THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY - VOL. V. THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY
CHAPTER I. CORRUPTION IN THE CHURCH
The early part of the eleventh, as well as the tenth, century is often
and rightly called a dark age for the Western Church. Everywhere we
find deep corruptions and varied abuses, which can easily be summed up
in broad generalisations and illustrated by striking examples. And they
seem, on a first survey, almost unreheved by any gleams of spiritual light.
The comparative security of the Carolingian Age, which gave free scope
to indiridual enthusiasm and personal activity, had been followed by
wide and deep disunion, under which religion suffered no less than learning
and government. Beginning with the central imperial and monarchical
power, the social nerves and limbs fell slack; outside dangers, Northmen
and Saracens, furthered the inner decay. Communities and men ahke
lost their sense of wider brotherhood, along with their former feeling of
security and strength. Hence came the decay in Church life. If it was
to be arrested, it could only be, not by isolated attacks upon varied
abuses, but by a general campaign waged upon principles and directed
by experience.
Yet condemnations of a particular age, like most historical
generalisations, are often overdone. This is the case here, too. There
were to be
found, in regions far apart, many men of piety and self-devotion. Among
such reformers was Nilus (ob. 1005), who founded some monasteries in
Italy. Greek by descent, bom at Rossano in Calabria, he was inspired
even in his early years by the Life of St Anthony (which so deeply
touched St Augustine) and so turned to a life of piety, penitence, and
self-sacrifice. His visions gained him followers, but his humble service
to
others carried him into the world of human sympathy. Even when he was
a feeble man of eighty-eight he took the long journey to Rome to offer
himself as humble companion to Philagathus of Piacenza, whom Otto III
had imprisoned after cutting out his tongue and blinding him (998);
his brave and courageous reproof moved the youthful ruler, and this
accidental association has given Nilus a reputation which his whole less
dramatic life deserved. Through him and Romuald of Ravenna, who did
much in a small sphere for ascetic life, a fresh stream of Greek
influence
was brought to strengthen Western monachism, which was growing into
an almost independent strength of its own. More widely influential was
* Many of the worst and unnameable evils belonged more to society at large than to the Church alone. And, as they existed before the monastic reform, they cannot be ascribed to it.
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. I.
1 Reform of the Church
Richard of St Vannes.
Ratherius
William of Dijon (ob. 1031), a German born in Italy, commended by his
father to the favour of Otto I, and by his mother to the care of the
Blessed Virgin. He was brought up in a cloister near Vercelli, but soon
came to look towards Cluny as his spiritual home, and in its abbot, Odilo,
he found a religious guide who sent him to the task of reform at Dijon,
whence his monastic reform spread in Burgundy, France, and Lorraine.
Everywhere his name, William supra regulam, was revered, and at
St Arnulf at Gorze, and St Aper at Toul, the spirit of Cluny was
diffused through him.
Richard of St Vannes near Verdun (ob. 1046) specially affected Lorraine,
and his name, Richard of the Grace of God, shews the impression he
made in his day. Poppo, Abbot of Stablo in the diocese of Liege
(1020-1048), was a pupil of his, and through him the movement, favoured
by
kings and utilised by bishops, reached Germany. In some cases, such men
had not to work in fields untilled. Gerard of Brogne, near Namur,
{oh. 959) and the earlier history of monastic reform must not be
forgotten.
But while the earlier monastic revival was independent of the
episcopate,
in the later part of the eleventh century monasticism and the episcopate
worked, on the whole, together. Better men among the bishops, and
through royal influence there were many such, rightly saw in the
monastic
revival a force which made for righteousness. It was so at Liege,
Cambrai,
Toul, and at Cologne, where a friend of Poppo, Pilgrim (1021-1036),
favoured Cluniacs and their followers. Thus in Germany, more perhaps
than elsewhere, reform gained strength.
The life and wandering of Ratherius (c. 887-974), no less than his
writings, illustrate the turmoil and degradation of the day ; born near
Liege, with a sound monastic training and in close touch with Bruno, the
excellent Archbishop of Cologne (953-965), his spiritual home was
Lorraine while his troubles arose mainly in Italy. From Lorraine he
followed Hilduin, afterwards Archbishop of Milan (931), to Italy (for the
revival in Lorraine threw its tendrils afar), and became Bishop of Verona
(931-939). Italian learning he found solely pagan in its scholarship;
ignorance abounded (his clergy reproached him for being ready to study
books all day); clerks did not even know their creed; at Vicenza many
of them were barely believers in the Christian God ; morals were even
worse, clerks differed little from laity except in dress, the smiles or the
tears of courtesans ruled everything. The strife of politics prevented
reform and intensified disorder. The Italian wars of Otto I, Hugh, and
Berengar affected the fate of Ratherius; his episcopal rule was only
intermittent (931-939; 946-948; 961 -968), and when for a time Bruno of
Cologne made him Bishop of Liege (953-955), he was faced through the
Count of Hainault by a rival, as at Verona, and found refuge at Lobbes.
He was specially anxious to force celibacy upon his Veronese clergy, some
married and many licentious; not all would come to a synod, and even
those who came defied him; some he cast into prison, a fate which once
Symptoms of reform
at least befell himself. With the ambition of a reformer, he lacked the
needed patience and wisdom; he toiled overmuch in the spirit of his
death-bed saying: "Trample under foot the salt which has lost its
savour." "He had not," says Fleury, "the gift of making himself loved,"
and it is doubtful if he desired it. The vivid and tangled experiences of
his life, political and ecclesiastical, are depicted for us in his works and
give us the best, if the darkest, picture of his times.
Nor should it be fortjotten that some ecclesiastics did much for the
arts which their Church had so often fostered. Bernwaixi of Hildesheim
(Bishop 992-1022), for instance, was not only a patron of Art, but, like
our English Dunstan, himself a skilled workman : in his personal piety
and generosity he was followed by his successor Godehard. Later monks
condemned this secular activity, and Peter Damian held Richard of
St Vannes, who like Poppo of Stablo was a great builder and adorner of
churches, condemned to a lengthy Purgatory for this offence. In France,
however, activity was shewn rather in the realm of thought, where
Gerbert's pupil, Fulbert Bishop of Chartres {oh. 1028), and Odo of Toumai
(ob. 1113) were pre-eminent; out of this activity, reviving older discussions,
arose the Berengarian controvei'sy, in which not only Berengar himself,
but Lanfranc, of Bee and Canterbury, and Durand of Troam (ob. 1088)
took part. The age was not wholly dead.
One foremost line of German growth was that of Canon Law, which
gave, as it were, a constitutional background to the attempts at reform,
drawn from the past and destined to mould the future. Here Burchard,
Bishop of Worms (1000-1025), was renowned, combining *as he did
respect for authority systematised by the past with regard to the
circumstances of his day. Wazo, Bishop of Liege (1041-1048), the
faithful servant of Henry III, had much the same reputation, and his
obiter
dicta were held as oracles.
Some reformers were bishops, but more of them were monastics — for
reform took mainly the monastic turn. Here and there, now and then,
could be found really religious houses, and their influence often spread
near and far. Yet it was difficult for such individuals or communities
to
impress a world which was disorderly and insecure. But soon, as so
often,
reforms, which were fii-st to check and then to overcome the varied
evils,
began to shape themselves. Sometimes the impulse came from single
personalities, sometimes from a school with kindred thoughts ; sometimes
general resemblances are common, sometimes local peculiarities overpower
them. The tangled history only becomes a little easier to trace when it
is grouped around the simony which Sylvester II held to be the central
sin of the day. It must not be forgotten that Christian missions
although
at work had only partly conquered many lands; abuses in the older
churches paralysed their growth, and the semi-paganism which was left
even percolated into the motherlands.
Bohemian history illustrates something of this process. A bishopric
CH. I. 1—2
4 Instances of corruption:
Jaromir of Prague
had been founded at Prague (c. 975) in which the Popes took special
interest, and indeed the Latin rite was used there from the outset. So
Bohemia looked towards the Papacy. But Willigis of Mayence had
consecrated St Adalbert to Prague (983), and so to claims of overlordship
by the German kings was now added a German claim to ecclesiastical
control over Christians who, as we are told, lived much as barbarians.
Then Bratislav of Bohemia, largely for political reasons, founded or
restored a lapsed Moravian see at Olmutz, over which he placed John, a
monk from near Prague, Severus of Prague being promised compensation
in Moravia.
In 1068 Bratislav, for family and political reasons, made his
troublesome brother Jaromir Bishop of Prague, in the hope of rendering
him more amenable. But the only change in the disorderly prince was
that of taking the name of Gebhard. He, like Severus, strove for the
delayed compensation but took to more drastic means: he visited (1071)
his brother-bishop at Olmiitz, and after a drunken revel mishandled his
slumbering host. John complained to Bratislav, who shed tears over his
brother"'s doings, and sent to Rome to place the burden of the unsavoury
quarrel upon Alexander II. His messenger spent a night at Ratisbon
on his road with a burgher friendly to Gebhard. Then, strangely enough,
he was stopped and robbed on his farther way and came back to tell his
tale. A second and larger embassy, headed by the Provost of St George
at Prague, an ecclesiastic so gifted as to speak both Latin and German,
was then sent, and reached Rome early in 1073. A letter from Bratislav,
weighted with two hundred marks, was presented to the Pope, and
probably read at the Lenten Synod. Legates were sent who, at Ratisbon,
were to investigate the case, but its settlement remained for Gregory VII.
It is a sordid story of evil ecclesiastics on a background of equally sordid
social and dynastic interests. And there were many like it.
The common corruption is better told us and easier to depict for
regulars than for seculars. In the districts most open to incursions, many
monasteries were harried or sorely afflicted. If the monks walled their
houses as protection against pirates or raiders, they only caused neighbouring lords to desire them for fortresses.
The spirit of the ascetic life,
already weakened by the civil employment of monks, seemed lost. The
synod of Trosly, near Soissons, called by Herve of Rheims in 909, ascribed
the decay of regular life mainly to abbots, laymen, for the most part
unlearned, and also married, and so eager to alienate property for their
families. Lay lords and laymen generally were said to lack respect for
Church laws and even for morality itself; debauchery and sensuality were
common ; patrons made heavy charges on appointments to their parish
churches. This legislation was a vigorous protest against the sins of the
day, and it is well to note that the very next year saw the foundation of
Cluny. The Rule was kept hardly anywhere; enclosure was forgotten, and
any attempt to enforce episcopal control over monasteries was useless when
bishops were so often themselves of careless or evil life. Attempts at
Farfa. Episcopal elections
improvement sometimes caused bloodshed: when the Abbot Erluin of
Lobbes, trying to enforce the Rule, expelled some malcontents, three of
them fell upon him, cut out his tongue, and blinded him.
The story of the great Italian monastery of Farfa is typical. It had
been favoured by Emperors and was scarcely excelled for splendour. Then
it was seized by the Saracens (before 915) and afterwards burnt by
Christian robbers. Its members were scattered to Rome, Rieti, and
Fermo; its lands were lost or wasted; there was no recognised abbot,
and after Abbot Peter died his successor Rimo lived with the Farfa colony
at Rome and there was poisoned. Then as the great nobles strove eagerly
for so useful a fortress. King Hugh supported a new abbot, Rafred, who
began to restore it: he settled in the neighbourhood 100 families from
Fermo and rebuilt the cloister. As far as was possible, the monks were
recalled and the monastic treasures restored. But there was little pretence
of theology or even piety; only the study of medicine was kept up, and
that included the useful knowledge of poisons, as abbot after abbot was
to learn. When Rafred was disposed of, one of his poisonei's maintained
himself in the monastery by military force; the so-called monks lived
openly with concubines; worship on Sundays was the sole relic of older
habits, and at length even that was given up.
One Campo, to whom King
Hugh had given the monastery in fief, enriched his seven daughters and
three sons out of its property. When some monks were sent from Rome
to restore religion, he sent them back. Then Alberic drove Campo out
by force, and installed as abbot one Dagobert, who maintained himself
for five tumultuous years until he, too, fell before the local skill in poison.
Adam of Lucca, who followed with the support of Alberic and John XII,
led much the life of Campo. Then Theobald of Spoleto made his own
brother Hubert abbot, but he was removed by John XII, and succeeded
by Leo, Abbot of Sant' Andrea at Soracte. But the task of ruling was
too hard for any man, and only force heavily applied could procure even
decency of life. If this was the sad state and tumultuous history of
monasteries, once homes of piety and peace, it can be guessed how, with
less to support them, parishes suffered and missions languished. Priests
succumbed and forgot their holy task. Their bishops, often worse than
themselves, neither cared nor attempted to rule or restrain them. For the
episcopate was ineffective and corrupt.
The primitive rule for election of bishops had been that it should be
made by clergy and people. To choose a fit person was essential, but the
mode of choice was not defined. Soon the clergy of the cathedral, first
to learn of the vacancy and specially concerned about it, began to take a
leading part. They, the clergy of the neighbouring country, and the
laity, were separate bodies with different interests, and tended to draw
together and to act as gi'oups. But the forces, which made for
centralisation of all kinds in civil politics, worked in the
ecclesiastical sphere as
well, and the cathedral clergy gained the leading part in elections,
other
The Crown and episcopal elections
clerks dropping off, and later on leading abbots appearing. Among laymen
a like process took place, and the populace, more particularly,
almost ceased to appear in the election. Thus, in place of election by
clergy and laity, we have a process in which the cathedral clergy, the
lay
vassals of the see, and the leading nobles of the diocese, alone appear.
We can trace a varied growth, in which the elements most concerned and
most insistent eventually gained fixed and customary rights ^
But the more or less customary rights gained in this process were soon
encroached upon by the crown. The king had a special interest in the
bishops : they were his spiritual advisers, a function more or less important.
But they were largely used by him for other purposes. In Germany they
were given civil duties, which did not seem so alien to their office when
the general conception was that of one general Christian society inside
which churchman and layman worked for common Christian ends. To
gain their help and to raise them in comparison with the lay nobility, it
was worth while, quite apart from piety and religious reasons, to enrich
their sees, and even to heap secular offices upon them. Ecclesiastical
nobles were always a useful counterpoise to secular nobles; as a rule they
were better trained for official duties, the Church had reason to remember
gratefully past services rendered to it by kings, and it had always stood
for social unity and larger fields of administration. In France, where the
authority of the king did not cover a large territory ^, the greater vassals
gained the same power for their own lands.
Popular election, even its
weakened form, tended to disappear. Ancient and repeated canons
might assert election by clergy and laity, but those of them who kept
their voice did so rather as surviving representatives of smaller classes
than as individuals. More and more the chapters alone appeared for the
clergy and the Church; more and more the king or a great feudal lord
came to appoint. By the middle of the eleventh century the old style of
election had disappeared in France, and the bishopric was treated
as a fief.
In Germany the bishops, although for the most part men of high
character, were often supporters of the crown and the mainstay of its
administration; when a bishop or a great abbot died, the chapter and
the great laymen of the diocese sent deputies to the court, and after a
consultation with them, in which they might or might not suggest a
choice, the king filled up the office. For England such evidence as we
have points to selection by the king, although his choice was declared in
^ The lapse of popular election was furthered by canon 13 of Laodicea (364 ?),
which forbade election by a mob. The canon, which was sometimes held to forbid
any voice to the populace, was copied into Gallican codes and the Forged Decretals,
and had much effect. Leo I said: electio clericorum: expetitio plebis; Stephen VI:
sarcerdotum quippe est electio, et fidelis populi consensus.
2 The Capetians only disposed of Rheims, Sens, Tours, Bourges, and, until it passed to Germany, Lyons.
Parishes 7
the Witan, where both laymen and churchmen were present. In all these
lands, the decisive voice, indeed the real appointment itself, lay with
the king; the part played by others was small and varying. To the
Church remained, however, the safeguard of consecration by the
metropolitan and bishops; to the diocese itself the local ceremony of
enthronement.
For parochial clergy and parishes the history is much the same. In the
central countries of Europe the missionary stage of the Church had long
passed away, although in newer lands varying traces, or more than
traces,
of it remained. In most cases the cathedral church had been the mission
centre, and from it the Church had spread. Of the early stages we know
but little, but there were many churches, serving a parish, which the
landowner had built, and in such cases he usually appointed the parish
priest. The right of approval lay with the bishop, who gave the
spiritual
charge. But more and more the office came to be treated as private
property, and in some cases was even bought and sold. The patron — for
here
we come to the origin of patronage, a field tangled and not yet fully
worked — was the landowner, who looked on the parish priest as a vassal,
and in the church as a possession. For the parish as for the diocese
distinct
and even hostile conceptions were thus at work. A fit person for the
spiritual work was needed; to see to this was the duty and indeed the
purpose of the Church. It could be best safeguarded by a choice from
above, and in early days a missionary bishop had seen to it. But when*
a parish church was held to be private property, a totally new
conception came into conflict with the ecclesiastical conception. We
have
a history which can be traced, although with some unsettled controversy ^
The legislation of the Eastern Empire, following that of Constantine
the Great, allowed churches to be private property, and forbade their
alienation, but it also safeguarded the claims of the Church to secure
the proper use of the building, and adequate provision for the priest
attached to it. Justinian (543) gave the founder of a church and his
successors the right to present a candidate for due examination by the
bishop.
