Produced by David King, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.




THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL
Volume IV

THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE


THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL
Brief Histories of Her Continuous Life

A series of eight volumes dealing with the history of the Christian
Church from the beginning of the present day.

_Edited by_
The Rev. W. H. Hutton, B.D.
Fellow and Tutor of S. John's College, Oxford,
and Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Rochester

THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES.
The Rev. Lonsdale Ragg, M.A., Vicar of the Tickencote, Rutlandshire,
and Prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral.

"Mr. Ragg has produced something far better than a mere text-book: the
earlier chapters especially are particularly interesting reading. The
whole book is well proportioned and scholarly, and gives the reader
the benefit of wide reading of the latest authorities. The contrasted
growth and fortunes of the Judaic Church of Jerusalem and the Church
of the Gentiles are particularly clearly brought out."--_Church
Times_.

"Written in a clear and interesting style, and summaries the early
records of the growth of the Christian community during the first
century."--_Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette._

"A careful piece of work, which may be read with pleasure and
profit."--_Spectator_.

THE CHURCH OF THE FATHERS.
The Rev. Leighton Pullan, M.A., Fellow of St. John's College, and
Theological Lecturer of St. John's and Oriel Colleges, Oxford.

"If we may forecast the merits of the series by Pullan's volume, we
are prepared to give it an unhesitating welcome. We shall be surprised
if this book does not supersede of the less interesting Church
histories which have served as text-books for several generations of
theological students."--_Guardian_.

"The student of this important period of Church history--the formative
period--has here a clear narrative, packed with information drawn from
authentic sources and elucidated with the most recent results of
investigation. We do not know of any other work on Church history in
which so much learned and accurate instruction is condensed into a
comparative small space, but at the same time presented in the form of
an interesting narrative. Alike the beginner and the advanced student
will find Mr. Pullan a useful guide and companion."--_Church
Times_.


THE CHURCH AND THE BARBARIANS.
The Editor. _3s. 6d. net._

"In so accomplished hands as Mr. Hutton's the result is an instructive
and suggestive survey of the course of the Church's development
throughout five hundred years, and almost as many countries and
peoples, in Constantinople as well as among the Wends and Prussians,
in Central Asia as well as in the Western Isles." _Review of
Theology and Philosophy._

"The volume will be of great value as giving a bird's-eye view of the
fascinating struggle of the Church with heathenism during those
spacious centuries."--_Church Times._


THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE. 1003-1304.
By D. J. Medley, M.A., Professor of History in the University
of Glasgow. _4s. 6d. net._


THE AGE OF SCHISM. 1304-1503.
By Herbert Bruce, M.A., Professor of History in the
University College, Cardiff.

"We commend the book as being fair in its judicial criticism, a great
point where so thorny a subject as the Great Schism and its issues are
discussed. The art of reading the times, whether ancient or modern,
has descended from Mr. W. H. Hutton to his pupil." _Pall Mall
Gazette._

"It is a great period for so small a book, but a master of his subject
knows always what to leave out, and this volume covers the period in
comfort."--_Expository Times._

"Usually such an 'outline' is a bald and bloodless summary, but Mr.
Bruce has written a narrative which is both readable and
well-informed. We have pleasure in commending his interesting and
scholarly work."--_Glasgow Herald._


THE REFORMATION. 1503-1648.

By the Rev. J. P. Whitney, B.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical
History at King's College, London. _5s. net._

"A book on the Reformation as a whole, not only in England, but in
Europe, has long been needed.... This present volume fills,
therefore, a real want, for in it the Reformation is treated as a
whole.... The value of the book is quite out of proportion to its
size, and its importance will be appreciated by all those whose duty
or inclination calls to study the Reformation."--_Guardian_.

"It is certainly a very full and excellent outline. There is scarcely
a point in this momentous time in regard to which the student, and,
indeed, the ordinary reader, will not find here very considerable
help, as well as suggestive hints for further study."--_Church Union
Gazette_.

THE AGE OF REVOLUTION. 1648-1815.

By the Editor. _4s. 6d. net_.

"The period is a long one for so small a book, but Mr. Hutton has the
gift not of condensing, which is not required, but of selecting the
essential events and vividly characterizing them."--_Expository
Times_.

"Mr. Hutton's past studies in Ecclesiastical History are sure to
secure him a welcome in this new venture. There is a breadth of
treatment, an accurate perspective, and a charitable spirit in all
that he writes which make him a worthy associate of Creighton and
Stubbs in the great field of history."--_Aberdeen Journal_.

THE CHURCH OF MODERN DAYS. 1815-1900.

By the Rev. Leighton Pullan, M.A. [_In preparation._]

London: Rivingtons




THE CHURCH
AND THE EMPIRE

Being an outline of
the history of the church
from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304

By

D. J. Medley, M.A.
Professor of History in the University of Glasgow




EDITORIAL NOTE

While there is a general agreement among the writers as to principles,
the greatest freedom as to treatment is allowed to writers in this
series. The volumes, for example, are not of the same length. Volume
II, which deals with the formative period of the Church, is, not
unnaturally, longer in proportion than the others. To Volume VI, which
deals with the Reformation, has been allotted a similar extension. The
authors, again, use their own discretion in such matters as footnotes
and lists of authorities. But the aim of the series, which each writer
sets before him, is to tell, clearly and accurately, the story of the
Church, as a divine institution with a continuous life.

W. H. Hutton



PREFACE


The late appearance of this volume of the series needs some
explanation. Portions of the book have been written at intervals; but
it is only the enforced idleness of a long convalescence after illness
which has given me the requisite leisure to finish it.

I have tried to avoid overloading my pages with details of political
history; but in no period is it so easy to miss the whole lesson of
events by an attempt to isolate the special influences which affected
the organised society of the Church. The interpretation which I have
adopted of the important events at Canossa is not, of course,
universally accepted; but the fact that it has seldom found expression
in any English work may serve as my excuse.

The Editor of the series, The Rev. W. H. Hutton, has laid me under a
deep obligation, first, by his long forbearance, and more lately, by
his frequent and careful suggestions over the whole book. It is
dangerous for laymen to meddle with questions of technical theology. I
trust that, guided by his expert hand, I have not fallen into any
recognisable heresy!

Mears Ashby,
_October_, 1910.




CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHURCH REFORM

CHAPTER II
GREGORY VII AND LAY INVESTITURE

CHAPTER III
THE END OF THE QUARREL

CHAPTER IV
THE SECULAR CLERGY

CHAPTER V
CANONS AND MONKS

CHAPTER VI
ST. BERNARD

CHAPTER VII
THE SCHOOLMEN AND THEOLOGY

CHAPTER VIII
GUELF AND GHIBELLINE (I)

CHAPTER IX
INNOCENT III

CHAPTER X
THE PAPAL POWER IN THE CHURCH

CHAPTER XI
DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH

CHAPTER XII
HERESIES

CHAPTER XIII
THE MENDICANT ORDERS

CHAPTER XIV
THE CHURCH AND THE HEATHEN

CHAPTER XV
GUELF AND GHIBELLINE (II)

CHAPTER XVI
THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE AND OF THE PAPACY

CHAPTER XVII
THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST



The Church and the Empire

Introductory


[Sidenote: Political thought in Middle Ages.]

The period of three centuries which forms our theme is the central
period of the Middle Ages. Its interests are manifold; but they almost
all centre round the great struggle between Empire and Papacy, which
gives to mediaeval history an unity conspicuously lacking in more
modern times. The history of the Church during these three hundred
years is more political than at any other period. In order to
understand the reason for this it will be well at the outset to sketch
in brief outline the political theories propounded in the Middle Ages
on the relations of Church and State. So only can we avoid the
inevitable confusion of mind which must result from the use of terms
familiar in modern life.

[Sidenote: Unity of world.]

Medieval thought, then, drawing its materials from Roman, Germanic and
Christian sources, conceived the Universe as _Civitas Dei_, the
State of God, embracing both heaven and earth, with God as at once the
source, the guide and the ultimate goal. Now this Universe contains
numerous parts, one of which is composed of mankind; and the destiny
of mankind is identified with that of Christendom. Hence it follows
that mankind may be described as the Commonwealth of the Human Race;
and unity under one law and one government is essential to the
attainment of the divine purpose.

[Sidenote: Duality of organisation.]

But this very unity of the whole Universe gives a double aspect to the
life of mankind, which has to be spent in this world with a view to
its continuation in the next. Thus God has appointed two separate
Orders, each complete in its own sphere, the one concerned with the
arrangement of affairs for this life, the other charged with the
preparation of mankind for the life to come.

[Sidenote: Relations of Church and State.]

But this dualism of allegiance was in direct conflict with the idea of
unity. The two separate Orders were distinguished as
_Sacerdotium_ and _Regnum_ or _Imperium_; and the need
felt by mediaeval thinkers for reconciling these two in the higher
unity of the _Civitas Dei_ began speculations on the relation
between the ecclesiastical and the secular spheres.

[Sidenote: Theory of Church party.]

The champions of the former found a reconciliation of the two spheres
to consist in the absorption of the secular by the ecclesiastical. The
one community into which, by the admission of all, united mankind was
gathered, must needs be the Church of God. Of this Christ is the Head.
But in order to realise this unity on earth Christ has appointed a
representative, the Pope, who is therefore the head of both spheres in
this world. But along with this unity it must be allowed that God has
sanctioned the separate existence of the secular no less than that of
the ecclesiastical dominion. This separation, however, according to
the advocates of papal power, did not affect the deposit of authority,
but affected merely the manner of its exercise. Spiritual and temporal
power in this world alike belonged to the representative of Christ.

[Sidenote: Sinful origin of State.]

But the bolder advocates of ecclesiastical power were ready to explain
away the divine sanction of temporal authority. Actually existing
states have often originated in violence. Thus the State in its
earthly origin may be regarded as the work of human nature as affected
by the Fall of Man: like sin itself, it is permitted by God.
Consequently it needs the sanction of the Church in order to remove
the taint. Hence, at best, the temporal power is subject to the
ecclesiastical: it is merely a means for working out the higher
purpose entrusted to the Church. Pope Gregory VII goes farther still
in depreciation of the temporal power. He declares roundly that it is
the work of sin and the devil. "Who does not know," he writes, "that
kings and dukes have derived their power from those who, ignoring God,
in their blind desire and intolerable presumption have aspired to rule
over their equals, that is, men, by pride, plunder, perfidy, murder,
in short by every kind of wickedness, at the instigation of the prince
of this world, namely, the devil?" But in this he is only re-echoing
the teaching of St. Augustine; and he is followed, among other
representative writers, by John of Salisbury, the secretary and
champion of Thomas Becket, and by Pope Innocent III. To all three
there is an instructive contrast between a power divinely conferred
and one that has at the best been wrested from God by human
importunity.

[Sidenote: Illustration of relations.]

There are two illustrations of the relation between the spiritual and
secular powers very common among papal writers. Gregory VII, at the
beginning of his reign, compares them to the two eyes in a man's head.
But he soon substitutes for this symbol of theoretical equality a
comparison to the sun and moon, or to the soul and body, whereby he
claims for the spiritual authority, as represented by the soul or the
sun, the operative and illuminating power in the world, without and
apart from which the temporal authority has no efficacy and scarcely
any existence. An illustration equally common, but susceptible of more
diverse interpretation, was drawn from the two swords offered to our
Lord by His disciples just before the betrayal. It was St. Bernard
who, taking up the idea of previous writers that these represented the
sword of the flesh and the sword of the spirit respectively, first
claimed that they both belonged to the Church, but that, while the
latter was wielded immediately by St. Peter's successor, the
injunction to the Apostle to put up in its sheath the sword of the
flesh which he had drawn in defence of Christ, merely indicated that
he was not to handle it himself. Consequently he had entrusted to lay
hands this sword which denotes the temporal power. Both swords,
however, still belonged to the Pope and typified his universal
control. By virtue of his possession of the spiritual sword he can use
spiritual means for supervising or correcting all secular acts. But
although he should render to Caesar what is Caesar's, yet his material
power over the temporal sword also justifies the Pope in intervening
in temporal matters when necessity demands. This is the explanation of
the much debated _Translatio Imperii,_ the transference of the
imperial authority in 800 A.D. from the Greeks to the Franks. It is
the Emperor to whom, in the first instance, the Pope has entrusted the
secular sword; he is, in feudal phraseology, merely the chief vassal
of the Pope. It is the unction and coronation of the Emperor by the
Pope which confer the imperial power upon the Emperor Elect. The
choice by the German nobles is a papal concession which may be
recalled at any time. Hence, if the imperial throne is vacant, if
there is a disputed election, or if the reigning Emperor is neglectful
of his duties, it is for the Pope to act as guardian or as judge; and,
of course, the powers which he can exercise in connection with the
Empire he is still more justified in using against any lesser temporal
prince.

[Sidenote: Theory of Imperial party.]

To this very thorough presentation of the claims of the ecclesiastical
power the partisans of secular authority had only a half-hearted
doctrine to oppose. Ever since the days of Pope Gelasius I (492-6),
the Church herself had accepted the view of a strict dualism in the
organisation of society and, therefore, of the theoretical equality
between the ecclesiastical and the secular organs of government.
According to this doctrine Sacerdotium and Imperium are independent
spheres, each wielding the one of the two swords appropriate to
itself, and thus the Emperor no less than the Pope is _Vicarius
Dei_. It is this doctrine behind which the champions of the Empire
entrench themselves in their contest with the Papacy. It was asserted
by the Emperors themselves, notably by Frederick I and Frederick II,
and it has been enshrined in the writings of Dante.

[Sidenote: Its weakness.]

The weak point of this theory was that it was rather a thesis for
academic debate than a rallying cry for the field of battle. Popular
contests are for victory, not for delimitation of territory. And its
weakness was apparent in this, that while the thorough-going partisans
of the Church allowed to the Emperor practically no power except such
as he obtained by concession of or delegation from the Church, the
imperial theory granted to the ecclesiastical representative at least
an authority and independence equal to those claimed for itself, and
readily admitted that of the two powers the Church could claim the
greater respect as being entrusted with the conduct of matters that
were of more permanent importance.

Moreover, historical facts contradicted this idea of equality of
powers. The Church through her representatives often interfered with
decisive effect in the election and the rejection of secular
potentates up to the Emperor himself: she claimed that princes were as
much subject to her jurisdiction as other laymen, and she did not
hesitate to make good that claim even to the excommunication of a
refractory ruler and--its corollary--the release of his subjects from
their oath of allegiance. Finally, the Church awoke a responsive echo
in the hearts of all those liable to oppression or injustice, when she
asserted a right of interposing in purely secular matters for the sake
of shielding them from wrong; while she met a real need of the age in
her exaltation of the papal power as the general referee in all cases
of difficult or doubtful jurisdiction.

Thus the claims of each power as against the other were not at all
commensurate. For while the imperialists would agree that there was a
wide sphere of ecclesiastical rule with which the Emperor had no
concern at all, it was held by the papalists that there was nothing
done by the Emperor in any capacity which it was not within the
competence of the Pope to supervise.




CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHURCH REFORM


Previous to the eleventh century there had been quarrels between
Emperor and Pope. Occasional Popes, such as Nicholas I (858-67), had
asserted high prerogatives for the successor of St. Peter, but we have
seen that the Church herself taught the co-ordinate and the mutual
dependence of the ecclesiastical and secular powers. It was the
circumstances of the tenth century which caused the Church to assume a
less complacent attitude and, in her efforts to prevent her absorption
by the State, to attempt the reduction of the State to a mere
department of the Church.

[Sidenote: Lay investiture of ecclesiastics.]

With the acceptance of Christianity as the official religion of the
Empire the organisation of the Church tended to follow the
arrangements for purposes of civil government. And when at a later
period civil society was gradually organising itself on that
hierarchical model which we know as feudalism, the Church, in the
persons of its officers, was tending to become not so much the
counterpart of the State as an integral part of it. For the clergy, as
being the only educated class, were used by the Kings as civil
administrators, and on the great officials of the Church were bestowed
extensive estates which should make them a counterpoise to the secular
nobles. In theory the clergy and people of the diocese still elected
their bishop, but in reality he came to be nominated by the King, at
whose hands he received investiture of his office by the symbolic
gifts of the ring and the pastoral staff, and to whom he did homage
for the lands of the see, since by virtue of them he was a baron of
the realm. Thus for all practical purposes the great ecclesiastic was
a secular noble, a layman. He had often obtained his high
ecclesiastical office as a reward for temporal service, and had not
infrequently paid a large sum of money as an earnest of loyal conduct
and for the privilege of recouping himself tenfold by unscrupulous use
of the local patronage which was his.

[Sidenote: Clerical marriage.]

Furthermore, in contravention of the canons of the Church, the secular
clergy, whether bishops or priests, were very frequently married. The
Church, it is true, did not consecrate these marriages; but, it is
said, they were so entirely recognised that the wife of a bishop was
called Episcopissa. There was an imminent danger that the
ecclesiastical order would shortly lapse into an hereditary social
caste, and that the sons of priests inheriting their fathers'
benefices would merely become another order of landowners.

[Sidenote: Church reform.]

Thus the two evils of traffic in ecclesiastical offices, shortly
stigmatised as simony and concubinage--for the laws of the Church
forbade any more decent description of the relationship--threatened to
absorb the Church within the State. Professional interests and
considerations of morality alike demanded that these evils should be
dealt with. Ecclesiastical reformers perceived that the only lasting
reformation was one which should proceed from the Church herself. It
was among the secular clergy, the parish priests, that these evils
were most rife. The monasteries had also gone far away from their
original ideals; but the tenth century had witnessed the establishment
of a reformed Benedictine rule in the Congregation of Cluny, and, in
any case, it was in monastic life alone that the conditions seemed
suitable for working out any scheme of spiritual improvement. The
Congregation of Cluny was based upon the idea of centralisation;
unlike the Abbot of the ordinary Benedictine monastery, who was
concerned with the affairs of a single house, the Abbot of Cluny
presided over a number of monasteries, each of which was entrusted
only to a Prior. Moreover, the Congregation of Cluny was free from the
visitation of the local bishops and was immediately under the papal
jurisdiction. What more natural than that the monks of Cluny should
advocate the application to the Church at large of those principles of
organisation which had formed so successful a departure from previous
arrangements in the smaller sphere of Cluny? Thus the advocates of
Church reform evolved both a negative and a positive policy: the
abolition of lay investiture and the utter extirpation of the practice
of clerical marriages were to shake the Church free from the numbing
control of secular interests, and these were to be accomplished by a
centralisation of the ecclesiastical organisation in the hands of the
Pope, which would make him more than a match for the greatest secular
potentate, the successor of Caesar himself.

[Sidenote: Chances of reform.]

It is true that at the beginning of the eleventh century there seemed
little chance of the accomplishment of these reforms. If the great
secular potentates were likely to cling to the practice of investiture
in order to keep a hold over a body of landowners which, whatever
their other obligations, controlled perhaps one-third of the lands in
Western Christendom; yet the Kings of the time were not unsympathetic
to ecclesiastical reform as interpreted by Cluny. In France both Hugh
Capet (987-96) and Robert (996-1031) appealed to the Abbot of Cluny
for help in the improvement of their monasteries, and this example was
followed by some of their great nobles. In Germany reigned Henry II
(1002-24), the last of the Saxon line, who was canonised a century
after his death by a Church penetrated by the influences of Cluny. It
was the condition of the Papacy which for nearly half a century
postponed any attempt at a comprehensive scheme of reform. Twice
already in the course of the tenth century had the intervention of the
German King, acting as Emperor, rescued the see of Rome from
unspeakable degradation. But for nearly 150 years (904-1046), with a
few short interludes, the Papacy was the sport of local factions. At
the beginning of the eleventh century the leaders of these factions
were descended from the two daughters of the notorious Theodora; the
Crescentines who were responsible for three Popes between 1004 and
1012, owing their influence to the younger Theodora, while the Counts
of Tusculum were the descendants of the first of the four husbands who
got such power as they possessed from the infamous Marozia. The first
Tusculan Pope, Benedict VIII (1012-24), by simulating an interest in
reform, won the support of Henry II of Germany, whom he crowned
Emperor; but in 1033 the same faction set up the son of the Count of
Tusculum, a child of twelve, as Benedict IX. It suited the Emperor,
Conrad II, to use him and therefore to acknowledge him; but twice the
scandalised Romans drove out the youthful debauchee and murderer, and
on the second occasion they elected another Pope in his place. But the
Tusculan influence was not to be gainsaid. Benedict, however, sold the
Papacy to John Gratian, who was reputed a man of piety, and whose
accession as Gregory VI, even though it was a simoniacal transaction,
was welcomed by the party of reform. But Benedict changed his mind and
attempted to resume his power. Thus there were three persons in Rome
who had been consecrated to the papal office. The Archdeacon of Rome
appealed to the Emperor Conrad's successor, Henry III, who caused Pope
Gregory to summon a Council to Sutri. Here, or shortly afterwards at
Rome, all three Popes were deposed, and although Benedict IX made
another attempt on the papal throne, and even as late as 1058 his
party set up an anti-pope, the influence of the local factions was
superseded by that of a stronger power.

[Sidenote: Imperial influence.]

But the alternative offered by the German Kings was no more favourable
in itself to the schemes of the reformers than the purely local
influences of the last 150 years. As Otto I in 963, so Henry III in
1046 obtained from the Romans the recognition of his right, as
patrician or princeps, to nominate a candidate who should be formally
elected as their bishop by the Roman people; and as Otto III in 996,
so Henry III now used his office to nominate a succession of men,
suitable indeed and distinguished, but of German birth. This was not
that freedom of the Church from lay control nor the exaltation of the
papal office through which that freedom was to be maintained. Indeed,
so long as fear of the Tusculan influence remained, deference to the
wishes of the German King, who was also Emperor, was indispensable,
and when that King was as powerful as Henry III it was unwise to
challenge unnecessarily and directly the exercise of his powers.

[Sidenote: Leo IX (1048-54).]

But Henry, although, like St. Henry at the beginning of the century,
he kept a strong hand on his own clergy, was yet thoroughly in
sympathy with what may be distinguished as the moral objects of the
reformers; and, indeed, the men whom he promoted to the Papacy were
drawn from the class of higher ecclesiastics who were touched by the
Cluniac spirit. Henry's first two nominees were short-lived. His third
choice was his own cousin, Bruno, Bishop of Toul, who accepted with
reluctance and only on condition that he should go through the
canonical form of election by the clergy and people of Rome. On his
way to Rome, which he entered as a pilgrim, he was joined by the late
chaplain of Pope Gregory VI, Hildebrand, who had been in retirement at
Cluny since his master's death. Not only did the new Pope, Leo IX,
take this inflexible advocate of the Church's claims as his chief
adviser, but he surrounded himself with reforming ecclesiastics from
beyond the Alps. Thus fortified he issued edicts against simoniacal
and married clergy; but finding that their literal fulfilment would
have emptied all existing offices, he was obliged to tone down his
original threats and to allow clergy guilty of simony to atone their
fault by an ample penance. But Leo's contribution to the building up
of the papal power was his personal appearance, not as a suppliant but
as a judge, beyond the Alps. Three times in his six years' rule he
passed the confines of Rome and Italy. On the first occasion he even
held a Council at Rheims, despite the unfriendly attitude of Henry I
of France, whose efforts, moreover, to keep the French bishops from
attendance at the Council met with signal failure. Here and elsewhere
Pope Leo exercised all kinds of powers, forcing bishops and abbots to
clear themselves by oath from charges of simony and other faults, and
excommunicating and degrading those who had offended. And while he
reduced the hierarchy to recognise the papal authority, he overawed
the people by assuming the central part in stately ceremonies such as
the consecration of new churches and the exaltation of relics of
martyrs. All this was possible because the Emperor Henry III supported
him and welcomed him to a Council at Mainz. Nor was it a matter of
less importance that these visits taught the people of Western Europe
to regard the Papacy as the embodiment of justice and the
representative of a higher morality than that maintained by the local
Church.

[Sidenote: Effect of Henry III's death.]

Quite unwittingly Henry III's encouragement of Pope Leo's roving
propensities began the difficulties for his descendants. It is true he
nominated Leo's successor at the request of the clergy and people of
Rome; but Henry's death in 1056 left the German throne to a child of
six under the regency of a woman and a foreigner who found herself
faced by all the hostile forces hitherto kept under by the Emperor's
powerful arm. And when Henry's last Pope, Victor II, followed the
Emperor to the grave in less than a year, the removal of German
influence was complete. The effect was instantaneous. The first Pope
elected directly by the Romans was a German indeed by birth, but he
was the brother of Duke Godfrey of Lorraine, who, driven from Germany
by Henry, had married the widowed Marchioness of Tuscany. and was
regarded by a small party as a possible King of Italy and Emperor.
Whatever danger there was in the schemes of the Lotharingian brothers
was nipped in the bud by the death of Pope Stephen IX seven months
after his election. Then it became apparent that the removal of the
Emperor's strong hand had freed not only the upholders of
ecclesiastical reform but also the old Roman factions. The attempt was
easily crushed, but it became clear to the reformers that the papal
election must be secured beyond all possibility of outside
interference. At Hildebrand's suggestion and with the approval of the
German Court, a Burgundian, who was Bishop of Florence, was elected as
Nicholas II. The very name was a challenge, for the first Nicholas
(858-67) was perhaps the Pope who up to that time had asserted the
highest claims for the See of Rome.

[Sidenote: Provision for papal election.]

The short pontificate of the new Nicholas was devoted largely to
measures for securing the freedom of papal elections from secular
interference. By a decree passed in a numerously attended Council at
the Pope's Lateran palace, a College or Corporation was formed of the
seven bishops of the sees in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome,
together with the priests of the various Roman parish churches and the
deacons attendant on them. To the members of this body was now
specially arrogated the term Cardinal, a name hitherto applicable to
all clergy ordained and appointed to a definite church. To all Roman
clergy outside this body and to the people there remained merely the
right of assent, and even this was destined to disappear. More
important historically was the merely verbal reservation of the
imperial right of confirmation, which was further made a matter of
individual grant to each Emperor who might seek it from the Pope. In
view of the revived influence of the local factions it was also laid
down that, although Rome and the Roman clergy had the first claim, yet
the election might lawfully take place anywhere and any one otherwise
eligible might be chosen; while the Pope so elected might exercise his
authority even before he had been enthroned.

[Sidenote: Papacy and Normans.]

But in the presence of a strong Emperor or an unscrupulous faction
even these elaborate provisions Papacy might be useless. The Papacy
needed a champion in the flesh, who should have nothing to gain and
everything to lose by attempting to become its master. Such a
protector was ready to hand in the Normans, who, recently settled in
Southern Italy, felt themselves insecure in the title by which they
held their possessions. Southern Italy was divided between the three
Lombard duchies of Benevento, Capua and Salerno, and the districts of
Calabria and Apulia, which acknowledged the Viceroy or Katapan of the
Eastern Emperor in his seat at Bari. The Saracens, only recently
expelled from the mainland, still held Sicily. Norman pilgrims
returning from Palestine became, at the instigation of local factions,
Norman adventurers, and their leaders obtaining lands from the local
Princes in return for help, sought confirmation of their title from
some legitimate authority. The Western Empire had never claimed these
lands, but none the less Conrad II and Henry III, in return for the
acceptance of their suzerainty, acknowledged the titles which the
Norman leaders had already gained from Greek or Lombard. Rome was
likely to be their next victim, and Leo IX took the opportunity of a
dispute over the city of Benevento to try conclusions with them. A
humiliating defeat was followed by a mock submission of the conqueror.
The danger was in no sense removed. Pope Stephen's schemes for driving
them out of Italy were cut short by his death, and meanwhile the
Norman power increased. Thus there could be no question of expulsion,
nor could the Papacy risk a repetition of the humiliation of Leo IX.
It was Hildebrand who conceived the idea of turning a dangerous
neighbour into a friend and protector. A meeting was arranged at Melfi
between Pope Nicholas and the Norman princes, and there, while on the
one side canons were issued against clerical marriage, which was rife
in the south of Italy, on the other side Robert Guiscard, the Norman
leader, recognised the Pope as his suzerain, and obtained in return
the title of Duke of Apulia and Calabria and of Sicily when he should
have conquered it. Pope Leo's agreement, six years before, had been
made by a defeated and humiliated ecclesiastic with a band of
unscrupulous adventurers. Pope Nicholas was dealing with an actual
ruler who merely sought legitimate recognition of his title from any
whose hostility would make his hold precarious. Thus resting on the
shadowy basis of the donation of Constantine the Pope substituted
himself for the Emperor, whether of West or of East, over the whole of
Southern Italy. Truly the movement for the emancipation of the Church
from the State was already shaping itself into an attempt at the
formation of a rival power.

[Sidenote: Alexander II (1061-73) and Milan.]

The value of this new alliance to the Papacy was put to the test
almost immediately. On the death of Pope Nicholas (1061) the papal and
imperial parties proceeded to measure their strength against each
other. The reformers, acting under the leadership of Hildebrand, chose
as his successor a noble Milanese, Anselm of Baggio, Bishop of Lucca,
who now became Alexander II. He was elected in accordance with the
provisions of the recent Lateran decree, and no imperial ratification
was asked. On the purely ecclesiastical side this choice was a strong
manifesto against clerical marriage. The city of Milan as the capital
of the Lombard kingdom of Italy had for many centuries held itself in
rivalry with Rome. Moreover, it was the stronghold of an aristocratic
and a married clergy, which based its practice on a supposed privilege
granted by its Apostle St. Ambrose. But this produced a reforming
democracy which, perhaps from the quarter whence it gained its chief
support, was contemptuously named by its opponents the Patarins or
Rag-pickers. The first leader of this democratic party had been Anselm
of Baggio. Nicholas II sent thither the fanatical Peter Damiani as
papal legate, and a fierce struggle ended in the abject submission of
the Archbishop of Milan, who attended a synod at Rome and promised
obedience to the Pope.

[Sidenote: German opposition.]

The weak point in the decree of Nicholas II had been that the German
clergy were not represented at the Council which issued it, and it was
construed in Germany as a manifest attempt of the reforming party to
secure the Papacy for Italy as against the German influence maintained
by Henry III. The Roman nobles also had seen in the decree the design
of excluding them from any share in the election. It was only by the
introduction of Norman troops into Rome that the new Pope could be
installed at the Lateran. A few weeks later a synod met at Basle in
the presence of the Empress-Regent and the young Henry IV. The latter
was invested with the title of Patrician, and the election of
Alexander having been pronounced invalid, a new Pope was chosen in the
person of another Lombard, Cadalus Bishop of Parma, who had led the
opposition to the Patarins in the province of Milan. The Normans were
recalled to their dominions, and the imperialist Pope, Honorius II,
was installed in Rome. The struggle between the rival Popes lasted for
three years (1061-4), and fluctuated with the fluctuations of power at
the German court. Here the young King had fallen under the influence
of Archbishop Hanno of Köln, who, surrounded by enemies in Germany,
hoped to gain a party by the betrayal of imperial interests in the
recognition of the decree of Nicholas II and of the claims of
Alexander. Again by the help of a Norman force Alexander was installed
in Rome, where he remained even when Hanno's influence at the German
court gave way to that of Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen. Honorius,
however, despite the desertion by the imperialist party, found
supporters until his death in 1072, and it was only by the arms of
Duke Godfrey of Tuscany acting for the imperialists and those of his
own Norman allies that Alexander held Rome until his death.

[Sidenote: Steps towards reformation.]

Meanwhile the ecclesiastical reformation went steadily on under the
direction of Hildebrand. The young King Henry endeavoured to free
himself from the great German ecclesiastics who held him in thrall, by
repudiating the wife whom they had forced upon him. He was checked by
the austere and resolute papal legate, Peter Damiani, and was obliged
to accept Bertha of Savoy, to whom subsequently he became much
attached. Peter Darniani's visit, however, brought him relief in
another way, for the legate took back such a report of the prevalence
of simony that the archbishops of Mainz and Köln were summoned to
Rome, whence they returned so humiliated that their political
influence was gone. It is almost equally remarkable that the two
English Archbishops also appeared at Rome during this Pontificate,
Lanfranc of Canterbury in order that he might obtain the pall without
which he could not exercise his functions as Archbishop, and Thomas of
York, who referred to the Pope his contention that the primacy of
England should alternate between Canterbury and York. In France, too,
we are told that the envoys of Alexander interfered in the smallest
details of the ecclesiastical administration and punished without
mercy all clergy guilty of simony or of matrimony. Almost the last
public act of Pope Alexander was to excommunicate five counsellors of
the young King of Germany, to whom were attributed responsibility for
his acts, and to summon Henry himself to answer charges of simony and
other evil deeds.




CHAPTER II

GREGORY VII AND LAY INVESTITURE


[Sidenote: Gregory VII (1073-85).]

The crowd which attended the funeral of Alexander II acclaimed
Hildebrand as his successor. The Cardinals formally ratified the
choice of the people and contrary to the wish of the German bishops
the young King Henry acquiesced.

[Sidenote: His rise to power.]

The new Pope was born a Tuscan peasant and educated in the monastery
of St. Mary's on the Aventine in Rome. His uncle was the Abbot, and
the monastery was Roman lodging of the Abbot of Cluny. Hildebrand
entered the service of Gregory VI, whom he followed into exile. On his
master's death in 1048 Hildebrand retired to Cluny. Hence he was drawn
once more back to Rome by Pope Leo IX. From this moment his rise was
continuous. Leo made him a Cardinal and gave him the charge of the
papal finances. In 1054 he sent him as legate to France in order to
deal with the heresy of Berengar of Tours. Hildebrand was no
theologian, and he accepted a very vague explanation of Berengar's
views upon the disputed question of the change of the elements in the
Sacrament. On Leo's death Hildebrand headed the deputation which was
sent by the clergy and people of Rome to ask Henry III to nominate his
successor; and again, on the death of Victor II, although Hildebrand
took no part in the choice of Stephen IX, it was he who went to
Germany to obtain a confirmation of the election from the
Empress-Regent. On Stephen's death Hildebrand's prompt action obtained
the election of Nicholas II. It was probably Hildebrand who worded the
decree regulating the mode of papal elections, and whose policy turned
the Normans from troublesome neighbours into faithful allies and
useful instruments of the papal aims. Nicholas rewarded him with the
office of Archdeacon of Rome, which made him the chief administrative
officer of the Roman see and, next to the Pope, the most important
person in the Western Church. Hildebrand was the chief agent in the
election of Alexander II; and the ultimate triumph of Alexander meant
the reinstatement of Hildebrand at head-quarters. Thus it had long
been a question of how soon the maker of Popes would himself assume
the papal title, and this was settled for him by the acclamations of
the people. In memory of his old master he took the title of Gregory
VII. As yet he was only in deacon's orders. Within a month he was
ordained priest; but another month or more elapsed before he was
consecrated bishop.

