of the convention for the first time. They were both amazed and incensed at the idea of the bishops’ surrendering their temporal power into the hands of the king, and would not listen to the suggestion. The day wore on, and though the Pope sent to urge the adoption of the agreement, they held to their determination not to allow the surrender of the regalia. Then it would appear as if Henry, convinced as he no doubt had been all along that the regalia would not be given up, resolved to force the Pope both to give him the imperial crown and to allow him to retain the right of investiture. At any rate, it was his counselors (familiares regis) that approached the Pope, and contended that the convention could not be carried out with justice. It was to no purpose that Paschal urged biblical and canonical objections to bishops concerning themselves with secular affairs. Henry’s party would not accept the convention.

Hour after hour passed; evening was drawing on, and yet nothing was decided. By way of wearying the Pope into doing his will, extraneous topics were introduced by Henry. Men grew impatient. The German soldiery began to close in round the Roman clergy; and a German noble sprang up and shouted : “What need of more words? Crown the emperor at once”. With this demand some advised the Pope to comply, on the understanding that discussion on the concordat should be resumed in the following week. The Germans would have none of the concordat. Their king must be crowned at once. To this, however, Paschal would not give his consent, and ordered that Mass should bring the day's tedious proceedings to a close.

Henry now resolved on one of the most violent and audacious strokes of the kind recorded in history. Orders were passed to the soldiers to seize the Pope and the cardinals as soon as Mass was over. From all parts of the great basilica the German troops began to press towards the altar. It was almost impossible to proceed with the holy sacrifice. The assistants could scarcely make their way about the altar, or procure the necessary bread and wine.

No sooner was the Mass finished than, roughly and rapidly forcing their way through the crowd which thronged the basilica, the German soldiers proceeded to execute their commission. Paschal was seized at once, compelled to leave his episcopal throne, and placed under a guard by the confession of St. Peter. At the same moment as the Pope, a number of cardinals and lay pontifical officials were also taken prisoners. As soon as the movements of the troops were comprehended, the sacred edifice instantly became a scene of the wildest confusion and uproar. The great rafters rang with the cries of terrified women and children, or with the shouts of indignant and angry men. Some attempted resistance, some flight. Above the din rose the sound of clashing swords and the clanging of steel mail. The religious light of the basilica was rendered still dimmer by the shades of evening and the overturning of lamps. And in the semi-darkness the barbarous soldiers treated the defenseless people as they listed. Many were wounded, if not killed, and still more were robbed. The sacred vessels were stolen, and many of the clergy were stripped of their priestly vestments, of their clothes, and even of their ornamental buskins and shoes.

To the credit of our human nature be it said that there were some few Germans who had the courage to show their king that they disapproved of his treacherous and sacrilegious act. Of these heroic souls one was Norbert, the future saintly founder of the Premonstratensian order. He was in the basilica in the capacity of a royal chaplain. But seeing the great wickedness of his lord the king, he was filled with grief, threw himself at the Pope’s feet, and implored his forgiveness, and abandoned a world where such deeds were possible. Conrad, archbishop of Salzburg, loudly protested against the impious transaction, and offered his neck to the sword of one of Henry’s suite, ready to die for justice. Though the glory of martyrdom was denied him, he proved his willingness “rather to part with his life than participate in such a deed of sacrilege”.

After the shrieking and terrified multitude had escaped from the basilica, and had fled from the Leonine City, Paschal and his fellow-captives were hurried from the church under cover of darkness to one of the hospitals in the neighbourhood of St. Peter’s.

In the confusion two of the cardinals, John, bishop of Tusculum, and Leo, bishop of Ostia, had contrived to escape. They and the others who had witnessed the outrageous scene in St. Peter’s, and had been allowed to go free, soon roused the city. The Romans were filled with grief and fury. Every German who was found in the city proper was instantly massacred.

All night long the people prepared for fight, and with the morning light, unfurling their standards, they forced their way into the Leonine City to effect the release of the Pope. So sudden and fierce was their attack that Henry himself nearly lost his life in the fray (February 13). The fight was carried on all day with varying fortune, but with great loss of life. Both parties being exhausted by the terrible encounter, there was a cessation of hostilities for two days. At the close of the second day’s rest, the Romans, animated by the cardinal of Tusculum, who bade them fight for their lives and for their liberties, for glory and for the defence of the Apostolic See, prepared for a grand attack on the following day. But during the night (February 15-16) Henry evacuated the town, taking with him the Pope and his prisoners, but leaving behind him no little treasure, and not a few of his wounded.

Stripped of his pontifical insignia, perhaps even bound, Paschal was escorted from Rome. Cardinals and nobles followed after him, dragged with ropes through the mud by German horse soldiers. Hurried along the Flaminian Way, he was taken past the foot of Mount Soracte and through the Sabine country, and finally lodged, with six cardinals, in a castle at Trebicum, while the other captives were imprisoned at Corcodilum (Corcolo, Querquetula), to the south-west of Tivoli, and six miles from Zagorolo.

When the cardinal of Tusculum discovered that Paschal had been carried off into the Campagna, “acting in the name of Jesus Christ, bound in the person of the Pope”, he made every effort to raise a force strong enough to compel Henry to set his sovereign free. But, as we have said, Matilda was now too old for fighting, and the Normans were themselves in a critical state. Duke Roger I. of Apulia died a few days after the capture of the Pope (February 22), and his brother, the famous Crusader, Bohemund, prince of Tarentum, followed him to the grave a little later. So that there were three female rulers in south Italy during Paschal’s captivity: Adelaide in Sicily, Alaine in Salerno, and Constance in Tarentum. Already, when Henry began to move towards Rome in the beginning of February, had Paschal himself to no purpose endeavoured to rouse the Normans to show themselves ready to help him.6Undeterred by the Pope’s failure, John made noble efforts to stir up the old allies of the Papacy. But though they realized that the Pope’s interests and their own were identical, they were paralyzed by the deaths of their leaders, and were, moreover, in dread of a rising of the natives. Robert, prince of Capua, however, dispatched a troop of horse towards Rome, But faced at Ferentino by Ptolemy of Tusculum and other nobles of the Campagna, who were standing for the king, they rode back home.

Of rescue, then, there was no hope for Paschal. Week after week passed by, and his hard captivity continued. No Italians were allowed to speak to him, while the Germans by whom he was surrounded told him of nothing but the ravages that their king was inflicting on the people, and were for ever urging him to make peace by surrendering to their master the right of investiture. Their king, too, swore that he would kill or maim all his prisoners if he did not do his will. Overcome by the sufferings of his faithful adherents, and in dread of a revival of the schism of Maginulf, with which he was threatened, Paschal, who had proclaimed his readiness to die rather than give way to the king, at length, “with tears and sighs”, weakly agreed to do for others what at the cost of his life he would not do for himself.

The preliminaries of an arrangement between the Pope and Henry were settled (April 11) at Ponte Mammolo, where the Via Tiburtina (or Valeria) crossed the Anio, which at this time separated the German army from the Romans. Paschal agreed not to trouble Henry on account of the injuries he had received at his hands; to concede him the right of investiture; not to excommunicate him; to crown him as emperor, and, as far as in him lay, to maintain him in his imperial dignity. Henry, on his side, swore to release the Pope and all he had taken prisoners, and to leave Rome in peace; to help Paschal to hold the Papacy; to restore what patrimonies of the Church he had seized; and to give him such obedience “as Catholic emperors are wont to render to Catholic Roman Pontiffs”.

There was still question of the formal signing by the Pope of the investiture concession, “that extorted portion of the agreement”. His seal was in Rome, and, as Henry did not wish this concession to be known there, a messenger was dispatched for it. Meanwhile the German troops moved further along the Tiburtine Road to the ninth mile­stone, where stood the Church of St. Symphorosa and her seven sons. Here, no doubt, it was that Paschal said the Mass “Quasi modo geniti” (April 12), and gave “the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ to Henry with the solemn words: This Body of the Lord, which Holy Church holds, which was born of the Virgin Mary, which was raised on the cross for the redemption of the human race, this do I give thee, my dearest son, for the remission of thy sins, and for the preservation of the peace between me and thee, between the empire and the Papacy; so that our Lord Jesus Christ, whose Body and Blood this is, may be the guardian and confirmer of true peace and concord between me and thee, and between the empire and the Papacy”.

It was evening before the papal seal was brought out from Rome. Meanwhile the terms of the investiture concession had been agreed upon in the German camp, pitched in a place which, from the adjoining Church of St. Symphorosa, was then known as Septem Fratrum, and since as Sette Fratte. The German army then retraced its steps westward, made its way over to the Via Salaria, and crossed the Tiber near the Ponte Salario, i.e., somewhere near the mouth of the Anio, with the object of working round Rome so as to enter the Leonine City. When at evening it had taken up its quarters at Octavum, (which does not appear to be identified, but which must be sought in the Campus Neronis), a notary from Rome drew up the investiture agreement, which, “though unwillingly”, Paschal signed. This document set forth that Henry might have the privilege of investing with ring and crosier the bishops and abbots of the empire who had been elected without compulsion or simony.

On the following day, Henry, “full of joy”, again entered the Leonine City; and again was he received by the Pope and all the clergy at the Silver Gate of the basilica of St. Peter’s. Then, after recitation of the prescribed prayer, he was conducted to the porphyry disc, and there, to quote the imperial account of this affair, “after the second prayer had been said, he was conducted, with the singing of the litanies, to the confession of the apostles Peter and Paul, and there anointed. Then with immense joy was he led by the Lord Pope to the altar of the same apostles, and by the imposition of the crown by the Pope was he consecrated emperor”. After he had been thus crowned, acting against “not only the will of the Pope, but against all custom”, he put the investiture agreement into Paschal’s hands, and there and then received it back from him. He was anxious to make it appear that the Pope had granted it to him of his own free will.

During the coronation all access from Rome to the Leonine City had been prevented. After the ceremony was over, the new emperor returned to his camp in the Neronian fields (ad castra in Campum), while the Pope, once more free, crossed the Tiber into Rome with his cardinals and bishops. He was received by so great a concourse of delighted people that it was not till evening that he reached the island of the Tiber, safe under the protection of the Frangipani.

Henry did not remain much longer in Italy. On May 6 he was at Bianello, where he had an interview with the Countess Matilda, whom he seems to have deceived with regard to his treatment of Paschal. Leaving her his regent in Liguria (i.e., Lombardy), he crossed the Alps before the end of May, and in August solemnly interred the body of his father in the cathedral of Spires.

But neither the weakness of the Pope, nor the violence of the emperor, was to remain unpunished. Paschal felt the first darts of retribution. Wherever his concession to Henry became known, it forthwith evoked a storm of indignation among all who, since the days of Gregory VII, had toiled and suffered for the reformation of the Church. So strongly did the party of reform feel on the subject, that Paschal was denounced by many as if he were a heretic. Many spoke as though the concession he had granted to the emperor in a matter that concerned ecclesiastical discipline were a declaration of formal heresy.

One of the first to speak out was Bruno of Asti, bishop of Segni, and for some time abbot of Monte Cassino, the friend of Hildebrand, and the biographer of St. Leo IX. In conjunction with a number of cardinals and of bishops of different countries, he called upon the Pope to annul the privilege he had granted to Henry, and to excommunicate him. After assuring the Pope of his love for him, he continued : “But I cannot approve of that treaty made with such violence and treachery, and opposed to all piety and religion; nor, as I learn from many, do you yourself. Who, indeed, can approve of a treaty which violates the faith, destroys the Church’s freedom, and deprives her of her priesthood by shutting the only door, viz., that of the Church, by which it can be entered?”

John, the cardinal-bishop of Tusculum, who had made such heroic efforts to rescue the Pope when he was first seized, convoked a number of cardinals and bishops, and called on him in their name to undo at once what he had done so unfortunately. In France, where the full facts of the case would not at first be very well known, the unhappy Pope sank very low in the general estimation. Bishops, abbots, and councils not only declared his concessions null, but loudly proclaimed that he ought to have been ready to suffer death “rather than yield anything to the secular power contrary to justice and to the decrees of the Fathers”. So heated did the French clergy become over this affair that it became necessary for the famous canonist, Ivo of Chartres, to remind them that “it was no business of theirs to pass judgment on the supreme Pontiff”.

Even in Germany itself some of the bishops showed themselves openly hostile to the concordat which Henry had extorted from the Pope. The monks of Hirschau are said to have declared that both Henry and Paschal ought to be deposed and excommunicated. Other monks again, like those of St. Vanne of Verdun, broken-spirited by the thought that “the citadel of the Roman faith had surrendered”, and by the gibes of their enemies that their sufferings for thirty years had come to naught, protested by their silence.

Even the Emperor Alexius wrote to say that he was distressed at the violent captivity of the Pope, and endeavoured to improve the occasion by offering to the Pope either himself or his son as a candidate for the imperial crown in the West (1111). Besides the first suggestion of definite opposition to Henry, the first strong action in this affair also took its origin in the East. Conon, formerly count of Urach, now cardinal-bishop of Palestrina and papal legate in Jerusalem, acting on the advice of his clergy, and inflamed with zeal for the glory of God, declared Henry excommunicated (mi). Subsequently, with the assent of their respective churches, he confirmed his sentence in five councils, in Greece, Hungary, Saxony, Lorraine, and France.

The year 1111, then, which had witnessed Henry’s triumph, did not close without giving abundant evidence of the rise of a flood which would sweep it away completely.

At first Paschal endeavoured to check the rising flood of indignant repudiation of his concordat. He rebuked with severity some of his critics, and even punished others. But when to the well-deserved reproaches of those who were loyal both to him and the Church was added the faithlessness of Henry in fulfilling his side of the concordat, he could not stand his ground. In despair he put off the insignia of his office, and fled to the desert island of Ponza (autumn 1111), famous in the history of the early martyrs of Christianity. But he was not to be allowed to withdraw from the combat. Men knew his goodness, and they feared a schism. The voice of the Church recalled him to his post (October 1111).

V.

The continuation of the investiture struggle with Henry V, till Paschal’s death.

That there was nothing for it but that he should revoke his concession was impressed upon Paschal not only by the indignant protests of Richard, cardinal-bishop of Albano; of Guy, archbishop of Vienne, afterwards Calixtus II; and of all those who were regarded as “the columns of the Transalpine” and Cisalpine Churches, but specially by the action of the imperial party in Germany. Henry was not content with simply sending copies of the concordat all over his kingdom, but he suffered his nobles to anticipate the Erastian Protestants of the sixteenth century. They went about proclaiming that Henry was at once king and pontiff, and that it was within his right to make and unmake bishops. Paschal accordingly summoned a council to deal with the affair.

 On March 18, 1112, there met together about one hundred and twenty-six bishops and cardinals, a number of abbots, and a very large number of the inferior clergy and laymen. The Pope explained to the assembled Fathers how he and a number of his clergy had been seized by Henry; how, against his better judgment, but under compulsion, and to free his brethren, he had conceded to Henry the right of investiture, and had promised not to excommunicate him on that count; and how, although Henry had not fulfilled his side of the compact, he could not excommunicate him, but he could and did condemn the privilege he had granted him. Following the lead of the Pope, the assembly, leaving Henry alone, declared the privilege null and void. Throughout all the deliberations of this synod, Paschal’s “demeanour, free from hatred towards the perjured Henry, ... gives him claim to the rare title of a true priest, and we venture to think that his attitude was due to Christian conviction, and not alone to fear”.

Though this action of the council was enough to alarm Henry’s supporters in Italy, and to cause them to beg him to come there at once with an army before opposition to him had become overwhelming, it did not satisfy the party of reform. Not content with the dispatch of Bishop Gerard of Angouleme formally to notify the sentence of the council to Henry, Guy, archbishop of Vienne, Paschal’s legate in France, with the Pope’s permission, and the encouragement of the French king, summoned the bishops of the various provinces of France to meet him at Vienne. The outcome of the deliberations of the council was that Henry was solemnly excommunicated by name for his base seizure of the Pope, and for his extorting the investiture concession from him. Paschal was then earnestly implored to confirm their action; and as “most of the princes and nearly all the people”, say the Fathers of the council, “think with us on this matter, do you enjoin them all to help us if need should arise”. In conclusion, “with due reverence”, but certainly with no little firmness, they assure the Pope of their obedience if he confirms their action and abstains from all further intercourse with “the most cruel tyrant”, but if he does not, then, they conclude: “May God have pity on us, because you will force us to abandon our subjection to you”.

It may be easily imagined that this vigorous action was not without its effect. From Paschal, who ceased not to proclaim that his views of the evil of the practice of investiture had never changed, and that dire necessity alone had wrung from him an approval of it, it compelled a prompt approval of what the council had done (October 1112); and in Germany it caused a gradual alienation from Henry, both of the people and of the nobles. When later we have to chronicle the emperor’s second entry into Italy (1116), we shall then relate how the repetition of the sentence of excommunication against him, and how his constant illegal treatment of the nobility of the empire, gradually undermined his power.

After he had thus expressed his adhesion to the decrees of Vienne, Paschal enjoyed three or four years of comparative peace. But even during that period he was worried with anxiety about Benevento, which, owing to internal dissensions and to the machinations of a party of the Normans who were anxious to obtain possession of it, was kept in a state of unrest both within and without. Paschal, at the request of its people, visited it in the winter of 1112-1113, and, after punishing the malcontents, set over it as constable a skilled soldier, Landulf de Graeca. But even this did not suffice to restore order, and the Pope found it necessary to depose the archbishop of Benevento, in order to support his governor. This he did at a council held at Ceprano (October 1114), where he invested Duke William, the son of Duke Roger I, and grandson of Robert Guiscard, with Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily.

The following year (1115) was distinguished by the death of the great Countess Matilda (July 24). She died as she had lived, full of the liveliest faith and of the most burning love of our Lord. “Kissing the crucifix, she cried : “Thee, my Lord, have I ever worshipped; now, I beg Thee, wash away my sins”. And after she had received Christ’s revered Body, she uttered these her last words: “Thou knowest, my God, that ever during my life my hope has been in Thee; now, when it is o'er, take me, I beseech Thee, and save me”.

Paschal realized at once that Matilda’s death meant a second coming of Henry into Italy; he felt that he would never allow her inheritance to pass quietly to the Roman Church, as she had willed that it should. He must, therefore, make further efforts to put an end to the dissensions which were rendering the Norman power in south Italy ineffective, and quite unable to afford him any solid support against Henry. Proceeding, therefore, immediately into Apulia, he partially succeeded in effecting his object; for in a council at Troia (August 1115), he induced the barons of those parts to promise to observe the Truce of God for three years. But the promises were not kept; and when Henry made his second descent into Italy, the Normans were in no position to help the Pope.

Paschal was not mistaken in his conjecture that the death of Matilda would bring Henry once again over the Alps. Other causes, however, had also been at work to make the emperor desirous of entering Italy. His affairs in Germany had come into such an evil case that he was glad to leave it.

When he had returned to Germany after his imperial coronation (1111), he soon gave evidence that he possessed the same tyrannical instincts as his father. His arbitrary interference with the privileges of the nobility, both ecclesiastical and lay, alienated many of them from him, and his excommunication by the French episcopate began gradually to make itself felt. One of those who, influenced by the latter cause, began to bestir himself against him was his once chief adviser and prime favourite, the chancellor Adalbert, chancellor of the empire and now archbishop-designate of Mainz. Grievances, real or imaginary, drove the Count Palatine Sigfried and the Saxons to arms. The whole empire was soon in a state of unrest. But by the year 1114 the emperor’s arms were everywhere in the ascendant. This, and his marriage with Matilda of England (January 6, 1114), seemed to render his position secure. He could not, however, refrain from dishonourable and arbitrary acts. As a consequence, the peace of the empire was promptly and seriously broken. Even at his marriage “many of the princes attended in sullen fear, and for the most part took themselves off without waiting for his permission. But they did not separate before they had arranged for a rising. This time Henry’s arms were not so successful. The imperial troops suffered several defeats even in the year 1114. To add to his difficulties, the bishops who were still faithful to the idea of reform became more active, and the excommunication which had been pronounced against him in distant Jerusalem and in France, began at length to be published in Germany itself. The energetic Conon is said to have declared Henry excommunicated at a council held in Cologne (April 19, 1115), and a little later in the same year another papal legate, Dietrich (Theodoric), repeated the declaration at Goslar.

Twice failing to induce the princes to treat with him, compelled by the citizens of Mainz to release their arch­bishop, and hearing that his excommunication had again been solemnly proclaimed at Cologne (Christmas 1115), Henry decided to leave Germany, and raise money for a fresh campaign against the rebellious princes by seizing the property of the late Countess Matilda. He entered Italy in March (1116), but this time with only a small army. The majority of the princes had no thought of accompanying him.

On his arrival in Italy, Henry found that it was still more or less true that, owing to the fear his first visit had inspired, Lombardy was even yet devoted to him. He seems to have had no difficulty in possessing himself of the inheritance of Matilda. But what that inheritance was, and on what grounds he claimed it, are questions more easily asked than answered. It seems to be generally supposed that he claimed Matilda’s allodial possessions on the plea of his relationship to her, and her fiefs as her emperor. His relationship to her was, however, very distant, and could not for a moment have been rightfully urged in opposition to her deeds of gift, by which she had made over her estates to the Roman Church. By seizing Matilda’s allodial possessions, then, Henry showed himself a royal robber. And in those days, when fiefs had practically become hereditary, had he any right to take Matilda’s fiefs into his own hands? Ought he not to have allowed the Pope to inherit them, as the other bishops of the empire received the fiefs which had been held of the emperor by their predecessors? Whatever answer be given to these questions, it remains to be stated that it cannot be shown that Henry ever claimed the fiefs of Matilda because he was her suzerain. His relationship to her seems to be the only claim that he put forward to anything and everything that had belonged to her. Unfortunately, it is not clear which parts of north Italy, over so much of which she had ruled, were her allodial possessions, and which were imperial fiefs. There is equal uncertainty as to what she wished to make over to the Church of Rome, and indeed as to what exactly she had control over on any count whatsoever. A contemporary document says she was “Duchess of Tuscany and of Lombardy, of the Marks or Marches of Spoleto and Camerino, and of all the country between the Adriatic, on which are the cities of Ravenna and Venice, to the other sea, on which is the city of Pisa, and to the city of Sutri near Rome”.

Had Paschal succeeded to the dominion of Matilda, as here outlined, then, having personal control over the patrimony of St. Peter from Radicofani to Ceprano, and being at the same time suzerain of south Italy and Sicily, he would have been the ruler of nearly the whole of the Italian peninsula. His sway would have extended from beyond Mantua in the north to the extreme point of Calabria; and the twelfth century would have seen a united Italy under the suzerainty of the Pope—a state of things to which even today many look forward as the best solution of the “Roman question”. But with his mailed hand Henry had grasped the lands of Matilda, so that Paschal did not inherit an acre of them. And it was a long time before any of the Popes received the least practical benefit from the Countess Matilda’s generous donation in their behalf.

About the same time that Henry entered Italy, the Pope held a council at the Lateran, in order to show the emperor by its decrees that he was resolved to stand by the policy of his predecessors. The privilege which had been granted to Henry was condemned at Paschal’s own request, after he had explained that he had in a weak moment given his consent to it in order to bring to an end the cruel treatment which was being inflicted on the Church. When, however, some wished to have the privilege declared heretical, Paschal sprang up and, demanding silence, exclaimed : “This Church has never been guilty of heresy, nay, has ever condemned it. . . . It was for this Church that the Son of God prayed in His Passion when he said : I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not” (St. Luke XXII. 32). But before the Pope himself could take any action, the strenuous opposition of Henry’s ambassadors had to be overcome; for no sooner had the emperor established himself in the north of Italy than he sent ambassadors to Rome “to make an earnest effort to settle the differences which had again begun to disturb the relations between the Papacy and the empire”. The chief of the embassy was Pontius, abbot of Cluny, said to have been a relation of Paschal. Receiving support from John of Gaeta, Pierleone, and the prefect of the city, the abbot strove to prevent matters from going any further; but to no purpose.

Paschal formally condemned both those who gave and those who received investiture, and definitely approved of the strong measures which had been taken by Conon. This being the case, it is impossible to regard Henry’s assertion that, in response to his embassy, Paschal repudiated the action of Conon and Theodoric, as other than false.

The Lateran council had not been broken up many days when an event occurred at Rome which played into Henry’s hands most opportunely. Peter, the city prefect, died at the end of March, and it was the wish of Paschal that he should be succeeded by a son of Pierleone II, the powerful supporter .of the Popes. But before even the dead prefect had been buried, a number of irresponsible persons, without consulting the more important citizens, elected to succeed him his son, a mere boy, also named Peter. To compel Paschal to confirm their election, they burst into the Lateran basilica, where he was consecrating the Holy Oils (Holy Thursday, March 30), and, placing their youthful candidate with rent garments between the altar and the Pope’s episcopal chair, they clamoured for his immediate confirmation. A request so preferred, received the refusal it deserved. But Peter’s supporters were not to be put off. They pushed their candidate’s claims among the people even on Good Friday, when, says the papal biographer, it was the general custom, especially at Rome, for people to go barefoot round “the cemeteries of the martyrs” and other holy places. On Easter Monday, when, in accordance with custom, the Pope rode from the Lateran to hold a station at St. Peter’s, the would-be prefect presented himself before him at the bridge of St. Angelo, and again to no purpose asked for confirmation. Enraged at the refusal, the infuriated youth and his party insulted the Pope’s escort, and even seized some of them. And when, on the completion of the station, Paschal was returning to the Lateran in solemn state, with his crown on his head, as was usual on that day, and, after having passed the Church of St. Mark, was moving along the Clivus Argentarius (Via di Marforio) at the foot of the Capitol, he was again assailed with insolent clamour and even with stones.

Both parties flew to arms, and called for their friends to come from their castles in the Campagna to help them. Fighting took place in every part of the city, and many were the fortified houses with their towers which were levelled with the ground. Delighted to hear of the turmoil, the emperor took care to help it on by sending large sums of money to the party which was opposed to the Pope. Finding that his position in the Lateran was unsafe, Paschal took refuge in the Septizonium, which in the days of Gregory VII had already been converted into a fortress. Thence he fled to Albano (April 8), and, after a brief return to St. Angelo and the Trastevere, he continued his flight, first to Sezza, the ancient Setia, on the east of the Pontine Marches, and then back again to the Trastevere. On his first return to the Trastevere he had endeavoured to secure the loyalty of some of the nobles by presents. He even invested Ptolemy of Tusculum with the town of Aricia. But many of these men were devoid of either honour or conscience; and a victory of the papal troops outside Rome was enough to cause Ptolemy to forget all that had been done for him, and to turn with successful treachery on his benefactor.

The perjury and victory of Ptolemy was the signal for a wholesale defection from the Pope, both in the city and in the Campagna. Sermoneta, Ninfa, and Tiberia and the whole Maritima fell away from him; and in Rome a furious but fruitless attack was made on the Theatre of Marcellus and the towers about it, which formed the powerful fortress of his ally, Pierleone II. The return of Paschal to Rome with a body of troops put an end to the assault, and restored peace to the city (August 1116).

Utterly discomfited, “the prefect and the consuls” sent to beg Henry to march on Rome. Readily accepting the invitation, the emperor moved southwards as soon as the winter (1116-1117) was over. Fighting began the moment he entered Latium. The lands of the Pope’s friends were ravaged and their castles stormed. Paving the way with gold beforehand, Henry entered the city along with the queen in triumph (c. March 1117).

Naturally wishful to wear his crown in Rome, Henry was faced by the difficulty that there was no one left in the city solemnly to place it on his head. Paschal had fled on his approach. He therefore tried to induce some of the cardinals who had remained behind, under the shelter of the strong castle of Pierleone II, to perform the desired function. As, however, he refused to give up his claim to invest with the crosier and the ring, they would not treat with him. He prevailed, however, on Maurice Bourdin, archbishop of Braga, and afterwards an antipope, who had come to Rome in order to defend the rights of his see, to perform the coronation ceremony for him. Crossing the Tiber by boat, because, through the castles of St. Angelo and that of the Theatre of Marcellus, Pierleone II had control of the bridges of St. Angelo and of the island, Henry made his way with what state he could to St. Peter’s. There Bourdin, as though not daring to impose the crown upon him in the proper place, before the confession of St. Peter, crowned him in the chapel of St. Gregory (March 25). Then the newly crowned monarch, after investing by the sceptre (per aquilam) the youthful disturber Peter with the prefectship, commenced his return march.

A demonstration against him in some force on the part of the Normans can scarcely be said to have been successful. Still, as Henry could not remain to enforce his authority either in Rome or south of it, the extent of that authority may be easily estimated. His accomplice Bourdin was excommunicated by Paschal at a council in Benevento (April 1117). The towns that had revolted were brought back to a sense of their duty, and in some cases punished severely. Ninfa saw its walls demolished and had to agree not to rebuild them without the Pope’s permission.

But Paschal’s days were numbered. In the autumn (1117) he retired to Anagni, and there nearly died. Recovering, however, a little strength, he not merely dedicated the present cathedral of Praeneste, but accepted the invitation of Peter Colonna and Raynald Senebaldi and others of his party to return to Rome. His first care, on re-entering the city (January 14), was to prepare engines of war to drive the prefect’s party out of the basilica of St. Peter. Death, however, overtook him in a house close to the castle of St. Angelo before he could accomplish his design (January 21, 1118).

When he felt that his hour was come, he called the cardinals around him, and bade them follow him in love of the faith and truth, and detest schism and “the Teutonic enormity”. Then “having confessed his sins, received extreme unction, and done all that becomes a good man to do, singing with those who were singing around him, at midnight, like one who was passing from darkness to the light, the holy old man paid the debt of all flesh”. After the body had been embalmed, “as the Ordo prescribes”, and clad in the sacred vestments, it was carried by the cardinals themselves to the Lateran basilica, as St. Peter’s was in the hands of the prefect, and placed in a mausoleum of the purest marble. His funeral took place on the day after his death.

Despite his unsettled reign, he not only consecrated twenty churches in Rome, and in different parts of Italy and France, but he completely restored the ancient church of the Quattro Coronati on the Celian, which had been destroyed in the fire of Robert Guiscard.

There are still to be seen a number of very small coins  stamped only on one side. Round the coin runs the name “Paschalis”, preceded by a cross, and in its centre is the Roman numeral II. It has been doubted whether they are really coins; but Promis believes the doubt has been set at rest by the discovery of a number of similar pieces showing two keys, the sign of the rule of the Roman Church, and the word “Beneventus”, preceded by a cross, running round them. Both these sets of coins, then, will have been struck at Benevento in the year 1101.

Though the coins which are ascribed to Paschal II are no doubt his, the same cannot be said of the arms set down as his by Ciacconius. They are almost certainly not his; for he would seem to have mistaken the monogram of Paschal I for the arms of Paschal II.

 

VI.

England, France, and Spain.

In treating of the different countries with which Paschal had important relations, we will begin with England, not only because the investiture quarrel which agitated the whole of Paschal’s reign was there first settled by a satisfactory compromise, but also because, as Paschal himself stated, “the kingdom of the English was especially linked to the Apostolic See by love and obedience”.

The confusion caused in England by the sudden death of Rufus (August 2, 1100), and the seizure of the kingdom by Henry, to the exclusion of his elder brother Robert, duke of Normandy, evoked a general wish for the return of Anselm. In response to a joint appeal from king and people, the archbishop left France and landed in England on September 23, 1100. His return was Henry’s salvation. Through his influence the designs of Robert from without, and of discontented nobles within, were brought to naught, and Henry felt safe on his throne.

To win his crown Henry had promised to make free the Holy Church of God, “which in his brother’s time had been sold and put out to farm”; to remove the evil customs and unjust exactions by which the country had been oppressed, and to restore the laws of good King Edward. But Henry was at heart a Norman tyrant, and soon showed his intentions with regard to the Church, both in its Head and members, by requiring Anselm “to do him homage and receive the archbishopric from him”, and by refusing to receive as a papal legate, Guy, archbishop of Vienne, who came to England in the beginning of the year 1101. In the midst of his early difficulties he did not push the matter of Anselm’s receiving investiture from him; on the contrary, he promised to leave ecclesiastical affairs in his hands, and to obey the Pope. He tried at once, however, to obtain Paschal’s consent to his wishes; and continued to do so for some six years, sending him no fewer than five embassies, and striving by every conceivable device either to obtain his end or to ward off the consequences of his disobedience. Though his own troubles and his natural weakness of character prevented the Pope from taking up a strong position at first, he persistently refused to listen to Henry’s request. He reminded him of the saying of our Lord, “I am the Door” (S. John X. 9), and added, “The moment, therefore, that kings establish the claim to be the entrance (to the Church), all such as enter by them must be regarded as thieves and robbers ... (Hence) the Roman and Apostolic Church has in the person of my predecessors made the most lively efforts to put a stop to royal usurpation under the abominable guise of investiture, and, in spite of most grievous persecutions and princely tyranny, has held her ground till this day”. He also exhorted Anselm to strive to reform the Church in England, to bring the king to a sense of his duty to the Pope, and to effect the restoration of Peter’s Pence, as he knew how hampered he was for want of means. Finally, he begged the archbishop to work hard to make peace between Henry and Robert, for the latter, as a Crusader, had appealed to him regarding Henry’s seizure of England. To help Anselm to effect the desired peace he sent him two legates. Other letters soon followed, in which he unfolded to him his mind on the investiture question.