In the West this was also recognised by a law of a.d. 398, and the
priest serving the church was, at least sometimes, chosen by the
parishioners. It was well to encourage private generosity, but it soon ,
became necessary to safeguard the control of the bishop, and Gelasius I
(492-496), an active legislator, restricted the rights of the founders of
' In the early Christian Roman Empire, although private property in churches
was admitted, the restrictive rights of the bishop prevented any evil arising. For
the West the existing evidence is scantier than for the East. The origin of the
"private churches" (Eigenkirchen) and of appropriation is regarded by Stutz as
based on early Teutonic custom, by Imbart de la Tour as due to a process of
encroachment.
8 Early stages of lay patronage
churches and attempted^ to make Papal consent necessary for
consecration;
in this way the Pope might make sure of ample provision for the
'maintenance of the Church. This clearly recognised the two opposed
rights, those of the Church and of the lay founder, but became a dead
letter. Legislation under Charles the Great also recognised the private
ownership : the Council of Frankfort (794) allowed churches built by
" freemen to be given away or sold, but only on condition that they were
not destroyed and that worship was performed. The Council at Rome in
A.D. 826 had to deal as no uncommon case with churches which the
patrons had let fall into ruin; priests were to be placed there and
maintained. The Synod of Trosly (909) condemned the charges levied by
laymen upon priests they appointed; tithes were to be exempted from
such rapacity. The elaboration with which (canon 5) relations of patrons
and parish priests are prescribed shews that great difficulties and
abuses had arisen. But the steady growth of feudalism, and the growing
inefficiency of bishops, intensified all these evils. From the ninth
century onward the leading principles become blurred. Prudentius of
Troyes
{oh. 861) and Hincmar of Laon led a movement against these private
churches, insisting that at consecration they should be handed over to
the
Church. Charles the Bald and the great canonist Hincmar of Rheims
took a different view; the latter wished to remove the abuses but to
allow
the principle of private churches. Patronage in its later sense (the
term
itself dates from the eighth century) was in an early stage of growth;
abuses were so rife that principles seemed likely to be lost. Simony
grew
to an astonishing height, and it was only after a long struggle was over
that Alexander III (1159-1181) established a clear and coherent system,
which is the basis of Church law today.
When we come to the eleventh century, we find that in parish churches,
built by a landowner, the priest was usually appointed by him; thus the
right of property and local interests were recognised. But the actual
power of laymen combined with the carelessness of many bishops to make
encroachment easy; there was a tendency to treat all churches as on the
same footing, and the right of approving the appointment which belonged
to the bishop, and which was meant to secure spiritual efficiency,
tended
to disappear. More and more parish churches were treated as merely
private property, and in many cases were bought and sold. The patron
. treated the priest as his vassal and often levied charges upon him.
Moreover, open violence, not cloaked by any claim to right, was common.
There were parishes in which a bishop had built a church, either as
part of the original mission machinery of the Church or on lands
belonging to the see. But sees were extensively robbed and some of these
churches too fell into lay hands. There were probably also cases in
which
the parishioners themselves had elected their priest, but, with the
growth
1 Writing to the Bishops of Lucania, Brutii, and Sicily. Jaffe-Loweufeld,
Regesta, No. 630.
Royal encroachments on the Church 9
of feudal uniformity, here too the lay landowner came to nominate. The
tenth and eleventh centuries give us the final stage — of usurpation or
corruption — in which the principle of private ownership was supreme, and
the spiritual considerations, typified by episcopal control, were lost,
almost or even utterly ; and with lay ownership in a feudal age, simony,
the sale of property which was no longer regarded as belonging to a
religious administration, became almost the rule.
Where the king had the power to fill vacant bishoprics, simony was
easy and in a feudal age natural. Kings were in constant need of money,
and poverty was a hard task-master. Some of the German kings had
really cared for the Church, and saw to the appointment of fit men, but
others like Conrad II made gain of the transaction; it was only too easy
to pass from the ordinary gift, although some conscientious bishops
refused even that, to unblushing purchase. In France simony was
especially rife.
Philip I (1060-1108) dismissed one candidate for a see
because his power was smaller than a rival's, but he gave the disappointed
clerk some words of cheer: "Let me make my profit out of him; then you
can try to get him degraded for simony, and afterwards we can see about
satisfying you." Purchase of sees became a recognised thing: a tainted
bishop infected his flock and often sold ordinations; so the disease spread
until, as saddened reformers said, Simon Magus possessed the Church.
It must not be supposed that this result was reached without protest.
Old Church laws though forgotten could be appealed to, and councils
were the fitting place for protest, as bishops were the proper people to
make it. Unhappily, councils were becoming rarer and many bishops
were careless of their office. Nevertheless, at Ingelheim (948) laymen
were forbidden to instal a parish priest or to expel him without the
bishop's leave; at Augsburg (952) laymen were forbidden to expel a
priest from a church canonically committed to him or to replace him by
another. At the important Synod of Seligenstadt (1023) it was decreed
that no layman should give his church to any priest without the consent
of the bishop, to whom the candidate was to be sent for proof of age,
knowledge, and piety sufficient to qualify him for the charge of God's
people. The equally important Synod of Bourges (1031) decreed that no
layman should hold the land (feudum) of a priest in place of a priest, and
no layman ought to place a priest in a church, since the bishop alone
could bestow the cure of souls in every parish. The same synod, it may
be noted, forbade a bishop to receive fees for ordination, and also forbade
priests to charge fees for baptism, penance, or burial, although free gifts
were allowed. In England laws betray the same evils: a fine was to be
^ Earlier councils also spoke of the same evil of lay encroachments : at Trosly
near Rheims (909), laymen were forbidden to use the tithes of their churches for
their dogs or concubines. The earlier and reforming Council of Mayence (888)
decreed that the founder of a church should entrust its possessions to the bishop.
So, too, at Pavia (1018).
10 Evils in the episcopate. Simony
levied for making merchandise of a churchy and again no man was to
bring a church into servitude nor unrighteously make merchandise of it,
nor turn out a church-thegn without the bishop's leave.2
It was significant that against abuses appeal was thus being made
to older decrees reiterated or enlarged by sporadic councils. And the
growth of religious revival in time resulted in a feeling of deeper
obligation to Canon Law, and a stronger sense of corporate life. But it
was the duty of the bishops to enforce upon their subjects the duty
of obedience. In doing this, they had often in the past been helped by
righteous kings and courageous Popes. But now for the needed reforms
to be effectively enforced it needed a sound episcopate, backed up by
conscientious kings and Popes. Only so could the inspiration of religion,
which was breathing in many quarters, become coherent in constitutional
action. When king and Pope in fellowship turned to reform, an
episcopate, aroused to a sense of duty, might become effective.
But the episcopate itself was corrupt, bad in itself, moving in a bad
social atmosphere, and largely used for regal politics. Two of the great
Lorraine reformers, William of Dijon (962-1031) and Richard of
St Vannes {oh. 1046), sharply criticised the prelates of their day: "They
were preachers who did not preach; they were shepherds who lived as
hirelings." Everywhere one could see glaring infamies. Guifred of
Cerdagne became Archbishop of Narbonne (1016-1079) when only ten
years old, 100,000 solidi being paid on his behalf. His episcopate was
disastrous: he sold nearly everything belonging to his cathedral and his
see; he oppressed his clergy but he provided for his family; for a
brother he bought the see of Urgel through the sale of the holy vessels
and plate throughout his diocese. In the Midi such abuses were specially
prevalent.
In 1038 two viscounts sold the see of Albi, while it was
occupied, and confirmed the sale by a written contract. But even over
the Midi the reforming zeal of Halinard of Lyons had much effect;
Lyons belonged to Burgundy, and Burgundy under Conrad II became
German. Halinard had been Abbot of St Remy at Dijon, and was a reformer
of the Cluniac type; at Rome, whither he made many pilgrimages, he
was well known and so popular that the Romans sought him as Pope on
the death of Daraasus II. One bishop, of the ducal house of Gascony, is
said to have held eight sees which he disposed of by will. The tables of
the money-changers were not only brought into the temple, but grouped
round the altar itself. Gerbert (Sylvester II), who had seen many lands
and knew something of the past, spoke strongly against the many-headed
and elusive simony. A bishop might say, "I gave gold and I received the
episcopate; but yet I do not fear to receive it back if I behave as I should.
1 Laws of Northumbrian priests, chap. 20 (?950). Johnson, English Canons,
p. 376.
2 Synod of Eanham (1009), chap. 9. Johnson, p. 485. The thriving of a ceorl
includes his possession of a church. Stubbs, Select Charters (ed. Davies), p. 88.
Clerical marriage 11
I ordain a priest and I receive gold; I make a deacon and I receive a heap of silver.... Behold the gold which I gave I have once more unlessened in my purse." * ^
Svlvester II held simony to be the greatest evil in the Church. Most
reformers, however, attacked the evil morals of the clergy, and their
attack was justified. But strict morality and asceticism went hand in
hand, and the complicated evils of the day gave fresh strength to the zeal
for monasticism and the demand for clerical celibacy. The spirit of
asceticism had in the past done much to deepen piety and the sense of
personal responsibility, even if teaching by strong example has its dangers
as well as successes. In the West more than in the East the conversion of
new races had been due to monks, and now the strength of reformation
lay in monasticism. The enforcement of clerical celibacy seemed an easy,
if not the only, remedy for the diseases of the day. In primitive times
married priests were common, even if we do not find cases of marriage
after ordination, but the reverence for virginity, enhanced by monasticism,
turned the stream of opinion against them.
At Nicaea the assembled
Fathers, while forbidding a priest to have a woman, other than wife or
sister, living in his house, had refrained, largely because of the
protest of
Paphnutius, from enforcing celibacy. But the Councils of Ancyra and
Neocaesarea (both in 314) had legislated on the point, although with
some reserve. The former allowed deacons, who at ordination affirmed
their intention to maiTV, to do so, but otherwise they were degraded.
The
latter decreed that a priest marrying after ordination should be
degraded,
while a fornicator or adulterer should be more severely punished. The
Council of Elvira (c. 305), which dealt so generally and largelv with
sexual sins, shut out from communion an adulterous bishop, priest, or
deacon; it ordered all bishops, priests, deacons, and other clerks, to
abstain from conjugal intercourse. This was the first general enactment
of the kind and it was Western. As time went on, the divergence between
the more conservative East and the newer West, With its changing
conditions and rules, became more marked. In the East things moved
towards
its present rule, which allows priests, deacons, and sub-deacons,
married
before ordination, to live freely with their wives (Quintisext in
Trillo,
held 680, promulgated 691); bishops, however, were to hvein separation
from their wives. Second marriages, which were always treated as a
different matter, were forbidden. The present rule is for parish priests
to
be mamed, while bishops, chosen from regulars, are unmarried. The
West, on the other hand, moved, to begin with, first by legislation and
then, more slowly, by practice, towards uniform celibacy.
Councils at Carthage (390, 398, and 419), at Agde (506), Toledo (531), and Orleans (538), enjoined strict continency upon married clerks
* See Saltet, Les Reordinations, Paris, 1907 — an excellent work — for the nature and
content of simony in the tenth and eleventh centuries, pp. 173sqq. ; he quotes Gerbert,
De informatione episcoporum, MPL, cxxxix, col. 174; Olleris, Op. Gerberti, p, 275.
12 Enforcement of clerical celibacy
from sub-deacons upwards. Siricius (384-398), by what is commonly
reckoned the first Decretal (385), and Innocent I (402-419) pronounced
strongly against clerical marriage. Henceforth succeeding Popes plainly
enunciated the Roman law. There was so much clerical immorality in
Africa, in spite of the great name and strict teaching of St Augustine,
and elsewhere, that the populace generally preferred a ceUbate clergy.
Ecclesiastical authorities took the same line, and Leo I extended the
strict law to sub-deacons. The Theodosian Code pronounced the children
of clergy illegitimate, and so the reformers of the tenth and eleventh
centuries could appeal to much support. Nevertheless, there were both
districts and periods in which custom accorded badly with the declared
law, and the confusion made by reformers between marriages they did not
accept and concubinage which opinion, no less than law, condemned,
makes the evidence sometimes hard to interpret. St Boniface dealt
firmly with incontinent priests, and on the whole, although here popular
feeling was not with him, he was successful both in Austrasia and
Neustria, The eighth and ninth centuries saw the struggle between law
and custom continuing with varying fortune. Custom became laxer under
the later Carolingians than under Charlemagne, who had set for others a
standard he never dreamt of for himself; Hincmar, who was an advocate
of strictness, gives elaborate directions for proper procedure against
offending clerks, and it is clear that the clergy proved hard either to
convince or to rule. By the end of the ninth century, amid prevalent
disorder, clerical celibacy became less general, and the laws in its
favour
were frequently and openly ignored. It was easy, as Pelagius II
(578-590), in giving dispensation for a special case, had confessed, to
find
excuse in the laxity of the age. So too St Boniface had found it
necessary to restore offenders after penance, for otherwise there would
be
none to say mass.
Italy was the most difficult country to deal with, and
Ratherius of Verona says (966) that the enforcement of the laws, which
he not only accepted but strongly approved, would have left only boys in
the Church. It was, he held, a war of canons against custom. By about
the beginning of the eleventh century celibacy was uncommon, and the
laws enforcing it almost obsolete. But they began to gain greater force
as churchmen turned more to legal studies and as the pressure of abuses
grew stronger.
The tenth and eleventh centuries had special reason for enforcing
celibacy and disliking clerical families. Married priests, like laymen,
wished to enrich their children and strove to hand on their benefices
to them. Hereditary bishops, hereditary priests, were a danger*: there
was much alienation of clerical property; thus the arguments urged so
repeatedly in favour of celibacy were reinforced. Bishops, and not only
* Atto of Vercelli (from 945) links clerical marriage and alienation of church
property together, putting the latter a8 a cause of abuse. The case is well put by
Neander, vi, 187 (Eng. trans.) and Fleury, Bk. Iv, c. 65.
Secular canons 13
those who held secular jurisdiction, thought and acted as laymen, and
like lavraen strove to found dynasties, firmly seated and richly endowed.
Parish priests copied them on a humbler scale. Hence the denial of
ordination to sons of clerks is frequent in conciliar legislation.
One attempt at reform of the secular clergy, which had special
importance in England, needs notice. This was the institution of canons,
which has a long and varied history. The germ of the later chapter
appears at a very eariy date in cathedrals, ceriiainly in the sixth
century ;
a staff of clergy was needed both for ordinary mission work and for
distribution of alms. But poverty often, as with monasteries later on,
led to
careless and disordered life. Chrodegang of Metz (06. 766), the pious
founder of Gorze, near his city, and of Lorsch, set up, after a
Benedictine
model, a rule for his cathedral clergy: there was to be a common life,
although private property was permitted ; a s^Tiod under Louis the Pious
at Aix-la-Chapelle (817) elaborated it and it was widely applied. The
ideal was high, and although inspired by the asceticism which produced
monasticism, it paid regard to the special tasks of seculars; it infused
a new moral and intellectual life into the clergy at the centre of the
diocese, and education was specially cared for. So excellent an example
was soon copied by other large churches, and the system spread widely.
In its original form it was not destined to live long: decay began at
Cologne with the surrender of the common administration of funds;
Gunther, the archbishop, yielded to the wish for more individual
freedom, and his successor Willibert in a synod (873) confirmed his
changes.^
After this the institution of prebends (benefices assigned to a canon)
grew,
and each canon held a prebend and lived apart. This private control of
their income, and their surrender of a common life, began a long process
of decay. But variations of the original form, which itself had utilised
much older growths, appeared largely and widely in history.
Brotherhood
and the sympathy of a common life(?) furthered diligence and devotion.
In councils of the tenth and eleventh centuries, clerical celibacy and
simony are repeatedly spoken of. With few exceptions^, all well-wishers
of reform, whether lay or clerical, desired to enforce celibacy, although
^ At the Roman Council of 1059 Hildebrand spoke against the laxity of the
system, especially its permission of private property and its liberality as to fare
(MabUlon, ASB, and Hefele-Leclercq, pp. 1177-8. with references there). In 1074
Hildebrand, as Gregory VII, put out a Rule for canons (Hefele-Leclercq, r, p. 94 n.,
Duchesne, Lib. Pont, i, CLXviiii) ; it was wrongly ascribed to Gregory IV. See Dom
Morin, R.Ben. 1901, xviii, pp. 177-183. Hildebrand's Rule breaks off short in
the MS., and the abbreviation can. for canonicorum led to its being attributed to
musical history (canendi).