[Sidenote: Opportunity of reform.]

At last the individual who was most identified in men's minds with the
forward movement in the Church was the acknowledged head of the
ecclesiastical organisation in the West. For more than twenty years he
had been at headquarters intimately knowing and ultimately directing
the course of policy. It was mainly by his exertions that the Church
was now officially committed to the views of the Cluniac reformers.
Yet so much opposition had been called forth as to show that the
success of the party hitherto had depended merely on the circumstances
of the moment. The time seemed to have arrived when matters should be
brought to an issue. The continued existence of the Roman factions and
the power of Henry III had made compromise necessary, and the general
result of the reformers' efforts upon the Church had been
inappreciable. But the lapse of time had done at least two things--it
had cleared the issue and it had brought the opportunity.

[Sidenote: Direction in which reform should move.]

The Church was so entirely enmeshed in the feudal notions of the age
that at first it was not very clear to the reformers where it would be
most effective to begin in the process or cutting her free. But by
this time it was seen that the real link which bound the Church to the
State was the custom by which princes took it on themselves to give to
the new bishop, in return for his oath of homage, investiture of his
office and lands by the presentation of the ring which symbolically
married him to his Church, and of the pastoral staff which committed
to him the spiritual oversight of his diocese. Probably there was not
a single prince in Western Europe who pretended to confer on the new
bishop any of his spiritual powers; but the two spheres of the
episcopal work had become inextricably confused, and in the decay of
ecclesiastical authority the lay power had treated the chief
ecclesiastics as mainly great officers of State and a special class of
feudal baron. In the eyes of the reformers the entire dealing of the
King with the bishops was an act of usurpation, nay, of sacrilege.
Ecclesiastics owed to the sovereign of the country the oath of fealty
demanded of all subjects. But for the rest, neither bishop, abbot, nor
parish priest could be a feudal vassal. The land which any
ecclesiastic held by virtue of his office had been given to the
Church; the utmost claim that any layman could make regarding it was
to a right or rather duty of protection. If the Church was to be
restored to freedom, investiture with ring and staff, and the control
of the lands during vacancy of an ecclesiastical office must all be
claimed back for the Church herself. The oath of homage would then
naturally disappear, and there would no longer be that confusion of
spheres which had resulted in the laicisation and the degradation of
the Church.

[Sidenote: Henry IV and the German clergy.]

Moreover, the moment was propitious for asserting these views to the
fullest extent. The chief represenative of lay authority was no longer
a powerful Emperor nor even a minor in the tutelage of others. He was
a King of full age whose wayward, not to say vicious, courses had
alienated large numbers of his people. It is true that Henry IV never
had much chance of becoming a successful ruler. Taken from his mother
at the age of twelve, for the next ten years (1062-72) he had been
controlled alternately by two guardians, of whom one, Adalbert,
Archbishop of Bremen, allowed him every indulgence, while the other,
Hanno, Archbishop of Koln, hardly suffered him to have a mind of his
own. Since he had become his own master he had plunged into war with
his Saxon subjects. Henry, entangled in this war, answered Gregory's
first admonitions in a conciliatory tone; but in 1075 he decisively
defeated the Saxons and was in no mood to listen to a suggestion for
the diminution of the authority of the German King in his own land,
which he had just so triumphantly vindicated. For Henry imitated his
predecessors in practising investiture of bishops both in Germany and
in Italy; and he realised that the summons of the Pope to the temporal
princes that they should give up such investiture would mean the
transference to the Papacy of the disposal of the temporal fiefs. This
would involve the loss at one blow of half the dominions of the German
King. Moreover, he was encouraged in an attitude of resistance by the
feeling of the German Church. At the first Lenten Synod held in the
Lateran palace after Gregory's accession canons were issued forbidding
all married or simoniacal ecclesiastics to perform ministerial
functions and all laity to attend their ministrations. Immediate
opposition was raised; the German clergy were especially violent: they
declared that this prohibition of marriage was contrary to the
teaching of Christ and St. Paul, that it attempted to make men live
like angels but would only encourage licence, and that, if it were
necessary to choose, they would abandon the priesthood rather than
their wives. Gregory, however, sent legates into various districts
armed with full powers, and succeeded in rousing the populace against
the married clergy.

[Sidenote: Gregory's decree against investiture.]

It was under these circumstances that Gregory determined to bring to
an issue the chief question in dispute between Church and State.
Hitherto he had said nothing against the practice of lay investiture.
Now, however, at the Lenten Synod in 1075, a decree was issued which
condemned both the ecclesiastic, high or low, who should take
investiture from a layman, and also the layman, however exalted in
rank, who should dare to give investiture. The decree had no immediate
effect, and at the end of the year Gregory followed it up with a
letter to the King, in which he threatened excommunication if before
the meeting of the next usual Lenten Synod Henry had not amended his
life and got rid of his councillors, who had never freed themselves
from the papal ban.

[Sidenote: Henry's Answer.]

Henry's answer was given at a Synod of German ecclesiastics at Worms.
Cardinal Hugh the White, who for personal reasons had turned against
Gregory, accused him of the most incredible crimes, and a letter was
despatched in which the bishops renounced their obedience. Henry also
addressed a letter to the Pope, which quite surpassed that of the
bishops in violence of expression. "Henry, King not by usurpation but
by the holy ordination of God, to Hildebrand now no apostolic ruler
but a false monk." It accused him of daring to threaten to take away
the royal power, as if Henry owed it to the Pontiff and not to God:
and it concluded by a summons to him to descend from his position in
favour of some one "who shall not cloak his violence with religion,
but shall teach the sound doctrine of St. Peter." It was nothing new
for a Pope to be deposed by a Council presided over by the Emperor.
And it is true that the same resolution, transmitted by delegates from
Worms, was adopted at Piacenza by a Synod of Italian bishops. But on
this occasion the sentence was uttered by an assembly of exclusively
German bishops, presided over by a King who was not yet crowned
Emperor. If such a sentence was to be effective, Henry should have
followed it up by a march to Rome with an adequate army. He merely
courted defeat when he gave the Pope the opportunity for a retort in
kind. Anathema was the papal weapon, and while the King's declaration
might even be resented by other rulers as an attempt to dictate to
them in a matter of common concern to all, the papal sentence on the
King was regarded by all as influencing the fate, not of the King
only, but of all who remained in communication with him, if not in
this world, at any rate in the world to come. Moreover, in this
particular case, while no one believed the monstrous charges against
Gregory, there was sufficient in Henry's past conduct to give
credibility to anything that might be urged against him.

[Sidenote: Gregory deposes Henry.]

Gregory's rejoinder was delivered at the Lenten Synod of 1076. As
against the twenty-six German bishops assembled at Worms, this Council
contained over a hundred bishops drawn from all parts of Christendom,
while among the laity present was Henry's own mother, the Empress
Agnes. Gregory used his opportunity to the full. In the most solemn
strain he appealed to St. Peter, to the Virgin Mary, to St. Paul and
all the saints, to bear witness that he himself had unwillingly taken
the Papacy. To him, as representative of the Apostle, God had
entrusted the Christian people, and in reliance on this he now
withdrew from Henry, as a rebel against the Church, the rule over the
kingdoms of the Teutons and of Italy, and released all Christians from
any present or future oath made to him. Finally, for his omissions and
commissions alike, Henry is bound in the bonds of anathema "in order
that people may know and acknowledge that thou art Peter, and upon thy
rock the Son of the living God has built His Church, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it."

The rhetorical flourish of the King's pronouncement against the Pope
withers before the tremendous appeal of the Pope to his divinely
delegated power to judge the King. Gregory's procedure was little less
revolutionary than that of the King, but the claim to depose might
appear as only a concomitant to the power already wielded by Popes in
bestowing crowns, while for Gregory it had by this time become the
copingstone in the fabric of those relations between Church and State
which he and his party were building up.

[Sidenote: Gregory's allies: Countess Matilda.]

Gregory's position was not devoid of difficulties. Numerous protests
were raised against this assertion of papal power. But events
concurred to justify Gregory's bold action. At the beginning of his
pontificate the Normans were quarrelling among themselves; but in
Tuscany the Countess Matilda had just become complete mistress of the
great inheritance which included a large part of Central Italy. She
was an enthusiastic supporter of the Papacy, and secured North Italy
by a revival of the Patarine party against the Italian bishops who had
repudiated Gregory at Piacenza.

[Sidenote: Rebellious German Nobles.]

But Gregory's most effective allies were Henry's rebellious subjects.
The Saxons broke out again into rebellion in the north, while the
nobles of Southern Germany with the concurrence of the Pope met at
Tribur, near Mainz, in October, 1076. Henry was forced to accept the
most abject terms. He was to submit to the Pope, and the nobles
further agreed among themselves that the Pope should be invited to
pronounce the decisive judgment at a diet to be held at Augsburg a
year later. If by that time Henry had not obtained the papal
absolution, the kingdom would be considered forfeit, and they would
proceed to the election of a new King without waiting for permission
of the Pope. The nobles were hampered by the rivalry of those who
hoped each to be Henry's successor, and they did not wish to found the
election of the new King on the acknowledgment of the papal power of
deposition. They acted, therefore, as if so far, apart from the
excommunication, the papal sentence of deposition had been only
provisional.

[Sidenote: Henry's Action.]

Henry saw that to be reinstated by the Pope in an assembly of his
rebellious subjects would be even more damaging for his prestige than
the original deposition, and, knowing nothing of the agreement of the
nobles for a new election, he determined to go and get his absolution
from the Pope at Rome. He treated the points in dispute between
himself and his opponents as practically settled by his promise of
submission, whereas the Pope desired to pose as arbiter between the
contending parties in Germany; while the nobles aimed at electing a
new King. Quite unconsciously Henry was forcing the hands of both
parties of his opponents, whose obvious interests were in favour of
delay. It was necessary that he should drink the cup of humiliation to
the dregs; but the astute King preferred that it should be at his own
time and place--at once and in Italy, instead of a year hence in
Germany.

[Sidenote: Canossa.]

Henry carried out his design, even though it was in the middle of
winter; and neglecting the welcome of the imperialists of North Italy,
he ultimately tracked the Pope to the Countess Matilda's fortress of
Canossa, in the Apennines, above Modena. But Gregory would listen to
no mediation, and demanded absolute submission to his judgment. So
Henry again took the method of procedure into his own hands and
appeared at intervals during three successive days before the castle
in the garb of a penitent, barefooted and clad in a coarse woollen
shirt. The picturesque account of this world-famous scene, which we
owe to Lambert of Hersfeld, must be regarded as the monastic version
current among the papal partisans. Gregory himself, who was scarcely
likely to minimise his own triumph, in his letter to the German nobles
says nothing of these details. He only relates that even his own
followers exclaimed that "tyrannical ferocity" rather than "apostolic
severity" was the characteristic of his act.

[Sidenote: Result Of Canossa.]

Thus Henry forced the hand of the Pope, who as a priest could not
refuse his absolution to one who showed himself ready to submit to the
severest possible penance for his sins. The only course open to
Gregory was to accept the situation on which he had lost the hold, and
to try to get some political concessions in the negotiations which
must follow. The terms did not differ much from those arranged at
Tribur: Henry should accept the decision of the diet of the German
nobles, presided over by the Pope, as to his continued right to the
crown, while if the judgment was favourable, he should implicitly obey
the Pope for the future in all that concerned the Church. But, on the
other hand, the papal excommunication and absolute sentence of
deposition were removed, and the whole excuse for continued rebellion
was thus withdrawn from his German opponents. Henry had undoubtedly
been humiliated and had acknowledged the papal arbitration in Germany:
but modern feelings probably exaggerate the humiliation of the
penitential system, and Henry had at least divided his enemies. The
Pope had undertaken to see fair play between Henry and his German
subjects: the German nobles had based their action on Henry's past
conduct, for which he had now done penance. Henry had obtained an
acknowledgment from the Pope that his right to the kingship was at any
rate an open question.

[Sidenote: Election of an anti-king.]

The German nobles had been betrayed by the Pope, but they could not
afford to quarrel with him. They had been outwitted by Henry, and
against him they proceeded as having violated the Agreement of Tribur.
A Diet met at Forchheim, in Franconia, in March, 1077. It was chiefly
composed of lay nobles, but papal legates were present, whom Gregory
instructed to work for a postponement until he himself could come. But
the nobles were determined, and Henry's brother-in-law, Duke Rudolf of
Suabia, was chosen King. Gregory, however, did not intend to have his
hand forced again, and for three years (1077-80) he refused to
acknowledge Rudolf and tried to pose as arbiter between him and Henry.
Five times Rudolf's supporters wrote remonstrating indignantly against
this neutrality. Gregory excused himself on the ground that his
legates had been deceived and had acted under compulsion in
acquiescing in the action of the diet at Forchheim. He had good
reasons for his delay. He was determined to secure recognition of the
right which he claimed for the Papacy as the real determining force in
the dispute, an act which the nobles had deliberately prevented.
Moreover, he was a little afraid of a trial of strength with Henry at
the moment. For while Henry's promptness had caused the Pope to break
faith with his allies, Gregory's severity had gathered round Henry a
party which made the King more powerful than he yet had been. Thus in
Lombardy the Countess Matilda was faced by a revived imperialist party
which seriously threatened her dominions, while in Germany the clergy,
the lesser nobles and the cities rallied round the King.

[Sidenote: Gregory accepts him.]

So long, then, as the contest seemed doubtful Gregory withheld his
decision. At length, in 1080, when, despite two victories, Rudolf was
gaining no advantage, Gregory felt that further delay might make Henry
too strong to be affected by the papal judgment. Accordingly, at the
usual Lenten Synod he renewed the excommunication and deposition of
Henry, recognised Rudolf as King of Germany, and even prophesied for
the excommunicated monarch a speedy death. One papal partisan
afterwards explained this as referring to Henry's spiritual death!
Gregory is further said to have sent a crown to Rudolf, bearing the
legend "Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rudolpho," but the story is
doubtful. The answer of Henry's party was given in successive synods
of German or Italian bishops, who declared Gregory deposed, and
elected as his substitute Henry's Chancellor, Guibert, Archbishop of
Ravenna, who took the title of Clement III.

[Sidenote: Death of anti-King.]

Gregory's decisive move was a failure. There were now two Kings and
two Popes, and all hope of a peaceful settlement was gone. None of the
nations of Europe responded to Gregory's appeal. Robert Guiscard, the
Norman leader, was busy with his designs on the Eastern Empire.
Gregory's only chance was a victory in Germany and the fulfilment of
his rash prophecy. In October, 1080, Henry was defeated in the heart
of Saxony on the Elster, but it was Gregory's accepted King, Rudolf,
who was killed. One chronicler reports Rudolf as acknowledging in his
dying moments the iniquity of his conduct. Saxony remained in revolt;
but until a new King could be agreed upon Henry was practically safe
and could turn to deal with the situation in Italy. There could be no
thought of peace. Gregory's supporters were upheld by the enthusiasm
of fanaticism, while by acts and words he had driven his enemies to
exasperation, and what had begun as a war of principles had now sunk
to a personal struggle between Henry and Hildebrand.

[Sidenote: Death of Gregory.]

The renewal of the sentence against Henry had caused a reaction in his
favour in Northern Italy. Soon after the episode of Canossa, the
Countess Matilda, having no heir, had bequeathed her entire
possessions to the Roman see and become a papal vassal for the term of
her own life. But most of the Tuscan cities declared for Henry and
thus entirely neutralised her power. Robert Guiscard was not to be
tempted back from his projects against the Eastern Empire, even if it
be true that Gregory offered him the Empire of the West. Thus Henry
entered Italy unhindered early in 1081, and even the news that his
opponents had found a successor to Rudolf in the person of Herman of
Luxemburg did not stop his march. The siege of Rome lasted for nearly
three years (1081-4), but ultimately he obtained possession of all the
city except the castle of St. Angelo. Henry's Pope, Clement III, was
consecrated, and on Easter Day Henry, together with his wife, at
length obtained the imperial crown. But meanwhile he had made a fatal
move. The Eastern Emperor Alexius persuaded him to make mischief in
Apulia. Henry fell into the trap. Robert Guiscard rushed back to
defend his own territories, and now determined to carry out his
obligations as a papal vassal. Henry was taken unawares and had to
retire before the Normans, who forced their way into Rome and cruelly
sacked and burnt it. Gregory was rescued, but life for him in Rome was
no longer possible. The Romans had betrayed him to Henry, and now his
allies had destroyed the city. He retired with the Normans to Salerno,
where, a year later, he died (May, 1085), bitterly attributing his
failure to his love of righteousness and hatred of iniquity.

[Sidenote: His reasons for his failure.]

But we cannot ratify Gregory's own judgment on the reasons for his
failure. Rather the blame is to be laid upon his lack of
statesmanship. His egotism and his fanaticism worked together to make
him believe that the supremacy of the spiritual power which he aimed
at might be attained by very secular devices. In action he showed
himself a pure opportunist, approving at one time what he condemned at
another. And yet he had so little of an eye for the line which
separates the practicable from the ideal that at Canossa he humiliated
Henry beyond all hope of reconciliation, and he died in exile because
he would not listen to any compromise which might be an acknowledgment
that he had exaggerated his own claims. Thus, despite the undoubted
purity of his life and the ultimate loftiness of his ideals, he is to
be regarded rather as a man of immense force of character than as a
great ecclesiastical statesman, rather as the stirrer-up of divine
discontent than as a creative mind which gives a new turn to the
desires and impulses of the human race.

[Sidenote: His activity in Europe.]

All this is borne out by his dealings outside Germany and Italy. He
conducted a very extensive correspondence with princes as well as
ecclesiastics all over Europe. Indeed this, as much as the despatch of
legates and the annual attendance of bishops at the Lenten Synod, was
one of the means by which the Papacy strove to make itself the central
power of Christendom. These letters deal with all kinds of subjects
and bear ample witness to his personal piety and high moral aims. But
alongside of these come arrogant assertions of papal authority. He
claims as fiefs of St. Peter on various grounds Hungary, Spain,
Denmark, Corsica, Sardinia; he gives the title of King to the Duke of
Dalmatia; he even offers to princes who belong to the Eastern Church a
better title to their possessions as held from St. Peter.

[Sidenote: His policy in France.]

Gregory's great contest with the Empire has been described without
interruption, as if it were the only struggle of his time, instead of
being merely the most important episode in a very busy life. And if we
ask in conclusion why it was fought out in the imperial dominions
rather than elsewhere, the answer will be instructive of his character
and methods of action. At the beginning of his pontificate his
harshest phrases were directed against Philip I of France, who added
to the crimes of lay investiture and shameless simony a scandalous
personal immorality. Ultimately Gregory threatened him with
excommunication and deposition. But he never passed beyond threats.
The reason is to be found in the fact that Gregory was soon in pursuit
of larger game. The French King only shared with his great nobles the
investiture of the bishops in the kingdom. Moreover, the French
bishops were not as a body great secular potentates like the German
bishops. The opposition to reform in France was passive, not active.
Crown, nobles, and Church stood together in opposition: there was no
papal party. Not enough was to be gained by a victory, and there was
great chance of a defeat. The result was that Philip continued his
simoniacal transactions and never entirely gave up investiture, while
Gregory allowed himself to be satisfied with occasional promises of
better things. His dealings with the French bishops are equally
inconclusive. For six years (1076-82) two of the papal legates divided
France between them, practically superseded the local ecclesiastical
jurisdiction, and acted with the utmost severity against all,
ecclesiastics or laymen, who practised the methods now under
condemnation. Great opposition was aroused and the legates went in
peril of their lives. They were only carrying out strenuously the
principles laid down under Gregory's guidance in many acts of synods
and inculcated by Gregory in numberless private letters. And yet
Gregory is found frequently undoing their acts, restoring bishops whom
they have deposed, accepting excuses or explanations which cannot
possibly have deceived him.

[Sidenote: In England.]

His policy towards England affords another instructive contrast. Both
in Normandy and in England William the Conqueror practised investiture
of his bishops and abbots and held his ecclesiastics in an iron grip.
He refused the papal demand for homage for his English kingdom and he
would allow no papal interference with his clergy without the King's
permission. Archbishop Lanfranc also only consented to accept the
decree against married clergy with a serious limitation--while married
canons were to dismiss their wives at once, parish priests already
married were not interfered with; but marriage was forbidden to clergy
in the future, and bishops were warned not to ordain married men. But
William's expedition to England had been undertaken with the approval
of Hildebrand, he did not practise simony, and he acknowledged the
principle of a celibate clergy, while he promised the payment of the
tribute of Peter's Pence from England. Moreover, William was not a man
to be trifled with: he was a valuable friend and would certainly be a
dangerous enemy. Consequently no question of the lawfulness of
investiture was mooted during his lifetime. Gregory contented himself
with threats against Lanfranc. But the English Archbishop owed a
grudge to Gregory, who had treated with a culpable indulgence the
great heresiarch Berengar after Lanfranc had vanquished him and
convicted him of heresy; and Lanfranc knew that under William's
sheltering favour he was safe from the papal ban.

Thus, while in France Gregory would have to face an united people, in
England he shrank before the personality of the King. In Germany, on
the other hand, he found a blameworthy King and a discontented people.
All the elements were present for the successful interference of an
external power. Moreover, the peculiar relations in which this
external power--the Papacy--stood towards the German King, the
prospective Emperor, gave every excuse, if any were needed, for such
interference. Finally and most especially, since these imperial
prospects made the German King the first among the monarchs of Western
Europe, a victory over him would carry a prestige which lesser
potentates would be bound to acknowledge.




CHAPTER III

THE END OF THE QUARREL


[Sidenote: A momentary peace.]

It remained to be seen whether Gregory's failure implied Henry's
success. The Emperor returned to Germany, where a strong desire for
peace had grown up and was taking practical shape. In some dioceses
the Truce of God was proclaimed, which, under heavy ecclesiastical
penalties, forbade hostilities during certain days of the week and
certain seasons of the year. Henry took up this idea, which as yet was
too partial to be effective, and in 1085, in a Synod at Mainz under
his presidency, it was proclaimed for the whole kingdom. The
unfortunate anti-King Herman found himself deserted, and died, a
fugitive, in 1088. Henry's moderation concluded what the desire for
peace had begun, and even Saxony seemed to be reconciled to his rule.

[Sidenote: Urban II (1088-99).]

But his triumph was short-lived. Between him and any lasting peace
stood the anti-Pope Clement III; for all who had received consecration
at Clement's hands were bound at all hazards to maintain the
lawfulness of his election. Moreover, Clement's opponent now was a man
to be reckoned with. The first choice of the Gregorian party,
Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, could not be consecrated for a
year after his election, and four months later he was dead (September,
1087). The partisans of Clement were too strong in Rome, and the next
election was carried out with total disregard of the decree of
Nicholas II. It took place at Terracina in March, 1088, and was made
by a large number of clergy in addition to the Cardinals. The choice
fell upon Otto, Bishop of Ostia, a Frenchman of noble family and a
monk of Cluny; but it was some years before Urban II could regard Rome
as his headquarters.

[Sidenote: His policy against Henry.]

In some ways Urban was more uncompromising than his master Gregory. He
upheld the papal legates in their strict treatment of the French
bishops; he actually launched against Philip I of France the
excommunication which Gregory had only threatened; to the prohibition
of lay investiture he added an explicit command that bishops and
clergy should not do homage to any layman. But while he showed himself
thus in thorough sympathy with his predecessor, in his power of
dealing with circumstances he proved himself by far the superior. A
succession of clever if thoroughly unscrupulous measures restored the
fortunes of the papal party. Henry had succeeded for the moment in
dividing and isolating his enemies. Urban set himself to unite the
chief opponents of Henry on both sides of the Alps. He planned a
marriage between the middle-aged widow, the Countess Matilda of
Tuscany, and the eighteen-year-old son of Welf, Duke of Bavaria
(1089). Matilda was ready to sacrifice herself for the good of the
cause. The Welfs, ignorant of Matilda's gift of her lands to the
Papacy, eagerly accepted the bait; but soon discovering that they were
being used as tools, they ceased to give any help, and in fact became
reconciled to the Emperor. But meanwhile the Pope had discovered other
more deadly weapons with which to wound the Emperor. The deaths of the
anti-Kings had left the papal party without a leader in Germany.
Events had shown the firm hold of the hereditary claim and the Salian
House upon a large portion of the Empire. The only acceptable leader
would be a member of Henry's own house. Henry's actions played into
their hands. His eldest son, Conrad, had been crowned at Aachen in
1087 and sent into Italy to act as his father's representative. He is
described as a young man of studious and dreamy character, unpractical
and easily influenced. In 1087 Henry lost his faithful wife Bertha,
and a year later he married a Russian Princess, Praxedis, who was the
widow of the Count of the Northern March. The marriage was unhappy;
each accused the other of misconduct; and Henry, suspecting the
relations of Conrad with his stepmother, put them both in prison.
Perhaps Conrad had already been worked upon by the papal party. He
escaped, took refuge with the Countess Matilda, and was crowned King
of Italy (1093). But he was only the tool of others. Far more
immediately dangerous was the escape of Praxedis (1094), who laid
before the Pope the foulest charges against Henry. To her lasting
shame the Countess Matilda was the chief agent in these family
revolts. The effect on Henry's position in Italy was disastrous. Pope
Urban finally recovered Rome, and Conrad, having won the cities of
Lombardy, took an oath of fealty to the Papacy in return for a promise
of the Empire.

[Sidenote: Beginning of the Crusades.]

And just as if the success of these diabolical schemes was not a
sufficient triumph, fortune at this moment gave the Pope a chance of
superseding the Emperor in the eyes of all Europe, by inaugurating a
great popular movement of which under different circumstances the
Emperor would have been the natural leader. In 1085 the Eastern
Emperor Alexius had appealed to Henry against the Normans, but now
Henry was a negligible quantity--excommunicated, crowned Emperor by an
anti-pope, not likely to undertake a distant expedition. In 1095,
therefore, when Alexius needed aid against the Seljuk Turks, it was to
the Pope that he sent his envoys, who appeared at the Synod of
Piacenza. Those late converts to Mohammedanism had established their
kingdom of Roum over the greater part of Asia Minor with its capital
at the venerable city of Nicæa, and had captured Jerusalem, which thus
passed out of the hands of the tolerant Caliphs of Cairo into those of
the most fanatical section of Mohammedans. Pilgrims returning from
Jerusalem spread through Europe tales of the harsh treatment to which
they were subjected. Then in 1087 a new tribe of Saracens, the
Almoravides, crossed from Africa to Spain and inflicted a severe
defeat upon a Christian army. It seemed almost as if a combined
movement of the Mohammedan world had begun for the final extinction of
Christendom. If Gregory had been free he would have wished to promote
the reunion of the Churches by sending help to the Eastern Empire; so
that it was no novel idea that was suggested to the assembled magnates
at Piacenza. Urban II no doubt saw the opportunity offered for
asserting the leadership of the western world. Alexius' envoys were
heard with sympathy; but Urban felt the need of appeal to a larger
public, and summoned a great Council to Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne,
where he would be among his own countrymen. Here in November, 1095, he
delivered before a vast concourse of persons assembled in the open air
an impassioned appeal on behalf of the suffering Christians of the
east. The result answered his utmost expectation, and the cry of the
assembled multitude, "God wills it," was the ratification of the papal
leadership. All methods were taken to stir the feelings of the west.
The vast ecclesiastical organisation was used in order to transmit
invitations to possible crusaders; the penitential system of the
Church was brought to bear on those already conscious of a sinful
life; popular preachers, such as Peter the Hermit, were employed to
rouse the interest of the masses; the Pope himself spent the
succeeding months in a tour through Southern France; and arrangements
were made for the start of the first expedition from the Italian ports
at the end of the summer of 1096, under the leadership of a legate
appointed by the Pope.

[Sidenote: The first Crusade.]

It is not possible here to follow the fortunes of the Crusaders.
Several unauthorised expeditions, which bore witness to the popular
enthusiasm, made their way through Southern Germany; but the
disorderly crowds which composed them perished either at the hands of
the inhabitants of the Eastern Empire, whom they treated as
schismatics, or among the Turks in Asia Minor. The real expedition
passed partly by land, partly by sea from the Italian ports to
Constantinople, whence the Crusaders set out across Asia Minor. Nicæa
was taken in June, 1097; the Sultan of Roum was overthrown in battle
at Dorylæum in July; Antioch detained the Crusaders from October,
1097, to June, 1098; and it was only in July, 1099, that after a siege
of forty days Jerusalem was captured from the Saracens of Egypt, who
had recently recovered it from the Turks.

[Sidenote: Its effect on the quarrel.]

But whatever may have been Urban's success in his own land of France
and elsewhere, in Germany, at any rate, his efforts to turn the
current against the Emperor had entirely failed. Of German lands
Lorraine alone sent warriors to the First Crusade. The movement did
not penetrate to the east of the Rhine, and the number of Germans who
helped to swell the multitude of crusaders who marched through
Southern Germany was inappreciable. At the same time the settlement of
the questions at issue between Papacy and Empire were indefinitely
postponed; for it would have been treason to the crusading cause to
press the papal claims against Henry at this moment. It was Henry's
turn to experience some good fortune. The proclamation of the Truce of
God under his auspices, the manifest interest of the German
ecclesiastics, and his own policy of favouring the rising cities
combined to strengthen his position. Thus in 1098 he was able to
obtain from the German nobles the deposition of his rebellious son
Conrad and the election of his younger son Henry as King, who was made
to promise that during his father's lifetime he would not act
politically against him. Then in 1099 Pope Urban died, and was
followed in 1100 by the anti-Pope Clement III, and in 1101 by Conrad.
All the personal causes of disunion were being removed. Moreover, the
success of the crusading policy made it impossible that Henry or
Germany should stand apart from it altogether. Although Jerusalem was
the capital of a Christian kingdom and other principalities centred
round Tripoli, Antioch, and the more distant Edessa, powerful
Mohammedan Princes lay close beside them at Damascus, Aleppo, and
Mossul, as well as to the south in Egypt. There was need of constant
reinforcement, for the fighting was continual. Under these inducements
Germany began to contribute crusaders to the cause. Duke Welf of
Bavaria led an army eastwards in 1101. In 1103 Henry's efforts in
favour of peace culminated in the proclamation at the Diet of Mainz of
the first imperial land peace sworn between King and nobles, which
bound the parties to it for four years to maintain the peace towards
all communities in the land. This was intended as a preliminary to
Henry's participation in an expedition to the east.

[Sidenote: Death of Henry IV.]

But this was the very last thing desired by Henry's enemies, and there
began a most unscrupulous attack which ended only with his death. Pope
Urban's successor, Pascal II, strengthened by the death of the
anti-Pope Clement and the failure of his party to maintain a
successor, renewed the excommunication against Henry, and did
everything deliberately to stir up strife in Germany. The nobles were
angry at the cessation of private war and at the favour shown by Henry
to the towns. But again they lacked a leader, and with diabolical
craft the papal party worked upon the young King Henry by threatening
to set up against him an anti-King who should rob him of the eventual
succession. The result was that the young King broke his solemn
promise, set up the standard of revolt, and was joined by nobles,
ecclesiastical as well as lay, and by the restless Saxon rebels. By a
trick he got his father into his power and forced him formally to
abdicate, while he himself was crowned King by the papal legate. But
the Emperor escaped, and with marvellous energy gathered adherents;
but a renewal of the struggle was staved off by his own death after a
few days' illness on August 6th, 1106.

[Sidenote: His justification.]

Henry never shook himself free from the difficulties of his own early
misdeeds; but the rights upon which he took his stand were those
exercised by his predecessors. The uncompromising attitude of his
opponents and their humiliation of him made it a life-long struggle
between them. Henry was no saint; but his opponents' tactics were
indefensible. Under less adverse circumstances he might have proved a
successful ruler. But he was the victim of a party which deliberately
subordinated means to ends in pursuit of an ideal which Henry could
scarcely be expected to understand or appreciate.

[Sidenote: Henry V.]

The papal party in its malice had overreached itself in selecting
Henry V as its champion. True, he had destroyed the most stubborn
enemy of the Papacy; but his own interests caused him to adopt his
father's policy. His one object was to recover the prestige which the
German King had lost in the struggles of the last twenty years. He was
undisputed King in Germany; he showed an unscrupulous and overbearing
demeanour which aroused opposition on all sides. He was not likely to
be content with less power than his father had demanded over the
German clergy, and at the first vacancies he invested the new bishops.

[Sidenote: Growth of a party of compromise on investiture.]

Henry's bold action was not altogether without reason. For some years
there had been growing up within the ranks of the advocates of reform
a moderate party which, while opposed to simony and clerical marriage,
saw in the continued and close union of Church and State an
indispensable guarantee of social order. They aimed therefore at
conserving the rights of the Crown no less than at recovering those of
the Church. This party is found especially among the French clergy.
One of its chief spokesmen, the Canonist Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, who
had suffered much for his enthusiasm for reform, insists in his
correspondence even with the Pope himself, that the prohibition passed
upon lay investiture is not among the class of matters which have been
settled by a law for ever binding, but among those which have been
enjoined or forbidden, as the case might be, for the honour or profit
of the Church, and he appropriately bids the papal legate beware lest
the Roman clergy should incur the charge of taking tithe of mint and
rue while they omit the weightier precepts of the law. Moreover, both
he and his friend Hugh of Fleury, in a treatise dealing with the
"Royal Power and Priestly Office," maintain that the King has the
power, "by the instigation of the Holy Spirit," of nominating bishops,
or at least of granting permission for their election; and that, while
the royal investiture, however made by word or act, pretends to bestow
no spiritual authority, but merely estates or other results of royal
munificence, it is for the archbishop to commit to a newly elected
prelate the cure of souls.

[Sidenote: Settlement in England.]

