text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/105

 DONATION" OF CONSTANTINE 91

to the Roman See. It adds that he had given Sylvester and his suc- cessors the Lateran Palace, the City of Rome, Italy and indeed the whole of Europe. Furthermore he had granted Imperial privileges, insignia and honours to the Pope, and had conferred the senatorial dignity on the Roman clergy. According to Max Biichner, the spuri- ous document may have been fabricated by Prankish groups anxious to promote their own ends in Prankish politics when Louis met Pope Stephen IV at Rheims, though Rome and the Papacy may also have had a hand in the matter. The effect of the "Donation" on world history is not affected by the multiform attacks made by anti-curialistic writers on its validity as law. The Popes themselves began to regard it as a basis for extensive claims to power only after the middle of the eleventh century. Its importance had by no means ceased when secular and religious scholars of the fifteenth century realized that the document was a forgery, executed long after Constantine's time.

After the Empire was divided into three kingdoms by the Treaty of Verdun (843), the Papacy had a clear path to a stronger position above the ruins of the once proud imperial unity. The mission to the Swedes, Danes and Slavs was begun. In order to ward off maraud- ing bands of Saracens who in 846 pillaged the basilicas outside the walls of Rome, Leo IV fortified the Vatican Quarter and himself assisted in the destruction of the enemy fleet. It was symbolic of the restoration of the spiritual power to its former status when, in official correspondence, this same Pope used the Papal reckoning of dates side by side with the Imperial reckoning. But though the sense of independence was stronger in Rome, it was contemporaneous with the growth of ambition of the prelatical party in Western France, where the episcopacy was freeing itself from the bonds of the state establish- ment. A juridical situation which made it far too completely con- tingent upon local authorities, metropolitan sees and national synods, seemed unendurable to this group. Yet it could attain independence only if a new legal foundation was established. Lacking any other recourse, the clergy undertook in its own right to amend die Prankish canon law. About 850 canonists of Rheims collected legal sources which professed to be the work of the great Isidore of Seville, an encyclopedic scholar of the seventh century. These "Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore," which were regarded as genuine up until the fifteenth

92

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/105


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/106

 THE TWO SWORDS

century, are as a matter of fact fraudulent and contain genuine, doc- tored and invented sources. From the beginning it ?vas not meant to be an enterprise beneficial to the Papacy; it was rather designed to strengthen episcopal authority. Yet its most definite characteristic was a tendency to bind the offices of the Church more closely to the Roman See, and so it became a weapon upon which the Papal Primacy heavily relied.

The counter-attack of the universal Church against the German Im- perial Church was led by Pope Nicholas I. He was one of the great Popes, and every subsequent illustrious pontiff has borne some of the features of this veritable ruler. Like Leo I and Gregory I, he combined personal superiority with the majesty of office. The devotion of his fiery soul to his cause was just as uncompromising as his belief in the sacredness of that cause. He led a life of strict purity, and the moral nobility of his official acts would have remained unquestioned if he had never succumbed to the temptation or the tragic necessity that lies in all vigorous political action. This is the temptation to achieve holy purposes through less holy means; and the Pope suc- cumbed to it when he declared that the principles contained in Pseudo- Isidore were ancient laws preserved in Roman archives. It is, of course, true that the collection mingled truth with falsehood. He needed these decretals when the dirty romance of Lothar I V's marriage- bargain revealed the great evils of a situation in which authority lay neither with the Church nor with the state because each had suc- cumbed to the other and to the lowest instincts.

From youth Lothar had been enamoured of Walrada, and had had children by her. But when he ascended the throne, he wedded Thict- berga because he hoped to attain some political advantage through her brother, the corrupt priestly Count Hucbert of St. Maurice, who ruled over the Rhone valley. After a year she had still borne him no child and so he cast her off, accusing her of having committed sodomy with her brother. The trial of this defenseless creature saw princes and prelates, perjurers and receivers of bribes, vie with one another in meanness. It was a long series of torments for the victim of Lothar, who was now once more living with Walrada. The Queen turned

NICHOLAS

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/106


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/107

 I 93

to the Pope for aid; a synod of Lorraine bishops had shielded the adulterer and .sanctioned his marriage with Walrada, who became queen. Lothar also tried to win Nicholas over to his side with fawn- ing letters; and his brother, Emperor Louis, threatened Rome with an army. The only powerful defender of the inviolability of Thiet- berga's marriage was Hinkmar, Archbishop of Rheims and one of the illustrious men of the time. In all other respects a deep gulf lay be- tween the Pope and this protagonist of an episcopacy welded to the state. In one tract he spoke in behalf of the persecuted queen, and also referred to Rome as the seat of a judge who ranked above archbishops and kings. And indeed Nicholas was not to be cowed by royal threats. He condemned the dual marriage as a crime and excom- municated the bishops involved in the affair from their offices, their priestly functions and the Church. Once again Lothar was united with Thietberga, and again he broke the troth. Then the Pope im- posed the ban on Walrada, forbade the broken-hearted queen to give way to her rival, and threatened to excommunicate the guilty tor- mentors. It is true that he died before the close of what he himself termed "this sad drama*'; but his granite-like firmness had won a moral victory for the Papacy over the state church, and had sealed the triumph of a religious ideal over the demands of the flesh.

All the actions of this inflexible Pontiff were based upon a profound desire to transform the Imperial Church into a Papal Church. Whether he fought against Hinkmar of Rheims as the exponent of Gallican ecclesiastical individualism, whether he banned die Arch- bishop of Ravenna for having been guilty of rude excesses, or whether in a Byzantium long since the prey of jealousy he repelled the base flattery of Patriarch Photius, so anxious to secure the recognition of Rome, and removed his own papal legates from office for having taken bribes the point was always that even in his most daring utterances he was very much in earnest. He realized that he must be the con- science of his time, and literally made himself that conscience. To him the Papacy was the representative of God on earth, the founda- tion and norm of all order in human society. The Pope could, he held, judge all men, but could be judged by none save God, who would judge him more sternly than the rest. It is no wondet that his own

94

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/107


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/108

 THE TWO SWORDS

rime said of him: since the days of St. Gregory there had been no Pope like this. He issued commands to kings and tyrants as if he were the master of all the world.

But the building he erected soon began to totter, and the fall thereof was great.

PETER

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/108


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/109

 IN CHAINS

Many things brought about the dissolution of the Prankish Empire. The post-Charlemagne partitions had a deep and lasting effect, be- cause as a result one people was sundered from another. The Franco- Germanic element parted company with the Gallo-Roman and Celtic elements and developed its own individual character inside the vast common enclosure of ecclesiastical culture and feudal society, which everywhere determined the quality of civic life. Nationalist con- ceptions were at the bottom of the Treaty of Meersen (870) which gave the countries inhabited predominantly by Romanic peoples to Charles the Bald, and awarded the German districts to Louis the Ger- man* Inside these divisions of the Empire still smaller independent civic units appeared the hereditary duchies. Nevertheless the imperial idea of Charlemagne remained a political and spiritual force and won ground in Germany during the tenth century. In the West, however, political unsettlement prevailed in spite of a more advanced culture. Before the year 900 Alfred the Great in England had brought his kingdom to a high state of civilization; two centuries later it was to become the possession of the Normans. A small, northern Chris- tian kingdom maintained itself in Spain against the Caliphs of Cor- dova until well into the eleventh century, when the inner weakness of the Islamic power made possible an extension of the Church's in- fluence. Italy, finally, was the scene of wholesale political conflicts fought out between princes of Prankish blood, Roman noble families, Byzantines and Saracens. Europe as a whole was everywhere so threatened by swarming mobs of Normans, Magyars and Saracens, that its very civic and ecclesiastical existence seemed insecure.

The only thing that held society together was the consciousness of belonging to one and the same Christendom. This no longer pos- sessed the purity, power and profundity of the primeval people of God, for the reason that the Church now embraced all men: the elect and those who were not called. Nevertheless the supernatural being of the Church, its faith and its demands on human nature, had re- mained the same frpm the beginning despite all the silt the world had deposited upon them. Yes, its inner power revealed itself the more

95

9

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/109


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/110

 6 PETER IN CHAINS

when the extensiveness of its efforts gave rise constantly to a cry for a deeper religious life, resounding all the more loudly when there was peril of ruinous worldliness. And that danger grew much more im- minent when the highest Captains of the Church seemed more like Anti-Christ than Christ, of whom the witnesses to all the evils that afflicted the Papacy declared that only He, though He might be asleep on the ship, had guided the Church safely through storm and wave. The Church existed nearly a century under figureheads or villains who termed themselves Popes; and the people kept alive and honoured the idea of the Papacy, despite the succession of traitors to that idea.

At the close of the first millennium, three powers struggled for the possession of Peter's See: first of all, the two political powers, Nation- alistic Romanism and the Roman Empire of the German nation; and then the autonomous religious ideal of a politically free Church. They followed one another historically and then gradually disappeared; but all laid hands upon the whole treasure-trove of spiritual and tem- poral power which the Roman See had become. The religious ideal proved itself the strongest of the three. With its help, the universal Papacy triumphed over its national Roman and its imperial German rivals. But when the historian views the development as a whole and its consequences he learns that victory and defeat are only names which like all conclusions to which he may arrive are likely to be proved erroneous and inaccurate by later events.