There was certainly ample need of his plainly informing Anselm of his attitude on the investiture question, for the archbishop had reason to fear that he had been frightened out of his position. Henry had written him a very domineering letter. In it he had indeed congratulated Paschal on his accession to the See of the Holy Roman Church, had informed him that he had dispatched the customary Peter’s Pence, and had promised him that obedience which his predecessors had had in England in his father’s time; but he had also stated that, if he was not allowed to retain the usages and customs which had obtained during that period, he would be compelled, however unwillingly, to withdraw himself from obedience to him.

Moreover, some of the king’s bishops, Gerard, archbishop of York, Herbert Losinga of Norwich, and Robert, bishop of Chester, who formed the second embassy which Henry sent to Rome, had not hesitated on their return to declare that the Pope had by word of mouth granted to the king that right of investiture which he denied him in writing (autumn 1102).

Though fresh letters soon arrived from the Pope (c. January 1103), indignantly repudiating the assertions of the bishops, Henry would take no notice of them, but begged Anselm himself to go to Rome, and try to persuade the Pope to let him keep “the usages of his predecessors”. Though well knowing what the result would be, when he found that the wishes of the king were the wishes also of the barons, he set out for Rome (April 1103).

When the aged prelate arrived at his destination, he found there an envoy of the king, William of Warelwast or Veraval. A skilful diplomat was William of Veraval, but he overshot the mark when he closed a clever speech with the words: “I would have you all know that my lord the king of England will rather suffer the loss of his kingdom than lose the investiture of the churches”. “If your king”, promptly rejoined the Pope, “will not give up the investiture of the churches even at the cost of the loss of his kingdom, know that not even for the loss of his life will Paschal ever allow him to retain it with impunity”.

But in the hope that a mild answer would turn away wrath, the Pope sent Henry a very temperate letter. After congratulating him on the birth of his son, he expressed his regret that the king should ask him for what he cannot grant: “Were we to sanction or tolerate the grant of investitures by your Majesty, we should incur a terrible risk, and so would you. It is not that in thus forbidding them we either gain a wider obedience and ampler freedom, or diminish aught of your due power and right; ... for the right is not yours. It is neither imperial nor royal, but Divine”. The only result of Anselm’s mission, as far as he was concerned, was that he was forbidden to return to England. He accordingly took up his abode as before with Archbishop Hugh at Lyons.

Meanwhile Henry seized the revenues of the archbishopric Anselm and entered into procrastinating negotiations with the Pope and Anselm to stave off the consequences of his arbitrary conduct. But there is an end to all things; and Anselm, leaving the question of investiture to be dealt with by the Pope, gave the king to understand that unless he left the property of his see undisturbed, he would excommunicate him (May 1104). Though by restoring the archbishop’s property he saved himself from that danger (July 1105), he found that difficulties were thickening around him. Paschal had excommunicated his chief adviser, Count Robert of Meluan, and those whom he had ventured to invest (March 1105); the clergy and people of England were becoming restive owing to his illegal pecuniary exactions; and his campaigns against his brother, Robert of Normandy, were not successful. There was a general wish for Anselm’s return to his diocese. For this Paschal paved the way by a concession which he made to Henry’s fifth embassy. He authorized the archbishop to absolve those who had incurred censures in the meantime by giving or receiving investitures, and as a temporary indulgence, and on the understanding that investiture was to be withheld, he permitted ecclesiastics to offer homage to the king.

Accordingly, at the urgent request of the king, Anselm set out for England, where he was received by “Good Queen Mold” (Matilda) and the whole country with the greatest joy, about the close of August 1106.

On August 1 of the following year, at a great assembly in London, the controversy on investitures, in which Anselm had taken so noble a part, was brought to a satisfactory close. It was there decreed that in future no ecclesiastic was to be invested by crosier or ring with a bishopric or abbacy, but, on the other hand, it was to be permitted to do homage to the king. The homage was tendered before consecration, and, at least in the time of Henry II, the oath to the king was taken with the saving clause, “as far as my sacred character will permit”.

This concession on the part of Henry did not indeed make the Church in England free; but it was a good step forward in that direction. It was an acknowledgment that the source of spiritual jurisdiction was elsewhere than in the crown. The king could not make bishops as he could make earls. Henry realized that he had had to give up what he would fain have kept. He was not above even making a feint to recover what he had yielded, on the pretence that Paschal had granted the right of investiture to Henry V of Germany. But a prompt denial of this pretext on the Pope’s part saved the English king from perjuring himself.

Despite his age, Anselm devoted himself with the utmost zeal to repair the injuries sustained by the Church during his struggle with the king, and he was well supported by the Pope. Seeing that the larger and better part of the English clergy were the sons of priests, Paschal allowed Anselm, notwithstanding the canons to the contrary, to promote such as were good and learned. And at the saint’s request he authorized the formation of the diocese of Ely out of the large diocese of Lincoln.

Though Anselm died in the midst of his work of reform (April 21,1109), the Pope fortunately did not cease to take an interest in our country. Unmindful of the promises he had made at the beginning of his reign, Henry kept the See of Canterbury vacant, and appropriated its revenues. At length, however, “moved by the admonitions of the Lord Pope” and by the prayers of the monks of Canterbury and others, he permitted an election to take place in his presence at Windsor. The choice of the electors fell on Ralph d'Escures, bishop of Rochester, sometime abbot of Seez (April 22, 1114), and he was solemnly enthroned about three weeks later. Towards the end of the year a number of monks and clerics were sent to Rome with letters from the king and the monks of Christchurch, praying the Pope to confirm their choice, and to grant their envoys the pallium for Ralph, as ill-health prevented him from going for it himself.

Seeing that the new archbishop had been translated from one see to another without his knowledge or consent, Paschal was little disposed to accede to the request made to him. But the envoys managed to secure the patronage of Anselm, abbot of St. Sabas, and nephew of their late archbishop, whom he resembled in his sweetness of face and character. He had lived in England for some considerable time, and “for his gentleness had been loved by the English as one of themselves”. He prevailed upon the Pope to allow him to take the pallium to the archbishop; but at the same time he had to convey papal letters to the king and the monks of Christchurch, in which Paschal complained that, in the realms of Henry, Blessed Peter, and in his person, our Lord had been deprived of the honour which was His due. Papal letters and legates were not received without the consent of the king, and appeals were not carried to Rome. This state of things, urged the Pope, is very different from that which obtained under the old regime, when England was so closely attached to the Apostolic See. To promote a better understanding he is sending to the king one dear to both of them, the abbot Anselm. He also told the king that Peter’s Pence was so carelessly or fraudulently collected that not half of it reached Rome. For this, as for all the other evils, the king is to blame, “because nothing may be done in the kingdom without his consent”. In his letter to the monks, Paschal strongly condemned the translation of the bishop of Rochester without his knowledge, but stated that he condoned the act owing to the good character of the prelate who had been translated.

After he had first made a profession of fidelity and canonical obedience to the Roman Pontiff, Ralph, with bare feet, assumed the pallium, which Anselm had placed in a silver casket on the altar of the cathedral at Canterbury (June 27, 1115).

Some weeks after this the bishops and barons of the nation were summoned to Westminster to discuss the Pope’s views on the relations between the king and himself. A long letter was read from him, in which he denounced Henry’s methods with regard to bishops. When our Lord Jesus Christ, said the Pope, entrusted the Church to its first pastor, St. Peter, with the words, “Feed my sheep, feed my lambs”, He gave into his hands the care of the bishops, signified by the sheep. How then can we feed sheep we have never seen nor heard? Our Lord divided the whole world among his disciples; but he gave over Europe especially to Peter and Paul, and through them and their successors has all Europe been converted. It has been their wont, continued the Pope, to settle the more important ecclesiastical cases by their vicars. But you, without consulting us, decide even episcopal cases; you hinder appeals to the Apostolic See, and hold ecclesiastical councils without our knowledge. If, concluded Paschal, you continue to do these things, we shall devote you to the judgment of God. This outspoken letter, of course, offended the susceptibilities of our Norman king; and the council accordingly decided that he should send an embassy to make his views known to the Pope.

Of the work done by the embassy nothing is known; but in the following year (1116), when Anselm was again on his way to England as papal legate, he was honourably but effectively retained by Henry in Normandy.

This question of the reception of papal legates in England, other than the archbishop of Canterbury, opened between William the Conqueror and Gregory VII, continued during most of the reign of Henry I, between that monarch, on the one hand, and Popes Paschal II, Calixtus II, Honorius II, and Innocent II on the other. By threats, soft words, or gold, Henry often succeeded in preventing the papal legates from landing in England or from executing their commissions. But the Popes continued to oppose their natural rights to the new-fangled tyrannical customs of the Norman sovereigns, and in their turn were occasionally successful in the assertion of their claims.

In connection with the legatine mission of Abbot Anselm of which we have just spoken, it was decided by a council in England and by Henry that Archbishop Ralph, “who was longing to visit the threshold of the apostles”, should go to the Pope to press his claims to be the sole legate of the Holy See in England. Ralph was also anxious to induce Paschal to force Thurstan, the archbishop-elect of York, to acknowledge his primacy. He went on his journey with great pomp, and was everywhere received with the state which he himself assumed. When, however, he reached Rome (1117), he found that, owing to the quarrel between Pope and emperor, the former had betaken himself to Benevento, and that it would be highly dangerous to attempt to go to him. He had, therefore, but to send him letters, and to return content with the Pope’s simple reply that he would not diminish the authentic privileges of the See of Canterbury.

Another long dispute in which also Paschal was engaged owed its continuance in no small degree, it would seem, to the Popes themselves not adopting a definite and final attitude towards it. The dispute in point was that between the archbishops of York and of Canterbury on the question of the dependence of the former see on the latter. Before Lanfranc would consecrate Thomas I of York, he exacted a promise of submission from him; but, saying that there were two metropolitans in England, the northern archbishop would not renew the act of submission to Lanfranc’s successor, Anselm. His successor, Gerard, however, gave the required promise “of subjection and obedience”. On his death, Thomas II (1108-1114) endeavoured to avoid making the objectionable promise, but Paschal stood firmly by Anselm; and his legate, Cardinal Ulric, gave the pallium to Thomas only after he had professed his subjection to Canterbury. On the accession of the famous Thurstan (1114-1140) to the great northern see, the dispute broke out again with violence. King Henry at first sided with the elect of York in his determination not to proffer that profession of obedience which, according to him, was only a recent claim, and not in harmony with the regulations of St. Gregory I and of his successors. But whilst Thurstan was making his contention known in Rome, and getting Paschal to acknowledge its justice, Henry veered round. Doubtless realizing it would be easier for him to control one primate than two, he ordered Thurstan to make the profession of obedience; and on his continued refusal to comply, deprived him of his see. Ralph, however, as we have seen, was unable to induce Paschal to give up his support of his rival. On the contrary, both Canterbury and the king received letters from the Pope requiring that Thurstan should be restored to his see, and that Ralph should consecrate him without exacting the promise of subjection. In virtue of the Pope’s letter Henry restored the elect to his see; but Ralph would not consecrate him, nor would Henry allow the Pope’s mandate which commissioned the suffragans of York to consecrate him to be put into effect. The dispute dragged on; and during it both Pope Paschal II and Gelasius II, who shared in it, died. Calixtus II, however, at last took up the matter vigorously, and, despite both Henry and Ralph, consecrated Thurstan himself (October 20, 1119). “And because”, says our old chronicle, “that Thurstan, against right and against the arch-see of Canterbury, and against the king’s will, had received consecration from the Pope, the king prohibited him from all return to England”. Calixtus accordingly took him about with him, and behaved towards him with the utmost consideration. He treated him as a cardinal, giving him, on the occasions of his solemn coronations, the same number of golden byzants, i.e., the same presbyterium, as he was wont to give to the cardinals.

In the following year, when at Gap, he took stronger steps. He definitely freed York from subjection to Canterbury, and threatened to excommunicate Henry if he should continue to oppose its archbishop (March 11, 1120). But it was not till the beginning of the next year, after Thurstan had been of great service to the king in promoting peace between England and France, and after Calixtus had threatened to lay the country under an interdict, that he was allowed to return to his diocese. If, however, he had helped to make peace between two countries, he did not succeed in making it between two archbishoprics. His struggle for independence with Canterbury went on for the greater part of his life, and almost as fiercely after the death of Ralph (October 20, 1122) as before it.

FRANCE

One of the links between England and France at this time was Thurstan. His cause was warmly supported by Louis the Fat, who bluntly told the Pope that “the case of the archbishop of York would bring to Rome no little honour or dishonour, as the case might be”. The Pope to whom he spoke these words was Calixtus II, but they might well have been addressed to Paschal II, with reference to many cases in France with which that Pontiff was concerned. Paschal’s action in the realm of Philip I (d. 1108), and Louis VI, the Fat, was manifold, but exerted in so pacific a spirit that, if compromise was carried to its furthest limits, the work of reform among the undisciplined clergy of the Church in France was nevertheless substantially advanced. We have already seen that to be more free to further it, he overlooked the fact that in the matter of Philip’s intercourse with Bertrada, his words and his deeds were not at one. The adulterous king was sure of the support of many of his creatures among the bishops. Even when he was under excommunication, the archbishop of Rheims would seem not to have hesitated to crown him. In view, then, of the strong position of the French king, and because he wanted a support in his struggle against the empire, Paschal followed the lead of the great bishop Ivo of Chartres, who induced both him and the king to make mutual concessions. They would appear, for instance, to have come to a tacit understanding on the investiture question on the lines of its settlement in England. But neither by his legates nor by his personal efforts when in France, did he succeed in putting an end to such abuses of the royal power as the keeping of bishoprics vacant that their revenues might enrich the royal coffers, and the arbitrary interference with the freedom of ecclesiastical elections.

Much of what has been said in the preceding paragraph may be illustrated by the case of Stephen Garland. Despite the regulations of the Pope and of his legates, John and Benedict, regarding the validity of episcopal elections, the larger section of the chapter of Beauvais, on the recommendation of Philip and Bertrada, elected as their bishop Stephen Garland, a son of the seneschal of France. Not only was their candidate not in major orders, but he was an illiterate gambler of bad life, who had been publicly expelled from the Church for adultery. Notwithstanding Stephen’s attempts at bribery, his election was annulled at Rome, and the more reputable portion of the chapter, with the advice of the nobles of the diocese and the consent of the people, elected in his stead a learned and virtuous monk, named Galon. But, inflamed by the suggestions of Stephen’s electors, Philip swore that never should Galon be bishop of Beauvais. Thus rejected by the king, the bishop-elect betook himself to Rome. Though Paschal at once acknowledged the legitimacy of his election, he did not institute proceedings against the king of France, but sent Galon on an embassy to Poland (1102). For two years longer the See of Beauvais remained vacant. At this juncture the bishop of Paris died (1104), and the friends of peace brought about the election and translation of Galon to the See of Paris. Consecrated by the Pope himself (April 1105), he entered on his new charge in peace, while a new bishop was chosen for Beauvais.

In all this affair, in the resistance offered to the scandalous election, and in the compromise that closed the strife resulting therefrom, the leading spirit was Ivo of Chartres. For though, as far as in him lay, he would not suffer the great laws of the Church to be trampled upon, he was so conscious of the harm done by disagreement between Church and State, that he spared no pains to put an end to it as soon as possible. “God first of all”, he insisted, “must have in His Church what are His rights”. At the same time he impressed upon Pope Paschal that “when Church and State work together, the world is well governed, and the Church flourishes; but that when they are in disagreement, not only do the weak not grow strong, but the strong become wretchedly infirm”.

These words were addressed to Pope Paschal à propos of the diocese of Noyon. When they were written, Louis VI was king of France. Though, according to Ivo, he was a man of simple nature, devoted to the Church of God, and well disposed towards the Apostolic See, he was above all things bent on extending the prestige and substantial power of the king of France. For it must not be forgotten that at this period he who bore that title was de facto the actual ruler of but a portion of the centre of the country which now bears that name. But, inasmuch as Louis VI firmly established the royal power in the country round Paris, and thus secured to the French monarchs a strong centre, he indirectly laid the foundations of that absolute power over the whole of France possessed by Louis XIV. With all his goodwill to the Church either at large or at home, over which the early kings of the Capetian race had more control than they had over the State, Louis steadfastly opposed anything which would tend to lessen his real power over it.

Part of the diocese of Noyon, in which was situated the city of Tournai, was close to the boundary where met the spheres of influence of the French king and of the emperor, and was more disposed to attach itself to the latter than to the former. On the death of Balderic, bishop of Noyon and Tournai (1113), both Noyon and Tournai put forward candidates of their own, and Paschal, favourable to a division of this large diocese, took steps to provide Tournai with a bishop of its own. But fearful lest the result of this would be that he would thus lose control over part of the diocese of Noyon, Louis stoutly set his face against its subdivision. Ivo in consequence wrote a strong letter to the Pope, begging that an arrangement of four hundred years duration might be allowed to stand, lest, though the kingdom of the Franks had ever been distinguished for its loyalty to the Apostolic See, Louis might cause a schism “in the kingdom of the Gauls” such as exists in the German Empire. He did not, he said, question the right of the Pope to arrange the territorial divisions of the Church, but he must consider the danger of schism, and of impoverishing the diocese of Noyon. The project of the division of the diocese accordingly fell through for the time.

It is quite impossible here to enter into any further detail to elucidate the intercourse between Paschal and the rulers, spiritual and temporal, of France. It must suffice to state the position he occupied in that great country, for it will not then require any great flight of imagination to understand in what directions his relations towards it must have run. To do so we select some words of Luchaire, who has sketched it in a few bold strokes. “The successor of St. Peter had in France his estates, his revenues, his sovereign rights, his government. The influence which he exercised either in person or by his representatives was even much more widespread than that of the king of France, for it effectively reached all parts of the kingdom, even those distant fiefs where the sovereign who ruled at Paris was scarcely known even by name”. And the action of Paschal in France was all the greater because at this period there was considerable religious activity there. The great growth of monasticism all over Europe in the eleventh century was very conspicuous in France. Not to speak again of the monastery of Cluny and its dependencies, to which attention has been so frequently called in these pages, nor yet of that of Citeaux, mention may here be made of the monastic foundations, Fontevrault, etc., of the Breton, Robert of Arbissel, of those of Bernard, abbot of Tiron in Perche, and of those of the Norman monk St. Vital. And, speaking generally, wherever a new monastery was instituted, there also was established a centre of papal action and influence. However, as Monod is at pains to note, Paschal did not unduly favour either monks or monasteries, but, in the disputes which necessarily arose between them and the bishops, he decided, as an impartial judge, now in favour of a bishop, now in favour of a monastery, as justice appeared to require.

SPAIN

It was in the year 1002 that first tolled the death-knell of the Moors in Spain. In that year, during the reign of Moorish Hisham II (976-1012), practically the last of the splendid line of the Caliphs of Cordova, died Almanzor (1002), nominally his commander-in-chief, but really his ruler, and the virtual sovereign of all the Moors in the peninsula. Soon after his death the caliphate came to an end. A number of petty kingdoms sprang up, and throughout the eleventh century there was anarchy in Moorish Spain, while the Christ, an kingdoms of the North, taking advantage of it, were steadily expanding southwards. Alfonso VI, king of Castile and Leon (1074-1109), recovered Toledo (1085), and Urban II helped to consolidate his kingdom by re-establishing the ancient ecclesiastical primacy of Toledo, and by his general policy of church reform in Christian Spain.

In the formation of the great modern kingdoms of Europe, the Church has played a very great part; initially, indeed, the greatest part; for, in the break-up of the empire of Old Rome, or of the dynasties which succeeded to portions of its power, the Church suffered less than any other institution. This was due to its organization, at once simple and complete, the same in every section of the empire, connected with that of every other section, and bound to a common immutable centre, the See of Peter. Hence it furnished in every country a nucleus round which its political unity could crystallize.

Of no country is this more true than of Spain; and what Paschal II did for it helped it at a very critical period of its history. Alarmed at the anarchy which had followed the close of the Ommeyad dynasty of Cordova, and at the advance of the Christian arms, the Moors of Spain turned for help to Africa. There the Berber chief Yusuf, coming from the slopes of the Atlas Mountains, had founded a new empire, that of the Almoravides (religious soldiers). Invited by the Moors of Spain to come to their help, he not only drove back the victorious Spaniards, but subjected the Moors themselves to his iron puritanical rule. And during most of the twelfth century Berber rulers, whether of the Almoravide dynasty or of that of their successors, the Almohades, kept the Christian kingdoms more or less in check.

When, then, Paschal II realized that the Spanish Christians had a new foe to face, he at once forbade either the laity or the clergy of Spain to join the Crusaders who were making for Jerusalem. Nor was he content with this prohibition, nor yet with offering his commiseration to Alfonso VI on his defeats. He encouraged the Christians of other lands to go and fight in Spain, and had the satisfaction of seeing that his exhortations were not thrown away. It was, for instance, due to his encouragement that the people of Pisa fitted out a fleet of three hundred ships and wrested the island of Majorca from the Moors (1114). He sent letters to the bishops and princes of Spain, urging them to combine to put down intestine strife, and to keep peace with one another; and he pronounced all those excommunicated who were engaged in civil war. He confirmed the decree of Urban II, which restored to Toledo its ancient primacy in Spain, and supported Bernard, the occupant of the see, “and our vicar”, in his punishment of Maurice Bourdin, archbishop of Braga, for his oppression of the See of Leon.

There was certainly every need for Paschal to do his best to promote the cause of peace and unity in Spain, for at this very time, when those blessings were most required by the Spanish kingdoms, they, were conspicuous by their absence. On the death of the great king Alfonso VI, his eldest daughter, Urraca, the widow of Raymond, count of Burgundy, succeeded to his throne (1109-1126). Unfortunately, the very step which she took, on the advice of her nobles, in the interests of peace brought about ceaseless war. She married Alfonso I, king of Aragon, surnamed el Batallador, or The Warrior (1109). But the marriage was a most unfortunate one. It was opposed by the Pope, because the married couple were cousins; and it was unhappy in itself. If the husband was cruel and overbearing, the wife was inconstant and unfaithful. Aragon and Castile, Portugal and Leon were all at war; Diego Gomez and Pedro de Lara, the queen’s lovers; Alfonso, the queen’s husband, and Alfonso, the queen's son, were one and all involved in perpetual strife; nor did the dissolution of Urraca’s marriage by the Pope in any way tend to abate the stress of warfare, which was maintained till her unregretted death in 1126.

This internecine struggle not only paralyzed the efforts of the Spaniards against the Moors, but led to a permanent division among themselves. It resulted in the independence of Portugal. At the mouth of the Douro once stood the town of Cale, or Porto Cale (Oporto). Belonging to the Callaeci, it became one of the important towns of the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis. About the middle of the eleventh century, among the districts or counties into which Galicia, then part of the kingdom of Leon, was divided, appears that of Portucalense. This district extended from the Douro as far south as the Vouga, and towards the north embraced part of the modern province of Minho. In 1095 its ruler was Count Henry, who had married an illegitimate daughter of Alfonso VI. Through his exertions and those of his son, Alfonso Henry, the Moors were steadily driven back along the west coast; and, during the troubles of the ill-starred reign of Urraca, he began to dream of independence. The fulfilment of this dream, was helped forward by the Pope. For the greater freedom of the newly re­established Church of Portucale, Paschal exempted its bishop from all metropolitan jurisdiction save that “of the Roman Pontiff or of a legate whom he might send ab ejus latere”. Carefully mapping out the limits of the ecclesia Portugalensis, he ordered restitution to be made to its bishop, Hugh, of any portion of it that had been annexed by another.

With a church independent of any Spanish metropolitan, and with his suzerain of Castile and Leon in perpetual strife, Alfonso Henry, the son of Count Henry, became himself independent (1139). In 1143 he assumed the title of king, and to ensure the permanence of his rule placed his kingdom under the suzerainty of the Holy See. His homage was accepted by Pope Lucius II, who, however, only gave him the title of duke. It was not till the pontificate of Alexander III that the papacy acknowledged the dukes of Portugal as kings, and that Portugal became independent in name as well as in fact.

In the midst of all the fighting, quarrelling, and intriguing princes of northern Spain at this epoch, the person of Diego Gelmirez, another Wolsey in his greatness and in his ambition, stands forth very conspicuously. Principally concerned with glorifying his See of Compostela and making it completely independent, we nevertheless find him in close contact with the great political movements of his time and country. Now he is supporting Urraca, and now fighting against her. At one time we see him making headway against Alfonso I of Aragon, and at another struggling against his people in revolt.

The possession by the Church of Compostela of the body of St. James the Apostle had given a great distinction to its bishop; but Diego was not satisfied with that, but longed to be completely independent of the revived primatial dignity of Toledo (1086), and of the archbishop of Braga, the traditional metropolitan of Galicia. His wishes were to a considerable extent gratified by the Popes. Urban II freed the See of Compostela from all subjection to any metropolitan, and Paschal II gave Diego the pallium. He, moreover, agreed that, in imitation of a Roman custom, only Diego, or one of “the seven cardinal-priests” he had ordained for the purpose, should say Mass at the altar of St. James. Although he granted other privileges to the Church of St. James, he found there was no satisfying Diego, and at length had to decline to grant him any further favors for the time. However, to soothe his feelings, he bade him labor for peace, and told him that when it was established he would consider his requests. In subsequent pages we shall have to relate how the ambitious Diego succeeded in winning from later Popes the rank of archbishop and the dignity of legate of the Apostolic See in the ecclesiastical provinces of Braga and Merida.

VII.

THE CRUSADES AND THE EAST.

IN his zeal for the success of the Crusades, Paschal imitated his illustrious predecessor. A few months after his accession he wrote to the Crusaders in Palestine to congratulate them on their victories over “the oppressors of the Christian people”, and to rejoice that “the Eastern Church, after its long captivity, had to a large extent returned to its ancient liberty”. He encouraged them, in view of the sacrifices they had already made of ease and home and friends, to aim at higher things, that they might win eternal life. He sent them, he said, “from the bosom of the Apostolic See”, Maurice, bishop of Porto, “that they who, through the vicar of Blessed Peter, his predecessor of blessed memory, Pope Urban, had undertaken so formidable a pilgrimage, might ever abound in the consolations of Peter”. He would have them obey his legate whom he had sent to regulate the Church of Jerusalem as they would obey himself.

Then he wrote in all directions, especially to the bishops of France, urging all soldiers, especially those who had already taken the cross, to hasten to assist their brethren in Palestine. Those who did not fulfil their promises to go to the East were to be accounted as infamous, and those who had cowardly abandoned the siege of Antioch were to be regarded as excommunicated.

Although a great number hearkened immediately to the voice of the Pope, the demand for men was so great, on account of the heavy losses the Crusaders had sustained, especially during their journey to Palestine, by hunger, sickness, the incessant attacks of enemies, and the wiles of the “accursed Alexius”, that he found it necessary, a few years later, to make a special effort. Bohemond of Antioch appeared before him and demanded help. Giving him the standard of St. Peter, and attaching to him the famous Bruno of Asti, bishop of Segni, Paschal sent him to France, the home of the Crusades, to stir up fresh zeal in their behalf.

The two envoys addressed the people at a great council at Poitiers (June 1106); and numbers assumed the cross with ardour, and, leaving all they possessed, embraced the pilgrimage to Jerusalem as if they were going to a feast. So many indeed took the cross at their exhortations, that Ordericus speaks of a third Crusade of the people of the West to Jerusalem being then set on foot, and depicts a vast concourse of many thousands advancing through Thrace, threatening to tread underfoot the Byzantine dynasty.  Bohemond had specially inflamed his hearers against Alexius by alleging his cruelty towards the Crusaders, for which, adds William of Malmesbury, he was very noted. The minds of the Westerns were now turned against the rulers of Constantinople, and the fatal seizure of Constantinople (1204), as the result of the fourth Crusade, was facilitated by the selfish and suspicious attitude of Alexius towards the Western soldiers of the first Crusade.

Throughout all his life Paschal had this satisfaction at least, that in response to his letters and to the personal appeals of himself and his legates, men set out year by year from every country to fight the infidel either in Spain or Palestine.

But the act of Paschal which had the most far-reaching influence on the Crusades was his confirmation of the Hospital of St. John at Jerusalem. According to the generally received account, some merchants from Amalfi had been allowed by the Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, el-Mustansir billah (1036-1094), to found a hospital in Jerusalem for poor and sick Latin pilgrims (1048). It would seem, however, that the ancient hospice of Charlemagne had been revived as early as the first quarter of the eleventh century, and that the hospital founded in 1048 was but a supplementary one. Whether this is so or not, a certain Gerard had founded a hospice at Jerusalem, “near the Church of St. John the Baptist”, and was at the head of it in 1113; for in that year Paschal addressed a bull to him in the twofold capacity of its head and founder. In response to Gerard’s request, the Pope took his hospital “under the guardianship (tutela) of the Apostolic See, and the protection of Blessed Peter”, and decreed that everything either in Europe or Asia which became their property was to be preserved to them inviolate; that they should be freed from the payment of tithes; and that after Gerard’s death only the professed brethren (fratres professi) should have the right of putting a successor in his place.

During the life of Gerard (d. 1118), the brethren of the hospital only took the three ordinary monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and confined their attentions to tending the sick. But after his death, his successor, Raymond du Puy (1118-1160), seeing the sufferings to which the pilgrims were even yet exposed on their way to Jerusalem from Saracenic marauders, followed the example just set by Hugh de Payen and his Templars, and added a fourth vow of fighting against the infidel. These two orders, religious and military, were to be the chief stay of the new kingdom of Jerusalem. Its other supporters were a very fleeting quantity, always coming and going; but they were ever on the spot to give it their permanent aid. And, to speak of the Order of the Knights Hospitallers, or of the Knights of Malta, as they were afterwards called, we willingly subscribe to the dictum of one of their English historians: “When we look back on the glorious achievements which through so many centuries have adorned its annals, and mark the long list of names, ennobled by so many heroic deeds, which have been successively enrolled beneath its banners, we must render all praise to the mind that first contemplated the establishment of a brotherhood combining within its obligations such apparently contradictory duties, and yet fulfilling its purposes with so much lasting benefit to Christianity, and imperishable renown to itself”.

One of the many obstacles which prevented the formation of a strong Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was the diverse nationality of its rulers, both spiritual and temporal. This naturally begot such jealousies and factions as rendered unity of action difficult in the highest degree. Another of the effects of this difference of race which concerns us at the moment was the obscuring of truth. Writers of different nationalities have left on record very different notices of the same men and the same events. The unfortunate quarrel we are about to relate between the patriarch Daimbert and King Baldwin I was, we believe, largely based on racial prejudices; and we find quite opposite estimates of the characters of the principal personages in the quarrel in historians of different countries. Albert of Aix would make of Daimbert a slave of avarice and a thief, and would have us believe that he became patriarch of Jerusalem by the weight of his gold rather than of his character. At the same time, he does not hesitate to depict his rival Arnulf, undoubtedly an intriguer, and probably a man of indifferent character, as distinguished for his prudence and eloquence. But then Albert was a German, and his sympathies go with the German Baldwin. On the other hand, of the more impartial authors, Fulcher praises Daimbert, and Raymond of Agiles condemns Arnulf; and with these authorities Albert cannot compare for a moment.

The quarrel between Daimbert and Baldwin began on the death of Godfrey (1100). The Italian patriarch wanted the Italian Bohemond to be the second king of the Holy City. Failing in his efforts to secure the fulfilment of his wishes, he was very naturally regarded with disfavour by the new king, Baldwin I, Godfrey’s brother. The ill-feeling thus felt towards him by his sovereign was stimulated by the intriguer Arnulf, and soon grew to such a pitch that Baldwin appealed to his suzerain, the Pope, against him. He was accused of treason, and of not giving the king moneys that were his due. To investigate the affair, Paschal, whom Albert calls “the inquisitor (examinator) of the Christian faith and religion throughout the world”, dispatched “brother Maurice, one of the twelve cardinals”. If we are to believe the aforesaid author, for William of Tyre says nothing about this embassy of Maurice, the cardinal at first suspended Daimbert from his office. Three hundred byzants, however, induced the king to persuade the legate to remove the suspension.

But when, after his hatred or mistrust of Daimbert had been once more aroused, Baldwin wished the cardinal again to proceed against him, he found, according to the same gossiping historian, that Maurice had been gained over to the patriarch’s cause by good cheer and gold. So hardly, however, did the king press his patriarch for money, that he at length fled to join Bohemond at Antioch (1103).

According to Albert of Aix, on the intercession of Tancred and other princes he returned soon after under a safe-conduct to Jerusalem, and was restored to his position preparatory to standing his trial. Under the presidency of a new legate, the cardinal-priest Robert, a council was held, and the patriarch was duly tried. But, overwhelmed by the evidence brought against him, he held his peace, and was declared deposed and excommunicated. However, from the more reliable evidence of a letter of Paschal, it would seem that he was condemned in his absence.