This distinction, repugnant as it was to the extremists, soon found
practical application. Lanfranc's successor in the See of Canterbury,
Anselm, was, like his predecessor, an Italian, transferred from
Normandy to England. He had to contend with the typical King of an
unrestrained feudalism in the person of William II. A succession of
quarrels ended in Anselm's retirement to Italy. Recalled by Henry I,
he took back with him the maxims of the reformers about investiture,
and refused to do the required homage to the new King. Henry was not
an unreasonable man, and he sent Anselm to bring about some
arrangement with the Pope. However, it was not until a rupture was
imminent that Pope Pascal was persuaded to acquiesce in an agreement
on the lines advocated by Ivo of Chartres and his party. By this
Concordat (1107) Henry I agreed to give up his claim to invest with
the ring and staff, while Archbishop Anselm allowed that the elected
bishop might do homage for his lands to the King.

[Sidenote: Pascal II (1099-1118).]

At present neither side in the Empire was sufficiently honest in its
intentions to be willing to accept so reasonable a settlement. But the
fact that the Pope had felt himself obliged to allow it in one case
sensibly weakened his position and correspondingly strengthened that
of the German King. It was typical of Pascal's position in general.
Though strongly Gregorian in principle, he was neither clever nor
courageous, and was inclined to take up a position which he could not
maintain. Intent on renewing the prohibition of lay investiture and
afraid of Henry, Pascal determined to support himself upon France.
Here, at any rate, Philip I had gradually dropped the practice of
investiture of bishops. The papal censures of his scandalous private
conduct uttered by Gregory and Urban had had no effect. Pascal
accepted professions of amendment and acts of humiliation, and ceased
to trouble himself further about Philip's private affairs. A Council
of French bishops was held at Troyes (1107), where the decrees against
lay investiture were renewed. The one gleam of hope for the future
appeared in Pascal's deliberate abstention from any pronouncement
against the King in person. Henry, occupied on the eastern border,
could not pay his first visit to Italy until the beginning of 1111,
and it was not without significance that on the eve of setting out he
betrothed himself to the daughter of Henry I of England. He was more
fortunate than his father had been in the moment of his visit. The
Lombard cities quarrelling among themselves were quickly forced to
submission; the Countess Matilda, grown old and tired of strife, sent
her envoys to do homage for the imperial fiefs; the Normans had just
lost their Duke. Pope Pascal, finding himself isolated, did not dare
to meet by a simple negative Henry's demand for the right of
investiture as well as for his coronation as Emperor.

[Sidenote: His proposal.]

By way of escaping from his difficulty he sent to the King an
astonishing proposal. The King was to renounce the right of
investiture and all interference in the elections, in return for which
the prelates should give up all imperial lands and rights with which
they were endowed, retaining merely the right to tithes, offerings,
and private gifts: the papal rights over the Patrimony of St. Peter
and the Norman lands were specially excepted. It has been pointed out
that this was the policy which Count Cavour made famous as "a free
Church in a free State." It seems almost impossible that Pascal should
have thought that the German bishops would accept this solution: he
may have hoped that they could be coerced into it. But in contracting
himself out of the obligations to be imposed on all other
ecclesiastical dignitaries, he practically renounced any claim to set
the policy of the Church. Henry may have aimed at digging an
impassable ditch between the Pope and the German bishops. It was an
impossible agreement; for neither bishops nor lay nobles would wish to
see so large an addition to the King's resources, while Henry himself
could not afford to surrender the right of investiture, since it would
stultify his claim to a voice in the election of the Pope.

[Sidenote: Henry's success.]

The publication of the agreement at Rome caused great tumults, Henry
contriving that all the odium should fall upon the Pope. Then, since
Pascal could not fulfil the part of the agreement which he had made on
behalf of the Church, Henry forced him, the successor of Gregory, to
acquiesce in the exercise by the German King of the right of
investiture with ring and staff. Henry was crowned Emperor, though
with very maimed ceremonial, and returned in triumph to Germany.

[Sidenote: Pascal's withdrawal.]

But his triumph was short, for he was immediately threatened with
danger from two quarters. On the one side the leaders of the
Ultramontane party were naturally most wrathful at this betrayal of
their cause, and Pascal, threatened with deposition, placed himself in
their hands. At the Lenten Synod of 1112 he confirmed all the decrees
of his predecessor against lay investiture, thus annulling his own
agreement with Henry. But he avoided issuing any sentence of
excommunication against Henry in person. His own legates, however, had
no such scruples, and in France Cardinal Conon took advantage of the
strong feeling among the clergy to launch excommunications against the
Emperor in several ecclesiastical Councils during 1114 and 1115.
Guido, Archbishop of Vienne, presiding over a Council of Henry's own
subjects at Vienne in 1112, had already condemned their sovereign and
forced Pascal to acquiesce in the resolution.

[Sidenote: Henry's difficulties.]

Henry's right policy would no doubt have been to compel the Pope to
observe the agreement. But it was more than three years before he
could return to Italy. For revolt had broken out again in Germany. The
nobles had their own grievances; the Saxons were always ready to take
arms; the Church was roused because Henry dealt with ecclesiastical
property as if the Pope's original proposal had been allowed to stand.
The royal bailiffs acted in such a manner with the cathedrals that of
a house of prayer they made a den of thieves.

Henry's forces were worsted in battle and he had recourse to his
father's tactics, seeking in Italy, by personal dealings with the
Pope, to recover the moral prestige which he had lost in Germany. He
had a pretext in the death of the Countess Matilda (1115); for the
Papacy was claiming not only her allodial lands, which she might have
a right to bequeath, but also her imperial fiefs, which were not hers
to dispose of. Henry occupied the dominions of Matilda without
opposition. His presence in Italy caused Pascal still to refrain from
personal condemnation of the Emperor, and a year later a party
friendly to Henry opened the gates of Rome to him. Pascal fled to
Albano, and only returned to Rome on Henry's departure, a dying man
(January, 1118). His successor, Gelasius II, refused Henry's advances,
and the Emperor resorted to the old and discredited policy of setting
up an anti-Pope in the person of the Archbishop of Braga, in Portugal,
who took the name of Gregory VIII. Gelasius excommunicated Henry and
his Pope; but finding himself threatened in Rome, fled to Burgundy,
and died at Cluny a year after his election (January, 1119). So far
Henry's attempts to deal with the Pope had failed, and the publication
of the new Pope's excommunication in Germany made the opposition so
strong that Henry found it advisable to return.

[Sidenote: Calixtus II (1119-24)]

Gelasius' successor chosen at Cluny was Archbishop of Vienne, who took
the title of Calixtus II. He was the first secular priest who had
occupied the papal chair since Alexander II, and he was related to the
royal families of France and England. Thus he had a wider outlook than
the monks who preceded him, and the nobles would be likely to listen
to a man of their own rank. He had been the most uncompromising of all
Henry's opponents; but this was a guarantee to the Church that her
position and power would not again be placed in jeopardy, for events
were at length tending towards a conclusion of the weary strife. The
views of the reformers had gained general acceptance as the doctrine
of the Church. The obligation of clerical celibacy was acknowledged:
simony had much diminished; Henry was the only King in Western Europe
who still claimed to invest his prelates. Although it was some time
before all the great French feudatories yielded to the spirit of
reform, the French King himself had abandoned the practice of
investiture for those bishops who were under his control. He retained,
however, certain of his rights. The election could not take place
without his permission, the newly elected bishop took an oath of
fealty to the King, and during the vacancy of the see the revenues
were paid to the Crown. It was more important still that in England
the question of investiture had been settled by a compromise which
recognised the twofold nature of the episcopal office, and that this
compromise had received the sanction of the Pope. Henceforth it was
practically impossible for the Church to maintain the position of the
extreme reformers. When Pope Pascal was forced to grant the right of
investiture to the Emperor, Henry I of England, as Anselm complained
to Pascal, threatened to resume the practice. Already William I of
England had defined the limits of papal power in his dominions without
a protest from Rome, and Urban II had actually found himself obliged
to endow Roger of Sicily and his successors with the authority of a
papal legate within their own dominions. It was clear that the papal
authority could do little against a really strong lay ruler. Moreover,
the influence of the Church had greatly diminished. There was scarcely
a see or abbey to which, during the last forty years, there had not
been rival claimants: King and nobles alike had not only ceased to
increase the endowments of the Church, but had caught at almost every
opportunity of encroaching on them.

[Sidenote: Concordat of Worms.]

The accommodation was very gradual, for much suspicion of insincerity
on both sides had to be overcome. The first step was taken in October,
1119. After the failure of direct negotiations between Pope and
Emperor, a Council at Rheims, presided over by the Pope, renewed the
anathema against Henry and his party, but only consented to a modified
prohibition of investitures, since the office alone was mentioned and
all reference to the property of bishop or abbot was omitted. It was
two years before the next stage was reached, and meanwhile the
anti-Pope had fallen into the hands of Calixtus, and Henry was still
in difficulties in Germany. Finally, in October, 1121, the German
nobles brought about a conference of envoys from both sides at
Wurzburg, where in addition to an universal peace it was arranged that
the investiture question should be settled at a General Council to be
held in Germany under papal auspices. The Council met at Worms in
September, 1122, and the papal legates were armed with full powers to
act. The result was a Concordat subsequently ratified at the first
Council of the Lateran in March, 1123, which is reckoned as the ninth
General Council by the Roman Church. By this agreement the Emperor
gave up all claim to invest ecclesiastics with the ring and staff. In
return it was allowed by the Church that the election of prelates
should take place in presence of the Emperor's representatives, and
that in case of any dispute the Emperor should confirm the decision
arrived at by the Metropolitan and his suffragans. The Emperor on his
part undertook that the prelate elect, whether bishop or abbot, should
be invested with the regalia or temporalities pertaining to his office
by the sceptre, in Germany the investiture preceding the
ecclesiastical consecration, whereas in Burgundy and the kingdom of
Italy the consecration should come first.

[Sidenote: Results of struggle in Empire.]

We are naturally tempted to enquire who was the gainer in this long
struggle? Writers on both sides have claimed the victory. It is clear,
however, that neither side got all that it demanded. Considering the
all-embracing character of the papal claim, the limitation of its
pretensions might seem to carry a decided diminution of its position.
Calixtus' advisers strongly urged that all over the imperial lands the
consecration of prelates should precede the investiture of
temporalities by the lay power. But the German nobles would not budge.
In Burgundy and Italy conditions were different: in the former the
power of the Crown had been almost in abeyance; in Italy the bishops
had found themselves deserted by the Crown and had submitted to the
Pope. The Crown had therefore to acquiesce in a merely nominal control
over appointments in those lands. But in Germany the King perhaps
gained rather than lost by the Concordat. His right of influence in
the choice was definitely acknowledged, and by refusing the regalia he
could practically prevent the consecration of any one obnoxious to
him. The prelates of Germany, therefore, remained vassals of the
Crown.

[Sidenote: on Papacy.]

On the other hand, the Papacy had definitely shaken itself free from
imperial control. Henry III was the last Emperor who could impose his
nominee Papacy upon the Church as Pope; the protégés of his successors
are all classed among the anti-Popes. At the same time the papal
privilege of crowning the Emperor and the papal weapon of
excommunication were very real checks upon the German King; while the
success of those principles for which the Cluniac party had striven
established the theoretical claim of the Pope to be the moral guide,
and the part which he played in starting the Crusades put him in the
practical position of the leader of Christendom in any common
movement. It was no slight loss to the Emperor that he had been the
chief opponent of the Pope and the reformers, and that in the matter
of the Crusades he and his whole nation had stood ostentatiously
aloof.




CHAPTER IV

THE SECULAR CLERGY


[Sidenote: The work of the Church reformers.]

The great movement in favour of Church reform, which had emanated from
Cluny, had worked itself out along certain definite lines. It is
important to ask how far it had succeeded in achieving its objects. We
have seen that it was a movement of essentially monastic conception
aimed at the purification of the secular clergy. And we have seen that
the evil to be remedied had arisen from the imminent danger that the
Church would be laicised and feudalised. From the highest to the
lowest all ecclesiastical posts were at the disposition of laymen who
treated them as a species of feudal fief, so that the holders, even if
they were in Holy Orders (which was not always the case), regarded
their temporal rights and obligations as the first consideration and,
like all feudal tenants, tried to establish the right of hereditary
succession in their holdings. Thus the work of the reformers had been
of a double nature; it was not enough that they should aim at
exorcising the feudal spirit from the Church, at banishing the feudal
ideal from the minds of ecclesiastics: it was necessary to effect what
was indeed a revolution, and to shake the whole organisation of the
Church free from the trammels which close contact with the State had
laid upon it. It began as a reformation of morals; it developed into a
constitutional revolution. There was involved in the movement both an
interference with what might be distinguished as private rights and
also a readjustment of public relations. The reformers headed by the
Pope ultimately decided to concentrate their efforts on the latter.
Hence we may begin by enquiring how far they had succeeded in freeing
episcopal elections from lay control.

[Sidenote: Episcopal appointments.]

There were three several acts of the lay authority in connection with
the appointment of bishops to which the Church reformers took
exception. The King or, by usurpation from him, the great feudal lord
had acquired the right of nominating directly to the vacant see, to
the detriment, and even the exclusion, of the old electoral rights of
clergy and people; and while in some cases nobles nominated themselves
without any thought of taking Holy Orders, frequently they treated the
bishoprics under their control as appanages or endowments for the
younger members of their family. Then, before the consecration, the
bishop-nominate obtained investiture from the lay authority by the
symbolic gifts of a ring and a pastoral staff or cross, not only of
the lands and temporal possessions of the see, but also of the
jurisdiction which emanated from the episcopal office. Finally, the
prospective bishop took an oath to his lay lord, whether King or
other, which was not only an oath of fealty such as any subject might
be called upon to take, but was also an act of homage, and made him an
actual feudal vassal and his church a kind of fief.

[Sidenote: Right of election.]

The result of the long struggle was that in the matter of episcopal
appointments, speaking generally, the right of election was not
restored to clergy and people, in whom by primitive custom it had been
vested, but that the laity, with the possible exception of the
feudatories of the see, were banished altogether, the rural clergy
ceased to appear, and, after the analogy of the papal election by the
College of Cardinals, the canonical election of the bishop in every
diocese tends to be concentrated in the hands of the clergy of the
cathedral. It was a long time, however, before the rights of the
cathedral chapters were universally recognised. Henry I of England in
his Concordat with Anselm (1107) and the Emperor Henry V in the
Concordat of Worms (122) both promised freedom of election. Philip I
and Louis VI of France seem to have conceded the same right without
any formal agreement. But many of the great French feudal lords clung
to their power over the local bishoprics, and in Normandy, in Anjou,
and in some parts of the south nearly a century elapsed before the
duke or count surrendered his custom of nominating bishops directly.
But the freedom of election by the Canons of the cathedral, even when
it was conceded, was little more than nominal. In England, France, and
the Christian kingdoms of Spain no cathedral body could exercise its
right without the King's leave to elect, nor was any election complete
without the royal confirmation. By the Concordat of Worms elections
were to take place in the presence of the King or his commissioners.
By the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164) English bishops must be
elected in the royal chapel. King John tried to bribe the Church over
to his side in the quarrel with the barons which preceded Magna Carta,
by conceding that elections should be free--that is, should take
place in the chapter-house of the cathedral; but even he reserved the
royal permission for the election to be held, and the _congé
d'élire_ in England and elsewhere was accompanied by the name of
the individual on whom the choice of the electoral body should fall.
It was not the rights of the electors but the all-pervading authority
of the Pope which was to prove the chief rival of royal influence in
the local Church.

[Sidenote: Investiture.]

The quarrel between Church and State had centred round the ceremony of
investiture, because in the eyes of the reformers the most scandalous
result of the feudalisation of the Church was the acceptance at the
hands of a layman of the spiritual symbols of ring and crozier. But as
Hugh of Fleury had acknowledged in his tract on "Royal Power and
Priestly Office," investiture there must be so long as ecclesiastics
held great temporal possessions. Here again some of the French nobles
clung to the old anomalous form of investiture, but otherwise the
example of the imperial lands, of the royal domain of France and of
England was generally followed, the gifts of ring and staff were
conceded to the Metropolitan, and where no special form of investiture
by the sceptre was retained it was confused with the ceremony of
homage. But in Germany and England investiture with the lands of the
see preceded consecration, so that while on the one hand it was not a
bishop who was being invested by a layman, on the other hand the
refusal of investiture would practically prevent the consecration of
any one obnoxious to the Crown.

[Sidenote: Homage and fealty.]

With regard to the feudal ceremony of homage a distinction came to be
drawn by writers on the Canon Law between homage and fealty, and
ecclesiastics were supposed to limit themselves to the obligations of
the latter, which were those of every subject. The ceremony was not
precisely the same as in the case of a lay noble being invested with a
fief; but in France, at any rate, the Crown never really abandoned its
claim to a feudal homage, and in any case ecclesiastics were expected
to fulfil their feudal obligations. Even Innocent III acknowledged
this in a decree (§43) of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), and in
interceding with Philip II of France on behalf of two bishops who had
been deprived of their temporal possessions for some neglect of
military duty, he argues that they were "ready to submit to the
judgment of your Court, as is customary in such matters."

[Sidenote: Regale.]

Arising out of these feudal relations certain rights over the
possessions of ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical bodies were claimed by
the Crown, which were the cause of serious oppression. According to
the Canon Law, the bishop was only the usufructuary of the lands and
revenues belonging to his see. The lands and revenues belonged to the
Church. But inasmuch as these had been originally in most cases the
gift of the Crown, the King claimed to deal with them in the method
applied to feudal holdings. By the right of _regale_, on the
vacancy of a see through death, resignation, or deprivation of the
bishop, the royal officers took possession of the temporalities, that
is, the land and revenues, and administered them for the profit of the
Crown so long as the see was vacant. The Crown did not hesitate to use
the episcopal patronage and to fill up vacant canonries and benefices
with its own followers, and it often took the opportunity to levy upon
the inhabitants of the diocese a special tax--_tallagium_,
_tallage_, or _taille_--which a landlord had a right of
exacting from his unfree tenants. It was to the interest of the Crown
to prolong a vacancy, and attempts to limit the exercise of the right
were of little practical effect.

[Sidenote: Right of spoils.]

An even more extraordinary claim was to the right of spoils (_jus
spolii_ or _exuviarium_). The canonical law forbidding the
bishop to deal by will with the property attached to his see, was
interpreted as applying to everything which he had not inherited. Thus
the furniture of his house and the money in his chest were claimed as
of right by the canons of his cathedral, but were often plundered by
the crowd of the city or by the local nobles. These lawless
proceedings provoked the interference of the royal officers, who
succeeded in most cases in establishing the right of the Crown to all
movables that the bishop left. The earliest notice of this royal claim
in Germany is found in the reign of Henry V. It was in full use under
Frederick I. William II is probably responsible for introducing both
the _regale_ and the _jus spolii_ from Normandy into
England. In France these were claimed by the feudal nobles as well as
by the King. Bitter were the complaints made by the Church against the
exercise of both rights. Kings and nobles clung to the _regale_
as long as they could, for it meant local influence as well as
revenue. In most cases, however, the right of spoils had been
surrendered before the thirteenth century. It is to be remembered that
ecclesiastics themselves exercised this right, bishops, for example,
claiming the possessions of the canons and the parish priests in their
dioceses. The Popes in relaxation of the Canon Law gave to certain
bishops the right of leaving their personal property by will, and the
canons also are found encouraging their bishop to make a will.

[Sidenote: Claims of the Clergy.]

As a set-off against these claims of the Crown upon the Church, the
clergy also advanced certain claims. These touched the two important
matters of taxation and jurisdiction. The Church claimed for her
members that they should not be liable to pay the taxes raised by the
secular authorities, nor should they have causes to which any
ecclesiastic was a party tried in the secular courts.

[Sidenote: Immunity from lay taxation.]

In seeking freedom from lay taxation the Church did not ask that her
members should escape their feudal obligations, nor even that they
should contribute nothing to the exigencies of the State. The desire
was merely that the clergy should be free from oppression and that the
Church should be so far as possible self-governing. Thus Alexander III
decreed in the third Lateran Council (1179), that for relieving the
needs of the community, everything contributed by the Church to
supplement the contributions of the laity should be given without
compulsion on the recognition of its necessity or utility by the
bishop and the clergy. Innocent III, in the fourth Lateran Council
(1215), provided a further safeguard against lay impositions in
demanding the permission of the Pope for any such levy. This does not
mean that the clergy escaped taxation at the hands of the State; it
merely means that while the Popes themselves heavily taxed them for
purposes which it was often difficult to describe as religious, the
price paid by the Crown for leave to tax the clergy was that a large
portion of the money should find its way to Rome.

[Sidenote: Tithes from the laity.]

The clergy were not content with this merely negative position.
Besides the right of self-taxation, they claimed that the laity should
contribute to the needs of the Church. The chief permanent source of
such contribution was the tithe, both the lesser tithes on smaller
animals, fruits, and vegetables, and the greater tithes on corn, wine,
and the larger animals. The Church also claimed tithes of revenues of
every kind, even from such divers classes as traders, soldiers,
beggars, and abandoned women. Much of the regular tithe had fallen
into the hands of laymen by gift from Kings to feudal tenants, or from
bishops to nobles and others, in return for military protection. These
alienated tithes Gregory VII tried to recover; but his need for the
help of the nobles against the Emperor forced him to stay his hand.
The third Lateran Council (1179) forbade, on pain of peril to the
soul, the transfer of tithes from one layman to another, and deprived
of Christian burial any one who, apparently having received such a
transfer, should not have made it over to the Church. This was a
definite claim for tithes as a right of which the Church had only been
deprived by some wrongful act. But in the very next year (1180)
Frederick I, at the Diet of Gelnhausen, declared that the alienation
of tithes as feudal fiefs to defenders of the Church was perfectly
legitimate. Religious scruples, however, seem to have caused the
surrender of tithes by many lay impropriators, especially to
monasteries.

[Sidenote: Bequests.]

There were many other sources of wealth to the Church. An enormous
quantity of property was bequeathed to pious uses by testators. The
attendance of the clergy at the death-bed gave them an opportunity of
which they were not slow to make use. The bodies of those who died
intestate, as of those unconfessed, were denied burial in consecrated
ground; all questions concerning wills were heard in the
ecclesiastical courts. The civil power attempted to check the freedom
of death-bed bequest, especially in Germany, where it was held that a
valid will could only be made by one who was still well enough to walk
unsupported. Another common source of revenue came from purchases or
mortgages or other arrangements made with crusaders, in which
advantage was taken of the haste of the lay men to raise funds for
their expedition.

[Sidenote: Wealth of the Church.]

From these and other sources the wealth which poured in upon the
Church was enormous. Individual gifts in money or in kind as
thank-offerings on all sorts of occasions reached no small of the
total; while no religious ceremony, from baptism to extreme unction
and burial, could be carried out apart from the payment of an
appropriate fee. The clergy constantly complained of spoliation, and
no doubt individuals suffered much. The very laymen who, with the
title of advocates, undertook to defend a cathedral or a monastery
were often its worst robbers. But the endowments and revenues of the
Church were so extensive as to raise in the minds of many reformers
the question whether they were not largely responsible for her
corruptions.

[Sidenote: Immunity from lay jurisdiction.]

The clergy also sought freedom from the jurisdiction of the secular
courts; in other words, the Church claimed exclusive cognisance in her
own tribunals of all matters concerning those in Holy Orders. The
_Decretiun_ of Gratian--the text-book of Canon Law--laid it down
that in civil matters the clergy were to be brought before a civil
judge, but that a criminal charge against a clerk must be heard before
the bishop. Urban II, however, declares that all clergy should be
subject to the bishop alone, and the Synod of Nimes (1096), at which
he presided, stigmatises it as sacrilege to hale clerks or monks
before a secular court. Alexander III (1179) threatens to
excommunicate any layman guilty of this offence; while Innocent III
points out that a clerk is not even at liberty to waive the right of
trial in an ecclesiastical court in a matter between him and a layman,
because the spiritual jurisdiction is not a matter personal to
himself, but belongs to the whole clerical body. Finally Frederick II,
on his coronation at Rome in 1220, forbade any one to dare to indict
an ecclesiastic on either a civil or a criminal charge before a
secular tribunal. But meanwhile the frequent perpetration of violent
crimes by those who wore the tonsure made it imperative in the
interests of social order that the Church should not be allowed to
defend these criminals in order to save her own interests.

The fiercest struggle took place in England. Henry II did not deny the
right of the Church to jurisdiction over her members; but he demanded
that clerks found guilty of grave crime should be unfrocked by the
ecclesiastical court, and that then, being no longer clerks, they
should be handed over to the royal officers, by whom they should be
punished according to their deserts. Archbishop Thomas Becket answered
that it was contrary to justice and the Canon Law that a man should be
punished twice for the same offence; that the punishment by the Church
involved the offender's damnation and was therefore quite adequate;
and that finally he himself was officially bound to defend the
liberties of the Church even to the death. Henry II attempted to solve
the difficulty by issuing the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), the
third clause of which decreed that the royal officer should determine
whether any matter in which a clerk was concerned should be tried in
the secular or the ecclesiastical court, and that even if it went to
the latter, the King's officer should be present at the hearing. As
the price, however, of his reconciliation with the Papacy after
Becket's death, Henry was obliged to withdraw the Constitutions.

The position of the Church on this question was clearly stated by Pope
Celestine III in 1192. If a clerk had been lawfully convicted of
theft, homicide, perjury, or any capital crime, he should be degraded
by the ecclesiastical judge; for the next offence he should be
punished by excommunication, and for the next by anathema; then, since
the Church could do no more, for any subsequent offence he might be
handed over to the secular power to be punished by exile or in any
other lawful manner. This, of course, was a direct licence to the
ill-disposed clergy to commit more crimes than were allowable for a
layman; but the laity had to proceed cautiously in opposing it. In
1219 Philip II of France demanded that a clerk who had been degraded
should not be protected by the Church from seizure outside
ecclesiastical precincts by the royal officers with a view to his
trial in a secular court. But here again, both at his coronation as
Emperor in 1220 and again in the code of laws drawn up for his kingdom
of Sicily in 1231, Frederick II confirmed the privileges of the Church
in the matter of jurisdiction. On the latter occasion, however, he did
reserve cases of high treason for the royal court. Almost the only
immediate effect of these protests on the part of the State was that
Popes and Councils enjoined on the ecclesiastical courts greater
severity of treatment of offenders, even to the extent of perpetual
imprisonment in the case of those whom the lay tribunals would have
condemned to death.

[Sidenote: Increase of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.]

But this exclusive jurisdiction in all matters that concerned her own
members was only a part of the authority claimed and exercised by the
Church in the sphere of justice. Synods of the clergy did not hesitate
to take part in the enforcement of civil law and order, and threatened
with severe ecclesiastical penalties all who did not observe the Truce
of God, or who were guilty of piracy, incendiarism, or false coining.
At one time they attempted thus to suppress usury and trial by ordeal,
which at other times they allowed. They even legislated against
tournaments and against the use of certain deadly weapons in battle by
one Christian nation against another. But apart from the special
circumstances which called out and so justified the legislation, the
Church claimed at all times jurisdiction over certain classes of lay
persons and in certain categories of cases. Thus all persons needing
protection, such as widows, minors, and orphans, came under the
cognisance of the ecclesiastical courts, and to these the Popes added
Crusaders. Furthermore, all cases which could be regarded as in any
way involving a possible breach of faith were also claimed as
belonging to the jurisdiction of the Church, and these included
everything concerning oaths, marriages, and wills. Naturally the
Church had cognisance of all cases of sacrilege and heresy. These
excuses for interference in the transactions of daily life were
susceptible of almost indefinite extension, especially since the
Church asserted a right to hear cases of all sorts in her courts on
appeal on a plea that civil justice had failed. Even so stout a
champion of the Church as St. Bernard complains bitterly that all this
participation in worldly matters tends to stand between the clergy and
their proper duties. The secular powers constantly protested. Even
when Alfonso X in his legal code allowed that all suits arising from
sins should go to ecclesiastical courts, the Cortes of Castile
constantly protested. The chief attempts to check the growth of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction were made in France. Even under Louis IX
the barons combined to resist the encroachments of the Church, and
resolved that "no clerk or layman should in future indict any one
before an ecclesiastical judge except for heresy, marriage, or usury,
on pain of loss of possessions and mutilation of a limb, in order
that," they add with a justifiable touch of malice, "our jurisdiction
may be revived, and they [the clergy] who have hitherto been enriched
by our pauperisation may be reduced to the condition of the primitive
Church, and living the contemplative life they may, as is seemly, show
to us who spend an active life miracles which for a long time have
disappeared from the world."

[Sidenote: Simony.]

The result, then, of the efforts of the Church reformers to free the
Church from the State had been an enormous increase in the power of
the Church. But these efforts were in the beginning only a means to an
end, and that end was the purification of the Church itself. We have,
therefore, to ask how far the attempts to get rid of simony and to
enforce the celibacy of the clergy had met with permanent success.
Before the movement in favour of reform the traffic in churches and
Church property was indulged in by laity and clergy alike. Not only
Kings and nobles but bishops and abbots received payments from those
who accepted ecclesiastical preferment at their hands, and were by no
means always careful that ecclesiastical offices were acquired by
those in Holy Orders. Church property, in fact, was treated by those
who represented the original donors as if it were the private property
of the patron. The reform movement of the eleventh century, at any
rate, succeeded in making a distinction between the right of ownership
and the right of presentation, and in limiting the power of the patron
to the latter. Beyond this nothing much was permanently effected in
checking the traffic in things ecclesiastical. Preferment continued to
be used as patronage: offices and dignities in the Church were given
to children, and preferments were accumulated upon individuals until
pluralities became a standing grievance. Councils and Popes still
thundered against simony, but with the extending authority of Rome the
staff of the papal curia was increased, and the traffic in things
ecclesiastical at Rome was notorious.

[Sidenote: Clerical marriage.]

The efforts of the reformers in checking clerical marriage had not
been much more successful. The law now stood as follows: the first two
Lateran Councils (1123, 1139) prohibited matrimony to priests,
deacons, and sub-deacons; but to those only in one of the three minor
orders of the Church it was still allowed, although Alexander III
ultimately decreed that marriage should cause them to forfeit their
benefice. It was some time, however, before these decrees could be
enforced, and even the Popes found themselves compelled to deal
leniently with offending clergy. Thus Pascal II allowed to Archbishop
Anselm that a married priest not only might, but must, if applied to,
minister to a dying person. Attempts were made to forbid ordination to
the sons of priests, at least as secular clergy, but such regulations
were constantly relaxed or ignored. Pascal II actually allowed that in
Spain, where clerical marriage had been lawful, the children should be
eligible for all secular and ecclesiastical preferment. In the remoter
countries of Europe--the Scandinavian lands, Bohemia, Hungary,
Poland--the decrees against clerical marriage were not accepted until
far into the thirteenth century. Even in part of Germany, notably the
diocese of Liege, the clergy continued openly to marry until the same
century. But even in countries where the principle was nominally
accepted it triumphed at the expense of morality. For example, in
England the decree was published in Council after Council throughout
the twelfth century and was undoubtedly accepted as the law. But in
1129, after the death of Anselm, who had opposed the expedient, Henry
I imprisoned the "house-keepers" of the clergy in London in order to
obtain a sum of money by their release. Furthermore, both in England
and elsewhere, bishops finding it impossible to enforce the decree,
frankly licensed the breach of it by individual clergy in return for
an annual payment. It is interesting to note that several important
writers of the age speak with studied moderation on this question. The
great lawyer Gratian admits that in the earlier period of the Church
marriage was allowed to the clergy. The Parisian theologian, Peter
Comestor, publicly taught that the enforcement of the vow of celibacy
on the clergy was a deliberate snare of the devil. The English
historians, Henry of Huntingdon, Matthew Paris, and Thomas of
Walsingham, speak with disapproval of the attempts to enforce it, and
even St. Thomas Aquinas holds that the celibacy of the secular clergy
was a matter of merely human regulation. Thus the protest of the
reformers of the eleventh century in favour of purity of life among
the clergy had met with the smallest possible success, but like all
such protests, it helped to keep alive the idea of a higher standard
of personal and official life until such time as secular circumstances
were more favourable.




CHAPTER V

CANONS AND MONKS


[Sidenote: Secular canons.]

So far, in speaking of the attempted purification of the Church in the
eleventh century, we have dealt merely with the bishops and the
parochial clergy. But a movement which emanated from the monasteries
had a message also for those ecclesiastics who were gathered into
corporate bodies, and whom we have learnt to distinguish respectively
as canons and monks. Of these the canons were reckoned among the
secular clergy; for although they were supposed to live a common life
according to a certain rule, their duties were parochial, and they
were not bound for life to the community of which they were members.
The body of canons was called a chapter, and of chapters there were
two kinds--the cathedral chapter, whose members served the Mother
Church of the diocese, and, as we have seen, ultimately obtained the
nominal right of electing the bishop; and the collegiate chapter,
generally, though not always, to be found in towns which had no
cathedral, the members of which, like those of a modern clergy-house,
served the church or churches of the town. In the eighth century these
communities were subjected to a rule drawn up by Chrodegang, Bishop of
Metz, in accordance with which they were required to sleep in a common
dormitory, feed at a common table, and assimilate themselves as far as
possible to monks. But in the two succeeding centuries there was no
class of clergy which fell so far from the ideal as the capitular
clergy. They were important and they were wealthy, for the cathedral
chapters claimed to share with the bishop in the administration of the
diocese, and both kinds of chapters owned extensive lands. In some of
the more important chapters great feudal nobles had obtained for
themselves the titular offices; in nearly all such bodies some, if not
most or even all, of the canonries came to be reserved for younger
members of the noble families. The common property was divided into
shares, between the bishop and the body of the canons and between the
individual canons: many of the canons employed vicars to do their
clerical duty, and some even lived on the estates of the capitular
body, leading the existence of a lay noble. Even those who remained on
the spot had houses of their own round the cloister, where they lived
with their wives and children, using the common refectory only for an
occasional festival.

[Sidenote: Canons Regular.]