The aged Pope Hadrian II took up the reins when the great Nicholas dropped them. He reconciled the adulterous Lothar with the Church and gave him Holy Communion at Monte Cassino. Then the King died on the journey homeward, and both the women who mourned him took the veil. It seemed as if Lothar's restless soul were haunt- ing the land he had left behind him the land that had become an eternal battlefield between neighbours to the east and west. Against the will of the Pope, who had wanted Louis II (the Emperor who was battling against die Saracens in Southern Italy), to be the heir to Lorraine, Charles the Bald took possession of the kingdom and was crowned by Hinkmar, Archbishop of Rheims, who, with Gallican in- dependence, ignored the Pope's request. It was also in vain that the

CHARLES

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/110


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/111

 THE BALD 97

Pope urged Charles to deal humanely with his rebellious son who had been blinded and imprisoned. Hadrian's young successor, John VIII, set out to reign with a firmer hand; but though he conferred the Im- perial crown on Charles he received no aid against the ever-increasing pressure of the Saracens. The small states of Italy were collapsing by reason of mutual jealousies, and for the time being the Pope had to buy the Saracens off with heavy annuities. While the corre- spondence which the Pope's chancellery conducted with Germany, France, England, Spain, Byzantium and Jerusalem shows how vast was the extent of the Pope's spiritual power, he remained personally helpless, as the Roman factions conspired against him because of his Prankish sympathies. He had no other weapon than the ban, and this fell primarily on Bishop Formosus of Porto, whose name thence- forth was dominant throughout all the factional warfare. The Lords of Spoleto and Tuscany invaded the Papal States, occupied Rome, and kept Pope John himself a prisoner until he signed every promise ex- acted of him. Then he fled to France; but there also he could find no dependable ally for the Roman See. When he returned he found that Photius, the Patriarch of Byzantium, had betrayed his friendship, and that he was compelled to recognize the abominable Charles the Fat as King of Italy as well as, finally, to crown him Emperor. The next year (882) the Pope fell victim to a conspiracy. The poison which a relative, who himself wanted to become Pope and a wealthy man, gave him worked too slowly. Thereupon the assassin finished his work with a hammer.

Then there followed that bloody farce which plays the same role in the history of the Papacy that was played by the bailiffs and the traitors in Christ's Passion. The epileptic Charles the Fat had united on his head all the crowns of the first Carolingian Empire. But on the Day of Tribur (887) he returned all to his nobles and his despairing peoples with a plea for mercy. In Germany his nephew Arnulf became king; and in Italy the choice lay between Beranger of Friuli and Vido of Spoleto until the second gained the upper hand. He was awarded the Imperial crown; and before he died his son Lambert was crowned by the same Bishop Formosus, who had now finally gained possession of the Roman See. The aged Pope, a man of impeccable conduct whom Nicholas had in his time entrusted with important business,

98

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/111


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/112

 PETER IN CHAINS

had in the meantime been freed of the ban and also of the vow he had taken nevermore to return to Rome or to resume his former dignity. Once become Pope, he felt that the pressure exerted by the nobles of Spoleto was an ignoble limitation of his powers; and he summoned King Arnulf, just previously victorious over the Normans, to come to his aid against them. Then he also crowned him Emperor. Just a few weeks after Arnulf departed, the Pope died and Lambert again set out to recover his lost greatness. The faction of Spoleto nobles avenged themselves on the dead Pope. Stephen VI, a pontiff to their liking, exhumed the body which had lain nine months in the grave, placed it in full pontifical raiment on the throne in St. Peter's, and passed judgment on it before an assembled synod. There was a formal trial. Three accusers appeared and there was also a counsel for the defense. It was decided that the pontificate had been illegal and that everything the Pope had done while in office was null and void. They tore the robes from his body, chopped off the finger with which he had imparted blessings, dragged the corpse through the city streets, and threw it into the Tiber. Some months later the people rose and seized the ghoulish Stephen while he was in Church. He was strangled to death in prison. One of his successors, Theodore II, buried the body of Formosus, which had been recovered by fisher- men, with the honours due to a Pope and proclaimed the orders he had imparted to be valid. The good name of Formosus was wholly restored when John V called a synod which condemned the trial held over his dead body and burned the records which had been kept of the proceedings. But at the same rime John proclaimed that Arnulf had not been rightly crowned Emperor. Lambert was present, but im- mediately afterward fell a victim to an assassin; and in the same year (899) Arnulf also died, leaving Germany to a child who could not retain the crown. Beranger made himself master of Italy.

While the Magyars beset the land from the North, and Saracens pressed against it from the South, noble families which had grown strong were plotting in the castles and palaces of Rome, the Campagna and the mountains, to seize the offices and riches of Rome. The wealthy house of the Counts of Tuscany in the Albanian Mountains became the masters for decades. They considered Circe to have been their original ancestress; and their women, who swayed Rome by

COUNTS

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/112


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/113

 OF TUSCANY 99

freely offering their beautiful bodies, really seemed to have in their veins the blood of this enchantress who had changed the friends of Odysseus into beasts. This notorious band of harlots involved the Papacy too, in its cbronique scandalettse. The three graces were Theodora the elder, who called herself Synatrix and was by her first marriage the wife of Count Theophylact and by her second marriage the spouse of the Margrave Adalbert of Tuscany; and her daughters Theodora the younger, and Marozia (Maruccia, little Maria). The political idea that dominated this house was the idea of Rome, of national independence after a long period of subservience to strangers. It was modern Italy's first effort to recover the ancient power and glory of Rome. In order to carry out the plan they needed to domi- nate the Roman See; and so, the nobles who had joined forces with them took possession of it as the most powerful instrument for realizing their national purpose.

The Tuscan faction raised one of its members to the Papal throne when Sergius III (904-911) was elected. His contemporaries praised him as an energetic man who had rebuilt the Lateran Basilica after its collapse and who had restored the bonds of union with the Greek Church. But Bishop Luitprand of Cremona, whose chronicle gar- nered every suspicion, professed to know that the Pope had an affair with Marozia, the newly-wedded wife of the Lombard ruler Margrave Alberich of Spoleto. After Sergius came John X, a relative of Theo- dora, who in a spirit of service to the national ideal of Theophylact organized a union of Italian princes. With their help as well as with the aid of Byzantium, he won in 915 the brilliant victory of Garigliano over the menacing Saracens. But his resistance to the growing power of the nobles and his attempt to foster the German kingdom had a tragic outcome. After the murder (924) of Beranger, who had helped to win the victory over the sons of the desert, the Tuscan party felt that the way was clear for its absolute dominion. They gave the most curt possible reply to the Pope's suggestion that Hugh of Provence, the successor of Beranger as King of Italy, be crowned Emperor so that he might protect the Roman See. Marozia and her second husband, Vido of Tuscany, Hugh's step-brother, had the Pope strangled in prison. In 931, after Vido too had died, Marozia placed one of her two sons (whose father had been Alberich, if not Sergius

ioo

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/113


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/114

 PETER IN CHAINS

III) on the Papal throne. Then she took King Hugh as her third husband; but her wish that she might receive the Imperial Crown from her Papal son was not granted. The marriage with Hugh took place at San Angelo's in 932 and became the scene of a rebellion. Her other son Alberich, named for his father, drove off the alien Hugh and imprisoned his mother and the Pope in San Angelo. Then for twenty-two years he kept Rome and a timorous series of four Popes under his thumb, while the kingdom was passing (945) from Hugh to Beranger of Ivrea, the nephew of the Spoletan noble of the same name. Alberich proved his liking for a religious Church by showing favour to the new monastic movement which had come to Italy from France, but his last act was to bequeath to the Papacy the worst legacy he could have left it. When he died in 954 he made the Roman nobles swear that they would elect his son Pope. His name was Octavian a name given to express the hopes which had been placed on the national movement; and this the seventeen-year-old magnate was also expected to serve after his election to the Holy See. He was the first Pope to change his name, calling himself John XII.

This roisterer was in all truth a caricature of the hero whom his father had imagined would carry out his boldly conceived but romantic and insufficiently buttressed policy. Not even the desire to serve the strong national purpose remained. This boy, who paraded about in the mantle of the Pope, was utterly unsuited even to that task. Ber- anger, who had secured for himself and his son Adalbert the kingly crown in 950, sought to cement his power and royal dignity by marry- ing his son to the widow of Lothar, son of King Hugh. When this lovely young woman Adelheid of Burgundy refused to enter the union, she was maltreated and kept under strict arrest. But she escaped and called on Otto I, the German King, for aid. This great Saxon was already the master of a flourishing and firmly established realm. For a long time he had carefully followed developments in Italy, being all the more deeply interested because an ambition to extend his rule over the world and to gain the Imperial crown had borne his thoughts southward. Therefore he marched to Italy in 951, ac- cepted the homage of the nobles at Pavia, and himself (he was until then a widower) married Adelheid with brilliant ceremoniousness. The Imperial crown was still held back by reason of Alberich's re-

OTTO

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/114


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/115

 I SAVES THE PAPACY 101

sistance, and Alberich was the master of Rome. Moreover Otto's son had rebelled, and the Hungarians were making inroads that neces- sitated his return homeward.

Now once more a Pope reiterated the summons to a worldly arm which two hundred years previous had brought Pepin, the Prankish King, to Italy. John XII needed defense against Beranger s tyranny in the Papal States, and summoned Otto who had meanwhile van- quished the Hungarians. The King came, reaching Rome in 962. After he had promised the Pope security and retention of all his rights, he was solemnly received. But before he entered the Papal palace Otto said to his sword bearer, "When I pray at the tombs of the Apostles be sure to hold my sword constantly above my head; for already my ancestors were suspicious of Roman loyalty. When we get back to Monte Mario you may pray as much as you like." On Candlemas Day, Otto and Adelheid received their crowns peacefully amidst great pomp. The Imperial dignity, once the treasured boon of Europe, had been laid aside for forty years, ever since the death of Beranger of Friuli. Now it was united with the German Empire and it was destined to remain so united. Some days after his coronation Otto renewed the Carolingian Donations, acknowledged the lawful- ness of later additions, and defined what rights the Emperor was to have in the Papal states and at the Papal elections. John XII agreed to everything, and joined the Romans in swearing loyalty to the Em- peror against Beranger of Ivrea and his son Adalbert. But what was a Roman oath? When Otto had marched out to raze Beranger's castles, he was given messages which seemed incredible. He said condoningly that the Pope was still a boy and would improve; but it was not long ere he was shown intercepted letters written by John. The traitor had summoned Adalbert, the Greeks, the Hungarians and the Saracens to war against the Emperor!