Whether Daimbert was condemned in his presence or absence, a successor was given to him, with the consent of the cardinal, in the person of Ebremar, who, according to Albert, was a good and distinguished cleric; but who, according to William of Tyre, was a priest, if pious, at any rate very simple. Next year Bohemond and Daimbert set sail for Italy to see the Pope (1104), the one going to seek help, the other justice. Both obtained what they sought, but both died before they could profit much by the success of their quest. Paschal examined Daimbert’s case at the Lateran synod of March 1105, and decided that he was to be restored to his see. But, as Ebremar had seemingly acted in good faith, he was not punished, but declared eligible for a vacant see. For more than a year Paschal kept Daimbert in Rome to see if his accusers would come to make good their charges. None appeared, and in the spring of 1107 the patriarch set sail for Jerusalem, but he died on the voyage (May or June 1107). Meanwhile, when Ebremar had heard of the Pope’s action, he at once set out for Rome to justify his conduct. Thither also went the intriguer Arnulf with what one cannot help but suspect must have been forged documents. Utterly unable to find out the truth between them, Paschal referred the matter to the Church of Jerusalem, and sent out as his legate the aged, learned, and virtuous Gibelinus, archbishop of Arles.

A council which Gibelinus summoned on his arrival at Jerusalem found, on the evidence “of good and sufficient witnesses”, that Daimbert had been expelled from his see “through the factions of Arnulf and the violence of the king”, and decreed that, though Ebremar had to be deposed, he might be given the vacant See of Caesarea. The debate which then ensued as to a successor for Daimbert was at length closed by the unanimous election of the legate Gibelinus. Whereupon Arnulf, so it is said, consoled himself by the reflection that his age would not allow the archbishop to enjoy his new see very long. It may be at once added that Gibelinus did not live very long (d. 1111), and that many will think that virtue was not rewarded when Arnulf, surnamed Malacorona, “the first-born of Satan”, as William of Tyre calls him, became patriarch in his stead (d. 1111).

Paschal’s new fief, the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, brought him, as we have already given evidence enough, no little trouble. Its chief temporal ruler, Baldwin I, though in many ways fitted to be the successor of the immortal Godfrey de Bouillon, was a slave to the soft passion, that most expensive luxury of kings, and abundant source of their perennial insolvency. The patriarch Arnulf, whom the Pope commissioned to rebuke the king for the looseness of his private life, was, it is to be feared, not much better than his royal master. And the very legates whom Paschal sent to adjudicate in his stead on the difficult cases that arose in the new kingdom were, it would seem, not always above suspicion. Still, in connection both with them and the Popes themselves, we would note that the charge of taking bribes which the disappointed candidate or the prejudiced historian so frequently brings against them, is one that is most easily brought, and most readily believed, and yet one that is most difficult to prove. As those who are base enough to offer or to take the bribes are not too likely to blazon their acts abroad, bribery must in very many cases at least always remain a wholly unfounded charge.

Another trouble which Paschal had to face was caused by the policy of Baldwin, and the ambition of the new patriarchs of Jerusalem.

The king was naturally anxious that all the conquests made from the Saracens should as far as possible be under his personal control, both in the spiritual and in the temporal order. He was most desirous that the influence of such subordinate rulers as the princes of Antioch should not increase. Calling to mind (and William of Tyre is honest enough to say that the suggestions of the clergy perhaps helped to bring the fact to his mind) that, before the coming of the Saracens, the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Antioch was much more extensive than that of the patriarch of Jerusalem, he sent to ask the Pope to agree that all the future conquests of the Crusaders should be subject to the See of Jerusalem. To this request Paschal gave his assent on the ground that the old landmarks had been swept away by the infidels, and consequently that it was necessary to establish new ones.

This action of the Pope not unnaturally roused the patriarch of Antioch, and he at once sent envoys to Rome to express his indignation at an attempt to curtail the ancient rights of his see. To pacify Bernard’s wounded feelings, Paschal wrote him various letters, explaining that he had not had any intention of interfering with the just claims of Antioch, but that his distance from the localities in dispute, and the alteration of names which time and the infidels had brought to cities and provinces, had placed him very much in the dark about them. Hence, as far as ever the changes wrought by time and the infidel rendered possible, it was his wish “not to lessen the rights of the churches because of the power of princes, nor on account of ecclesiastical dignities to hamper regal resources”. At the same time, he made known to Baldwin that, in the concession he had granted him, he had had no intention of interfering with the clear and undoubted rights of the Church of Antioch, and he begged him not to suffer such rights to be violated. “We cannot”, he concluded, “oppose the sacred constitutions of our fathers”. But time was soon to show both the secular and ecclesiastical princes that they had better have spent their time in making fast what they had, than in quarrelling over futurities which were never to be theirs.

Passing over the other works of this "wholly admirable Pope, we shall reserve the few facts we have found concerning his intercourse with Norsemen, Slavs, and Hungarians till we recount the relations of Calixtus II with those peoples. This will prevent the scattering of the very insignificant number of such details which has reached us. Enough, we believe, has here been said to make manifest what manner of man was the gentle but energetic Paschal II, and to justify the assertion that, despite an occasional display of tender weakness, he was, both as a man and as a Pope, a worthy representative of the great reforming Pontiffs of his age.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GELASIUS II.

A.D. 1118-1119.

 

 

When Paschal II died, Rome, as we have seen, was anything but tranquil. A portion of it was in the hands of a party hostile to the Popes. The greater portion of the city was, however, in the hands of loyal subjects; and Peter, bishop of Porto, took steps immediately for the election of a new Pontiff. The archdeacon and chancellor, John of Gaeta, who was staying at Monte Cassino at the time, was at once summoned to Rome. On the prescribed third day after the death of Paschal, four out of seven cardinal-bishops, twenty-seven out of twenty-eight cardinal-priests, the eighteen cardinal-deacons, a number of the inferior clergy, and some “of the senators and consuls”, met together in the monastery known as the Palladium, the site of which is now marked by the small Church of St. Sebastian alia Polveriera, or, as it is otherwise called, S. Maria in Pallara (January 24, 1118). This building, which was on the Palatine, not very far from the Arch of Titus, belonged to the Roman Curia, and was regarded as a desirable meeting-place, because it was in the midst of those monuments of antiquity, the Arch of Titus, with its adjoining Turris Chartularia, the Septizonium, and the rest which the Frangipani had converted into fortresses. After some debate, the chancellor John, archdeacon of S. Maria in Cosmedin, was unanimously elected Pope 4 (January 24, 1118).

The place in which the election had been held was near the papal palace of John VII, at the foot of the Palatine, and among the fortresses of a family which had long been faithful to the Holy See. It had therefore been regarded as most safe, but it proved to be one of the worst places in which it could have been held. No sooner was it made public that, despite his unwillingness, John of Gaeta was Pope Gelasius II, than Cencius Frangipane, whether acting in the interests of the Emperor Henry V, or, what is more likely, actuated by some personal vindictive motives, collected a band of his dependants and attacked the monastery. The papal guard was easily overpowered, and the church doors were burst open. Sword in hand, the noble ruffian dashed into the sacred building, seized the aged Pope by the throat, threw him to the ground, assailed him with blows, gashed him with his spurs, dragged him along by the hair, and threw him bound into one of his dungeons. The other prelates who were present were treated in a similar manner. After being robbed and mal­treated in various ways, they were thrown on to horses with their faces towards the animals’ tails.

But the triumphal hour of the Frangipani was short. Under Peter, the prefect of the city, Pierleone, Stephen the Norman, and other nobles, the militia of the twelve regions, of the Trastevere and the Island, rushed to arms, swarmed over the Capitol, and demanded the surrender of the Pope. The Frangipani, brave where there was no danger, were terrified. Throwing themselves at the Pope’s feet, they begged for forgiveness, obtained it, and lived to harry the Church again.

No sooner was the Pope released than he was mounted upon a white horse, and a crown was put upon his head. At the same time the whole city crowned itself with garlands, while the Pope with the customary solemn procession made his way by the Meta Sudans and the Coliseum to the Lateran.

He whose election day was so fearfully memorable belonged to the noble family of the Coniulo of Gaeta, and was born certainly before the year 1058. When a child, he was offered by his parents to Monte Cassino, and was there brought up under the famous abbot Desiderius. Trained under able masters, he imbibed that culture which manifested itself not only in the various Lives of saints which he wrote whilst in the monastery, but in his work in the papal chancellary. In that important department he was placed by Urban II, who brought him from his ever-beloved home in the monastery which overlooks the Garigliano. We have evidence of his work there certainly in 1089, and, according to some, as early as August 23, 1088.

Urban’s object in selecting the learned and eloquent young monk for a position in his chancellary was that he might assist in bringing back to the documents which issued from it some of the dignity of diction that used to distinguish them. From the fifth century, from the days of St. Leo I the Great (440-461), whose letters served as a model for them, the papal bulls were, till about the middle of the seventh century, distinguished by a certain rhythm, known from St. Leo as the cursus leoninus. This rhythmic cursus was produced by an ordered sequence of accented spondees and dactyls, giving respectively the cursus tardus or velox. Four and even more distinct varieties of style of diction were at one time recognizable in the documents which proceeded from the Roman Curia (styli curiales). After the seventh century the literary excellence of the papal epistles steadily deteriorated. But in connection with the century of which Paschal II saw the opening years, it has been said that then “the literature of the papal bulls had its rules, its vocabulary, its grammar, and its masters, who, from the beginning of the twelfth century, drew up their formularies, and took rank with the canonists”. The principal author of this literary development was the chancellor of Urban II and Paschal II, John Comalo. With the last-named Pontiff he had very great influence, for he stood by him in all his troubles, and, as Pandulf says, was the prop of his old age. Among other ways, he used this influence in securing the deserved promotion of different members of the school of young secretaries whom he had trained. John was no doubt also instrumental in finally fixing the minuscule as the alphabetic character in which the papal bulls were for the future to be written. The penmanship of the documents which issued from the papal chancellary varied at different times but the definite employment of the minuscule was settled by the dictum of Urban II, perhaps inspired by John of Gaeta, that there was need not only of drawing up documents, but of drawing them up in such a style that the faithful could read and comprehend them.

Put in charge, as archdeacon, of S. Maria in Cosmedin, he not only enriched and endowed that ancient deaconry with the goods of this world, with gold and estates, but furnished it with relics of the saints, and made it conspicuous for the works of piety there practised

The news of the election as Pope of the industrious and learned arch-chancellor, the fifth monk since Gregory VII, was received with some misgivings by the bolder adherents of the principles of the Gregorian reformation. The fact that he had with some the reputation of being a friend of the emperor, and that he had throughout supported Paschal in all his timid courses, caused it to be feared that he would at least be as irresolute as his late master. When the fearless legate, Conon of Praeneste, was informed that John of Gaeta had been elected, but against his will, he exclaimed: “Did so great a man at such a moment of persecution and danger hesitate to take the burden of the Papacy on his shoulders? ... Although, as God knows, I have never aimed at the Papacy, had I been in Rome I would have readily placed my shoulders beneath the burden, that I might the easier fight the enemy of the Christian faith, who ceases not to attack the Church of Christ. In time of peace, indeed, when often love of power fires ambition, no man, even endowed with ability, should take that office to himself except under compulsion, and no man lacking it should take it even under compulsion”.

The heroic exile, Conrad of Salzburg, on hearing of the election of John of Gaeta, is reported to have said : “Among the cardinals a worse choice could not have been made than that of John, but there may be some virtue in Gelasius”. The arch-chancellor of the Roman Church, Frederick, archbishop of Cologne, wrote about the beginning of March to a number of bishops assembled in synod at Milan, that if a legitimate successor had been given to Paschal, who would in all things follow in his footsteps and in those of the Fathers, he would have the support of the whole Gregorian party in Germany; “but if he show by his actions that he is a bishop not of God but of a man, and of the excommunicated, no persuasion nor condemnation will make us serve him”.

But even if there was no soundness in John Coniulo, there was much virtue in Gelasius. Many hailed his accession because “he was personally acquainted with nearly all the churches of the world, with their pastors and with their needs”. Besides, “with his name”, says a contemporary, “he changed his character ... glorified the Church, and, with Peter, was prepared to lay down his life for the liberty of the Church”.

As Gelasius was only a deacon, he awaited the coming of the Lenten Ember days to be ordained priest at the customary time, though meanwhile he ruled the Church as if he were already consecrated. Word of all that had happened since the death of Paschal had been forwarded to Henry at Verona “by the consuls”. Without loss of time he hurried to Rome with a small force, and entered the city secretly on the night of Friday, March 1-2. The emperor’s object in this hurried rush to the Eternal City was to wring concessions from Gelasius in return for his recognizing him as Pope. But no sooner was his arrival made known than Gelasius, though old and feeble, was placed by his attendants on a horse, and hastily conveyed for the night from the Lateran to the house of Bulgamini. It was situated near the Church of S. Maria in Secundicherio, i.e., S. Maria Egiziaca, the little pagan temple of Fortuna Virilis near the Ponte Rotto, which John VIII dedicated to our Lady in 872. Its proximity to the Tiber and to the docks made it a suitable house of refuge.

On the Saturday Henry sent envoys to the Pope, calling on him “to put an end to the struggle” between them, i.e., to grant him the right of investiture. Unable to do this, and unwilling to be treated by the emperor as Paschal had been, Gelasius went on board a galley that very night. Accompanied by a number of cardinals and others in another galley, he made for Porto, but “the heavens and the earth and well-nigh everything in them”, says Pandulf, “conspired against them”. A terrible storm of hail and rain, with thunder and lightning, lashed the river and the sea to such fury that the two ships could hardly remain in safety in the harbour of Porto, much less put to sea. To make matters worse, the Germans, who had got word of the flight of the Pope and his followers, endeavoured to capture them, dead or alive. As they were not in possession of boats fit to face the storm, they fired upon the galleys with arrows, which Pandulf declares were poisoned, and threatened to burn them with a sort of Greek fire, if the Pope were not surrendered. From these horrors Gelasius and his party were only saved by night and the violence of the storm.

As it was not safe to put to sea, the galleys were run ashore at Ostia, and the papal company made for the castle of Ardea, some thirty miles away, which belonged to the monastery of St. Paul. The infirm Pontiff was carried on the back of the devoted cardinal, Hugh of Alatri, through the blinding darkness and storm for many a weary mile.

When the daylight of Sunday (March 3) dawned, the Germans, finding that the galleys had been abandoned, and that the Pope had fled somewhere by land, retraced their steps. On Sunday night the poor Pope was hurried back to the Tiber, again put on board, and, though the storm had not quite subsided, was conveyed to Gaeta. There, after braving no little danger from the angry sea, he arrived on Tuesday, and received a most enthusiastic welcome from his fellow-citizens.

As soon as the news of his arrival at Gaeta spread over south Italy, bishops, abbots, and barons flocked to him from all parts. With the lesser barons came William, duke of Apulia, Robert, prince of Capua, and others of the greater nobility, who renewed their oaths of fidelity to him. Then, in the presence of an immense crowd of people, he was ordained priest on the Saturday of Ember Week (March 9), and consecrated bishop by the three cardinal-bishops, whose privilege it was to perform that act, on the following day.

Meanwhile in Rome Henry’s advisers, finding that Gelasius was as little likely to be bent to their views as his predecessors, advised their master to provide himself with a Pope after his own heart. The ambitious and excommunicated Maurice of Braga was promptly selected for this mark of the emperor’s confidence. Accordingly, with the applause of only a number of the old faction of the antipope Guibert, the Spanish bishop was installed as Gregory VIII, perhaps on the very day on which Gelasius himself was consecrated, but probably two days earlier.

Henry was induced to take this extreme step, as unjustifiable as it was futile, owing to the failure of fresh negotiations into which he had entered with Gelasius after his flight from Rome. Baffled by the Pope’s escape from his hands, he dispatched envoys to Gaeta, who, by a judicious use of threats and flattery, were to endeavour to induce him to return to Rome. They were to assure the Pope that the emperor was anxious to confirm his election, and to be present at his consecration; but they were at the same time to make it plain that the election of an antipope would be the consequence of his refusal to come back to the Eternal City. After expressing his astonishment that the emperor, who had sent him word that he would come to Rome at Easter, had entered it by night before the appointed time, Gelasius said that he would, with his fellow-bishops, discuss the question in dispute between the Church and the empire either at Milan or Cremona on the forthcoming feast of St. Luke (October 18).

On this occasion the astute emperor had brought with him to Rome allies of a fresh type, viz., professors of law, men who had revived at Bologna the study of the Code Justinian, and of the legislation of old Rome. Imbued with the ideas of the absolutism of the state therein embodied, these men and their disciples were to continue to prove themselves the most subtle agents of despotism, and the greatest enemies of personal freedom. Of these new supporters of the emperor, the most famous was Master Irnerius or Guarnerius, the father of the revival of the study of Roman law in the West, some of whose successors or disciples were to maintain “that the simple letter or rescript of the emperor has the force of law”, and that “the emperor was really the lord of all property”. Obertus, archbishop of Milan, even assured the emperor, Frederic I, Barbarossa, that “his will was law” (1158). Master Irnerius accordingly explained to the people the papal decrees about the election of Popes, and in consequence procured a number of them to acclaim Maurice Bourdin as Pope Gregory VIII. But the prefect of the city and a number of the Roman nobles sent to assure Gelasius that they had had no hand in the promotion of the excommunicated archbishop, and that they had no doubt that God would soon bring the designs of the wicked emperor to naught.

Unmoved by the action of Henry and his quibbling lawyers, Gelasius, the representative of what Gregorovius calls “the rock of Peter, the immobile saxum”, lost no time in notifying to the Catholic world what Henry had done, and in commending the firmness of those Romans who had resisted the emperor’s bribes, threats, and cajoleries. He also ordered the election of a new bishop for the See of Braga, and on Palm Sunday (April 7) excommunicated Henry “and his idol” at Capua.

Henry, meanwhile, to render the neighbourhood of Rome safer for his “idol”, laid siege to the papal fortress of Torrice (Turricula), some six miles east of Frosinone, above the road to Capua. As the garrison offered a stout and prolonged resistance, Gelasius was able to induce the Normans to come to his help. Under Robert of Capua they began their march on Rome. This movement so alarmed Henry that, hastily breaking up the siege of Torrice, he returned to the city, caused himself to be crowned by Maurice (June 2), and then, leaving his puppet-pope in Rome, began his return journey to Germany.

The attack of the Normans on Rome was only partially successful; they drove the nobles who favoured the emperor across the Tiber, but they did not succeed in expelling the antipope’s party altogether. Although they marched home before they had completed their task, Gelasius returned to Rome about the beginning of July. He had, however, to take up his abode in the little Church of S. Maria in Secundocereo, the old temple of Fortuna Virilis, in the midst of the fortresses of his friends.

So little assured was his power in Rome that, when he went to sing vespers in the Church of S. Prassede (July 21), assailed by a fierce attack upon it was made by the Frangipani, in the midst of whose strongholds it was. The attack was as fiercely resisted by Stephen the Norman and the other friends of the Pope. In the midst of the fight, Gelasius managed to escape from the church, and, still partially clad in his sacred vestments, mounted a horse and fled out of the city towards St. Paul’s outside-the-walls. When the Frangipani, among whom was the ungrateful Cencius, finding that their prey had fled, drew off, search was then made for the Pope by his friends. He was at length found in a field near St. Paul’s, weary and sick at heart, broken in mind and body.

Rome, thus parcelled out between warring factions, was more than either Pope or antipope could endure. Bourdin retired to Sutri, leaving St. Peter’s in the hands of his followers, and Gelasius determined to follow his example. “Let us fly from this city of blood”, he said to those around him : “I would sooner have one emperor than many. One wicked one would at least kill the more wicked, till the Emperor of emperors come to bring him to justice”.

After nominating Peter, bishop of Porto, as his vicar, and the gallant Stephen the Norman as standard-bearer of the Church, Gelasius set out by sea for Pisa. In conferring on the new archbishop, Walter, who had abjured the schismatical alliance of the Emperor Henry, the forfeited spiritual and temporal privileges of the See of Ravenna, he had already bestowed upon him the civil authority in those parts. His intention in leaving Rome was to seek “the traditional friendship of the king of the French, and the sympathy of their church”. John of Crema, Pierleone, and other cardinals, and a number of Roman nobles accompanied the Pope.

The aged Pontiff was received with the greatest honour not only by the Pisans themselves, but by crowds of people wh0 flocked to the great maritime city from all parts of Tuscany. Profoundly moved by their affectionate enthusiasm, Gelasius addressed them with an eloquence “which Origen himself could scarcely have equalled”. Before he left the city in the beginning of October, he had consecrated the new cathedral Church of St. Mary, that glorious conception of Buschetto which had been begun in 1064, and which was the fruit of booty taken from the Saracens. All in bright marble, this noble building, with its arcades and its many columns, still stands as it was meant to stand, an enduring thank-offering to God, and as a lasting memorial of the patriotic people who caused it to be built. So delighted was the Pope with what the Pisans had done for the honour of God and for the cause of Christ against the Moslems, that he made their bishop a metropolitan, and subjected to him the bishops of Corsica.

From Pisa he went by boat to Genoa, to Marseilles, and then by the Petit Rhone to St. Giles, where he gave the famous St. Norbert, the founder of the Premonstratensians, “permission to preach wherever he wished”, and then to Maguelonne (November). In France, where saints were offering up for him their last dying prayers, and where appeals were waiting for his decision, the aged Pope, though poverty-stricken and quite worn out by the hardships of his journey, was received with every demonstration of respect and joy.

But if the good people of France could make a rich man of a pauper, they could not renew the youth of the Pope, nor change sickness into health. Still, the old and feeble Pontiff made a brave use of the few weeks of life that were left him. He interviewed the envoys of Archbishop Ralph; granted privileges to bishops and monasteries; took certain abbeys under his protection; dedicated churches; settled disputes; showed a great interest in the prosecution of the war against the Moors in Spain; held a synod at Vienne (January 1119), and ordered the assembling of an important one for March 1119. Indeed, we are assured that he was forming plans for the carrying out of many new and hitherto unheard-of schemes, when he was seized with his last illness.

Feeling that his end was nigh, he gave orders that he should be conveyed to Cluny. There he was received with greatest honour, and treated with the tenderest care; and there, “as though he were St. Peter himself”, he was visited by bishops and nobles. All who came to see him were comforted and edified. At length, after he had provided as well as he could for those loyal hearts who had followed him into exile, or whom he had left behind him in Rome, feeling that the pleurisy which had seized him was about to end his life, he called his cardinals and the monks about him. Causing himself to be laid on the ground, he confessed his sins, and received the Body and Blood of our Redeemer.

Among the bishops who had flocked to greet the suffering Pontiff, was one of the great heroes of the giant struggle between the Church and the empire, Cardinal Conon of Palestrina (Praeneste). Singling him out from among the bishops around him, Gelasius expressed his wish that he should be recognized as his successor. “God forbid, Holy Father, that so great an honour and so heavy a burden should be laid upon me, unworthy and miserable as I am. The Roman Church in our days needs to be defended against persecution by temporal riches and influence. If you would take my advice, it would be to elect the arch­bishop of Vienne, a man both religious and prudent, and, moreover, possessed of worldly rank and power. By God’s help and the merits of St. Peter he may be able to deliver the Roman Church, so long oppressed and threatened, and to lead her to peace and victory”.

This disinterested counsel recommended itself to all, and messengers were straightway dispatched to urge the archbishop to hasten to the Pope’s death-bed. But Gelasius had made his last effort for the Church, and, as a faithful monk expresses it, “in his own house its own master rested in peace at Cluny” (January 29, 1119).

Amid general grief this “father of justice”, who in his sufferings as Pope was an image of his Divine Master, if ever any man was, was most honourably interred in the great church at Cluny. His tomb, which was still to be seen in the eighteenth century, was situated “between the cross and the altar, behind the choir”. What is often quoted as his epitaph is really a poem by Peter of Poitiers, chancellor of the Church of Paris, who died as late as 1205. It begins: “Vir gravis et sapiens actu verboque Joannes”, and notes that John of Gaeta was a worthy second to Gelasius I, but does not add to our knowledge of him who “slept his last sleep in the special harbour of refuge of the Roman Church—Dormiit in proprio Romani juris asylo”.

The number of terribly tragic episodes which were crowded so thickly in the brief pontificate of Gelasius have justly earned him the compassion of writers of every school of thought. “His pontificate”, writes Gregorovius, “had only lasted a year and four days, and within this span of time the sorrows of a life had been compressed. No sensitive man can look unmoved by feelings of sympathy on the unfortunate figure of this last sacrifice to the struggle for investiture”.

 

 

CALIXTUS II.

A.D. 1119-1124.

 

 

CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS.

Emperor of Germany. Henry V, 1106-1125.

King of France. Louis VI, the Fat, 1108-1137.

King of England. Henry I, 1100-1135.

Emperor of the East. John Comnenus, 1118-1143.

I.

THE ELECTION OF GUY OF VIENNE, AND HIS EARLY LIFE.

ACTING on the advice of Cardinal Conon, the dying Gelasius had commended to those around his bedside Guy of Vienne as his successor. Accordingly, when, after the Pope’s death, the archbishop reached Cluny, he was at once, despite his reluctance, elected to fill the vacant see by the cardinals and Romans who had accompanied Gelasius into France. His disinclination to accept the burden of the Papacy was the more real because he did not know whether the cardinals in Rome would confirm the action of their brethren in France. Moreover, he was happy in his native Burgundy, and, on the other hand, clearly understood the insolent turbulence of the Romans. Vienne, he said, was not a rich church, but it was rich enough for him, and in the whole of Burgundy there was scarcely anyone of name who was not his relation or dependant. But the Roman Papacy, while more than honourable, was a most grievous burden. “In Rome”, he continued, “I shall find as many princes as cardinals, and as many masters as citizens”.

According to the authors of the history of Compostela, no sooner did Guy’s numerous escort hear of his election as Pope than, in a paroxysm of grief at the thought of losing their beloved pastor, they burst open the monastery gates, rushed in, and, violently tearing from their archbishop the cope, stole, and the other papal insignia, they cried out: “Why are you plotting to deprive us and all France of so great a pastor? Let the Romans choose another bishop; they shall not have ours”. After a time, however, wiser counsels prevailed, and, realizing the honour which had come to their city, they conducted their late archbishop through Lyons, where he had a most splendid reception, back to Vienne. There he was solemnly installed and crowned as Pope on Quinquagesima Sunday (February 9).

Though thus duly proclaimed Pope, and though, as the well-informed history of the monastery of Maurigny assures us, the cardinals who had accompanied Gelasius had arranged with those in Rome that, if anything happened to the Pope in France, it should be lawful for them to elect his successor, still, he was unwilling, like St. Leo IX, to make much use of his new powers until his election had been confirmed at Rome. The cardinals who had elected him had at once dispatched one of their number, Rocemanus, the cardinal-deacon of St. George in Velabro, to the Eternal City in order that he might notify to the cardinals there what they had done. Peter, cardinal-bishop of Porto, whom Gelasius had left as his vicar in Rome, at once assembled the electors. They came together on the 1st of March into the Church of St. John de insula, and, if we are to believe Pandulf, the influential nobleman Pierleone worked as hard in Rome for the confirmation of the election of Calixtus as his son, the cardinal, had in France to secure him that election. At any rate, the election was confirmed without any difficulty, and the cardinals in Rome lost no time in signifying this not only to their brethren at Cluny, but to the Christian world at large. The new Pope, they said, was prayed for in the liturgy of the Church, and his name was inscribed in the documents which were issued from the papal chancellary. Even some of the followers of the antipope sent in their adhesion to an election which they praised as “free from the taint of simony and ambition”.

Guy of Vienne, who was thus acknowledged Pope by the Catholic world, was born probably about the year 1060, and was a scion of one of the best-connected houses in Christendom. His father was William, surnamed the Great, or Tête-Hardie, sovereign count of Burgundy, who had been a great ally of Gregory VII. His mother, Stephania (Étienette), who brought to her husband the county of Vienne, had at least nine children. Through this large number of brothers and sisters, or through his parents, Guy was related to most of the great reigning families of Europe. He was cousin of our own King Henry I and of the Emperor Henry V. His niece Adelaide was the wife of King Louis VI of France; and in his letters he makes frequent mention of his nephew Alfonso VII, king of Castile, and of his sister Clementia, wife of the count of Flanders. Of his three brothers who died fighting for the cause of Christianity in the East, he often speaks of Hugh, who was archbishop of Besançon; and though Clementia seems to be the only one of his sisters whose name appears in his letters, the others seem to have been equally illustrious, and through their distinguished marriages brought him into close touch with many great families.

Guy’s character was apparently on a par with his great family. His piety and energy, his love of justice, and his open-handed generosity are the common theme of writers, both ancient and modern.

Little or nothing is known of his early years. Fable has, however, endeavoured to fill up this gap in our knowledge. In a letter which is supposed to have been written by him, and which is prefixed to a work, Liber de miraculis S. Jacobi, which is also said to have been from his hand, he is made to say that, when he was a student, he spent fourteen years in travelling through various lands, civilized and uncivilized, collecting all that had been written about St. James the Apostle, whom he had loved from his infancy. In the course of his wanderings, he encountered perils from fire, from robbers, and from shipwreck, and though he frequently lost all else that he had, the volume in which he had recorded what he had learnt about the apostle was never taken from him. In a vision he was ordered by the Son of God Himself to complete his account of the miracles of St. James, and to punish all wicked pilgrims who were on their way to his shrine at Compostela. Unfortunately, the letter which tells this pretty story is as little authentic as the book of which it speaks.

It is more probable that the place of Guy’s birth was the chateau of Quingey on the Loue, one of the residences of the counts of Burgundy; that he was educated in the school of the chapter of St. John at Besançon; that his abilities were the reason of his being ordained priest before the age fixed by the canons, and that he soon rose to honour among the clergy of Besançon.

At any rate it is certain that in due course he was elected archbishop of Vienne, seemingly in 1088, and that he soon after came to Rome and endeared himself to Urban II, who highly extolled his merits. When he returned to his diocese, he devoted his influence and energy to the ordering especially of its temporal well-being. Unfortunately, it is so often true that the sight of the means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done, and that the powerful easily confound might and right. And as David first coveted and then seized Naboth’s vineyard, so Guy of Vienne first coveted, then seized and tried to keep by violence and fraud the churches of the pagus Salmoracensis (Sermorens), a county on the borders of the dioceses of Vienne and Grenoble, the capital of which has now fallen to the low level of a suburb of Voiron in the Isère.

When Guy became archbishop, it is acknowledged that spiritual jurisdiction over the said district had for a hundred years and more been in the hands of the bishops of Grenoble, suffragans of the archbishops of Vienne, and that it was then exercised by St. Hugh, bishop of Grenoble. Pretending, however, that one of his predecessors had indeed, in the days of the Saracen trouble, entrusted the ecclesiastical government of the locality to the bishop of Grenoble, but for a time only, Guy boldly claimed it. But finding that his arguments were not likely to stand the searching examination of other bishops before whom the case was brought, without more ado he took violent possession of the county. Urban was now appealed to by Bishop Hugh, but Guy circumvented an adverse decision of the Pope’s delegate, by secretly sending to Rome, judiciously expending five hundred solidi among the members of the Roman Curia, and obtaining from the Pope, who was ignorant of the judgment of his legate, a confirmation of the privileges of his see, among which jurisdiction over Sermorens had been inserted. Such a confirmation was, of course, not worth the parchment on which it was engrossed, and was promptly repudiated by Urban as soon as he learnt the truth. But Guy would not give up what he had seized. Carried on by obstinate adherence to a bad case, he stopped at nothing to gain his point. He connived, at least, at the forging of false documents; he made promises and deliberately broke them; set at naught the sentences of Pope and council; and went the length of putting armed pressure on Urban when he came to France. Even when the punishments inflicted upon him by the Pope caused him to yield, he seized the opportunity furnished him by an illness of St. Hugh in Italy of again possessing himself of the district in dispute. Urban died before he could vindicate his outraged authority, and in the final settlement of the quarrel effected by Paschal II, we do not see the triumph of the right. When that Pontiff was in Lyons in January 1107, he caused the contending parties to agree to a division of the county. Each bishop was to have eleven churches, and though some slight compensation was given to St. Hugh for the loss of eleven churches, the archbishop was to keep the right of ordaining the clergy and consecrating the altars for the entire county. For the sake of peace and deference to the Pope Hugh agreed to this compromise, the whole gain of which was on the side of his opponent.

Even when Guy of Vienne became Pope Calixtus II, he does not appear to have righted the wrong which his high­handed conduct caused ultimately to be inflicted on the See of Grenoble. When, as Pope, he was occupied not unnaturally with bestowing favours on his former see— granting its occupant the right of having his cross carried before him throughout the whole of his province, and of not being subject to any other legate but one direct from the Pope (a pontificis latere)—he seems to have denied to the See of Grenoble even the rights granted it by Paschal. Fortunately, as Robert pertinently notes, there are more beautiful pages in the life of Guy of Vienne.

If his embassy to England in 1101 as papal legate was not a success, it was not his fault, and did not prevent his friend Pope Paschal from making him his legate in France in succession to Hugh, archbishop of Lyons (d. October 1106).

A year or two later, seemingly in 1109, he went into Spain to be nominated along with Diego, bishop of Compostela, tutor to his young nephew, Alfonso VII, whom his dying grandfather, Alfonso VI, named ruler of Galicia. It was no doubt on this occasion that he first began to take that interest in Compostela and its bishop which he showed so strongly when he became Pope.