- Ulrich (Udalrich) of Augsburg (923-973) was, perhaps, an exception. So later on
was Cunibert of Turin, himself a celibate whose clerks reached a high standard of
life: he permitted them to marry, for which Peter Damian reproved him. Both
these prelates were earnest reformers. Damian tried to get Adelaide, Regent of
Piedmont and Savoy, to enforce his policy against Cunibert.
14 Rome
some thought circumstances compelled laxity in applying the law. Thus
in France the Council of Poitiers (1000) forbade priests and deacons to
live with women, under pain of degradation and excommunication. The
Council of Bourges (1031), while making the same decrees (repeated at
Limoges the same year), went further by ordering all sub-deacons to
promise at ordination to keep neither wife nor mistress. This promise
resembles the attempt of Guarino of Modena a little earlier to refuse
benefices to any clerk who would not swear to observe celibacy. In
Germany the largely-attended Council of Augsburg (952) forbade marriage
to ecclesiastics, including sub-deacons; the reason assigned was their
handling the divine mysteries, and with German respect for Canon Law
appeal was made to the decrees of many coimcils in the past. Under
Henry III the prohibitions were better observed, not only through the
support of the Emperor, but because collections of Canons, especially
that by Burchard of Worms (Decretum, between 1008 and 1012), were
becoming known and gaining authority I The statement of principles,
especially from the past, as against the practice of the day was
becoming
coherent. But the Papacy, which had so repeatedly declared for celibacy,
was not in a state to interfere authoritatively. Thus we come to the
question of reform at Rome.
The movement for reform needed authority
and coherence, which were to be supplied from Rome. But first of all
Reform had to capture Rome itself.
At Rome a bad ecclesiastical atmosphere was darkened by political
troubles and not lightened by religious enthusiasm. There as elsewhere
local families were striving for local power; the nobility, with seats
outside, was very disorderly and made the city itself tumultuous and
unsafe.
The Crescentii, so long and so darkly connected with Papal history, had
lands in the Sabina and around Farfa, and although with lessening
influence in the city itself they stood for the traditions of civic
independence, overshadowed, it is true, by the mostly distant power of
the Saxon
Emperors.
Nearer home they were confronted by the growing power of
the Counts of Tusculum^, to whose family Gregory, the naval prefect under
Otto III, had belonged; they naturally, although for their own purposes,
followed a German policy. Either of these houses might have founded
at Rome a feudal dynasty such as rose elsewhere, and each seemed at
times likely to do so. But in a city where Pope and Emperor were just
strong enough to check feudal growth, although not strong enough to
^ This tendency to enforce celibacy on seculars by an oath might have led to a
general policy, but was not followed. It was an obligation understood to be inherent
in the priestly office.
2 Burchard illustrates, on celibacy and lay interference, the conflict between old
canons and later customs. He copies the former, but accepts the latter, and allows
for them.
3 For a discussion of their genealogy see II. L. Poole, Benedict IX and Gregory VI
(reprinted from Proceedings of British Academy, viii), pp. 31 sqq.
Benedict VIII 15
impose continuous order, the disorderly stage, the almost anarchy, of
earlv feudalism lingered long.
When Sergius IV (1009-1012) " Boccaporco," son of a Roman shoe-maker and
Bishop of Albano, died soon after John Crescentius, the
rival houses produced rival Popes: Gregory, supported by the Crescentii,
and the Cardinal Theophylact, son of Gregory of Tusculum. Henry II of
Germany, hampered by opposition from Lombard nobles and faced by
King Arduin, had watched Italian politics from afar, and the disputed
election gave him an opening. Rome was divided. Theophylact had
seized the Lateran, but could not maintain himself there; Gregory fled,
even from Italy, and (Christmas 1012) appeared in Henry's court at
Pohlde as a suppliant in Papal robes. Henry cautiously promised
enquiry, but significantly took the Papal crozier into his own keeping,
just
as he might have done for a German bishopric. He had, however, partly
recognised Theophylact, and had indeed sent to gain from him a
confirmation of privileges for his beloved Bamberg: a decision in
Theophylact's favour was therefore natural. Henry soon appeared in
Italy (February 1013); his arrival put Arduin in the shade. Theophylact,
with the help of his family, had established himself, and it was he who,
as Benedict VIII, crowned Henry and Cunegunda (14 February 1014).
The royal pair were received by a solemn procession, and six bearded
and six beardless Senatore bearing wands walked "mystically" before
them. The pious Emperor dedicated his former kingly crown to St Peter,
but the imperial orb bearing a cross was sent to Cluny.
Benedict VIII
was supported now by the imperial arm, and in Germany his ecclesiastical
power was freely used; he and the Emperor worked together on lines of
Church reform, even if their motives differed.
Benedict VIII (1012-1024) proved an efficient administrator, faced by
the constant Saracen peril, and wisely kept on good terms with Henry II.
Although he was first of all a warrior and an administrator, he also
appears, probably under the influence of the Emperor, as a Church
reformer, A Council was held at Pavia (1018)^ where the Pope made
an impressive speech, which, it is suggested, may have been the work of
Leo of VerceUi, on the evils of the day, denouncing specially clerical
^ For the foundation of Bamberg see Hefele-Leclercq, Les Conciles, w, pp. 909
sqq. ; Hauck, op. cit. III, p. 418 ; and Giesebrecht, Deutsche Kaiserzeit, u, pp. 52 sqq.
The missionary importance, as well as the ecclesiastical interest, of the new see and
the disputes about it should be noted. For the Church policy of Henry II see
supra, Vol. III, pp. 231 sqq.
- A more favourable view of him is summarised in Hefele-Leclercq, iv, p. 914.
So K. W. Nitzsch, Gesch. des deutschen Volkes, Leipsic, 1892, i, pp. 392 sqq., in the
same sense.
3 The date of this Council is disputed. 1022 was accepted until Giesebrecht
suggested 1018 (op. cit. II, p. 188, and note 623-4). Also Hauck (who prefers 1022),
op. cit. III, p. 528, n. 2. The earlier date seems a little more probable. In Vol. iii
supra, p. 251, the date 1022 is accepted.
16 The Emperor Henry II
concubinage and simony. His starting point was a wish to protect
Church property from alienation to priestly families, a consideration
likely to weigh with a statesmanlike administrator, although Henry II
might have had a more spiritual concern.
By the decrees of the Council,
marriage and concubinage were forbidden to priests, deacons, and sub-
deacons, indeed to any clerk. Bishops not enforcing this were to be
deposed. The children of clerks were to be the property of the Church.
In the Council the initiative of the Pope seems to have been strong.
The Emperor gave the decrees the force of law, and a Council at Goslar
(1019) repeated them. Italy and Germany were working as one.
There was little difference between the ecclesiastical powers of Henry
in Italy and in Germany. He knew his strength and did not shrink
from using it. Before his imperial coronation he held a synod at Ravenna
(January 1014) where he practically decreed by the advice of the bishops;
for Ravenna he had named as archbishop his half-brother Arnold, who
was opposed by a popularly-supported rival Adalbert. This probably
canonical prelate was deposed, and after Henry's coronation a Roman
synod approved the judgment, although it did obtain for the victim the
compensation of a smaller see. Decrees against simonist ordinations and
the alienation through pledges of Church lands were also passed, and
published by the Emperor. A liturgical difference between Roman and
German use in the mass was even decided in favour of the latter. So
far did German influence prevail.
The reforming tendencies of the German Church found full expression
at the Synod of Seligenstadt (12 August 1023). In 1021 a young
imperial chaplain Aribo had been made Archbishop of Mayence; and he
aimed at giving the German Church not only a better spirit but a more
coherent discipline. In the preamble to the canons, Aribo states the aim
of himself and his suffragans, among whom was Burchard of Worms
(Bishop 1000-1025): it was to establish uniformity in worship, discipline,
and ecclesiastical morals.
The twenty canons regulated fasting, some
points of clerical observance, observance of marriage, in which the
canonical and not the civil reckoning of degrees of kinship was to hold^ ;
lay patrons were forbidden to fill vacancies without the approval and
assent of the bishop; no one was to go to Rome (i.e. for judgment)
without leave of his bishop, and no one subjected to penance was to go
to Rome in the hope of a lighter punishment. This legislation was
inspired by the reforming spirit of the German Church, due not only to
the saintly Emperor but to many ecclesiastics of all ranks, with whom
religion was a real thing; and for the furtherance of this the regulations
of the Church were to be obeyed. The Canon Law, now always including
the Forged Decretals, involved respect to Papal authority, but Aribo
1 'The civil law reckoned brothers and sisters as in the first degree ; the canonical
law was now reckoning cousins-german as such.
Benedict IX 17
and his suffragans laid stress also upon the rights of metropolitans
and bishops in the national Church, which gave them not only
much power for good but the machinery for welding the nation together.
In June 1024 Benedict VIII died and was followed by his brother
Romanus the Senator, who became John XIX; his election, which was
tainted bv bribery and force, was soon followed by the death of the
Emperor (13 Julv 1024). The new monarch, Conrad II, was supported
by the German adlierents in Italy and especially by the Archbishop
Aribert of Milan, a city always important in imperial politics. Both he
and John XIX were ready to give Conrad the crowns which it was theirs
to bestow. So in 1026 he came to Italy; and he and his wife Gisela were
crowned in St Peter's (26 March 1027). Then, after passing to South
Italy, he slowly returned home, leaving John XIX to continue a Papacy,
inglorious and void of reform, until his death in January 1032. Under
him old abuses revived, and so the state of things at Rome grew worse,
while in Germany, although Conrad II (1024-1039) was very different
from Henry II in Church affairs, the party of reform was gaining
strength.
With the election of Benedict IX, formerly Theophylact, son of
Alberic of Tusculum, brother of a younger Romanus the Consul, and
nephew of Benedict VTII and John XIX, Papal history reached a crisis,
difficult enough in itself, and distorted, even at the time, by varying
accounts.
According to the ordinary story, Benedict IX was only twelve
years old at his election, but as he grew older he grew also in debauchery,
until even the Romans, usually patient of papal scandal, became restive;
then at length the Emperor Henrv III had to come to restore decency
and order at the centre of Western Christendom. But there is reason to
doubt something of the story. That Benedict was only twelve years old
at his accession rests on the confused statement of Rodulf Glaber; there
is reason to suppose he was older. The description of his depravity
becomes more highly coloured as years go by and the controversies of
Pope and Emperor distort the past. But there is enough to shew that as
a man he was profligate and bad, as a Pope unworthy and ineffective.
It was, however, rather the events of his Papacy, singular and significant,
than his character, that made the crisis. He was the last of a series of
what we may call dynastic Popes, rarely pious and often bad; after him
there comes a school of reformed and reformers.
Conrad II differed much in Church matters from Henry II. It is true
that he kept the feasts of the Church with fitting regularity and splendour
and that he also was a "brother" of some monasteries. But his aims were
purely secular, and the former imperial regard for learaing and piety was
not kept up. Some of his bishops, like Thietmar of Hildesheim, were
ignorant; others, like Reginhard of Liege and Ulrich of Basle, had
openly bought their sees, and not all of them, like Reginhard, sought
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. I. 2
18 The Emperor Conrad II
absolution at Rome. Upon monasteries the king's hand was heavy:
he dealt very freely with their possessions, sometimes forcing them to give
lands as fiefs to his friends, sometimes even granting the royal abbeys
themselves as such. Thus the royal power worked harmfully or, at any
rate, not favourably for the Church and bishops or abbots eager for
reform could no longer reckon upon kingly help. It is true that Poppo
of Stablo enjoyed royal favour, but other ecclesiastics who, like Aribo of
Mayence, had supported Conrad at his accession, received small encouragement.
Conrad's marriage with Gisela trespassed on the Church's
rule of affinity, and the queen's interest in ecclesiastical appointments, by
which her friends and relatives gained, did not take away the reproach;
but she favoured reformers, especially the Cluniacs, whose influence in
Burgundy was useful.
A change in imperial policy then coincided with a change in Popes.
Benedict VIII may have been inspired by Henry II, but John XIX was
a tool of Conrad, For instance, he had to reverse a former decision,
by which the Patriarch of Grado had been made independent of his
brother of Aquileia. Poppo of Aquileia was a German and naturally an
adherent of Conrad; everyone knew why the decision was changed.
It was even more significant that the Emperor spoke formally of the
decree of the faithful of the realm, "of the Pope John, of the venerable
patriarch Poppo, and others." It was thus made clear that, whether for
reform or otherwise, the Pope was regarded by the Emperor exactly as
were the higher German prelates. They were all in his realm and
therefore in his hands. Here he anticipated a ruler otherwise very
differently-
minded, Henry III.
Benedict IX could be treated with even less respect than John XIX. It is true that he held synods (1036 and 1038), that he made the Roman Bishop of Silva Candida bibliothecarius (or head of the Chancery) in succession to Pilgrim of Cologne. But in 1038 he excommunicated Aribert of Milan, who was giving trouble to Conrad. To the Emperor he was so far acceptable, but in Rome where faction lingered on he had trouble. Once (at a date uncertain) the citizens tried to assassinate him at the altar itself.
Later (1044) a rebellion was more successful : he and
his brother were driven from the city, although they were able to hold
^ See supra, Vol. iii, p. 271.
2 The later incident, 1042, in which Poppo entered Grado by force, burning
and destroying churches and houses, slaughtering and ravaging, illustrates what
some bishops of the day were and did. The story of this revived quarrel between
Grado and Aquileia is well told by F. C. Hodgson, Early History of Venice, London,
1901, pp. 196-206 sqq. ; also supra. Vol. iv, pp. 407-8. The quarrel, which was
old ecclesiastically, had now a twofold connexion with Venetian and German politics.
3 On the difficult chronology of Benedict's Papacy see R. L. Poole, Benedict IX
and Gregory VI {Proceedings of the British Academy, viii). For the chronology
of, and authorities for, the Italian journey of Henry III, SteindorfF, Jahrbucher des
deutschen Reiches unter Heinrich III, i, pp. 466-610.
Sylvester III and Gregory VI 19
the Trastevere. Then John, Bishop of Sabina, was elected Pope, taking the name of Sylvester III. Again we hear of briber}', but as John's see was in the territory of the Crescentii, we may suppose that this rival house was concerned in this attack upon the Tusculans; in fifty days the latter, helped bv Count Gerard of Galeria, drove out Sylvesters party, and he returned to his former see. Then afterwards Benedict withdrew from the Papacy in favour of his godfather, John Gratian, Archpriest of St John at the Latin Gate, who took the name of Gregory VI.
The new Pope belonged to the party of reform ; he was a man of high character, but his election had been stained by simony, for Benedict, even if he were weary of his office and of the Romans, and longed, according to Bonizo's curious tale, for marriage, had been bought out by the promise of the income sent from England as Peter's Pence, The change of Popes, however, was welcomed by the reformers, and Peter Damian in particular hailed Gregory as the dove bearing the olive- branch to the ark. Even more significant for the future was Gregory's association with the young Hildebrand; both were probably connected with the wealthy family of Benedict the Christian . There was a simplicity in Gregory's character which, in a bad society caUing loudly for reform, led him to do evil that good might come. For nearly two years he remained Pope, but reform still tarried.
Attention has been too often concentrated on the profligacy of
Benedict IX, which in its more lurid colours shines so prominently in
later accounts. What is remarkable, however, is the corruption, not of
a single man, even of a single Pope, but of the whole Roman society.
Powerful family interests maintained it; the imperial power might
counterbalance them, and, as we have seen, the Papacy had been lately
treated much as a German bishopric. In the Empire itself there had
been a change; Conrad II had died (4 June 1039), and his son Henry III,
a very different man, now held the sceptre.
Whether it be true or not that, as Bonizo tells us, Peter the
Arch-deacon became discontented and went to ask Henry's interference, it
is
certain that in 1046 Henry came to Italy; German interests and the state
of the Church alike incited him. At Pavia (25 October) he held a
Council, and the denunciation of simony made there- by him gave the
keynote of his policy, now, after Germany, to be applied to Italy and
Rome itself.
Henry was now a man of twenty-two, versed in business, trained to
responsibilities and weighty decisions since his coronation at eleven.
1 For a very probable genealogy see Poole, Benedict IX and Gregory VI, pp. 23 sqq. The connexion explains but avoids Hildebraud's alleged Jewish descent.