Otto turned and marched back toward Rome. When his German troops reached the Tiber they saw the Pope armed with sword and shield, helmet and coat of mail, standing on the other bank. Before they could capture him he fled from the city. The Emperor called a synod in St. Peter's and himself presided over it. The Pope, ac- cused of numberless misdeeds, was dethroned. That was contrary to the law and custom of the Church, but was just as necessary as was

102

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/115


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/116

 PETER IN CHAINS

the consecration and ordination the next day of a layman, who took the name of Leo VIIL A heavily bribed mob rioted violently against the new Pope but was soon suppressed by Otto. When the Emperor left the city John returned, drove out Leo (who fled to the Imperial camp) and took cruel revenge on his followers. Then he summoned a new synod which annulled the coronation of the Emperor and the orders received by the other Pope. But returning to his excesses, he died of a stroke, and Leo returned under armed escort furnished by Otto. Meanwhile the Romans had consecrated another Pope, Bene- dict V, but the Emperor carried him off to Germany and placed him under the supervision of the Bishop of Hamburg. In that city this pious, learned man died soon thereafter in the odour of sanctity. Leo had passed into the beyond some time previous.

Though the peoples realized the impotence and ignominy into which the See of Peter had fallen, their faith in its divine significance did not falter. The supernal idea out of which this See had grown made all the faults of those who occupied it still darker; but because there were such Popes and because the chaos in the Church and the world had grown so great, the idea itself appeared to hover ever more alluring and more radiant, above the ruins caused by traitors to the memory of Peter. The throne lost none of its solidity because it had been defiled. This century of degeneration could not undermine what to the men of the Middle Ages seemed the truest of all verities the sovereign world of the supernatural and the spiritual, which remains forever harmonious, exalted, despite all failures to realize an analogy to it here below. This one must bear in mind in order to understand why it was that the provincial churches did not cease to cherish their bond with Rome and despite the Popes to honour the Papacy as a gift from God. Anyone who asks himself whether hunger and love, money and the drawn sword alone make history or whether this is not also the product of the finer energies of the mind and soul; any- one who doubts that the trends of time are moved not by warriors and their fists alone but also by the intangible needs of the inner man; let him look for an answer at this and other dark passages in the story of the Papacy. The power of Peter remained even though there ruled a Pope unable to find carpenters who would bring from the dangerous woods of the Sabine or Albanian hills the timber he needed

THE

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/116


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/117

 GERMAN REFORM 103

to rebuild a roof. Even if during this shameless collapse of Rome, the last New Testament and the last Missal had been destroyed, monks in the cloisters of France, England and Germany would not have ceased to adorn with pictures of the most reverent art and piety the Psalms which they had copied into books.

The Papacy is not the Church, and its decline could not be deeper than the resolve of such men to do their duty and raise it up again. Beyond the Alps there was also much reason to lament the evil ways upon which the Church had fallen; but in no decade of this notorious century was there an absence of blossom and fruit. As soon as one mentions St. Gall, Reichenau, Fulda, Hildesheim, Corby, Malmsbuty, Alfred the Great, Dunstan, Gerbert, Bruno, one senses the vigorous air of the northern spring. And when one has referred to the single Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy, one has pointed out the place where Europe would be reborn in the old disciplined spirit of die Church. While this all renewing stream moved toward the West, it met a second tide of reform which had its source in Germany.

Otto the Great was an heir to Charlemagne's theocratic idea. As he conceived of the Empire, Christendom was one with a politically unified Europe. In order to be master and head of a domain which was divided politically but unified ecclesiastically, he turned his gaze southward. In the north, however, his German Church was most in- timately bound up with the Imperial authority. Otto made the prelates of the Church organs of the government. Bishops and abbots joined the ranks of the counts; archbishops became dukes. When they took over the possessions and administrative rights which went with their rank, they also bound themselves to do the Emperor's bid- ding. Therewith a dam was built against the dangerously growing power of the nobles; the clergy was freed from the long established pressure of temporal dignitaries, and the throne was given dependable support. The education which flourished in the spiritual estate a culture represented by the brilliant figure of Otto's brother, Bruno of Cologne, Archbishop and Chancellor helped to enrich civic life, and the celibacy of priest-officials was also a source of strength. When they died the king could dispose anew of their fiefs and offices.

But the sum-total of liberties in the world has never been larger than the highest conceivable quantity of liberty. In the new order of

104

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/117


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/118

 PETER IN CHAINS

things the Church remained the limit beyond which the State could not go, and the State circumscribed the Church no matter how inti- mately it might be associated in the government. Otto conferred ecclesiastical authority on people of his choice by giving them the ring and the staff a practice that was later termed investiture. He did not inquire very deeply into whether or not these men were called to the priesthood. Thus the Church in his time acquired new vigour but it shouldered a heavy temporal bondage in which there lay the tragic germ of conflict with the Imperial authority. This tragedy of a single theocratic idea incorporated in two powers proved inescapable. If the Church was the primal source of the religious conception of the Empire, then the crown and its authority could only be legitimate if they emanated from the Church. Therefore every time the state limited the freedom of the Church, it had necessarily to sacrifice some of its own power and authority. It had, therefore, gradually to sur- render all influence upon the Church, which then, as the unconditioned representation, yes, as the reality of the supernal Civitas Dei on earth, took over world dominion in a higher and deeper sense than the worldly Empire could exemplify. But whether the two powers united forces or separated, they could not escape from each other since conflict between them was contained in the very conception of the Civitas Dei. This conflict was at bottom only a necessary, perma- nently creative duality, similar to that which human nature has to confront unceasingly, by reason of the fact that it is a blend of body and soul, of matter and spirit.

Otto the Great was still far from believing that a separation between the two powers was desirable. He harnessed the Church and the power of the State together in a relationship of mutual service. The impressive progress of his Italian and Imperial policy was not the result of a desire to serve the Popes, for though he held die highest office on earth in reverence, he made himself its master. Yet he rendered the universal Church a service by manifesting to those who guided its destinies, the earnestness with which the German spirit weighed the highest values of life. When in 966 he went to reside in Italy for six years, he insisted that the Church should be safeguarded more firmly there against the ambitions of the nobles who were its officials and vassals. Pope John XIII was himself a nobleman who had been

POPE

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/118


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/119

 AND ANTI-POPE 105

elected at the Emperor's suggestion, but as the prisoner of the city prefect Peter, he had been made to feel the antagonism to the German rule which prevailed among nationalistically-minded Romans. A year after the election, Otto appeared, liberated the Pope and brought stern judgment to bear on the rebels. Some he exiled; others he blinded or hanged from the gallows. Peter, delivered over to the Pope, was hanged by the hair from the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. The Emperor made Crescentius, a Tuscan nobleman and the son of the younger Theodora, Duke of Rome, believing that he would be loyal to the Pope. But he showed John courtesy only when he found him subservient. In 967 he bade him crown his son Otto II co- Emperor, and won him over to the idea of gaining the Greek posses- sions in Italy for himself through marriage. Theophano, daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, received the Crown from the Pope's hands when in 972 she became the young Otto's wife. Soon afterward both Pope and Emperor died, and Crescentius manifested his true sen- timents. As leader of the nationalist faction, he ordered that the Imperial-minded Pope elected to succeed John be strangled in San Angelo; and before the sentence could be executed, he named as Pope under the name of Boniface VII a cardinal implicated in the plot. Boniface soon fled to the Bosphorus with a rich booty rifled from the Papal treasury.

Otto IFs successes in Italy were not decisive enough to forestall the future rule of Crescentius' faction, but he was able to protect the Pope who ruled during his time (973-983). This was Benedict VII, a Tuscan who had been elected through German influence, whose quiet wprk of reform was carried out in the spirit of Cluny. When Bene- dict died, Otto's wish was granted and the former Chancellor of the Empire became Pope John XIV. Yet before this Pontiff had been a year in office he lost his Imperial protector, who died at the age of twenty-eight, and fell a victim to the aristocratic faction. Boniface now returned from exile, and Benedict was thrown into a dungeon at San Angelo, where he starved to death. The year following Boni- face himself was slain, and his body dragged through the streets. Cencius, son of Crescentius, now remained the master of Rome for a decade while the Empress Theophano acted as Regent for her infant son, Otto III. Cencius' own creature John XV began to yearn for

io6

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/119


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/120

 PETER IN CHAINS

liberation from the tyranny of his master, and was supported by the Roman people who also clamoured for a new Emperor. Moreover the Church of France, where Hugh Capet had ascended the kingly throne in 987 and where Gerbert, the great Benedictine scholar, was entrusted with political policy, hurled the full bitterness of long- accumulated wrath at the scandals of Rome and its Pope, who was termed the anti-Christ. The French threatened a schism, holding that Rome had lost Alexandria and Antioch, and now was beginning to lose Europe as well as Africa and Asia. Byzantium had already severed relations; and in the heart of Spain no one any longer paid attention to the edicts of Rome. The consequence must therefore be not only the division of peoples but also of the Church. They added that Rome was now isolated, having neither a counsel for itself nor a counsel for others.