We have already spoken of the uncompromising attitude which he took up towards the Emperor Henry V on the question of investiture, and of the great influence which he thereby exercised on the stand which Paschal at length made against the brute force of the German monarch. If he did not shrink from excommunicating Henry himself, he did not, we may be sure, hesitate to treat his creatures in the same way. A few years later, we find him anathematizing our countryman, Henry, archdeacon of Winchester. He had escorted into Germany Henry’s betrothed, Matilda, the daughter of Henry I of England. For this, through her influence, he had been nominated bishop of Verdun by the emperor. Guy insisted on his submission to the Pope, and had the pleasure of seeing him offer it to Cardinal John of Crema, who acted in Paschal’s behalf.

It was from the midst of hard work for his diocese, and useful labours for the Universal Church, that Guy of Vienne was called to fill the Chair of Peter.

II.

CALIXTUS II IN FRANCE

Before leaving Vienne, where he had been crowned, Calixtus adopted the advice which had been given him by Roman cardinals and summoned a council to meet at Rheims in the following autumn, to deliberate as to the best means of providing for the peace and freedom of the Church. He then began a tour through France, which was to occupy him nearly a year, and which was in every way productive of the greatest good. Apart from presiding at local councils, conferring privileges, consecrating churches, and the performance of other similar functions, his intention was by personal interviews to endeavour to influence for good the emperor and the kings of France and England. Meanwhile, he lost no time in exhorting the leaders of the church party in Germany not to allow themselves to be contaminated by the tyrant’s abominable investiture.

In the beginning of July Calixtus entered the ancient city of Toulouse, and there, on the 8th or 9th, opened a council at which were present a number of bishops not only from the south of France, but from the north of Spain. This council is memorable not so much because it condemned simony and the plundering of church property by the laity, as because it anathematized doctrines which were to be propagated in the same locality by the Albigensians with such terrible consequences, and because we see it here authoritatively proclaimed that heretics, at least heretics of a certain class, were to be coerced by the secular arm. The decree on this subject ran as follows: “Those who, under the pretence of special piety, repudiate the sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood, the baptism of infants, the priesthood, and the other sacred orders in the Church, and the bonds of legitimate matrimony, are expelled as heretics from the Church of God, and must, along with their supporters, be coerced by the secular arm”.

In this appeal to the civil authorities to punish heretics, it must be noted that they were teachers of doctrines not merely opposed to the tenets of the Catholic Church, but to public morality. A hundred years before the holding of this council of Toulouse, we find the punishment recorded of certain heretics in this very district, who went by the name of Manicheans, and who, we are assured, endeavoured to propagate their views in secret. The heretics who were condemned by the third canon of the council of Toulouse in 1119 were no doubt descendants of the so-called Manicheans of the eleventh century, and as some of their dogmas were gravely dangerous to public decency, the public authorities were very naturally called upon to check the propagation of them. What steps, if any, were taken by the civil power do not appear. But if any were taken, they were not very efficacious; and before Calixtus had been dead a hundred years, the great Innocent III found it necessary to proclaim a crusade against heretics who, under a different name, lived in the same locality of Toulouse, and also promulgated teachings similar to those held by the heretics there of the eleventh and twelfth centuries—teachings opposed not only to the Catholic faith, but to the most fundamental principles of Christian morality.

The Pope and the council of the year 1119 called on the civil authority to do what the indignant voice of outraged Christendom called upon the United States Government to do against the Mormons of Salt Lake City, and what our own Government has had to do more than once in this generation against propagators of theories of “free love”. Beliefs that pander to man’s basest passions soon spread, but are rooted out with the greatest difficulty.

After some well-filled months of work, Calixtus reached Rheims on October 18.

The principal object for which the council of Rheims had been summoned was the establishment of peace between the Church and the empire. The emperor was the more ready to treat with the Pope because he had found that his power in Germany, which he had thought so firm, was tottering. While he had been in Italy, the indefatigable legate Conon had been acting with his usual energy. His repeated excommunications of Henry had their effect, and the princes of the empire had resolved to hold a diet, and there force their emperor to come to terms with the Church, or else depose him. On hearing of this determination, Henry was seized with fury, and, leaving his wife and army in Italy, hurried back to Germany, where he endeavoured to carry all before him with a high hand. The Truce of God was disregarded, and the whole country again resounded with the din of battle. But Henry had miscalculated his strength, and he was forced to consent to the holding of a diet at Tribur, near Mainz, for the redress of grievances. It met on June 24, 1119, and was very numerously attended. Among others present at it were legates of Pope Calixtus. Utterly disregarding the emperor’s creature, Bourdin, the whole German hierarchy submitted to Calixtus,4and approved of the holding of the synod at Rheims. Then, to promote peace within the empire, it was decided that the emperor and the princes should mutually restore what each party had annexed, and that the investiture question should be referred to the consideration of the forthcoming council of Rheims.

Before the council assembled, two envoys of the Pope, Pontius, abbot of Cluny, and the celebrated William of Champeaux, now bishop of Châlons, and once the master of Abelard, met the emperor at Strasburg about the beginning of October. Asked by Henry how he could come to terms with the Church without a loss of his power, the bishop assured him that if he gave up investiture he would lose nothing. “I”, he said, “have never received investiture from the king, and yet in the matter of taxes, military service, and the like, I serve him as your bishops do you. Give up investiture, restore the property of the Church and of those who have laboured for her, and we will strive to put an end to this quarrel”. To this the emperor replied that he would do what was required of him if the Pope would do him justice, and see that what he and his had lost during the struggle was restored to him. At a subsequent inter-view these mutual concessions were agreed to in writing, and it was arranged that the Pope and the emperor should meet at Mouzon on October 25 to ratify them formally.

The council, for which many had waited anxiously in the hope that it meant peace, was opened at length on October 20. The bishops who were to take part in it had gathered together from Italy and Germany, France and Spain, Brittany and England, the islands of the Ocean, and all the provinces of the West. Some of them had come in great state, as Adalbert, archbishop of Mainz, who had an escort of five hundred knights. There assembled, then, in the metropolitan Church of Our Lady, “for the love of our Saviour”, and in obedience to the command of the Pope, fifteen archbishops, over two hundred bishops, and as many abbots, making in all four hundred and twenty-seven prelates.

The Pope’s throne was placed on a raised platform facing the doors of the church, while the chairs of the bishops were set opposite to it, and in front of the rood-loft. By the side of the Pope stood the deacon Chrysogonus in his dalmatic, with a volume of the canons in his hand, so that, as occasion required, he might cite therefrom the decrees of the Fathers. The different metropolitans were seated in the order of precedence, says Ordericus, “to which they were entitled in virtue of ancient decrees of the Popes”.

After a sermon from the Pope, in which he compared the Church in the world to the barque of the apostles on the Sea of Galilee, the assembled Fathers were reminded both in Latin and in their mother tongue of the ravages simony was effecting in the Church through the custom of investiture.

After the investiture question had been clearly laid before the assembly, the French king Louis, pale, tall, and stout, in eloquent language denounced the conduct of our king, Henry I, for his treatment of Robert of Normandy and his son, and that of Theobald of Blois for disturbing his kingdom. Hildegarde, countess of Poitiers, came to plead for justice against an adulterous husband, and others appeared to appeal against deeds of violence.

At this point the Pope intervened. He delivered a most touching exhortation to peace, which he called “the nurse of the good”, and declared that he would do all he could to propagate it throughout the Church, and that he enjoined “the observance of the Truce of God, as Pope Urban of blessed memory decreed it at the council of Clermont”. He then suspended the work of the synod for the time being, explaining that the emperor had invited him to meet him at Mouzon to make peace, and forbidding any of the Fathers to leave Rheims till he returned to finish with them the work of the council. After that, he said, he would visit Henry of England, his spiritual son and relative, and endeavour to induce him to refrain from hostile enterprises.

On the second day after the opening of the council (October 22), Calixtus left the city to traverse the rough seventy-five miles of road which led through the Ardennes to Mouzon on the Meuse, near Sedan. When they arrived at that small town they were not a little alarmed to find the emperor in the neighbourhood with a large army, which some of the cardinals, perhaps because terrified, estimated at thirty thousand. Anything but reassured by this display of force, the Pope’s suite insisted on his remaining in a castle, whilst his envoys went to interview the emperor.

At first Henry pretended that he had never promised to give up investiture; then he pressed for one delay after another, while his followers by an aggressive exhibition of naked swords and spears endeavoured to frighten the papal legates. Especially did they insist that it was preposterous that the emperor should make his submission to the Pope barefoot in the usual way. Though the envoys at once promised that they would try to bring it about that his absolution should take place privately and with shod feet, they saw that there was no real intention on Henry’s part of coming to terms. Accordingly, when it transpired that he had requested that the Pope should be detained in the castle in which he had taken refuge, no time was lost in putting a safe distance between the emperor and his intended prey. The Pope and his suite returned to Rheims far quicker than they had left it (October 26). For a day or two after his return Calixtus was so much upset by the fatigues and fears from which he had suffered during the brief period of his absence from Rheims, that he could not recommence the business of the synod. However, its work was resumed on October 29, and various decrees were passed against simony, the marriage of the clergy, and investiture.

At the same time, with great grief Calixtus pronounced sentence of excommunication against the emperor, the enemy of God, and against the antipope Bourdin and their supporters. And “by his apostolic authority he absolved from their allegiance all those who had sworn fidelity to the emperor till such times as he should repent, and make satisfaction to the Church of God”.

Among the many people who came to Rheims to see the Pope was St. Norbert, the founder of the Premonstratensian Order. But the number of those who were anxious to interview Calixtus was so great, that, after staying in the city for three days, Norbert wandered away from it in despair. Fortunately, he was met and accosted by Bishop Bartholomew of Laon. Finding that he wished to embrace a special form of religious life, for which he was desirous of securing the papal approval, the bishop bade him return with him, and promised to secure him an audience with the Pope. The bishop fulfilled his promise, modestly suggesting to the Pope that it was not the proper thing that he, the Father of the Church universal, should speak only with the rich, and that the poor should be kept from him. After much speech with the Pope, first at Rheims and then at Laon, Norbert secured from him the approval of the order he proposed to found.

Knowing that the weighty and solemn condemnation of the council of Rheims could not be ignored, and that, when the returning bishops had spread word of it throughout every civilized country of Europe, it could not fail to produce its desired effect, Calixtus meanwhile turned his attention to other matters. Of his interview at Gisors with Henry of England (November 1119), which resulted at least in peace between England and France, we shall speak in another place. After spending a few more months in the latter country, among other things confirm­ing St. Norbert’s right to preach everywhere, and, at the request of Abbot Stephen Harding, the Cistercian rule, he at length set out for Italy (March 1120).

III.  

CALIXTUS IN ITALY. DOWNFALL OF THE ANTIPOPE

It was about March 25 when Calixtus, in company with those members of the Roman Church who had been with him in France, and escorted by the guard who had left Rome with Gelasius, appeared in Piedmont. His safety was carefully watched over by the archbishop of Milan, and everywhere, especially at Lucca and Pisa, was he received with the liveliest demonstrations of joy. Everywhere was he greeted as the vicar of Christ. The news of his triumphal progress soon reached Rome, and put fresh life into the adherents of the Papacy. The basilica of St. Peter and its approaches were still in the hands of the partisans of the antipope Bourdin, who was now residing at Sutri. Pierleone made another effort to get possession of it, and before Calixtus appeared in sight of Rome, money had induced the followers of the antipope to give up their chief stronghold in the Eternal City.

When Calixtus reached Rosella he was joined by Egino, abbot of S. Udalricus of Augsburg, and his inseparable companion, the monk Udalscalcus. He received them with the utmost cheerfulness, and bade them come with him and witness the triumph of the Church. At a distance of three days’ journey from Rome he was met by the militia of the city, with their banners and crosses; and as he drew nearer to it, the whole population, men, women, and children, seemed to come out to greet him. The children, who were carrying branches of trees, were especially blessed by the Pontiff. As he passed along, “even the confused plaudits of the Jews” were heard amidst the chants of the Latins and the Greeks. Solemnly received by Peter, cardinal-bishop of Porto, the vicar of Rome, and the other dignitaries of the Church and State, he was formally crowned in St. Peter’s, and through the Sacred Way, as the route was called, all gay with triumphal arches, gilding, and precious draperies, he slowly made his way to the Lateran Palace. No such glorious sight had been seen in Rome within the memory of any living man. At the Lateran the Pope received the homage of Pierleone, of the prefect of Rome, of Leo Frangipane, of Stephen the Norman, and Peter Colonna.

Calixtus did not remain long in Rome. Anxious to strengthen his authority among the Normans in south Italy, he made his way through the Campagna to Monte Cassino. After resting there for a few weeks, he went to Benevento. His coming there had been long looked for, says Falco, and the whole people, clergy and laity, went two miles out of the city to meet him. The wealthy merchants of Amalfi had ornamented the city with hangings of silk and expensive decorations of all sorts, and perfumed the whole air by burning cinnamon and various aromatic herbs in censers of gold and silver. Sweet with the odour of precious spices, the air was also pleasant with the sound of tympana, tinkling cymbals and lyres. Four distinguished citizens held the stirrups and reins of the Pope’s horse from the Leper’s Bridge to the Gate of St. Lawrence; then four others held them from there to the residence of the bishop, when their places in turn were taken by four of the judges, who led the Pope to the palace (August 8). “Reader!” exclaims the local historian, full of legitimate pride, “had you been present in the Pope's company and heard and seen those lovely sounds and sights, you would have said chat never before had a Pontiff been so joyously and triumphantly greeted by any other city”.

Before Calixtus left Benevento, he received the feudal submission of a very great number of the inferior nobility, and of Jordan II of Capua and of the poor-spirited Duke William I of Apulia. By a banner which he placed in the hands of the latter, he confirmed him in all the possessions which his predecessors from the days of Pope Nicholas II had granted either to his grandfather, Robert Guiscard, or to his father, Duke Roger. In his anxiety to promote the sacred cause of peace, Calixtus went from one city to another. At Troia he was met by the nobility, headed by Duke William, who, performing the office of esquire, led the Pope’s horse to the cathedral. In this city and at Bari he devoted himself to the establishment of the Truce of God.

Returning to Rome for the December ordinations, he began forthwith to make preparations for securing the submission of the antipope, who by his constant raids was rendering the roads to Rome quite unsafe.

With a large force of horse and foot he appeared before Sutri about the middle of April. Though Bourdin had written piteous letters for help to his patron, the Emperor Henry, he had received nothing from him but florid letters. The papal troops pushed the siege, and after enduring a blockade of eight days, the inhabitants surrendered Maurice Bourdin, called Gregory VIII, into their hands.

No sooner was he in their power than, clothing him in bleeding sheep-skins instead of the red mantle worn by the Popes, and putting him on the camel which had carried the cooking utensils of the papal camp-kitchen, with his face towards its tail, which was given him as reins, they drove him with insults and mockeries towards Rome. “Accursed one”, they cried, “what scandal have you caused! Woe to you for attempting to rend the seamless robe of Christ, and to divide the unity of Catholic faith”. When this disorderly cavalcade reached Rome, the tormentors of the unfortunate antipope, treating him with a view of preventing others from imitating him, set him on a worthless nag, and hurried him with fresh insults through the Trastevere. How this cruel horse-play, to which the Romans were much addicted, might have ended if the wretched man had remained in the hands of the mob, it is perhaps not very difficult to conjecture. But at last he was with difficulty rescued from their hands by Calixtus, and placed in safety, though in chains, in the Septizonium. It is much to be regretted that the Pope did not take the antipope into his own custody the moment he surrendered. After all, he was a most distinguished man : one, says our own historian, William of Malmesbury, “whom anyone might have highly reverenced, nay, even almost have venerated, for his active and unwearied industry, had he not been led to make himself conspicuous by so disgraceful an act” as setting himself up against the true Pope. But it is quite possible that Calixtus rescued him from the hands of the crowd as soon as he could.

He was not left long in the Septizonium. Taken thence, he was confined first in one place and then another, and appears to have died in the monastery of La Cava, near Salerno, after the month of August 1137. In memory of the capture of Bourdin a picture of the Pope was placed in one of the halls of the Lateran Palace, and beneath it this inscription:—

Ecce Calixtus, honor patria, decus imperiale,

Nequam Burdinum damnat pacemque reformat.

Not long after the fall of the antipope, Calixtus left Rome for some seven months to restore order in its neighbourhood, and to work for peace in south Italy, both in the civil and in the ecclesiastical order. The chief cause of trouble at this time in south Italy was, on the one hand, the weakness of William, duke of Apulia, and on the other the ambition or greed of his first cousin, Roger II, count of Sicily, afterwards (1130) king of Italy (i.e. Sicily). He invaded Calabria, taking advantage, according to Pandulf, of a journey of William to Constantinople. When the duke left Italy, he entrusted his territory to the care of the Pope, but no doubt lost no time in returning home as soon as he heard of his cousin’s aggressive action. Calixtus did all he could, both by legates and by personal interviews, to bring about peace between the two cousins. Everything, however, went against the Pope. He lost at this moment by death many of his most eminent and trusted cardinals, and he himself fell dangerously ill. With Calixtus in this stricken condition, Count Roger was able to work his will. He was in Calabria, and in Calabria he contrived to remain.

 To illustrate the work for peace in the ecclesiastical order performed by Calixtus in south Italy, we will select the one instance of his relations with the Church of Tres Tabernae. We do so because it serves also as a reminder of how largely under Greek influence was still the southern portion of the peninsula, and as an indication of the manner in which that influence was gradually being undermined.

Among the very many towns in the extreme south of Italy destroyed by the Saracens in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries was the populous but unwalled city of Trischines, or Tres Tabernae, situated on the sea by the river Alii in the toe of Italy. Such, however, of the inhabitants as escaped built for themselves another town in a strong place on the higher part of the same river, the present Taverna, some ten miles north of Catanzaro. The episcopal succession, which had been transferred to the new city during the Byzantine domination in those parts, was again broken owing to quarrels among the local Norman nobles after the city had in due course come into the hands of Robert Guiscard. At length, however, the virtuous Geoffrey, count of Catanzaro, calling his feudatories around him, pointed out to them that it was not becoming that they should have a bishopric in their midst but no bishop. “Let us then send to Pope Gelasius and beg him to let us have a Latin bishop for our See of Tres Tabernae. Since we are all Latins, we do not want a Greek”. The envoys who were accordingly sent to the Pope found that he had betaken himself to France. When they reached that country they had to present their petition to Pope Calixtus, as Gelasius was no more.

Learning from the report of Cardinal Desiderius that the resources of the bishopric were quite equal to the proper support of a bishop, Calixtus accepted as the new incumbent the choice of the clergy and people, viz. John, the capellanus of Catanzaro, himself consecrated him, and by a bull of January 14, 1121, reconstituted the bishopric in his favour. But the lords spiritual and temporal of the neighbourhood who had profited by the recent lapse of the episcopal succession of Taverna to annex the property or rights of its diocese were not all of them disposed to give up what they had taken. Calixtus, therefore, had to issue a number of letters to Peter, bishop of Squillace, and to Hugh the Red, the lord of Rocca Falluca, commanding them to give to John, bishop of Catanzaro, the obedience or the property which was his due. In order to establish clearly the limits of the diocese of Taverna or Catanzaro, inasmuch as they were everywhere disputed, Calixtus ordered the bishops and abbots of Calabria to meet him at Cotrone (January 1122). On the testimony especially of a Greek priest who knew Latin, and whose father had been the chief official of one of the bishops of Tres Tabernae, it was definitely decreed that the diocese of Catanzaro should extend from the river Lorda or Bordo(?) to the Crocchio. With the citation of a second admonitory letter of the Pope to Hugh the Red, the interesting chronicle of Tres Tabernae comes to an abrupt close. Short though it is, it serves to show by what steps Greek influence in south Italy was gradually replaced by that of the Popes and of the Normans.

IV.

THE CONCORDAT OF WORMS AND THE FIRST GENERAL COUNCIL OF THE LATERAN (1122-1123).

Meanwhile in Germany the march of events was gradually wearing down the obstinacy of Henry. His solemn excommunication at Rheims caused him to be abandoned by first one bishop and then another. An attempt which he made to crush by force one of his principal opponents, Adalbert, archbishop of Mainz, resulted in his being faced by half the empire in arms (June 1121), and he had to agree to refer the matters in dispute to a diet to be held at Wurzburg (September 1121). The downfall of his antipope Bourdin still further weakened his position.

When the diet assembled in the presence of legates of the Pope, it was agreed in the first instance to enforce the observation of peace throughout the whole empire, and a general restitution of the property which had been seized by both sides during the wars caused by the quarrel between the Papacy and the Empire. Justice was to be administered to all classes of the community, and thieves and robbers were to be put down. The all-important question, however, of the relations between the Pope and the emperor was put off for the consideration of a general council which was to be summoned by the Pope in order that “what could not be decided by human wisdom might be settled by the decision of the Holy Ghost”. Meanwhile it was laid down as a general principle that the emperor was to obey the Apostolic See. But at the same time all felt that it was far from easy to adjust the claims of the Pope with the just rights of the emperor.

The hope, however, of the situation was a deep and general feeling that it was not beyond the power of earnest and wise men to settle the investiture question in such a manner as not to compromise the real rights either of the Pope or of the emperor.

To this feeling expression was given in a poetical dialogue between the Pope and the emperor, published by Hugo Metellus of Toul (d.c. 1150) shortly before the assembling of the diet of Worms. After indulging in mutual recriminations, and arguing as to the signification of investiture by crosier and ring, and as to the intent of the donation of Constantine, the two disputants concluded to put an end to vain contentions, and to follow the decisions of the wise.

With a view to keeping Henry true to the provisions of Wurzburg, Calixtus addressed him a letter which he sent by Azzo, bishop of Acqui, a mutual relative. He selected Azzo in order to remind the emperor that they were debtors one to another in a more strict sense than their predecessors had been. “Besides the bond of apostolical paternity which links us together, and besides the bond between us of the imperial dignity, which the German kings receive solely through the Roman Pontiffs, we are bound to hear and to love one another by our close blood relationship”. He exhorted him to restore peace to the Church, “which desires not any of your rights for herself, but, like a mother, gives freely of her own to all. ... You have soldiers on your side, but the Church has to defend her the King of kings ... and her lords and patrons are the Apostles Peter and Paul. Give up, then, what does not belong to your province, that you may the better administer what does”.

The bishop of Spires and the abbot of Fulda had been dispatched to Rome to inform the Pope of the decisions of the diet of Wurzburg. With them, on their return to Germany, Calixtus sent on his behalf Lambert, bishop of Ostia, and Cardinals Gregory and Saxo. As Henry had already begun to violate the agreement of Wurzburg, it required all the exhortations of the Pope, and all the exertions of his legates, and of the indefatigable Adalbert of Mainz, to keep the peace, and to bring about an assembly of the great ones of the empire at Worms. Lambert reminded the emperor of his declaration by the envoys he had recently sent to Rome that he wanted peace if it could be brought about consistently with the maintenance of his position and rights, and he assured him it was the wish of the Pope that, maintaining due regard for justice, the honour of the empire should in every way be augmented. He therefore begged him to come “to the council of bishops” which was to be held at Mainz.

In deference to the wishes of the emperor, who not unnaturally preferred that the diet should be held in a city loyal to himself, the place of its meeting was changed from Mainz to Worms. Accordingly, in the month of September, there assembled in the latter city the great leaders both of the Church and the imperial parties, along with the emperor himself, and the papal legates; while on the banks of the Rhine outside the city an enormous crowd of people took up their station. For more than a week the important question of investiture, which had so long agitated the whole empire, was debated with the greatest vehemence and prudence. At first the lay adherents of the emperor were not disposed to yield anything. They alleged the length of time the emperors had practised investiture by ring and crosier, and did not hesitate to call their opponents destroyers of the empire. However, as time and the debate went on, the more moderate views of those who were really anxious for peace prevailed. God, “in whose hands are the hearts of kings, bent the obstinacy of the emperor beneath the obedience of the Apostolic See”, and Henry “gave up for the love of Christ what he had sworn never to part with as long as his life should endure”.

After the emperor and his party had been solemnly absolved from the censures of the Church, the terms of the agreement which had been arrived at were read out before the assembled multitude. “I, Calixtus”, began the famous document, “servant of the servants of God, do grant to thee, beloved son Henry, by the grace of God august emperor of the Romans, that the elections of the bishops and abbots of the German kingdom, who belong to the kingdom, shall take place in thy presence, without simony and without any violence; so that if any discord shall arise between the parties concerned, thou, by the counsel or judgment of the metropolitan and the co-provincials, mayest give consent and aid to the party which has the more right. The one elected, moreover, without any exaction, may receive the regalia from thee through the scepter (sceptrum), and shall do unto thee for these what he rightfully should. But he who is consecrated in the other parts of thy empire shall within six months, and without any exaction, receive the regalia from thee through the sceptre, and shall do unto thee for these what he rightfully should, excepting all things which are known to belong to the Roman Church. Concerning matters, however, in which thou dost make complaint to me, and dost demand aid—I, according to the duty of my office, will furnish aid to thee. I give unto thee true peace, and to all who are or have been on thy side in the time of this discord”.

Then followed the second part of the concordat: “In the name of the holy and indivisible Trinity, I, Henry, by the grace of God august emperor of the Romans, for the love of God, and of the Holy Roman Church, and of our Lord Pope Calixtus, and for the healing of my soul, do remit to God, and to the holy apostles of God, Peter and Paul, and to the Holy Catholic Church, all investiture through ring and staff, and do grant that in all the churches that are in my kingdom or empire there may be canonical election and free consecration. All the possessions and regalia of St. Peter, which, from the beginning of this discord unto this day, whether in the time of my father or else in mine, have been abstracted and which I hold, I restore to that same Holy Roman Church. As to those things, moreover, which I do not hold, I will faithfully aid in their restoration. As to the possessions also of all other churches and princes, and of all other lay and clerical persons which have been lost in that war, according to the counsel of the princes, or according to justice, I will restore the things that I hold, and of those things which I do not hold I will faithfully aid in their restoration. And I grant true peace to our Lord (dominus) Pope Calixtus, and to the Holy Roman Church, and to all those who are or have been on its side. And in matters where the Holy Roman Church shall demand aid I will grant it, and in matters concerning which it shall make complaint to me I will duly grant it justice. All these things have been done with the consent and counsel of the princes”. Then follow the names of the principal clerical and lay chiefs of the empire, and the official signature of Frederick, archbishop of Cologne, and archchancellor.

After the reading of this momentous document, Mass was said by Lambert of Ostia, at which the reconciliation of the emperor to the Church was sealed “by his receiving the kiss of peace and the Holy Communion; and all departed with infinite joy”. Thus, says our own chronicler, William of Malmesbury, “that inveterate controversy between the empire and the priesthood concerning investiture, which for more than fifty years had created commotions to such a degree that, when any favourer of this heresy was cut off by disease or death, immediately, like the hydra’s heads, many sprouted up afresh, this man by his diligence cut off, brought low, rooted out, or plucked up, beating down the crest of German fierceness by the vigorous stroke of the papal hatchet”.

The fifty years’ war between the Church and the State regarding investitures was at length at an end. A fair compromise had been found which gave to each party its due. On the one hand, the emperor, by yielding the right to invest with the ring and crosier, gave up all pretence of having any ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and the clergy, by doing homage for the temporalities of their sees, professed that there was a temporal side to their office which required acknowledgment. But it must be noted that what had been gained by the Church was not of such far-reaching importance as might at first appear. The emperor, it is true, conceded freedom of election and of consecration, but he retained the right to be present at elections, and he was granted a voice in disputed elections. Further, the German bishops, at least, had to receive investiture of their temporalities by the scepter before their consecration. With these rights guaranteed to him, it is clear that the emperor could easily cause the elections to be free in nothing except the name. Still, as he had had to give way in what appeared to be the principal matter in dispute, viz., the ring and crosier, it was generally believed that a striking victory had been gained by the Church, and its influence was thereby greatly increased. Time, however, was to show that the position of the State had not been completely carried by the Concordat of Worms.

As soon as Calixtus received official information of the concordat which the genius of his legate, Lambert of Ostia, had been chiefly instrumental in bringing out, he caused the agreement to be everywhere published throughout the nations and peoples, and wrote to congratulate Henry on his having at length submitted to the Church. He assured him that his conduct and his relationship to him would make him cherish both the empire and himself with an ever increasing affection. By their union they must confer as much benefit on the faithful of Europe as their previous, discord had brought injury.

In the letter just quoted Calixtus speaks of the near approach of a council which he had summoned before the holding of the diet of Worms, no doubt with the intention either of confirming what should be done there, or of even  more solemnly reaffirming the sentence passed against Henry by the council of Rheims.

In the middle of Lent (March 18, 1123) was opened the council which is reckoned the ninth ecumenical council, or the first general council of the Lateran. We are told that most of the prelates of Europe were present; nor need we doubt the assertion, since it appears that some three hundred bishops and over six hundred abbots, nine hundred and ninety-seven prelates in all, assisted at it. The most important work of the council consisted in the confirming of the concordat of Worms, and in the absolving of the emperor from the excommunication decreed against him by the council of Rheims.

The council also issued a number of disciplinary decrees. We have the usual ones against simony and the marriage of the higher clergy. But now, for the first time, such marriages were declared null and void. The ordinations held by the antipope Bourdin, after he had been condemned by the Roman Church, were declared null and void. Those who had taken the cross to fight the infidel in Palestine or in Spain, and had not yet fulfilled their vows, were ordered to do so at once. With the consent of the prefect, certain mal-practices of the Porticani, the inhabitants of the quarter of the colonnade of St. Peter, were ordered to be put an end to. And no doubt also with special reference to Rome it was forbidden to fortify churches, and to snatch votive offerings from altars. Utterers of false coin were declared excommunicated, as oppressors of the poor, and disturbers of the public peace; and so also were those who put fresh imposts and tolls on merchants. The observance of the Truce of God was still further insisted on. Several canons restricted the parochial action of monks, and defined more exactly their relations with their episcopal ordinaries.

Among the many causes that were brought to a satisfactory termination by the council, some of which will be mentioned later, was the canonization of Conrad, bishop of Constance. The 

Not content that notice of the work of reform begun by St. Leo IX, promoted most especially by Gregory VII, and fixed by himself, should be committed only to parchment, Calixtus employed the art of the time, such as it was, to commemorate the history of the fifty years’ struggle. Not only did he cause the text of the concordat to be painted on the walls of a hall adjacent to his chapel of St. Nicholas of Bari, but built the said chapel, perhaps on the site of the oratory of St. Cesarius, in the vestiarium of the Lateran Palace, as a kind of memorial of the great investiture quarrel. The decoration of the new chapel was begun by Calixtus II, but seems to have been finished by the antipope Anacletus II. That portion of it which occupied the apse showed two rows of figures. The upper row filled the conch of the apse. Its centre was occupied by a crowned figure of our Lady seated on a throne, grasping a cross with one hand, and with the other holding her divine child on her lap. Close to her throne on each side are angels with torches. Further away on her right is an erect figure of Pope St. Sylvester, wearing a tiara, and on her left another erect figure of a Pope without a tiara, which the existing copies of the original designate as St. Anastasius I, but which seems to have been meant for St. Anacletus I. Grasping the feet of our Lady are two kneeling Popes, both represented with square nimbuses. The one on her right is Pope Calixtus II himself, and the one on her left is, in our copies, like the erect Pope near him, set down as a Pope Anastasius (viz. Anastasius IV., 1153-1154), but it is probably the antipope Anacletus II. Immediately below our Lady is the inscription : “Presidet aethereis pia virgo Maria choreis—Above the heavenly choirs sits Mary, pious maid”. And below the figures on her right and left run the following lines, according to the copy made of them by Pietro Sabino at the close of the fifteenth century:—

Calixtus first this temple wholly raised

Of Gallic noble blood, renowned far.

With joy Callistus, trusting papal power,

This work adorned, and many ways bedecked.

Now it is certain that there is something wrong with the third verse as it now stands. Not only is the spelling Callistus not the spelling of the twelfth century, but the laws of leonine verse require that we should read “Calixtus letus” to rhyme with “fretus”. Other antiquaries who copied this inscription in the beginning of the seventeenth century began the third line with “Verum Anastasius”; and it is possible that the remains of letters exhibited by a MS. preserved at Windsor may designate “Praesul Anastasius”. But those readings are worse than that of Sabino. If, however, we suppose the said verse begins: “Praesul Anacletus” (Pope Anacletus), we shall not only have a proper rhyme for “fretus”, but the four verses will harmonize among themselves, and the meaning they then present will be found to square with what we know of the history of the time. We should thus be told that the building was erected by Calixtus, but decorated by Anacletus; and considering that Calixtus died about two years after the signing of the concordat of Worms, it would seem only likely that there would not be time for him both to build and to decorate his chapel in that interval. No doubt then that, after his overthrow, the name of Anacletus was deleted, and that the archaeologists of later ages made out what they could from such traces of the letters of his name as were left. Below this inscription is a series of nine upright figures. In the centre, immediately beneath our Lady, stands the patron of the chapel, St. Nicholas of Bari. On his right are St. Leo I, Urban II, Paschal II, and Gelasius II, and on his left are St. Gregory I, Alexander II, St. Gregory VII, and Victor III.