* Steindorff places here Henry's discourse (given by Rodulf Glaber, ed. Prou,
p. 133). See Steindorff, op. cit. pp. 309 sqq. and 497 sqq., followed by Hefele-
Leclercq, iv, pp. 979 sqq. But see also Hauck, op. cit. in, p. 586, n. 3, who rightly
holds the words not to be taken as au exact report.
CH. I 20 The Emperor Henry III
He had been carefully taught, but, while profiting from his teachers, had
also learnt to think and decide for himself. He had a high ideal |of his
kingly office; to a firm belief in righteousness he added a conception of
his task and power such as Charlemagne had shewn. He was hailed,
indeed, as a second Charlemagne, and like him as a second David,
destined to slay the Goliath of simony. But in his private life he far
surpassed the one and the other in purity. He saw, as he had declared
at Constance and Treves (1043), the need of his realm for peace, but the
peace was to come from his royal sway.
He was every inch a king, but heart and soul a Christian king. Simony
he loathed, and at one breath the atmosphere of Court and Church
was to be swept clear of it. Inside the Church its laws were to bind not
only others but himself as well: no son of a clerk, for instance, could
hope for a bishopric under him, because this was a breach of law, and he
told Richard of St Vannes that he sought only spiritually-minded men
for prelates. His father had been guilty of simony, but, at much loss
to himself, he abstained from it; his father had been harsh, but he
did not hesitate to reverse his decisions: thus he reinstated Aribert
at Milan. But on the other hand, election by chapters, for bishoprics and
monasteries, was unknown: he himself made the appointments and made
them well; in the ceremony of investiture he gave not only the staff but
the ring. Synods he called at his will, and in them played much the part
of Constantine at Nicaea. This was for Germany, and in Italy he played,
or meant to play, the same part. The case of Widger of Ravenna is
significant.
This canon of Cologne had been named as Archbishop of
Ravenna (1044), but when two years had passed he was still unconsecrated,
although he wore episcopal robes at mass. He was summoned to the
imperial court, and the German bishops were asked to decide his case.
Wazo of Liege asserted that an Italian bishop could not be tried in
Germany, but clearly to Henry the distinction meant nothing. Wazo
also laid down the principle, of novel sound then although common later,
that to the Pope they owed obedience, to the Emperor fealty; secular
matters the one was to judge, ecclesiastical matters the other. Widger^s
case, then, was for the Pope and Italy, not for Henry and Germany.
Nevertheless, Henry gained his point and Widger had to return his ring
and staff. It was doubly significant that the distinction between
ecclesiastical and secular authority should be drawn by Wazo, for the
king had no more devoted servant; he said once that if the Emperor put
out his right eye he should still serve him with the left, and his acts,
notably in defending the imperial rights around Liege even by force,
answered to his words. He was the bishop, too, to whom, when he
asserted the superiority of his episcopal anointing, Henry answered that
he himself was also anointed. Here then, in the principles of Wazo,
canonist, bishop, loyalist, and royal servant, but a clear thinker withal,
were the signs of future conflict. In Henry's own principles might be
The Synod of Sutri 21
seen something of the same unformed conflict, but with him they were
reconciled in his own authority and power.
Such was the king whom the scandals of the Papacy called from
Germany, where for six years the Church had rapidly improved, to Rome,
over which reformer's grieved. Of Rome, Desiderius, Abbot of Monte
Cassino and afterwards Pope as Victor III (1086-7), could write, although
with the exaggeration of a critic : " the Italian priesthood, and among
them most conspicuously the Roman pontiffs, were in the habit of defying
all law and all authority; thus utterly confounding together things sacred
and profane .
Few prelates kept themselves untainted with the vile
pollution of simony; few, very few, kept the commandments of God or
served him with upright hearts."
After his synod at Pavia, Henry III went on to Piacenza, where
Gregory VI, the only Pope actually in power, came to meet him and was
received with fitting honour. Then in Roman Tuscany another synod
was held at Sutri; at this point later and conflicting accounts, Papal and
imperial, begin gravely to distort the evidence and the sequence of
events At the synod the story of the payment made by Gregory VI for
the Papacy was told ; he was most probably deposed, although a later
pro-Papal account made him resign of himself, as the bishops refused to
judge him. Up to their interview at Piacenza Henry had treated him as
the legitimate Pope, but afterwards there was certainly a change. The
details of his accession were probably now more clearly unfolded; stress
may have been laid upon them, and so Henry may have been influenced.
It was not an unknown thing for an Emperor to remove a Pope. Another
motive may also have influenced him. His second marriage to Agnes of
Poitou, sound as a piece of policy, was within the prohibited degrees. It
had caused some discussion in Germany*, but there no bishop, whatever
he thought, cared to withstand a king so good. Probably at Rome it
would be looked at more suspiciously, and to the eyes of a strict Pope
might go against the coronation of the royal pair. We are reminded of
the marriage of William the Conqueror ; both cases would at a later date
have been rightly covered by a dispensation, but the law and its system
of dispensations was only beginning to grow into shape. And Henry
might naturally wish for a Pope who would support him without reserve,
for such was his view of bishops generally. The exile, which Gregory was
to pass in Germany up to his death (probably in October 1047), is a
strange ending to an almost blameless life ; it can only be accounted for
* Here the reconstruction by R. L. Poole, Benedict IX and Gregory VI, a fine
piece of criticism, is followed.
See also Steindorff's Excursus, noted before, and
G. B. Borino, L'elezione e la deposizione di Gregorio VI (Archivio delta R. Soc. Rom.
di Storia Patria, xxxix).
* See supra, Vol. iii, pp. 283—4. The letters of Siegfried of Gorze, who would
have had strong measures taken, to Poppo of Stablo and Bruno of Toul, in Giesebrecht,
op. cit. II, Dokumente 10 and 11.
22 Clement II
by the fear of danger arising from him if he were left in Italy. The doubt
about Henry's marriage, and the recognition of Gregory VI as the true
Pope, wide-spread in Italy and testified to by Wazo of Liege in Germany,
might be used for trouble.
But if Gregory was removed from the papal throne on the ground of
an invalid title, either Benedict IX or Sylvester III must be the rightful
Pope; the throne could hardly now be treated as vacant. Henry had
doubtless made up his mind for a German Pope, who could be better
relied on than an Italian; Rome could well be treated as Milan or
Ravenna had been, and a German Pope was a good precedent since the
days of Gregory V. The claims of Benedict IX and even of Sylvester III
were stirred into life, although they may not have been urged ; the
story that they were considered at Sutri comes from later writers and is
unlikely. It was probably in a synod at Rome (23-24 October) that
Benedict was deposed ; at one time he had certainly been a rightful, if an
unrighteous. Pope, and so he must be legally deposed. Sylvester III,
whose claims were weaker, disappeared into monastic retirement at
Fruttuaria, and was, if dealt with at all, probably deposed in the same
synod.
The way was now clear, and Suidger of Bamberg, a worthy bishop, was chosen as Pope (Christmas 1046). Then, as Clement II, he crowned Henry and Agnes.
We can judge of the degradation of the Papal office,
in spite of the enhanced appeal to it through the spread of Canon Law,
by the refusal of Adalbert of Bremen to accept it on Henry's offer; his
own see, even apart from his special Baltic plans, seemed to be more
important. There was a show of election in the appointment, but the real
power lay with Henry, who named Suidger with the approval of a large
assembly; once again he treated an Italian bishopric, even that of Rome,
as he would have done a German. Significant is the renunciation by the
Romans of their election rights, which must be taken along with the
title
of Patrician given to Henry.
But the new state of things was not to pass without criticism. From
Lower Lorraine came a curious and rather bitter tractate {De ordinando
pontijwe auctor Gallicus) written late in 1047. It betrays some
unrevealed discussion, and the writer urges the French bishops, who had
not been consulted in the election of Clement, to stand aloof ; it was
not
for the Church to palter with the laws of marriage at the wish of a
king.
Evidently, therefore, Henry's marriage was held to be of moment in the
election. Even in Germany there were some who, like Siegfried of Gorze
and like Wazo a little later, were uneasy. Siegfried had disliked the
marriage, and Wazo protested to Henry, when he sought a successor to
1 For the title see supra, Vol. in, pp. 291 , 305.
^ Ed. by E, Dummler, MHG, Libelli de lite, i, pp. 9 sqq. But it is to be dated,
not as by Dummler in 1048, but late in 1047. See Sackur, Die Cluniacenser, ii,
pp. 306 sqq. ; R. L. Poole, Benedict IX and Gregory VI, pp. 29-30.
Damasus II 23
Clement, that no Pope could be made while Gregory VI was still alive ^
Clement II was worthy of his office, but his Papacy was short, and so
uneventful ; he was overshadowed by the presence of the Emperor, whom
he followed to southern Italy, but he held in Januarv 1047 a Council at
Rome, where deposition was decreed against all simonists, while those
ordained by a simonist bishop were to do forty days' penance. Like
preceding Popes he was ready to excommunicate the Emperor's foes, and
the
Beneventans, who refused admittance to the German army, were sufferers.
But, setting a strange example to later Popes, he kept his old
bishopric,
to which, as " his sweetest bride," he sent an affectionate letter, and
where
on his unexpected death (9 October 1047) his body was laid to rest (he
was the onlv Pope buried in Germany) ; a widely-accepted rumour had
it that his unexplained illness was due to poison administered in the
interests of Benedict IX, and the same was said about his successor. It
is certain, at any rate, that on 9 November Benedict returned to Rome,
and, supported by the Marquess Boniface of Tuscany, kept his old office
until July (1048). Neither Roman families nor Italian nobles would
accept imperial control if they could help it.
The power of Boniface now
threatened to become dangerous : his grandfather Azzo owned Canossa,
and his father Tedald, favoured by Henry II, had held Mantua, Ferrara,
and other towns, and kept them faithful to the Emperors. Boniface at
first followed his father's policy and Conrad had given him the March of
Tuscany. But his choice of a second wife, Beatrice, daughter of Frederick,
Duke of Upper Lorraine, brought him into a wider sphere of politics.
Distrust grew between him and the Emperor. At Rome he could injure
the Emperor most, and hence his support of Benedict. The Romans,
however, did not follow him; a deputation was sent to Henry at Pohlde
seeking a new nomination, and Poppo, Bishop of Brixen, was chosen
(Christmas 1047). But Boniface, although Henry's representative in
Italy, at first refused to lead the new Pope to Rome, and only renewed
orders brought him to obedience; then at length he expelled Benedict IX,
and the new Pope was enthroned as Damasus II (17 July 1048).
On
9 August he too died at Palestrina, after a Pontificate of only
twenty-three days; poison was again suspected, although malaria may have
been
the cause. It was no wonder that the deputation which again visited
Germany found the Papal throne little desired. They suggested Halinard
of Lyons, much beloved in Rome, where he had sojourned long. But
he did not accept, even if Henry offered it. At Worms the Emperor
chose a relative of his own, Bruno of Toul, and so there began a Papacy
which was to change even the unchanged Rome itself.
1 Wazo, Sententia de Gregorio VI, in Watterich, Vitae Pontificum, i, pp. 79-80,
quoted from Anselm of Liege.
* It seems better, with Hauck and others, to place the suggestion of Halinard
here, and not earlier.
24 Leo IX as Bishop of Toul
Bruno, Bishop of Toul, was son of Hugo, Count of Egrsheim, and
related to Conrad II, who destined him for rich preferment. Herman of
Toul died on 1 April 1026, and the clergy and citizens at once chose for
successor Bruno, who was well known to them but was then with the
army of Conrad II in Italy. The Emperor hinted at a refusal in hope of
better things, but the unanimous election seemed to the young
ecclesiastic
a call from God; there had been no secular influence at work on his
behalf, and so to Toul, a poor bishopric, often disturbed by border
wars, he
determined to go.
The future Pope had been born 21 June 1002, and, as destined for the
Church, was sent to a school at Toul, noted equally for its religious
spirit
and its aristocratic pupils. His parents were religious and devoted
patrons of monasteries in Alsace, and at Toul reforming tendencies, due
to William of Dijon, were strong, while an earlier bishop, Gerard (963-
994), was revered as a saint; the young man, learned and literary,
became
a canon of Toul, and although not a monk had a deep regard for
St Benedict, to whose power he attributed his recovery from an illness.
From Toul he passed to the chapel of the king, and as deputy for
Herman led the vassals of the bishopric with Conrad ; in military
affairs
he shewed ability, and was, from his impressive figure, his manners and
activity, liked by many besides Conrad and Gisela. His acceptance of
Toul seemed to others a self-denial, but even its very poverty and
difficulties drew him. He was not consecrated until 9 September 1027,
as Poppo of Treves wished to impose a stricter form of oath upon his
suffragan, and not until Conrad's return did the dispute end by the
imposition of the older form. This difficulty cleared, Bruno devoted
himself to his diocese: monastic reform in a city where monasteries were
unusually important was a necessity, and to this he saw; the city lay
open
to attacks from the Count of Champagne, and Bruno had often occasion
to use his military experience, inherited and acquired. Thus, like the
best bishops of his day, notably Wazo of Liege, he was a good vassal to
the Emperor and a defender of the Empire. On the ecclesiastical side,
too, he had that love of the past which gave a compelling power to
historic traditions: it was he who urged Widerich, Abbot of St Evre, to
write a life of his predecessor, St Gerard; as a pilgrim to the
apostolic
threshold, he often went to Rome. In diplomacy he was versed and useful :
in Burgundian politics he had taken a share ; he had helped to
negotiate the peace with France in 1032. As a worthy bishop with
many-sided interests and activities he was known far beyond his diocese,
and even in countries besides his own.
Christmas 1048 Bruno spent at Toul, and then, accompanied by other
bishops and by Hildebrand, the follower of Gregory VI, he went to Rome.
It was a journey with the details of which clerical and partisan romance
afterwards made itself busy. But an election at Rome was usual and,
to Leo more than to other men, necessary. As before at Toul, his
Leo IX as Pope 25
path must be plain before him. Only when accepted by his future flock
could he begin his work, although the real choice had been the
Emperor's.
Leo moved along a path he had already trodden, and he needed no
Hildebrand, with the warning of an older prophet, to guide his steps.
Already he knew a bishop's duty and the needs of the Church. He now
passed into a larger world, even if he kept his former see up to August
1051 : his aims and his spirit were already set, only he was now to work
on an international field; reading, travel, diplomacy, and episcopal
work
had trained him into a strong, enlightened statesman, of fixed
principles
and piety, clear as to the means he ought to use. Church reform had
begun in many places and under many leaders; its various forms had been
tending to coherence in principles and supports, removal of abuses, and
recognition of Canon Law. Taught by these, many eyes had turned
to Rome. But guidance had been lacking thence, and abuses had
flourished to excess. Leo IX was to bring to the movement guidance;
he was to give it a coherence based on papal leadership and power. We
find under him all the former elements of the movement welded together,
and re-interpreted by a Pope who knew what the Papacy could do.
Hence came its new strength. His papacy is marked by its many
Councils, held not only at Rome but also far afield: Rome (after Easter
1049), Pavia (Whitsuntide), Rheims (October), Mayence (October), Rome
(Easter 1050), Salerno, Siponto, Vercelli (September 1050), Rome (Easter
1051), Mantua (February 1053), Rome (Easter)^ But this itinerary gives
little idea of his travels ; on his route from place to place he made
visits
of political impoi'tance, such as to Lorraine, and southern Italy, and
even to Hungary; everywhere he strove to rouse the Church, and
incidentally composed political or ecclesiastical strifes. Details are
wanting for some of these councils, but we must assume that in all of
them decrees against simony and clerical marriage, often spoken of as
concubinage (which was sometimes the truth), were issued.
At the Roman
Council of 1049 simony was much discussed; guilty bishops were deposed,
and one of them, Kilian of Sutri, while trying to clear himself by false
witness, fell like another Ananias and died soon afterwards. There was a
like incident later at Rheims, when the innocent Archbishop of Besan^on,
pleading for the guilty and much accused Hugh of Langres, suddenly lost
his voice. It was ascribed to a miracle by St Remy (Remigius), but such
details shew how personal responsibility was now being pressed home on
the bishops. There was a suggestion that ordinations bv simonist bishops
should be declared null, and it is sometimes said that Leo decreed they
were so*. This, as it was urged, would have made almost a clean sweep
^ An account of Leo's councils is given in Hefele-Leclercq, iv, pp. 995 sqq., with
a very full bibliography for the reign; points of chronology, etc., are discussed.
2 For a full discussion see Saltet, Les Reordinatmu, Paris, 1907, pp. 181 sqq. and
note, p. 408. The evidence comes from Peter Damian, and the difficulty lies in the
translation of his "tanquam noviter ordinavit." I agree with the text of the Abbe
Saltet, and am not convinced by his note correcting his views as given there.