Thus no body of ecclesiastics stood in need of thorough reform more
than the capitular clergy, and no class proved so hard to deal with.
Attempts to substitute Cluniac monks for canons roused the opposition
of the whole body of secular clergy. More successful to a small degree
was the plan of Bishop Ivo of Chartres and others to revive among the
capitular bodies the rule of common life. But it was difficult to pour
new wine into old bottles, and the reformers found it more profitable
to leave the old capitular bodies severely alone, and to devote their
efforts to the foundation of new communities. To these were applied
from the very first a new rule for which its advocates claimed the
authority of St. Augustine. It laid upon the members vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience, and placed them under an abbot elected by the
community of canons. Such was the origin of the Augustinian or Austin
Canons, who came to be distinguished as Regular Canons, and are to be
reckoned with monastic bodies, in comparison with the old cathedral
and collegiate chapters, who were henceforth known as Secular Canons.
These bodies of clergy, who combined parochial duties with what was
practically a monastic life, became exceedingly popular; and by
degrees not only were Secular Canons of collegiate churches, and even
of some cathedrals, transformed into Regular Canons, but even some
monastic houses were handed over to them. Instead of existing as
isolated bodies, like the old Benedictines, they took the Cluniac
model of organisation and formed congregations of houses grouped round
some one or other of those which formed models for the rest. Of these
congregations of Regular Canons the most celebrated were those of the
Victorines and the Premonstratensians.

[Sidenote: Victorines.]

The abbey of St. Victor at Paris was founded in 1113 by William of
Champeaux, afterwards Bishop of Chalons. The Order came to consist of
about forty houses, and its members strove to keep the Augustinian
ideal of a parochial and monastic life. But the chief fame of the
abbey itself comes from its scholastic work, and it became known both
as the stronghold of a somewhat rigid orthodoxy and as the home of a
mystical theology which was developed among its own teachers.

[Sidenote: Premonstratensians.]

But by far the most important congregation of Canons Regular was that
of the Premonstratensians. Their founder, Norbert, a German of noble
birth, in response to a sudden conversion, gave up several canonries
of the older kind with which he was endowed; but finding that a
prophet has no honour in his own country, he preached in France with
astonishing success, and ultimately, under the patronage of the Bishop
of Laon in 1120, he settled with a few companions in a waste place in
a forest, where he established a community of Regular Canons and gave
to the spot the name of _Prémontré--pratum monstratum--_the
meadow which had been pointed out to him by an angel. Almost from its
foundation the Premonstratensian Order admitted women as well as men,
and at first the two sexes lived in separate houses planted side by
side. The Order also began the idea of affiliating to itself, under
the form of a third class, influential laymen who would help in its
work. The Premonstratensian houses assimilated themselves to monastic
communities more than did the Victorines: their work was missionary
rather than parochial. The Order spread with great rapidity not only
in Western Europe, but, even in its founder's lifetime, to Syria and
Palestine, and for purposes of administration it came to be divided
into thirty provinces.

[Sidenote: St. Norbert in Germany.]

Meanwhile Norbert had come under the notice of the Emperor Lothair II,
who forced him into the archbishopric of Magdeburg. Here he
substituted Premonstratensians in a collegiate chapter for canons of
the older kind, and he eagerly backed up Lothair's policy of extending
German influence upon the north-eastern frontier by planting
Premonstratensian houses as missionary centres and by founding new
bishoprics. Norbert, in fact became Lothair's chief adviser and was an
European influence second only to that of St. Bernard in all the
questions of the day.

[Sidenote: Knights Templars.]

It was upon the model of the Canons Regular that the great military
Orders of the religious were organised. In the year 1118 a Burgundian
knight, Hugh de Payens, with eight other knights, founded at Jerusalem
an association for the protection of distressed pilgrims in Palestine.
From their residence near Solomon's Temple they came to be known as
the Knights of the Temple. They remained a small and poor body until
St. Bernard who was nephew to one of the knights, took them under his
patronage and drew up for them a code of regulations which obtained
the sanction of Honorius II at the Council of Troyes in 1128. From
that moment the prosperity of the Templars was assured. Their numbers
increased, and lands and other endowments were showered upon them in
all parts of Europe. As monks they were under the triple vow of
poverty, chastity, and obedience, and the regulations of the Order
which governed their daily life were among the most severe. As knights
it was their duty to maintain war against the Saracens. For
administrative purposes the possessions of the Order were grouped in
ten provinces, each province being further subdivided into
preceptories or commanderies, and each of these into still smaller
units. Each division and subdivision had its own periodical chapter of
members for settling its concerns, and at the head of the whole Order
stood the Grand Master with a staff of officers who formed the general
chapter and acted as a restraint upon the conduct of their head. In
addition to the knights the Order contained chaplains for the
ecclesiastical duties, and serving brethren of humble birth to help
the knights in warfare. Their possessions in Western Europe were used
as recruiting-grounds for their forces in the East; but it was only in
towns of some importance that they erected churches on the model of
the Holy Sepulchre in connection with their houses.

[Sidenote: Knights Hospitallers.]

The Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem was a reorganisation
of a hospital dedicated to St. John the Baptist. This had been erected
for poor pilgrims by the merchants of Amalfi before the Crusades
began. But it remained merely a charitable brotherhood living under a
monastic rule and attracting both men and endowments, until the
example of the Templars caused the then master, Raymond du Puy, to
obtain papal sanction some time before 1130 for a rule which added
military duties without superseding the original object of the Order.
Their possessions were divided into eight provinces with subdivisions
of grand priories and commanderies, and the other administrative
arrangements differed in little, except occasionally in name, from
those of the Templars.

[Sidenote: Privileges of the military Orders.]

Both these Orders obtained not only extensive possessions from the
pious, but wide privileges from the Pope. They were subject to the
spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope alone; they could consecrate
churches and cemeteries on their own lands without any interference of
the local clergy; they could hold divine service everywhere.
Interdicts and excommunications had no terrors or even inconveniences
for them. They were free from payment of tithes and other imposts
levied on the clergy. There is no doubt that but for these Orders the
Crusaders would have fared far worse than they did. The Templars and
Hospitallers were the one really reliable element in the crusading
forces. This is no very high praise, and their effectiveness was
largely discounted by their bitter quarrels with each other and with
the local authorities, both secular and ecclesiastical, alike in the
east and the west. They scandalously abused the extensive privileges
accorded to them, by such acts as the administration of the Sacrament
to excommunicated persons, to whom they would also give Christian
burial. In 1179, at the second Lateran Council, Alexander III was
moved by the universal complaints to denounce their irresponsible
defiance of all ecclesiastical law, and subsequent Popes were obliged
to speak with equal vigour. After the destruction of the Latin power
in Palestine (1291) the Hospitallers transferred their head-quarters
to Cyprus till 1309, then to Rhodes, and finally to Malta. The
Templars abandoned their _raison d'être_, retired to their
possessions in the west, and placed their head-quarters at Paris,
where they acted as the bankers of the French King. Their wealth
provoked jealousy: they were accused of numberless and nameless
crimes, and their enemies brought about their fall, first in France,
then in England, and finally the abolition of the Order by papal
decree in 1313. Such of their wealth as escaped the hands of the lay
authorities went to swell the possessions of the Hospitallers.

[Sidenote: Teutonic Knights.]

There were many other Orders of soldier-monks besides these two. The
best known are the Teutonic Knights, who originated during the Third
Crusade at the siege of Acre (1190) in an association of North German
Crusaders for the care of the sick and wounded. The Knights of the
German Hospital of St. Mary the Virgin at Jerusalem--for such was
their full title--gained powerful influence in Palestine; their Order
was confirmed by Pope Celestine III (1191-8), and in 1220 Honorius III
gave them the same privileges as were enjoyed by the Hospitallers and
Templars. Their organisation was similar to that of the older Orders.
Their prosperity was chiefly due to the third Grand Master, Herman von
Salza, the good genius of the Emperor Frederick II, and a great power
in Europe. Under him the Order transferred itself to the shores of the
Baltic, where it carried on a crusade against the heathen Prussians,
and here it united in 1237 with another knightly Order, the Brethren
of the Sword, which had been founded in 1202 by the Bishop of Livonia
for similar work against the heathen inhabitants of that country.

[Sidenote: Other military Orders.]

The Knights of the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acre was a small English
Order named after Thomas Becket and founded in the thirteenth century.
They, together with those already mentioned as founded for work in
Palestine, belonged to the Canons Regular. For convenience, however,
mention should be made here of the great Spanish Orders which were
affiliated to the Cistercian monks. These were founded in imitation of
the Templars and Hospitallers for similar work against the Saracens of
the Peninsula. The Order of Calatrava, founded by a Cistercian abbot
when that city was threatened by the Saracens in 1158, and the Order
of St. Julian, founded about the same time, which ultimately took its
name from the captured fortress of Alcantara, were amenable to the
complete monastic rule; while the Portuguese Order of Evora or Avisa,
founded a few years later, was assimilated rather to the lay brethren
of the Cistercians, and its members could marry and hold property.
There was one of the Spanish Orders, however, which was not connected
with the Cistercians. The Knights of St. James of Compostella
originated in 1161 for the protection of pilgrims to the shrine of
Compostella. Their rule was confirmed by Alexander III in 1175, and
the Order of Santiago became the most famous of the military Orders in
the Peninsula.

[Sidenote: New Monastic Orders.]

The revival and reorganisation of the common life among cathedral and
collegiate bodies roused the jealousy of the monastic houses. The
absolute superiority of the monastic life over any other was an
article of faith to which the obvious interests of the monks could
allow no qualification; and the close imitation of the monastic model
adopted by the Regular Canons was sufficient proof that the Church
generally acquiesced in this view. The great reform movement of the
eleventh century had emanated from the monks of Cluny; but just as the
degradation of the monastic ideal by the Benedictines had called into
existence the Order of Cluny with its reformed Benedictine rule, so
now the failure of the Cluniacs to live up to the expectations and to
minister to the needs of the most fervent religious spirits caused the
foundation of a number of new Orders. In each such case the founder
and his first followers strove, by the austerities of their personal
lives and by the severity of the rule which they enjoined, to embody
and to maintain at the highest level that ideal of contemplative
asceticism which was the object of the monastic life. Such was the
origin of the Order of Grammont (1074) and of Fontevraud (1094) and of
the better known Orders of the Carthusians (1084) and the Cistercians
(1098).

[Sidenote: Grammont.]

Thus Stephen, the founder of the Order of Grammont, was the son of a
noble of Auvergne, who, in the course of a journey in Calabria, was so
impressed by the life or the hermits with which the mountainous
districts abounded, that he resolved to reproduce it, and lived for
fifty years near Limoges, subjecting himself to such rigorous
devotional exercises that his knees became quite hard and his nose
permanently bent! Gregory VII sanctioned the formation of an Order,
but Stephen and his first followers called themselves simply _boni
homines_. After his death the monastery was removed to Grammont
close by, and a severe rule continued to be practised; but the
management of the concerns of the house was in the hands, not of the
monks, but of lay brethren, who began even to interfere in spiritual
matters, and the Order ceased to spread.

[Sidenote: Carthusians.]

The founder of the Carthusians, Bruno, a native of Koln, but master of
the Cathedral school at Rheims, also took the eremitic life as his
model for the individual. To this end he planted his monastery near
Grenoble, in the wild solitude of the Chartreuse, which gave its name
to the whole Order and to each individual house. In addition to a very
rigorous form of asceticism his rule imposed on the members an almost
perpetual silence. The centre of the life of the Carthusian monk was
not the cloister, but the cell which to each individual was, except on
Sundays and festivals, at the same time chapel, dormitory, refectory,
and study. The Carthusian rule has been described as "Cenobitism
reduced to its simplest expression"; but despite the growing wealth of
the Order, the rigour of the life was well maintained, and of all the
monastic bodies it was the least subjected to criticism and satire.

[Sidenote: Fontevraud.]

A different type of founder is represented by Robert of Arbrissel, in
Brittany, who, although he attracted disciples by the severity of his
life as a hermit, was really a great popular preacher, whose words
soon came to be attested by miracles. He was especially effective in
dealing with fallen women, and the monastery which he established at
Fontevraud, in the diocese of Poitiers, was a double house, men and
women living in two adjacent cloisters; but the monks were little more
than the chaplains and the managers of the monastic revenues, and at
the head of the whole house and Order the founder placed an Abbess as
his successor. The rule of this Order imposed on the female members
absolute silence except in the chapter-house.

[Sidenote: Cluniac Congregation.]

The foundation of these Orders, greater or less, did not exhaust the
impetus in favour of monasticism. Single houses and smaller Orders
were founded during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, of which
many attained a merely local importance. The common feature of the
great Orders was that each of them formed a Congregation, that is to
say, an aggregate of numerous houses scattered over many lands, but
following the same rule and acknowledging some sort of allegiance to
the original home of the Order. The invention of this model was due to
Cluny, although even among the Cluniacs the organisation of the
Congregation, with its system of visiting inspectors who reported on
the condition of the monasteries to an annual Chapter-General meeting
at Cluny, was not completed until the thirteenth century. From the
first, however, the Abbot of Cluny was a despot; with the exception of
the heads of some monasteries which became affiliated to the Order he
was the only abbot, the ruler of the Cluniac house being merely a
prior. All the early abbots were men of mark, who were afterwards
canonised by the Church. The fourth abbot refused the Papacy; but
Gregory VII, Urban II, and Pascal II were all Cluniac monks. The real
greatness of the Order was due to its fifth and sixth abbots, Odilo
who ruled from 994 to 1049, and Hugh who held the reins of office for
an even longer period (1049-1109); while the fame of the Order
culminated under Peter the Venerable, the contemporary of St. Bernard.

[Sidenote: Its decay.]

But the history of the abbot who came between Hugh and Peter shows the
strange vicissitudes to which even the greatest monasteries might be
subjected. Pontius was godson of Pope Pascal II, who sent to the newly
elected abbot his own dalmatic. Calixtus II visited Cluny, and while
reaffirming the privileges granted by his predecessors, such as the
freedom of Cluniac houses from visitation by the local bishop, he made
the Abbot of Cluny _ex officio_ a Cardinal of the Roman Church,
and allowed that when the rest of the land was under an interdict the
monks of Cluny might celebrate Mass within the closed doors of their
chapels. But as a consequence of these distinctions Pontius' conduct
became so unbearable as to cause loud complaints from ecclesiastics of
every rank. Ultimately the Pope intervened and persuaded Pontius to
resign the abbacy and to make a pilgrimage to Palestine. Meanwhile
another abbot was appointed. But Pontius returned, gathered an armed
band, and got forcible possession of Cluny, which he proceeded to
despoil. Again the Pope, Honorius II, interfered, and Pontius was
disposed of.

[Sidenote: Criticism of St. Bernard.]

But such an episode was only too characteristic of the decay which
seemed inevitably to fall on each of the monastic Orders. The wealth
and privileges of Cluny made its failure all the more conspicuous. A
few years after the expulsion of Pontius, St. Bernard wrote to the
Abbot of the Cluniac house of St. Thierry a so-called apology, which,
while professing a great regard for the Cluniacs Order and pretending
to criticise the deficiencies of his own Cistercians, is in reality a
scathing attack upon the lapse of the former from the Benedictine
rule. He attacks their neglect of manual work and of the rule of
silence; their elaborate cookery and nice taste in wines; their
interest in the cut and material of their clothes and the luxury of
their bed coverlets: the extravagance of the furniture in their
chapels, and even the grotesque architecture of their buildings. He
especially censures the magnificent state in which the abbots live and
with which they travel about, and he declares himself emphatically
against that exemption of monasteries from episcopal control which was
one of the most prized privileges of the Cluniac Order. Something may
perhaps be allowed for exaggeration in this attack; but that there was
no serious overstatement is clear from the letters written some years
later by Peter the Venerable to St. Bernard, in answer to the
accusations made by the Cistercians in general. He justifies the
departure from the strict Benedictine rule partly on the ground of its
severity, partly because of its unsuitability to the climate; but his
defence clearly shows how far, even under so admirable a ruler, the
Cluniacs had fallen away from the monastic ideal.

[Sidenote: Cistercians.]

The Cistercian Order, no less than the Orders already mentioned, owed
its origin to the desire to revive the primitive monastic rule from
which the Cluniacs had fallen away. The wonderful success which it met
with made it the chief rival of that Order. The parent monastery of
Citeaux, near Dijon, was founded by Robert of Molesme in 1098 under
the patronage of the Duke of Burgundy. But the monks kept the rule of
St. Benedict in the strictest manner, and their numbers remained
small. In 1113, however, they were joined by the youthful Bernard, the
son of a Burgundian knight, together with about thirty friends of like
mind, whom he had already collected with a view to the cloister life.
At once expansion became not only possible but necessary, and the
abbot of the day, Stephen Harding, by birth an Englishman from
Sherborne in Dorsetshire, sent out four colonies in succession, which
founded the abbeys of La Ferte (1113), Pontigny (1114), Clairvaux and
Morimond (1115). The first general chapter of the Order was held in
1116: the scheme of organisation drawn up by Stephen Harding was
embodied in _Carta Caritatis_, the Charter of Love, and received
the papal sanction in 1119. By the middle of the century (1151) more
than five hundred monasteries were represented at the general chapter,
and despite the resolution to admit no more houses, the number
continued to increase until the whole Order must have contained
upwards of two thousand.

[Sidenote: Mode of life.]

The entire organisation of the Cistercian Order made it a strong
contrast to the Cluniacs, both in the mode of life of its members and
in the method of government. The Cluniacs had become wealthy and
luxurious: their black dress, the symbol of humility, had become
rather a mark of hypocrisy. In order to guard against these snares the
Cistercians, to the wrath of the other monastic Orders, adopted a
white habit indicative of the joy which should attend devotion to
God's service. Their monasteries, all dedicated to the Blessed Virgin
Mary, were built in lonely places, where they would have no
opportunity to engage in parochial work. This indeed was strictly
forbidden them as detracting from the contemplative life which should
be the ideal of the Cistercian. For the same reason they were
forbidden to accept gifts of churches or tithes. The monastic
buildings, including the chapel, were to be of the simplest
description, without paintings, sculpture, or stained glass; and the
ritual used at the services was in keeping with this bareness. The
arrangements of the refectory and the dormitory were equally meagre.
Hard manual work, strict silence, and one daily meal gave the inmates
every opportunity of conquering their bodily appetites.

[Sidenote: Organisation.]

The method of government adopted for the Cistercian Order is also a
contrast by imitation of the Cluniac arrangements. It was an essential
point that a Cistercian house should be subject to the bishop of the
diocese in which it was situated. The episcopal leave was asked before
a house was founded, and a Cistercian abbot took an oath of obedience
to the local bishop. The actual organisation of the whole Order may be
described as aristocratic in contrast with the despotism of the Abbot
of Cluny. The Abbot of Citeaux was subject to the visitation and
correction of the abbots of the four daughter houses mentioned above,
while he in turn visited them; and each of them kept a similar
surveillance over the houses which had sprung from their houses. In
addition to this scheme of inspection, an annual general chapter met
at Citeaux. The abbots of all the houses in France, Germany, and Italy
were expected to appear every year; but from remoter lands attendance
was demanded only once in three, four, five, or even seven years.

[Sidenote: Decay.]

The Cistercians certainly wrested the lead of the monastic world from
Cluny, and until the advent of the Friars no other Order rivalled them
in popularity. But no more than any other Order were they exempt from
the evils of popularity. The very deserts in which they placed
themselves for protection, and the agricultural work with which they
occupied their hands, brought them the corrupting wealth; in England
they were the owners of the largest flocks of sheep which produced the
raw material for the staple trade of the country. They accepted
ecclesiastical dignities; they became luxurious and magnificent in
their manner of life; they strove for independence of the
ecclesiastical authorities, until in the middle of the thirteenth
century one of their own abbots quotes against them the saying that
"among the monks of the Cistercian Order whatever is pleasing is
lawful, whatever is lawful is possible, whatever is possible is done."

[Sidenote: Grant of privileges.]

This degeneracy of the monastic Orders was due in no small measure to
the policy of the Papacy. The monasteries, in their desire to shake
themselves free from the jurisdiction of the bishop of the diocese,
appealed to Rome; and the Pope, in pursuit of his policy of
superseding the local authorities, encouraged the monks to regard
themselves as a kind of papal militia. Thus from the time of Gregory
VII, at all events, all kinds of exemptions and privileges were
granted to the monastic communities in general and to the abbots of
the greater houses in particular. Exemption from the visitation of the
local bishop was one of the most frequent grants, until the great
Orders became too powerful to be afraid of any interference. This
carried with it the right of jurisdiction by the abbot and general
chapter over all churches to which the monastic body had the right of
presentation. This was an increasingly serious matter, for pious
donors were constantly bequeathing churches and tithes to favourite
Orders and popular houses, and the abbot attempted with considerable
success to usurp the definitely episcopal authority by instituting the
parish priest. Nor was this the only matter in which the abbot
substituted himself for the bishop. The monastic community might build
a church without any reference to the local ecclesiastical authority,
and the abbot might consecrate it and any altar in it. It is true that
if any monk of the house or secular clergyman serving one of the
churches in the gift of the house desired ordination to any step in
the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the abbot was limited to choosing a
bishop who might be asked to perform the duty; but in the course of
the thirteenth century, in some cases at least, the Popes gave to
certain abbots the privilege of advancing candidates to the minor
Orders. Probably Gregory VII began the grants of insignia which marked
the episcopal office to abbots of important houses. The Abbot of St.
Maximin in Trier certainly obtained from him permission to wear a
mitre and episcopal gloves. Urban II granted to the Abbot of Cluny the
right to appear in a dalmatic with a mitre and episcopal sandals and
gloves.

[Sidenote: Forged claims.]

What could be gained by favour could also be obtained by payment or
claimed by forgery. The expenses of the Roman Curia increased; the
monastic Orders were wealthy. Moreover, the critical faculty was
slightly developed. Certain monasteries became notorious for the
manufacture of documents in their own favour, St. Augustine's at
Canterbury being especially bad offenders; and certain individuals
from time to time supplied such material to all monasteries which
would pay for them; while, finally, in return for well-bestowed gifts,
the Roman Curia was often willing to recognise the authenticity of a
spurious claim.




CHAPTER VI

ST. BERNARD


[Sidenote: Honorius II.]

Calixtus II died in December, 1124, and in a few months (May, 1125)
Henry V followed him to the grave. The imperial party at Rome had
disappeared, but, on the other hand, Calixtus had established only a
truce between the Roman factions. The Frangipani and Pierleoni
families each nominated a successor to him, but the former forcibly
placed their candidate in the papal chair. The six years of the
pontificate of Honorius II (1124-30) are unimportant.

[Sidenote: Lothair II.]

It was perhaps fortunate for the Papacy that the allegiance of Germany
was also divided. With Henry V expired the male line of the Salian or
Franconian House. He had intended to secure the succession for his
nephew, Frederick the One-eyed, Duke of Suabia and head of the family
of Hohenstaufen. But the anti-Franconian party procured the election
of Lothair, Duke of Saxony, who had built up for himself a practically
independent territorial power on the north-eastern side of Germany,
and had taken a prominent part in opposition to Henry V.

[Sidenote: Lothair and the Concordat.]

Lothair's election, then, was a triumph for the Papacy, and the Church
party could not let pass so good an opportunity of revising the
relations of State and Church in Germany. They had maintained from the
first that the Concordat of Worms was a personal arrangement between
Calixtus II and Henry V. But the exact nature of Lothair's promise on
election is a matter of great dispute. According to the account of an
anonymous writer, he undertook that the Church should exercise entire
freedom in episcopal elections without being controlled, "as formerly"
(an obvious reference to the Concordat of Worms), by the presence of
the lay power or by a recommendation from it, and that after the
consecration (not before, according to the terms of the Concordat) the
Emperor should, without any payment, invest the prelate with the
regalia by the sceptre and should receive his oath of fealty "saving
his Order." Lothair's actual conduct, however, in the matter of
appointments seems to have been guided by the terms of the Concordat.

[Sidenote: Lothair and the Hohenstaufen.]

Frederick of Hohenstaufen did homage with the rest of the nobles to
Lothair, but not unnaturally Lothair distrusted him. Frederick was
heir to all the allodial possessions of the late Emperor; but Lothair
persuaded to a decision which would have deprived Frederick of a large
portion of these, and thus have rendered him and his house practically
innocuous. When Frederick refused to accept this decision he was put
to the ban of the Empire. The Hohenstaufen party challenged Lothair's
title to the throne, and put up as their candidate Frederick's younger
brother Conrad, Duke of Franconia, who, having been absent in
Palestine, had never done homage to Lothair. Conrad was crowned King
in Italy, but he was excommunicated by Pope Honorius, and neither in
Germany nor in Italy did the Hohenstaufen cause advance.

[Sidenote: Schism in the Papacy.]

Meanwhile a crisis at Rome quite overshadowed the German disputes.
Honorius II died in February, 1130. Immediately the party of the
Frangipani, who had stood around him, met and proclaimed a successor
as Innocent II. This was irregular, and in any case the act was that
of a minority of the Cardinals. It must have been, therefore, with
some confidence in the justice of their cause that the opposition
party met at a later hour, and by the votes of a majority of the
College of Cardinals elected the Cardinal Peter Leonis, the grandson
of a converted Jew and formerly a monk of Cluny, as Anacletus II.
There was no question of principle at stake; it was a mere struggle of
factions. The partisans of Innocent charged Anacletus with the most
heinous crimes. Clearly he was ambitious and able, wealthy and
unscrupulous. Moreover, for the moment he was successful. By whatever
means, he gradually won the whole of Rome; and Innocent, deserted,
made his way by Pisa and Genoa to Burgundy, and so to France. His
reception by the Abbey of Cluny was a great strength to his cause, and
he there consecrated the new church, which had been forty years in
building and was larger than any church yet erected in France. In
order that the schism in the Papacy should not be reproduced in every
bishopric and abbey of his kingdom, Louis VI of France summoned a
Council at Etampes, near Paris, which should decide between the
respective merits of the rival Popes.

[Sidenote: Bernard of Clairvaux.]

To this Council a special invitation was sent to the great monk who
for the next twenty years dominates the Western Church and completely
over-shadows the contemporary Popes. We have of seen that it was the
advent of Bernard and his large party at the monastery of Citeaux in
1113 that saved the newly founded Order from premature collapse.
Although only twenty-four years of age, Bernard was entrusted with the
third of the parties sent forth in succession to seek new homes for
the Order, and he and his twelve companions settled in a gloomy valley
in the northernmost corner of Burgundy, which was henceforth to be
known as Clairvaux. Here the hardships suffered by the monks in their
maintenance of the strict Benedictine rule and the entire mastery over
his bodily senses obtained by their young abbot built up a reputation
which reacted on the whole body of the Cistercians, and soon made them
the most revered and widespread of all the monastic Orders. Bernard
himself became the unconscious worker of many miracles: he was the
friend and adviser of great potentates in Church and State, and
without the least effort on his own part he was gradually acquiring a
position as the arbiter of Christendom.

[Sidenote: Acceptance of Innocent II.]

As yet he had confined his interferences in secular matters to the
kingdom of France and some of its great fiefs; he had rebuked the King
of France for persecution of two bishops; he had remonstrated with the
Count of Champagne for cruelty to a vassal. Now he was called upon to
intervene for the first time in a matter of European importance. The
whole question of the papal election was submitted to his judgment,
and his clear decision in favour of Innocent carried the allegiance of
France. Advocates of Innocent could not base his claims on legal
right, and Bernard led the way in asserting his superiority in
personal merit over his rival. At Chartres Innocent met Henry I of
England and Normandy, and again it was Bernard's eloquence which won
Henry's adhesion. A Synod of German clergy at Würzburg acknowledged
Innocent, and Lothair accepted the decision. But when Innocent met the
German King at Liège in March, 1131, fortunately for the Pope Bernard
was still by his side. It is true that Lothair stooped to play the
part of papal groom, which had been played only by Conrad, the
rebellious son of Henry IV; that he and his wife were both crowned by
the Pope in the cathedral; and that he promised to lead the Pope back
to Rome. But in return for his services Lothair tried to use his
opportunity for going back upon the Concordat and claiming the
restoration of the right of investiture. Bernard, however, came to the
help of the Pope, and, backed by the general indignation and alarm at
the meanness of Lothair's conduct, forced the Emperor to withdraw his
demands. Innocent spent some time longer in France, among other places
visiting Clairvaux, where the hard life of the inmates filled him and
his Italian followers with astonishment.

Throughout these wanderings since the Council of Etampes Bernard had
been the constant companion of the Pope, and had ultimately become not
merely his most trusted but practically his only counsellor. As a
matter of form questions were submitted to the Cardinals, but no
action was taken until Bernard's view had been ascertained. In April,
1132, Innocent once more appeared in Italy. Meanwhile Anacletus,
having failed to obtain the support of any of the great monarchs of
the West, turned to the Normans, and by the grant of the royal title
gained the allegiance of Roger, Duke of Apulia and Count of Sicily. A
few other parts of Europe still acknowledged Anacletus. Scotland was
too distant to be troubled by Bernard's influence; but in Lombardy the
great abbot worked indefatigably; and the Archbishop of Milan, who had
accepted his pallium from Anacletus, was driven out by the citizens,
who subsequently welcomed Bernard with enthusiasm and tried to keep
him as their archbishop. Duke William X of Aquitaine also continued to
acknowledge Anacletus, and when at length Bernard accompanied the
legate of Innocent to a conference at his court, the saint had
recourse to all the methods of ecclesiastical terrorism at his command
before he gained the fearful acquiescence of the ruler.

[Sidenote: Lothair at Rome.]

At length Lothair felt himself sufficiently free to fulfil his promise
to Innocent. But the turbulent condition of Germany prevented him from
bringing a force of any size, and, despite the vehement eloquence of
Bernard, among the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany the friend of
Innocent was still the German King and was viewed with much suspicion.
Fortunately, however, Roger of Sicily, the one strong supporter of
Anacletus, was engaged in a struggle with his nobles and could give no
help. But Lothair desired to avoid bloodshed if possible. He made no
attempt, therefore, to get possession of St. Peter's and the Leonine
city, which were in the hands of Anacletus and his followers, but
contented himself with the peaceful occupation of the rest of Rome. He
and his wife were crowned in the church of St. John Lateran by
Innocent (June, 1133). Lothair seems again to have used his
opportunity to attempt a recovery of the right of investiture from the
Pope; but on this occasion the opponent of the Emperor was his own
favourite counsellor, Archbishop Norbert of Magdeburg, the founder of
the Premonstratensian Order. A few days later, however, Innocent
published two bulls dealing with the questions at issue between
himself and the Emperor. The first merely confirms the arrangements of
the Concordat, although it certainly omits all mention of the presence
of the King at the election. The second bull deals with the
inheritance of the Countess Matilda. Henry V had never recognised the
donation of the Countess to the Papacy, and consequently, as a lapsed
fief and part of the late Emperor's possessions, the lands could be
claimed by his Hohenstaufen heirs. This perhaps accounts for Lothair's
readiness to accept the conditions imposed by the Pope. Innocent
invested him by a ring with the allodial or freehold lands of the
Countess in return for an annual tribute and on the understanding that
at Lothair's death they should revert to the Papacy. Lothair took no
oath of fealty for them, but such oath was exacted from his
son-in-law, Henry the Proud of Bavaria, to whom the inheritance was
made over on the same conditions. Lothair had perhaps saved the
much-coveted lands from being lawfully claimed by the Hohenstaufen;
but it was the Pope who had really gained by these transactions, for
he had obtained from a lawfully crowned Emperor the recognition of the
papal right to their possession. Indeed, the whole episode of
Lothair's coronation was treated as a papal triumph, and by Innocent's
direction a picture was placed in the Lateran palace in which Lothair
was represented as kneeling before the throned Pope to receive the
imperial crown, while underneath as inscribed the following distich:--

  "Rex stetit ante fores, jurans prius urbis honores,
  Post homo fit papae, sumit quo dante coronam."

Lothair, however, never saw this record of his visit. He returned to
Germany, having secured, at any rate for himself, the right of
investing his ecclesiastics with their temporalities, the lands of the
Countess Matilda, and, most important of all, the imperial crown
bestowed at Rome by a Pope who was recognised practically throughout
the West. So strengthened, he intended to crush the still opposing
Hohenstaufen. But the intercessions of his own Empress and the papal
legates were backed up by the fiery eloquence of the all-powerful
Bernard, who appeared at the Diet of Bamberg (March, 1135). Lothair
was overruled and terms were granted, which first Frederick of Suabia
and, later on, Conrad were induced to accept. Frederick confined
himself to Suabia, but Conrad attached himself to Lothair's Court, and
became one of the Emperor's most honoured followers.

After Lothair's return to Germany, Roger of Sicily gradually recovered
his authority in Southern Italy, and he even made use of his
championship of Anacletus to annex unopposed some of the papal lands.
Finally, to the scandal of Christendom, the abbey of Monte Cassino,
the premier monastery of the West, declared for Anacletus. Both
Innocent and the Norman foes of Roger appealed to Lothair, who crossed
the Alps, for a second time, in August, 1136, this time, accompanied
by a sufficient force. He did not delay long in Lombardy: he ignored
Rome, which apart from Roger was powerless. One army, under Lothair,
moved down the shores of the Adriatic; another, under Henry of
Bavaria, along the west coast. The fleets of Genoa and Pisa
co-operated, and Roger retired into Sicily. But both Emperor and Pope
claimed the conquered duchy of Apulia, and the dispute was only
settled by both presenting to the new duke the banner by which the
investiture was made. It did not help to soothe the quarrel when the
recovered monastery of Monte Cassino was handed over to the Emperor's
Chancellor. Lothair could remain no longer in Italy; but he fell ill
on his way back, and died in a Tyrolese village on December 3rd, 1138.

[Sidenote: The end of the schism.]