Adjoining this chapel, Calixtus also built an audience chamber, and adorned it also with frescoes relating to the investiture quarrel, which were no doubt admired by his contemporaries, but which were thought “most abominable” by the sixteenth and seventeenth century men who have left us notices of them, and who had gazed upon the wondrous pictorial creations of the Renaissance in all their glorious freshness. One of the pictures showed Alexander II and his cardinals treading underfoot the antipope Cadalous, with the inscription : “Regnat Alexander, Cadolus cadit et superatur”. Another depicted Guibert of Ravenna being treated in the same way by Gregory VII, Victor III, and Urban II: “Gregorius, Victor, Urbanus cathedram tenuerunt; Gibertus cum suis tandem destructi fuerunt”. A third represented Albert, Maginulf, and Theodoric beneath the feet of Paschal; and a fourth Calixtus II triumphing over Bourdin, as we have already noted.

Though it be granted that the provisions of the concordat of Worms, especially in the matter of freedom of elections, were far from being always observed by the emperors, they were nevertheless fraught with the most important results in the Church and in the State. Whatever, hereafter, might be the practice in individual cases, a canon of right and wrong had been set up by general agreement which caused any interference with freedom of election to be branded as an illegal act, and principles had been proclaimed which at once put in the wrong anyone attempting to practice investiture.

The investiture quarrel and its just termination spelt death to absolutism in the State as well as in the Church. The successful manner in which the princes, those of Saxony especially, had resisted the arbitrary will of the powerful Franconian emperors, rendered it for ever impossible for the Teutonic Cesar to lord it over free Germans. The independence of the various German races and the different local dynasties was secured, and has in the main remained intact to this day. If the imperial authority maintained German unity, the local governments were the safeguard of personal freedom.

To the Church and the Papacy the concordat brought many advantages. Freedom of election was guaranteed not only to the members of the Church, but also to its Head. The emperor could never for the future claim a right of interference with the election of a Pope, when it had been declared illegal for him to interfere with the election of the most insignificant abbot in the empire. By giving up investiture with the ring and crosier, the emperors acknowledged that they had no share whatever in the imparting of that spiritual power by which alone a bishop is constituted. Finally, the concordat brought to the Church at large, and to the distracted Church in Germany in particular, a measure of peace. For a brief space there was a much needed truce between the empire and the Papacy, between the temporal and the spiritual powers. It is indeed with these powers living side by side as it is with the higher and lower natures of a man. There can never be enduring peace between them; and the history of the Popes and the Hohenstaufens will show the empire and the Papacy soon again in dire conflict.

Meanwhile, with the details and results of the investiture quarrel now before his mind, there is no one, we venture to think, who can call in question the conclusion of Montalembert: “No man, therefore, who has the smallest knowledge of history can fail to see in Rome the sanctuary of spiritual freedom, the bulwark of human dignity, and the hearth where burned the inextinguishable flame of truth”. And if we allow that “the time was approaching when abuses as well as benefits were to spring from Rome”, we may boldly assert with a non-Catholic writer that “the papal plenitude of dominion over the Western world . . . often degenerated into a tyranny; but that tyranny, even when carried to its greatest excess, was free from the most formidable of those dangers to religion which would have attended the unqualified subjection of the Church and her discipline to secular authority, against which Rome contended in the great battle of half a century, which has been now described”.

Now assured of peace with the empire, Calixtus  employed the freedom thus acquired in making his authority respected at Rome. “For the preservation of peace”, he ordered the complete destruction of a number of towers in the city. One of them belonged to a certain Domna Bona, seemingly “the wife of John Frangipane (the son of Cencius), the sister of Stephen the Norman, and the mother of Cencius II, Leo, and Robert, who figure in the histories of Gelasius II and Honorius II”. The lawless barons of the Campagna also felt the weight of the just hand of Calixtus. Over and over again he led troops against them. Among other places, he took the fortresses of Maenza near Piperno, and Aquapuzza near Sermoneta, and decapitated their lordly owners for killing his governors. So successful were the energetic operations of this “son of peace”, as his biographer justly calls him, that in the city itself signs of order were visible which had not been seen for centuries. No one, whether citizen or stranger, dared to carry arms within its walls.

The last two years of the life of Calixtus were taken up with these strenuous campaigns, with another visit to the south of Italy, and with the execution of works for the beautifying or for the utility of the city. The basilica of St. Peter was the object of his special care. To protect it against the plundering habits of the lay nobility, or to save it from assault, he bought a fortress in its neighbourhood, and besides bestowing a number of endowments upon it, renewing its high altar and enriching it with silver candelabra and other gifts, he never entered it, or said Mass within its walls, without making it a present.

In his care for St. Peter’s he did not forget those who lived round about its portico, i.e., those inhabitants of the Leonine City who were known as the Porticani. By what the Pope properly described as a bad custom, it had come to pass that, if any of the Porticani died without a will, their property was seized for the benefit of the prefect of the city. One result of this was that people left the Leonine City, “so that it seemed almost a ruin”. One of the prefects, Peter, had, in the presence of Calixtus, formally renounced all claim to take advantage of this custom. The Pope had, therefore, less difficulty in complying with the petitions of the Porticani, and by a decree of July 1123 abolished the abuse for ever. The benefits conferred by Calixtus on Rome and its neighbourhood in general, and on St. Peter’s in particular, may be summed up in the words of William of Malmesbury: “In his time there were no snares laid for the traveller in the neighbourhood of Rome; no assaults on him when he arrived within the city. The offerings to St. Peter, which, through insolence, and for their lusts, the powerful used to pillage, basely injuring such preceding Popes as dared to complain, Calixtus brought back to their proper use: that is to say, for the public service of the ruler of the Holy See”.

On the Alban Hills, between Marino and Grotta Ferrata, rises the stream of the Aqua Crabra. Turning round by Morrena, it runs into the Anio, five miles from Rome. “But at the Casale di Morrena, near the railway junction, the greater part of its water is diverted and flows by a subterranean canal, under the name of the Marrana or Morrena, to Rome, . . . and falls into the Tiber near the Cloaca Maxima”. It enters the city at the ancient Porta Metrovia. It was seemingly from this source that Calixtus carried water to the Porta Lateranensis or Asinaria, a gate that was in use up to the year 1408. There he constructed a great basin for watering horses and a number of water-mills; and there, too, all round about where they could be benefited by the water, he planted both vines and fruit trees.

Unfortunately, however, just “when the days of Augustus were returning”, Calixtus was seized with the Roman fever. After receiving the last sacraments, “the father of peace, in company with peace herself, left us all desolate” (December 13, 1124).

He was laid to rest in the south transept of the Lateran basilica, near Paschal II, apparently on the day of his death, viz., on the feast of St. Lucy (December 13).

A few months after the body of Calixtus was carried to the basilica of the Lateran, that of his imperial opponent, Henry V, was conveyed to the massive cathedral of Spires. The great drama of the investiture quarrel closed, as a great tragedy always does, with the nearly simultaneous deaths of those who took leading parts in it. With the childless Henry V the great house of Franconia came to an end. But the duel between the Papacy and the empire was not over. After a brief breathing space it was to be violently resumed, and was to be continued for a hundred years (1150-1268) by men greater even than those under whom it had been begun. The Hohenstaufens, Frederic I, Barbarossa, and Frederick II, the wonder of the world, were to be faced and vanquished by Alexander III and Innocent III, by Honorius III, by Gregory IX, and by Innocent IV.

V.

FRANCE, ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND WALES, THE NORTH OF EUROPE

The best service rendered by Calixtus either to France or England was the peace he brought about between the kings of the two countries. Though Henry had his brother Robert, duke of Normandy, in safe keeping in England, and had that unfortunate man’s duchy more or less firmly in his grip, the cause of Robert was not lost. His son William had friends not only among some of the barons of Normandy, but also in Louis of France. The young man’s claims were taken up, and soon all Normandy was ringing with the clash of arms, the burning of villages, and the groans of the poor.

After the council of Rheims, the Pope went to meet Henry at Gisors (November 1119). The magnificent king received him with the highest honours, threw himself at his feet, and paid the greatest reverence to one who was not only the chief pastor of the universal Church, but united to him by the ties of consanguinity. Calixtus, after informing Henry that at the council of Rheims he had been occupied with trying to promote a general peace, begged him to grant that peace to his enemies which they sought through the Pope’s mediation, and to restore Normandy to Robert. Pretending that Robert’s carelessness had already lost him the duchy before he took it, Henry, while refusing to restore the duchy to him, showed himself ready to come to terms with Louis of France, “because”, as he said, “I both wish to give you satisfaction in all things, and desire a general peace”. Terms were soon arranged between the two kings, and a peace was made, satisfactory not only “to the people, who had suffered so much from frequent hostilities”, but also, on various grounds, to the Pope. Peace between France and England was to a lover of peace and the poor desirable in itself. It was also a step towards peace between the Papacy and the empire, and in any case meant that one who was friendly towards him would be more at liberty to help him.

But however amenable to the wishes of the Pope Louis might be under ordinary circumstances, he soon grew impatient if anything were done which tended in any way to limit his authority. The one aim of Louis VI was to extend the power of the monarchy at its centre in the Île de France, the Orléannais, the Vexin, and Picardy. He began that systematic policy of crushing the local feudal nobility which, steadily persevered in by his successors, was to render them the most powerful absolute monarchs in Europe.

With the view of strengthening the ecclesiastical unity of France, Calixtus had confirmed the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Lyons over the metropolitans of Rouen, Tours, and Sens, which had belonged to it of old (January 5, 1121). At this period the kingdom of Burgundy, of which Lyons was the chief city, was dependent upon the empire. It had been ceded to it in 1038 by Rudolf III. king of Burgundy. Louis, therefore, was not at all satisfied that the metropolitan of Sens, whose jurisdiction extended over a large portion of the royal domains, should be subject to the influence of a primate who was sure to act in accordance with the interests of the emperor. These views he made plain to the Pope, who in consequence suspended his confirmation of the powers of the primate of Lyons, at least as far as Sens was concerned, as there does not appear to have been any difficulty with regard to the other metropolitans. This only partially satisfied Louis. He desired the definite withdrawal of Sens from the jurisdiction of Lyons, and wrote to the Pope to that effect. He told him he would sooner die, and have his whole kingdom in a blaze, than tolerate the subjection of Sens to Lyons; and he reminded him how true he had been to him, listening to neither the emperor’s entreaties nor his promises. If, he continued, the ancient primatial rights of Lyons be urged, the ancient exemption of the See of Sens can be equally put forward.

What the immediate effect of this strong letter was is not known; but the difficulty was not finally adjusted till the kingdom of Burgundy became attached to the crown of France.

After Calixtus left that country, he continued to exercise influence over it, as over other countries, by his legates. One of the most distinguished of these was the famous Jew-looking, deformed Pierleone, cardinal of S. Maria in Trastevere, a relative of the Pierleone who was afterwards the antipope Anacletus II. He was the Pope’s envoy in France, Ireland, and England, and his legatine power extended even to the Orkneys. Another was the oft-mentioned Conon, bishop of Praeneste, who made frequent journeys through France, often in company with the famous William of Champeaux, bishop of Châlons, the “column of the doctors”.

Both these men came into contact with the greatly gifted but inordinately vain and selfish Abelard. William of Champeaux, when lecturing at the cathedral school of Paris, had had his realistic doctrines upset by his pupil Abelard, and the cardinal had to decide concerning his orthodoxy at the council of Soissons (spring 1121?). He was accused of refining away altogether the distinctions between the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, and was finally made to burn with his own hands his Introductio in theologiam, as teaching Sabellianism. It is unfortunate that the details of this synod are only known to us from a letter of Abelard himself. However, Otto of Frising allows that he was condemned without a hearing, as all knew his masterly skill in debate.

As Abelard does not appear to have had any personal relations with Calixtus, we shall pass on to that Pontiff’s dealings with England.

England.

Not only did our country at once acknowledge Calixtus as the legitimate successor of St. Peter, but, as we have just  seen, the Anglo-Norman historian, Ordericus Vitalis, put into the mouth of Henry I the declaration that he wished to give the Pope satisfaction in all things. Yet, in fact, he would neither restore Normandy nor liberty to his brother Robert at the Pope’s request, nor would he at first allow the archbishop of York to return to England. Even when the joint exertions of the Pope and of Thurstan himself secured the accomplishment of the last-named point (1121), the question of the independence of the archdiocese of York was far from being settled. The Pope indeed gave Thurstan the pallium, confirmed his metropolitan rights, and ordered his suffragans, including the bishops of Scotland, to obey him as their archbishop. But the archbishop of Canterbury had no mind to give up the primacy, which he believed had been conferred upon his see by Pope Gregory the Great, and which the monks of Canterbury assured him had been confirmed by Pope after Pope, as papal privileges in their archives showed. He induced1 the king to summon Thurstan (August 1121) to a council to be held at Michaelmas.

He had previously written a very long expostulatory letter to the Pope. He had pointed out that from the days of Pope Gregory the Great the Apostolic See had been ever bestowing dignities on the Church of Canterbury, as it in turn (except in the case of a “certain Stigand”) had ever offered obedience to the Apostolic See. As a result, what Rome was to Canterbury, Canterbury became “to the whole of Britain”. It was the ambition of the archbishops of York to overthrow the primacy which Rome had given to Canterbury. Ralph then gives a summary of the history of the Church in England drawn from the History of Bede, in which he strove to prove that the primacy given by Gregory I to Canterbury had in fact been exercised by that see up to the Norman Conquest. Reminding Calixtus that the Popes engaged not to act against the decrees of their predecessors, he declared that in exacting submission from the archbishop of York he was not disobedient. Canterbury had received this homage “for many thousands of days, not against the will of Peter, but with it and under it”. He did not, be said, desire what was not his, but the Church of York had ever yielded canonical subjection to the See of Canterbury. In conclusion, he besought the Pope, if he thought it well, to send to England some of his cardinals and of the bishops of France to examine his claims and those of York on the spot. “Again and again we call on your majesty not in these last days to despise the good faith of the Church of Canterbury and its devoted obedience towards the supreme and first see of Blessed Peter”. No doubt the mission of Cardinal Pierleone to England, which, as we have already noted, Henry contrived to render futile, was in connection with this dispute about the primatial rights of Canterbury.

But if Henry could by force or guile prevent the Pope from settling the difference in the way he wanted, he was unable to work his own will in the matter. When in due course Thurstan presented himself before him and his council at Michaelmas (1121), he simply assured the king that if he had refused his profession to Canterbury “before he was formally exempted from it by the Pope, he was less likely to submit afterwards”. He then presented to the king the privilege of Pope Calixtus. That put an abrupt term to the discussion, and Thurstan returned to his diocese.

The death of Ralph, which took place soon after (October 20, 1122), did not improve the position of Thurstan. The king, too, was annoyed that without his consent the archbishop had received the papal summons to the Lateran council, and had signified his intention to obey it. However, on this matter, Henry’s vexation was short-lived, and when, after a stormy debate between the bishops on the one hand, and the nobles and the monks of Canterbury on the other, the monks were practically forced to elect a secular clerk, William of Corbeil, and not a monk, Henry turned to Thurstan for his opinion on the man thus selected (February 1123). The archbishop praised both his learning and his virtue, and signified his readiness to consecrate him. His proffered services, however, were declined, unless he would consecrate him “as primate of all England”.

This, needless to say, Thurstan would not do, but pressed the king for leave to betake himself to the Lateran council. But Henry requested him as a favour to wait till William was ready to go for the pallium, promising to explain his absence to Rome. When the two archbishops arrived in Rome, the election of William was regarded as uncanonical, and had it not been for the generous intercession of Thurstan, it would have been rejected by the Pope.

Though it was through the good-will of Thurstan that William received his pallium from Calixtus, that fact did not prevent his party from striving by argument, and, according to Hugh, even by bribery, to obtain the withdrawal of the privilege in favour of Thurstan. But as there was question of the examination of the ancient papal privileges which both parties professed to have at home, the dispute between the rival archbishops could not be then and there settled. Both William and Thurstan returned to England with papal letters. William was recommended to his suffragans, and kindly treatment was asked for Thurstan from the king and from William of Canterbury.

To settle this primacy quarrel and other matters, Calixtus next year (1124) sent the cardinal-priest, John of Crema, as his legate to England. But before John landed in England, Calixtus died. His successor, Honorius II, in due course confirmed John’s mission, concerning which it must suffice to note here that it left the primacy question precisely where it was before.

Scotland.

The steady growth of the feeling of nationality in Europe during this period was, as we have already seen, everywhere causing difficulties in the matter of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Rulers of one nation were loth to have their subjects under the ecclesiastical control of bishops who owned allegiance to a neighbouring and often hostile potentate.

On the grounds of the letter of St. Gregory I to St. Augustine, committing to him all the bishops of Britain, and the jurisdiction over the south of Scotland formerly exercised by Northumbrian bishops, the archbishop of York, somewhere about the year 1072, put forward a claim to supremacy over the bishops of Scotland. His pretensions were favoured by the Popes. Paschal II wrote to the bishops of Scotland, bidding them show due obedience to the archbishop of York. But the Scottish bishops very frequently called in question the claims of the Anglo-Norman prelate; and when, to avoid vexatious delays, Turgot was consecrated by Thomas II of York bishop of St. Andrews, “in which is the see of the primate of the whole nation of the Scots”, it was on the understanding that the consecration was not to prejudge the rights of either see.

With the favor he had found in the eyes of Calixtus, Archbishop Thurstan had no difficulty in obtaining his support against the efforts of the Scotch bishops to obtain freedom. The bishops of Durham, the Orkneys, Glasgow, and Scotland, suffragans of York, were ordered to obey its archbishop (1119). Sure, however, of the support of King Alexander I, John, bishop of Glasgow, who had been consecrated by Pope Paschal II, refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of York. Letters of Calixtus (1122) to the king, to John, and the other bishops of Scotland, were ignored, as also were those of Honorius II, Innocent II, and Hadrian IV.

The question was complicated by claims of the arch­bishop of Hamburg-Bremen, and of the archbishop of Canterbury. The former asserted his supremacy over the Orkneys in virtue of his succession from St. Ansgar, the apostle of Scandinavia, and hence of Norway, to which those islands belonged. The archbishop of Canterbury claimed to be the spiritual superior of the Orkneys and of York alike. During the hundred years that the dispute lasted, the different parties did not lose any opportunity of pushing their claims at Rome. Hugh the Chantor tells us how Thurstan used one against the recalcitrant John of Glasgow. Meeting him in Rome in 1125 in the train of William of Corbeil, Thurstan complained to Honorius II of his failure to comply with the commands of Paschal and Calixtus about rendering canonical obedience to the See of York. John, however, pointed out to the Pope that he had not been summoned to Rome on this matter, but had come as an envoy of the king of Scotland, and contrived to arrange for the hearing of the case on another occasion. At the same time, Honorius reminded him that "he had not absolved him from the obligations which Pope Calixtus had imposed upon him.

The struggle of the Scottish kings and bishops for immunity from the jurisdiction of an English bishop continued till the reign of King William. This monarch contrived to free Scotland from all dependence on England, whether spiritual or temporal. By gold he induced Richard Coeur-de-Lion to renounce all pretensions to political supremacy over Scotland, and by the bull, Cum universi, of March 13, 1188, which he procured from Clement III, the ecclesiastical controversy of a century was settled. The Pope decreed that the Church in Scotland was henceforth to be subject directly to the Holy See. Only the Pope or his legate a latere was to pronounce any sentence of interdict or excommunication in Scotland, and only a subject of the Scottish kingdom or a special delegate from the Apostolic See was to exercise the functions of legate in Scotland. Questions regarding the property of the Church were to be settled within the kingdom, saving in the case of an appeal to Rome. Clement’s bull, which was confirmed by Innocent III (1208) and Honorius III (1218), definitely freed the Church in Scotland from all further interference by the bishops of this country.

Wales.

The canonical supremacy which the archbishops of York failed at this period to make good over the bishops of Scotland was successfully established over the bishops of Wales by the archbishops of Canterbury, supported, for political reasons, by the English kings. Urban, though probably a Welshman, was not elected, like his predecessors, by the Welsh princes, but by Norman nomination, and 'was consecrated to Llandaff at Canterbury, A.D. 1107, and professed canonical obedience to that see. In the first year of his reign (October 1119), Calixtus received a pitiful letter from Bishop Urban. It was addressed “to the patron of all Christendom”, and was dispatched in the name “of the Church of God and ours, which is under God and you”. It reminded the Pope that the Church of Llandaff, founded in honour of St. Peter, had been the head of all the other churches of Wales, but was now, by the invasion of the Normans and other causes, fallen from its former high state. Assuring Calixtus that during the days both of the British Church and of the Anglo-Saxon Church, the bishops of Llandaff had been faithful both to the archbishop of Canterbury and to the king of the English, he begged his protection against the oppressors of his see, amongst whom he had to include the bishops of Hereford and St. David’s.

Hearkening to Urban’s petition, Calixtus took his see under the protection of the Apostolic See, and addressed letters in his favour to the archbishop of Canterbury and others. But Urban’s troubles were not to be settled so easily. His episcopal opponents were not to be put down. In 1128 he went to Rome in person to seek the aid of Honorius II. This he obtained, and King Henry caused the apostolic mandates in his favour to be put into execution. Still the numerous letters of Honorius on his behalf, and the exertions of the king of England in his interests, did not secure Urban’s position. Counter-claims were set up against him by the See of St. David. Nevertheless, Innocent II took up the cause of the struggling bishop, which was only ended by his death in 1134, on the occasion of a fresh journey to Rome to prosecute his appeal.

Northern Europe.

The Popes of the early part of the twelfth century were in frequent communication even with the most northerly countries of Europe. We have records to show that not only did distinguished Icelanders go on pilgrimage to Rome at this period, but that they received from Paschal the first bishop of their northern See of Holar in Sheltiedale. We are indebted to the entertaining saga of this prelate (Joans Saga) for very interesting information regarding his career. The first important statement it contains is to the effect that “the holy John was married and had two wives, and the first one lived but a short time”. This good man was selected by Bishop Gizor of the southern Icelandic See of Skalholt to be the first incumbent of the northern see. He chose him “with the consent of all the clerks and laymen in the Northlander’s Quarter”. He was then sent for consecration to Archbishop Auzor, archbishop of Lund, to whom Paschal had sent the pallium. “But”, exclaimed Auzor, “because thou hast had two wives, I dare not consecrate thee without the leave of the Pope”. He accordingly sent him to the Pope, who received him very well; and as he found everything about him in the letters of Gizor and the archbishop quite satisfactory,—at least so says the saga—he gave Auzor permission to consecrate him. This was duly done on April 29, 1106. John proved a truly great bishop, establishing schools and bringing to Iceland masters from Denmark and France.

As it is certain that his second wife, Waldis, was alive when he was a bishop, it would be interesting to know on what understanding Paschal agreed to his consecration.

Passing over the letter of Calixtus to the brothers Eystein and Sigurd Jorsalfarer, kings of Norway, admonishing them to accept, as bishop of the Orkneys, Ralph, who had been consecrated by the archbishop of York, we may turn our attention to the Church in Denmark.

Already, before the year 1042, Peter’s Pence had been paid by the Danes. But in Denmark, as in other countries, it was often collected carelessly or fraudulently. Pope Paschal, therefore, in 1104, found it necessary to write to Auzor, the new archbishop of Lund, of whom mention has just been made, and to the other bishops throughout the country, and to exhort them to exert themselves in order that the Roman Church might not be further defrauded of its rights.

The act of Pope Paschal which erected the See of Lund into an independent archbishopric, of which Auzor was the first incumbent, was not likely to pass unchallenged. His bull, which had made the Danish bishop a metropolitan (1104), had at once curtailed the powers of the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen and abridged the influence of the emperor. Henry took the first opportunity of making representations on the subject to Pope Calixtus; and in 1123 Adalbert, the new canonically elected archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, went to Rome in person to ask for the pallium, and to plead for the rights of his see. He contended that he ought not to suffer for the negligence of his two predecessors, through whose fault it was that the pallium had been lost to his see, and transferred to that of the Danes. His eloquence and the wishes of the emperor prevailed. The pallium, with spiritual jurisdiction over the whole far North, was restored to him. But though a cardinal was sent back with him to instruct the Danish bishops to obey him as their metropolitan, and though to please his protector, the Emperor Lothaire II, Innocent II confirmed the decision of Calixtus II in behalf of Hamburg-Bremen (1133), Paschal’s settlement remained undisturbed.

VI.  

POLAND, POMERANIA, HUNGARY AND DALMATIA.

 

In the midst of all their difficulties with the empire, Paschal II and Calixtus II found time to attend to the spiritual needs of the still semi-barbarous and but half-Christian states of the east of Europe.

At the beginning of the twelfth century the destinies of the duchy of Poland were guided in a masterful way by the brave and successful but rather cruel Duke Boleslas III, Wrymouth (1102-1139). To establish more firmly the ducal succession in the legitimate branch of the family against the pretensions of his half-brother Sbigniew, he wished to espouse Zbslava, the daughter of Sviatopolk, prince of Kief (1093-1113). As, however, she was a near relative of his, it was necessary to apply to Rome for a dispensation. The case was managed for the duke by Baldwin, bishop of Cracow, who had been consecrated by Pope Paschal II himself. Putting forward the pleas of political necessity, and the crude ideas of the Christian faith yet in vogue among all classes, he obtained the Pope’s permission for the wedding. “And so”, adds the contemporary Polish chronicle assigned to Martinus Gallus, “the authority of the Roman See, as is said, sanctioned this marriage exceptionally and out of merciful consideration, but not in accordance with either canon law or custom” (1103).

Soon after the marriage of Boleslas with the Russian princess, if not indeed in connection with it, there appeared in Poland as legate of the Pope, Walo (or Galo), bishop of Beauvais. His mission was to push on in Poland the work of ecclesiastical reform which the Popes were endeavouring to effect in every country in Europe. He was received with great honour by the warlike duke. A council was held, and with the support of Boleslas, two unworthy bishops were deposed. And then, to use the significant words of the chronicler, “the apostolic envoy gave his blessing and returned to Rome, while the bellicose Boleslas went to fight his enemies”.

Among these were the Slavonic Pomeranians, who, to the north of Poland, dwelt on the shores of the Baltic, between the Oder and the Vistula. Fierce and brave, skilful fighters both on sea and land, accustomed to live by plunder, they were naturally a thorn in the side of a people at once Christian and somewhat more civilized than themselves. The continual wars between them and the more or less Christian Poles were a great hindrance to the spread of Christianity among them, as was also the fact that the Poles, when victorious, endeavoured to impose it upon them by force. But the Pomeranians were hard to conquer; and no sooner were they subdued than they rose again, and threw off at once not only the dominion of the Poles, but their religion, which they had never regarded as anything else but a badge of their subjection to the Poles.

In the wry-mouthed Boleslas III, however, they found one who was determined to be their master. After he had, with some degree of firmness, fixed his yoke on their necks, he essayed to plant his religion in their hearts. But for some time he could not get preachers, for the savage manners of his new subjects, and the tragic way in which they had terminated previous attempts to convert them, daunted the bravest. At length, about the year 1122, there arrived at his court a Spaniard, Bernard by name, who had been consecrated bishop at Rome. There he heard that the Pomeranians were still pagans, and there he was seized with the desire of “either incorporating them in the Catholic Church by faith, or of there laying down his life for Christ by martyrdom”.

When Boleslas found that, despite what he had to tell him of the difficulties and dangers of the work he had set before himself to do, Bernard was still resolved to go forward, he was overjoyed, and supplied him both with an interpreter and a guide. Arrived at Julin (now Wollin) in humble guise, poorly clad and barefoot, he began to preach with great earnestness the Word of God. But the rude Pomeranians had peculiar ideas of their own.

Unable to judge except by outward appearances, they were not impressed by the exterior of the holy missionary. Consequently, when he told them that he was a servant of the true God, the Maker of heaven and earth, they turned on him indignantly. “How”, they asked, “can it be that you are the messenger of the supreme Deity. He is glorious and all-rich, but you are miserable-looking and so poor that you have not shoes to your feet. ... The great God would never have sent us so abject an envoy. If He had wished our conversion He would have sent us a becoming minister, one worthy of His power”. They would neither hear him nor be provoked to put him to death; they simply sent him out of their country, after nearly killing him for his attempt to provoke them.

Having heard of his noble but futile effort to convert the Pomeranians, Otho, the famous bishop of Bamberg, made it a point of conversing with him on his missionary journey. As he listened to Bernard’s account, he was fired with the idea of renewing the Spaniard’s attempt. “If you go amongst these heathens, then”, said the missioner, “you must go in great state, with abundance of everything; and if they give you any presents, you must give them greater, that they may see you have come to preach the Gospel to them not for gain, but for the love of God. Have courage, then; you will bring many into the true land of promise”.

Otho determined to follow the advice which experience dictated; but first, realizing that all that is done in a house without the knowledge and consent of the master of the house is to no purpose, he understood that so arduous a work was not to be undertaken without the authority of the Roman Pontiff. He accordingly dispatched competent envoys to the apostolic Pope Calixtus, and obtained from him permission to preach the Gospel in Pomerania.

Of the work of this apostle of the Pomeranians it is not our task to speak. Suffice it to note that a previous residence in Poland had fitted him for the work of converting them, by giving him an opportunity of becoming conversant with their customs and language, and that in his two journeys (1124 and 1127), making much of his authority as envoy of Pope Calixtus, he met with great success. He returned to his diocese after overcoming and destroying the idols. Among the other idols which he destroyed was one that had been held in the very greatest esteem by the people, viz. the golden three-headed god Triglav. But its triple head he kept for himself, and then sent it to Pope Honorius II, with whose blessing he had undertaken his second journey, as an earnest of the conversion of the Slavs : “that is, to show to the apostolic Pope and the Universal Church what, in obedience to them, he had been able to accomplish among those peoples by rooting up and planting, by building and destroying.

The good bishop continued to watch over the new church till his death. He provided for its ecclesiastical organization by establishing a bishopric at Julin (Wollin) in 1139, which was placed by Innocent II under the immediate jurisdiction of the Holy See (1140). After the destruction of Julin by the Danes, the see was transferred to Camin (1188).

Whilst Boleslas III of Poland was in constant, if generally in hostile, touch with Hungary, the records of the age that have reached us do not appear to connect in any way closely with it the name of his correspondent, Pope Calixtus II. In all the letters of that Pontiff which have reached us the name of Hungary would seem only to figure once. When renewing the privileges of the famous monastery of St. Giles in Provence, he confirmed to it the abbey of St. Giles in Sümeg, to the north-west of Lake Balaton in Hungary, an abbey which paid the Holy See a tax of two ounces of gold.

The immediate predecessors, however, of Calixtus were often in communication with the rulers of Hungary. In 1095 one of Hungary’s greater sovereigns came to the throne in the person of Coloman the Bookish, or the Learned. Fortunately for Hungary, he was not merely a student; he was a soldier also. And he needed his military capacity to control the first undisciplined hordes of Crusaders, the leadership of whom had been offered to his predecessor St. Ladislaus, and who roamed through his territories to the Holy Land, plundering and fighting as they went along.

The character of Coloman, and the civilizing influence exercised over the rising kingdom of Hungary by the supreme Pontiffs, may, to some extent, be gauged from the following letter addressed by Urban II (1096) to its sovereign, “the magnificent king of the Hungarians”. After assuring him that he had heard of his accession with joy, he added : “Our venerable son Odilo, abbot of St. Giles, has told me that, besides the secular knowledge in which you excel, you are well trained in sacred learning, and, what is of the first importance in a ruler, that you are skilled in canon law. Hence it becomes you, dearest son in Christ, to have a greater care of your own salvation and that of the people entrusted to you than your predecessors have had. To whom much is given, from him will much be required”. He bade him raise the glorious standard of the Catholic faith which will bring victory and glory to his banners, and, mindful of the example of King Stephen, “the first of his race to receive the faith from the Holy Roman and Apostolic Church”, to obey SS. Peter and Paul, and to show their Church that submissive honour which was tendered to it by him. He went on to warn his correspondent against the antipope Guibert, and to show him to what misery Henry, the author of the existing schismatical troubles, had been reduced. “His most intimate friends, men whom he loved as his own soul, nay, even his own son, have turned against him on account of his abominations, and separated themselves from him”. In the midst of the stormy times caused by Henry and his antipope, the kingdom of Hungary has for a while, continued the Pope, ceased to obey the Apostolic See, but, as he believed, divine providence had raised Coloman to the throne to take away the veil from the eyes of his people. In conclusion, the Pope begged him to let him know whether he would agree to papal legates being sent to him.

Negotiations between Coloman and the Holy See must  have proceeded satisfactorily; for at the council of Guastalla (1106) he gave up the right of investiture, “as he wished to submit to the divine law, and, according to it, to obey the Pope”. Moreover, at a council which was held at Gran (Strigonium) in 1114, many decrees were passed in the spirit of the Gregorian reform. The king was to be asked to ordain that judgments concerning clerics and all church matters should be based upon canon law, and while, “from regard to human weakness”, such priests as had been married before receiving orders might keep their wives, those who had not married before being ordained were forbidden to marry. Simony was also forbidden, and a great many decrees were passed which were eminently calculated to advance the interests of public morality, order, and decency.

King Coloman, as we have said, was a soldier as well as a scholar, and used his military talents in consolidating the conquests which his predecessors had made towards the West. Not only did he so subdue Croatia that it henceforth remained incorporated in the Hungarian empire, but, despite the opposition of the Venetians, rendered himself master of much the greater part of Dalmatia. In 1102 he had been crowned king of Croatia and Dalmatia at Belgrade (Zaravecchia), and by 1105 he was really, as he styled himself, king of Hungary, Dalmatia, and Croatia.