26 The Council of Rheims
of the Roman clergy, for many Popes of late had been simoniacal. Finally it was settled on the lines laid down by Clement II that a penance of forty days met the case. But Leo brought up the matter again in 1050 and 1051, and on the last date he bade the bishops seek light from God. In the Curia there were different views. Peter Damian insisted that the acts of simoniacal bishops were valid, and he supported this by the assertion that some of them had worked miracles; Cardinal Humbert, on the other hand, went strongly on the other side. The two men were foremost in rival schools of thought, divided by opinions on other matters also. Peter Damian, for instance, welcomed the help of pious kings like Henry III, while Humbert held any lay interference in Church affairs an outrage. Strife on this matter was to grow keener, and the fortune of battle is recorded as by an index in the treatment of simonist ordinations. There was a side issue in the question whether simony was not a heresy, as the musician-monk Guido of Arezzo suggested; if it were, simonist ordinations, according to received doctrine, would be automatically void.
The Council of Rheims (3 October 1049) was of special importance.
In
France local conditions varied: here the king and there a great vassal
controlled episcopal appointments, but everywhere simony was rife. It
arose, however, not as in Germany from the policy of one central power,
based upon a general principle of law or administration ; it was a
widespread abuse of varied local origin to be attacked in many
individual cases.
The needed reform was now to be preached on French soil by the Pope
himself; it was to be enforced with all the authority given to the Pope
by the Canon Law, genuine or forged ; it appealed to ancient decisions,
such as that of Chalcedon (canon II, repeated at Paris in 829), against
simony, whether in ordinations or in ecclesiastical appointments, and
such as those enforcing attendance at councils, which were henceforth
commoner. The appearance of a Pope with definite claims to obedience
was thus emphasised by an appeal to the deficient but reviving sense of
corporate life. And, when the synod had done its work, the appeal was
driven home by the summons of guilty bishops to Rome, and by the
Pope's bold guardianship of free elections against royal interference,
as in
the case of Sens (1049) and Le Puy (1053), and Henry I shewed himself
fairly complaisant.
But a German Pope was by no means welcome in France; national
diplomacy rather than a fear of Papal authority made Henry I look
askance on the assembly at Rheims. The consecration of the new abbey
church of St Remy was the occasion of Leo's visit, but the king, by
summoning his episcopal vassals to service in a well-timed campaign,
made their
attendance at the synod difficult, and so many held aloof. An attack
upon simony was the first and main business, and after an allocution the
bishops one by one were called upon to declare their innocence of it. To
do this was notoriously difficult for Guy, the local Archbishop, and the
Bishops of Langres, Nevers, Coutances, and Nantes were in the same
plight.
Activity of Leo IX 27
The archbishop promised to clear himself at Rome the next Easter,
which he may have done; the much-accused Hugh of Langres fled and
was excommunicated; Pudicus of Nantes was deposed; the two others
cleared themselves of suspicion. The Archbishop of Sens, and the Bishops
of Beauvais and Amiens, were excommunicated for non-attendance with
insufficient reason. The canons enjoined election by clergy and people
for bishops and abbots, forbade the sale of orders, safeguarded clerical
dues but prohibited fees for burials, eucharists, and service to the sick;
some canons recalled the objects of the Truce of God, and othere dealt
with infringements of the marriage law. If the synod had been in itself
and in many wavs, and above all in its vigorous reforms, an expression of
the Church's corporate life, it also drove home with unexpected energy
the lesson of individual responsibility. The new Papacy as a means of
reform had justified itself in a hitherto disorderly field. Summonses to
Rome, attendance at Roman synods, and the visits of Roman legates to
France, were to secure for the future the gains that Leo had made
possible.
From Rheims the Pope passed by way of Verdun, M etz, and Treves, to
Mayence, where (in October) a large Council was held. Here simony and
clerical mamage were sternly condemned. Adalbert of Bremen and other
bishops after their return home enforced these decrees with varying
strictness, but without much success ; Adalbert drove wives of clerics from
his city to the country outside. But the unhappy fact that a few of the
bishops, and notably Sigebod of Spires, were not above moral reproach
gave Bardo of Mayence, who was named legate, a difficult task.
On
leaving Germany, Leo visited Alsace and Lorraine, having with him
Humbert, a monk of Moyenmoutier in the Vosges; he was designed for a
new arch-see in Sicily, but that not being created he was named
Cardinal-bishop of Silva Candida. It was doubtless meant that he was to
help Leo
in the plans already forming against the Normans in southern Italy.
Then, whether before or after the Easter Council at Rome (1050) it
is hard to say, Leo went to southern Italy where matters religious and
secular needed attention. At the outset of his reign an embassy, it is
said from Benevento had begged for his help; there was another embassy
in 1052, and probably an intermediate one. And one of the legates whom
Leo sent to report upon the situation was Cardinal Humbert. In his own
visit of 1050 Leo held Councils at Salerno and at Siponto,in the Norman
territory; here the customary decrees were made and some simoniacal
bishops deposed. The Easter Council at Rome (1050) was largely
attended, as was becoming usual, fifty-five bishops and thirty-two
abbots
^ By his archdeacon and biographer, Wibert of Toul ; this is the oldest
life of
LeO, and is written in the older panegyrical style, but is a sound
authority for detailed events ; like the other biographies of the time,
it shews the influence of the
Cluniac spirit. See Giesebrecht, op. cit. n, p. 566 ; Aribert's Life of
Leo in Muratori,
RR.II.SS. Ed. I, III, pp. 282 sqq., and in Watterich, i, pp. 127-170.
28 The Pope and the Normans
being present. Guido of Milan successfully cleared himself from a
charge of simony, but his very appearance to do so marked, much as
similar trials at Rheims and Mayence, a triumph for Papal power. But,
unhappily for Guido, the struggle for precedence between him and
Humfred of Ravenna ended in his being wounded so severely as to be
healed only on his return by the miraculous help of St Ambrose. But
Humfred himself offended by words against the Pope, for which he was
excommunicated at the Council of Vercelli, and his forgiveness at
Augsburg (February 1051) was followed by a somewhat dramatic death. The
very stars seemed to fight against Leo's foes, and submissions to his
commands became more general.
It is needless to follow the later councils of Leo; they were all part of
the policy so strikingly begun. A few fresh matters appear in them,
mingled with the old: at Vercelli (1 September 1050) the heresy of
Berengar, previously discussed in the Roman Council of the same year,
was brought up afresh and was to come up again and again. It was an
outcome, almost inevitable, of the varied and growing movements of the
day.
From Vercelli Leo went by way of Burgundy and Lorraine to Germany,
onl}' coming back to Rome for the Easter Council of 1051. He wished
to get the Emperor's support for a Norman campaign, but the advice of
Gebhard of Eichstadt (afterwards Victor II) swayed Henry against it.
Then later in the year he visited southern Italy, whither he had already
sent Cardinal Humbert and the Patriarch of Aquileia as legates. His
plans almost reached a Crusade; he wished for help both from Henry and
the Emperor Constantine IX (1042-1055); he had visions of a Papal
supremacy which should extend to the long-severed East.
Hence a campaign against the Normans and negotiations with
Constantinople were
combined. Benevento, whence the citizens had driven the Lombard
Princes, and which Leo now visited, was at Worms (autumn 1052) in a
later visit to Germany given to the Papacy in exchange for Bamberg.
Leo IX therefore, like many a Pope, has been called, though for services
further afield, the founder of the Temporal Power. On his return from
the south, Councils at Mantua (February 1053), where opposition to the
decrees for celibacy raised a Lombard riot, and at Rome (Easter)
followed;
at the latter, the rights of the Patriarch of Grado over Venice and
Istria
were confirmed, and to the see of Foroiulium (Udine), where the
Patriarch
of Aquileia had taken refuge after the destruction of his city by the
Lombards, was now left only Lombard territory. These measures are to be
taken alongwith the Pope's Eastern plans, in the general policy and
military
preparations for which Hildebrand had a share. But the host, like other
crusading forces, was strangely composed, and the battle of Civitate,
which
was to have crowned everything, brought only disaster and
disappointment. An honourable captivity with the Normans at Benevento
made
warfare, against which Peter Damian raised a voice, impossible, but Leo
Work of Leo IX 29
could still carry on correspondence and negotiations. The story of the
Papal embassy to Constantinople, whence help was expected more hopefully
than from Germany, has been told elsewhere ^ The three legates,
Cardinal Humbert, Frederick of Lorraine, Cardinal and Chancellor, and
Peter, Bishop of Amalfi, had small success, and the breach between the
Churches of the East and of the West only became wider and more lasting.
Constantine IX had hoped by conquering the Normans to revive his
failing dominion over southern Italy, where the Catapan Argyrus was as
anti-Norman as Leo himself. But Michael Cerularius, Patriarch since
March 1043, had his own large views, carried into politics with much
ability, and a natural dislike of the now more strongly-urged Roman
claims. Constantinople for manv centuries had jealously maintained its
independence of Rome; it knew nothing of the Forged Decretals, while
Canon Law, Church customs, and ritual were now taking separate paths
in East and West. Eastern Emperor and Eastern Patriarch thus had very
different interests and views about Leo's designs. The fortune of war
favoured the Patriarch, for Argyrus, like Leo, was routed in Italy
(February 1053), and the negotiations at Constantinople came to worse
than naught.
But the end of a great Papal reign was near. Sick in heart and health,
Leo left Benevento (12 March 1054), slowly travelling to the Rome
where he had dwelt so little but w hich he tried to make so great. Before
his death he besought the Romans to keep from perjury, forbidden
marriages, and robbery of the Church; he absolved all whom he had
excommunicated; he prayed for the Church and for the convereion of
Benedict IX and his brothers, who had set up simony over nearly all the
world. Then (19 April 1054) he died.
There seems to us a contrast between the more political schemes of his
later and the reforming work of his earlier years. But to him they were
both part of the task to which he had been called. To breathe a new
spirit into the Church and to extend its power were both to make it more
effective in its duty. Even his warfare for the Church was merely
doing as Pope what had been part of his recognised duty as Bishop
of Toul. And his papal reign made a new departure. His conciliar and
legislative activity had been great, even if, amid the pressure of large
events and policies, it slackened, like that of Gregory VII, before the end.
He brought bishops more generally into varied touch with Rome. He
renewed the Papal intercourse and growing control for many lands,
such as Hungary and England. He made Adalbert of Bremen (1053)
Papal Vicar for his Baltic lands, with power to form new sees, even
" regibus invitis." Much that he had begun was carried further by later
Popes, and great as it was in itself his Pontificate was perhaps even
greater as an example and an inspiration. Under the influence of reform
in Germany, of his own training, his own piety, and his devotion to the
* Supra, Vol. iv, pp. 255 sqq.
30 Reform under Leo IX
Church, he had shewn, as Bishop of Toul, a high conception of a bishop's
office. He brought the same to Rome, and with wider and more historic
responsibihties he formed a Hke conception for the Papacy. His friend
and almost pupil Hildebrand was wont% we are told, to dwell upon the
life of Leo, and the things which tended to the glory of the Roman
Church. One great thing above all he did in raising the College of
Cardinals, which succeeding Popes,andnotably Stephen IX, carried further.
His very travels, and the councils away from Rome at which he presided,
brought home to men the place and jurisdiction of the Papacy which was
being taught then by the Canon Law. These councils were now attended
not only by bishops but also by abbots, in quickly increasing numbers;
first by such as those of Cluny and Monte Cassino, and then by others,
until at Rheims (1049) about fifty appeared and at Rome (1050) thirty-
two. Many abbots were now privileged to wear mitres and to ordain;
attendance at councils was thus natural. They formed a solid phalanx
of reformers, and the nucleus of a Papal majority. Thus his Pontificate
abounded in beginnings upon which future days were to build. He
brought the Papacy, after its time of degradation, and with the best
impulses of a new day, into a larger field of work and power.
Leo IX left his mark in many ways upon following reigns. The
central direction of the Western Church continues, although with some
fluctuations of policy and persons, while the improved organisation
enables us to see it in the documents now more carefully preserved. The
Chancery, upon which fell much work due to the new and wide-spread
activity of the Popes, was re-organised by him after the model of the
imperial Chancery. After his time the signatures of witnesses often
appear,
and so we can see who were the chief advisers of the Pope; this we can
connect with the growing importance of the cardinals. Papal activities
are
seen in the number of privileges to monasteries, and many documents shew
a diligent papal guardianship of clerical and monastic property. Rome
is kept closely in touch with many lands ^, leading prelates are
informed
of Papal wishes and decrees.
A continuity of policy and of care for
special districts can also be traced in series of letters, such as those to
Rheims.
Leo's reforming policy was carried on. Conciliar decrees upon clerical
celibacy were repeated, and simony, sometimes forbidden afresh, like
marriage, met with new punishment. The policy is much the same, and
it is still more directed by Rome. But one difference between him and
1 So Bruno of Segni, Vita Leonis IX, in Watterich, Vitae Pontificum, i, p. 97.
2 Privileges, grants or confirmation of rights to property or jurisdiction, took
under him a new form, and are distinguished from letters. See 11. L. Poole,
Lectures on the Hidory of the Papal Chancery and Imperial Influences on the Forms of
Papal Documents (Brit. Acad. vxii). Sovereignty and control thus entered into a
new and larger field.
3 E.g. England under Edward the Confessor, Dalmatia, France.
Victor II 31
his successors soon appears, and slowly grows. He had worked well with
the Emperor, but the new spirit breathed into the Papacy brought, with
a new self-consciousness, a wish for independence. This was natural, and
harmonised with the new feeling, intensified by Canon Law, that the
hierarchy of the Church should not be entangled with that of the State.
About the difficult application of this principle, views began to differ.
The Papal reigns to which we pass shew us the gradual disentanglement
of these rival principles amid the clash of politics.
But Leo's successor was long in coming, and the exact course of
events is somewhat doubtful. Gebhard of Eichstiidt had been a trusted
counsellor of Henry he had thwarted the hopes of Leo for large help
against the Normans, and now at length he became Pope. The Emperor might
well hesitate to part with such a friend, and the prospect
of the impoverished Papacy in difficult Italy was not enticing. Here as
in the case of Leo IX the real decision lay with Henry. Gebhard's
elevation was settled in the last months of 1054, and he was received
and,
as Victor II, enthroned "hilariter" at Rome (13 April 1055).
The Norman victory, and another event, had altered affairs in Italy.
Boniface of Tuscany, whose power and policy were threatening to Pope and Emperor alike, was assassinated on 6 May 1052, and his widow Beatrice married (1054) the dangerous and ambitious Godfrey the Bearded, the exiled Duke of Lorraine, who had been administering her estates. Hence arose difficulties with Henry. He was needed in Italy; in April he was in Verona, at Easter in Mantua. In spite of her defence he put Beatrice and her only remaining child Matilda in prison. Godfrey fled across the Alps, and his brother Frederick, lately returned from Constantinople, took refuge at the fortress- monastery of Monte Cassino; here (May-June 1057) he became abbot, after a short but fervid monastic career entered upon under the influence of Desiderius. At Whitsuntide (4 June 1055) Pope and Emperor were present at a council in Florence. Before leaving Italy Henry gave to the Pope Spoleto and Camerino, as well as making him Imperial Vicar in Italy. This may throw light on Henry's choice of Gebhard and also his alleged pro- mise to restore papal rights. But on 5 October 1056 the great Emperor died. The removal of a strong hand brought new responsibilities to the Pope, his old adviser and friend. Victor II, like Leo, dwelt little in Rome; he left it at the end of 1055 and travelled slowly to Germany; he was by Henry's death-bed at Botfeld, and he buried him at Spires. Then at Aix-la-Chapelle he enthroned the young king Henry IV; his presence and experience were valuable to the Empress Agnes, now Regent, and he was able to clear her path and his own by a reconciliation with Godfrey, who was allowed to take the place of Boniface. By Lent 1057 Victor was in Rome to hold the usual council. Then he left the city for Monte Cassino to bring the
^ See supra, Vol. iiij pp. 298-9.
32 Stephen IX
stubborn monastery, which had elected an Abbot Peter without consulting
Pope or Emperor, into accord with the Papacy. The elevation of the
Cardinal-deacon Frederick to be its abbot and also Cardinal-priest of
St Chrysogonus (14 June) marked a reconciliation, significant
ecclesiastically and politically. In July Monte Cassino was left for a
journey
towards Rheims, where a great Council was to be held. But Victor's death
at Arezzo (28 July 1057) removed from the Empire a pillar of peace, and
left the Church without a head. In those days of stress, workers who
really faced their task rarely lived long. He was buried, not at
Eichstadt
as he and his old subjects would have wished, but at Ravenna.