Lothair had done nothing to end the schism. Innocent was back in Rome,
but Anacletus had never been ousted from it. Meanwhile, in the spring
of 1137, Bernard had also responded to the appeal of Innocent and
returned to Italy. While Lothair was overrunning Apulia Bernard was
winning over the adherents of Anacletus in Rome. When Lothair retired
Roger immediately began to recover his dominions; but when Bernard
made overtures to him on behalf of Innocent, he professed himself
quite ready to hear the arguments on both sides. A conference took
place between a skilful supporter of Anacletus and this "rustic
abbot"; but although Bernard convinced his rhetorical adversary, Roger
had too much to lose in acknowledging Innocent, for he would be
obliged to surrender the papal lands which he had occupied and,
perhaps, the royal title, the gift of Anacletus. The end, however, was
at hand. Less than two months after Lothair's death Anacletus died
(January 25, 1138). His few remaining followers elected a successor,
but this was more with the desire of making good terms than of
prolonging the schism. Innocent bribed and Bernard persuaded, and the
anti-Pope surrendered of his own accord. Bernard, to whom was rightly
ascribed the merit of ending the scandal of disunion in Christendom,
immediately escaped from his admirers and returned to the solitude of
Clairvaux and his literary labours. These were not all self-imposed.
Among his correspondents were persons in all ranks of life; and his
letters, no less than his formal treatises, prove his influence as one
of the most deeply spiritual teachers of the Middle Ages.

[Sidenote Roger of Sicily.]

Roger of Sicily alone had not accepted Innocent; but a foolish attempt
to coerce him ended in the defeat and capture of the Pope. In return
for the acknowledgment of papal suzerainty, which involved oblivion of
the imperial claims, Innocent not only confirmed to Roger and his
successors both his conquests in Southern Italy and the royal title,
but even, by the grant of the legatine power to the King himself,
exempted his kingdom from the visits of papal legates. Roger was
supreme in Church and State. A cruel yet vigorous and able ruler, he
built up a centralised administrative system from which Henry II of
England did not disdain to take lessons. His possession of Sicily
carried him to Malta and thence to the north coast of Africa; and
before his death in 1154 Tunis was added to his dominions. He was thus
one of the greatest among the early Crusaders, and perhaps the most
notable ruler of his time.

[Sidenote: Conrad III.]

Lothair hoped to leave in his son-in-law a successor with irresistible
claims. But the very influence to which Lothair owed his own election
was now to be cast into the scale against the representative of his
family; while the grounds of objection to the succession of Frederick
of Hohenstaufen to Henry V now held good against Henry of Bavaria,
Saxony, and Tuscany. The Pope and the German nobles were equally
afraid of a ruler whose insolent demeanour had already won him the
title of "the Proud." They took as their candidate the lately rejected
Hohenstaufen Conrad, whose behaviour since his submission had gained
him favour in proportion as the conduct of Henry of Bavaria had
alienated the other nobles. Conrad was crowned at Aachen by the papal
legate, and Henry made his submission. But Conrad, like Lothair, felt
himself insecure with so powerful a subject. Accordingly he took away
from him the duchy of Saxony, and gave it to the heir of the old dukes
in the female line. When Henry refused to accept the decision Conrad
put him to the ban of the Empire and deprived him of Bavaria also,
which he proceeded to confer upon a relative of his own. But Conrad's
obvious attempt to advance his own family offended the nobles, and the
death of Henry the Proud in 1139 opened the way for a compromise.
Saxony was made over to Henry's youthful son, known in history as
Henry the Lion, while Bavaria was to be the wedding portion of Henry
the Proud's widow if she married Conrad's relative, who was already
Margrave of Austria.

[Sidenote: Arnold of Brescia.]

But despite this elimination of all rivals Conrad was so much occupied
elsewhere that he never managed to reach Italy. And yet his presence
there was eagerly desired. It was under the guidance of their bishops
that the cities of Lombardy had freed themselves from subjection to
the feudal nobles. But with the growth of wealth they resented the
patronage of the bishops and were inclined to listen to those who
denounced the temporal possessions of the Church. The movement spread
to Rome. Here the municipality still existed in name, but it was quite
overlaid by the papal prefect and the feudal nobles of the Campagna;
and the Roman people had no means of increasing their wealth by the
agriculture or the commerce which was open to the cities of Tuscany or
Lombardy. A leader was found in Arnold of Brescia (1138). He seems to
have been a pupil of Abailard, who devoted himself to practical
reforms. He began in his native Lombardy to advocate apostolic poverty
as a remedy for the acknowledged evils of the Church. Condemned by the
second Lateran Council (1139), he retired to France, and in 1140 stood
by the side of Abailard at the Council of Sens. After Abailard's
condemnation Arnold took refuge at Zurich, where, despite the
denunciations of Bernard, he found protection from the papal legate,
who had been a fellow-pupil of Abailard. Arnold returned to Italy in
1145, and was absolved by the Pope.

[Sidenote: The Roman Republic.]

The course of affairs in Rome brought him once more to the front. In
1143 Innocent II had offended the Romans, who in revenge proclaimed a
republic with a popularly elected senate and a patrician in place of
the papal prefect. Innocent died (September, 1143); his successor
survived him by less than six months, and the next Pope, Lucius II,
was killed in attempting to get possession of the Capitol, which was
the seat of the new government. The choice of the Cardinals now fell
upon the abbot of a small monastery in the neighbourhood of Rome, who
took the title of Eugenius III (1145-53). He was a pupil of Bernard,
who feared for the appointment of a man of such simplicity and
inexperience. But Eugenius developed an unexpected capacity, and
forced the Romans to recognise for a time his prefect and his
suzerainty. But Arnold's presence in Rome was an obstacle to permanent
peace. Both Arnold and Bernard eagerly sought the same end--the
purification of the Church. But in Bernard's eyes Arnold's connection
with Abailard convicted him of heresy, and his doctrine of apostolic
poverty was construed by the ascetic abbot of the strict Cistercian
Order as an attack upon the influence under cover of the wealth of the
Church. Nor was Arnold a republican in the ordinary sense. He expelled
the Pope and organised, under the name of the Equestrian order, a
militia of the lesser nobles and the more substantial burgesses, such
as existed in the cities of Lombardy. But he did not desire to
repudiate the Emperor; and at his instigation the Romans summoned
Conrad to their aid and to accept the imperial crown at their hands.
Eugenius spent almost his whole pontificate in exile; his successor,
Anastasius IV, during a short reign, accepted the republic, but
Hadrian IV (1154-9) took the first excuse for boldly placing the city
for the first time under an interdict. The consequent cessation of
pilgrims during Holy Week and the loss of their offerings caused the
fickle Romans to expel their champion, and Arnold wandered about until
a few months later Frederick Barbarossa sacrificed him to the renewed
alliance of Empire and Papacy (1154).

[Sidenote: The second Crusade.]

Conrad III, then, never was crowned Emperor. It was no fault of his
that he never visited Rome. Bernard's influence caused him to postpone
his immediate duties for a work which every Christian of the time
regarded as of paramount importance. The first Crusade had met with a
measure of success only because the Mohammedan powers were divided.
The Crusaders were organised into the kingdom of Jerusalem and the
principalities of Tripoli, Antioch, and Edessa. But they quarrelled
incessantly. Meanwhile Imad-ed-din Zangi, the Atabek or Sultan of
Mosul on the Tigris, extended his arms over all Mesopotamia and
Northern Syria, and in 1144 he conquered the Latin principality of
Edessa. The whole of Europe was shocked at the disaster. Pope Eugenius
delegated to Bernard the task of preaching a new crusade. The young
King, Louis VII of France, had already taken the Crusader's vow, but
so far the earnest entreaty of his minister, Suger, Abbot of St.
Denys, had kept him from his purpose. But at the Council of Vezelai in
1146 the eloquence of Bernard bore down all considerations of
prudence. Conrad III was much harder to persuade, for he felt the need
of his presence at home. But Bernard was not to be denied, and by
working upon Conrad's feelings at the moment of the celebration of the
Mass he entirely overcame the better judgment of the German King.

Events proved in every way the mischievous nature of Bernard's
influence. The Crusade was a total failure. Only a small remnant of
the force which followed either King reached Palestine; and the only
offensive operation undertaken--an attack upon Damascus--had to be
abandoned. Nothing had been done to break the growing power of Zangi's
son, Noureddin, the uncle and predecessor of the great Saladin.

[Sidenote: The divorce of Louis VII.]

The effects were scarcely less disastrous in Western Europe. Suger
supplied Louis with money and defended his throne against plots, and
ultimately persuaded him to return to France. But during the Crusade
Louis and his wife Eleanor, the daughter and heiress of William X of
Aquitaine, had quarrelled bitterly. Louis had disgusted his
high-spirited wife by behaving more like a pilgrim than a warrior;
while Eleanor had attempted to divert the French troops to the aid of
her uncle, Raymond of Antioch. Suger alone preserved some sort of
harmony between the ill-assorted pair; but he died in 1151, and
Bernard, who had never approved of the marriage on canonical grounds,
lent his support to Louis' desire for a declaration of its invalidity,
though Louis and Eleanor had been married for thirteen years and there
were two daughters. The dissolution of the marriage was pronounced by
an ecclesiastical Council in 1152, and in the same year Eleanor,
taking with her all her extensive lands, married the young Henry of
Anjou and Normandy, who two years later became King of England.

[Sidenote: Bernard as defender of the Faith.]

Bernard and Suger were friends; but while the predominant work of
Suger's life had been the supremacy of the House of Capet, it is vain
to attempt to trace in Bernard any prejudice in favour of a growing
French nationality. He represents the cosmopolitan Church of the
Middle Ages; and his career is a supreme instance of the power which
results from an absolutely single-minded devotion to a lofty cause. In
masterful vehemence he challenges comparison with Hildebrand; but
unlike the Pope, he never identified the Church with his own
interests. He steadfastly refused all offers of advancement for
himself, although he did not dissuade his own monks from accepting
preferment. He would have preferred to live out his life as the
obscure head of a poor and secluded community; and even if the
political condition of the time had not brought constant appeals for
help to him, his duty to the Church would have made him a public
character. For the work of his life which was perhaps most congenial
to him was the defence of the doctrine of the Church against heretical
teachers. He has been called "the last of the Fathers," and his whole
conception and methods were those of the great Christian writers of
the early centuries. To the great saint self-discipline through
obedience to the ordinances of the Church was the cure for all evil
suggestions of the human heart; while as for the intellect, its duty
was to believe the revealed faith as propounded by the authorities of
the Church. Like St. Augustine, Bernard did not despise learning; but
he would confine the term to the study of religion. Secular learning
was for the most part not only a waste of precious time, but an actual
snare of the devil. Thus Bernard stood for all that was most
uncompromising in the theological attitude of the time. Speculative
discussion was an abomination; for the end of conversation was
spiritual edification, not the advancement of knowledge; and what to
strong minds might be mental gymnastics, in the case of weaker
brethren caused the undermining of their faith. Against heretics of
the commoner sort, such as the Petrobrusians, who impugned the whole
system of the Church and appealed to the mere words of Scripture,
there was only one line to be taken. But Bernard was no persecutor.
During his preaching of the Crusade a monk perverted the popular
excitement to an attack upon the Jews in the cities of the Rhineland:
Bernard peremptorily interfered and crushed the rival preacher.
Similarly with heretics. He trusted to his preaching--attested, as it
was commonly supposed, by miracles--to convince the people; while the
leaders when captured were subjected to monastic discipline.

[Sidenote: Abailard.]

But such popular forms of unbelief were merely the outcome of the
speculations of subtler minds, which it was necessary to stop at the
fountain-head. The arch-heretic of the time was Peter Abailard, who
routed in succession two great teachers--William of Champeaux in
dialectic in the great cathedral school of Paris, and Anselm of Laon,
a pupil of Anselm of Canterbury, in theology. He gathered round him on
the Mount of Ste. Geneviève, just outside Paris, a large band of
students, in whom he inculcated his rationalistic methods. For his was
a definite attempt to obtain by reason a basis for his faith. How
could such teaching be allowed to continue unreproved by Bernard, who
held that the sole office of the reason was to lead the mind astray?
But in the height of his fame Abailard, still quite young, loved the
beautiful and erudite Heloise. He abused her trust, and when she in
her infatuation for his genius refused to monopolise for herself by
marriage the talents which were for the service of the world, she and
he both entered the monastic life. Abailard passed through several
phases of this--a monk at St. Denys; a hermit gradually gathering a
band of admirers round a church which they built and he dedicated to
the Third Person of the Trinity, the Paraclete; and finally the abbot
of a poor monastery in his own native Brittany. While an inmate of St.
Denys a work of his on the Trinity was condemned at a Council at
Soissons presided over by the papal legate (1121). It was twenty years
before he was again subjected to the censures of the Church. But,
meanwhile, he had more than once fallen foul of Bernard, and had not
hesitated to flout with his gibes the one man before whom the whole of
Catholic Europe bent in awestruck reverence. But the time came when
Bernard, noting the spread of the Petrobrusian heresy, determined to
strike at the source of these errors. He appealed for assistance to
the friends of orthodoxy from the Pope downwards. Abailard determined
to anticipate attack and desired to be heard before an assembly to be
held at Sens (1140). Bernard reluctantly consented to take part in a
public controversy. But when they met, Abailard, probably feeling
himself surrounded by an unsympathetic audience, suddenly refused to
speak and appealed to the Pope. On his way to Rome he fell ill at
Cluny, where the saintly abbot, Peter the Venerable, received him as a
monk. He made a confession which chiefly amounted to a regret that he
had used words open to misconstruction, and he died in 1142 the inmate
of a Cluniac house.

Bernard remained upon the alert, intent on checking any further spread
of the teaching of Abailard's followers. But he had pushed matters to
an extreme, and there were many in high place who resented his efforts
to dictate the doctrine of the Church. Thus Gilbert de la Porrée,
Bishop of Poictiers, a pupil of Abailard, was accused at the Council
of Rheims (1148) of erroneous doctrines regarding the being of God and
the Sacraments. Bernard tried to use his influence over Pope Eugenius
in order to procure the bishop's condemnation, and stirred up the
French clergy to assist him. The Cardinals addressed an indignant
remonstrance to the Pope, pointing out that as he owed his elevation
from a private position to the papacy to them, he belonged to them
rather than to himself, that he was allowing private friendship to
interfere with public duty, and that "that abbot of yours" and the
Gallican Church were usurping the function of the See of Rome. Bernard
had to explain away the action of his party, and the Council contented
itself with exacting from the accused a general agreement with the
faith of the Roman Church, and this was represented by Gilbert's
friends as a triumph.

Bernard's death restored the leadership of Christendom to the official
head, and the removal of several others of the chief actors of the
time opened the way not only for new men, but for the emergence of new
questions. In 1152 Conrad III ended his well-intentioned but somewhat
ineffectual reign. In 1153 Pope Eugenius died at Rome, to which he had
at length been restored a few months previously. Six weeks later St.
Bernard followed him to the grave. It was not long before the papal
act ratified the general opinion of Christendom, and in 1174 Alexander
III placed his name among those which the Church desired to have in
everlasting remembrance.




CHAPTER VII

THE SCHOOLMEN AND THEOLOGY


[Sidenote: Secular Studies.]

Mediaeval learning, whether sacred or secular, was founded upon
authority. The Scholasticus, who took the place of the ancient
Grammaticus, was not an investigator, but merely an interpreter. On
the one side the books of the sacred Scriptures as interpreted by the
Fathers were the rule of faith; on the other side as the guide of
reason stood the works of the Philosopher, as Aristotle was called in
the Middle Ages. But until the thirteenth century few of his works
were known, and those only in Latin translations. Here were the
materials, slight enough, on which hung future development. The
secular knowledge taught in the ordinary schools was that represented
by the division of the Seven Arts into the elementary Trivium of
Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, followed by the Quadrivium of Music,
Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy. The scope of the Trivium was much
wider than the terms denote. Thus Grammar included the study of the
classical Latin authors, which never entirely ceased; Rhetoric
comprised the practice of composition in prose and verse, and even a
knowledge of the elements of Roman Law; Dialectic or Logic became the
centre of the whole secular education, because it was the only
intellectual exercise which was supposed to be independent of pagan
writers. In the Quadrivium--the scientific education of the
time--Arithmetic and Astronomy were taught for the purpose of
calculating the times of the Christian festivals; Music consisted
chiefly of the rules of plain-song. It was the subjects of the
Quadrivium which were subsequently enlarged in scope by the
discoveries of the twelfth century. Apart from these subjects little
attempt was made at a systematic training in theology. In so far as
any such existed it was purely doctrinal, and aimed merely at enabling
those in Holy Orders to read the Bible and the Fathers for themselves
and to expound them to others.

[Sidenote: Scholasticism.]

Now the speculative intellect trained in dialectic had no material to
work upon save what could be got from the Scriptures, the Fathers, and
the dogmas of the Church; and Scholasticism is the name given to the
attempt to apply the processes of logic to the systematisation and the
interpretation of the Catholic faith. The movement was one which,
narrow as it seems to us, yet made for ultimate freedom of human
thought; for it meant the exercise of the intellect on matters which
for long were regarded as beyond the reach of rationalistic
explanation. There was much difference of opinion among the thinkers
as to the limits to be assigned to such freedom of speculation on the
mysteries of the faith, some starting from the standpoint of idealists
and endeavouring to avoid the logical consequences of their
speculations; while others, adopting so far as possible a position of
pure empiricism, set tradition at defiance, and hoped by the aid of
reason to reach the conclusions of divine revelation.

[Sidenote: Realists and Nominalists.]

The philosophical problem to which the mediæval thinkers addressed
themselves is one that it is essential to the progress of human
thought to solve. Whence do we derive general notions (Universals, as
they were called), and do they correspond to anything which actually
exists? Thus for the purpose of classifying our knowledge we use
certain terms, such as genera, species, and others more technical. Do
these in reality exist independently of particular individuals or
substances? One school of philosophers, basing their reasoning upon
Plato, maintained that such general ideas had a real existence of
their own, and hence gained the name of Realists. But another school,
who took Aristotle as their champion, held that reality can be
asserted of the individual alone, that there is nothing real in the
general idea except the name by which it is designated; while some of
these Nominalists, as they came to be called, even proclaimed that the
parts of an individual whole were mere words, and could not be
considered as having an existence of their own. With the application
of these definitions to theological dogmas we reach the beginning of
Scholastic Theology. Here both sides were soon landed in difficulties.
Nominalism, in its denial of reality to general notions, undermined
the Catholic idea of the Church: in its recognition of none except
individuals it destroyed the whole conception of the solidarity of
original sin; while those of its professors who allowed no existence
of their own to the parts of an individual whole, resolved the Trinity
into three Gods. On the other hand, the danger of Realism was that,
since individuals were regarded merely as forms or modes of some
general idea, these philosophers were inclined to make no distinction
between individuals and to fall into pantheism. As a result, the
personality of man, and with it the immortality of the soul,
disappeared, and even the personality of God threatened to lose itself
in the universe which He had created. These tendencies will be clear
from a short account of the chief schoolmen or writers on Scholastic
Philosophy.

[Sidenote: Roscelin and Anselm.]

The first great names are those of Roscelin and Anselm of Canterbury.
Roscelin (between 1050 and 1125), primarily a dialectician, rigidly
applied his logic to theological dogmas. If we may judge from the
accounts of his opponents, Anselm and Abailard, he took up a position
of extreme individualism and denied reality alike to a whole and to
the parts of which any whole is commonly said to be composed. The
application of this principle to the doctrine of the Trinity landed
him in tritheism, and he did not shrink from the reproach. Roscelin, a
theologian by accident, was answered by Anselm who was primarily a
theologian, and a dialectician by accident. If Roscelin was the
founder of Nominalism Anselm identified Realism with the doctrine of
the Church. But Anselm's Realism is not the result of independent
thought. In his methods he has been rightly styled the "last of the
Fathers." His keynote was Belief in the Christian faith as the road to
understanding it. Thus his object was to give to the dogmas accepted
by the Church a philosophical demonstration. To him Realism was the
orthodox philosophical doctrine because it was the one most in harmony
with Christian theology. He applied philosophical arguments to the
explanation of those tenets of the faith which later scholastic
writers placed among the mysteries to be accepted without question.

[Sidenote: Abailard.]

The reputed founder of definite Realism was William of Champeaux
(1060-1121), a pupil of Roscelin himself, a teacher at Paris, and
ultimately Bishop of Chalons. By the account of his enemy Abailard, he
held an uncompromising Realism which maintained that the Universal was
a substance or thing which was present in its entirety in each
individual. It was the presence of such crude Realism as this which
gave his opportunity to the greatest teacher of this early period of
Scholasticism, Peter Abailard (1079-1142). A pupil of both Roscelin
and William of Champeaux--the two extremes of Nominalism and
Realism--he aimed in his teaching at arriving at a _via media_ to
which subsequent writers have given the name Conceptualism. According
to him the individual is the only true substance, and the genus is
that which is asserted of a number of individuals; it is therefore a
name used as a sign--a concept, although he does not use the word.
Thus he does not condemn the Realistic theory borrowed from Plato, of
Universals as having an existence of their own; he regards them as
ideas or exemplars which existed in the divine mind before the
creation of things. But he opposes the tendency in Realism to treat as
identical the qualities which resemble each other in different
individuals, since that abolishes the personality of the individual
which to him is the only reality. Like Roscelin he did not hesitate to
apply his dialectic to theology. Here, while repudiating the tritheism
of his master, he practically reproduced the old heresy of Sabellius
which reduced the Trinity to three aspects or attributes of the Divine
Being--power, wisdom, and love. "A doctrine is to be believed," he
held, "not because God has said it, but because we are convinced by
reason that it is so." His whole attitude was that of the free, if
reverent, enquirer. "By doubt," he says, "we come to enquiry; by
enquiry we reach the truth." His book _Sic et Non_, a collection
of conflicting opinions of the Christian Fathers on the chief tenets
of the faith, was to be the first step towards arriving at the truth.

[Sidenote: Mysticism.]

He was condemned twice--his doctrine of the Trinity at Soissons in
1121, his whole position at Sens in 1141. The leaders of orthodoxy met
him not with argument but with a demand for recantation. St. Norbert
during the early part of his life, and St. Bernard both early and
late, pursued him with their enmity. Their objection was not to his
particular views, but to his whole attitude towards divine revelation;
and the conclusions in which the use of the scholastic method landed
its advocates perhaps justified the rigid theologians in the general
distrust of the exercise of reason on such subjects. St. Bernard did
not hesitate to attack even Gilbert de la Porrée, Bishop of Poictiers,
an avowed Realist, who attempted to explain the Trinity. In fact, St.
Bernard represents the reaction from Scholasticism, which took the
form of Mysticism, that is, the purely contemplative attitude towards
the verities of the Christian creed. In this he was followed with much
greater extravagance by the school which found its home in the great
abbey of St. Victor--Hugh (1097-1143), who formulated the sentence
"Knowledge is belief, and belief is love," and Richard (died in 1173),
who applied to the intuitive perception of spiritual things and to the
love of them the same dialectical and metaphysical methods as the
Schoolmen applied to reason.

[Sidenote: After Abailard.]

The results of Abailard's work are seen in two directions. His _Sic
et Non_ became the foundation of the work of the "Summists," who,
in the place of Abailard's purely critical work, occupied themselves
in systematising authorities with a view to the reconciliation of
their conflicting opinions. The greatest of these was Peter the
Lombard (died 1160), who became Bishop of Paris, and whose
_Sententiae_ was taken as the accredited text-book of theology
for the next three hundred years. With the Summists theology returned
to its attitude of unquestioning obedience to the conclusions of the
early Fathers. But in the second place, Abailard was indirectly
responsible for "the troubling of the Realistic waters," which
resulted in many modifications of the original position.

[Sidenote: Classical revival.]

A justification for the attitude of the Church towards the followers
of Abailard is to be found in the apparent exhaustion of the
speculative movement which had started at the end of the eleventh
century, and the consequent degeneracy of logical studies. It was a
result of this that in the second half of the twelfth century many of
the best minds were directing their energies into the channel of
classical learning which was to prepare the way for the next phase of
Scholasticism. Besides being a philosopher and a theologian, Abailard
was also a scholar well read in classical literature. The cathedral
school of Chartres, founded by Fulbert at the beginning of the
eleventh century, was the centre of this classical Renaissance, and it
rose to the height of its fame under Bernard Sylvester and his pupil,
William of Conches; while the greatest representative of this learning
was a pupil of William of Conches, John of Salisbury, an historian of
philosophy rather than himself a philosopher or theologian.

[Sidenote: Origin of universities.]

It was in the twelfth century and out of the cathedral schools that
the medieval universities arose. The monastic schools had spent their
intellectual force, and during this century they almost ceased to
educate the secular clergy. St. Anselm, when Abbot of Bec in Normandy,
was the last of the great monastic teachers. But it was not from the
school of Chartres but from that of Paris that the greatest University
of the Middle Ages took its origin. Paris was identified with the
scholastic studies of dialectic and theology, and it was the fame of
William of Champeaux, and still more that of Abailard, which drew
students in crowds to the cathedral school of Paris. But no university
immediately resulted. Indeed, the Guild of Masters, from which it
originated, is not traceable before 1170, and the four Nations and the
Rector did not exist until the following century. Its recognition as a
corporation dates from a bull of Innocent III about 1210. Its
development starts from the close of its struggle with the Chancellor
and cathedral school of Paris, in which contest it obtained the papal
help. Before the middle of the thirteenth century the University had
acquired its full constitution. But its great fame as a place of
education dates from the teaching of the two great Dominicans,
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas in the convent of their Order in
Paris during the middle years of the century. This new outburst of
philosophical studies was due to the recovery of many hitherto unknown
works of Aristotle, and as a consequence classical studies were
completely neglected and Chartres was deserted for Paris.

[Sidenote: Aristotle in the East.]

We have seen that the contemporaries of Abailard knew none but
Aristotle's logical works, and these only in part and in Latin
translations. So far nothing had interfered with the development of
thought along "purely Western, purely Latin, purely Christian" lines.
Churchmen who did not disapprove of dialectic altogether, had accepted
and used Aristotle so far as they understood what they had of his
works. Heretics there had been, but hitherto none had questioned the
authority of the Bible or the Church. Meanwhile in the east a
completer knowledge of Aristotle's works had been communicated by the
Nestorian Christians to their Mohammedan masters. Greek books were
translated into Arabic, and Arabian philosophy, already monotheistic,
became permeated with Aristotelian ideas. Moreover, the union of
philosophical and medical studies among the Arabs caused them to
attach a special value to Aristotle's treatises on natural science. In
Spain the Arabs handed on their knowledge of Aristotle to the Jews,
and it was from the Jews of Andalusia, Marseilles, and Montpellier
that the works of the Greek philosopher and his Arabian commentators
became known in the west.

[Sidenote: Revival in the west.]

By the middle of the twelfth century the chief of these works--texts,
paraphrases, commentaries--had, at the instance of Raymond, Archbishop
of Toledo, been rendered into Latin by Archdeacon Dominic Gondisalvi,
assisted by a band of translators. But the translations of Aristotle's
own works were not from the original Greek, but from the Arabic, which
laid stress upon the most anti-Christian side of Aristotle's thought,
such as the eternity of the world and the denial of immortality. The
result was an outbreak of heretical speculation along pantheistic
lines. Swift steps were taken: the heretics were hunted down, and in
1209 the Council of Paris forbade the study of Aristotle's own works
or those of his commentators which dealt with natural philosophy;
while in 1215 the statutes of the University renewed the prohibition.
But such prohibition did not include any of the logical works; and in
1231 a bull of Gregory IX only excepted any of Aristotle's works until
they had been examined and purged of all heresy. Finally, in 1254, a
statute of the University actually prescribed nearly all the works of
Aristotle, including even the most suspected, as text-books for the
lectures. Meanwhile fresh translations were made from the Arabic by
Michael Scot and others at the instance of Frederick II, so that by
1225 the whole body of his works was to be found in Latin form.
Further still, the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204 had
brought back to the west a knowledge of a large part of Aristotle's
writings in their original form. Translations were now made into Latin
straight from the Greek; and Thomas Aquinas, seconded by Pope Urban
IV, took especial pains to encourage such scholarship.

[Sidenote: The later Scholasticism.]

By this medium there was developed the great system of orthodox
Aristotelianism which was the form taken by Scholasticism in the later
Middle Ages. This was the work of the Friars, who, for the purpose of
giving to their own students the best procurable training in theology,
established houses of residence in Paris and elsewhere. The quarrels
between the University of Paris and the municipality in the first half
of the thirteenth century gave their opportunity to the Friars, and
even after the settlement of the quarrels they remained and became
formidable rivals to the teachers drawn from the secular clergy. It
was only in 1255 that, after a severe struggle, the University was
forced by a bull of Alexander IV to admit the Friars to its
privileges, although it succeeded in imposing upon them an oath of
obedience to its statutes.

[Sidenote: The change of position.]

It was the Franciscans who began this new intellectual movement in the
persons of the Englishman, Alexander of Hales (died 1245), who was the
first to be able to use the whole of the Aristotelian writings, and
his pupil, the mystic Bonaventura (died 1274). But the scholastic
philosophy as it is taught to this day was the work of the two great
Dominicans, Albert of Bollstädt, a Suabian, known as Albertus Magnus
(1193-1280), and his even greater pupil, Thomas of Aquino, an Italian
(1227-74). The endeavour of these writers was to take over into the
service of the Church the whole Aristotelian philosophy. It was a
consequence of this that the old question of the nature of Universals
was not so all-important, or that at any rate it ceased to be treated
from a purely logical standpoint. The great Dominicans were very
moderate Realists; but they treated Logic as only one among a number
of subjects. Albert wrote works which in print fill twenty-one folio
volumes (whence his name Magnus); but his fame has been somewhat
obscured by the more methodical, if almost equally voluminous (in
seventeen folio volumes) works of his successor. The result of their
labours was a wonderfully complete harmonisation of philosophy and
theology as these subjects were understood by their respective
champions. This was brought about by the use of two methods. In the
first place, the works of Aristotle on the one side, and the Bible and
the writings of the Fathers on the other side, were treated as of
equal authority in their respective spheres The ingenuity of the
theologians was to be employed in harmonising them. It is, in fact,
only from this period that "the Scholastic Philosophy became
distinguished by that servile deference to authority" which we
ordinarily attribute to it.

[Sidenote: Reason and faith.]

But, in the second place, any such harmonisation could only be carried
out by some demarcation of territory. The earlier orthodox writers
like Anselm, as we have seen, did not hesitate to attempt a
philosophical explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity. But
Aristotle and his Arabian commentators were monotheistic, and
consequently the reconciliation between the Aristotelian philosophy
and the Christian faith could only be effected by distinguishing
between natural and revealed religion. The truths of the former were
demonstrable by reason, of which Aristotle was the supreme guide. The
truths of the latter were mysteries to be accepted on an equally good
though different authority. By such methods these later schoolmen
excepted and accepted the doctrines of the Trinity and the
Incarnation, though they allowed the doctrine of the existence of God
to be susceptible of logical proof. But notwithstanding these
exceptions, the teaching of the Dominicans was a wonderful attempt to
abolish the inevitable dualism between faith and reason.

[Sidenote: Thomists and Scotists.]

The history of Scholasticism after Thomas Aquinas is largely occupied
by an account of the quarrel between the rival schools of Thomists and
Scotists. The great teacher of the generation after St. Thomas was a
Franciscan, Duns Scotus, the "Subtle Doctor," who taught at Oxford and
Paris and died in 1308. His teaching differed in two ways from that of
his Dominican predecessor. In the first place he excepted a larger
number of theological doctrines as not being capable of philosophic
proof, so that his teaching tended to bring back and to emphasise the
dualism between faith and reason. It is for this reason that his
system has been considered as the beginning of the decline of
Scholasticism. In the second place, the real quarrel between Thomists
and Scotists centred round the question of the freedom of the will.
The followers of St. Thomas maintained that although the will is to
some extent subordinate to the reason, yet it is free to determine its
own course of action after a process of rational comparison, by
contrast with the animals which act on the impulse of the moment. The
Scotists, on the other hand, taught that what is called the will is
merely a name for the possibility of determining without motive in
either of two opposite directions. The importance of this difference
of view consisted in this--that whereas the Thomists held that God
subjects His will to a rational determination and therefore commands
what is good because it is good, the Scotist taught that good is so
because God wills it; if He chose to will the exact opposite, that
would be equally good--in other words, he attributed to God an
entirely arbitrary will. The two greatest disciples of St. Thomas were
Dante and the Franciscan Roger Bacon (1214-92), the latter of whom
fell into disfavour with the superiors of his own Order in consequence
of his scientific studies, and spent many years at the end of his life
in prison.

[Sidenote: Results of Scholasticism.]

The Scholastic philosophy failed to justify the doctrines of the
Church to a rapidly expanding world. But it is unjust and ungrateful
to stigmatise its results as barren. In the first place it gave a most
valuable training in logical method to the keenest intellects of the
time. Moreover, the very attempt to establish the Christian faith by
argument was an unconscious homage to the supremacy of reason as the
ultimate guide; while, finally, in the philosophy of St. Thomas, all
nature was regarded as a fit subject for enquiry, and some of the
greatest Schoolmen, as we have just seen, were noted for their
investigations into natural phenomena.




CHAPTER VIII

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. (I)


[Sidenote: Hadrian IV.]

Hadrian IV is interesting to us as the only Englishman who has ever
sat upon the throne of St. Peter. As Nicholas Brakespeare he had led
the life of a wandering scholar, chiefly in France. He entered the
house of Canons Regular of St. Rufus near Avignon, and when Abbot of
this monastery attracted the attention of Eugenius III, who made him
Cardinal Bishop of Albano, and employed him as papal legate in freeing
the Church in Scandinavia from its dependence on the Bishops in
Germany. The prestige which he acquired in this work marked him out as
the successor of the shortlived Anastasius. Hadrian was a much abler
man than either of his predecessors, and, while fully conscious of the
difficulties of his office, he did not let these deter him from the
fulfilment of its obvious duties. We have seen how he drove Arnold
from Rome. He found, however, a new danger in Sicily. Roger's son
William, known as "the Bad," took up an attitude of hostility, and
when the Pope asserted his overlordship, William's troops overran the
Campagna. The Pope retorted by excommunicating his refractory vassals
and looking for help from the new German King.

[Sidenote: The new contest.]