After he had established his power in Dalmatia (1105), Coloman would appear to have been suspicious of any influence, even of a spiritual order, exercised therein other than his own. From a strikingly vigorous letter of Pope Paschal to an archbishop of Spalato, it seems that the Hungarian monarch had objected to that prelate’s taking the usual oath of obedience tendered to the Pope by bishops when they received the pallium from Rome.

“You have informed me, dearest brother”, wrote the Pope, probably to Archbishop Manasses, about 1113, “that the king and his nobles are astonished that the pallium was offered you by my envoys on condition that you took the oath which I had prescribed. By the pallium, my brother, is conceded the fullness of pontifical authority, seeing that, in accordance with the custom of the Apostolic See and the universal Church, metropolitans may not consecrate bishops nor hold synods until they have received it. The same persons would, I suppose, be astonished at the action of our Lord Jesus Christ. For in entrusting the care of all His sheep to Simon Peter, He did so on a condition, when He said, 'Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? ... Feed my sheep' (St. John xxi. 17). If the Lord of our consciences imposed such a condition ... how dare we entrust so great a number of Christ’s sheep to brothers whose consciences we cannot see, to such as we do not even know by intercourse, and of whose love we are entirely ignorant?

“It is further urged that all oath-taking has been forbidden by our Lord in the Gospel, and that such an oath is not found to have been prescribed by the apostles or by the councils. But what is that which our Lord went on to say— that which is over and above these (viz., yea and no) is of evil (S. Matthew v. 37)? That we should exact this over and above is required of us by that very evil. Is it not an evil to withdraw from the unity of the Church, and from the obedience of the Apostolic See? Did not your predecessors condemn a bishop without the knowledge of the Roman Pontiff? By what canons or councils is this permitted? Why must I speak of episcopal translations, which among you are made without reference to the apostolic authority, but by the command of the king. To put an end to these and other such evils is this oath required”.

After explaining in what sense the Gospel forbids oath-taking, he continued:—

“They contend that this oath is not found to have been ordered by councils, as though any councils could impose laws on the Roman Church, since all councils have been held by the authority of the Roman Church, and from it have received all their authority. And, what is more, that authority has been plainly acknowledged in their decrees ... Does, then, the fact, that the king and his magnates have decreed that you should decline the aforesaid oath, seem to you to be a decision of the Gospel? Does not the honour of our primacy seem of the first importance? Have you forgotten the word of our Lord that the disciple is not above his master (S. Matthew x. 24)? Was it to the king of Hungary that our Lord said : And thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren (S. Luke XXII. 32)? ... They may raise up their heel against the Apostolic See, but the privilege given to it by God when it was said to Peter, 'Thou art Peter' etc., cannot be diminished. ... Since, then, you ask of the Apostolic See the insignia of your dignity which are taken from the body of Blessed Peter, it is fitting that you should show due signs of subjection to it”. He concludes this remarkable assertion of papal rights by assuring the Dalmatian archbishop that he is requiring nothing from him which he does not exact from the metropolitans of the Saxons, Danes, and all the others.

According to Gams, Manasses was expelled from his see, but whether it was because he obeyed the mandates of the Apostolic See, I am wholly unable to state.

One of the maritime cities of Dalmatia which Coloman failed to subdue was the famous republic of Ragusa. In Antivari. 1120 (September 28) we find Calixtus confirming the metropolitan rights of its archbishop over “upper Dalmatia or Dioclea”.

A little sooner or a little later (1119-1124), he confirmed the metropolitical rights of its rival Albanian city, Antivari, over northern Albania, and sent the pallium to its incumbent Elias, and acknowledged his right to have his cross carried before him in Sclavonia and Dalmatia.

VII.  

THE EAST AND SPAIN.

CALIXTUS would not have been a true heir of the ideas of Gregory VII if he had failed to make an effort to reunite the Greek and Latin Churches. In 1122 his envoys made their way to Constantinople with letters for the Greek emperor, John II, Comnenus, on the subject of reunion. The Pope’s letters are lost, but the emperor’s reply to them is extant. John II, known as Kalojoannes, John the Good, was a pious, brave, and virtuous monarch, and indeed by some historians is even accounted “the most amiable character that ever occupied the Byzantine throne”. Both his own disposition and reflection on the weak and corrupt condition of the empire must have made John welcome the idea of a closer union with the vigorous West. He accordingly wrote to Calixtus, warmly approving of his efforts, and sent an envoy with instructions as to the mode of proceeding in effecting the reunion. He acknowledged that what the Pope had written about the unity of the churches was in accord with the truth, and eminently worthy of his great prudence. “For what”, he asked, “ought to be of greater moment to us Christians than the true unity of the Church? This rich fruit of peace must be earnestly sought by all who obey the laws of God”. The wicked are ever striving to rend the divine seamless vesture, but our Saviour will bring their designs to naught. Expressing his approval of what the Pope had done, the emperor went on to say that he had instructed his envoy to inform him as to the manner in which the reunion should be brought about. Finally, after pleading his Eastern campaigns as the cause of his delay in replying to the Pope’s overtures, he concluded with an enumeration of the presents, vestments, etc., which he had forwarded to him (June 1124).

The negotiations so auspiciously opened under Calixtus were continued under Honorius II. Unfortunately, most of the correspondence which passed between Rome and Constantinople has been lost. However, there has been preserved another letter “to the most holy Pope” from “John, faithful to God in Christ, Emperor, born in the purple, King, High, Mighty. Augustus, Autocrator of the Romans, Comnenus”. This document would seem to show that things were moving favourably for Rome, as the emperor’s letter opens with an acknowledgment of the division of the two powers, the spiritual and the temporal. The former he declared was given by Christ to His disciples, and by it His ministers bind and loose in accordance with the divine will; the latter, the power of this world, is Caesar’s. United, these two powers work for man’s good; divided, they cause the greatest mischief to him. What he has learnt from the Pope’s envoys has shown him that he is striving to make the two powers work in harmony. He himself thinks with the Pope, who must complete what he has so well begun. If God would only bring about the corporate reunion of the churches, it would be the greatest benefit of the divine goodness.

From whatever reason, whether because the emperor was insincere, or the difficulties in his way were insurmountable, negotiations did not lead to much else except further negotiations. The Emperor Lothaire took up the task of furthering the projected reunion (1135-1136), and his envoy Anselm, bishop of Havelberg, held a theological discussion with the archbishop of Nicomedia (April 10, 1136). In the following year, when Honorius was in Calabria, there reached him an embassy from the Greek emperor, to which was attached “a certain philosopher”, one of those fanatics who have ever ruined all attempts to reunite the Greeks and the Latins. We are told that in the very presence of Lothaire he began “to snap and to bark at the Holy Roman and Apostolic See and the whole Western Church, declaring that the Roman Pontiff was an emperor and not a bishop, that the Roman clergy were all excommunicated and were Azymites”. The Westerns, he continued, take after their bishops, who, like Pope Innocent II, distribute money, collect soldiers, and clothe themselves in purple. To attempt to discuss reunion with men of the stamp of this philosopher was out of the question; and it may be assumed that the opposition which Innocent II had to offer to John’s designs on Antioch and other towns in the hands of the Crusaders brought to a close another abortive and little known attempt to reunite the Greek and Latin Churches (1138).

A thirteenth-century chronicle, while giving an account, more or less mythical, of one “John, patriarch of the Indies”, furnishes a curious addition to our knowledge of this attempt at reunion. Professing to quote “from the records of Calixtus”, its author relates that in the fourth year of that Pope there arrived at Constantinople, after a journey of a whole year, the patriarch of that part of India which forms the end of the world (1122). He had come, we are told, for the pallium, and he found at the imperial city envoys whom “Calixtus had sent to promote concord between the Romans and the Greek emperor”. Learning from these envoys “that Rome was the head of the whole world”, he returned with them to Rome. There, in reply to questions put to him by the Pope and his cardinals, he said that the name of the city whence he had come was Ulna (or Ultima, according to another reading), “the capital and ruling city of the whole kingdom of India”. It had a circumference of four days’ journey, and two Roman chariots could run abreast along its walls, which were so high that even the towers of Rome looked small beside them. Phison, one of the rivers of paradise, flowed through it, most limpid, and yielding gold and gems. It was inhabited by most faithful Christian people. Not far from the city, on a mountain surrounded by a deep lake, was the mother church of St. Thomas the Apostle. Round the lake were monasteries of the twelve apostles. In the ciborium of the church, in a silver case (concha), suspended by silver chains, was the body of the apostle whole and entire, which, according to John, did the most extraordinary things during Mass.

Though there is much in this narrative that is mythical and that foreshadows the wondrous stories of Prester John which were to excite the interest of Europe from this century to the close of the Middle Ages, it has incidentally preserved a grain of truth.

Following in the footsteps of Paschal II, Calixtus not only confirmed the order of the Hospitallers, but endeavoured, by recommending their agent to the faithful Eur0pe, t0 obtain financial assistance for them.

But he took a greater interest in the new kingdom of Jerusalem than that of confirming an Order which was indeed to be of the greatest advantage to it, or of sending the pallium to its patriarch, Guarmond.

In the beginning of his reign Baldwin II, king of Jerusalem (1118-1131), gained some successes in different parts of his dominions; but in 1123 he was taken prisoner by Balak, the sultan of Aleppo. The provisional government then set up, despite the display of a great deal of energy on the part of its chief, Count Eustace of Sidon, feeling that its hold on Syria was becoming very feeble, turned to the West (1123). They sent envoys both to Pope Calixtus and to the doge of Venice, Domenigo Michieli, begging their immediate help. Unable himself to offer any effectual assistance, the Pope at once sent ambassadors to Venice to implore the Venetians by their common faith to go to the help of the distressed Christians of the East. Moved by the joint appeal of the Latin princes and of the Pope, the doge, “ a thorough Catholic, bold, and full of days”, and the chief nobility of Venice “with great devotion” took the cross. Under the banner of Blessed Peter, which Calixtus had sent them, the Venetians sailed to the East with a great fleet. Their arrival changed the situation. Moslem fleets were destroyed, and the famous city of Tyre captured (July 1124), of which the Venetians, who were always on the look-out for commercial advantages, received one-third. From this time till the death of Baldwin II, the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem enjoyed a large measure both of peace and prosperity.

Spain.

With his mind full of the needs of the Christians in the East, Calixtus could not forget those others nearer home who were fighting against the same terrible foes of Christianity. Like Paschal, he gave the same encouragement to those who fought against the infidels in Spain as to those who made the Holy Land their battle-ground against them. Addressing an encyclical to all bishops, kings, counts, and princes, and to all the faithful, he reminded them of the sufferings of the Spanish Church at the hands of the unbeliever, and exhorted them to hasten to the aid of their afflicted brethren. In virtue of his apostolic authority and of the power given him by God, he granted the same remission of sins to the Spanish Crusaders as to the defenders of the Church in the East. Because he could not be with the crusading army in person, as he wished, he sent it, he said, as his legate, the archbishop of Tarragona, to whom all questions were to be referred.

The sympathetic appeals of the Popes in its behalf greatly helped the Spanish cause. Pope Gelasius had shown such interest in it that, when he went to France, it was rumoured that he intended to proceed to Spain.

Calixtus was not behind his immediate predecessors in his interest in both the spiritual and temporal concerns of the Peninsula. He showed himself a great friend to the famous bishop, Diego Gelmirez, who utilized the good-will of the Pope to get for his See of Compostela the metropolitical privileges which had formerly belonged to the See of Braga or of Merida. His great plea was that the bishops of all the other apostolic sees were metropolitans. And, if we are to believe the authors of the Historia Compostellana, the chief means he used to obtain the recognition of his plea was gold, at times sacrilegiously taken from the shrine of St. James, and shamelessly distributed among the members of the Roman Curia.

But before Gelmirez could obtain the archbishopric which he panted, he had many obstacles to overcome, The primate of Spain, Bernard, archbishop of Toledo and of papal legate, not unnaturally opposed his ambitious aspirations. Alfonso I, king of Aragon, was his bitter enemy on account of the support which he gave to his wife Urraca, from whom he was separated, and endeavoured to prevent any of his agents from finding their way to the Popes when they were in France. Hence we are told of Diego’s envoys, even bishops, journeying through Aragon as beggars, and feigning to be afflicted with blindness, lameness, or paralysis. In fine, many of the Roman Curia were not too favourably disposed towards him. Their opposition is ascribed by Diego’s purblind admirers to unsatisfied avarice, or to an absurd fear which the bishop’s panegyrists imagined them to have lest Compostela should become the rival of Rome itself.

Calixtus II was not a man to be frightened by a bogey, and he made no difficulty in bestowing on Diego the archiepiscopal dignity which had belonged to Merida before it fell under the yoke of the Moors. He extended his jurisdiction at the same time over the ancient archdiocese of Braga, and named him his legate in those two provinces (1120). This he did, he said, in honour of St. James the Apostle, and at the request of his nephew, King Alfonso, of Pontius, abbot of Cluny, and of Diego’s envoy.

In the following year Calixtus had again to interfere in behalf of Gelmirez. The fact of his having once been the guardian of her outraged son, Alfonso VII, and of his being the favoured friend of Calixtus II, her son’s uncle, would seem to have enraged the unnatural Queen Urraca against him. She contrived to seize him, and cast him into prison, and to possess herself of the goods of his church (1121).

Calixtus at once wrote to his legate in Spain, Boso, the cardinal-priest of St. Anastasia, to bid the queen, under pain of excommunication, to set Gelmirez free, and to restore the goods of his church within forty days. The primate and the bishops of Spain were also instructed to take action in the matter. The Pope’s letter to his nephew, Alfonso VII, is interesting from many points of view. It is addressed “to his most dear nephew, the powerful and glorious king of the Spains”. “We give thanks to Almighty God, and to our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to His great mercy, has freed us from a grievous sickness, and restored us to health. We also thank Him because all the faithful in the city and without it over all Italy are humbly submissive to our will. But there is one thing which makes us most sad, and that is, that your mother, Queen Urraca, has laid sacrilegious hands on our venerable brother Diego, the archbishop of Compostela”. The king is urged, by the memory of all that his former guardian did for him when a boy, to work for his release.

Before this letter could have reached him, the young king had already taken the part of the archbishop. The people rose, and the queen was soon compelled to restore Gelmirez to freedom. But she had an insatiable thirst for money, and longed to keep the property (castella) of the Blessed James. This was the principal cause of the discord between her and the archbishop, and why most of Galicia was devastated by the scourge of war. It does not, however, come as a surprise when the panegyrists of the pertinacious archbishop inform us that it was not long before he recovered the property of his see.

Though, as we have seen, Calixtus bestowed great favours on Gelmirez, and stood by him to the last, he found that it was necessary to keep his ambition within confirmed. And so, whilst reserving to him primatial rights over the provinces of Merida and Braga, he confirmed Bernard as primate of the rest of Spain, and reasserted the privileges of Segovia and Braga.

He never ceased to take a close interest in the affairs of the Spanish Church. Not long before he died he sent to Spain a special legate a latere in the person of Cardinal Deusdedit, of whom let it suffice here to state that he was well received by Gelmirez, and became his devoted friend. Distracted as Spain was at this period by civil and foreign war, the organization of ecclesiastical jurisdiction which the Popes were able to effect during it must have had a most beneficial effect on the consolidation of Spanish power. But however this may be, their action certainly increased their own influence in the Peninsula. The admirers of Gelmirez who wrote the Historia Compostellana assure us in one place that, up to his time, his predecessors had all been as much fighting men as bishops, so much so that they had been described as at once crosiers and catapults. And when he became bishop “almost all Spain was rude and illiterate. None of the Spanish bishops at that time paid any due regard or obedience to our Mother, the Holy Roman Church. Spain received the law of Toledo, not that of Rome. But after King Alfonso (VI) of happy memory imposed the Roman law and Roman customs on Spain, then, as though the cloud of ignorance had been rolled away, the glory of Holy Church began to shine in Spain”.

When due allowance has been made for the intention of his panegyrists to glorify Gelmirez, and to proclaim his loyalty to the See of Rome, enough remains of their evidence to show that about his time papal influence grew considerably in Spain.

The ambition of Gelmirez and his relations with the Apostolic See did not expire in 1124; but in that year died Pope Calixtus, “distinguished for his prudence, humility, chastity, and other moral virtues”. Further notices of the intercourse with Rome of the bishop of Compostela will be found in the biographies of Honorius II and Innocent II.

From what we have now written of the Life of Calixtus, the friend of the rich and the father of the poor, and from the unanimous verdict of his contemporaries, we cannot be far wide of the truth if we conclude with Ordericus that he “was the brightest light and the best model of virtues the Church had in our times”.

 

HONORIUS II

A.D. 1124-1130.

 

CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS.

Emperors of the West:  Henry V, 1106-1125. Lothaire II, 1125-1138.

Emperor of the East: John II  (Comnenus), 1118-1143.

King of France : Louis VI, 1108-1137.

King of England : Henry I, 1100-1135.  

I. 

LAMBERT OF FIAGNANO BECOMES POPE HONORIUS II

 

On the death of Calixtus the illegal interference of the nobility in papal elections again caused trouble. At the moment the two great factions in Rome were the Frangipani and the Pierleoni, the one dominating the region of the Colisseum, with their Turris Chartularia, and the other the district in the neighbourhood of the Island of the Tiber, with their fortress-theatre of Marcellus. By general agreement it was arranged between all the cardinals of the curia and the nobility, that, in accordance with the canons, the election of a successor to Calixtus should not take place till the third day after his death. On the side of the nobles the chief agents were the rich and powerful Pierleone I (fii28), the father of Cardinal Pierleone II, who was to be the antipope Anacletus, and Leo Frangipane, the brother of Robert Frangipane and of that Cencius who had outraged Gelasius II. Leo Frangipane had promoted this understanding in order that he might have the longer time to work for the election of the distinguished diplomatist of the concordat of Worms, Cardinal Lambert, bishop of Ostia. Feeling that a difficult task was in front of him, as it was widely known that the people desired Saxo, cardinal of St. Stephen’s, Leo feigned to have the same desire himself. At the same time, to secure the presence of all the cardinals, and so ensure a valid election, he is credited with having privately approached the chaplains of every one of the cardinals on the evening before the election day, and with having arranged with each of them, unknown to the others, to vest his master on the morrow with the red robe distinctive of the Popes beneath his black cloak. This he did in the expectation that, trusting to his influence to be elected Pope, each of the cardinals, unmindful of what had happened at the election of Gelasius, would boldly come to the place of election and would look to him.

Whatever truth there may be in this story, told by an ardent partisan of the antipope Anacletus, then Cardinal Pierleone (II) of St. Calixtus’, two of whose subsequent adherents were prominent at this election, all the cardinals did assemble in the chapel of the monastery of St. Pancratius. This was attached to the south of the Lateran basilica, where now stands the charming cloister of the canons.

After some discussion, on the motion of Jonathan, cardinal-deacon of SS. Cosmas and Damian, neither Cardinal Saxo nor Lambert was chosen, but the cardinal-priest of St. Anastasia’s, Theobald Buccapecu. He was duly clothed with the red cope, and took the name of Celestine. But suddenly, whilst the Te Deum was being chanted, and Cardinal Lambert was singing as loud as the rest, Robert Frangipane and his party raised the cry of “Lambert Pope!”. He was at once hurried off, seated in the so-called symae (sigmae) in front of the Church of St. Sylvester, and proclaimed Pope under the name of Honorius II (December 15).

It is fairly obvious that the party of Pierleone, by their unexpected nomination of Theobald, disconcerted the mass of the cardinals, and they were hurried into proclaiming a candidate they did not want. For, as soon as the name of Lambert was put forward, “the more respectable portion” of them, the sanior pars of the election decree of Nicholas II, immediately adhered to him.

For some days Rome was the scene of the greatest disorder and tumult; but at length Celestine’s supporters abandoned him, and Lambert was left in undisputed possession of the See of Peter. However, as he was “a lover of justice”, he was not satisfied with the manner of his election, and, before all the cardinals, resigned his position, and laid aside his mitre and mantle.

His resignation was accepted, but he was immediately re-elected. All kissed his feet, and acknowledged him “as their bishop and universal Pope” (Sunday, December 21, 1124).

According to Pandulf, Lambert was born of humble parentage in the county of Bologna, more exactly, in the insignificant hamlet of Fiagnano, near Imola. When we next hear of him, he is archdeacon of Bologna. His reputation for learning at length attracted the notice of the Pope, and he entered the service of Urban II, possibly as a member of the papal chancellary. He was made cardinal-bishop of Ostia by Paschal II (1117), and throughout all the trying pontificate of his successor, Gelasius II, remained by his side. He shared his exile in France and stood near him at his death.

But it was under Calixtus II that his remarkable abilities especially showed themselves. After he had crowned him, he accompanied him in his journeys through France, assisted him in his first dealings with the Emperor Henry V, and was sent with full powers into Germany to conduct those negotiations which terminated in the concordat of Worms (1122). In that most important undertaking he displayed a happy combination of firmness and tact. His letters are still extant in which he makes known to the emperor his presence in Germany, informs the bishops of France and Germany that he has come by the authority of our lord the Pope and the whole Roman Church to make peace between that Church and the empire, and summons them all to appear at the council he had ordered to assemble at Mainz on September 8, 1122. So little was he prepared to brook any want of obedience to his orders on the part of the bishops, that it required the mediation of Adalbert, archbishop of Mainz, to save St. Otho of Bamberg from being suspended by him for his non-attendance at one of his synods.

It seems to have been generally acknowledged at the time that, whatever measure of peace accrued to the Church and the empire by the concordat of Worms was, to a very large extent, due to the exertions of Lambert of Ostia. Hence Ekkehard assures us that the news of his election as Pope was everywhere received with approval.

In the midst of all his distracting public occupations for the good of the Church and the State, Lambert would seem even in his old age to have found some few quiet hours during which he could devote himself to his studies. For when he was elected Pope, men knew at least of his learning, if of nothing else about him. Oderisius, abbot of Monte Cassino, on being asked who the new Pope was, replied that he had no knowledge whatever of his parentage, but that he was certain of one thing regarding him. “He is”, said he, “full of literature from his head to his feet”.

He had, of course, not become thus learned without effort. He was a hard worker, and wished all those around him to work as he did. He began his labours in the very early morning, and did not approve of even exercises of piety keeping his cardinals from an early application to the calls of business. Hence, as his devotions did not allow the saintly Cardinal Matthew of Albano (formerly a Cluniac monk) to begin his work till the third hour (nine o'clock), the Pope used frequently to say to him in a half-bantering tone that he was still a great deal too much of a monk.

Honorius, then, began his pontificate as a bishop already distinguished for his love of justice and of the poor, and with a well-deserved reputation for learning, virtue, and prudence. Unfortunately, however, he did not begin it with a well-filled treasury, nor with a substantial military force at his disposal. His predecessor, Calixtus II, through his powerful family connections, had no doubt been able to wield such supplies of money, and to exercise such influence, that the turbulent Roman barons had thought it advisable to keep within bounds. But when his restraining hand was removed, and the barons found that the new Pope was embarrassed for want of money, they broke out into their old habits of license. To repress them Honorius had to engage in a number of petty wars which wasted his time without bringing him glory, or even always success. And his efforts to raise the funds necessary for the expenses of government sometimes, as we shall see, brought him into trouble.

II

HONORIUS THE EMPIRE

 

On May 23, 1125, died the emperor with whom Honorius, when Cardinal Lambert, had concluded the concordat of Worms. Had Henry not died thus early in the pontificate of Honorius, there is every reason to fear that he would soon again have been at war with him. It is thought that his abortive invasion of France in the last year of his reign was undertaken not merely in the interests of his father-in-law, Henry I of England, but also because its king, Louis VI, was the ally of the Pope. However this may have been, there were two obvious causes of quarrel between them, viz. the succession to the inheritance of Matilda, and the loyal carrying out of the provisions of the concordat itself.

The Great Countess, Matilda of Tuscany, had, as we have seen, left her possessions, Tuscany, Liguria, part of Lombardy, and Ferrara, to the Popes. Much of what she bequeathed to them had already been given to them by King Pippin, Charlemagne, and other emperors; and it has been noticed that the claims to territory which they made from time to time never went beyond the boundary line from Luna through Bercetum to Mons Silicis, which Pippin had fixed as the limit of his donation. Hence of the inheritance of Matilda they never claimed Reggio, Parma, Mantua, etc., which may have been imperial fiefs. But Henry V, on the death of Matilda (d. 1115), without making the slightest pretence of endeavouring to establish what legal rights he had to any or all of the lands of Matilda, descended the Alps in 1116, and took forcible possession of all that had been hers. He and his successors thereafter took upon themselves to appoint marquises of German birth to administer Tuscany. But their authority was disputed either by the cities of Tuscany, or by the Pope, or by both. During the whole of the twelfth century (1115-­1199), the lordship of Matilda’s county was warmly disputed by the Popes and by the emperors. Not unnaturally, Tuscany as an administrative area fell to pieces. Its cities gradually made themselves independent, and at length, in 1199, formed themselves into a league under the protection of the Popes.

Meanwhile Honorius II made an effort to establish the just claims of the Papacy to Tuscany, and appointed a certain Albert as marquis and duke there. Though Albert may never have possessed much authority in his duchy, the action of the Pope would have sufficed to have caused a quarrel with the despoiler Henry, had he lived to see it.

And if the nomination of a papal ruler of Tuscany had not been enough to cause dissension between Honorius and Henry, the concordat of Worms itself would have been quite sufficient. The emperor certainly never made much attempt to enforce the carrying into effect of some of its provisions. He had undertaken faithfully to help in the restoration of property which had been taken from either cleric or layman during the course of the investiture dispute. But the contents of the subjoined letter, written in the year 1125, may be taken as an indication that the secular power of the empire was not to be relied upon for the faithful carrying out of the provisions of the concordat. It shows that those who had suffered during the investiture quarrel did not think of appealing to the ruler of the empire for the redress of their grievances.

“To his friend Adalbert, by the grace of God venerable archbishop of Mainz, Lawrence, and the congregation of the Church of St. Vanne-de-Verdun, address their respectful greetings and supplications.

“The whole empire knows the most faithful devotion and love which you display towards the Roman Church ... and all the sufferings you have endured for its sake. That peace (concordia) between the empire and the Papacy, which the afflicted Church had so long sighed for, was, after many miseries, brought about to a very large extent by you. Nor were the terms of that peace drawn up without the greatest care. Among them there was a clause to the effect that churches which had been robbed of their possessions, or any persons who had lost their rights or goods by reason of the investiture quarrel, should have them restored to them intact.

“Hence we appealed to Henry, bishop of Verdun, to restore to us the rights which had been granted us by his predecessors, and confirmed by decrees of Popes and emperors, but which had been lost during the days of strife. This, though calling himself an obedient son of the Roman Church, he has refused to do. Compelled to appeal to Rome, Pope Honorius took our part, and ordered the bishop to restore what he had taken. So far from doing this, he has even deprived us of more ... In this extremity ... for now we have scarcely bread ... we turn to you for justice”.

Knowing, then, what we do of the character of Henry, and considering that there were the inheritance of Matilda and the provisions of the concordat of Worms to quarrel about, it is not difficult to forecast what a harassed reign Honorius would have had if Henry had lived. But, as we have said, he died on May 23, 1125, and, as he was childless, the great Franconian line came to a close with him. It was the wish of Henry that his nephew, Frederick of Hohenstaufen, duke of Swabia, should succeed him. But the house of Franconia had in the last two reigns worn out the affection and patience of the Germans. Hence in the summons to the diet which was to elect a successor to the late emperor, Adalbert, archbishop of Mainz, and archchancellor of the empire, and the other nobles who issued it, bade the electors consider the oppression under which the Church and the whole empire had been suffering, and to see to it that, in electing a successor, they should choose one who would free the Church and State from the heavy yoke of servitude under which they had been labouring, so that all might live in peace under the laws.

There were present at the diet, besides the legates of the Pope, and the great clerical and lay nobles of the empire, some sixty thousand fighting men. The arrogance of Frederick, who came to be elected but not to elect, combined with the opposition to him of Adalbert, and the persuasion of the papal legate Gerard, was the chief reason why the votes of the assembly ultimately fell upon Lothaire of Supplinburg, duke of Saxony. With the cry of “Let Lothaire be our king”, the nobles raised him aloft on their shoulders, and, despite his reluctance, saluted him as emperor. After the newly elect had formally agreed to respect the rights of the Church and of the people, he received from the clergy, not homage, but a promise of fidelity, and from the laity, including Frederick himself, the customary homage.

Cardinal Gerard (afterwards Lucius II) and two bishops were then sent to Rome to obtain the Pope’s confirmation of the election. This was duly granted by Honorius, and Lothaire was at the same time invited by the same cardinal-priest to come to Rome to receive the plenitude of the imperial dignity (c. July 1126).

But foreign and domestic wars prevented Lothaire from immediately availing himself of the invitation of the Pope, or of that of the Roman people, which came later. At first wars in Bohemia kept him occupied in the north, and then the rebellion of the Hohenstaufen brothers, Frederick and Conrad, duke of Franconia. The latter was proclaimed king by some malcontents at Spires (December 1127), crossed the Alps, and was crowned at Monza by Anselm, archbishop of Milan (1128). His attempt, however, was not destined to be successful. The Church both in Italy and Germany opposed him. In Italy, Cardinal John of Crema called together at Pavia the suffragans of Milan, and urged them to excommunicate their archbishop for his conduct. They obeyed and wrote to inform Lothaire that Conrad, “the Milanese idol”, was universally discredited, and that various cities of Italy were eagerly longing for his appearance among them (1129). Strange to say, the Romans also remained loyal to Lothaire, and their consuls and other princes wrote to tell him that they were constant in their fidelity to Pope Honorius, and loved what was pleasing to him. Accordingly, in view of the great affection which they knew the Pope had for him, and in view of the rebellion of Conrad, they entreated him to come to Rome forthwith, and to receive from the Pope the plenitude of dignity and the honour of empire.

If, then, the greater part of Italy remained loyal to Lothaire, so did most of Germany. Its great archbishops had promptly excommunicated the Hohenstaufen brothers, and their action was confirmed by the Pope in a synod which he held in Rome at Easter (April 22, 1128). Though it was not till 1135 that the rebellious brothers finally submitted to Lothaire, their revolt did not seriously disturb the empire, and its chroniclers could with some justice write large at the beginning of their entries for the year 1126 : “Here begin the years of peace”. There was, however, war enough to prevent Lothaire from coming to Rome, so that Honorius had not the gratification of crowning the prince whom his influence had so substantially helped to place upon the throne, and to keep there. But if it was not till 1133 that Lothaire received the imperial crown at Rome, he showed himself throughout all his reign “a faithful son of the Church, and a faithful patron of the Saxons, the two influences that placed him on the throne”.

The fact that St. Norbert was a subject of the empire, and became one of the most trusted counsellors of Lothaire, must be our excuse for finding a place here to say something more about him. Though he had received from Gelasius II and Calixtus II permission to preach wherever he wished, and a general approval had been given of the order he had founded at Premontré in the midst of the forest of Coucy, near Rheims, he was anxious for its formal sanction by Rome. As the rule he gave his monks was in substance that of St. Augustine, his order was rather a revival of an old institution than the establishment of a new one. Its object was to combine the active and the contemplative life, the duties of canons with those of monks, and the care of souls with the pursuit of learning. To obtain the end he had in view Norbert set out for Rome in the very beginning of the year 1126. Honourably received by Pope Honorius, he obtained from him the confirmation he desired. A bull was issued which expressed approval of his rule, granted its followers many immunities from episcopal jurisdiction, and forbade any interference with their goods, which were to be left undisturbed “for the benefit of the brethren of the order and of the poor”.

It is not the province of a biographer of the Popes to tell of the extraordinary impulse which, at the close of the eleventh century, and at the beginning of the twelfth, urged so many men of position to abandon the joys and activity of the world for the austerities and repose of a monastery, and caused such a wonderful development of religious orders, like the Cistercian and Premonstratensian. But it may be noted with a great modern historian of the Ages of Faith that the moral courage required to embrace the restrictions of the religious life was such that it can scarcely be comprehended by an age like ours, so effeminate and so devoted to material comforts. “We are convinced”, he says, “that this zeal for the severe discipline of the monastery could only have been brought about by a burning desire for the joys of heaven, painted in such glowing colours by the lively faith of this believing generation”. Whatever be our attitude towards monasticism, its profound moral effect on this age cannot be doubted; and those who had not the opportunity or the courage to join its ranks considered themselves bound, for their soul’s sake, to help it onwards. Kings and nobles founded monasteries and nunneries everywhere, and Popes blessed and protected the monks and nuns who filled them.

 

III.  

ITALY AND THE NORMANS.

 

ALTHOUGH Honorius had no difficulty, perhaps with aid of the Frangipani, in maintaining order among the nobles in Rome, the same cannot be said about the nobles of the Campagna. From their well-nigh inaccessible castles which crowned the crests of the hills, they were for ever engaged in despoiling the farmers of the plain, in molesting the peaceful traveller, the merchant or the pilgrim, and, generally, in setting the papal authority at defiance. At intervals during the first three years of his reign Honorius took the field against them with varying success.