It is not so easy to sketch the character of Victor II as to record his
doings. As a young man he had been chosen bishop almost incidentally by
Henry III, who may have judged rightly his powers of steady service.
The Eichstadt chronicles tell us that as a young man he did nothing
puerile; it is also true that as an old man he did nothing great. But
neither as German bishop nor as Pope did he ever fail in diligence or
duty: his earlier reputation was gained rather as servant of the State
than as prelate of the Church; as Imperial Vicar he might have brought
peace to Italy as he had to Germany and its infant king. But death
prevented his settling the Norman difficulty; there is no reason to think
that he had forsaken his former view which had crossed that of Leo IX.
His dealings with Monte Cassino, always strongly anti-Norman, had
given him a new base upon which he could rely for peace as easily as for
war. His work was sound but was not completed. He seems to us an
official of many merits, but confidence was the only thing he inspired. He
was no leader with policies and phrases ready; he was only a workman
who needed not to be ashamed.
On 2 August 1057, the festival of Pope Stephen I, Frederick of
Lorraine was elected Pope 1 and took the name of Stephen IX.2 He was
in Rome when the news of Victor's death came, and was asked to suggest
a successor; he named Humbert, three Italian bishops, and Hildebrand.
Then, when asked to be Pope himself, he unwillingly accepted. He was no
imperialist like Victor, and he was, like the monks of his abbey, strongly
anti-Norman. Above all he was an ecclesiastic, heart and soul. Moreover,
he was freely elected at Rome; not until December was a deputation sent
to inform the German Court; there was no whisper of kingly recognition
and indeed there was no Emperor; he was elected, as a German chronicler
complains, rege ignorante ^ although the circumstances may account for
this.
The new Pope had been a canon at Liege. His riches, increased by
gifts at Constantinople, made him popular, but he was a monk of deep
1 He kept his abbacy as preceding Popes their sees. Victor II's successor
Gunther was only elected to Eichstadt on 20 August 1057.
2 Sometimes called Stephen X. See II. L. Poole, The Names and Numbers of
medieval Popes, EHR, xxxii, pp. 4G5 sqq. For our period, pp. 471-2.
St Peter Damian 33
conviction. His short papacy leaves room for conjecture as to what with longer days he might have done. There were rumours that he meant to make Duke Godfrey Emperor, but he differed very widely from his more secular-minded brother.
Like his predecessors he did not stay long in
Rome; he soon left it for Monte Cassino, which he reached at the end of
November: he arranged for Desiderius to be abbot after his death, but
meanwhile to be sent on an embassy to Constantinople. The shadow of
death was already on the Pope, when in February 1058 he went to Rome.
Before this he had sent representatives, of whom Hildebrand was one, to
Germany, probably to announce his election. Now he resolved to meet
his brother, but before he set out he gathered together the cardinal-
bishops and other clergy of Rome with the burghers. He told them he
knew that after his death men would arise among them who lived for
themselves, who did not follow the canons but, though laymen, wished
to reach the Papal throne. Then they took an oath not to depart from
the canons and not to assent to a breach of them by others. He also bound
them in case of his death to take no steps before Hildebrand's arrival.
Then he set out for Tuscany, but on 29 March 1058 died at Florence
where he was buried. Weakness and sickness had long been his lot; it was
needless to attribute his death to poison given by an emissary from Rome.
It is clear that Pope Stephen's thoughts were intent upon the Normans;
what support Hildebrand had gained from the Empress-regent we
do not know, and the Pope himself was eagerly awaiting his legate's
return. What further help and of what kind he was to gain from Duke
Godfrey was even more uncertain.
A policy of peace, such as Victor H
had adopted, had more to recommend it than had one of war; Monte
Cassino was under Papal control, and all the cards were in the Papal
hand. The hurried fever of a dying man made for haste, but death was
even quicker. Stephen's papacy ended amid great possibilities.
But one thing was certain : any line taken would be towards the
continued reform of the Church. Stephen had drawTi more closely around
him able and determined reformei"s. Peter Damian he called to be
Cardinal-bishop of Ostia, a post from which that thorough monk recoiled.
He had been unwilling to pass from his beloved Fonte-Avellana to Ocri
where Leo IX had. made him prior; the sins of the monks filled him with
horror, and now he shrank even more from the open world which did not
even profess the monastic rule. The Pope had to appeal to his obedience
and even to threaten excommunication. So Damian was consecrated at
Rome in November 1057, under pressure which he held to be almost
uncanonical. He was called from his diocese in 1059 to enforce the
programme of discipline at Ambrosian Milan; with him was to go the
active reformer Anselm, Bishop of Lucca. To their embassy we must
return later. It is enough to notice here that Milan was thus brought
into the Papal sphere; Guido, its Archbishop, was ordered on 9 December
1057 to appear at the Papal Court to discuss the situation.
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. I. 3
34 Increase of Papal Authority
At length in 1070 Peter Damian gained his release from Alexander II
so that he could return to his beloved penitential desert. But his cardinalate
he kept and his influence he never lost. As legate, however, he brought
his personal power into fresh fields: he was sent to difficult Milan in
1057; to France in 1063 to settle the dispute between Drogo of Macon
and the exempted Cluny; and as an old man of 62 to Germany in 1069
to handle the suggested divorce of Henry IV and Bertha. Each mission
was a triumph for his firmness or, as he would have preferred to say, for the
laws of the Church. The employment of legates to preside at councils
superseded the heroic attempts of Leo IX to do so in person; the
reverence owed to the Apostolic See was paid to its legates. So we have
Humberfs legateship to Benevento in 1051 and to Ravenna in 1053;
that of Hildebrand to France in 1055, when he not only, as Damian tells
us, deposed six bishops for simony but, as he himself told Desiderius, saw
the simonist Archbishop of Lyons smitten dumb as he strove to finish the
Gloria with the words "and to the Holy Ghost." With the same great aim,
Victor II named the Archbishops of Aries and Aix his permanent Vicars for
southern France. Leo IX solemnly placed a mitre on the head of Bardo of
Treves to mark him as Primate of Gallia Belgica (12 March 1049), on
29 June 1049 gave Herman of Cologne the pallium^ and cross, on 6 January
1053 gave the pallium and mitre to Adalbert of Bremen as Papal Vicar for
the north, and on 18 October 1052 gave the pallium and the use of a special
mitre to the Archbishop of Mayence; on 25 April 1057 Victor confirmed
the privileges of Treves, and gave the mitre and pallium to Ravenna.
The Papal power was thus made more and more the mainspring of the
Church. Metropolitans became the channels of Papal power.
To the
Papacy men looked for authority, and from it they received honours
which symbolised authority. Grants of the pallium to other sees extended
the process, and other marks of honour, such as the white saddle-cloths
of Roman clerics, were given and prized. The eleventh century, like the
tenth, was one in which this varied taste for splendour, borrowed from
the past, was liberally indulged. The mitre, papal and episcopal, was
being more generally used and was altering in shape, and its growth
illustrates a curious side of our periods Laymen shared the tastes of
* The pallium was given from the fifth century to archbishops named as
Vicars
of the Roman Patriarch. In the eighth century it was given to other
metropolitans.
Originally it was an honorary decoration given by the Emperor, and then
acquired
an ecclesiastical meaning. It was an age in which, as all evidence
shews, decoration and robes, splendid and symbolic, were valued and
sought after; diplomatically
bestowed by the Popes they gratified the recipients and enhanced the
Papal power.
See for the eighth century the letters between Pope Zacharias and Boniface in
S. Bonifacii et Lulli Epistolae, MGH, Epp. Sel. i (ed. Tangl), pp. 80-205.
2 The mitre probably originated in the Phrygian cap, a secular sign of
honour
supposed to be given to the Popes by the Donation of Constantine and
worn ad
imitationem imperii. About the middle of the eleventh century it was
used liturgically and not only in secular processions. Hie whole
development, use, and interpretation are interesting.
See Sachsee, Tiara und Mitra der Papste, ZKG, xxxiv,
pp. 481 sqq.; Duchesne, Christian Worship (Engl, transl.), p. 398.
Contested succession on Stephen IX's death 35
churchmen; Benzo's vivid picture of "the Roman senate" wearing
head-dresses akin to the mitre charmed the pencil of a medieval
chronicler.
The death of Stephen IX gave the Roman nobles, restless if submissive
under imperial control and Papal power, a wished-for chance. Empire
and Papacy were now somewhat out of touch, and other powers, Tuscan
and Norman, had arisen in Italy. Gerard, Count of Galeria, formed a
party with Tusculan and Crescentian help, burst into the city by night,
5 April 1058, and elected John Mincius, Cardinal-bishop of Velletri, as
Benedict X;1 and money played its part in the election. The name was
significant, but the Pope himself, more feeble than perverse, had previously
been open to no reproach"^; he had been made cardinal by Leo IX, and
on the death of Victor II had been suggested by Stephen himself as a
possible Pope. Reform had thus made great strides between Benedict IX
and Benedict X. Some of the cardinals were afar, Humbert in Florence,
and Hildebrand on his way from Germany', whither he had gone, a little
late, to announce the election of Stephen. But as a body they were now
more coherent, less purely Roman, and more ecclesiastical; they declared
against Benedict, threatening him with excommunication, and fled the
city. Then they gathered together in Tuscany and consulted at leisure
on another choice. In the end they settled on a Burgundian, Gerard
Bishop of Florence, a sound and not too self-willed prelate of excellent
repute, favoured by Duke Godfrey^ and not likely to take a line of his
own. Besides the help of Godfrey the approval of the Empress Agnes
was sought. Even in Rome itself there was a party against Benedict,
headed by Leo de Benedicto Christiano^ a rich citizen, son of a Jewish
convert, influential in the Trastevere and in close touch with Hildebrand ;
they sent a deputation to the Empress Agnes at Augsburg, pleading that
the election of Benedict had been due to force. As a result Duke Godfrey
was ordered to lead the cardinals' nominee to Rome. Gerard was elected
at Siena, probably in December 1058, by the cardinals, together with
high ecclesiastics and nobles, and chose the name of Nicholas 11^. His old
see he kept until his death. Then an approach was made towards Rome ;
a synod was held at Sutri. Leo de Benedicto opened the Trastevere
1 On the election and date see Hefele-Leclercq, iv, pp. 1133 sqq.
2 The invective of Peter Damian against him judges after the election. For it
see Watterich, i, pp. 204-5.
3 Less probably in Germany itself. But see Hefele-Leclercq, iv^ p. 1134, note 2.
* In war against Ancona he was helped by a Papal excommunication of the
opposing citizens. Thus the Papacy was useful to him. Peter Damian did not
approve this action of the Pope (Ep. i, 7). See Langen, iii, pp. 528-9.
^ From his son Peter his descendants were known as the Pierleoni. On him see
Poole, Benedict IX and Gregory VI, pp. 23 sqq.; he was probably connected by
marriage with Hildebrand's mother.
^ For an election near 6 December (St Nicholas' Day), the choice of name was
natural. Martens wrongly assumes a reference to Nicholas I. A Pope chose his
own name, from the time of John XVI (983) whose baptismal name was Peter (see
Poole, EHR, XXXII, pp. 459 sqq.).
CH. 1. 36 Nicholas II
to them, and Benedict X fled for a few days to Passarano and thence
to Galeria, where for three months he was besieged by the Normans under
Richard of Aversa. Nicholas was enthroned on 24 January 1059; and
the captured Benedict was deposed, stripped of his vestments, and
imprisoned in the hospitium of the church of Sant Agnese His name
was long left in the Papal lists, and he was not an anti-Pope in the ordinary
sense until Nicholas II was elected 2. The choice of Gerard had removed
the election of a Pope from the purely Roman sphere to one of wider
importance, and the alliance with the Normans, brought about by the
help of Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, gave the Pope a support
independent of the Empire or Rome. In all these negotiations Hilde-
brand played a great part^ In the interval between his enthronement
and the Easter Council, Nicholas visited Spoleto, Farfa, and Osimo, and
at the last place on 6 March 1059 appointed Desiderius as cardinal.
In Italy, after the Easter Council at Rome, he held a Council at Melfi,
where decrees on clerical celibacy were repeated stringently, and the
famous peace was made with the Normans^. Then he returned to Rome,
accompanied by a Norman army, and the Papal sovereignty was enforced.
The Norman alliance, and the celebrated decree on Papal elections, worked
together, and a new era began.
A great Council of 113 bishops was held on 14 April 1059 at the
Lateran^ Earlier decrees had broadly regulated the election of a Pope:
Stephen III (769) and Stephen IV (862-3) had anathematised anyone
contesting an election made by priests, prelates, and the whole clergy of
the Roman Church. Otto I had renewed the settlement of Lothar I (824),
by which the election was to be made by the whole clergy and nobility
of the whole Roman people, canonically and justly, but the elect was not
to be consecrated until he had taken the oath to the Emperor. The
normal canonical form was prescribed, but disorderly nobles, imperial
pressure, civic riots, and simony, had tampered with Rome even more than
other churches. The German Popes had brought reform but at the price
of ecclesiastical freedom.
The Election Decree of 1059 has come down to us in two forms, known
^ The final scene of his condemnation may belong to the winter of 1059 or the
Easter Council of 1060. For details see Meyer von Knonau, i, pp. 177-8 and note 13.
^ On this point see Poole, Names and Numbers of Medieval Popes, EHR, xxxii,
pp. 465 and 473-4. Benedict's name has now disappeared from the official list.
^ Yet the views of Hauck, op. cit. in, pp. 680-1 seem to me to go too far.
* See infra, Chapter iv, pp. 174 sq.
^ A discussion of the literature with bibliography in Meyer von Knonau^
Jahr-bucher, i. Excursus vii, pp. 678 sqq.; Hefele-Leclercq, iv, p.
1139, note 2; Hauck^
op. cit. Ill, p. 683, note 4. Also A. Werminghoff, Verfassungsgeschichte
der
deutschen Kirche im Mittelalter (in Aloys Meister, Grundriss der
Geschichtswissenschaft); Langen, Geschichte der Romischen Kirche, in, p.
503, note 3; J. v. Pflugk-
Harttung, Die Papstwahlen und das Kaisertum (1046-1328), in ZKG, xxvii,
pp.
283 sqq.
Election Decree of 1059 37
as imperial and papal respectively. The latter is now generally
accepted,
and the former is held to have been falsified by Guibert, then Imperial
Chancellor for Italy and afterwards Archbishop of Ravenna and anti-Pope
as Clement III^ The business of election was, in the first place, to be
treated of by the cardinal-bishops. Then they were to call in fii-stly
the
cardinal-clerics, and secondly the rest of the Roman clergy and the
people.
To prevent simony, the cardinal-bishops, taking the place of a
metropolitan, were to superintend the election, the others falling in
after them.
The elect should be taken from the Roman Church, if a suitable candidate
were found ; if not, from another Church. The honour due to Henry, at
present king and as it is hoped future Emperor, was reserved as conceded
to him, and to such of his successors as should have obtained in person
the same right from the Apostolic throne. If a pure, sincere, and
voluntary election could not be held in Rome, the cardinal-bishops with
the
clergy and catholic laitv, even if few, might hold the election where
they
were gathered together. If the enthronement had to be postponed by
reason of war or other evil, the Pope-elect might exercise his powers as
if fully Pope. Anvone elected, consecrated, or enthroned contrary to
this
decree was to be anathematised.
The imperial form differed from the Papal form summarised above in
giving the Emperor a place with the cardinals as a body in leading the
election; it does not distinguish the cardinal-bishops from the others,
and it does not mention the rest of the clergy or the people. If an
election
were not possible in Rome, it might be held where the electors chose, in
agreement with the king. The differences lie rather in the way in which
the king is brought into the election than in the reservation of the
imperial rights, which is much the same in both forms, and the cardinal-
bishops are not given the rights of a metropolitan; and the imperial
form mentions the mediation of Guibert, Chancellor of Italy and imperial
representative. The changes seem to be made less on general
principles than to suit a special case, and if due to Guibert this is
what
we might expect.
The decree was not strictly kept, but the place given to the cardinals,
who were now growing into a College, was significant for the future. Its
details had reference to the past election; judged by its standard, the
election of Nicholas was correct and that of Benedict was not. But it
laid stress on the special place of the Papacy, and in the Papal form at
1 The Papal form (from the Vatican MS. 1994) in MGH, Constitutiones, i.
pp.
539 sqq., Watterich, i, p. 229, and Mirbt, p. 140. The imperial form in
MGH,
Constitutiones, i, pp. 542 sq. and Mirbt, p. 141, note 2. Both forms
conveniently in
Bernheim, Quellen zur Geschichte des Investiturstreites , i, pp. 12
sqq., followed by the
announcements to Christendom at large, to the West Franks, and to the
Province of Amalfi. These agree more closely with the Papal form. The
Papal form
was preserved by the Canonists and in the Conciliar collections. For the
later
falsification by Guibert see Watterich, i, p. 233, note 1.