In 996 Otto III marched on Rome, taking with him Gerbert, who after many vicissitudes had become his teacher. On the way the King received the news of John XV's death. He advised the Roman dig- nitaries who sent a delegation to him, to elect his excellently educated young cousin the next Pope. This was done and so the first German Pope took office as Gregory V. He gave the Gallican Church new hope that the Papacy would prove worthy of the heritage. Mean- while he also defended the interests of his See unflinchingly against the French King Robert, and even against Gerbert who was the Emperor's favourite. In every possible way he promoted the Cluny reform. But there was a trait of priestly gentleness in his disposition which proved his undoing. Crescentius, whom the Emperor had first banned and then pardoned at Gregory's suggestion, enkindled a rebellion the purpose of which was to free Rome from German control with the help of Greek allies. Gregory was obliged to flee and to surrender his See to Crescentius' anti-Pope John XVI. This Greek, who had formerly been Theophano's chaplain and her legate to the Eastern court, betrayed both the Saxon royal house and die Roman Church. There was imminent danger that the Greek army would stir the whole of Italy to rebellion against the Germans. But in 998 the Emperor returned to judge and avenge. Crescentius was beheaded on the roof of San Angelo, and John fell into the hands of German soldiers who treated him according to the Greek custom. Blinded, with his nose

SYLVESTER

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/120


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/121

 II 107

and ears cut off, he was hailed before a synod in the Lateran, which stripped him of the Papal dignity. Then seated backward on an ass, he was led through the streets of Rome.

Gregory returned and restored order in his chaotic realm. He named Gerbert Archbishop of Ravenna and Viceroy of the Exarchate. He even managed to win the confidence of the Roman people. Un- fortunately he died very suddenly (999) at the age of twenty-seven, and with him there disappeared one in whom both the Church and the Emperor had placed great confidence. The news came to Otto at Monte Cassino. He left this monastery, where he had returned to pray, in order to proceed to Rome; but before he reached the city, he visited places of pilgrimage in the Apulean Hills and consulted with monks and hermits. While he disciplined his body and his soul, he beheld himself in his dreams as the winner of world dominion over the resistance offered by Greece and Byzantium, the city which had long since fascinated him, possibly by reason of some secret influence of his mother's blood. Then he went on to the tents of the Saint Nilus, whom he had once promised to spare the life of the Greek Pope John. But Otto had broken this pledge and Nilus had retired into this lonely place to mourn for friends who had fallen victims to the Imperial wrath. Otto, long since grown moody because his chimeri- cal world-empire did not take form, pleaded in vain with the Saint to accompany him to Rome. Accordingly he knelt to pray at his side; and when he left he placed his crown in the hands of the Saint whose blessing he received, as a sign that he put little store by worldly power.

One among the Emperor's retinue, who was not less concerned about the coming Papal election than was his master, may then have remembered the hour in which his monarch had paid homage on his knees to Romuald, son of a duke and second saint of this land which then lived in a state of mystical exaltation. That had occurred on an island off Ravenna. This one was Gerbert, Archbishop of Ravenna, the fatherly Dadalus who accompanied his pupil on his Icarian flight toward Imperial and ecclesiastical world dominion over the nations of the West. Gerbert was then placed by his master on the throne of Peter, and took the name of Sylvester II. He was the first French Pope, a man of brilliant mind who yearned to know and understand

io8

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/121


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/122

 PETER IN CHAINS

all things. He was a lover of learning for learning's sake and a pow- erful magnet that drew the studious youth of France, Germany and Italy to his feet at Rheims, then the most universalistic institute of culture. His contemporaries were often astounded at the worldly nature of his studies; and after his death it was rumoured that he had made a pact with the Devil. Gerbert had cultivated his genius for mathematics and natural sciences in Arabian Spain. In the Palatinate, his association with both Ottos had fostered his native political bent. It could not be expected thaiKthis French Pontiff would encourage his German disciple to adopt a strong German policy. The Emperor, who wore on his belt buckle a rune in praise of Rome, and allegorical representations of the three divisions of the world as symbols of his claim to universal power, seemed to the Pope himself more a Byzan- tine and a Roman than a German.

Having now become the successor of Peter, Sylvester uncompromis- ingly adopted the outlook of Papal authority and strove to elevate his See above all states. He now thought as a Roman, no longer as a Gallican; and he was anxious to carry out a Christian world policy having supernatural objectives. It was not to the advantage of the German mission in the East chat he aided the Poles and the Hungarians by erecting metropolitan sees at Gnesen and Gran and by conferring on Stephen the Holy Crown, implying civic and racial independence. He was also the first to draw up a great and far-sighted plan for a crusade against the Turks. Nothing came of it.

Otto, who had forgotten his Germans while dreaming of world Empire, had now to face the fact that the German princes were con- spiring against him and that the German bishops were revolting against the Papal authority. He was now also to learn what national- ist passions slumbered in the hearts of his beloved Romans. They hated the foreign Emperor and the foreign Pope. Once more the nobles of the city raised the Roman flag, though their enemy was an Emperor who had created the city's new glory in the world. It did not help the German-Greek monarch greatly that he calmed the populace once more in beautiful Latin from his castle on the Aventine, and that a few leaders of the uprising were brought to his feet in chains. He was compelled to leave Rome and never again beheld the Aventine. He died (1001) at the age of twenty-two in the arms

BENEDICT

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/122


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/123

 VIII 109

of the French Pope at Paterno on the Soracte, yearning for his German homeland. Sylvester lived out another year in the Lateran amidst his parchments and his astronomical globes, while the Crescentians took advantage of the fact that the Imperial power slumbered and once more gained control of the city. In the North the Margrave Arduin of Ivrea proclaimed himself the new king and raised the stand- ard of Italian unity and independence. John Crescentius, son of the man who had been beheaded, ruled the city between 10021012; and three impotent Popes, whose elections he brought about, did his bidding.

After his death the faction of Tuscan Counts who recognized the German kingship was again victorious. As soon as they came to power in 1012, they raised a member of their house to the Roman See as Benedict VIII. His pontificate is a memorable one for Germany and affords opportunity to consider the quiet, deep ferment which had long since been active in the universal Church.

St. Benedict had placed the virtus Romana under the sign of the Cross. The communities of monks which followed his Rule had proved of immeasurable beneficence to the Western world. But from the tragic circle inside which all things human move these communi- ties, so wisely planned and so exemplary of pure nobility of living, did not escape. Virtue led of itself to power and riches, and of them- selves this power and riches destroyed virtue. In addition there were external disasters the all-unsettling collapse of the Empire, the im- potence and moral rottenness of the Papacy. But at no time have all the eternal lamps of the Church gone out in unison; and now the last of them still burned and its fire sufficed to kindle all the rest anew.

This happened when during 910 the monk Berno turned the Villa Clunicum, given to him as a present by his protector the Duke of Burgundy, into a monastery. Here one of the most majestic dramas of history took its inception. It was a rising of the Church against the Church a revolution of the Gospel against the world which had invaded its domain. Here also the fiery watchword was, of course, freedom; but what distinguished this religious upheaval from other oc- currences bearing the same name was the manner in which "freedom" was understood. The monastery was to live according to its own

no

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/123


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/124

 PETER IN CHAINS

laws, wholly free from the power of kings and princes, and liberated also from ties to the bishops. It was to be placed directly under the protection of the Pope and was to realize the monastic ideal for the welfare of the Church. Though so much had been done to desecrate what is holy, Cluny made the heroic attempt to sunder a, man's eternal welfare as fully as possible from the fetters which bound him to the lesser things of the contingent world. These were to be used only as means for realizing the objective of a higher order of human nature, and for ennobling the earth by making it the serving symbol of the Providential will.

Like all serious attacks on decadence, this one began heroically. In everything which the spirit of Cluny created during the two centuries it flourished, there was revealed an awesome awareness that religious values are the most fundamental of all human values. But what was accomplished was so manifold that it is difficult to describe in a few words what the effect of it all really was. It meant both the erection of an ideal which may be termed that of "the Christian superman," and economic revival. It meant political change as well as the de- velopment of a new science. It meant freeing oppressed classes of society as well as creating a new art and poetry. The cultural effects were all the more profound for having seemed inconsequential to the authors of the reform themselves; for nothing possesses so much crea- tive efficacy as do abnegation and retirement. This knighthood which had turned its face inward was characterized by simplicity, silence and a rude way of living. Odo, the first great Abbot, separated himself forever from his beloved Virgil because he had seen in a dream a beau- tiful antique vase filled with wriggling worms. But he did not for- get the beauty of that vase. He bade his monks cast off everything that hampered the soul from looking straight at the world beyond; and yet, or rather because of this injunction, he exacted of them formal tenure of the body. The monk was to stand erect like a soldier with his legs together, for all disorder (he held) springs from outer form- lessness. He practiced and demanded of others a hard asceticism, but even so he honoured freedom and battled for the oppressed against the nobles and the feudal clergy. Not only did he castigate the guilt of those who despoiled and robbed the people, but he denounced as well those who contrary to their duty as pastors of the fold permitted

THE

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/124


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/125

 CLUNY REFORM 111

such things to happen. It was inevitable that this chaste service to the spirit and the mind should also create its own great world of sen- sory expression in the liturgy, and in all the arts and sciences.

Gerbert, too, had been a pupil of Cluny; and he was followed by others who had breathed in the new spirit either in the monastic city itself or in one of the houses it established. After 1089 there was erected in Cluny, as a symbol of the universal power of religion, a tremendous basilica larger in circumference than St. Peter's in Rome. Through more than 2,000 monasteries, France, Germany, England, Spain and Italy were bound to this centre of inner Catholic reforma- tion according to the Rule of Benedict. Its innermost character was freedom from the world in order that this world might be reconstructed according to the laws of Christ and under the protection of the Pa- pacy. This one can understand if one has grasped Dostoievsky's saying, "He who does not know the monk also does not know the world." The Roman hearth of the Cluniac spirit was the monastery of San Alesso, on the same Aventine where in the castle of the two Ottos German Emperors had drunk in the spirit of Rome. The nationalist movement did not permit the two to join forces; nor did their peaceful proximity mean that there would be peace between the Papacy and the Emperor for much longer.