In the spring of 1125 he brought to submission the lords of Ceccano by taking forcible possession of Trevi, Maenza, and S. Lorenzo, and by devoting to the flames Roccasecca, Giuliano, and others of their fastnesses. Immediately afterwards he laid siege to the castle on the lofty, round, stony, isolated summit of Fumone, which dominates the whole country in the neighbourhood of Ferentino, Frosinone, and Alatri, commanding a view of some forty towns and villages. It was the hill whence the watch-fire gave the alarm of war to the whole country. “When the fire blazes on Fumone, the whole of Campania trembles”, the people used to say.

The stronghold of Fumone belonged to the Popes, but the nobles, to whom it had been leased, kept possession of it. Ascending the hill, the papal troops slowly rose above the slopes where the vines’ dark, lank, and sinuous arms gripped each twisted branch of the smooth-barked elm, and where, still higher, the somber olives cast their thin shade on the rocky soil, and at length they encamped in front of the small town which formed one large fortress, with its castello as a kind of citadel in its midst. After a blockade often weeks the place submitted (July).

“Moved by the wonted clemency of the Apostolic See”, Honorius again granted its custody to the same family, after taking every precaution that they would never again claim to be its real owners. Once master of this stronghold, Honorius transferred to it the antipope Gregory VIII (Maurice Bourdin) from Janula, the fortress of Monte Cassino. Towering aloft may still be seen the rocky castle where one Pope imprisoned an antipope, and where Boniface VIII imprisoned St. Celestine V after his abdication, lest he might be induced to become one. Honorius removed Maurice to Fumone because he was not on good terms with Oderisius, the abbot of Monte Cassino, and not unnaturally feared to leave under his control one whom the abbot might use as a powerful weapon against him.

Though somewhat petty, it may be well to tell the story of the quarrel between Honorius and Oderisius, as it shows what an amount of independence was affected by some of the great abbots of Christendom. The ill-feeling between the two began when Honorius was still Cardinal Lambert. He had asked the abbot to allow him and his suite the right to lodge at S. Maria in Pallaria on the Palatine, as his predecessor in the See of Ostia had been allowed to do. Oderisius, however, fearing that a precedent might be thus created, and that the abbey might eventually thus lose the Church altogether, refused to grant the desired permission. No doubt the cardinal was not pleased with this rebuff, and the abbot, whom his modern biographer, himself a distinguished abbot of Monte Cassino, allows to have been wanting in prudence, was impolitic enough to irritate him again when he was elected Pope. In want of money, Honorius on his election wrote to Oderisius to ask him for some pecuniary assistance, saying he would regard those as step-sons and not as true children who should refuse to help him in his great need. But this Oderisius denied him. He had had no share in his election, he said, and therefore ought not to be burdened with his difficulties. And in reference to the Pope’s humble origin, he told his monks that he had not any knowledge whatever of his parentage, and indeed knew nothing else about him except that he was crammed full of literature.

When, then, stories were brought to Honorius that Oderisius was more bent on aggrandizing than sanctifying his monastery, it is likely that the Pope did not find them hard to believe. Accordingly, when he had safely removed the antipope Gregory from the control of Oderisius to his own castle of Fumone, he publicly denounced the abbot as being a soldier and not a monk, and as a squanderer of the goods of his abbey. When, further, Adenulfus, count of Aquino, accused Oderisius to the Pope of aiming at the Papacy, Honorius had no difficulty in believing that there was some foundation in the charge, and summoned Oderisius to Rome to clear himself of it. As the abbot, knowing the Pope’s feelings towards him, thrice refused to answer the summons, Honorius declared him deposed from his office (Lent 1126). Listening to flattery, the misguided man set the sentence at naught, and continued to act as before. This act of contumacy brought down upon him a sentence of excommunication. At once many of the abbot’s supporters fell away from him, especially the people of San Germano (Cassino). This was a dependency of the great abbey. It was situated on a small hill far below the monastery, and was grouped beneath its rocca, its old citadel of Janula (now in ruins), perched on a rugged limestone crag.

In the course of the armed struggle which immediately ensued between Oderisius and the people of San Germano, the latter forced their way into the monastery, compelled the monks to declare Oderisius deposed, and to elect another abbot in his place. Accordingly, Nicholas, the dean of the monastery, was chosen to fill his place. Some of the priors, however, not satisfied with his choice, secretly sent word to the Pope that the new election had not been held in accordance with the regulations of canon law. “Not understanding”, says the deacon Peter, “that Nicholas was actually elected”, Honorius sent Cardinal Gregory to the abbey with instructions to secure the election of Seniorectus, the provost of the monastery at Capua, as he was a man in every way likely to restore the prosperity of the abbey, both spiritually and temporally.

This action of the Pope was bitterly resented by the monks. Their monastery was “free”, they said, and was not to be subjected to cardinals. Undisturbed by the tumult his mission had raised, Gregory asked the monks “what church or abbey was free from the yoke of the Roman See, seeing that at its will heaven itself was bound and loosed?”. Whereupon, after the cardinal had succinctly unfolded the relations of the great abbey to Rome, the monks satisfied themselves with promising to embrace the first favourable opportunity of complying with the will of the Pope.

Meanwhile, open war was waged between the two abbots. To make headway against his rival, Nicholas disposed of the treasures of the abbey, and thereby of course incurred the hatred of the monks. The whole domain of the abbey was rent with strife, and its neighbours took advantage of the confusion to seize part of it. Hope of peace, however, dawned at last. Oderisius resigned his pretensions; and when Honorius excommunicated Nicholas, and assured the monks that he only had their interests in view, they expelled their late abbot, and begged the Pope to send a legate to put a term to their troubles. Honorius therefore sent them Matthew, cardinal-bishop of Albano, who at length secured the peaceable election of Seniorectus (1127). A little later (c. September), as Honorius was on his way to Benevento to deal with the usurpation of Roger of Sicily, he himself installed Seniorectus as abbot. But when he wished him to take the oath of fidelity which vassals were wont to take to their overlord, in order that the abbey might not take the part of Roger, the monks objected to his taking it. They pretended to think that there was question of faith and not of loyalty, and asserted that it was right for others to take that oath, but not for them, as they had never been heretical, and never held opinions opposed to those of the Apostolic See. How far Honorius was justified in demanding an oath of fidelity from the monks was shown by the sequel. Oderisius and the monks of Monte Cassino stood by the antipope Anacletus and Roger of Sicily against Innocent II.

The story of Honorius and Abbot Oderisius has been narrated as it appears in the pages of Peter, a monk of Monte Cassino. There does not seem to be any other contemporary source by which it can be controlled. Knowing this, the reader will perhaps himself be able to see what praise or blame should be meted out to the Pope and to the abbot.

In passing backwards and forwards between Rome and Monte Cassino, Honorius must every time have gazed on the high hill on which stood the strong city of Segni, and have reflected that, like many another place which ought to have been subject to his authority, it was under the power of a petty baron. At length he found time to lay siege to it. Its tyrant was slain, and it returned “under the sway of Blessed Peter”, thus verifying the prophecy which St. Bruno of Segni is said to have uttered on his death-bed (d. 1123). It was to the effect that his episcopal city would soon be set free from the tyrants, never again to fall under their yoke. Though generally successful in these small wars which he had to undertake, Honorius was not uniformly fortunate, and we read of his returning to Rome after the loss of many of his men, and covered with the discredit of a failure before Arpino—or Supino, according to one manuscript reading.

But military operations in south Italy on a much larger scale were soon to demand the attention of the Pope. Roger, the brother of Robert Guiscard, and the youngest of the sons of Tancred de Hauteville, had, with the aid of his famous brother, invaded Sicily (1061), rent it from the Saracens, and become its Great Count. Roger I died in 1101, and left Sicily to his child, Roger II, who was to become king of Sicily and Apulia. On the death of his childless cousin, William I, grandson of Robert Guiscard and duke of Apulia and Calabria (1127), Roger sailed to Italy to establish his claim to his territories.

From the words of Alexander of Telese, it appears that Roger claimed Apulia on the ground that his cousin, if he did not live to draw up a formal document to that effect, had, as a matter of fact, constituted him his heir. Walter, archdeacon of Thérouanne, on the other hand, professing to speak from information received from the Pope himself, assures us that William had left all his possessions to the Holy See. However, as far as the rights of Honorius II over Apulia are concerned, it is matterless which of these historians is correct. William was his vassal, and had been duly invested with his duchy by him (September 1125). Hence by ordinary feudal law, as William died intestate, his fief reverted to the Pope.

Misfortunes, it is said, never come singly; and it was after his reverse at Arpino that Honorius heard that Roger had landed in Italy with the intention of taking forcible possession of the duchy of Apulia. The Pope made haste to reach Benevento, the more so because he had heard that at least the Norman party there had begun to enter into negotiations with Roger. The count overran the duchy with great rapidity, and sent Honorius many, valuable presents, begging him to invest him with the duchy, and promising him Troia and Monte Fusco in return. So far, however, from listening to the repeatedly urged request of Roger, Honorius, no doubt dreading to have an all-powerful Norman neighbour, solemnly declared him excommunicated if he persisted in his attempt. Many of the barons of Apulia, who, under the easy rule of Duke William, had been able to live as they listed, and now feared to be brought to order by Roger, rallied round the Pope. The excommunication of the count of Sicily was renewed at Troia (November), and both sides prepared for war. Roger, ordering his allies to harass Benevento unceasingly, betook himself to Sicily, while the Pope endeavoured to strengthen his hands by an alliance with the new prince of Capua.

Jordan II of Capua died on December 19, and was succeeded by his son Robert. He was solemnly anointed in presence of the Pope (December 30), who, taking advantage of the great gathering of bishops and barons which the occasion brought together, exhorted them to united action against the ambitious Roger. The harangue of Honorius evoked the greatest enthusiasm. The new prince of Capua immediately offered to devote himself and the principality which the Pope had just granted him to the service of the Roman Church. Still further to encourage his allies, Honorius granted a plenary indulgence to all who, truly contrite, should lose their lives in the struggle against Roger, and a partial indulgence to all who, after confessing their sins, should take part in it.

Though excommunicated for refusing to allow the bishops of Sicily to go to Rome, and, as we have seen, for assuming the title of duke of Apulia without the approval of its suzerain the Pope, Roger’s arms and Fabian policy were attended with complete success after he re-entered Italy in May 1128. At length the armies of the Pope and of Roger came in touch with each other on the banks of the Bradano. The count, however, would not give battle, but kept to the mountains. He trusted that, given a little time, the July sun and internal dissensions would cause the heterogeneous army of the Pope to fall to pieces. Helped, too, by the fortune of war, his anticipations were realized. The commissariat of the papal army was not equal to the demands made upon it, and at once some of the allies began to desert to Roger.

Fearing lest he should be abandoned by all, Honorius followed the bad example which had been set by some of the most important of his allies, and began to consult for of  his own advantage. He sent secretly to Roger, and agreed to invest him with the duchy of Apulia, if he would follow him to Benevento, whither he promptly retired. The count followed him, and, after a few days’ negotiation, during which Honorius safeguarded the interests of the prince of Capua, who had been the first to abandon him, met the Pope at the bridge (Pons Major) which crosses the river Sabbato near Benevento. There, after sunset, in the presence of some twenty thousand men, Honorius presented Roger with a standard, thereby formally investing him with the duchy of Apulia, and received from the new duke the usual feudal oath of fidelity (August 22, 1128). By this act of the Pope in sanctioning that union of Sicily with part of the peninsula whence was soon to spring the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, an enormous boon was conferred on south Italy. It was henceforth to be subject to one ruler, and not to continue to be rent in pieces by a dozen.

After peace had been thus concluded, Honorius set-out for Rome. He had not arrived there before news reached him that a faction of the people of Benevento had risen, massacred his governor (rector), destroyed the houses of other officials, and formed a commune. Full of indignation, the Pope declared he would exact full vengeance for the misdeeds of the city wherein he had spent so much of his time. Alarmed at the Pontiff’s just anger, the towns­folk sent to assure him that the outrages had been the work of foolish and wicked men, and to beg him to grant them peace and send them a suitable governor. Cardinal Gerard was accordingly dispatched to rule the city.

Next year (1129) Honorius once more visited Benevento. But, as he could not induce its citizens to receive back those who had been banished in the late disturbance, he went to Roger, engaged him to punish the city in the following May (1130), and meanwhile gave orders for it to be harassed. Honorius, however, did not live till the following May, and the schism which took place after his death saved the Beneventans from the condign punishment they deserved.

The Pope must have been glad, one would think, to leave Benevento. From first to last it had brought him trouble. When he visited it at the beginning of his pontificate (1125), it had been shaken by a terrible earthquake. Its first shock was felt at night, and Falco tells us how the Pope left his palace, and in tears, prostrate on the ground before the altar of our Saviour in the basilica of St. John, implored the divine mercy. Shocks were felt for no less than fifteen days in succession, and the terrified people, followed by the Pope and cardinals in bare feet, went in procession to the churches, singing litanies and calling on God for protection. Swaying with earthquakes and with the passions of its people, Benevento was not a pleasant place for a peaceful person to dwell in during the twelfth century.

Before turning to the intercourse of Honorius with some of the great men of France, we may say a word or two about his dealings with another part of Italy, viz., with the great maritime cities of Genoa and Pisa. Unfortunately, these two naval powers, ever jealous of one another, were perpetually at war with each other. One bone of contention between them was the ecclesiastical primacy of the isle of Corsica. This had been granted to the Pisans by Urban II, and confirmed to them by his two immediate successors. But on account of the bad blood which this privilege caused between the Pisans and the Genoese, Calixtus II took away the primacy from the Pisans and placed the island under the immediate jurisdiction of the Apostolic See. Though this action of Calixtus took away one cause of quarrel between the two cities, it did not make them live in peace. It was to no purpose that Honorius sent letters and legates to try and make them act in harmony with each other. Seeing, then, that his exertions were thrown away, and that the Pisans were clamouring for the privilege that had been duly conferred upon them, Honorius, after careful examination of the facts of the case, decided to restore the primacy of Corsica to the Pisans, on the ground that a privilege which had been so solemnly conferred upon them ought not to be taken away, unless it had been manifestly abused.

 

IV.

HONORIUS AND SOME OF THE GREAT ONES OF FRANCE.

 

A NAME not unfrequently to be met with in the preceding pages of this work is that of Pontius, abbot of Cluny. Of noble birth and of great promise, he was elected while still young to succeed the famous abbot Hugh in the government of the abbey of Cluny. He took part in many of the important affairs of his age, and soon became one of its best-known men. But mixing with secular princes led him to imitate their ways. His pomp was equal to theirs, and his imperiousness no less. The temporal interests of the monastery were sacrificed to his ambitions, and its spiritual concerns were neglected. An anecdote told of him by Geoffrey, prior of Vossium (Vigeois), in his excellent chronicle, may be at least so far relied on as to show how high the abbot of Cluny aspired.

Whilst Gelasius II lay dying at Cluny, he fixed his eyes steadily on its abbot, who stood by his side. Asked by Pontius why he did so, he replied, “Because I see you dying on papal territory”. He was indeed to die in Rome as a prisoner, but he at once conceived the thought of being Pope. This vain hope led him to offer a useless opposition to the election of Calixtus II.

Meanwhile the discontent of the monks at the lordly and extravagant ways of their abbot was steadily growing. They sent their complaints to Rome. Grievously hurt in his self-esteem, Pontius went himself to Calixtus, and would hear of nothing but that his resignation should be accepted. The Pope at length consented to meet his wishes, and permitted him to go to Palestine, where he proposed to end his days (1122).

But in three years he was back again in France, distinctly a worse man than when he left it. Want of power seems only to have strengthened the desire of it in his heart, and the flattery of some of his companions, who, regarding him, or pretending to regard him, as a saint, told the most wonderful stories of his miraculous deeds, completely upset the balance of a mind already unduly weighted with ambition. Collecting together any disorderly monks he could find, and a number of armed men, mingled with whom are said to have been a number of dissolute women, he burst into the abbey of Cluny during the absence of its abbot, Peter the Venerable (1125). Melting down the treasures of the monastery, he thus found money to give to his gang of ruffians, and to carry on the work of compelling the dependencies of the abbey to recognize his authority.

It was not long before news of such outrageous proceedings reached Rome from many sources. Honorius at once dispatched the cardinal-deacon Peter of S. Maria in Via Lata as his legate to investigate the affair on the spot. He then excommunicated Pontius, denounced him to the whole of France, and summoned him to Rome. Peter the Venerable was summoned thither at the same time, and duly presented himself before the Pope (September 1126).

But it was only after he had been solemnly condemned, in France that Pontius obeyed the papal summons to Rome. He came, however, thoroughly hardened in his iniquity, and, after his case had been carefully investigated, he was imprisoned in the tower of the Septizonium. There, not long after, he died, as he had lived, impenitent. Though he died under sentence of excommunication, Honorius, out of respect for the great monastery of Cluny, caused him to be buried honourably in the monastery of St. Andrew’s on the Coelian (December 1126).

Meanwhile Peter the Venerable, reinvested with the emblems of his dignity by the Pope, had returned to Cluny with apostolical letters which enjoined the monks to pay full obedience to him according to the order of St. Benedict. The commands of the Pope were obeyed, and Abbot Peter, triumphant in the issue of his appeal, was well received by the monks, who, says Ordericus Vitalis, have submitted to his government to the present time, laudably combating for the divine law.

A very different man to the unhappy abbot Pontius was Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux. Both were of noble blood, both were famous in their generation, and both were much in the eye of the world; but while pride and the wish to be seen figuring in lofty stations caused the fall of the one, humility and a disinclination to appear in public were the safeguard of the other. It may be that it was in connection with this very affair of Pontius that the cardinal-deacon Peter had requested Bernard to join him, and that the abbot had replied to him in these terms: “That I have not come to you as you commanded has been caused not by my sloth, but by a graver reason. It is that, if you will permit me to say so with all the respect which is due to you and all good men, I have taken a resolution not again to go out of my monastery, unless for precise causes; and I see at present nothing of that kind which would permit me to carry out your wish and gratify my own by coming to you”.

Passing over the first communications of St. Bernard with Honorius, to the effect that the election of Alberic to the See of Châlons might be confirmed, and that the monks of Dijon might be supported by him, we may discuss the saint’s relations with the bishop of Paris and the king of France. His example and his exhortations to a more earnest life were having their effect in the very highest quarters. Among those who were thus influenced by St. Bernard was Stephen, bishop of Paris (1124-1144). He left the king’s court, and devoted himself to the cure of souls and to working for the liberty of the Church. His change of conduct brought on him the displeasure of the king. The goods of his church were arbitrary confiscated, and he was exposed to much annoyance. But he had firm friends in the monks of Citeaux. Headed by the English abbot, Stephen Harding, they wrote to the king, declaring that they would be compelled to have recourse to the authority of the Pope, if he did not desist from his persecution of the bishop. Next, the bishops of Stephen’s province, with Henry, archbishop of Sens, at their head, contemplated extending the interdict which he had already laid on his diocese of Paris. The last measure would by itself have proved effective in bringing Louis to a sense of justice, had he not contrived by negotiations at Rome to induce Honorius to suspend the operation of the interdict. Indignation at this act of the Pope was general. St. Bernard wrote to him and to his chancellor Haimeric, both in his own name and in that of others. “In the time of Honorius”, he wrote to the Pope himself, “the honour of the Church has been deeply wounded. Already the humility, or rather the constancy, of the bishops had bent down the anger of the king, when the supreme authority of the supreme Pontiff intervening, alas! threw down constancy and set up pride! We know, indeed, that that mandate must have been obtained from you by falsehood, as is quite evident from your letter, or you would not have ordered an interdict so just and so necessary to be put an end to ... That which astonishes us is that judgment should have been given without hearing the two parties”. And in a letter to the papal chancellor he boldly added: “Even although I shut myself up and keep silence, I do not suppose that the murmurs of the churches will cease, if the Roman Curia continues to do injury to the absent in order to be complaisant to those who are near at hand”. The issue of the affair is anything but clear. It seems, however, that the Pope entrusted the examination of it to his legate Matthew, cardinal-bishop of Albano; that, acting on the advice of the bishop of Chartres, Stephen presented himself to the king, and that at length, after Honorius had passed away, “justice and peace kissed” (1130).

Henry Sanglier (1129)

Connected with the struggle of Stephen, bishop of Paris, against the king was that of his metropolitan, Henry Sanglier, archbishop of Sens. A charge of simony was trumped up against him by the king, but as a matter of fact the Capetian government persecuted him because he had joined the party of reform. “The very men”, wrote St. Bernard to the Pope in behalf of the arch­bishop, “who previously in secular life were honoured by the king, judged faithful, and regarded as familiar friends, are now treated as enemies, because they behave worthily in the priesthood and honour their ministry in all things. This is the cause of the insults and injuries with which the bishop of Paris, though innocent, has been attacked; yet he has not been crushed, because the Lord arrested the king’s hands when he opposed yours. Hence also now he endeavours to weary and break down the constancy of the archbishop of Sens, so that when the metropolitan is vanquished (which may God forbid!) he may easily, as he supposes, prevail over all the suffragans”.

Fearing that Honorius would order the cause of the archbishop to be discussed in the presence of the king, and acknowledging that whatever he directed must be inviolably adhered to, St. Bernard implored the Pope that, if he were to decide on such a course, and if, in consequence, this prelate should be crushed by the sovereign power (as it has happened only too often), “he may be permitted to seek refuge in your fatherly bosom, because hitherto we have never heard that you have refused this refuge to a person oppressed”.

In some of these letters about the conduct of the king of France, the saint occasionally allowed his zeal for justice to obscure his judgment regarding the general character of Louis, and at times to outrun discretion. The king of France was not exactly a Herod, though St. Bernard calls him such, and in the present instance he was not apparently guilty of any of the drastic modes of action of that “thorough” sovereign. At any rate, in 1136 the archbishop was still in possession of all his rights, and, such is the strange nature of many men, engaged in oppressing others, as he had himself been oppressed.

These struggles of Bishops Stephen and Henry against Louis of France are typical of the movement begun by Gregory VII, and destined to continue till the Church had won comparative liberty for herself and for the people. A prelate won to a life in accordance with his sacred character meant a champion gained for the cause of freedom. The charters wrung from absolute kings which declared the Church in a particular country to be free, at the same time secured the rights of every inhabitant of that country. And the churchmen who fought and bled to wrest the freedom of the Church from the hands of arbitrary tyrants were really striving for the personal liberty of every citizen. At the time of which we are writing there was playing about the streets of London a little boy of twelve whose later heroic struggle for the rights of the Church in England not merely threw into the shade most of the similar contests waged by others, but rendered possible the putting into position of the key­stone of English freedom in the beginning of the following century. It was from the hot life’s blood of Thomas Becket, freely poured forth on the pavement of his cathedral in defence of the liberties of the Church, that there sprang forth the Magna Carta of England.

Nor should it ever be forgotten that what encouraged churchmen to brave the swords which in these ages of violence were ever ready to spring from the scabbards of princes was the thought that they could have recourse to the authority of the Pope. Rome it was which was at once their support and their restraint. The powerful voice of the Pope rang throughout Europe big with fate to the evil-doer, but in the sweet accents of hope to the oppressed; and his arm, which reached powerfully even to the lands in the frozen sea, was for ever employed not merely in repression and in punishment, but in helping forward and upward.

Unfortunately, in continuing to treat of the relations between Honorius and the great ones of France, we have now in an increasing degree to face the difficulty we had to encounter in the cases of Stephen of Paris and Henry of Sens. Many documents of this period are like flash-lights. They show us persons and things in contact, but do not enable us to study the relations between them.

Towards the beginning of the year 1125 Hildebert of Lavardin, bishop of Le Mans, one of the distinguished churchmen who at this period gave luster to the Church in France, was by permission of Pope Honorius translated to the metropolitan See of Tours (1125).

Because he was a man of virtue and principle, he was soon in conflict with the king of France. Louis, though, according to a modern biographer of Hildebert, he was more intelligent than William Rufus, and not false like his successor, Henry I, was nevertheless quite willing to follow their evil example when it suited him. Like them he was prone by violence to keep ecclesiastical positions vacant to enjoy their revenues, or, by the exertion of his kingly power, to fill them with his own creatures. He took the latter course with regard to certain vacancies in the diocese of Tours (1126). It was in vain that Hildebert tried by a personal interview to bring him to a sense of what was in accordance with law; it was also seemingly in vain that he implored the assistance of the Pope’s legate, John of Crema, then on his way to England. While he continued to refuse to accept the king’s nominees, he had to suffer loss of control over the revenues of his see, and to submit to his clergy’s carrying appeals to the civil authority and not to himself. At length, but not till 1131, Hildebert contrived to make his peace with the king, by a considerable pecuniary sacrifice. And yet this same Louis when king-elect (rex designatus), at the close of a quarrel he had had with certain canons, had laid down the principle that, without hindrance from him, the canons were to render obedience to the Pope of Rome as the successor of the apostles, and service to him as their king. In dealing with Hildebert he had forgotten that not all things are Caesar’s. These disputes in different countries between bishops and kings as to their respective rights over the revenues of the Church, and over ecclesiastical positions, serve at least to show how literally is it true that history repeats itself.

If Hildebert was in disfavour with his own sovereign, he was in honour with another. Anxious to effect various reforms in his duchy, Conan III, duke of Brittany, called together at Nantes a large assembly of his bishops and nobles. Despite the pretensions of the bishop of Dol to the primacy in Brittany, the presidency of the diet was entrusted to the true primate of the duchy, viz. to the archbishop of Tours. At this important gathering several disciplinary decrees were carried. Various barbarous or illegal customs were condemned, such as those which placed the goods and persons of the shipwrecked, or the goods of a deceased wife or husband, at the mercy of the lord of the manor. Incestuous marriages, and the marriages too of priests, were strictly prohibited. These much-needed acts of reform were sent to Rome by Hildebert, and duly received the Pope’s confirmation.

The work of the diet was not finished at Nantes. One of Conan’s vassals, Oliver of Pontchâteau, had succeeded in setting his suzerain at complete defiance. He had at last seized the famous monastery of Redon, and turned it into a fortress, whence he plundered the whole neighbourhood. Writing to the Pope, Conan, confessing his inability to restrain his vassals, begged him to retake the monastery under his direct protection, and, in order to strike terror into the brigands, to do this with great pomp by means of his legate Gerard, bishop of Angouleme, and Hildebert.

Acting on the Pope’s instructions, the diet proceeded to the plain of Redon. The robber-baron submitted, and Hildebert removed the desecration of the monastic church by the solemn reconsecration of its high altar.

If Hildebert’s work for the reformation of his diocese was hindered by appeals to the king, it was also hampered by what he regarded as vexatious appeals to Rome. He accordingly wrote two letters to the Pope, which, though full of expressions of respect for the authority of Rome, were strong protests against its ready reception of all kinds of appeals against episcopal authority. He knew, he said, it was his duty to show respect to those in power by deeds of obedience, and not to aggravate them by words of insolence; but at the same time he urged that it was not in accordance with either right reason or canon law that appeals of all kinds should be listened to at Rome. How was it possible, he asked, to force the blind and the lame to enter the kingdom of heaven (St. Luke XIV. 24), if the blind and the lame could always appeal? He acknowledged that, where there was question of violence, or of unfair trial or of other similar reasons, appeals to Rome were right and proper, but he begged the Pope to give no heed to appeals which were simply made to gain time, and implored him to leave him free to exercise his episcopal power in his own diocese. Whether Hildebert obtained any satisfaction from Honorius, or whether the Pope was able to show that the appeals in question were not simply vexatious, is not known.

Besides being a great bishop and poet, Hildebert was, for his age, a traveller. In the very beginning of the twelfth century (1101) he went to Rome, where he was well received by Pope Paschal II, and then made a journey through south Italy.

From Cannes one can see in the roadstead of Toulon the low, dull isles of Lérins, “rocky and arid, surmounted here and there by a slender cluster of pines”. One of them, the Ile St. Honorat, “has been for the soul, for the mind, for the moral progress of humanity, a centre purer and more fertile than any famous isle of the Hellenic Archipelago”. Thither in the fifth century came Honoratus, a patrician and monk, and there founded a monastery which will render the name of Lérins for ever illustrious in the annals of Christendom; for it became “a celebrated school of theology and Christian philosophy, a citadel inaccessible to the waves of the barbarian invasion, an asylum for literature and science, which had fled from Italy, invaded by the Goths: in short, a nursery of bishops and saints, who were destined to spread over the whole of Gaul the knowledge of the gospel and the glory of Lérins”. Hildebert, when sailing back from Italy, did not look at the isles of Lérins with indifference and strive to avoid them, as Montalembert, whom we have been quoting, notes is the habit of most travellers. He put into the isle of St. Honorat to visit its great monastery. But his pious curiosity nearly cost him his life. On the very day that a favourable breeze had carried him safely away from the island to the then flourishing, but now deserted Provençal harbour of Maguelonne, a fleet of barbarous Moorish pirates swooped down upon the luckless isle of Blessed Honoratus (1101). Not for the first time in its long and chequered career was the monastery destroyed and most of the monks put to the edge of the sword. Some few of them, however, escaped by hiding themselves, or by taking refuge in a tower. Alongside the ruins of the church, baptistery, and other buildings of the old monastery still to be seen on the island is a donjon-tower, surrounded by a loop-holed wall. This is doubtless the castle spoken of by Hildebert, and hence is the place in which most of the monks who escaped from the Saracens found refuge.

Situated as they were in front of the very jaws of the Saracens, the monks, unable to help themselves, turned to the common Father of Christendom. Honorius at once interested himself in their behalf, and in an encyclical addressed to all the faithful told of the sufferings which the Saracens had long been inflicting on the monks of Lérins and called on all to help them. To encourage men to go to their assistance, he offered them the same remission of their sins as his predecessor had offered to those who went in arms to Jerusalem, on condition that “for the love of God and the good of their souls” they remained at their own expense to defend the monks for three months. Those who could not go themselves, but supported a soldier there for three months, were to receive an indulgence of three years with regard to those sins of which they had repented.

Fulk V the younger of Anjou, 1109-1143

History also shows the names of Hildebert of Lavardin and Honorius II connected with the doings of Fulk V the younger, count of Anjou. Situated as were the domains of Fulk on the borders of territories over which Henry I of England and Louis VI of France respectively held sway, it behoved the Angevin to walk with great circumspection, and to ally himself with one or other of the great potentates who were as ready to attack him as each other. At first Fulk attached himself to Henry I, who, as duke of Normandy, was his northern neighbour, by giving his daughter, with the province of Maine as the principal part of her dowry, to William the Atheling, heir to the throne of England (1119). But by the wreck of the White Ship (November 25, 1120), Fulk’s daughter lost her husband, and Fulk himself his daughter’s dowry, which Henry refused to restore. Naturally indignant, Fulk now invested William, surnamed the Clito, son of Robert of Normandy, with Maine, and gave him in marriage his second daughter, Sibyl (1123). At the same time he promised the young man his help to recover the inheritance of his father. As Henry had possessed himself of the dominions of his brother Robert, whom at this very time he was holding in confinement, he was not a little alarmed at this alliance, and immediately endeavoured to break it. He first attempted to get the marriage between William and Sibyl dissolved on the ground of the relationship between them. At this period marriages between those related even to the seventh degree were prohibited by the Church, and William and Sibyl were related in the sixth degree. It is true that the marriage between his own son, William the Atheling, and a sister of Sibyl had roused no scruple in Henry’s conscience; but the Clito’s marriage was opposed to his interests and must be dissolved. According to Ordericus, the English king began at once to employ skilful agents, and to scatter his money broadcast.

The affair was important, and Pope Calixtus sent to France to examine the case two most distinguished cardinals, Pierleone (Peter Leo), afterwards the antipope Anacletus, and Gregory, afterwards Innocent II (1124). Received with the greatest honour by such bishops as Serlo of Séez, who would have all attention paid to them because they were the ambassadors of the Pope, “who, under God, is the father of all the faithful”, they summoned a council to meet at Chartres (1124). Hildebert of Le Mans, who, as the most important bishop in the disputed province of Maine, felt himself in a most awkward position, was called upon to open the council, and did so with a sermon on the sacrament of matrimony. But the violence displayed by the two parties at the council prevented the bishop from concluding his discourse, and caused the assembly to break up without accomplishing anything.

The abrupt termination of the council, however, meant the collapse of the case for the validity of the marriage; “for in the absence of reasons to the contrary the decrees of the canon law were final”. Another papal legate, John of Crema, declared the marriage null, and Pope Calixtus supported his decision  (1124). But the Clito would not give up his bride; and his father-in-law, Fulk, seized the legate’s messengers, who announced to him John’s decision, singed their beards, and publicly burnt the cardinal’s letter. This truly Angevin violence brought from John a sentence of excommunication on its truculent perpetrator himself, and an interdict on his territories. Confirmation of this action by Honorius vindicated the authority of the Church, and William was compelled to leave his bride and Anjou as well, and with fear and toil to seek the aid of strangers.