With the accession of Frederick I the quarrel between Empire and
Papacy enters on a new phase. On the death of Henry V the natural
candidate of the papal party for the German throne was Henry the Black
Duke of Bavaria, the head of the family of Welf or Guelf. But he was
old, and related by marriage to the Hohenstaufen. He was, however,
bribed to acquiesce in the election of Lothair by the offer of
Lothair's daughter and heiress, Gertrude, as a wife for his son Henry
the Proud. This marriage determined the whole course of German
history. Henry the Proud obtained the duchy of Bavaria from his father
and the duchy of Saxony from his father-in-law. Thus, if the
Hohenstaufen family were the heirs of the Franconian Emperors, the
Guelfs became the representatives of the opposition to that line which
had centred in Saxony; and for the old contest between Papacy and
Empire, Saxon and Franconian, there was now substituted a dynastic
struggle between Weiblingen or Ghibelline and Guelf. The Guelfs were
the papal party only in the sense that, like the Saxons, they were in
opposition to the dynasty which occupied the German throne and claimed
the imperial title. The name, however, was extended to Italy: it was
applied to the collective opposition to the imperial power, and
therefore came to denote the friends of the Papacy.

[Sidenote: Frederick I.]

So far the contest had been confined to Germany; for Lothair had
sacrificed the claims of the empire to his own immediate interests,
while Conrad had never set foot in Italy after his accession to the
German throne. But as the attempt of Lothair to crush the acknowledged
Ghibelline leaders had been thwarted, so Conrad had failed to render
the Guelf harmless; and it was the pretensions of Henry the Lion, the
son of Henry the Proud, which determined Conrad to waive the claims of
his young son to the succession, and to recommend to the nobles the
choice of his nephew Frederick. But Conrad's nomination would have
been of little account. Frederick's claims were largely personal.
Already before he succeeded his father as Duke of Suabia he had shown
a combination of boldness in action with a conciliatory disposition
which marked him out as a leader and a statesman. To this was added,
as with Conrad, the prestige of a crusader; while in view of the
bitter rivalries of the last two reigns, it was a recommendation that
Frederick united in his person the two families whose strife had
divided the kingdom. Two years elapsed from his accession before
Frederick was free to set out for Italy. As the heir of the
Franconians his probable attitude was a matter of some anxiety at Rome
and in Italy generally. He was no enemy of the Church. His first act
after his coronation at Aachen (March 9th, 1152) was to announce his
accession to the Pope, who sent him a return message of goodwill. But
from the outset Frederick showed his intention of taking a high line,
for, in a disputed election at Magdeburg he obtained a party for a
nominee of his own who was already a bishop, and therefore ineligible,
and by virtue of the Concordat he decided for his own candidate in
defiance of all ecclesiastical laws, and straightway invested him with
the regalia.

[Sidenote: Imperial rights.]

Moreover, he had a high idea of the imperial mission. It was seventeen
years since any emperor had crossed the Alps; and it is difficult to
say whether the selfish policy of Lothair or the non-appearance of
Conrad must have been the more detrimental to the maintenance of
imperial interests. But during the first few months of his reign
appeals poured in from the Pope against his various enemies, from some
barons of Apulia against the great Roger of Sicily, from the citizens
of Lodi against the tyranny of Milan. These, together with the
ridiculous proffer of the imperial crown from the lately formed
Republic of Rome, seemed to open an opportunity for the successful
recovery of imperial rights. And, much as the Italians resented the
spasmodic interferences of the Emperor, they were proud of their
imperial connection. The commerce of the East, largely increased by
the Crusades, flowed into Western Europe chiefly through Italy. As a
result, the north and centre of the peninsula were studded with a
number of compact, self-governing communities inclined to resent any
outside interference, however lawful in origin. But the larger cities
were ever trying to group the smaller round them as satellites; and
the constant quarrels which resulted, often produced a party which was
ready to welcome the interposition of the Emperor. There was this
common ground, then, between these cities and the Papacy that, whereas
they found it equally necessary to invoke the aid of the Emperor as an
outside power against their foes, each was threatened by the assertion
of those imperial rights which it was the sole object of Frederick's
journey to Italy to assert.

But the results of Frederick's first expedition to Italy were of a
very doubtful kind. It is true that he was crowned at Rome, that he
asserted his imperial rights both positively in a great assembly on
the plains of Roncaglia and, as it were, negatively by the destruction
of three refractory towns, and that he got rid of Arnold of Brescia.
But, on the other hand, his assertion of power provoked hatred instead
of fear; and although, despite some sharp differences, he parted
amicably from the Pope, his return to Germany left Hadrian in an
impossible position. The republican party in Rome remained untouched:
William of Sicily was unsubdued.

[Sidenote: Papal defiance.]

Shortly after his accession Frederick had made an agreement with the
then Pope that neither should make peace with the Romans or the
Sicilian King without consent of the other. But now Hadrian, deserted,
accepted the Commune as the civil authority in Rome, and even came to
a treaty with William of Sicily, who engaged to hold all his lands as
a vassal of the Pope. Frederick was naturally angry at the repudiation
of the mutual obligation with regard to peace and of the imperial
suzerainty of William's duchy of Apulia. But he was too much occupied
in Germany to do more than protest. And before he was able to assert
his power in Italy again Pope Hadrian had, as it were, thrown down a
challenge to him. At the Diet of Besançon in Burgundy in 1157 two
papal envoys appeared with a complaint of Frederick's conduct in some
particular. The letter which they bore spoke of the late coronation of
the Emperor by the Pope and used the equivocal word _beneficia_
to describe the papal act. When the assembled nobles resented the
expression as implying a feudal relation between Pope and Emperor, the
papal representative, the Chancellor Roland, boldly asked, "From whom,
then, does the emperor hold the empire if not from the Pope?"
Frederick's authority alone saved the envoys from violence, and
Hadrian found himself obliged to explain away the objectionable
expressions.

[Sidenote: The breach.]

But the papal position had been formulated, and that before a German
assembly. The Pope was no longer a suppliant: he claimed to be more
than an equal. He had thrown down a challenge. Frederick proceeded to
pick it up. In fact, it was this second expedition of Frederick to
Italy which opened the long contest between Ghibelline and Guelf, a
contest only to be ended by the practical destruction of one or other
of the parties. It was the complaints of the other cities against the
oppression of Milan, which were the immediate cause of Frederick's
appearance in Italy in 1158; and the reduction of the Milanese was
followed by the holding of an assembly on the plain of Roncaglia, to
which Frederick summoned the most famous lawyers of Italy. By their
decision rights and powers were given to him, which placed all the
communes at his mercy. Moreover, these were not compatible with the
rights asserted since the time of Gregory VII by the papal supporters:
the regalia were given to the Emperor at the expense of ecclesiastical
as well as lay landowners and corporations. If the papal investiture
of Apulia infringed the imperial rights, the investiture of
Frederick's uncle, Welf VI of Bavaria, with the inheritance of the
Countess Matilda openly ignored the oft-repeated claim of the Papacy.
Neither side seemed to take especial pains to avoid a breach. The
acrimonious correspondence which ensued centred round the relations of
the Italian bishops to the Emperor, the respective claims of each
party to Rome, and the restoration of the Tuscan inheritance and all
the other lands which it claimed, to the Papacy. The excommunication
of the Emperor--the open declaration of war--was prevented by
Hadrian's death on September 1, 1159.

[Sidenote: The papal schism.]

A schism was inevitable. The majority of the Cardinals elected the
papal Chancellor Roland who had defied Frederick at Besançon, and who
would be likely to maintain Hadrian's high claims: he was afterwards
consecrated as Alexander III. The minority got possession of St.
Peter's and proclaimed an imperialist Cardinal as Victor IV. Neither
Pope could be consecrated or could remain in Rome: both appealed by
legates and letters for the recognition of Christendom. Frederick as
Emperor summoned both candidates to submit their claims to the
decision of a Council at Pavia. Alexander entirely repudiated the
Emperor's implied claim to be the arbiter of Christendom in a
spiritual matter, and found support in the fact that only fifty
bishops, almost entirely from Germany and Lombardy, assembled at
Pavia. The Council, of course, decided in favour of Victor IV.
Alexander, however, excommunicated the Emperor, and bent all his
energies to gain the adherence of France and England. Not only was he
successful in this, but he was also recognised by the Latins of the
East and the lessor Christian kingdoms. Victor IV's only supporter was
the Emperor.

Nor did Frederick gain anything by his successes in Lombardy. It cost
him seven months to subdue the little town of Crema; while it was
three years (1159-62) before Milan surrendered and was destroyed. It
is true, Alexander could no longer maintain himself in Italy, but in
1162 sought refuge in France. Frederick's attempts to drive him from
his new asylum failed. Alexander carried on skilful negotiations with
Louis VII of France and Henry II of England; and at Whitsuntide, 1163,
a Council assembled at Tours, composed of a large number of cardinals,
bishops, and clergy, and acknowledged Alexander with the utmost
solemnity, while at the joint invitation of the two Kings the Pope
took up his abode at the city of Sens.

[Sidenote: Fredericks's chance.]

The death of the anti-Pope was a further blow to Frederick's cause,
for the action of his representative in Italy committed him to
recognise a second anti-Pope and laid him open to the accusation of
desiring to perpetuate the schism. It seemed, however, as if his
chance had come when the quarrel between Henry II and Thomas Becket
drove the English Archbishop to take refuge with the Pope at Sens.
Alexander was in a difficulty. Henry was perhaps the most powerful
monarch in Europe, and his support was of the utmost importance to the
Pope. But the rights for which Thomas was contending were part of the
rights which Alexander himself was claiming against the Emperor--the
right of the Church to manage her own concerns without lay
interference. While, therefore, prudence forbade him to throw down a
distinct challenge to the English King, it was impossible that he
should comply with Henry's demand for the condemnation of the
refractory Archbishop. Frederick took advantage of Henry's ill-humour
to propose a marriage alliance between the royal houses and to sound
Henry on the question of a change of alliance. The marriage thus
arranged--of Frederick's cousin, Henry the Lion, to Henry II's
daughter--ultimately took place. But both clergy and people in England
were for the most part in sympathy with Becket and unwilling to
prolong the schism. The altars used by Frederick's envoys in England
were purified after their departure; and although Henry's
representatives appeared at the Diet of Würzburg in May, 1165, and
even took an oath to acknowledge the anti-Pope, the English King did
not dare to ratify their action.

[Sidenote: Frederick's momentary triumph.]

Nor was this the only time when success seemed possible to Frederick.
This failure to move the English allegiance and the defection of a
number even of the German clergy emboldened Alexander to assume the
aggressive, and he ventured to leave France and to take up his abode
at Rome. (December, 1165.) Again the discontents of Lombardy were the
occasion for the Emperor's visit. In the autumn of 1166 he crossed the
Alps, and after spending some months in Lombardy he forced an entrance
into Rome, enthroned his own Pope in St. Peter's, and himself wore his
imperial crown. Frederick refused to treat with Alexander except on
the basis of the resignation of both existing Popes and the election
of a third. Alexander's position was unbearable and he fled to
Benevento. The Romans accepted Frederick as their lord. The Emperor's
triumph seemed complete: Charlemagne's successor had indeed arrived.
But the triumph was short-lived. The summer pestilence, which so often
attacked a German army in Italy, fell more fiercely than ever before.
Frederick fled northwards before it, and found so much hostility in
Lombardy that it was only by bypaths and in disguise that he was able
to make his way out of Italy.

[Sidenote: The Lombard League.]

It was seven years (1167-74) before Frederick was able to return to
Italy; and although by that time his position in Germany was
unquestioned and the mutual relations of Louis VII and Henry II
precluded any likelihood of interference from France or England, the
Italian foes of the Emperor had gathered strength and combined their
forces. Chief among these were the cities of Lombardy. Divided as they
were into imperialist and anti-imperialist, or, to use the terms
coming into vogue, Ghibelline and Guelf, they at first followed no
common policy. Milan had taken the lead of the anti-imperialists.
After the destruction of Milan a league formed by the cities of the
Veronese March helped to force Frederick for a time to abandon his
designs upon Italy (1164). During his expedition of 1166-7 a Lombard
League sprang up and coalesced with the Veronese League; a common
organisation was set up, Milan was restored, many of the staunchest
imperial towns were forced to become members, and the crowning work of
the League was the foundation of a common stronghold which in
compliment to the Pope was named Alessandria.

[Sidenote: Alliance with the Pope.]

The real danger to the Emperor came from alliance of this League with
the Pope. The Lombard cities were the Pope's natural enemies. Some of
them were the rivals of Rome--Pavia as the capital of the kingdom of
Italy; Milan the quondam champion of the cause of the married clergy;
Ravenna as the rival patriarchate in Italy. Strong local feeling made
them resent all outside interference, of Pope no less than of Emperor.

It was among these free, self-governing communities that heresy found
its chief adherents. But for the moment the common danger from the
Emperor overshadowed all other differences. The old imperial rights
which Frederick designed to recover included the power of appointing
local officers whether consuls or bishops. Alone, neither Pope nor
Lombard cities could look for success. In 1162, when all the cities
fell before Frederick, Alexander remained practically untouched. But
although his position was immensely strengthened since then,
experience had shown that the Pope could not hold his own in Italy or
Rome without the help of some secular power. At the same time, in
Europe at large he had proved a most potent force, since he wielded
weapons which were independent of time and place for their action, and
such as the most powerful secular prince had found it impossible to
ignore. It was under direct encouragement from Alexander that the
cities concluded their League in 1167. Before the next imperial
expedition it had become all-powerful in Northern Italy; not only the
chief Ghibelline cities, including Pavia itself, had joined, but even
the remaining feudal nobles had found it impossible to stand outside.

[Sidenote: Submission of Henry II.]

Nor was this Alexander's only triumph. So long as Archbishop Thomas
Becket remained unreconciled to Henry II, the English King had done
all in his power to influence Alexander. A marriage alliance was
carried out between the royal families of England and Sicily, solely
with the object on Henry's side of neutralising one of the chief papal
supporters, and Henry scattered his bribes among the Lombard cities
with the same intent. But the reconciliation to which the attitude of
his own people forced Henry in 1170 robbed him of all excuse for
harassing the Pope, and the murder of the Archbishop by four of the
King's knights in Canterbury Cathedral isolated Henry and forced him
to a humiliating treaty with Alexander.

[Sidenote: Final failure of Frederick.]

Frederick entered Italy in 1174 with small chance of success, for his
army was composed of mercenaries, and many of the leading German
nobles, notably his cousin Henry the Lion, refused to accompany him.
He exhausted all the resources of his military art in a vain attempt
to take the new fortress of Alessandria. The jealousies within the
League made negotiations possible, but these broke down because
Frederick refused to recognise Alessandria as a member of the League
or to include Pope Alexander in any peace made with the cities. But
the end was at hand. When at length the forces met at Legnano on May
29, 1176, the militia of the League won a decisive victory. All
possibility of direct coercion was gone, and Frederick was forced to
consider seriously a change of policy. His only chance of good terms
lay in dividing his enemies. He applied to Alexander, who refused to
separate his cause from that of his allies, though he allowed that the
terms might be arranged in secret. This was done. Frederick undertook
to recognise Alexander and to restore all the papal possessions. For
the allies, peace would be made with Sicily for fifteen years; the
Lombards should have a truce for six years. After much negotiation
Venice was agreed upon for a general congress of all the parties to
the contest, and Frederick was forced to promise that he would not
enter the city without the Pope's consent. Up to the last he hoped
that mutual suspicion would divide his allies. But the terms of peace
were agreed upon among the allies on the bases already mentioned; then
Frederick was admitted into Venice, and a dramatic reconciliation
between Pope and Emperor was enacted (July 25, 1177). Frederick
returned to Germany at the end of the year.

[Sidenote: Triumph of Alexander.]

The schism was over, the anti-Pope submitted, and Alexander's
conciliatory policy opened the way for his return to Rome. The Pope
signalised the close of the long schism of eighteen years by gathering
in 1179 a General Council, distinguished as the Third Lateran Council,
to which came nearly a thousand ecclesiastics from various parts of
Christendom. The chief canon promulgated placed the papal election
exclusively in the hands of the cardinals, and ordained that a
two-thirds majority of the whole College should suffice for a valid
election. During the rest of his reign Alexander was occupied in
mediating between Henry II and his sons, and between Henry and Louis
of France. He died, again an exile from Rome, on August 30, 1181. His
long pontificate is one of the most eventful in papal history. He was
matched against an opponent who not only aimed at reviving the
imperial claims, but was himself a man of imperial character. The
difficulties of the situation might have seemed overwhelming. Where
Gregory VII failed Alexander succeeded. Tact, not force, was the
quality required. The infinite patience and long tenacity of Alexander
met their reward. The Emperor was forced to violate the solemn oath he
had sworn at Wurzburg in 1165, never to acknowledge Alexander or his
successors, and never to seek absolution from this oath. The Pope had
successfully asserted his claim to the civil government of Rome and to
many other purely temporal possessions.

[Sidenote: Frederick's new move.]

Once more Frederick crossed the Alps. He had crushed his formidable
cousin, Henry the Lion, and banished him from Germany; he had turned
the truce with the Lombards into the Peace of Constance by acquiescing
in the loss of the imperial rights for which he had fought. His eldest
son, Henry, had been crowned King of Germany as long ago as 1168.
Frederick was now anxious to secure for him the succession to the
imperial title, and hoped to find the Pope willing to crown Henry as
his father's colleague in the Empire. But although Lucius III,
Alexander's successor (1181-5), had been driven from Rome, and was
dependent on the Emperor's help, it was impossible for him or for any
Pope to agree to Frederick's wish. Two emperors at once were a
manifest absurdity, and Frederick was not likely to accept the Pope's
suggestion that he should resign in favour of his son. Moreover, there
lay between Pope and Emperor the still unsettled question of the
inheritance of the Countess Matilda. It was clear that the quarrel
must shortly be renewed. By the nature of the respective claims there
could never be more than a temporary truce. Lucius died, but his
successor, Urban III, was yet more irreconcilable. Meanwhile Frederick
had resolved on an act which would make the breach between Papacy and
Empire irreparable. The King of Sicily was William II "the Good." His
marriage to a daughter of Henry II of England (1177) had proved
childless, and the succession seemed likely to fall to Constance,
daughter of King Roger and aunt of the reigning King. She was over
thirty years of age. Frederick's defeat in 1174 had been due to his
failure to divide his enemies. Now, however, he had his chance. The
Lombards, having got all that they wanted, were quite favourable to
him. He planned to win Sicily also by a marriage between his youthful
son Henry and the almost middle-aged heiress Constance. A party in
Sicily helped him; and the marriage and the coronation of the happy
pair as King and Queen of Italy took place at Milan in January, 1186.
Not only had the Emperor knocked away the staff upon which the Papacy
had been disposed to lean its arm for more than a century; but he had
actually picked it up and proposed to use it in the future for the
purpose of belabouring the Popes. Moreover, he had really secured his
object of a hereditary empire; for Henry, now King with his father in
Germany and in Italy, must needs succeed to all the paternal honours.
In vain Urban tried to raise up a party against the Emperor; and the
sentence of excommunication, which at length he had determined to
pronounce, was stopped only by the death of the Pope on October 20,
1187.

[Sidenote: Frederick's death.]

It was, however, chance and not the policy of the Emperor that averted
the inevitable conflict. On July 5 the Christians of Palestine had
suffered a crushing defeat at the battle of Hittim or Tiberias at the
hand of Saladin, and on October 3 the Mohammedan conqueror entered
Jerusalem. The quarrel was necessarily suspended, and a new crusade
was preached with such success that in May, 1189, Frederick set out
for Palestine, to be followed a year later by the Kings of France and
England. But the Emperor never reached the Holy Land. He made his way
by Constantinople and Iconium into Cilicia, and there not far from
Tarsus he disappeared, apparently drowned while crossing or bathing in
a river.

[Sidenote: The new contest.]

With the great Emperor's death the contest between Papacy and Empire
enters on a new phase. It is typical of this phase that the one
outstanding question between the two powers after the Peace of Venice
was the question of Tuscany. For the quarrel was now almost entirely
political, and was becoming more and more confined to Italian
politics. The imperial attempt to subdue Italy to Germany had failed,
and it remained for the Emperor to make it impossible for the Pope to
live at Rome except as a dependant of the German King. With Tuscany,
Lombardy, and Sicily under the imperial control, there was no room for
papal action in Italy. In a contest of abstract principles the Emperor
had entirely failed to subdue the Pope; and the interest and
importance of the contest between Frederick and Alexander lay in the
fact that each was the representative of an idea. This is no doubt the
reason why Frederick's failure did not damage his prestige. But he had
learnt that he could not set the abstract claims of the Empire against
those of the Papacy. The former did not appeal to any one beyond the
limits of Germany; whereas the latter could count on sympathy in every
country of Western Europe. Frederick, therefore, made no more appeals
to Europe. His disputes with the Papacy were now individual matters:
they were contests of policy, not of principle, and he would not
hesitate to turn circumstances to his advantage. Perhaps, fortunately
for Frederick's reputation, he did nothing more than inaugurate this
policy. But it was a policy which essentially suited the peculiar
genius of his successor.

[Sidenote: Henry VI.]

As soon as Frederick had started for Palestine Henry was plunged in
difficulties. Henry the Lion returned from banishment and raised a
disturbance. A few months later William II of Sicily died, and Pope
Clement III (1187-91) immediately invested with the kingdom Tancred,
Count of Lecce, an illegitimate member of the Hauteville family, who
had been elected by the party opposed to the German influence. On the
top of these difficulties came the news of Frederick's death. There
was thus a double reason for an expedition to Italy--Henry must assert
his wife's claim to the throne of Sicily, and he must do this without
quarrelling with the Pope, from whom he must obtain the imperial
crown. His first expedition was only a formal success. Pope Celestine
III (1191-8), who took office just after Henry entered Italy, dared
not refuse to crown him emperor, nor could he prevent Henry from
either courting the Roman Commune with success or prosecuting his
claim to the Sicilian crown. But Henry failed before Naples: his army
was decimated by the plague, and his wife fell into Tancred's hands.

[Sidenote: His success in Italy.]

This ill-success revived the Guelf opposition in Germany, whose most
powerful supporter was Henry the Lion's brother-in-law, Richard of
England. Richard on his way to Palestine had made an alliance with
Tancred against the common Hohenstaufen enemy. But returning from
crusade Richard fell into the hands of Leopold of Austria. Leopold was
forced to hand him over to the Emperor, and the anti-Hohenstaufen
alliance fell to pieces. For whatever reason, Henry kept the English
King for more than a year, and turned a deaf ear to the papal
remonstrances against his detention of a crusader. Fortified by the
failure of the threatened combination against him, and by the money
from Richard's ransom, Henry returned to Italy. Fortune favoured him
at every turn. Since he left Italy Tancred and his eldest son had
died, and Henry found no difficulty in getting hold of the youthful
son of Tancred, who had been placed upon the throne under his mother's
regency. Apulia and Sicily were overrun. The toils were closing round
the Pope. Celestine had excommunicated all concerned in Richard's
imprisonment until they should have restored his ransom. Thus by
implication Henry was excommunicate. The money had been spent in
subduing the papal fief of Sicily; while Henry further made his
brother Philip Marquis of Tuscany, and planted his followers about in
the lands of the Church. Yet Celestine did not dare to pronounce the
fatal sentence against the Emperor directly.

[Sidenote: His imperial schemes.]

Henry meditated one more step which would have rendered the Pope
powerless. Frederick, with the mere prospect of the Sicilian
succession for his son, desired to make the imperial title hereditary;
much more was Henry, the active sovereign of Sicily, anxious to
accomplish this. The lay princes could have been bribed to consent by
the recognition of hereditary succession to their fiefs. But the
German ecclesiastics, with the Pope at their back, had no desire to
increase the power of the Emperor, and the utmost that Henry could
secure was the election as German King, and therefore King of the
Romans, of his two-year-old son Frederick.

[Sidenote: His death.]

Henry's projects stretched out beyond the lands under his rule. The
death of Saladin encouraged the idea of a new crusade. Henry as
crusader might propitiate the Pope. But such an expedition once
started might have been diverted, as indeed happened a few years
later, for an attack upon Constantinople, which should lead to the
union of both empires under the ambitious Hohenstaufen. Pretexts were
not wanting. Henry collected a number of German crusaders upon the
coast of Italy, and many of these had actually sailed for Palestine
when everything was changed by Henry's sudden death on September 28,
1197. He had reigned eight years, and was only thirty-two years of
age. Despite his youthful age and his short reign he had raised the
imperial power to a height which it had scarcely ever touched before
and which it was never to reach again. Endowed with ability at least
equal to his father's, his very selfishness and ruthlessness gave him
a success denied to his predecessor. All Henry's acts were associated
with his own aggrandisement, and the result shows that the Papacy no
less than the Empire was dependent for its influence chiefly upon the
personality of the holder of the office. Henry had to deal at Rome
with Popes of inferior capacity. Had Innocent III been elected a few
years earlier, the tragedy of Anagni--the maltreatment of Boniface
VIII by the emissaries of the King of France--might have been
anticipated by a century.




CHAPTER IX

INNOCENT III


[Sidenote: The new Pope.]

Celestine III died less than four months after the Emperor Henry VI,
and the centre of interest immediately shifted from the Empire to the
Papacy. For, in their desire to shut out the Roman clergy and people
from any share in the election, the Cardinals made haste to find a
successor. As it happened, the object of their choice was also the
favourite of the Roman people. Lothair of Segni was the youngest of
the Cardinals, being only thirty-seven years of age. He was sprung
from a German family which had settled in the tenth century in the
Campagna. He had studied in Paris and Bologna, and had been made
Cardinal by his uncle, Clement III. Celestine was of the rival family
of Orsini, and during his reign the young Cardinal remained in
retirement and consoled himself by writing a book on the _Despite of
the World_. Thus he was young, noble, wealthy, and distinguished.
He showed his power of self-control at once by doing nothing to
shorten the canonical time before his consecration as priest and
bishop; while the magnificence of the coronation ceremonies typified
the view which he took of the office and position.

[Sidenote: The condition of Europe.]

The work of Innocent III was European in importance, and he found his
opportunity in the disturbed condition of the time. The rivalry of
Ghibelline and Guelf in Germany and Italy, and the rivalry of the
houses of Capet and Plantagenet in France, forbade any concerted
action on the part of Christendom, whether against pagans on the
eastern frontier of Germany or against Mohammedans in Spain or Syria.
Hungary and Poland were both in a state of ferment; in Spain the
Almohades from Morocco were making serious advances. Saladin's death
might seem to offer a peculiarly favourable chance of recovering for
Christendom what had been so recently lost. But the Empire was
divided; England and France neutralised each other, the Eastern Empire
was weakened by the success of an usurper, the knightly orders were
quarrelling with each other. And this state of disunion was not the
most dangerous feature of the moment. The moral condition of Europe
was seldom worse. Philip of France had repudiated his Danish wife,
Ingebiorg, apparently for no more valid reason than that he liked some
one better; Alfonso of Castile took his own half-sister to wife.
Oriental manners, imported from Palestine or learnt from commercial
intercourse in the Mediterranean, seemed to be invading the furthest
regions of the West. Perhaps to the same influence may be attributed
the spread of religious heresies. Much of this was provoked by direct
antagonism to a powerful and corrupt Church; but the actual form
assumed by the positive beliefs of those who organised themselves
apart from the Catholic Church were largely Oriental in character.

Everything combined to encourage Innocent's interference, and it may
be pointed out at once that his success was largely due to the selfish
ambitions and desires of the lay princes, which enabled him to pose as
the undoubted representative of moral force organised in the Church.
In all his most important acts he was the mouthpiece of popular
opinion. Thus his contest with Philip of France in favour of the
repudiated Ingebiorg commanded the sympathy of every right-thinking
person in Europe; his desire for the separation of Italy and Germany
under different rulers was popular in Italy; while to attempt an union
of the Churches of East and West, to crush out heresy in the south of
France and elsewhere, to promote a new crusade in the East, were all
regarded as duties falling strictly within the papal sphere.

[His claim for the Papacy.]

The importance of this great activity lies in the fact that it was
based upon the most advanced theories of papal power. It was the
controversy over lay investiture which first caused the defenders of
the Church to formulate their views of the sphere of ecclesiastical
influence as against the influence of the secular authority. But the
extreme claims put forward for the Papacy as the head of the Church,
by Gregory VII and his followers, had provoked the counter definitions
of the jurists of Bologna on behalf of the imperial power. But the
claim of universal dominion by the Emperor was contradicted by facts,
and never rose above the dignity of an academic thesis; whereas in the
century which elapsed from the days of Gregory VII to those of
Innocent III the papal power was becoming an increasing reality in the
Church. It is indeed a little difficult to see wherein it was possible
for any successor of Gregory VII to make an advance upon the claims
put forward by that Pope. Gregory in fond of pointing out that the
power of binding and loosing given to St. Peter was absolutely
comprehensive, including all persons and secular as well as spiritual
matters. Innocent tells the Patriarch of Constantinople that the Lord
left to Peter not only the whole Church, but the whole world to
govern. To the Karolingian age it was the Emperor who was the Vicar of
God. The Church reformers, while attacking this title, do not seem to
have claimed in words for the Pope a higher title than Vicar of St.
Peter. Innocent, however, more than once asserts that he is the
representative "not of mere man, but of very God." In fact, such
development as is to be found in the papal office during the twelfth
century consists merely in making rather more explicit positions which
have already been asserted. Gregory, in writing to William the
Conqueror, had used the figures of the sun and moon to illustrate the
relations of Church and State. Innocent draws out the analogy in much
detail: "As God, the builder of the universe, has set up two lights in
the firmament of heaven, the greater light to rule the day and the
lesser light to rule the night, so for the firmament of the universal
Church, which is called by the name of heaven, He has set up two great
dignities, the greater to rule souls, as it were days, and the lesser
to rule bodies, as it were nights; and these are priestly authority
and royal power. Further, as the moon obtains its light from the sun,
seeing that it is really the lesser both in quantity and quality, and
also in position and influence, so royal power obtains the splendour
of its dignity from priestly authority." He points out on another
occasion that "individual kings have individual kingdoms, but Peter is
over all, as in fulness so also in breadth, because he is the Vicar of
Him whose is the earth and the fulness thereof, the round world and
they that dwell therein. Further, as the priesthood excels in dignity,
so it precedes in antiquity. Both kingdom and priesthood," he allows,
"were instituted among the people of God; but," he adds, "while the
priesthood was instituted by divine ordinance, the kingdom came into
existence through the importunity of man." Hence it is not strange
that "not only in the Patrimony of the Church, but also in other
spheres, we occasionally exercise temporal jurisdiction," for "he to
whom God says in Peter, 'Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, etc.',
is His Vicar, who is priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek,
ordained by God to be judge of the quick and the dead."

[Sidenote: He secures power in Rome.]

But while the Pope assumed this all-embracing position, a considerable
share of his energies was absorbed in a very small and purely selfish
matter--the extension of the temporal dominion of the Papacy; and the
use for this personal object of the great powers which men willingly
acknowledged in the Pope as the upholder of the standard of morality
greatly prejudiced the success of Innocent's policy elsewhere. In its
origin this was a policy of self-preservation. The civil government of
Rome was in the hands of a prefect representing the Emperor and a
senator who was the spokesman of the Commune. The Pope was either a
prisoner or a nonentity in his own capital. The Empire being in
abeyance, it was not difficult to transform the prefect into a papal
officer, but a greater triumph was the nomination of the senator, for
it carried the ultimate control over the municipality, and thus
undermined the power of the Commune, which had paralysed the papal
influence in Rome for nearly sixty years. This signal victory was not
gained without a struggle. The democratic party even drove the Pope
from the city for a time; but by 1205, Innocent, by apparent
concessions and the use of bribery, had won his end.

[Sidenote: Central Italy.]

Meanwhile an even more important movement had been accomplished. The
centre of the peninsula outside the Patrimony of St. Peter was in the
hands Of Henry VI's German followers. One was driven from Spoleto,
another from Ravenna, and both these districts were added to the papal
dominions. Tuscany had been made over to Henry VI's brother, Philip;
but he went off to secure the German crown, and his subjects did
homage to the Pope. There existed, however, a League of Tuscan cities,
and the Pope, leaving to them their independence, merely accepted the
office of President of the League. It was the addition of these
substantial dominions to the lands of the Patrimony which, as between
Pope and Emperor, effectually solved the question of the
long-contested Matildan inheritance, and laid the foundation of the
temporal dominions of the Papacy as they remained until 1860.

[Sidenote: South Italy.]

The German influence also threatened to be paramount in the south of
the peninsula. For Henry VI, while giving to Queen Constance the
nominal regency during the minority of their son Frederick, took care
that the real authority should be in the hands of his German
followers. Constance, however, had no desire for the continued union
of the German and Sicilian crowns; and here she found a staunch
supporter in the Pope. First with Celestine, and then with Innocent,
she entered into close relations. Frederick took the old Norman oath
of vassalage for his dominions; and when Innocent confirmed the title,
he compelled Constance in return to surrender the ecclesiastical
privileges connected with elections, legatine visits, appeals, and
councils originally granted by Urban II to Count Roger of Sicily, and
to promise an annual tribute. The Pope, however, aided her to clear
her country of the Germans, many of whom he afterwards again hunted
from Central Italy. It was natural, therefore, that on her death in
November, 1198, Constance should commend her child to the guardianship
of Innocent. Innocent himself was far too much occupied to take the
personal direction of affairs, and eight years of incessant warfare
(1200-8) were necessary before the German influence could be finally
got rid of, and then Innocent secured his influence through a regency
of native nobles under the presidency of his own brother.

[Sidenote: The contest in Germany.]

Even on the German side there was little need to anticipate that the
two crowns of Germany and Sicily would remain united. The nobles were
scarcely likely to keep their promise of crowning Henry's young son.
He was a mere child, three years of age; not yet baptised, perhaps
because his father was excommunicate; brought up in Italy and in the
hands of Italians; a protégé of the Pope. Thus his uncle Philip was
easily persuaded by the Hohenstaufen supporters in Germany to take the
place intended for his nephew, and was chosen and crowned as King of
Germany (March, 1198). But the enemies of the Hohenstaufen could not
let the opportunity go by, and three months later, at the suggestion
of Richard of England, they elected and crowned his nephew, Otto of
Brunswick, a son of Henry the Lion of Saxony, whom Richard had made
Count of Poitou and York. Thus was revived the struggle between
Ghibelline and Guelf.

[Sidenote: Innocent's decision.]