Benedict VIII, the Tuscan, was a rough warrior and a political cal- culator rather than a spiritually minded man, and ushered in a period of glory for his house, which had based its power on the German kings during the whole of the conflict with the Crescentians. The Pope also owed that king gratitude for having been preferred to a rival from a hostile family, and this he did not forget. He crowned Henry II and Cunigunde. He warred against the Saracens on land and sea. But the resistance of the Greeks in southern Italy, against whom he could not prevail even with the help of the Herculean Normans (these Knights had come from Normandy as pilgrims) compelled him (1020) to obey a summons from the Emperor and go to Germany. In exchange for the service that he was to render there, he kept in his heart during the journey over the Alps a request for a service in return. The eventful visit made Germany jubilant. Benedict, welcomed with pomp, celebrated the feasts of Easter in Bamberg Cathedral

112

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/125


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/126

 PETER IN CHAINS

(Henry's favourite foundation) and afterward consecrated a new church erected in honour of St. Stephen and received Communion together with the King. The two rulers also visited Fulda; and the fact that they travelled together was an expression of their agreement concerning the questions they discussed. The Pope, who for years had docilely carried out the Imperial will, was assured of German help in Southern Italy. The other matter of great moment was the reform in the spirit of Cluny, and this Henry had very much at heart. He was a fervent Christian, more so perhaps than the worldly, nationalistic Tus- can Pope; and as Emperor of Christendom he felt deeply attracted to the Benedictines. Simony and clerical marriage had made alarming headway, to the injury of the Church and of the State. Both evils were deeply related. If the ancient rule of priestly celibacy (this rule is spoken of as early as 300; and the practice of celibacy goes back much farther) were discarded then it would also be impossible to prevent the deeding of ecclesiastical property to the children of priests or to root out haggling over Church offices. The Empire, which since the reforms made under Otto the Great had counted on the personal obedience of prelates and their freedom from family ties, was now threatened with the emergence of a priestly caste. If the bishops, in so far as they were estate owners and princes, could bequeath their possessions and their dignity to legitimate sons according to the feudal law, it could, of course, not remain hidden from tender consciences that the conferring of spiritual dignities by the Emperor was at bottom also simonistic.

The struggle for this ultimate liberation of the Church and the intellect was still hidden in the future, when during 1022, soon after their meeting in Germany, Henry and the Pope both attended a Synod in Pavia in order to reach an agreement concerning reform. All priests were ordered under threat of dismissal to rid themselves of wives and concubines. Their children were declared serfs of the Church, which was never to raise them to the dignity of freemen. But during the year 1024 both Henry and Benedict died, and Rome was the victim of all the horrors of family strife over the Papacy.

Conrad II, the first Salian Emperor, was a strong man who brought good fortune to the Empire, but he was not a devoted son of the Church. He ordered the erection of the Cathedral of Speyer, but he

THE

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/126


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/127

 SALIAN EMPERORS 113

also tyrannized over the bishops and the Pope. The Cluniac monks were aroused by his interference in the business of ecclesiastical admin- istration. The Roman See offered no stiff resistance. The first Pope during Conrad's reign was John XIX, a brother of Benedict VIII and a poor substitute. In 1027 he crowned Conrad Emperor. The fam- ily money had placed him on the Papal throne, and he followed the example set by offering to sell to the Patriarch of Constantinople the Papal authority in the East. It was only the vehement protest of friends of the reform which broke off this unhallowed deal. The next Pope was John's nephew, who as Benedict IX inherited the Roman See just as if it were a piece of furniture in his Tuscan family house! He ascended the Papal throne as a twelve-year-old boy, and for a whole decade draped it in scandals. Conrad, not averse to a weak Papacy, gave him more help than vituperation. The better Romans drove him away; but with his father's money he was able to come back and compel the Pope who had meanwhile been elected under the name of Sylvester III (he too had bought the throne) to retire to the Sabine bishopric from which he had come. But by this time the indignation of the Romans over his vicious life was so strong that he could not remain. The city rejoiced when he resigned in 1045 and sold his office to Gregory VI for a huge sum. This Pope was a virtuous man and a friend of the reform, had been Benedict's confessor and had doubtless himself induced him to resign. He wanted to be the sav- iour of the Church, but that he had used simony to get rid of simony proved his undoing.

During 1046, Henry III crossed the Alps to put an end to the un- settlement. He was preceded by a reputation for strength and kingly earnestness. He was just as serious about the Church as he was about the business of the State, and believed that the well-being of his era depended upon establishing harmony between Pope and Emperor. Being a man of earnest temperament, he was at heart a good deal of a monk. There was about him something of a poet, too. He was the friend of many arts, but deeper than this affection was that which impelled him to be alone with his God. From all profane and vul- gar joys he kept aloof. For days on which he was to wear the royal insignia he prepared himself by going to confession. This beautiful, sombre, lonely man, the most powerful ruler since Charlemagne's

ii

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/127


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/128

 4 PETER IN CHAINS

time, was designed by nature to be a fosterer of the new rigorist spirit. The influence of his pious Empress Agnes did the rest. Meanwhile Henry kept the Church inside the Empire in the status which had been fixed by the two Ottos. He expected the reform to succeed in abolishing priest-marriage, so that the ruler could recruit a higher clergy obedient to the Emperor and free to serve his business. He expected further that the baneful practice of bequeathing offices and tenures would cease. Finally he hoped that if the Empire fa- voured the reform, this would cease to be a menace by reason of its trend toward an order transcending the State. His devotion to jus- tice and his relish of honesty in the spiritual life of the Church also induced him to dispense with simony, though this meant a great loss to the Imperial economy by reason of the cessation of gifts customarily received from those chosen to exchange secular positions for bishoprics. If now the episcopate was liberated from the system of simony, the Papacy too must be far above every suspicion on this score.

Henry found Gregory VI guilty of simony. Paying no attention to the ancient rule that the Bishop of Rome could be judged by no one, he summoned a synod at Sutri in 1046, and this deposed both Gregory and Sylvester III. A few days later the same verdict was delivered against the Tuscan Pope Benedict. A German Bishop, Suidger of Bamberg, who had accompanied the Emperor to Rome, became Pope under the name of Clement II and crowned Henry and Agnes. The Emperor also gave himself the title of Patricius, thus manifesting his determination to act as overlord of the Roman See and guarantor of future Papal elections. He did not define the free- dom of the Church as this Church itself or the most vigorous men of the reform movement defined it. With his own hand he forced the systems of Otto and of Cluny into a unity that was outwardly harmo- nious but intrinsically fragile. It was necessary only that on one or the other side a man should appear who did not favour the peace, and the erroneousness of Henry's policy would be revealed. It is true that at the moment there was no danger. The man who was to start the conflict was still no more than a twenty-year-old priest named Hil- debrand, who had gone into German exile at Cologne with the de- posed Gregory VI. When Clement II died after being in office a year, he was followed by a German, Damasus II, who also died a few

LEO

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/128


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/129

 X AND REFORM 115

weeks later. Then Henry made his cousin, Bishop Bruno of Toul, Pope. Unfortunately this splendid man of Alsatian noble extraction was granted only a few years during which to keep the rainbow of peace aloft in the storm-laden air.

Bishop Bruno took the name of Leo IX. He trusted the Emperor and the Emperor trusted him. When the two sovereigns stood face to face, their contemporaries were given a twofold picture of handsome, manly strength. Their natures, though different, were in harmony, for the Pope was of other stuff than Henry. He also was majestic and dignified, but for all his splendour and distinction he possessed an infectious warmth of character. While a priest in Conrad's court, he had already been known as the "good-natured Bruno" and his motto remained, one must be all things to all men, and show kindness to everyone. He was alive to the beauty of the world, loved both men and beasts, practised the arts, studied public opinion, rode to battle like a knight, and proved a tireless horseman during the long pastoral tours he made through the Empire. Yet one could often see him going at night in lay attire as a barefoot pilgrim from the Lateran to St. Peter's. He served the Church with the same deep earnestness that characterized the Emperor. Immediately he took up the struggle to re-establish the unchanging rights of his See. At a synod which convened in the Lateran Basilica, he repudiated simony as determinedly as any Cluniac reformer, being supported in this by the will of the Emperor (which harmonized completely with his own) and by the democratic movement which had arisen in northern Italy under the name of Pataria. He removed from the feudal episcopacy those who had personally been guilty of simony. His sternness sent a chill of fear down the spines of those he investigated. The Bishop of Sum, summoned to take an oath of innocence, succumbed to a stroke. Leo also decreed that all priests who had been ordained by simonistic bishops were to be considered unordained and deprived of their rank, even though they themselves might be innocent. A tu- mult ensued among those affected by the ruling; and men who clung to a milder view of the reform movement induced the Pope to agree that ordination by a simonistic bishop was valid. There was almost a danger of a rigoristic prophetic movement comparable to that which

n6

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/129


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/130

 PETER IN CHAINS

had risen in the time o the Montanists and Donatists. Leo conceded the point but insisted all the more strongly upon the strict observance o celibacy by those ordained. All Roman women who had co- habited with priests were declared serfs of the Church of the Lateran.