But the chequered relations between Henry of England and Fulk of Anjou were not yet over. The cause of William the Clito being taken up by Louis of France, drove Henry to turn once more to Fulk. He offered to unite his daughter, the Empress Matilda, the childless widow of the Emperor Henry, to Geoffrey Plantagenet, Fulk’s eldest son. “Regardless of his promise not to give his daughter in marriage to anyone out of the realm, regardless of the scorn of both Normans and English, of the empress’s own reluctance, and also of the kindred between the houses of Normandy and Anjou”, Henry carried out his purpose (1128), and succeeded in ultimately providing from his body an heir to the throne, and in adding Anjou and Maine to his Norman duchy. To Fulk, however, thus become the father of a new race of English kings, the marriage of his eldest son and heir to the heiress of England and Normandy meant loss of interest in his ancestral domains, and the same year (1128) that his son married, he accepted the hand of Melisenda, the heiress of Baldwin II, took the cross from Hildebert, now arch­bishop of Tours, and at length became king of Jerusalem.

Before the name of Honorius II had been heard in Gaul, those of Abelard and Heloise had already become famous, if not notorious, throughout the land. However much what she herself called her “immoderate love” of her master, and her unbounded devotion to her lover are calculated to win for the misguided Heloise the indulgent compassion of loyal-hearted men, it would appear that too much sympathy is not uncommonly shown towards the cleric who could abuse the advantages given him by his age and position to attract the affections of his pupil, and then to seduce her; who could, while master of the whole heart of one of the truest of women, be all the while false to her and who was at one period perhaps the proudest and vainest man of his time, regarding himself as the only philosopher of his age worthy of the name. It is true he was subtle, bright, and quick-witted; but he had no respect for authority, was not too profound, and was unable to make any progress in the exact sciences. His great dialectic skill, and his natural intellectual pugnacity, however, which made him able and willing to unseat everyone of his professors, earned for him as great a name in the world of letters as was ever gained in the realm of war by the most skilled knight in the tilt-yard.

But we are not here directly concerned with either Abelard’s intellect or his moral character. When the savage vengeance which the uncle of Heloise had inflicted on him for his behaviour towards his niece had reduced Abelard to the same state to which the great Origen voluntarily brought himself, he persuaded Heloise to become a nun in the convent of Argenteuil, while he became a monk in the great abbey of St. Denis (1119).

It was not long before the amiability and intellectual capacity of Heloise caused her to attain the highest position in her convent. But all did not go well at Argenteuil. Whether too much of the relations of the new prioress with Abelard both in the convent and out of it, before she became a professed religious, was known to the nuns to prevent their having due respect for her authority, or whether they were lacking in discipline before she joined them, certain it is that the irregularities of her convent became notorious.

In perusing the documents which showed the rights of the abbey of St. Denis, the great abbot Suger had discovered that Argenteuil really belonged to his monastery. Promptly taking advantage of the ill-repute of its nuns, he put forward his claim to it. One of the ubiquitous papal legates whom Rome’s zeal for reform had spread over Europe was soon upon the spot. An inquiry was held, and Matthew, “by divine grace bishop of Albano and legate of the Apostolic See”, proclaimed (1129) that an investigation held before the king and a large number of bishops had revealed the fact that gross irregularities were practiced at the convent, and that in consequence the nuns must be dispersed to different religious houses, and their convent restored to the monastery of St. Denis, “which we have found to be flooded with the light of monastic virtue”. This decision of the cardinal of Albano was shortly afterwards (April 23, 1129) duly confirmed by Pope Honorius, because, as he said, the bonds of unity were best preserved when that which had been carefully done by the members of the Church was confirmed by its head. But in his confirmatory bull which he addressed to Suger, he was careful twice to insist that his sanction of the cardinal's decision was only granted on condition that the abbot took the greatest care to place the nuns in suitable convents, “so that not one of them should perish through his fault”.

Abelard now came to the help of the expelled Heloise, and gave her and the few nuns who remained attached to her a small oratory which he had built (1121) on the banks of the Ardusson, in the diocese of Troyes near Nogent-sur-Seine, and which he had called the Paraclete (1129). Further, as nothing had been proved against Heloise, who seems to have been as true to her vows as she had been formerly true to Abelard, she herself induced Innocent II, whom the schism of Anacletus had driven into France, to take her house under his protection, and to confirm its property. “At last”, says Remusat with justice, “Abelard for once did no evil to the object of his love”.

As the name of Innocent II has just been brought into touch with the work of Abelard, it may be well to narrate here what remains to be told of the latter’s relations with the See of Rome.

When, by taking the habit of a monk, Abelard proclaimed to the world his conversion to God, the thought of his sins and the calamities they had brought upon him did not, unfortunately, work in him the change that similar reflection wrought in St. Augustine. That sound interpreter of our duties to our Creator laid it down that when God has been forsaken by sin, “it must be by a humble piety that we must return to Thee, and then Thou cleanse us of our evil customs, and show mercy to them that confess their sins, and hear the groans of them that are fettered, and loosest those bands which we have made to ourselves, provided that we now no longer advance against Thee the horns of a false liberty by the covetousness of having more, and so incur the loss of all, by loving more a private good of our own than Thee, the universal good of all”. Abelard for a long time, at least, thought not of returning to God by the way of humility, nor did he learn to keep in check his desire to fathom the supernatural mysteries of faith with the plummet of human reason. He ceased not, moreover, to be intolerant of the opinions of others when they opposed his own; he remained as impatient of authority as ever; and he encouraged a false liberty both in himself and others.

Though, when at Cluny, he repudiated his errors in general terms, never did he become humble enough and wise enough to write a book of “retractations”. After many of his teachings had been condemned by the Church, he simply declared “that they were in essential harmony with the Catholic faith; and while he is careful in his Apologia to emphasize his convictions of that faith, he does not retract1 his previous words, but attributes many things said against him to malice or ignorance, and asks only that whatever in his writings may appear of doubtful meaning shall be interpreted in the spirit of charity”.

It is not to be wondered at, after the scandalous life which Abelard had led, that many should think that to seek retirement would become him better than to court publicity. Nor is it anything but natural that many whose characters, if not perfect, had never been as bad as his, should take it amiss that he should set himself up to criticize their conduct; nor again is it strange that, when his disciples gave utterance to new and strange theories regarding the faith, the orthodoxy of their master should be closely scrutinized. Another circumstance which rendered the novel utterances of Abelard all the more suspicious was his connection with Arnold of Brescia. Relying on the words of St. Bernard, who calls that revolutionary Abelard’s “shield-beare, some suppose that Arnold’s encouragement rendered the restless professor still less heedful of authority. At any rate, whether rendered more audacious by Arnold or not, Abelard’s disposition was constantly putting him in opposition to the men and things he found around him, and his high opinion of his own powers was always driving him to say rather what seemed acute and original than what was in accepted accordance with revealed and acknowledged truth.

At length a number of his errors, or, at least, a number of his propositions which by a natural and fair interpretation were erroneous, were brought directly to the notice of St. Bernard by William, abbot of St. Thierry. “Peter Abelar, he wrote, “is again teaching and publishing novelties; his books cross the seas, pass the Alps; new speculations concerning the doctrine of the faith, and new dogmas are spread throughout provinces and realms, are openly preached and freely defended; it is even said that they have partisans in the Curia of Rome”. He set forth some thirteen erroneous propositions, chiefly with regard to the Blessed Trinity, which he had culled from the writings of Abelard.

St. Bernard was thoroughly aroused, and with his accustomed vigour denounced the innovator, in the first instance, to Pope Innocent (1140). “Master Peter and Arnold, of whose evil influence you have cleared Italy”, he wrote to the Pope, “have stood up against the Lord ... To describe this theologian in few words, he distinguishes with Arius degrees and inequalities in the Trinity; with Pelagius he prefers free-will to grace; and with Nestorius he divides Christ in excluding His humanity from union with the Trinity”. He next wrote, sometimes in language that was unjustifiably violent, to various cardinals and abbots, to inform them that “the life, the character, and the books already published of Peter Abelard show him to be a persecutor of the Catholic faith”.

Everywhere men began to talk of the “errors” of Abelard. Realizing that he must take some decisive step if he would avoid a second condemnation, Abelard challenged St. Bernard to a discussion on his teaching before a great assembly of bishops and others which was to meet at Sens. The adverse decision already passed against him at the council of Soissons (1121) had not affected him very much, as he had contrived to make it appear that envy had been the cause of his condemnation.

At first St. Bernard was unwilling to face such a master of fence as Abelard, but when it was pointed out to the saint that, if he failed to meet his adversary, “unthinking persons, as well as his partisans of error, would regard all the opinions, or rather all the fancies of their master as being more important than they really were”, he boldly presented himself before the assembly.

This meeting of Abelard and St. Bernard ranks among the most memorable that history has recorded. The quickest-witted, if not the most intelligent man of his age, was faced by one who was perhaps the holiest man of his age. The excitement of the great multitude which gazed upon these two great masters in Israel must have been intense. The disciples of Abelard and those who wished for innovation believed that their tall and eloquent champion was invincible. Had he not silenced everyone who had stood up against him, even his professors? The followers of St. Bernard and the lovers of the Catholic faith believed that, as God was with the great abbot, no one could prevail against him.

At once taking the offensive, the saint pointed out to the king, and to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, and nobles who were present, what he contended were the heretical propositions contained in Abelard’s Theologia. But to the intense surprise of the whole audience, when, with all his wonted eloquence, St. Bernard closed his indictment of Abelard’s teachings, “Master Peter”, wrote the bishops to the Pope Innocent, “appeared to be at a loss what to do, and in order to make a way of escape, refused to reply, although he had a free hearing given to him, a safe place, and impartial judges; but appealing to your hearing in person, most Holy Father, he left the assembly with all his supporters. Although”, continued the bishops, “that appeal seemed to us not canonical, yet out of respect to the Apostolic See, we abstained from pronouncing any judgment against him personally”. However, they call on the Pope to do so, and to confirm their condemnation of his doctrines.

Whether Abelard had or had not followers among the cardinals, a storm of strong letters from St. Bernard to different members of the curia swept away all the support in which he trusted, and the Pope issued two letters to the archbishop of Sens, St. Bernard, and others, condemning the innovator. Acting on the letters of the council, and guided by examination “of the heads of the errors” of Abelard which had been sent him, and by “the common advice of our brethren, the bishops and cardinals”, Innocent “condemned, with their author, all the perverse doctrines” of Peter Abelard. He “imposed perpetual silence upon him as a heretic”, and decreed that excommunication should be inflicted on his followers (July 16). He also, rather hastily, it would seem, as far as the professor was concerned, ordered them to imprison Abelard and Arnold in separate religious houses and to burn their books.

Abelard, however, on his way to Rome to appeal to the Pope, found an asylum at Cluny. By the advice of its abbot, Peter the Venerable, he remained there, and became reconciled with St. Bernard and the Pope; for, as he said in his Apology addressed to Heloise, “I have no wish to be even a second Aristotle, if I am to be separated from Jesus Christ”. After about two years spent in that famous abbey in hard work and humble submission, “showing”, says the chronicle of Cluny, “something divine in his spirit, his words, and his actions”, he died in 1142. Before the close of the year the sympathetic abbot conveyed the remains of his former religious to the Paraclete, and heard from Heloise the simple words, “You have given us the body of our master”.

 

V.

ENGLAND, SPAIN AND OTHER COUNTRIES

 

In the early months of his pontificate (April 5, 1125), Honorius wrote to Thurstan, archbishop of York, to tell him that, as he loved him, he wished the question of the primacy to be settled before him personally. However, seeing that questions of jurisdiction between Canterbury and Wales, and between York and Scotland and Norway had also to be settled, he ratified the orders previously given by Calixtus II, and instructed his legate, Cardinal John of Crema, then in Normandy, to proceed to England. At the same time, he wrote to the clergy and laity of England, charging them to receive John as the vicar of St. Peter. He reminded them that, as our Lord had committed the sheep and the lambs of his flock to St. Peter, “not one of the lambs belonging to the fellowship of Christ is excluded as not belonging to the pastorate of Peter. Besides this, the authority of our most holy father, Pope Gregory, and the mission of St. Augustine show that the kingdom of England belongs in a special manner to Blessed Peter and the Roman Church”.

After having been kept a long time in Normandy by King Henry, the legate at length “received permission to cross into England, and was reverentially welcomed by the churches”. However much tyrannical kings and ambitious prelates might dread the arrival of a papal legate, the rank and file of the clergy and the people at large were glad to see in their midst the representative of the great spiritual power which exercised so wholesome a restraining influence on the arbitrary tyranny of the powerful. Hence our national chronicle is at pains to tell us that John of Crema was “everywhere received with worship”. Visiting the different bishoprics and abbeys on his way, and receiving everywhere the greatest honour and splendid presents, John proceeded in the first instance to Scotland. The object of his mission was set forth in a letter of Honorius, which he presented to King David. The monarch is asked to cause the bishops of Scotland to assemble in council when summoned by the legate, and is informed that, while the council is to discuss the question of the jurisdiction of the archbishop of York over them, “the final sentence is reserved to the Apostolic See”. The bishops, accordingly, duly met at Roxburgh in response to the legate’s summons, but what took place at their synod is not known. Certain it is that many of the Scottish bishops continued to reject the claims of York; and at length, in 1188, Clement III declared the Scottish Church to be immediately dependent on the Apostolic See.

Meanwhile, however, the archbishops of York did not cease to strive to maintain their jurisdiction over the bishops of Scotland. With this end in view, Thurstan made great efforts to secure the support of Honorius. When, about the close of the year 1125, he had gone to Rome along with William, archbishop of Canterbury, in order to treat before the Pope of the respective rights of York and Canterbury, he asserted his claims to ecclesiastical authority over Scotland before John, bishop of Glasgow. But the whole affair was one of politics. Both parties seem to have allowed that spiritual jurisdiction was to be determined by temporal conditions. The Scotch bishops held that Scotland was not feudally dependent upon England, and endeavoured to get the bishop of St. Andrews made their metropolitan; whereas Thurstan urged that their kingdom was subject to England, and that the king of the Scots was the liegeman of the king of England. Both Honorius II and Innocent II strove with only partial success to make the Scotch bishops obey Thurstan. Some of them, as for instance the bishops of Galloway (Whitherne), fulfilled the papal mandates, but John of Glasgow never submitted, and his successors were the first of the Scottish bishops who obtained from Rome a grant of independence from the jurisdiction of York. In this matter of spiritual authority of a bishop of one nationality over the bishops of another, racial and political prejudices were too strong for the Popes. They found themselves in most cases ultimately compelled to modify the ecclesiastical situation in accordance with the political.

For some time, however, the archbishops of York kept their spiritual control over certain places which were in the power of the kings of Norway, or of their sub-kings. Thus letters are extant in which Olaf, king of Man (1103-1153), calls on Thurstan of York to consecrate one Nicholas bishop of the Isles, and in 1151 and 1154 Thurstan’s successors are found consecrating bishops of Man and the Isles. But after the visit to Norway of the English cardinal Nicholas Breakspear (afterwards Hadrian IV) in 1148, Eugenius III and Anastasius IV definitely made the sees of the Orkneys and of Man and the Isles subject to the See of Nidaros (Drontheim or Trondhjem).

Similar efforts to those which the archbishops of York were making to maintain their jurisdiction over bishoprics not included in the realm of England were also being made by the archbishops of Canterbury. William of Malmesbury categorically asserts that the archbishop of York had subject to him all the bishops on the farther side of the Humber, and all the bishops of Scotland and the Orkneys, and the archbishop of Canterbury those of Ireland and Wales. But as the Scotch contested the claims of York, the Welsh contested those of Canterbury. However, the Welsh were gradually subdued by the arms of the Norman kings, and at length lost both their political and ecclesiastical autonomy. The first quarter of the twelfth century saw Norman nominees and Normans appointed to Welsh bishoprics, and the last quarter of the same century witnessed the complete subjection of the Welsh Church to that of Canterbury. It did not, however, submit without a struggle. The See of St. David's endeavoured, but in vain, to induce first Honorius II and then Innocent II to grant it metropolitan authority; and the people sometimes succeeded in preventing those Normans who had been appointed to sees in Wales from actually holding them. It would also seem that they occasionally contrived to worry such bishops as had been imposed upon them whom they could not dispossess. But the strong arm of the Norman kings at length beat down all resistance.

The first bishop in Wales who was appointed by the Normans (1107) was Urban, who became the ruler of the diocese of Llandaff. It was not long before he became well known at the court of Rome during the reigns of both Honorius II and Innocent II. Perhaps because he was not a Norman, the neighbouring Norman bishops of St. David’s and Hereford would appear to have usurped part of his diocese. At any rate he appealed to Rome against them in connection with the boundaries of his see (1119). “The Church of God and ours which is subject to God and to you”, he wrote to Pope Calixtus, “sends this letter to your mercy”. But though he appealed to Calixtus, to Honorius, and to Innocent in turn; though he made two journeys to Rome (1128-1129), and received many privileges for his see, and many letters of encouragement and support from each of these Popes, the affair was not settled when he died, during his third journey to Rome in order to get it decided (1133). The contention, says William of Malmesbury, “after being agitated by so many appeals to the court of Rome, by so many expensive journeys, by so many debates of lawyers for a number of years, was at last terminated, or rather cut short, by the death of Urban”.

Before the papal legate, John of Crema, left England he presided over a council held at Westminster. Both Thurstan of York and William of Corbeil, archbishop of Canterbury, were present at the synod, along with twenty bishops, some forty abbots, and a countless multitude of clergy and people. The assembled Fathers passed seventeen canons of discipline forbidding simony in any form, usury, pluralities in the Church, and the marriage of the clergy or of those related even to the seventh degree.

The council did not touch upon the dispute between Thurstan and William of Corbeil; but after it was over, John summoned the two archbishops to accompany him to Rome, in order that the question of the primacy might be discussed in the Pope's presence. Along with the legate and the archbishops there went also Alexander, the munificent bishop of Lincoln; John, bishop of Lothian; and Gaufridus, abbot of St. Albans. They were received by Pope Honorius with great honour, and they remained in Rome all that winter (1125-1126). The issue of the dispute between the archbishops was that William returned in the character of the Pope’s legate for England, but Thurstan exactly as he had set out. Despite Honorius’s predilection for Thurstan, he evidently could not see his way to allow his complete independence of Canterbury; but to lessen the pain his refusal must cost his friend, he put the superiority of Canterbury on another level. William of Corbeil was henceforth Thurstan’s superior, not as archbishop of Canterbury, but as papal legate for England and Scotland. In order to show this, he forbade the archbishop of Canterbury to exact any profession of obedience from the archbishop of York, and ordained that, for purposes of honorary distinction, that prelate should be regarded as the first who had been first consecrated. Finally, he enjoined both King Henry and the archbishop of Canterbury to permit Thurstan, in accordance with ancient custom, to have his cross earned before him, and, as usual, to take his share in crowning the king.

SPAIN

The most striking figure in Spain at this period, if not in the political, at least in the ecclesiastical world, was Diego Gelmirez, the archbishop of Compostela. The one object of this able and ambitious but unscrupulous prelate was to enhance the importance of his see. He had succeeded in obtaining the pallium from Pascal II (1104), and although that Pontiff decided that the Spanish primacy was to be attached as of old to the See of Toledo, he left Merida and Braga under the jurisdiction of Diego as legate of the Apostolic See for those provinces (March 27, 1120). But the ambition of Diego was not sated; he would be legate of all Spain. Honorius, however, did not look upon Diego with the same friendly eyes as Calixtus. Gossip had long been proclaiming in Rome that Diego wished to make his apostolic see the equal of that of Rome. Though the Popes could afford to smile at such wild ambition, even if it existed in fact, the persistence of such stories about the Spanish prelate was enough to make them slow to help the See of Compostela still further up the ecclesiastical ladder. The successors of Calixtus did not renew his commission as legate.

Honorius, whom Diego, through his panegyrists, cannot refrain from describing as a man of remarkable industry and great probity, took care to inform the archbishop that he had heard many stories of his ambitious designs; but he assured him that he trusted him, and exhorted him to a humble performance of his duty. With a view to obliterating the unfavourable impression of him evidently entertained by Honorius, and in the hope of being made by him legate of all Spain, Diego sent envoys to Rome with a large benediction. According to Diego, for the words of the Historia Compostellana are his words, this benediction consisted of three hundred Almorabitini; and of these two hundred and twenty were given to the Pope. The remaining eighty were used in pacifying the curia. Honorius, however, was not to be won over by any of the arts of Diego, but diplomatically replied that, while he might be glad at some future time to make him legate of Spain, he could not do so at present, as he had already dispatched Cardinal Hubert in that capacity to Spain.

However, Honorius hearkened to one of the requests of Diego. On the death of Gonzalo II, bishop of Coimbra, in the province of Merida, the archbishop of Braga, in contempt of the canons and of the privilege of the Roman Church, presumed to consecrate his successor, though the See of Coimbra was subject to that of Compostela. Of this usurpation Diego had loudly complained, and Honorius wrote a curt letter to the offending archbishop. He told him that it had been the good pleasure of the Roman Pontiff to honour Diego and to make him the metropolitan of the province of Merida. Despite this, the archbishop (Payo Mendes) had presumed, so it appeared, to consecrate one of the suffragans of that province. He must present himself before the Pope on the second Sunday after Easter (1129) to answer for his conduct.

When Cardinal Hubert arrived in Spain, he arranged with Alfonso VII of Leon and Castile, el Emperador, to hold a council at Carrion. To this council Diego was duly summoned both by the king and the legate, because, says Diego, “they knew that if he were absent their council would not be able to effect anything”. Though not well, the archbishop decided to present himself at the council, “not so much on account of the invitation of the king and the cardinal”, as for the good of the Church. Again, according to Diego’s panegyrists, the reception given to their hero by the king was most splendid, and “by the concession of the king and the Roman cardinal” the entire conduct of the council was put in his hands. The principal work of the assembly seems to have been “the just and reasonable deposition of the bishops”. If Diego had no further relations with Honorius, neither his stormy career nor his intercourse with Rome was yet over. After what seems to have been a careful inquiry into the facts of the case, he acknowledged Innocent II, and not Anacletus, as the lawful successor of Honorius. Some years later, after making his see outshine, “as the moon outshines the stars”, all the other sees, with the exception of Rome, “which is the mistress of the whole Church on earth”, the machinations of his enemies, or the natural consequences of his vaulting ambition, nearly brought about Diego’s deposition by a cardinal-legate, and his death at the hands of an angry mob (1136). But “the head of Spain”, as Diego calls himself, never lived to see himself recognized as such. He closed his vigorous life in 1139.

Like all the Pontiffs of this age, Honorius was ever ready to promote any enterprise against the infidels. This anxiety brought him in touch with the north-east of Spain. Raymond-Berenger III, count of Barcelona (1096-1131) recovered the ancient city of Tarragona from the Moors, and, with the consent of Pope Gelasius II, made Oldegaire, bishop of Barcelona, the new archbishop of Tarragona. At the same time, he made him the temporal ruler of the newly recovered city. It was, however, in a sorry condition, its cathedral church being “overgrown with oaks, beeches, and other tall trees which had sprung up in it”. The archbishop manfully set to work to restore the city, but he was hampered by the Moors and his own age. He accordingly “looked about him for a man of deep experience, in whom he might provide a protector for the church, and a lord for the city, who would defend the one and the other ... as if they were his own”. He found such a man in the land where at that time so many bold adventurers were to be found, viz., in the land of Normandy. Robert de Culie, surnamed Burdet, was the man of Oldegaire’s choice, and he duly named him “prince of the city”, that he might “there always serve God and His Church and bear arms in defence of Christianity” (1128). After Robert had duly sworn to be the liege­man of Oldegaire, he betook himself to Pope Honorius, and “received from the Pope’s gift the county of Tarragona, to hold free from all secular exactions. On his return” continues Ordericus Vitalis, whom we are here quoting, “he gathered a band of his own countrymen, and has held it, and resisted the pagans to the present day”.

In the days of which we are writing, it would seem that no important transaction was valid, or at least likely to be deemed finally concluded, unless it received the sanction of the Roman Pontiff, the universal referee of Christendom. If this was true of other Christian countries, it was particularly true of Spain, which, as we have seen, was claimed by the Popes as subject to themselves in an especial manner.

 

VI.

THE EAST. DEATH AND BURIAL OF POPE HONORIUS II.

 

FROM the close of the eleventh century the chief cities of Palestine had been in the hands of the Crusaders, but their control over the intervening country was but feeble. Predatory bands of Arabs rendered the roads from the coast to Jerusalem most unsafe, and many an unfortunate pilgrim from the West lost his money or his life, or both, almost within sight of the Holy City itself. Filled with concern at this state of things, Hugh de Payns and eight other knights bound themselves by vow to devote their lives to protecting the pilgrim and the traveller in the Holy Land (1119). To quote the words of a quasi-contemporary, writing about the year 1162: “There arose in Jerusalem a new kind of soldiery, founded by a nobleman Hugh de Payns. They lived like monks, took a vow of chastity, observed discipline both at home and in the field, ate their meals in silence, and had all things in common. They bear arms only against the heathen, and have spread widely. Many say that but for these men the Franks would long since have lost Jerusalem and Palestine. They are called ‘soldiers of the Temple’ because they have fixed their centre in the portico of Solomon”. What the Templars called the Temple of Solomon was the long basilica of St. Mary built by the Emperor Justinian on the south wall of Mount Moriah, but not connected with Abd-el-Melek’s Chapel of the Rock, which was erected on the site of Solomon’s Temple.

To obtain recruits and papal sanction for their new Order, some of the knights came to Europe. In 1128 they appeared before the council of Troyes (January 13), at which, among many others, the papal legate Matthew, bishop of Albano, and St. Bernard were present. The council expressed its approval of the new Order, and commissioned St. Bernard to draw up a rule for it. In accordance with their new constitution, the Templars added to their vow of fighting for the Christian cause in Palestine the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. As a distinctive mark of their Order, they were to wear a white cloak, to which a red cross was afterwards added by Eugenius III. To ensure that the rule should be authoritative and at the same time practical, it was to be submitted to the Pope, to Stephen, the patriarch of Jerusalem, and to the chapter of the Order. What exactly it was that the Pope approved we have no means of knowing, as no bull of his bearing on the matter is extant. However, when once his approval was given, the future of the Order was assured, and by the favour of priest and people its knights soon became numerous, wealthy, and powerful. “The memory of these holy warriors is embalmed in all our recollections of the wars of the cross; they were the bulwarks of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem during the short period of its existence, and were the last band of Europe’s host that contended for the possession of Palestine”. Mr. Addison only spoke the truth when he called them holy; for such they were on their first institution, and such for the most part they remained. They formed a company whose object was not to fight for honour or glory, but for Christ. The eulogy pronounced upon them by St. Bernard was well merited, and if, with the fate of all things human, the lapse of time found them after two hundred years of existence not so good as they were when they were first enrolled, their Order, as a whole, was incorrupt when it was suppressed. But, as has so often happened, to the shame of mankind, the knights who had done so much for a great cause encountered the basest ingratitude in return for the services they had rendered to the Christian faith, and were plundered, persecuted, and condemned to a cruel death by those who ought in justice to have been their defenders and supporters.

The Order of the Templars became the model of many similar bodies; and it is one of the glories of Honorius II that his name will be for ever linked with as heroic, if withal as strange, a body of men as have ever existed.

The other relations of Honorius with the East may be summed up shortly. As suzerain of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, he confirmed the bull of Pope Paschal and ratified the election of Baldwin II, the first royal patron of the Templars, as its sovereign.

Like all the Popes, he strove to preserve harmony among the various Western rulers in the East. One of the chief causes of the weakness of the kingdom of Jerusalem was the natural but unfortunate rivalry of the different nations which had contributed to its formation, combined with the grasping for power on the part of its new ecclesiastical and civil rulers. In the sphere of spiritual jurisdiction, trouble soon arose between the new Latin patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem. Paschal II, without taking into consideration the ancient boundaries between the patriarchates, had decided that all the territory temporally subject to the king of Jerusalem should be ecclesiastically subject to the patriarch of Jerusalem (1111). Two years later, he is said to have fixed the river Eleutherus (Nahr-el-Kebir, great river), nearly midway between Antaradus (Tortosa) and Tripoli, as the boundary between the newly revived patriarchates. Though he weakly endeavoured to render his decisions more acceptable to Bernard of Antioch by asking the king of Jerusalem not to tamper with the boundaries of the ancient Church of Antioch in his wish to favour his own patriarch, still Bernard never succeeded in obtaining jurisdiction over much of the territory ruled over by his predecessors before the coming of the Saracen.

Ill-feeling, however, remained between the two patriarchs, and manifested itself over the new archbishopric of Tyre. That important place fell into the hands of the Crusaders in 1124, and Guarimund, patriarch of Jerusalem, consecrated as its new archbishop William I, an Englishman (1128). He was accepted by Honorius, to whom he betook himself, and received the pallium from him against the will of Guarimund. Now possessed of metropolitical powers, William wished to obtain jurisdiction over the suffragans, thirteen to fifteen in number, who used to be subject to the See of Tyre. Bernard, however, having lost his rights over Tyre itself, had no mind to lose his control over all the bishops who used to be subject to that see. He accordingly refused to give up his claims to several of them. When William went to Rome, he laid the question before Honorius, who sent back to Palestine with him, as his legate, Giles, cardinal-bishop of Tusculum, “a man”, says the historian-archbishop of Tyre, “both eloquent and literary, whose famous letters to the people of Antioch are still extant”. But neither the Pope’s legate nor his letter were destined to be altogether successful. Cardinal Giles reminded Bernard that, in defiance of the oath he had taken to the contrary, he had set at naught both “the letters of the Father of all Christians and his legates”. He had “contemned the Roman dominion with disdain”, though at his consecration before the sepulchre of the Lord he had promised obedience to the Pope, and had received the pallium from Maurice, (cardinal) bishop of Porto. He would seem to have forgotten the fact that Peter received his name from Christ from a rock, and that on his body at Rome the whole Church rested. Reminding the patriarch that Antioch had been snatched from the very jaws of the infidel by the Roman Church, who was daily sending out her sons to guard it, he exhorted the patriarch to humble submission. He must be careful lest the Church of the East be ruined by internal dissension, and lose the assistance of the western Church. The Pope’s letter to Bernard threatened to suspend the suffragans of Tyre if they did not submit to their archbishop within forty days after they had received the letters he had sent them.

Bernard, however, and his successors contrived to evade the papal mandates, and though the Popes succeeded in maintaining the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Jerusalem over the archbishop of Tyre, the patriarchs of Antioch retained their hold of those bishoprics north of Beyrout which used to be subject to the archbishop of Tyre. Even the patriarch of Jerusalem possessed himself of some of his suffragans, so that, wrote Tyre’s archiepiscopal historian humorously, if somewhat petulantly, the two patriarchs “have sated themselves with my belongings, and it only remains to hope that they will make them vomit them up again”. He concludes by assigning the cause of the troubles of his see to the Roman Church, which ordered the archbishops of Tyre to be subject to the Church of Jerusalem, and then suffered them to be robbed by the Church of Antioch. Such petty and self-seeking prelates deserved to lose all in their unceasing efforts to grasp for more. If they had only been content loyally to abide by the reasonable decisions of the Popes, or to have put off contending for their respective rights till the conquest of the country had been definitely effected, they would have done something to assure the success of the Crusades. But the rivalries of the great churchmen and nobles which no Pope nor king could quell were almost as fatal to the continued existence of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem as the arms of Saladin himself.

Honorius passed the last year of his life in suffering, and when he felt that the end was drawing nigh, he took the advice of his most trusted counsellors, and caused himself to be conveyed to the monastery of SS. Andrew and Gregory on the Coelian. This he did to be near the Cartularia and the centre of the power of the Frangipani, because the openly ambitious aims of Cardinal Pierleone had already given symptoms of causing trouble at the ensuing papal election. As a matter of fact, the conduct of the cardinal’s party even before Honorius died showed how he was going to act. Hearing some report that the Pope was dead, Pierleone’s adherents rushed tumultuously to the monastery with the evident intention of forcing the election of their chief. They were only induced to disperse when the dying Pope showed himself at a window in full pontifical state, surrounded by his relations, friends, and attendants.

When, about sunset on Friday, February 14, 1130, Honorius really did die, the cardinals who had been with him, in view of the disturbed state of the city, closed the monastery gates and refused admission to anyone. On the following day, if we are to accept the statements made by the party of Pierleone, the body of Honorius was temporarily interred in the cloister of the monastery. Then the cardinals in the enclosure elected Gregory as Innocent II, and the body of Honorius was transferred to the Lateran for more formal burial. About the same time Innocent went to take possession of the basilica, so that “the dead and the living entered the basilica at the same time”. The corpse of the late Pope was laid to rest in the south transept next to the body of Calixtus II, to whom in life Honorius, according to Peter the Venerable, had been in no way inferior.

He was in truth a worthy successor of St. Gregory VII and of his distinguished successors, to whom the greatest men of their time offered not simply the scant homage of bare duty, but the full homage of reverence and love. Adalbert, archbishop of Mainz, is credited with loving the Holy See beyond gold and the topaz; Geoffrey 0f Vendôme rejoices in the Lord that he has suffered for the good of the Roman Church; and Otho, bishop of Bamberg, lays it down that no one must cross the limits which have been set by the authority of Rome, whose decisions must be accepted under pain of heresy. And although, among others, so great a bishop as Hildebert of Le Mans found it necessary to complain of the abuse of appeals to Rome, he proclaimed, as we have already seen, that a light offence becomes serious if it is the Church of Rome that is offended, and that he would not undertake to defend anyone at the expense of St. Peter.

 

 

 

“THE LIVES OF THE POPES IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES”

END OF THE FOURTH VOLUME