Innocent undertook the decision of the question as a matter belonging
to his sphere, "chiefly because it was the Apostolic See which
transferred the Empire from the east to the west, and lastly because
the same See grants the crown of the Empire." In the divided condition
of Germany much depended on his attitude. It was scarcely likely that
he would accept a Hohenstaufen who was lord of Tuscany. But Philip was
the nominee of the most numerous and important section of the German
nobles, while the death of Richard of England (1199) deprived Otto of
his chief supporter. As Gregory VII on a similar occasion, so now
Innocent delayed his decision between the rivals until he could make
up his mind that Otto had some chance of success. Meanwhile he did
everything to prejudice the minds of the German people against Philip,
who, as the holder of lands claimed by the Papacy, was already
excommunicate. After three years of deliberation Innocent declared
himself. Otto paid a heavy price for the decision in his favour. By
the Capitulation of Neuss (June, 1201) he swore to protect to the
utmost all the possessions, honours, and rights of the Roman Church,
both those which it already held and those which he would help it to
recover. The extent of land was defined as including not only the
Patrimony of St. Peter (from Radicofani to Ceperano), but also the
Exarchate, the Pentapolis, the March of Ancona, the Duchy of Spoleto,
and the territories of the Countess Matilda.

[Sidenote: Innocent III and Philip Augustus of France.]

But in the course of the next few years Innocent was obliged to take
up a totally different attitude in this struggle in consequence of
disappointments elsewhere. There were two such which fell especially
heavily upon him during the first half of his reign. He inherited from
his predecessor a quarrel with Philip Augustus of France. Philip lost
his first wife in 1190; in 1193 his designs against England caused him
to marry Ingebiorg, a sister of the King of Denmark. Immediately after
the marriage he took a dislike to her, refused to live with her, and
obtained from an assembly of his own clergy a sentence of divorce,
founded on an allegation of some very distant relationship between him
and his new wife. Ingebiorg and her brother appealed to Pope Celestine
III, who declared the sentence of divorce illegal and null. Philip not
only paid no attention to the numerous letters and legates of the
Pope, but he tried to make the divorce irrevocable by taking a new
wife. After several rebuffs he found in Agnes of Meran, the daughter
of a Bavarian noble, one who was willing to accept the dubious
position (1196). Innocent III at once took up an uncompromising
attitude, and instructed his legates that if Philip refused to send
away Agnes and to restore Ingebiorg, they should put the kingdom under
an interdict preparatory to a sentence of personal excommunication
against Philip and Agnes themselves. Those bishops who dared to
publish the interdict were seriously maltreated by the King; but after
nine months of resistance the distress of his people at the cessation
of religious services caused him to submit; he pretended to take back
Ingebiorg, and the interdict was raised (1200). But he did not send
away Agnes, and a renewal of the interdict was only averted by Agnes'
death in 1201. Innocent, desiring to be conciliatory, actually
declared Agnes' two children legitimate. Philip still, however,
pressed for a divorce from Ingebiorg, declaring that he was bewitched
by her. After his victory over John of England in 1204 he became more
than ever obdurate to papal remonstrances, and he even contemplated a
new marriage. Innocent was not in a position to drive him to extremes,
and was obliged to temporise for a time. Eventually, however, he
reduced Philip to submission.

[Sidenote: The Fourth Crusade.]

But Innocent suffered more definite defeat in the matter of the
Crusade. The crusading fervour had much diminished, and it has been
pointed out as characteristic of the age that a fourth crusade was
determined on at a tournament in Champagne in 1199. Celestine III had
vainly tried to rouse the interest of Europe, but the preaching of
Fulk, the priest of Neuilly, recalled the efforts and the success of
Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard. Innocent III lent his whole
influence to the enterprise. But from the first everything seemed to
go contrary to his wishes. The death of Theobald of Champagne (1201),
who was the papal nominee for the leadership, placed at the head of
the crusaders Boniface, Marquis of Montserrat, an Italian and kinsman
of Philip of France and a typical representative of the worst side of
feudalism. From that moment Innocent lost all control over the
expedition. Instead of going directly to the Holy Land, the barons
decided to attack the Mohammedan power in Egypt--perhaps the sounder
policy. They made an agreement with the Venetians to find the shipping
for the host in return for a large sum of money. But the long delay
caused many crusaders to set off to the Holy Land; so that when the
main force arrived at Venice it was so diminished in numbers that the
leaders could not raise the sum for which they had pledged themselves
to Venice. Probably there was no deep-laid plot for the diversion of
the crusading host from the first. But the Venetians suddenly found
themselves with the practical direction of a formidable army; they had
enemies in the Adriatic against whom they had hitherto been powerless;
they had old causes of rivalry and enmity with Constantinople. At the
same time King Philip of Germany was urging the cause of his
brother-in-law, who had been deposed from the Byzantine throne. The
crusaders, unwilling to disperse and unable to insist, allowed
themselves to be diverted, first to an attack upon Zara, a nest of
pirates in the Adriatic, although it belonged to the King of Hungary,
who was himself a crusader; and then to Constantinople, which they
ultimately captured (1204), and where they set up a Latin Empire.
Innocent did everything to prevent this diversion of his cherished
scheme. He forbade the attack upon Zara, he excommunicated the
Venetians for going to Constantinople, and threatened the whole host
with the same penalty. But he was powerless. The few in the army who
were moved by some of the crusading spirit were overruled; and when
the papal legates for the expedition to Palestine joined the army at
Constantinople, all thought of going on to Palestine was abandoned.
Innocent was forced to accept what was done and to console himself
with the thought of the blow thus dealt to the Eastern Church.

[Sidenote: Innocent's difficulty.]

These rebuffs seriously diminished Innocent's influence in Europe for
a time. Moreover, Innocent soon had reason to regret his championship
of Otto. Philip was wealthy and personally popular, while Otto's
brusquerie and selfishness alienated many supporters. Consequently
from 1203 Philip distinctly obtained the upper hand, and at length in
1207 Innocent opened negotiations with him. But these were rendered
futile when Philip fell victim to the assassin's knife in June, 1208.
Otto's acceptance now became inevitable, and he did everything to
conciliate his opponents. He submitted himself to a fresh election by
the German nobles, and won the Hohenstaufen by marrying Beatrice, the
daughter of his late rival. He made new concessions to the Pope, which
practically amounted to a renunciation of the powers confirmed to the
Emperor in the matter of elections by the Concordat of Worms; he
undertook to give up the right of spoils and to help in the
eradication of heresy. And all this he promised because he was "King
of the Romans by the grace of God and of the Pope."

[Sidenote: Otto's designs.]

But Otto's acceptance was only the beginning of the end. He knew that
he owed his position merely to the accident of Philip's death and to
the absence of any eligible Hohenstaufen candidate. He had therefore
no feelings of gratitude towards Innocent. Moreover, he was now
surrounded by Ghibelline influences, and was anxious to be crowned
emperor. Thus, despite his promises of 1201 and 1209, to recover to
the Papacy all the lands and rights which it claimed, he began to
realise that the task to which he must give himself was the
restoration of the connection between Italy and Germany, which had
been entirely broken since Henry VI's death. In fact, this Guelf
prince took up the work of the Hohenstaufen. When, therefore, Otto and
Innocent met in Italy a year later, Otto declined to give more than a
verbal promise that after his coronation he would do what was right.
Innocent, in return, did not refuse the crown indeed, but made a new
departure in naming Otto Emperor without consecrating him as such, and
thus denied to him the divinity of the imperial office (October,
1209).

[Sidenote: Otto's success.]

Otto immediately set to work. He recovered for the Empire all the
lands of Central Italy which Innocent had already annexed to the papal
dominions, including, of course, the Matildan inheritance; he made the
Roman Prefect an imperial officer again; and entering into alliance
with the German followers of Henry VI, who had never been entirely
dislodged from the southern kingdom, he overran Apulia and prepared,
by the aid of a fleet lent by Pisa, to pass over into Sicily. Innocent
did everything in his power to check the conqueror. He excommunicated
him (August, 1210); in conjunction with Philip Augustus of France, the
old ally of Henry VI, he roused disaffection against Otto among the
German nobles. Innocent was somewhat taken aback when Otto's subjects,
finding that the Pope in his anathema had absolved them from their
fealty to the King, held Otto as deposed, and proceeded to elect in
his place the young Frederick Roger, Henry VI's son and the papal
ward, who was already King of Sicily. This choice also threatened to
produce that very union of Germany and Italy which Otto was bent on
accomplishing. But the need of checking Otto forced Innocent to
acquiesce, and Frederick did everything to allay the papal fears.

[Sidenote: Innocent and Frederick.]

Since Frederick could not stop Otto's progress in the south, it was
arranged that he should go north to Germany in the hope of drawing
Otto away. Before he left, Frederick had his young child Henry
crowned, as an earnest that he did not intend to join the kingdom he
was going to seek with that which he already held. He passed through
Rome on his way north, and Innocent obtained from him a repetition of
his liege homage for Sicily and a promise that the two kingdoms should
be kept separate. In return Innocent gave him the title of "Emperor
elect by the grace of God and of the Pope," and supplied him with
money. Innocent thus hoped that he had taken every precaution to avoid
the dangers which he feared, while Frederick, young and inexperienced,
seems to have accepted the conditions willingly and to have intended
to keep them. His ambition and the unexpected prospects thus opened to
him led him on regardless of consequences.

[Sidenote: Otto's failure.]

Frederick's move was perfectly successful. Otto rushed back to
Germany, and the death of his wife Beatrice did away with any
obligations of loyalty which the partisans of the Hohenstaufen might
have felt towards him. Frederick was elected and crowned (December,
1212), and renewed the old Hohenstaufen league with France. Otto
turned for help to his uncle, John of England. John was excommunicate,
but now made his peace with the Pope. Philip, at first encouraged by
Innocent to attack England and then after John's submission forbidden
to go, turned his arms against Flanders. A coalition was formed
against him, and was joined by John and by Otto; but Philip's victory
at Bouvines (July, 1214) broke up the coalition and put an end to
Otto's hopes. For the four years of life which remained to him his
power was confined to Brunswick.

[Sidenote: Frederick's acceptance.]

Meanwhile Frederick had, as it were, put the crown upon his work of
submission to the Papacy. By the Golden Bull (July, 1213), he repeated
the promises which Otto had made at Neuss in 1201 with the additions
of 1209. In 1215 he went through a second and more formal coronation
at Aachen, and took the cross in conjunction with a number of German
nobles. In 1216 he further promised, in a formal deed, that in return
for the imperial crown his son Henry should become King of Sicily,
entirely independently from himself and under the supremacy of the
Roman Church. Thus Frederick in his eagerness put himself completely
in the hands of the Papacy.

[Sidenote: Innocent and England.]

Otto's cause had been linked with that of his uncle John, over whom
Innocent won the greatest of his victories. On a vacancy in the see of
Canterbury (1206) the right of election was disputed, as usual,
between the monks of the monastery of Christchurch at Canterbury and
the bishops of the province. King John thrust in his nominee. Innocent
settled the matter by making an appointment of his own. But John
refused to accept Stephen Langton; and Innocent proceeded to force his
consent. In 1208 the country was laid under an interdict; and John
treated the bishops who published it as Philip Augustus had treated
the French bishops ten years before. In 1209 Innocent excommunicated
John, and in 1212 declared him deposed. Despite the continued
obstinacy of Philip of France in the matter of Ingebiorg, Innocent
called upon him to execute the papal sentence; and Philip, thinking
that the aid of Denmark would be useful, ended the twenty years'
dispute and accorded to Ingebiorg the position of Queen for the rest
of his reign. It was certainly a measure of the growing strength of
the royal power in France that it had been able to defy the Papacy for
so long in a matter in which the King was so clearly in the wrong.
Philip's threatened attack brought John to his knees; and in 1213 he
not only accepted Stephen Langton, but even surrendered his kingdom to
the Papacy to receive it back as a papal fief, and undertook to pay an
annual tribute. The sequel was not quite so satisfactory for Innocent.
The surrender to the Pope and the defeat at Bouvines so enraged the
barons and clergy in England that they combined to force John to sign
Magna Carta (1215). But John was now under the protection of the Pope;
and although Innocent's own archbishop took the lead in the movement
against John, Innocent issued a bull in condemnation of the charter;
but so long as John lived, even the interdict and excommunication
which followed failed to move the barons. Innocent's successors reaped
the benefit of his triumph in the influence which they were able to
exert in England during the greater part of the reign of Henry III.

[Sidenote: Innocent's successes in Europe.]

Nor was John the only King who laid his crown at the feet of the Pope.
Peter, King of Aragon, hoped to escape the claims of the King of
Castile and the tyranny of his own barons by making his kingdom
tributary to the Papacy. Prince John of Bulgaria actually asked for
and obtained a royal crown from Innocent. The struggles of Sancho,
King of Portugal, to free himself from the submission made by a
predecessor ended in failure. Leo, King of Armenia, sought the papal
protection against the crusaders. The King of Denmark appealed to
Innocent on behalf of his much-wronged sister. The contending parties
in Hungary listened to his mediation.

But we have already seen that Innocent was not always successful, and
that most of his successes were won only after a prolonged contest.
Their matrimonial irregularities brought him into conflict with nearly
all the Christian Kings of Spain, and the kingdom of Leon was struck
by an interdict which was not removed for five years. It was a more
serious matter for the future that the papal acts for the first time
roused the opposition of the people in more than one instance; while
it is right to notice that Innocent often got acknowledgment of his
claim to adjudicate by accepting what had already been done. But
despite some notable failures, he did meet with considerable success;
and since he got so much, it is not surprising that he aimed at more.
Perhaps the greatest disappointment of his life was the failure of the
Fourth Crusade. Innocent found some compensation in the great victory
won by the united chivalry of Spain and France over the Almohades on
the field of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. But he is responsible for
inventing a new kind of crusade--that of Christians against
Christians--in the undoubtedly papal duty of dealing with the
Albigensian heretics; and it is, in modern eyes at least, a small
condonation that he encouraged the founder of the Dominicans and
received Francis of Assisi with sympathy.

[Sidenote: The Fourth Lateran Council.]

Innocent's pontificate ended in a blaze of glory. After the settlement
of the strife in Germany he called together a Council which is
distinguished as the Fourth Lateran or the Twelfth OEcumenical
Council. It met in 1215, and was composed of more than two thousand
persons, including envoys from all the chief nations of Europe. Its
resolutions were embodied in seventy canons dealing with a vast
variety of subjects in the endeavour to bring about a drastic
reformation of the Church. This is perhaps Innocent's most solid claim
to the name of a great ruler. But it only serves to emphasise the
wholly external nature of his rule. And subsequent ages have
recognised this limitation to his claims for honour in that, while
they have freely accorded to him the name of a great man and a great
Pope, if not the greatest of the pontiffs, the Church has never added
his name to the rôle of Christian saints.




CHAPTER X

THE PAPAL POWER IN THE CHURCH


[Sidenote: The basis of papal claims.]

The interest of the period with which we are dealing is largely
concerned with the attempted definition of the relations between
Church and State. The peculiar form of mediaeval thought resolved this
into a struggle of the papal power to make itself supreme over all
temporal rulers. But scarcely less important or interesting is the
concomitant effort of the Papacy to gather up into itself the whole
immediate authority of the Church.

This effort was very materially helped by the fact that various
national churches which had retained their own customs were gradually
brought into communion with Rome. William the Conqueror put an end to
the schism which had cut off the Anglo-Saxon Church from Rome, and
drew the Church in England into closer contact with Rome than she had
enjoyed since the days of Archbishop Theodore. Through Queen Margaret,
the Anglo-Saxon wife of Malcolm Canmore, Roman customs superseded
those of the Celtic Church in Scotland. Gregory VII prevailed on the
Spanish churches to accept the Roman for the Mozarabic liturgy.
Alexander III attracted to Rome the long-isolated Church in Ireland,
and Innocent II reconciled the Milanese at last to the papal
supremacy. The foundation for the high claims on the part of the
Papacy rested on what are known as the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals.
Decretals are answers to questions referred to the Bishop of Rome from
other churches. The earliest of these was of date 385. Compilations of
the Canons of the Church, in which these answers were included, were
put out in the sixth and the seventh centuries, the latter under the
name of Bishop Isidore of Seville. In the middle of the ninth century
appeared a third compilation, also published under the name of
Isidore, and containing fifty-nine additional letters and decrees of
earlier date than 385. Inasmuch as the Latin edition of the Bible,
which St. Jerome did not translate until about the year 400, is quoted
in some of these, this compilation has not unnaturally been styled the
False or Forged or Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. The object of this
forgery was the exaltation of the Papacy as "the supreme lord,
lawgiver, and judge of the Church," since all previous claims were
brought together and were referred back to the foundation of
Christianity. Two centuries later another document of doubtful
authenticity, called _Dictatus Papae_, sets forth in a
sufficiently true spirit the principles proclaimed by Gregory VII.
This states, among other things, that the Roman pontiff can alone be
called Universal, that his name is unique in the world, that he ought
to be judged by none; and it ascribes to him, without the intervention
of any intermediary, the supreme and immediate power in all executive,
legislative, and judicial matters.

[Sidenote: The Pope: the sole authority in the Church.]

The history of the Church during the two succeeding centuries is
merely an exemplification of these claims. It was in the spirit of
this document that Innocent II, in the speech with which he opened the
Second Lateran Council in 1139, reminded his hearers that Rome was the
head of the world, and that the highest ecclesiastical offices were
derived from the Roman pontiff as by a kind of feudal right, and could
not he lawfully held without his permission. Innocent III, we have
seen, describes himself as the Vicar of God or of Jesus Christ. Thus,
although the Pope is potentially present everywhere in the Church, he
cannot exercise the great power belonging to the office personally, so
that he has called in his brethren, the co-bishops, to share in the
care of the burden entrusted to himself; but in doing so he has
subtracted in no whit from the fulness of power which enables him to
enquire into individual cases and to assume the office of judge at
will. Others, then, may be admitted to a share in the care of the
Church (_pars solicitudinis_); but to the Pope has been given the
fulness of power (_plenitudo potestatis_). Thomas Aquinas shows
how bishop and archbishop equally derive their authority from the
Pope, and finds parallels to the relationship between the Pope and the
other officers of the Church in the dependence of all things created
upon God and the subordination of the proconsul to the Emperor. This
deliberate policy on the part of the Papacy to absorb into itself the
whole spiritual authority of the Church may be traced in its attempts
to set itself up as supreme administrator, supreme lawgiver, and
supreme judge.

Before the Pope could claim to be supreme administrator within the
Church it was necessary to deprive all other ecclesiastical officers
of their independence. The custom of the gift of the pall to
archbishops who exercised the office of Metropolitans had already made
these highest officers of all into little more than delegates of the
Papacy. Gregory VII failed in his attempt to force them to come in
person to Rome in order to receive the pall. He succeeded, however, in
imposing upon them an oath which, founded upon the oath of fealty,
made their position analogous to that of a feudal vassal. By this a
Metropolitan swore to be faithful to St. Peter and the Pope and his
successors who should have been canonically elected; that he would be
no party to violence against the Pope; that he would attend in person
or by representatives at every synod to which the Pope summoned him;
that, saving the rights of his Order, he would help to defend the
Papacy and all its possessions and honours; that he would not betray
any trust reposed in him by the Pope; that he would honourably treat
the papal legate; that he would not knowingly communicate with
excommunicates; that when asked he would faithfully help the Roman
Church with a force of soldiers. To this was often added an
undertaking that he would appear at Rome himself or by a
representative at stated intervals; that he would cause his suffragans
at their consecration to take an oath of obedience to the Roman
pontiff; that he would not part with anything belonging to his
official position without the knowledge of the Roman See.

[Sidenote: Claim over bishoprics.]

Gregory's successors imposed this oath by degrees on all bishops, and
thus gradually substituted the Pope for the Metropolitan. The
_Dictatus Papae_ claimed for the Pope the right of deposing or
reinstating bishops without reference to a synod; of transferring a
bishop from one see to another; of dividing a wealthy see or joining
together poor bishoprics. It was the papal policy to champion the
suffragans against the Metropolitans until the original metropolitical
power of confirming the elections of their newly elected suffragans
and consecrating them to the episcopal office was entirely superseded
by the growing authority of the Pope. The right of confirmation
implied the power of quashing an election, and this could easily grow
into a power of direct appointment. This last power was only exercised
habitually in certain cases--after a vacancy had lasted for a certain
time; if the bishop had died at Rome; if the bishop had been
transferred from one see to another. From the end of the eleventh
century cases are found of bishops designated to be such, not only,
according to the ancient formula, "by the grace of God," but also by
that "of the Apostolic See," and such description becomes fairly
common in the thirteenth century.

[Sidenote: Claim over benefices.]

And as the Popes passed over Metropolitans in order to obtain a direct
hold on the suffragans, so they went on in course of time to pass over
the bishop in every diocese by claiming the disposition of individual
benefices. Such a claim began in the first half of the twelfth century
in letters of recommendation and petitions for the appointment of
papal favourites to prebends or benefices. But so quickly did this
system develop that where Hadrian IV recommended Alexander III
commanded, and the mandates of Innocent III were enforced by specially
appointed officers. Clement IV lays it down that ancient custom has
specially reserved to the Roman pontiff the collation of churches and
offices which become vacant through the death of the holder at Rome,
but that this is only part of the greater right which is known to
belong to Rome and gives to the Pontiff the full disposal (_plenaria
dispositio_) of all offices and benefices both at the time of
vacancy and by provision beforehand. But so flagrant was the abuse of
this power of appointment that it roused the indignant remonstrance of
the most ardent supporters of the papal authority in the Church.
England under Henry III was so much exploited by its papal guardian as
to gain the name of the "Milch-cow of the Papacy"; but there were many
protests.

Robert Grossteste, Bishop of Lincoln, the most revered English
Churchman of the thirteenth century, was bidden by Innocent IV to find
a canonry in his cathedral for a nominee of the Pope, who, moreover,
was still a child. He answered in a rebuke of such severity and
dignity as can have rarely been addressed to Rome by one devoted to
its service. "Next to the sin of Lucifer," he tells the Pope, "there
is not, there cannot be, any kind of sin so adverse and contrary to
the evangelical doctrine of the Apostles as the destruction of souls
by defrauding them of the duty and service of a pastor." He adds that
the most holy Apostolic See cannot command anything that tends to a
sin of such a kind except by some defect or abuse of its plenary
power: that no faithful servant of the Papacy would comply with a
command of that kind "even if it issued from the highest order of
angels"; and he therefore, _filialiter et obedienter_, flatly
refuses to obey. Scarcely less severe were the strictures of Louis
IX's ambassadors, who laid the grievances of the French bishops and
barons before the same Pope. They tell Innocent IV that the devotion
which the French people have hitherto felt towards the Roman Church is
now not only extinguished, but is turned into vehement hate and
rancour, and that the claim for subsidies and tribute for every
necessity of Rome--a claim which was enforced by the threat of
excommunication--was unheard of in previous ages.

[Sidenote: The Pope as supreme legislator.]

The Pope also gradually established his authority as supreme and sole
lawgiver within the Church. The _Dictatus Papae_ asserts that for
him alone it is lawful to frame new laws to meet the needs of the
time. Meanwhile the Forged Decretals had found their place in the
various collections of the Canons made in the eleventh and early
twelfth centuries. In the middle of the twelfth century Gratian, a
Benedictine monk of Bologna, put out his _Concordantia discordantium
Canonum_, commonly known as the _Decretum Gratiani_, which
combined a theoretical disquisition with illustrations drawn from the
documents which had appeared in previous collections. This became the
standard mediaeval treatise in ecclesiastical law, and its appearance
much encouraged the systematic study of the Canon law. The Popes of
the succeeding century and a half made great additions to the law of
the Church, partly through the decrees issued by the General Lateran
Councils, partly by their own edicts. Such new matter was embodied
from time to time. Thus in 1234 the Dominican Raymund de Pennaforte
gathered five books of Decretals at the command of Gregory IX;
Boniface VIII was responsible for a sixth book in 1298, while other
additions were made by Clement V (1308) and John XXII (1317). All
these, together with the earlier compilations and some later
additions, formed the _Corpus Juris Canonici_. This enormous body
of law was full of contradictions and not devoid of falsification and
forgery. The growing study of it caused the foundation of Chairs at
the universities, and the Popes found it a most convenient method to
publish their new decrees through the lecture-rooms. The old Canon Law
was entirely superseded by the later Papal Law.

[Sidenote: Power over Councils.]

The Popes made no pretence of hiding their claims to the legislative
power. Urban II strongly affirms that it has always been in the power
of the Roman Pontiff to frame new laws; and two centuries later
Boniface VIII embodies in his addition to the Canon Law the words of
an earlier writer, that the Roman Pontiff is considered to hold all
laws in the repository of his breast. There was no room in such a
theory for any effective co-operation of ecclesiastical Councils,
however representative. The _Dictatus Papae_ declares that no
General Council can be held without the papal command. Pascal II
points out that no Council can dictate the law of the Church, because
every Council comes into existence and receives its power by authority
of Rome, and in its statutes the authority of the Pope is clearly not
interfered with. But the Popes often found it convenient to obtain the
sanction of a General Council for their legislation, and the four
Lateran Councils (1123, 1139, 1179, 1215) were the occasions for great
and important additions to the Canon Law. But from the time of the
third Lateran Council, at all events, all ordinances of a General
Council were issued in the name of the Pope, although the approval or
the fact of the Council was likewise expressed. Thomas Aquinas merely
expresses the recognised law of the Church when he says that the Holy
Fathers gathered together in Councils can make no laws except by the
intervention of the authority of the Roman Pontiff, for without that
authority a Council cannot even meet.

[Sidenote: Popes above law.]

It followed from this assumption of the supreme legislative power
that, in the first place, the Pope himself claimed not to be bound by
the laws which he made. Thus in the thirteenth century papal writers
denied that the Roman Church could commit simony. Certain acts are
simoniacal because they have been prohibited as such by Canon Law; but
inasmuch as it is the Pope who had forbidden them, the prohibition
does not bind him. And in virtue of this power, from the time of
Innocent IV the Popes added to their bulls a _non obstante_
clause whereby they suspended in a particular instance all laws or
rights which might otherwise stand in the way of their grant.

[Sidenote: Papal dispensation.]

It followed, further, that the Pope claimed also the power of granting
dispensations from existing laws and absolution for their
infringement. Every papal bishop was armed with the power of granting
pardon in God's name for breaches of the law which had already been
committed. The Pope, however, claimed not only this power concurrently
with all other bishops, but he even developed a right of granting
dispensations beforehand, so that the tendency was to ignore the
bishop of the diocese and to apply directly to the Pope or his
representatives, who thus were willing to permit infractions of the
law. Thomas Aquinas declares that any bishop can grant dispensation in
the case of a promise about which there is any doubt; but that to the
Pope alone, as having the care of the Church Universal, belongs the
higher power of giving unconditional relaxation from an oath of
perfectly clear meaning in the interests of the general good.

But even papal writers sometimes complain of the irresponsibility of
the papal acts, and Popes themselves had to allow that there were
spheres outside their legislative interference. Thus Urban II
acknowledges that in matters on which our Lord, His Apostles, and the
Fathers have given definite decisions, the duty of the Pope is to
confirm the law. Thomas Aquinas, while holding that the Pope can alter
the decisions of the Fathers and even of the Apostles in so far as
they come under the head of positive law, yet excepts from the
possibility of papal interference all that concerns the law of nature,
the Articles of Faith (which, he says elsewhere, have been determined
by Councils), or the sacraments of the new law.

[Sidenote: The Pope as supreme judge.]

The third wide sphere of action within the Church in which the Pope
established his supremacy was that of justice. The _Dictatus
Papae_ asserts not only that the Pope should be judged by no one,
but that the "greater causes" of every Church should be referred to
him, that none should dare to condemn any one who appealed to Rome,
and that no one except the Pope himself can interfere with a papal
sentence. Litigants of all kinds were only too ready to appeal against
the local tribunal, and the Pope gave them every encouragement. St.
Bernard indignantly pointed out to Innocent II that every evil-doer
and cantankerous person, whether lay or cleric or even from the
monasteries, when he is worsted runs to Home and boasts on his return
of the protection which he has obtained. It is true, Gregory VIII
(1187) tried to check the practice of appeals; but his short reign
gave no time for any real result. Bishops and archdeacons tried
sometimes to stop appeals by excommunication, which prevented the
victim from appearing in an ecclesiastical court; but the third
Lateran Council (1179) forbade this method of defence. Alexander III
definitely laid it down that appeals could be made to the Pope in the
smallest no less than in the greatest matters, and at every possible
stage, before and after trial, at the pronouncement of the sentence
and after it has been awarded; and this, he points out, is not the
case in civil law, where an appeal is only admitted after judgment.
Indeed, the most serious matter with regard to papal appeals was the
reservation by the Pope to his own decision of cases which were
regarded as too serious for the local courts. The bishops had
themselves largely to thank for the development of this direct papal
jurisdiction; for they began the custom of referring to Rome the cases
of great criminals and of serious crimes. But these "greater causes,"
claimed for the Pope as early as the time of Gregory VII, included not
only grave moral crimes such as murder, sacrilege, and gross
immorality, but also cases of dispensation beforehand, of absolution
after excommunication for certain offences. Under the same head would
come the right of canonisation exercised by archbishops until
Alexander III claimed it exclusively for the Pope, and the right of
translating a bishop from one see to another, which involved a
dissolution of the metaphorical marriage between the bishop and his
see and therefore needed a special dispensation.

[Sidenote: The papal Curia.]

These extensive powers could only be put in practice by an elaborate
machinery for their enforcement. In the first place the Pope was
surrounded by a numerous body of officials to whom is applied from the
middle of the eleventh century the title Curia. Gerhoh of
Reichersberg, an ardent papal supporter writing about a century later,
objects to the substitution for the word "Ecclesia" of this term
"Curia," which would not be found in any old letters of the Roman
pontiffs. The rapacity of the officials became a byword throughout
Christendom. John of Salisbury told Hadrian IV, with whom he was on
terms of intimacy, that many people said that the Roman Church, which
is the mother of all the churches, shows herself to the others not so
much a mother as a stepmother. "The Scribes and Pharisees sit in it,
laying intolerable burdens on the shoulders of men, which they do not
touch with a finger.... They render justice not so much for truth's
sake as for a price.... The Roman pontiff himself becomes burdensome
to all, and almost intolerable." Honorius III in 1226 acknowledged to
the English bishops that this greed was a long-standing scandal and
disgrace, but he ascribed it to the poverty of Rome, and proposed that
in order to remove the difficulty two stalls should be given to him
for nomination in every cathedral and collegiate chapter. The magnates
considered the remedy, if possible, worse than the disease. The
popular songs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries contain many
references to the fact that nothing was to be had at Rome except for
money, and that success in a cause went to the richest suitor. And yet
Rome had many sources of wealth. She drew regular revenues from
estates which had been given to the papal see; from monasteries which
were subject to visitation of papal officers alone; from kingdoms,
such as England, whose kings had made themselves feudal vassals of the
Pope. Several nations, moreover, paid special taxes, such as Peter's
Pence, a kind of hearth tax, which went from England. The Papacy also
exacted a number of dues on various pretexts which increased with the
growth of papal power. Such were the Annates or Firstfruits and
analogous payments, which amounted to the value of the first year's
income, and were claimed from newly appointed bishops and abbots as an
acknowledgment of the papal right of confirmation. Nor did
Metropolitans get their pall, which was necessary for the exercise of
their special authority, without the payment of considerable sums.
Over and above these regular and occasional sources, the Popes exacted
on especial occasions, such as the Crusades, a tax amounting to a
tenth on all ecclesiastical property, and even allowed kings to take
it with their leave. But these formed a small portion of the money
which found its way to Rome. When the papal legate found fault with
Ivo of Chartres because simony was still prevalent in his diocese, the
bishop retorted that those who practised it excused their action from
the example of Rome, where not even a pen and paper were to be had
free. Dante addresses the shade of Pope Nicholas III in the
_Inferno_ (xix.):--

  "Your gods ye make of silver and of gold;
  And wherein differ from idolaters,
  Save that their God is one--yours manifold?"

And he ascribes the evil which he is condemning to the so-called
Donation of Constantine.

[Sidenote: Papal Legates.]

The most manifest agents and organs of papal authority throughout
Christendom were the legates. The Pope had appointed permanent
representatives called Apocrisiaries at Constantinople, and had sent
emissaries to General Councils and for other special matters. But from
the time of Leo IX legates began to be appointed with a general
commission to visit the churches; and Gregory VII developed this
method of interference with the local authorities into a regular
system. In some cases local hostility was disarmed by the appointment
of the Metropolitan as ordinary legate, and the position was accepted
with the object of retaining the chief authority upon the spot. Such
the Archbishop of Canterbury became after 1135. But the existence of
this official did not prevent the despatch from time to time of
legates _à latere_, as they were called. The ordinary legate
exercised the concurrent jurisdiction claimed by the Pope, that is,
the right of interference in every diocese; these legates coming from
the side of the Pope were armed with the power of exercising most of
the rights specially reserved for the personal authority of the Pope.
The _Dictatus Papae_ asserts that the Pope's legates take
precedence of all bishops in a council even though they may be of
inferior rank, and Gregory VII applies to their authority the text "He
that heareth you heareth me." In 1125 John of Crema, a legate sent to
England, presided at a Council at Westminster, where were present
ecclesiastics from the archbishops downwards and a number of nobility;
and "on Easterday he celebrated the office of the day in the mother
church in place of the supreme pontiff, and although he was not a
bishop, but merely a Cardinal Priest, he used pontifical insignia." A
Metropolitan in his oath of loyalty to the Pope was made to swear that
he would treat with all honour the Roman legates in their coming and
going, and would help them in their needs; and the procuration or
maintenance from all countries which they not only visited, but merely
passed through, was arbitrarily assessed. Innocent III enforces it by
directing against ecclesiastics who were contumacious a sentence of
distraint of goods without any right of appeal. The burden was no
light one. Wichmann, Archbishop of Magdeburg, writing on behalf of
Frederick I, tells the Pope that the whole Church of the Empire is
subject to such heavy exactions at the hands of the papal officials,
that both churches and monasteries, which have not enough to supply
their own daily wants, are yet compelled "beyond their utmost
possibility" to find money for the use of these legates, sustenance
for their train of attendants, and accommodation for their horses. In
more picturesque language John of Salisbury describes the legates of
the Apostolic See as "sometimes raging in the provinces as if Satan
had gone forth from the presence of the Lord in order to scourge the
Church." It is true that Alexander IV commanded an enquiry into the
amount which his legates had demanded under pretext of procuration,
and which he heard they had enforced by the sacrilegious use of the
powers of excommunication, suspension, and interdict. But the parallel
which Clement IV drew between the ordinary legates and the proconsuls
and provincial presidents of the early Empire showed how little
likelihood there was of redress being got from the Papacy itself.