The Pope, who was the Emperor's most dependable friend, viewed his office with as much veneration as did Henry. With undaunted vigour he removed the Roman nationalist element from the Curia and gave this a universalist stamp in conformity with the spirit of Cluny, which extended its influence to the point which the growing opposi- tion between Church and world in Western culture could not reach. There was plenty of reason on evety side to battle for the cleanness of the spirit against its misuse and enslavement through lust for power and pleasure. Nor did the spiritual Church, the new leaven, lack men of constructive ability. Leo knew how to use them. When he went to France in 1049, ^ e brought back with him the Burgundians Humbert and Halinard to serve in the Curia. Though they were of different temperaments, they were of one mind in so far as their la- bours in Rome for the ideas of Cluny were concerned. Humbert, the more gifted of the two, was a fighter who showed no quarter. He became a cardinal; and as a writer and politician he hurled his pro- phetic utterances at an unsettled world during and after Leo's reign. Halinard, Archbishop of Lyons, knew many languages. He had himself once refused the Papal dignity and now proved Leo's intimate associate and sometimes his representative until his death by poison at the hand of an enemy. Hugo, Abbot of Cluny, who like Hum- bert and Halinard was descended from Burgundian noblemen, like- wise stood close to Leo. He lived long and saw nine Popes occupy the throne. Meanwhile he earned for his monastery its world-wide reputation, a symbol of which was that basilica of five naves and seven towers which he caused to be erected during his old age. Well into the twelfth century he was looked upon as the exemplar of cul- tural creativeness based on a religious attitude eager to find expression. He was averse to all brusque action; and during the dawning struggle for power between Pope and Emperor he remained friendly to both. As one who would reconcile the world and the Church, the Papacy and the Empire, he held in himself the tragedy of all non-tragic na- tures who seek to bring about harmony. In order that the Gordian

HILDEBRAND

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/130


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/131

 117

knot which Leo and Henry still held in brotherly hands should be cut, it was necessary only that men should rise like Peter Damien of Ra- venna, who spread his hermit-like message of penitence during this and succeeding pontificates, or like Hildebrand, the subdeacon, whom the Pope had brought to Rome from Germany after Gregory's death and had entrusted with the task of putting the chaotic Papal finances in order.

Leo displayed his pastoral staff to the north, but to the south he also laid bare his sword. He crossed the Alps three times, rode tirelessly from synod to synod, and let the peoples realize that he wished to be a Pope for all men, and always a kind and energetic Pope. His jour- neys, the ecclesiastical feasts he inaugurated, and his monastic visita- tions, had the far-reaching impressive effect that he loved to evoke. But around the corners of the streets through which he rode in tri- umph there were also those who muttered dissatisfaction. Possibly there were even more of them in France than in Germany. There were bishops and archbishops, jealous of his personal and official power and aware that the ancient structure of the Imperial Church was be- ginning to totter. The stubbornness of the German bishops, above all that of their leader, Gebhard of Eichstatt, was also directed at the Papal policy in southern Italy, which they thought made Imperial moneys serve an alien purpose. Leo requested German troops to op- pose the growing power of the Normans, and to stop their inroads into ecclesiastical territory. The Emperor assented, but was then in- duced by Gebhard and his faction to withdraw the offer. Only a small company of volunteers accompanied the Pope southward. And so he daringly staked everything on his own army and in 1053 suffered a devastating defeat at Civitate, where the Italians fled before the first onslaught of the enemy and the small German force, though they fought like so many lions, bowed to superior numbers. After months in Norman captivity spent in weeping for his dead, giving alms to the poor and praying during whole nights while lying on a pallet with his head against a stone, Leo also lived to witness the collapse of his Oriental policy. After a long process of estrangement and deepening hostility, the almost inevitable end came with the Schism of 1054. Leo came back to Rome a sick and humbled man, and died there in 1054. He was the most significant of the German Popes and found

n8

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/131


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/132

 PETER IN CHAINS

a worthy resting place beside Leo the Great. Hildebrand, who had once counselled him to lay aside the Papal insignia of office and to enter Rome garbed as a pilgrim, may well have seemed to many the man destined to be Pope. But he was still to labour quietly during twenty more years building and guiding the Church with a hand seen or un- detected in every move taken by Popes bearing other names.

Cluny and the German monarchy had raised the Roman See from an evil state during the eleventh century. In other countries, above all France and Spain, men looked upon the Germanization of the Pa- pacy with a jealousy in which there was latent a tendency to make the national churches sufficient unto themselves. Many thought it high time that the successor of Peter were freed from the direction of the German Emperor. While Henry lived no one dreamed of a breach. Hildebrand, at the head of a Roman embassy, once more requested a German Pope; and the answer was Bishop Gebhard of Eichstatt, the Emperor's relative and friend. A year later (1056) Gebhard, who had now become Victor II, stood beside the corpse of Henry. As the administrator of the Empire, who had been named in the testament, he rendered the dead monarch most loyal service. He crowned the Emperor's little son Henry IV, secured for his widow Agnes the Re- gency and an oath of loyalty from the German princes, and guaranteed the child a throne and the Empire a peace by bringing about a recon- ciliation with a most dangerous enemy Henry III had made during his later years the powerful Godfrey of Lorraine, who through his marriage with Beatrice of Tuscany had become heir to the crown of Tuscany and master of the rich House of Canossa. The Pope died (1057) on the way back to Rome, but the election of Abbot Frederic of Monte Cassino, Godfrey's brother, confirmed the new peace. This event had a profound and far-reaching effect. The power of God- frey, which had been further increased after Henry's death by acces- sions of territory in Italy, remained a bulwark of the Papacy as long as he lived to be the new protector of Rome and the Viceroy of Henty IV; and it was continued later by Mathilda, daughter of Countess Beatrice, who was an energetic woman. Godfrey's brother was called Stephen IX, and wore the tiara only one year. By threat- ening punishment if his orders were disobeyed, he compelled Peter

RISE

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/132


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/133

 OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES 119

Damien, then Prior of his hermitage at Fonte Avellana near Faenza, to become Cardinal Archbishop o Ostia and to prove his zeal for justice and for the purity of the Church by public deeds. Much against his will, quite in the manner in which Dante shows him ut- tering complaints in Paradise, this aged ascetic, who was nevertheless a humanist and a passionate poet, left his consecrated wilderness and during fifteen years played a prominent part in the drama of Church and Emperor. In the Commedia he is made to say that only a little of earthly life was left to him when he was summoned and dragged to the mitre. He was also involved in another fateful occurrence which owed its inception to Pope Stephen the association of the Papacy with the democratic movement in northern Italy.

There the freedom-loving middle classes had risen against the cor- rupt feudalism of their temporal and spiritual masters. Milan, city of industry and commerce, which already in the days of the ancient Church had been a community knowing its own mind and which had since seen the first heretics burned at the stake, was naturally the hearth on which social conflagrations which were to concern European society as a whole later on when cities grew larger were enkindled. Everywhere people felt the weight of the feudalistic economy, but they were no less strongly opposed to the frivolous association between money and religion in the Church. Distinguishing between religion and the servants of religion, the movement voluntarily joined the party of the reform. Doubtless the beginnings of a republican Milan go back to the year 1056, when Henry III died. Then a few priests, among them also two brothers of the noble house of Cotta, took the lead as captains of the people in a struggle against a city clergy, the majority of whom were guilty of simony and fornication. They were in close touch with Hildebrand and Peter Damien, knowing that real improvement could come only from the Papacy. But the other party, led by Archbishop Vido, swore just as passionately by the Emperor. Conscious of their superiority in wealth and culture, they termed themselves "Popolo grasso" and called the reformistic popular party the "Popolo minuto," i. e. the riff-raff.

This opposition was intensified during the next few years into an open fight involving the very existence of the spiritual church. Hil- debrand was still in Germany, treating with the Regent Agnes for the

120

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/133


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/134

 PETER IN CHAINS

recognition of Pope Stephen. Then the Pope died, and the Tuscans were free once more to elevate a friend of their house to Peter's throne. Peter Damien thundered in vain; the cardinals were forced to flee for their lives. When Hildebrand returned he assembled them in Sienna and recommended to them (as soon afterward he also did to the Ger- man Court) Bishop Gerhard of Florence, who had been born in Bur- gundy and was an intimate friend of Duke Godfrey. This master stroke of diplomacy proved successful. Hildebrand now had the as- sured support of Lorraine. But Gerhard, now Pope Nicholas II (10581061), was also an able abettor of his own policies. For this second Nicholas had nothing in common with the first excepting his name. Even Peter Damien called Hildebrand the master of his Pope; and Benzo, Bishop of Alba, an enthusiastic supporter of the Emperor, said in his usual gossipy and satirical way, that "Prandellus" i. e. Hildebrand kept his Pope as one keeps a donkey in the stable, giv- ing him the bran but keeping the bread for himself. Nevertheless Hildebrand, supported by Cardinal Humbert, went his way. The interlude of a counter-Pope, who was driven off by force of arms, com- pelled Rome to assure freedom of election against the nobles of the city and the German Court. The Easter Synod of the Lateran (1059) passed severe laws against priest-marriage and the reception of eccle- siastical offices from the hands of laymen, but its chief work was the reform of the Papal elections. Though there was a profession of loyalty to the King, the real sense of the new ruling was not veiled. The cardinal bishops were to make the nominations, the College of Cardinals alone were to cast the ballots, and the clergy and the people retained the right to assent. In Germany this new ruling was very badly received. A Roman legate was sent to pour oil on the troubled waters, found the Castle gates locked, and had to bring his sealed let- ter back home unopened. Ano of Cologne, archbishop and adminis- trator of the realm, convened the Court and the episcopacy in a synod during the early months of 1061 and took a foolish and brusque step. The decree concerning the elections was repudiated, the Pope was con- demned, and all decisions reached during his pontificate were declared null and void.