The Papal form agrees with
Peter Damian's comment.
38 Simoniacal [Papal] ordinations
any rate it threw aside all imperial influence before assent to the
accomplished act. It remained to be seen whether this freedom could be
maintained.
Other matters were also dealt with in the Council. Berengar appeared
and made a profession of faith dictated by Cardinal Humbert. The
regulation of the Papal election was announced as a matter of European
importance, as indeed it now was, and here the cardinal-bishops are
mentioned expressly; the decree on celibacy was strict, and for those
clerks
who obediently observed chastity the common canonical life was enforced.
In this detail we have a trace of the discussion already mentioned. ^ No
clerk or priest was to obtain a church either gratis or for money
through
laymen. No one was to hear a mass said by an unchaste priest: the
precedent of this canon was to be followed later under Alexander II and
Gregory VII. Laymen were not to judge or expel from their churches
clerks of any rank. The boldness of this canon may be compared with a
more hesitating grant in 1057 to the clergy of Lucca that none of them
should be taken to secular judgment. The fuller treatment of simonist
ordinations and simony of all kinds belongs to the Synods of 1060 and
1061 ^.
The upshot of Conciliar activity under Nicholas II was to crystallise
the former campaign for celibacy into definite decisions, backed by
the whole power of the Papacy and the Curia. What had before been
tentative was now fixed. Opinion was consolidated, and policy was
centralised, not only about celibacy but also about simonists. If those
who
had been ordained by simonists in the past were allowed to keep their
orders and their offices, thus conforming to the policy of Peter Damian
at Milan, it was lest the Church should be left without pastors. But
for the future there was to be no hesitation, and the correspondence of
the Popes with Gervais of Rheims^ (a see carefully watched as in
previous reigns) illustrates the carrying out of the policy*.
The Council at Rome (1060) decreed that for the future anyone ordained without payment by a simonist bishop should remain in his order if he was open to no other charge; this decision was made not on principle but from pity, as the number affected was so great. It was not to be taken as precedent by following Popes; for the future, however, anyone ordained by a bishop whom he knew to be a simonist should be deposed, as should the bishop also. Thus a long-standing difficulty was for the time disposed of.
Reforming councils in France at Vienne and Tours, held under the legate Cardinal Stephen, made stringent decrees against simony, marriage
^ See supra, p. 13 and note 1.
2 Hefele-Leclercq, iv, p. 1169. See also for canons of 1060 Bernheim, Quellen,
pp. 22 sq.
3 Jaffe-Lciweiifeld, Reg., passim [some 20 letters].
* For the views of Nicholas on reordination see Saltet, Les Reordinations,
pp. 198-9, and A. Fliche, Les Pregregoriens, Paris, 1910, p. 240.
Decision on the crucial point was avoided.
Milan 39
of priests, and alienation of church property or tithes under legal form.
Abbot Hush of Cluny did the same at Avignon and Toulouse.^ But
it was now more a matter of enforcing decrees already made than issuing
new. In Italy some bishops found it difficult to publish rcforming decrees,
and in some cases did so with risk of violence.
It has been noted as strange that in such a remarkable reign we hear
little about the character of the Pope himself. The predominance of the
cardinals partlv explains it : Humbert, Peter Damian, and Hildebrand
(now archdeacon) were not always in accord, and it was for Nicholas to
balance conflicting views and policies. He was the president of the
College rather than its director.
Like other Popes Nicholas kept his old
bishopric, and like them too he was often absent from Rome, which was
not without its drawbacks, as the English bishops, robbed by the Count
of Galeria, found out. But we breathe an air of greater largeness in his
Papacy, and things seem on a larger scale.
Nicholas died suddenly near Florence on 27 July 1061, returning from
an expedition in southern Italy. The Election Decree was to be tested.
The Norman alliance, and still more the Election Decree, had affected
the delicate relations of Pope and Emperor 2 During the minority of
Henry IV, matters had been allowed to slide, and when attention was at
length given to them the barometer registered a change of atmosphere.
So great was the initation in Germany that the name of Nicholas was
left out in intercessions at mass; legates from Rome met with bad receptions.
Meanwhile events in Milan' had taken a decisive turn for Papal and
ecclesiastical history. In position, in wealth, in traditions, both
political
and ecclesiastical, the city of St Ambrose was a rival of Rome, and
hitherto it had proudly kept its independence. Aribert's opposition to
the Emperor Conrad had shewn the power of the archbishop ; and if an
enemy to the Empire were to rule there, imperial influence would be
weakened. This Henry III understood. On Aribert's death in 1045
Guido was appointed. Class distinctions were strongly marked, and the
new archbishop belonged not to the barons but to the vavassors; in
strength and in reputation he was undistinguished, and Bonizo with his
usual exaggeration calls him "vir illiteratus et concubinatus et
symoniacus," but concubinage he was not guilty of. He was not the man
for a
difficult post, still less the man to lead reform. He valued more the
traditions of St Ambrose as a rival of Rome than as a teacher of
1 For France, Laugen, iii, pp. o2J-5. R. Lehniaun, Forschungen zur Geschichte Abtes Hugo I von Cluny, Gottingen, 1869, pp. 88-9. Hefele-Leclercq, iv, pp. 1199 sqq. Nicholas was, as Langen has noted, specially interested in France, as a Burgundian might be. It may be mentioned that in later years his enemies spread a rumour that his birth was irregular.
^ See Meyer von Knonau, Jahrbucher, i, Excursus viii, pp. 684 sqq. Hefele-
Leclercq, iv, pp. 1209 sqq. Hauck, op. cit. rii, pp. 700-1, especially note 5.
^ For Milan cf. infra, Chapter v, pp. 217 sqq.
40 Milan and clerical celibacy
righteousness. In Italy as a whole the poor were more devoted to the
Church than the rich (who tended to have their own chapels), and they
were keen to criticise the lives of their spiritual teachers; outbursts of
violence against unworthy priests had not been rare in Milan. But these
had been isolated acts; what mattered more was that the Milanese
Church had settled down into a worldly, possibly respectable, but certainly
unspiritual life of its own. It was content to breathe the air around it
but did nothing to revive or purify it, although the clergy were numerous
" as the sands of the sea" and the churches were rich. For the most part
the clerks were married, and so the Church was deeply intertwined in the
social state.
Sale of Church offices was common, and there was a recognised
scale of charges for orders and for preferments. It was certain that
reformers would find much to complain of; so long had the growth of
secularisation gone on that, even with a more placid populace, reform when
it came was likely to become revolution.
About 1056 the new streams of thought and new ideals began to flow
around the hitherto firm footing of the clergy. The movement was
headed by a deacon Ariald, a vavassor by birth and a canonist by
training, an idealist, inspired by visions of the primitive Church and
the simple teaching of Christ : contrasting these with the example of
priests whose life could teach but error.
He began his campaign in the
villages where he was at home; then, when his hearers pleaded their
simplicity and urged him to go to Milan, where he would find men of
learning to answer him, he took their advice. In the city he found allies
ready to help although starting from a different point — Landulf, who
was in minor orders, and (later on) his brother Erlembald, of the Cotta
family, both gifted with eloquence, ambitious, and thorough demagogues.
The movement soon became political and social as well as religious, owing
to the social standing of those they attacked. With these two worked
Anselm of Baggio, one of the collegiate priests, whom Guido persuaded
the Emperor to appoint to the see of Lucca (1056 or 1057). Guido,
appointed by Henry III who had misjudged his character, was himself a
simonist, and his arguments that clerical marriage was an ancient custom
in Milan, that abuse and violence were evil ways of reproving offenders,
that the clergy were not immoral but for the most part respectable married
men, and that abstinence was a grace not given to all and was not imposed
by divine law, had small effect.
In other cities, Pavia and Asti for
instance, the populace rose against their bishop, and Milan was moved
in the same way. Landulf worked in the city ; Ariald carried on the
campaign in the surrounding villages whose feudal lords were citizens
of the town. And Anselm brought the movement into touch with the
wider circle of reformers at Rome and elsewhere. Landulf's eloquence
soon filled the poorer citizens with hatred of the clergy, with contempt
for their sacraments, and a readiness to enforce reform by violence. The
undoubted devotion of the leaders, enforced by their eloquence in sermons
Milan and simony 41
and speeches, soon made them leaders of the populace. The use of
nick-names — Simonians and Nicolaitans — branded the clerical party ;
that of
Patarines brought in class distinctions, and those to whom it was given
could claim like Lollards in England the special grace of simple men. On
the local festival of the translation of St Nazarius a riot broke out,
and
the clergy were forced to sign a written promise to keep celibacy. They
had to choose between their altars and their wives. Their appeal to the
archbishop, who took the movement lightly, brought them no help. The
nobles for some reason or other took as yet no steps to help them. The
bishops of the province when appealed to proved helpless, and in
despair the clerks appealed to Rome, probably to Victor II.
His care for
the Empire made the Pope anxious to keep order. He referred the
matter to Guido, and bade him call a provincial synod, which he did at
Fontaneto in the neighbourhood of Novara (1057). Ariald and Landulf
were summoned, but, in their scornful absence, after three days they were
excommunicated. Although this synod had been called, its consequences
fall in the pontificate of Stephen IX, who is said to have removed
the ban from the democratic leaders. The movement had become, as
democratic movements so easily do, a persecution with violence and
injury ^ Guido's position was difficult and in the autumn (1057) he
went to the German Court.
But the movement now took a new and wider turn ; not only clerical
marriage but simony, the prevalent and deeply-rooted evil of the city,
was attacked. A large association, sworn to reach its ends, was formed.
The new programme affected Guido, equally guilty with nearly all his
clergy. It was of small avail that now the higher classes, more sensitive
to attacks on wealth than on ecclesiastical offences, began to support the
clergy; the strife was only intensified. In the absence of Guido, and with
new hopes from the new Pope, Ariald went to Rome and there complained
of the evils prevalent at Milan. It was decided to send a legate, and
Hildebrand on his way to the German Court made a short stay at Milan
(November 1057). He was well received ; frequent sermons did something
to control the people already roused. But his visit wrought little change,
and it was not until Damian ^ and Anselm came as legates that anything
1 The chronology is difficult and doubtful. That adopted by Meyer von Knonau
{Jahrb. 1, especially Excursus v, pp. 669 sqq.) seems best. It is not certain whether
the Milanese clergy appealed to Victor II or Stephen IX ; Arnulf says the latter,
but the former is more probable. For the chronology see also Hefele-Leclercq, iv,
pp. 1126 sqq.
2 The legateship is best dated early in 1059 before the Easter Synod at Rome.
We have Damian's own account addressed to Hildebrand, Archdeacon. Hence a
difficulty, for Hildebrand was not Archdeacon until autumn 1059. But Damian
speaks of his having been asked by Hildebrand to put together matters bearing on
Roman supremacy ; the account was probably meant in that sense as a record of an
important decision. For other arguments in favour of this date see Hefele-Leclercq,
IV, p. 1191, note 2 ; Meyer von Knonau, i, p. 127, note 17. Hauck, iii, p. 696, note
1, holds the date as good as certain.
42 The vacancy on Nicholas II's death
was done. Damian persuaded Guido to call a synod, and here, at first to
the anger of the patriotic Milanese, the legate presided. It seemed a
slur
upon the patrimony and the traditions of St Ambrose; even the democratic
reformers were aghast. It was then that Damian, faced by certain
violence
and likely death, shewed the courage in which he never failed. With no
attempt at compromise, with no flattery to soothe their pride, he spoke
of the claims of St Peter and his Roman Church to obedience. Milan was
the daughter, the great daughter of Rome, and so he called them to
submission. It was a triumph of bold oratory backed by a great
personality;
Guido and the whole assembly promised obedience to Rome. Then
Damian went on with his inquest ; one by one the clerics present
confessed
what they had paid, for Holy Orders, for benefices, and for preferment.
All were tainted, from the archbishop to the humblest clerk. Punishment
of the guilty, from which Damian was not the man to shrink, would have
left the Church in Milan without priests and ministers of any kind. So
the legate took the course taken by Nicholas II in his decree against
simonists (1059). Those present, beginning with the archbishop, owned
their guilt, and promised for the future to give up simony and to
enforce
clerical celibacy. To this all present took an oath. Milan had fallen
into
line with the reformers, and in doing so had subjected itself to Rome.
Bonizo, agreeing with Arnulf on the other side, is right in taking this
embassy as the end of the old and proud independence of Milan. When
Guido and his suffragans were summoned to the Easter Council of 1059 at
Rome some Milanese resented it. But the archbishop received absolution
and for some six years was not out of favour at Rome.
The unexpected death of Nicholas II was followed by a contested
election and a long struggle.
Both the Roman nobles and the Lombard
bishops wished for a change but knew their need of outside help. At
Rome Gerard of Galeria, whose talents and diplomacy were typical of
his class, was the leader; he and the Abbot of St Gregory on the Caelian
were sent to the German Court, and they carried with them the crown
and insignia of the Patrician. The Lombard bishops, with whom the
Chancellor Guibert worked, met together and demanded a Pope from
Lombardy — the paradise of Italy — who would know how to indulge
human weakness. Thus civic politics at Rome and a reaction against
Pataria and Pope worked together; the young king Henry acted at the
impulse of Italians rather than of Germans; the latter had reason for
discontent, but the imperial nominee was not their choice and their
support was somewhat lukewarm. Henry met the Lombard bishops (some
of whom Peter Damian thought better skilled to discuss the beauty of a
woman than the election of a Pope) and the Romans at Basle on
28 October 1061, and, wearing the Patrician's crown which they had
brought, invested their elect, Cadalus, Bishop of Parma, who chose the
name of Honorius II, "a man rich in silver, poor in virtue" says Bonizo.
' There is some conflict of evidence^ especially as to the part played by the
Alexander II and Honorius II 43
Meanwhile the cardinal-bishops and others had met outside Rome,
and,
hastening when thev knew of the opposition, elected, 30 September 1061,
Anselm of Baggio, the Patarine Bishop of Lucca. 1 It was a wise choice
and likelv to commend itself; there could be no doubt as to the
orthodoxy or policy of this old pupil of Lanfranc at Bee, tested at
Milan and
versed in Italian matters; at the same time he was in good repute at the
German Court and a friend of Duke Godfrey. Desiderius of Monte
Cassino carried a request for military help to Richard of Capua, who
came and led Alexander II to Rome. Some nobles, especially Leo de
Benedicto Christiano ("of the Jewish synagogue," says Benzo), influenced
the Trastevere, but there was much fighting and Anselm was only taken
into the Lateran at night and bv force. He was consecrated on 1 October
1061, and like his predecessors kept his old bishopric.
Cadalus found his way to Rome blocked by Godfrey's forces, but in
Parma he gathered his vassals, and could thus march on. But another
help was of greater use. Benzo, Bishop of Alba in Piedmont, was sent
by the Emperor as his ambassador to Rome; he was a popular speaker
with many gifts and few scruples; his happy if vulgar wit was to please
the mob and sting his opponents; he was welcomed by the imperialists
and lodged in the palace of Octavian. Then he invited the citizens,
great
and small, and even Alexander with his cardinals, to a popular assembly.
The papal solemnity had little chance with the episcopal wit. "
Asinandrellus, the heretic of Lucca," and "his stall-keeper Prandellus,"
as Benzo
calls the Pope and Hildebrand, were worsted in the debate; Cadalus
was able to enter Rome on 25 March 1062, and a battle on 14 April
in the Neronian Field after much slaughter left him victor. But he could
not gain the whole city, and it was divided into hostile camps. Honorius
hoped for help from Germany, and he was negotiating with Greek envoys
for a joint campaign against the Normans. But after the arrival of
Duke Godfrey there came an end to the strife; both claimants were to
withdraw to their former sees until they could get their claims settled
at the German Court. Honorius was said to have paid heavily for the
respite, but Alexander could rest easy as to his final success.
Alexander was not without some literary support, Peter Damian from
his hermitage wrote to Cadalus two letters, fierce and prophetic — the
second addressed "To Cadalus, false bishop, Peter, monk and sinner,
wishes the fate he deserves": he had been condemned by three synods ;
he had broken the Election Decree ; his very name derived from cado
(Greek 'laos'?) was sinister, he would die within the year ; the old prophet believed
German bishops. A summary of references in Hefele-Leclerq, iv, p. 1217, note 1.
The part played by Henry corresponds to the imperial falsification of the Election
Decree of 1059 (clause 6).
* An election outside Rome was provided for in the Election Decree, and Peter
Damian expressly mentions the presence of the cardinal-bishops, a mention which
supports the Papal form of the Election Decree.