Hildebrand was armed for battle. Fully conscious of the German opposition, he had immediately allied himself after the Lateran Synod

THE

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/134


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/135

 NORMAN ALLIANCE 121

with the rising Norman power in the South. Out o these robbers and bandits he fashioned associates for the difficult times he now fore- saw. During July 1059, he met the Norman chieftains, Richard of Aversa and Robert Guiscard, at Melfi. To one he entrusted Capua and to the other Apulia, Calabria and even Sicily, though the last still had to be freed from the Saracens. Doubtless the legal basis for this action was only the right conferred by the "Donation of Constantine." In return Hildebrand got their oath to be his vassals not a whit less valuable a property than what he had given. The Norman princes swore that they would protect, if necessary with arms, the Ro- man Church, its possessions, the Pope and the freedom of Papal elec- tions against every attack. Thus the Papacy became independent of the second strong power in Italy, the House of Godfrey of Tuscany. In order to win him over, too, although he was hostile to the Normans, Hildebrand compelled the City of Ancona (against which the Duke was then waging war) to surrender by threatening to impose the ban. The new vassals began to live up to their oaths by storming the castles of the rebellious nobles roundabout Rome. Palestrina, Tuscalon, and other towns were once more brought under the dominion of the Ro- man See.

Nicholas II died unexpectedly in 1061. Since the camps in Rome and the Empire were so divided, open schism broke out. All oppo- nents of the new order of things the Roman nobility and the ene- mies of the Pataria in the Lombard dioceses requested the German court to name a German Pope. In Basel the Lombards called a synod which elected their candidate, the rich Cadalus, Bishop of Parma. He called himself Honorius IL Meanwhile, however, the cardinals in Rome had elected their own Pope, Hildebrand's choice. This was Anselm de Baggio, formerly a brave Milan priest and founder of the Pataria and then Bishop of Lucca, who became Pope Alexander IL The Imperial party felt strong enough to bar his way to the throne. Richard the Norman had to wage a bloody street battle before the elected Pontiff could enter the Lateran by night.

Germany meanwhile did not ignore the fact that Alexander had dealt with it in a friendly manner. In view of the weakness of the regency which Agnes administered in behalf of the boy Henry IV, this was enough to prevent determined German resistance. The Im-

122

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/135


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/136

 PETER IN CHAINS

perial party in Rome itself banded together in order to assure the tri- umph of Cadalus. Benzo of Alba, their leader, fired the passions of the people with speeches in the Circus. He bade Cadalus proceed toward Rome, and gathered troops for the coming struggle over the city. Alexander saw all this and remained steadfast knowing that Hildebrand had also mustered arms. There ensued a battle on the meadows of Nero, April 14, 1063. The result was that Alexander suffered a defeat while Cadalus gained no victory. Then Godfrey of Tuscany intervened. An enemy of the Normans and a friend of the Papacy, he placed himself above the factions and induced both candi- dates to retire to their dioceses. A solution of the problem came from Germany, where Ano of Cologne had executed a coup d'etat at Kaiser- werth during April 1062, by kidnapping the young Henry and thus gaining control of the Imperial administration. He declared the Bishop of Lucca the legitimate Pope and Germany supported his de- cision.

When Alexander entered the Lateran for the second time, Rome was strongly guarded; but Cadalus had not renounced his claim, and after Ano's defeat in Germany summoned up the courage to return to Rome. For a whole year he resided in San Angelo as a spectator of the ghastly city war which he finally lost. Then Ano again mas- tered the situation in Germany and invited Alexander to come to the Synod of Mantua, which in 1064 recognized him Pope and imposed the ban on Cadalus. He was now abandoned by Germany, which in the first instance had elected him; and after his time no Imperial Pope was able to prevail.

As the young Henry grew to manhood, the storm clouds rose higher in the heavens. The Curia set about in dead earnest to realize the idea of freedom from Imperial authority. Ano had to go barefoot, in penitential raiment, to the Lateran in quest of the Pope's forgive- ness because he still kept up political relations with Cadalus. Ger- man prelates were compelled to return their offices into the King's hand because they had been granted for monetary considerations. A thousand and one matters, large and small, which had previously been settled by the German Church itself, were now referred to the Roman chancellery. The bonds of order in the German Church had been loosened, but now Rome placed all in its own firmer hand. The

SAINT

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/136


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/137

 PETER DAMIEN 123

hostile tension between Adalbert and Ano, between Ano and the King, and between the King and the princes, the lawless, morally dis- solute conduct of Henry, the widespread tendency toward anarchy among the people all these things meant impotence, and therefore the Papacy the only real power left in the Empire grew stronger. Alexander proved himself the master when the King, at the age of nineteen, wished to put aside his young wife. He likewise gained the upper hand in the struggle with the Imperial party over the See of Milan, and banned Henry's most distinguished councillors.

The Papal flag also fluttered bravely outside the Empire. William the Conqueror had borne it to England; and in gratitude Rome had given the English bishoprics to Normans. Alexander's teacher, La- franc of Bee, occupied the See of Canterbury (to which that of York was now made subordinate) and therewith became Primate of Eng- land. Even in France the Gallican spirit had bowed to Hildebrand's reformisric ideas. Philip I temporarily acknowledged the new laws against simony and ecclesiastical Church control though he was soon to adopt another attitude.

Alexander died in 1073. Ano and Adalbert had preceded him. Humbert had long been at rest, and a year previous Peter Damien had died on a pallet at Fonte Avellana, to which he had gone home. In his papers there can be found many sharp epigrams directed against the autocracy of Hildebrand, whom he called a "Holy Satan." He himself, the genuinely saintly monk, also had always wanted to give to Gesar everything that was Caesar's.

Two men remained upon the scene, neither of whom wished to concede a point to the other. They were Henry and Hildebrand.

LIBERATION

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/137


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/138

During the last days of April 1073, Hildebrand, though ill as a result of the spiritual upheavals through which he had passed, dictated the necessary letters concerning his election. After Alexander's death, he said, the cardinals had fasted and prayed for three days and thus prepared themselves for the new election. But suddenly, as the corpse was being placed in the tomb at the Church of St. Salvator, there was a tumult and shouting among the people and he had been forced to ascend the Papal throne (for which he considered himself utterly unfitted) without having had time or opportunity to discuss or reflect upon the matter.

These events were reminiscent of the election of Gregory the Great, and this new Pope also took the name of Gregory. As the seventh of the name, he looked upon the first as his model, though he resembled him neither in blood nor in temperament. Yes, when he cited say- ings of God's aristocratic consul and he loved to do so in official letters the sound was utterly different, and incompatible with his own words. Then one hears with far more than ordinary clarity what is hard and commanding in the voice of this Lombard from Tuscany. That which informs his words and deeds is a Germanic spirit of force. The fatherly characteristics of the first Gregory are not here, nor can one discern in Hildebrand anything of the whimsicality or irony of his chosen exemplar. Perhaps for that reason the impression given by his personality is so overwhelming and so strange. His slight, ugly form and his pale face aroused the contempt of his enemies; and those who were weaker than he whetted their pride on the autocracy of this plebeian. His father had been a goat-herd, and his mother came from a poor section of the city. Yet the spirit blows where it lists. He might be of humble origin, but he was possessed by the daemon of a task to be performed for mankind. Peter Damien complained that Hildebrand spoke to him as roughly as the north wind. His speeches and his letters constantly seek to make an impression: they command, demand, urge, take by storm. But when they are not so impulsive and flow more quietly, they enable one to glimpse the real nature of the man from whom they spring. He was a homo religiosus a man

124

GREGORY

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/138


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/139

 VII 125

of clean-hearted greatness, dedicated to God. Torn apart from the common life, uncompanionable, lonely and bowed down by the bur- den of a prophetic mission, he was inwardly troubled by doubts con- cerning his Charisma. He hungered and thirsted after justice, and never attained happiness because this justice never assumed the form he visioned in his ardent desire. There is no other word which passed his lips so frequently, so feelingly, as this word justitia the cause of justice, the cause of God, the eternal law, the world-order according to the divine idea. Actuality was to become reasonable, what was rea- sonable was to be realized: this modern phrase would have suited him, if by "reason" were meant the divine spirit of order, which in itself is already a summons to carry on ceaselessly the reform of the world.

The gulf which lies between what mankind is and what it ought to be had tormented Hildebrand almost beyond endurance. Now that he was Pope, he sensed the dreadful command to carry out his office as viceroy of God's Kingdom. He felt the wholeness of Peter's power within himself more deeply, ardently, mystically, than did even Leo the Great. In a letter to Henry he declared that whatever the Emperor said or wrote to him was said or written to the Aposde himself. It was Peter who with unearthly insight divined the con- viction underlying the lines, the words, which die Pope read or lis- tened to. Gregory felt sure that he was in person the Rock, the Bearer of the Keys, the authorized antagonist of Satan. That which was imperious in his nature was not the self-glorification of human genius, as Cassar and Napoleon exemplify it. He lived, acted and gave orders by the power of another, who had seized upon his person in order to act through it.

But the person is also a limitation; and even the holiest human will must make use of human means. Gregory, who had become a monk long ago at Cluny, struggled to bring about the complete, untarnished supremacy of the spirit of the Church, in the priesdy office and the life of the laity. He wanted to make freedom a striving towards the highest goals, and on his side were the heroic counsels of the Gospel. Yet what this Gospel defines as summons and ideal he made law and compulsion. Having put on the armour of that Gospel he gave batde for men's right to renounce for religion's sake blood, tribe and family* Besides there lay embedded in his nature a chill suspicion that the

iz6

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/139


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/140

 LIBERATION

vitalistic sub-structure of human nature was of evil. This feeling was stronger in him than in Paul, Dominic, Bernard of Clairvaux, Ig- natius of Loyola, not to mention Francis. It is, however, doubtless the ultimate source of his greatness as an ecclesiastical politician. When he mercilessly enforced the ancient law of clerical celibacy despite all revolts of the flesh and all the tears of those whom the law affected, he gave historical validity to the teaching that a state, the officials of which are unmarried and continent, is unconquerable. More than any other statesman he had the courage and the power to regard politics as the art of the impossible. Though he often failed because reality was stronger than he, it is even more evident that he triumphed over reality in his own time and, by his influence, in later ages. If it is a basic characteristic of the Roman Church to posit its spiritual cosmos against the constant peril of chaos latent in the instincts of man, and to be as hard and determined in so doing as nature itself, sacrificing si- lently and mercilessly the individual to the welfare of the whole, then Gregory was the greatest among those who helped to make that heroic characteristic dominant.

How was his ideal to be realized? With those same things which had always stirred men, had convinced their minds, had enabled them to win victories. He, too, did not escape the tragic fate that lies in every struggle to establish a better world. Believing that the higher right was on his side, he fought to gain control of the greater power. It was not the dignity of his person that he defended nor was it the power of his personality which determined the course of his life. He was simply die steward of a heritage, which he added to and then passed on to the next man in the list on which was written his own name. The Papacy never seems greater than when it bends beneath itself like slaves the greatest of those who represent it. It is an exalted idea and it compels even genius to serve its ends. History never sees in any of the Popes, even in Gregory who was perhaps the greatest among them, the expression of a creative energy existing for its own sake. This monk with a crown upon his head is memorable only because of the tremendous strength and fixity of purpose with which he served the rights and the significance of the spirit through the agency of the Church. Still mightier than his damon was the tiara on his head.

REFORM

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/140


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/141

 127

The struggle between Imperial authority and the Papacy remained at its height during half a century. It began with Gregory's tumul- tuous election in 1073, and ended with the compromise of Worms in 1 1 22. It was the age of triumphant feudalism, when the new ro- mantic ministers were rising, when the new urban freedom and an infant Scholasticism were first arousing interest. New religious or- ders surpassed in youthful heroism the rich Cluny, now already de- clining. But it was also a time when a Manichean spirit of heresy was taking form almost unnoticed, and when Christian armies were marching against Islam in Spain. The Normans were still masters of Southern Italy and of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Yet of all the things which characterized the era, the most far-reaching was the effect of Hildebrand's mind.

This soon found expression in Papal words and deeds. When the Lenten Synods of 1074 and 1075 met, resolutions more severe than any heretofore known were adopted against simony and the sexual lapses of the clergy. The faithful were summoned to enforce these decisions, and to abstain from attending Mass when that was cele- brated by a married priest. The Pope ignored disturbances in Ger- many and elsewhere that grew out of protests organized by prelates. When German and Lombard bishops, including even Councillors of the King, did not obey, he imposed the ban on them. Henry him- self, who at first when he was weak because of the uprising in Saxony, had written to Rome in an obedient and penitential spirit, again be- came the battler of old against Hildebrand once he had gained a vic- tory over his foes. He now made appointments to benefices quite as he had always done, even though the Pope had issued decrees that were to stamp out all the evil at the root. He had denied to the sec- ular ruler the right to give away bishoprics, and forbidden the laity under penalty of the ban to have a hand in the conferring of churchly offices. Gregory was willing for a time to negotiate concerning a modification of this prohibition. He was fully conscious of the grave results which might follow a breach with the German crown, and his objective was not separation between church and state but freedom for the church in the choice of its shepherds.

Henry, meanwhile, set a man of his choice in the See of Milan, and gave prominence once more to the banned councillors. Again Greg-

128

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/141


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/142

 LIBERATION

oty placed the ban on them and was fully able to reckon with the consequences, though at the rime his own situation was perilous. The leader of the Milan Pataria had fallen in a street fight. Papal friend- ship with the Normans was broken off, the higher German clergy sided with the king, and Cencius, leader of a conspiracy of Roman nobles, seized the Pope's person during a coup which took place during 1075. Seized by the hair during midnight Mass on Christmas Day and dragged off, the wounded and maltreated Pontiff was the victim of female scoffers in Cencius' dungeon until the people liberated him. He forgave the culprit on the spot, and protected him against the wrath of the populace. Brought back to the Church by an enthusi- astic crowd, he finished the interrupted Mass. Courageously, firmly, imperturbably, he took up the battle against the King in the same spirit he had revealed on this night, though the outlook was very unfavourable. Of the King it is said that he provoked the crime of this Christmas Eve. Now Henry also disregarded Gregory's final warning, and at a Synod convened iii Worms declared him deposed. A dangerous enemy of the Pope, Cardinal Hugo Candidas, who had previously been his friend and furtherer but had since been excom- municated, now fanned the flames with the worst of calumnies. Greg- ory, he said, was secretly the paramour of Mathilda of Tuscany, and the most recent Popes had not died without his doing.

The riotous events of the years 1076 and 1077 are familiar to every- one. Henry's fateful letter containing the decisions reached at Worms employed this initial address: "Hildebrand, not the Pope, but the false monk." And in the final sentence the King commanded him, in the name also of the German bishops to "step down, step down." The tumultuous, formless election by which the Pope had risen to power now proved the weakest point in his armour. But the Romans shielded it well. The anger of the throng assembled at the Lateran Synod of 1076 rose against the royal bearer of evil tidings and Greg- ory himself prevented the legate's assassination. In the basilica there also sat as a witness of the Council, Agnes, the King's mother. Long before, this wife of the strict third Henry had turned from her vicious son and had taken the veil in Rome. Now she saw and heard every- thing that happened. The Pope gave the counterstroke and called down the curse of the ban on Henry. The form he chose was that

HENRY

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/142


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/143

 IV IS BANNED 129

of a prayer to Peter: "Thou art my witness," he cried, "that thy Holy Roman Church placed me at the helm against my will. . . By the strength of thy grace, and now by reason of my own deeds, thou wert pleased that thy Christian people should obey me as thy viceroy; and for thy sake there was given me the power to bind and to loose in heaven and on earth. Filled with such confidence, for the honour and protection of thy Church in the name of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in the strength of thy power, I forbid King Henty, the son of Henry the Emperor, who has risen against thy Church in unheard-of arrogance, to rule over the whole Empire and Italy. I dispense all Christians of the oath given to him or still to be given, and forbid herewith that anyone whatsoever shall obey him as a King ... I bind him in thy stead with the bonds of the curse, so that the peoples may know and bear in mind that thou art Peter, and that upon this Rock, the Son of the Living God built his Church, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail."

This anathema flashed like lightning over the terrified countries. Thus there was unleashed in the twinkling of an eye the ancient storm that hung above the Empire; and the brightness of the lightning fell upon the crumbling structure in which even the holy spirits of its founders stood at the bar of judgment as if they, too, were guilty.

Soon it was lonely for the King. The ban meant exclusion from the communion of the Church, and this in that time was equivalent to being cast out of human society. As long as the curse lay upon him, Henry was unable to perform his duties as ruler. Ecclesiastical and spiritual leaders now turned their backs on him. The Saxons were restive again, and no one came to the King's parliaments. The Papal legates who crossed the lands had an easy task. The princes were agreed that Henry should be deposed if he had not freed himself from die ban within the year. A parliament, to which the Pope was invited, was to convene on Candlemas Day, 1077, to decide the fate of the royal crown.

Enemies to the death were now about to cross swords. Were they only two men, one a King and the other Priest? When placed side by side these words suffice to convey the antagonism of the forces they signified. Hiereus and Basiletts, Sacerdos and Imperator, Pope and

130

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/143


text:
Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/144

 LIBERATION

Emperor, indicate roles in the oldest drama of politically organized humanity. For Christian Europe a clash between these powers was inevitable as soon as both were arrayed against each other in representa- tives of self-confident strength. No one will say that Henry IV was a great man. Nevertheless, he did not speak jestingly of the honour of the Empire; and while his was a wavering figure, it also testified to the fury of the storms which blew across his path. The old Imperial system had been hollowed out when he took the crown. That which under the name of "investiture" constituted the thing over which the battle raged, went down deep to the roots of both Church and State. The structure erected by the Ottos rested upon Germanic conceptions of the law, the essence of which was that the unity of the clergy and officialdom, of ecclesiastical property and Imperial possessions, was to find its symbol and its guaranty in the conferring of spiritual offices by the Emperor's hand. When the rulers were men who had the inter- est of the Church at heart, they chose those who assured the well-being of the Church; but when the system was misused both the Church and the State were led by the necessity latent in human nature to bar- ter for positions, and that meant the simultaneous deterioration of both powers. The State was no longer the State, and the Church was no longer the Church. It was inevitable that the religious movement of reform should take up a position hostile to the Imperial authorities who had gained the upper hand over ecclesiastical administration. The struggle between the two spheres of life, at first a battle over pos- sessions and rights, soon became a conflict to decide which sphere was to be dominant in the Christian world.

If the balance of power in the Christian conception of society was to be shifted, it was not necessary that new ideas should be advanced but only that a powerful man should appear. Hildebrand was this man, and the lever he used was an idea of the Papacy which, from the time Christ had spoken the words of foundation recorded in Matthew until the time of pseudo-Isidore, had consistently remained through good and evil days the most influential idea in the world. Gregory himself developed this idea to its ultimate conclusions in the twenty- seven sentences of his Dictates Ptpa of 1075. Perhaps these are only an improvisation, perhaps also they are only notes he wrote down fot

PAPAL

title: Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/144