44 Victory of Alexander II
the prophecy fulfilled by the excommunication, the spiritual death, of
Honorius within the year. At the same time he was writing treatises on
the episcopal and clerical life. At this time, too, he wrote his well-known
Disceptatio Synodalis, a dialogue between champions of the Papacy and
the Empire; it is not, as was once supposed, the record of an actual
discussion, but a treatise intended to influence opinion at the assembly
called at Augsburg, 27 October 1062, to settle the Papal rivalry. But he
was an embarrassing ally ^ : his letters to Henry and Anno of Germany, if
full of candid advice, laid overmuch stress on the royal rights, and
Alexander and Hildebrand were displeased. Damian, perhaps ironically,
begged the mercy of his " Holy Satan."
It was the practical politics of the day, and not theories or arguments,
which turned the balance at Augsburg and elsewhere in favour of
Alexander. The abduction of the twelve-year-old boy at Kaiserswerth
(April
1062) and his guardianship by Anno of Cologne, first alone and then with
Adalbert, changed affairs. The Empress Agnes, who had taken the veil
about the end of 1061, withdrew from politics. The German episcopate,
weak, divided, and never whole-hearted for the Lombard Honorius,
turned towards Alexander.
The Synod of Augsburg, led by Anno, declared
for Alexander and so gained commendation from Damian; "he had smitten
off the neck of the scaly monster of Parma." Before the end of 1062
Alexander moved towards Rome, and before Easter 1063 Godfrey
supported the decision of Augsburg ; the inclination of Anno and his
position of Imperial Vicar led him to Rome. At the Easter Synod
Alexander acted as already and fully Pope. As a matter of course he
excommunicated Cadalus, and repeated canons against clerical marriage
and simony ; the faithful were again forbidden to hear mass said by guilty
priests.
But the opposition was not at an end, so the irrepressible Benzo again
led Cadalus to Rome in May 1063 ; they took the Leonine City, Sanf
Angelo, and St Peter's, but his seat was insecure. His supporters and his
silver dwindled together ; the castle was really his prison until he bought
freedom from his jailor Cencius with three hundred pounds of silver;
with one poor attendant he escaped to the safer Parma.
Then at Whitsuntide, probably in 1064'^, he met the Council at
Mantua attended by German and Italian prelates. Anno ("the high-priest"
Benzo calls him) stated candidly the charges against Alexander.
Alexander on oath denied simony, and on the question of his election
without Henry's leave or approval satisfied the assembly. Everyone
1 His letters to Cadalus, Epp. i, 20, 21 (MPL, cxuv); to Henry IV, vii, 3;
to Anno, iii, 6 ; to Hildebrand, clearing himself, i, IG.
2 The year is taken as 1064, 1066, and 1067 by various writers. The arguments
are most clearly discussed in Hefele-Leclercq, iv, pp. 1237 sqq. See also Meyer
von Knonau, i, p. 375, note 19. Benzo's account with its alternate swoonings of
Beatrice and Anno has a touch of drama.
Reform under Alexander II 45
present may not have looked at the Council in the same way, but all
were glad to settle the disputed succession. On the second day a mob of
Cadalists attacked the gathering. Only the appearance of Beatrice of
Tuscany with a small force saved the Pope's life; some bishops fled.
Cadalus was excommunicated, and Alexander could safely go to Rome.
But his city was still not a pleasant seat. Benzo did not give up hope and
in 1065 visited the German Court ; even up to 20 April 1069 Honorius
signed bulls as Pope.
The remaining years of Alexander's Pontificate can be summarised.
The Norman vassals or allies of the Pope soon deserted him ; Richard
of Capua ravaged Campania and approached Rome, probably anxious to
be made Patrician. Duke Godfrey, acting in his own interests and not
those of Henrv, marched towards Rome with an army of Germans
and Tuscans, and a treaty followed. Once more Pope and Normans
were at peace, irrespective of imperial plans and hopes. The balance
between Duke Godfrev and the Normans was finally kept. Elsewhere too
it was a question of balance. As Anno's influence at the German Court
lessened he depended more upon Rome, and from the German episcopate,
lacking any great national leader like Aribo and now gradually losing
its
former moral strength, he gained small support. At Rome he was
humiliated; in 1068 and again in lOTO he had to clear himself of
accusations.
The system by which metropolitans were to be channels of papal authority
was beginning to work its way. But provincial synods both in France
and Germany became commoner, and some, such as that of Mayence
(August 1071) where Charles, the intended Bishop of Constance, resigned
in order to avoid a trial, acted independently. But there as in other
cases
legates, the Archbishops of Salzburg and Treves, were present. Such
councils, often repeating decrees from Rome, raised papal power, and at
this very synod the Archbishop of Mayence is called for the first time
Primal et Apostolicae sedis legatus. It was no wonder that not only
Anno but Siegfried^ dreamt of a calm monastic life.
The growth of reform seemed to slacken in Alexander's later years : it
may be that Damian was right in contrasting the indulgence shewn to
bishops with the severity towards the lower clergy; it may be that the
movement was now throwing itself more into constitutional solidification
than into spiritual awakening; it may be that the machinery at Rome
was not equal to the burden thrown upon it by the vast conception of its
work. In England alone, where Alexander had blessed the enterprise of
1 Alexander exercised his power more in matters of discipline than of property.
The Thuringian tithes dispute he left for German settlement.
2 Siegfried's letter to the Pope (see Mon. Bamb. ed. Jaffe, p. 77) does not seem
to me so subservient as it is often held to be, e.g. by Hauck, op. cit. iii, p. 743.
3 Siegfried retired to Cluny and made his profession, only returning to his see
at the command of Abbot Hugh (1072). He would have resigned in 1070 but for
Alexander II.
46 Conciliar legislation
William of Normandy, was success undiluted. The king was just and
conscientious ; Lanfranc was a theologian and a reformer, even if of the
school of Damian rather than of Humbert. The episcopate was raised,
and the standard of clerical life; councils, such as marked the movement,
became the rule, as was seen at Winchester and London in 1072. But if
England moved parallel to Rome it was yet, as an island, apart. It was
also peculiar in its happy co-operation of a just king and a great archbishop.
The growth of canonical legislation (1049-1073) is easily traced. It
begins with an attempt to regain for the Church a control over the
appointment of its officers through reviving canonical election for bishops
and episcopal institution for parish priests. But the repetition of such
canons, even with increasing frequency and stringency, had failed to gain
freedom for the Church in face of royal interests and private patronage.
The Synod of Rheims under Leo IX (1049) had led the way: no one was
to enter on a bishopric without election by clergy and laity. The spread
of Church reform and literary discussion moved towards a clearer definition
of the rival principles: the Church's right to choose its own officers, and
the customary rights of king or patron in appointments. So the Roman
synod of 1059 went further: its sixth canon forbade the acquisition either
gratis or by payment by any cleric or priest of a Church office through a
layman. The French synods at Vienne and Tours (1060), held under the
legate Stephen, affirmed the necessity of episcopal assent for any appointment.
Alexander II, with greater chance of success, renewed in his Roman
synod of 1063 Pope Nicholas' canon of 1059. Under him the two elements,
the cure of souls, which was obviously the Church's care, and the
gift of the property annexed to it, about which king and laymen had
something to say, were more distinctly separated. It was significant
when on
21 March 1070 Alexander gave to Gebhard of Salzburg, the power of
creating new bishops in his province, and provided that no bishop should
be made by investiture as it was accustomed to be called or by any other
arrangement, except those whom he or his successors should, of their
free
will, have elected, ordained, and constituted I So far, and so far only,
had
things moved when Alexander II died.
The constant use of legates was continued if not increased, and France
was as before a field of special care. Thither Damian had gone, returning
in October 1063, and Gerard of Ostia (1072) dealt specially and severely
with simony. In France, and also elsewhere, the frequency of councils
* Throughout the Middle Ages the right of confirming his suffragans was left to
this archbishop, and the peculiarity was mentioned at the Council of Trent.
2 Jaffe-Lowenfeld, Regesta, no. 467-3. The history is clearly summarised
in
Scharnagl, Der Begriff der Instititur in den Quellen und der Litteratur
des Investitur-streites (Kirchenrechtliche. Abhandlungen, ed. II. Stutz,
No. 86). Some of the canons
mentioned are in Bernheim, Qellen. Also at length Hefele-Leclercq
(passim). The
Latin originals in Mansi.
Alexander II and Milan 47
locally called is now noticeable. Not only the ordinary matters but laxity
of marriage laws among the laity arising from licence among great and
small were legislated upon.
The course of affairs at Milan, however, needs longer and special notice.
Alexander II had been for many years concerned in the struggle at
Milan; his accession gave encouragement to the Patarines; to the citizens
and clergy he wrote announcing his election. When Ariald visited Rome
under Stephen IX, Landulf, who was on his way thither, was wounded
at Piacenza; his wound was complicated by consumption, and he lost
the voice and the energy which he had used so effectively. After his
death, the date of which is uncertain, his place was more than filled by
his brother Erlembald, a knight fresh from a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land, and with, as it was said, private, as well as family, wrongs to
avenge upon the clergy. He had a personality and appearance very
different from his brother's; striking and handsome as became a patrician,
splendidly dressed, gifted with that power of military control and
organisation which was destined to reappear so often in medieval Italian
States. He fortified his house, he moved about with a bodyguard; he
became the Captain of the city; personal power and democratic rule were
combined and so he was the real founder of the Italian commune. Ariald
was content, as he put it, to use the word while Erlembald wielded the
more powerful sword.
The new leader visited Rome (1065) when
Alexander was settled there; he received from the Pope a white banner
with a red cross, and so became the knight of the Roman and the
universal Church. The archbishop, with no traditions of family or
friendship to uphold him, saw power slipping from his hands, and the
Emperor counted for naught. From a second visit to Rome (1066)
Erlembald returned with threats of a Papal excommunication of Guido,
and fresh disturbances began. Married priests and simonists were sharply
condemned from Rome, and believers were forbidden to hear their masses.
But the Papacy sought after order, and the cathedral clergy, faced by
persecution, gathered around the archbishop. More tumult arose when
Ariald preached against local customs of long standing. Milan had not
only its own Ambrosian Liturgy S but various peculiar customs: the ten
days between Ascension Day and Pentecost had been kept since the
fourth century as fasts; elsewhere only Whitsun Eve was so observed.
Ariald, preferring the Roman custom, preached against the local use,
and so aroused indignation. Then Guido at Whitsuntide seized his chance,
and rebuked the Patarines for their action against him at Rome in
^ It seems best with Duchesne (Origins of Christian worship, p. 88) to
connect
the Ambrosial! Rite with the Gallican group. Aquileia and the Danubian
districts
followed Milan. The Carolingian changes affected the Gallican Church,
and through
imperial influence reached Rome. But Milan kept its Ambrosian
traditions, dating
from the days of Auxentius (.355-374), a Cappadociau Arian and immediate
predecessor of St Ambrose; no doctrines were concerned (Duchesne, op.
cit. pp. 93 sqq.).
48 The commune at Milan
seeking his excommunication; a worse tumult than before arose, and the
city was again in uproar. But the day after the riot the mass of citizens
took better thought and repented. The archbishop placed the city under
an interdict so long as Ariald abode in it. For the sake of peace the
threatened preacher left, and (27 June) was mysteriously murdered, at
Guido's instigation as his followers said. Ten months later his body was,
strangely and it was said miraculously, recovered. He had perished by the
sword of violence which he had taken, but the splendid popular ceremonies
of his funeral restored his fame, and so in death he served his cause.
Once again two legates came to still the storm (August 1067): Mainard,
Cardinal-bishop of Silva Candida, and the Cardinal-priest John
The
settlement they made went back to that of Damian, and so recognised
the position of Guido, but years of violence had by now changed the city.
The legatine settlement attempted to re-establish Church order and
Damian's reforms, and the revenue of the Church was to be left untouched.
Violence was forbidden, but things had gone too far ; revolution had
crystallised, and neither side liked the settlement ; Guido thought of resigning.
Erlembald, supported from Rome, thought he could increase his power by enforcing canonical election on the resignation of Guido, setting aside the imperial investiture and gaining the approval of the Pope. But Guido now chose the sub-deacon Godfrey, a man of good family, in his con- fidence, eloquent, as even his later enemies confessed, and therefore likely to be influential. Guido formally although privately resigned, and Godfrey went to the imperial Court where he was already known through services rendered; he returned with his ring and staff, but was driven away. Alexander II condemned not only Godfrey but also Guido, who had resigned without Papal leave; Guido took up his duties again, and remained in power; disorder passed into war. Erlembald, with an army made up of his followers and some nobles, attacked Godfrey. Revolution had become war against a claimant chosen by the Emperor but in defiance of ecclesiastical law and the Papacy. During Lent 1071 part of the city was set on fire, causing great destruction and misery; Guido withdrew to the country and there on 23 August 1071 his life and trouble ended. Not until 6 January 1072 did Erlembald find it possible to elect a successor; by a large assembly from the city, its neighbourhood, and even farther afield, in the presence of a legate Cardinal Bernard, Atto, a young cathedral clerk of good family but little known, was elected. Erlembald, the real ruler of the city, was behind and over all; and many, laymen and ecclesiastics, disliked the choice. The discontented took to arms, the legate escaped with rent robes, and Atto, torn from the intended feast at the palace, was borne to the cathedral, where in mortal fear he was made to swear never to ascend the throne of St Ambrose. But next day Erlembald regained control; he ruled the
^ The embassy, often slurred over in narratives, is described by Arnulf, Chap. 21.
Death of Alexander II 49
city as a Pope to judge the priests, as a king to grind down the people,
now with steel and now with gold, with sworn leagues and covenants
many and varied." It mattered little that at Rome a synod declared
Atto rightly elected, and condemned Godfrey and his adherents as
enemies of God. Meanwhile the Patarines held the field, and their success
at Milan encouraged their fellows in Lombardy as a whole. But the new
turn of affairs had involved the Pope; he wrote (c. February 1072) to
Henry IV, as a father to a son, to cast away hatred of the servants of God
and allow the Church of Milan to have a bishop according to God.
A
local difficulty, amid vested interests, principles of Church reform, and
civic revolution, had merged into a struggle between Emperor and Pope.
Henry IV sent an embassv to the suflfragans of Milan announcing his
will that Godfrey, already invested, should be consecrated; they met at
Novara where the consecration took place.
At the Easter Synod (1073) the Pope, now failing in strength,
excommunicated the counsellors of Henry IV who were, it was said,
striving to alienate him from the Church. This was one of Alexander's
last acts. Death had already removed many prominent leaders, Duke
Godfrey at Christmas 1069, the anti-Pope Cadalus at the end of 1072
(the exact day is not recorded). Peter Damian died on 22 February
1072, and Adalbert of Bremen on 16 March of the same year, both men
of the past although of very different pasts. Cardinal Humbert had died
long before, on 5 May 1061. Hildebrand was thus left almost alone
out of the old circle of Leo IX.
On 21 April 1073 Alexander died, worn out by his work and
responsibilities; even as Pope he had never ceased the care of his see
of Lucca;
by frequent visits, repeated letters, and minute regulations he
fulfilled his
duty as its bishop ^ It was so with him also as Pope. The mass of great
matters dealt with was equalled by that of smaller things. Even the
devolution of duties, notably to cardinals and especially to the
archdeacon,
did not ease the Pope himself. He seems to us a man intent mainlv upon
religious issues, always striving (as we should expect from a former
leader
at Milan) for the ends of clerical reform, able now to work towards them
through the Papacy itself. Reform, directed from Rome and based upon
papal authority, was the note of his reign.
A man of duty more than of
disposition or temperament, he gained respect, if not the reverent love
which had gathered around I«o IX. His measure of greatness he reached
more because he was filled with the leading, probably the best, ideas of
his day than because of any individual greatness of conception or power.
But he had faced dark days and death itself with devotion and unswerving
hope. It was something to have passed from his earlier trials to his later
prosperity and firm position, and yet to have shewn himself the same man
1 The history of the Chancery under him is "peculiarly anomalous." And this
was because he not only was, but acted as. Bishop of Lucca. See Poole, The Papal
Chancery, p. 69.
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. I.
50 The new Papacy
throughout, with the same behefs, the same aims, and the same
care for
his task. If he left his successors many difficulties, and some things
even
for Gregory VII to criticise, he also left them a working model of a
conscientious, world-embracing Papacy, filled, as it seems to us, with
the
spirit of the day rather than inspiring the day from above. The Papacy
had risen to a height and a power which would have seemed impossible
in the time of Benedict IX. But the power, strong in its theory and
conception, had a fragile foundation in the politics of the Empire, of
Italy,
and of Rome itself.