[Sidenote: Increase of papal ceremony.]

The effect of this absorption of power by the Papacy is to be traced
in many directions. Here we may take notice of two of the most
remarkable. In the first place, he who had grown from the Vicar of St.
Peter to be directly the Vicar of God naturally surrounded himself
with an increasing amount of ceremony. The _Dictatus Papae_
claims that the Pope alone can use imperial insignia, and that it is
his feet alone that all princes should kiss. We have noticed the
disputes which arose when the Pope demanded from Lothair and from
Frederick I that the Emperor should perform the office of groom to the
Pope--hold his stirrup as he mounted and walk by the side of the mule.
St. Bernard rightly points out that in thus appearing in public
adorned in jewels and silks, covered with gold, riding a white horse,
and surrounded with guards, the Pope was the successor not of Peter,
but of Constantine. And if he required so much state outside the
Church, much more did he insist upon a special ceremony in the
services. Thus at the Mass the Pope received the elements not kneeling
at the altar, but seated and on his throne; while the Host was carried
before him in procession whenever the Pope went outside his palace.

[Sidenote: Papal infallibility.]

A far more important result of the supreme position accorded to the
Papacy was the gradual emergence of the doctrine of papal
infallibility. "The Church of Rome," says Gregory VII, "through St.
Peter, as it were by some privilege, is from the very beginnings of
the faith reckoned by the Holy Fathers the Mother of all the Churches
and will so be considered to the very end; for in her no heretic is
discerned to have had the rule, and we believe that none such will
ever be set over her according to the Lord's special promise. For the
Lord Jesus says, 'I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.'"
And in accordance with this principle the _Dictatus Papae_ lays
it down that "the Roman Church has never erred, nor, as Scripture
testifies, will it ever err." Innocent III pertinently asks how he
could confirm others in the faith, which is recognised as a special
duty of his office, unless he himself were firm in the faith. But many
writers, including Innocent himself, believed that it was possible for
a Pope to err in some individual point, and that it was the duty of
the Church to convert him. Thomas Aquinas, while holding it certain
that the judgment of the Church Universal cannot err in these matters
which belong to the faith, gives to the Pope alone, as the authority
by whom synods are summoned, the final determination of those things
which are of faith. Yet even he allows that in matters of fact, such
as questions of ownership and criminal charges, false witnesses may
lead the judgment of the Church astray.

[Sidenote: Kings and papal claims.]

We have seen that the Papacy did not attain its supremacy without
encountering much opposition. But the protests on the part of bishops
were unavailing, and they were themselves largely to blame for the
height to which the papal power had grown. Such effective remonstrance
as there was came from the Kings, though even they were often ready to
invoke the papal aid to obtain an advantage against their own
ecclesiastics or even their own subjects. Thus in England William II
agreed with Urban II that no legate should be sent to the country
unless the King was willing to receive him; while Henry II, in the
Constitutions of Clarendon, lays it down that no one should appeal to
Rome without permission of the King. But Henry's submission after
Becket's murder nullified the Constitutions, and John's humiliating
surrender made it difficult to object to the exercise of any papal
power in England. During the minority of Henry III the papal legate
was the most important member of the Council of Regency; and at a
later stage, when Henry had quarrelled with his barons, he was glad to
obtain the papal support against them. In Germany Hadrian IV
complained that Frederick I used force in order to prevent any of his
subjects from carrying their causes to Rome; and Otto IV was obliged
to swear in 1209 that no hindrance should be placed to ecclesiastical
appeals to Rome, a promise subsequently exacted also from Frederick
II and from Rudolf.

Not dissimilar was the submission of Alfonso X of Castile, who set his
seal to the papal encroachments; but his object was to obtain the
support of Rome in his campaign against the local liberties in his
kingdom. In his code of law known as "Siete Partidas" power was given
to the Pope to deal as he liked with bishops and with benefices and to
receive all appeals. On the other hand, St. Louis was not above a
bargain with Rome. He refused to the Pope the tithes of the French
Church for three years for the object of carrying on the war against
Frederick II; but in 1267 he himself obtained the papal consent to
take these tithes for the purpose of crusade.




CHAPTER XI

DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH


[Sidenote: Number of the Sacraments.]

It was during the period covered by this volume that some of the most
characteristic doctrines of the Roman Church were developed. In this
development the whole sacramental system of the Church comes under
consideration. The word "sacramentum" in the sense of a holy mark or
sign (_sacrum signum_) was used with a very wide meaning as
denoting anything "by which under the cover of corporeal things the
divine wisdom secretly works salvation." Hugh of St. Victor, writing
in the first half of the twelfth century, distinguishes three kinds of
sacraments--those necessary for salvation, namely, baptism and the
reception of the Body and Blood of Christ; those for sanctification,
such as holy water, ashes, and such-like; and those instituted for the
purpose of preparing the means of the necessary sacraments, that is,
holy orders and the dedication of churches. Elsewhere he chooses out
rather more definitely seven remedies against original or actual sin,
namely, baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, extreme unction,
marriage, and holy orders; and after the twelfth century the Church
gradually restricted the use of the word Sacrament to these seven.
There was much disputing among the schoolmen on the need of
institution by Christ Himself. Peter Lombard, and after him
Bonaventura, denied this necessity; Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas
asserted it. But how account for extreme unction and confirmation?
This is St. Thomas' explanation. "Some sacraments which are of greater
difficulty for belief Christ himself made known; but others He
reserved to be made known by the Apostles. For sacraments belong to
the fundamentals of the law and so their institution belongs to the
law-giver. Christ made known only such sacraments as He Himself could
partake. But He could not receive either penance or extreme unction
because he was sinless. The institution of a new sacrament belongs to
the power of excellence which is competent for Christ alone: so that
it must be said that Christ instituted such a sacrament as
confirmation not by making it known, but by promising it."

[Sidenote: The Eucharist.]

Of these seven sacraments the one round which the whole doctrine and
discipline of the Church increasingly centred was, of course, the
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist. The view generally
held in the Church was that of St. Augustine, which finds a place in
the homilies of Aelfric and in the controversial work of Ratramnus of
Corbie (died 868). According to this view, Christ is present in the
consecrated elements of the sacrament really but spiritually. "The
body of Christ," says Ratramnus, "which died and rose again and has
become immortal, does not now die: it is eternal and cannot suffer."
But the tendency of the Middle Ages was to materialise all conceptions
however spiritual; and Ratramnus had written to controvert Paschasius
Radbertus, Abbot of New Corbie, who had applied these materialistic
views to the Eucharist. "Although," he asserts, "the form of bread and
wine may remain, yet after consecration it is nothing else but the
flesh and blood of Christ, none other than the flesh which was born of
Mary and suffered on the cross and rose from the sepulchre." During
the two succeeding centuries this theory of the corporeal presence
gained so much vogue in the Church that when Berengar of Tours taught
in the cathedral school of his native city the doctrine of Ratramnus,
he was condemned unheard at a Synod at Rome in 1050. But he gained the
favour of Hildebrand, who was then at Tours in 1054 as papal legate,
and was content with the admission "panem atque vinum altaris post
consecrationem esse corpus et sanguis Christi"; and relying on his
protection Berengar went to Rome (1059). Here, however, his opponents
forced him to sign a confession in conformity with the materialistic
view. His repudiation of this as soon as he got away from Rome began a
long controversy, the champion on the materialistic side being
Lanfranc, then a monk of Bee in Normandy, to whom Berengar had
originally addressed himself. Lanfranc held the position that the
consecrated elements are "ineffably, incomprehensibly, wonderfully by
the operation of power from on high, turned into the essence of the
Lord's Body." In 1075 the matter was discussed at the Synod of
Poictiers, and Berengar was in danger of his life. Again Pope Gregory,
as he had now become, tried to stand his friend, and at a Synod at
Rome in 1078 to get from Berengar a confession of faith in general
terms. But the violence of Berengar's enemies made compromise or
ambiguity impossible. Again Berengar repudiated the forced confession;
and Gregory only obtained peace for him until his death in 1088, by
threatening with anathema any who molested him. Berengar's objections
to the doctrine of Paschasius were shared by all the mystics, who held
a more spiritual belief. Thus, St. Bernard distinguishes between the
visible sign and the invisible grace which God attaches to the sign;
and Rupert of Deutz declares that for him who has no faith there is
nothing of the sacrifice, nothing except the visible form of the bread
and wine.

[Sidenote: Transubstantiation.]

But apart from these writers the trend of opinion and inclination told
entirely in favour of the materialistic school of thought. To the
ordinary folk the miraculous aspect of the doctrine was a positive
recommendation to acceptance. And the word Transubstantiation, even
though it did not necessarily imply a materialistic change,
undoubtedly became associated in men's minds with that idea. As early
as the middle of the ninth century Haimo of Halberstadt had said that
the substance of the bread and wine (that is, the nature of bread and
wine) is changed substantially into another substance (that is, into
flesh and blood). But the word "transubstantiate" is used first by
Stephen, Bishop of Autun (1113-29), who explains "This is My Body" as
"The bread which I have received I have transubstantiated into My
Body." Sanction was first given for the use of the word in the Lateran
Council of 1215. In the confession of faith drawn up by that Council
it is asserted that "there is one Universal Church of the Faithful,
outside of which no one at all has salvation: in which Jesus Himself
is at once priest and sacrifice, whose Body and Blood are truly
received in the sacrament of the altar under the form of bread and
wine, the bread being transubstantiated by the divine power into the
Body and the wine into the Blood, in order that for the accomplishment
of the mystery of the unity we may receive of His what He has received
of ours. And this as being a sacrament no one can perform except a
priest who shall have been duly ordained according to the Keys of the
Church, which Jesus Christ Himself granted to the Apostles and their
successors."

[Sidenote: Resulting Changes.]

This "mystery of the unity" became, on the one side, the subject of a
long and intricate controversy on the method by which the change in
the elements was effected, while on the other side it lent itself to
much mystical meditation. Of neither of these is there space to give
illustration; but the hymn of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is familiar to
English readers under the form of "Now, my tongue, the mystery
telling," blends the two sides with astonishing success. It is a
mistake to describe the view of the sacrament thus sanctioned by the
Church as either more "advanced" or "higher" than the older view. It
was merely more elaborate, and as being such it led on to certain
definite results or changes in custom.

Thus, in the first place, hitherto children had partaken of the
sacrament. This had come partly from the teaching of the need of the
sacrament for salvation, partly from the early custom of administering
communion directly after baptism. The fear of profanation now caused
the gradual discontinuance of children's communions, and in the middle
of the thirteenth century they were definitely forbidden.

[Sidenote: Refusal of cup to laity.]

A far more important change, and for a similar reason, was the refusal
of the cup to the laity. St. Anselm is responsible for the dictum
(afterwards accepted by the whole Church) that "Christ is consumed
entire in either element"; from this came the inference that there was
no need for the administration of both. The heaviness of a single
chalice made the danger of spilling its contents so great that several
chalices were used. This, however, only increased the chances, and
various methods were adopted with a view to minimising the difficulty.
Sometimes a reed was used; later on, bread dipped in wine was
administered, as was already usual in the case of sick persons or
children; or even unconsecrated wine was given. Some of these methods
came under papal condemnation; and the withdrawal of the cup found
powerful apologists in Alexander of Hales and Thomas Aquinas. But the
administration of both elements continued to be fairly common until
far on into the thirteenth century.

[Sidenote: Adoration of the sacrament.]

A third result of the new views is to be seen in the extension of the
doctrine and practice of adoration of the sacrament. The rite of
elevation existed in the Greek Church at least as early as the seventh
century, but was not adopted by the Latins until four centuries later.
In either case, however, it was only regarded as an act symbolical of
the exaltation of Christ. But following on the sanction of the
doctrine of transubstantiation by the Lateran Council, Honorius III in
1217 decreed that "every priest should frequently instruct his people
that when in the celebration of the Mass the saving Host is elevated
every one should bend reverently, doing the same thing when the priest
carries it to the sick." A logical outcome of this was the foundation
of the festival of Corpus Christi for the special celebration of the
sacramental mystery. This was first introduced in the bishopric of
Liège in response to the vision of a certain nun. Urban IV, who had
been a canon of Liège, adopted it for the whole Church in 1264, but it
only became general after Clement V had incorporated Urban's ordinance
as part of the Canon Law in the Clementines (1311).

While there was a growing elaboration of the sacramental rite, the
laity in many parts of Europe came from slackness less frequently to
receive communion. As early as Bede, in England, though not in Rome,
communions were very infrequent. English and French Synods tried to
insist on communion three times a year, but could not enforce the
rule. Innocent III, in the fourth Lateran Council, with a view to
compel confession, prescribes once a year. "Every one of the
faithful," runs the canon of the Council, "of either sex, after he has
come to years of discretion, is to confess faithfully by himself all
his sins at least once a year to his own priest, and is to be careful
to fulfil according to his power the penance enjoined on him,
receiving with reverence the sacrament of the Eucharist at least at
Easter."

Finally, the discussion of this theory of transubstantiation led to
the development of a special view of the doctrine of the Eucharistic
Sacrifice. Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas call the sacrament a
representation of the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. But to
Albertus Magnus it is not merely a Representation, but a True
Sacrifice, that is, "an Oblation of the thing offered by the hands of
the priests," and St. Thomas elsewhere declares that the perfection of
the sacrament consists not in its use by the faithful, but in the
consecration of the element, that is to say, that the main point was
the act of the priest. The prevalence of this view appears to have
encouraged the idea in the laity that a mere attendance at the service
was in itself so meritorious as almost to dispense with the need of
communion, except once a year and on the death-bed. Similarly, private
Masses for the dead were instituted, chantry chapels were founded for
the celebration of them, and priests were appointed for the sole
purpose of serving the altar of the chapel.

[Sidenote: Confession.]

Nor was the development of this sacramental system the only method by
which the importance of the priesthood became enhanced. The whole
penitential system of the Church was gradually perverted. Originally
those convicted of open sin who submitted to penance were publicly
readmitted to the Church after confessing their sin and making some
form of atonement. People were encouraged to confess their sins to
their bishop or priest even when their sins were not open and
notorious. This was especially enjoined in the case of mortal sin. But
it was for a long time a matter of discussion whether this confession
to a priest was an indispensable preliminary to forgiveness. Peter
Lombard marks another view. God alone remits or retains sins, but to
the priests he assigns the power, not of forgiveness, but of declaring
men to be bound or loosed from their sins. He adds that even though
sinners have been forgiven by God, yet they must be loosed by the
priest's judgment in the face of the Church. In this ambiguous
position of the priest laymen were even entrusted with the power of
hearing a confession if no priest was available. But in the twelfth
century, as we have seen, confession was often reckoned among the
sacraments; and at the Lateran Council Innocent III enjoined an annual
confession to the parish priest. Before long the precatory form of
absolution is replaced by the indicative form by which the priest
declared the sinner absolved. Thomas Aquinas lays it down that "the
grace which is given in the sacraments descends from the head to the
members: and so he alone is minister of the sacraments in which grace
is given who has a true ministry over Christ's body; and this belongs
to the priest alone who can consecrate the Eucharist. And so when
grace is conferred in the sacrament of penance, the priest alone is
the minister of this sacrament; and so to him alone is to be made the
sacramental confession which ought to be made to a minister of the
Church." There was no room here for confession to laymen, although
Thomas himself allows that in cases of necessity such confession has a
kind of sacramental character which would be supplemented by Christ
Himself as the high priest.

[Sidenote: Indulgences.]

The increasing stress laid upon private confession not only led to the
decay of the public procedure, but also brought about some dangerous
developments in the penitential system of the Church. This had already
become very largely a matter of fixed pecuniary compensations for
moral offences; so that the new system of compulsory confession was
able to recommend itself to the people through the adaptation of the
old mechanical standards by the confessors to each individual case.
Far more important was the extension given to the system of
indulgences. These had their origin in the remission of part of an
imposed penance on condition of attendance at particular churches on
certain anniversaries, it being understood that the penitent would
present offerings to the Church. Abailard complains that on ceremonial
occasions when large offerings are expected, bishops issue such
indulgences for a third or fourth part of the penance as if they had
done it out of love instead of from the utmost greed. And they boast
of it, claiming that it is done by the power of St. Peter and the
Apostles, when it is God who said to them "Whosesoever sins ye remit,"
etc. Thus all bishops took it upon themselves to issue indulgences for
the furtherance of particular objects. But in its claim to subordinate
the episcopal power to its own, the Papacy began to grant indulgences
which were not limited to time or circumstance. Gregory VI in 1044
made promises to all who helped in the restoration of Roman churches;
but Gregory VII promised absolution to all who fought for Rudolf of
Suabia against Henry IV; while Urban II in the widest manner offered
plenary indulgence, that is, remission of all penances imposed, in the
case of any who would take part in the Crusade. This offer in whole or
in part was constantly renewed in order to raise an army for the East.

[Sidenote: Effect on populace.]

It was of course presupposed by those in authority in the cases of
these indulgences that, confession having been made, the temporal
penalties to be undergone either here or in purgatory were thus
remitted. But preachers in their eagerness to raise troops asserted
that those guilty of the foulest crimes obtained pardon from the
moment when they assumed the cross, and were assured of salvation in
the event of death. Consequently the people in their ignorance
overlooked the conditions attached and regarded these indulgences as
promises of eternal pardon. It is not wonderful that men released from
social restraints of a more or less stable society should have
developed in their new abode the licence which made crusaders a byword
in the West.

[Sidenote: Papal indulgences.]

So far the Popes had endeavoured to supersede the bishops in the issue
of indulgences by entering into rivalry with them. But the power was
used by the bishops in such detailed ways as perhaps seriously to
interfere with the offerings which should reach the Papacy or be
applied to important projects. Innocent III, therefore, at the great
Lateran Council limited the episcopal power to the grant of an
indulgence for one year at the consecration of a church and for forty
days at the anniversary. Unfortunately this did not mean the
suppression of trifling reasons for the multiplication of indulgence.
The whole system was a convenient method of adding to the revenues of
Rome, and no occasion seemed too small for the exercise of the papal
power of dispensation. Urban IV granted an indulgence to all who
should listen to the same sermon as the King of France. The Crusades
were the great occasion and excuse for the development of this system,
and it certainly reached its nadir when Gregory IX showed himself
ready in return for a pecuniary penance to absolve men from the vows
which they had perhaps been unwillingly forced to take by his own
agents for going on crusade. Equally disgraceful was the establishment
of the year of Jubilee in 1300 by Boniface VIII, when plenary
indulgence of the most comprehensive kind was offered to all who
within the year should in the proper spirit visit the tombs of St.
Peter and St. Paul at Rome.

[Sidenote: Treasury of merits.]

But how came the Pope to be in possession of this power of remitting
the penalties for sin? The schoolmen of the thirteenth century supply
the answer. Alexander of Hales and Albert the Great invented the
theory and Thomas Aquinas completed it. According to their teaching,
the saints, by their works of penance and by their unmerited
sufferings patiently borne, have done in this world more than was
necessary for their own salvation. These superabundant merits,
together with those of Christ, which are infinite, are far more than
enough to fulfil all the penalties due for their evil deeds from the
living. The idea of unity in the mystical body enables the
shortcomings of one man to be atoned for by the merits of another. The
superabundant merits of the saints are a treasury for use by the whole
Church, and are distributed by the head of the Church, that is, the
Pope. Furthermore, to St. Thomas is due the idea that the contents of
this treasury were equally available for the benefit of souls in
purgatory, for whom the Church was already accustomed to make
intercession.

[Sidenote: Canonisation of saints.]

It was to our Lord Himself that the theologians attributed all merit;
but in the popular mind the merits of the saints took an ever more
important place, since the Church seemed to make the priesthood a
barrier against, rather than a channel for, the flow of God's mercy to
man; but popular feeling sought to find intercessors before the throne
of grace in the holy men and women of the faith. For a long time it
was the bishops who decided the title to saintship. But in 993 Pope
John XV, in a Council at Rome and in response to a request of the
Bishop of Augsburg, ordered that a former bishop of that see should be
venerated as a saint. This was the process afterwards called
Canonisation, which involved the insertion of a name in the Canon or
list, and gave it currency not merely in a single diocese, but
throughout western Christendom. In 1170 Alexander III claimed such
recognition as the exclusive right of Rome. But despite this
assumption of authority, popular feeling very often dictated to the
Pope whom he should admit into the list. Death followed by miracles at
the tomb, and sometimes the building of an elaborate shrine with an
altar, forced the Pope to grant the claims of a popular favourite.

[Sidenote: Miracles and relics.]

A rapid increase in the number of applications for such official
recognition would be the result of any widely popular movement. Such
was the effect of the Crusades in the twelfth century, and of the
foundation of the Mendicant Orders in the thirteenth. And the
multiplication of saints meant an increase in the number of relics and
an ever-growing belief in the miraculous. Miracles frequently took
place in connection with living persons of saintly life. Abailard
scornfully pointed out that some of the attempts made by Norbert or
Bernard to work miraculous cures were quite unsuccessful, while in
successful cases medicine as well as prayers had been employed. But
such rationalism was beyond the grasp of an ignorant age, and
collections of stories of miracles, such as remain to us in the
"Golden Legends" of Jacob de Voragine, a Dominican of the thirteenth
century, fed the popular belief. Miracles so commemorated often
occurred in connection with relics; and the traffic in relics and so
styled "pious" frauds, not to say the forcible means used to procure
reputed relics of authentic or supposititious saints, forms a curious
if a discreditable feature in mediæval history. An occasional protest
was uttered against the manner in which credit was often obtained for
relics of more than doubtful authenticity; but the manufacture of them
was easy and profitable, and pilgrims returning from Palestine could
palm off anything upon the credulity of a willing and ignorant
populace. The growth of a legend in connection with relics is fitly
illustrated by the history of the eleven thousand Virgins of Köln.
Martyrologies of the ninth century celebrate the martyrdom of eleven
virgins in the city of Köln. Perhaps these were described as XI. M.
Virgines, and the letter which denoted martyrs was mistaken for the
Roman numeral for one thousand, and so the number of virgins was
ultimately swollen to eleven thousand. A legend, possibly working on
an old one, was invented by a writer of the twelfth century that these
virgins were martyred by the Huns in the fifth century. In the middle
of that century, when heresy was rife at Köln, a number of bones of
persons of both sexes were found near Köln, and the authenticity of
the relics was put beyond dispute by the revelations vouchsafed to
Saint Elizabeth, Abbess of Schönau, to whom the matter was referred.
Even though she did give a date for the event which was historically
impossible, the confirmatory evidence of the Premonstratensian Abbot
Richard nearly thirty years later put the matter beyond the doubt of
any pious Christian. But the interest of these unsavoury remains of
anonymous men and women, however saintly, pales before certain relics
of our Lord's life on earth which gained currency. Of these the most
famous were the Veronica, a cloth on which Christ, on His way to
Calvary, was supposed to have left the impress of His face, and a
vessel of a green colour which was identified with the holy grail, the
cup which our Lord used at the Last Supper. Of garments purporting to
be the seamless coat of Christ there were a considerable number shown
in different places; but the most famous to this day remains the Holy
Coat of Treves, which, in Dr. Robertson's caustic words, "the Empress
Helena (the mother of Constantine) was said to have presented to an
imaginary archbishop of her pretended birthplace, Treves." During the
First Crusade the army before Antioch was only spurred on to the
efforts which resulted in the capture of the city, by the opportune
discovery of the Holy Lance with which the Roman soldier had pierced
Christ's side while He hung upon the cross.

[Sidenote: Adoration of the Virgin.]

The great increase in the whole intercessory machinery of the Church
culminated in the adoration of the Virgin Mary. The extravagant
expression of this devotion was widespread. For the many it found vent
in the language of popular hymns. Among the monks the Cistercians were
under her special protection, and all their churches were dedicated to
her. Of the learned men Peter Damiani in the eleventh century, St.
Bernard and St. Bonaventura in the two succeeding centuries
respectively, especially helped in various ways to crystallise her
position in the Church. As a result of the efforts of her devotees
Saturdays and the vigils of all feast days came to be kept in her
honour; the salutation "_Ave Maria gratia plena_" with certain
additions was prescribed to be taught to the people, together with the
Lord's Prayer and the Creed. In the thirteenth century its frequent
repetition resulted in the invention of the Rosary, a string of beads
by which the number of repetitions could be counted. The religion of
Mary soon showed signs of development as a parallel religion to that
of Christ. She is styled the Queen of Heaven; her office, composed by
Peter Damiani, was ordered by Urban II to be recited on Saturday; and
a Marian Psalter and a Marian Bible were actually composed; while in
place of the _didia_ or reverence offered to the saints, there
was claimed for the Virgin a higher step, a _hyperdulia_, which
St. Thomas places between _dulia_ and the latria or adoration
paid to Christ.

[Sidenote: The immaculate conception.]

A final stage in possible developments was reached in the twelfth
century in the institution of a feast in honour of the conception of
the Blessed Virgin. Hitherto it had been supposed by Christian
writers, notably by St. Anselm, that the Mother of the Lord had been
conceived as others. Towards the middle of the twelfth century some
Canons of Lyons evolved the theory that she was conceived already
sinless in her mother's womb. St. Bernard strenuously opposed this
notion of her immaculate conception, pointing out that the supposition
involved in the theory could not logically stop with the Virgin
herself, but must be applied to her parents and so to each of their
ancestors in turn in an endless series. Nor was St. Bernard alone in
his objection: indeed, nearly all the chief theologians of the
thirteenth century, including Thomas Aquinas, declared that there was
no warrant of Scripture for the theory. But notwithstanding this
criticism, the festival won its way to recognition. Those who kept it,
however, declared that it was merely the conception which they
celebrated; and St. Thomas interpreting this to denote the
sanctification, was of opinion that such a celebration was not to be
entirely reprobated. It was Duns Scotus who first among the schoolmen
defended the theory of the immaculate conception, but in moderate
language; and his Franciscan followers, who at a General Council of
the Order in 1263 had admitted the festival among some other new
occasions to be observed, in the course of the fourteenth century
adopted it as a distinctive doctrine.




CHAPTER XII

HERESIES


[Sidenote: Cause of heresy.]

It was not until the thirteenth century that the Church had to face
that spirit of scepticism or anti-religious feeling which is the chief
bug-bear of modern Christianity. Her elaborate organisation and the
gradual development of her own dogmatic position enabled her to deal
with individual writers of a speculative turn like Berengar or
Abailard. Nor were these in any sense anti-Christian. But they were
the inciters to heresy; and a real danger to the Church lay in the
filtering down of intellectual speculations to ignorant classes, by
whom they would be transformed into weapons against the fundamental
doctrines of the Christian faith. Indeed, from the eleventh century
onward the Church was constantly threatened by heresy of a popular
kind, which tended to develop into schism. And for this she had to
thank not only the growing materialisation of her doctrine, but even
more the worldly life of her ministers. Unpalatable doctrines may
commend themselves by the pure lives which profess to be founded on
them; but evil doing carries no persuasion to others.

[Sidenote: Two kinds of heretics.]

It is a real difficulty that our sources of information of all the
heretics of these centuries are chiefly the writings of their
successful opponents--the defenders of the orthodox faith. But much
information remains to us from the admissions of her supporters as to
the depraved condition of the Church at this period; so that we need
not believe the allegations or their opponents that a chief inducement
to join heretical sects lay in the greater scope for the indulgence of
sin. Charges of immorality against opponents were the stock-in-trade
of the controversialist, while the greatest authorities in the Church
allow that heresy lived upon the scandals and negligences of the
Church. Moreover, based as they were upon opposition to the existing
organisation, the doctrines of the various sects had much in common.
The Church did not distinguish between them, but excommunicated them
all alike. If, however, we would understand the developments of
opinion in the succeeding centuries, it is important to discriminate;
and a clear distinction can be made between those opponents of the
Church whose views were aimed against the development of an extreme
sacerdotalism within the Church, and those who, going beyond this
negative position, reproduced the Manichæan theories of an early age
and threatened to raise a rival organisation to that of the Christian
Church.

[Sidenote: Anti-sacerdotalists.]

The object which those who belonged to the first of these divisions
set before themselves, was to get behind the elaborate organisation
which the Church had built up and which, instead of being a help to
lead man to God, had now become a hindrance by which the knowledge of
God was actually obscured. They would therefore sweep away all this
machinery and return to the Christianity of apostolic times. Their
objection was primarily moral, but it soon became doctrinal; and among
the heretics of this class there was revived the Donatist theory that
the sacraments depend for their efficacy on the moral condition of
those who administer them. The campaign of the Church reformers
against clerical marriage seemed directly to support this view; but
the canons which forbade any one to be present at a Mass performed by
a married priest had to be explained away as a mere enforcement of
discipline; and in 1230 Gregory IX definitely laid it down that the
suspension of a priest living in mortal sin merely affects him as an
individual and does not invalidate his office as regards others. But
such declarations did nothing to meet the common feeling of the great
incompatibility between the awful powers with which the Church clothed
her ministers and the sinful lives led by a large proportion of the
existing clerical body.

[Sidenote: Extreme examples.]

From an early period in the twelfth century sectaries of this class
are found in several quarters. Two extreme instances are Tanchelm, who
preached in the Netherlands between 1115 and 1124, and Eon de
l'Etoile, who gathered round him a band of desperate characters in
Brittany about 1148. They have been described as "two frantic
enthusiasts," and Eon was almost certainly insane. Eon was imprisoned
and his band dispersed. But Tanchelm found a large following when he
taught that the hierarchy was null and that tithes should not be paid.
He came to an untimely end; but the influence of his doctrines
continued so strong in Antwerp that St. Norbert came to the help of
the local clergy and succeeded in obliterating all traces of the
heresy.

[Sidenote: Petrobrusians and Henricians.]

It was in the south of France that this and all heresy assumed a more
formidable shape. The population was very mixed; the feudal tie,
whether to France, England, or the Emperor, was slight; there was more
culture and luxury, the clergy were more careless of their duties,
while Jews had greater privileges, than anywhere else in Europe.
Moreover, the early teachers were men of education. Two such were
Peter de Bruis (1106-26), a priest, and Henry of Lausanne (1116-48),
an ex-monk of Cluny. Peter was burnt and Henry probably died in
prison. Peter preached in the land known later as Dauphiné; and the
views of the Petrobrusians, as his followers were called, so continued
to spread after his death that Peter the Venerable, the Abbot of
Cluny, thought it worth while to write a tract in refutation of them.
Henry was more formidable. He preached over all the south of France,
was condemned as a heretic at the Council of Pisa (1134), but was
released and resumed his preaching. As the bishops could not and the
lay nobles would not do anything against him, the papal legate
obtained the help of St. Bernard, who, although ill, preached at Albi
and elsewhere with an effect which was much enhanced by the miracles
which in popular belief accompanied his efforts. Henry declined a
debate to which Bernard challenged him, and so became discredited, and
shortly after he fell into the hands of his enemies.

The tract of Peter the Venerable is practically the sole authority for
the tenets of the Petrobrusians. According to this they were frankly
anti-sacerdotal. Infant baptism was held to be useless, since it was
performed with vicarious promises. Churches were useless, for the
Church of God consists of the congregation of the faithful; the Cross,
as being the instrument of Christ's torture, was a symbol to be
destroyed rather than invoked; there was no real presence and no
sacrifice in the Mass, for Christ's body was made and given once for
all at the Last Supper; all offerings and prayers for the dead were
useless, since each man would be judged on his own merits. Henry with
his followers practically adopted these views and added attempts at
social reform on Christian lines, especially in the matter of
marriage, persuading courtesans to abandon their vicious life and
promoting their union to some of his adherents.

[Sidenote: Waldenses.]

By far the most important body of these anti-sacerdotal heretics were
the Waldenses. Their founder was Peter Waldo, whose name takes many
forms--Waldez, Waldus, Waldensis. He was a wealthy merchant of Lyons
who, moved with religious feelings and himself ignorant, caused two
priests to translate into the vernacular Romance the New Testament and
a collection of extracts from the chief writers of the early Church
known as Sentences. From a perusal of these he became convinced that
the way to spiritual perfection lay through poverty. He divested
himself of his wealth and, as a way of carrying out the gospel
further, he began to preach (1170-80). He attracted men and women of
the poorer classes, whom he used as missionaries; and the neglect of
the pulpit by the clergy caused these lay preachers to find ready
listeners in the streets and even in the churches of Lyons. According
to the custom of the day they adopted a special dress; and the sandals
(_sabol_) which they wore in imitation of the Apostles gave them
the name of Insabbatati. They called themselves the Poor Men of
Lyons--Pauperes de Lugduno; Li Poure de Lyod. The Archbishop of Lyons
excommunicated them; but Alexander III, at the request of Peter,
allowed them to preach with permission of the priests. Their disregard
of this proviso caused their excommunication by the Pope in 1184 and
again in 1190; and from this time they began to repudiate the Church
which limited their freedom, and to set up conventicles and an
organisation of their own. The date of Peter's death is not known.

[Sidenote: Their Views.]

The strong missionary spirit of these sectaries spread their doctrines
with extraordinary rapidity. They consisted almost entirely of poor
folk scattered over an area extending from Aragon to Bohemia; and from
place to place differences of organisation and doctrine are to be
observed. But they were not Protestants in the modern sense, and,
despite persecution, many continued to consider themselves members of
the Church. Thus on such doctrinal points as the Real Presence,
purgatory, the invocation of saints, in many places they long
continued to believe in them with their own explanations, and their
repudiation of the teaching of the Church was a matter of gradual
accomplishment. It is true that in places they strove to set up their
own organisation. But the tendency of the Waldenses was much rather
towards a simplification of the existing organisation. The power of
binding and loosing was entirely rejected: an apostolic life and not
ordination was the entrance to the priesthood. In fact, a layman was
qualified to perform all the priestly functions, not merely to baptise
and to preach, but even to hear confession and to consecrate the
Eucharist. Thus the whole penitential machinery of the Church was set
aside. Their specially religious teaching was largely ethical, and by
the testimony of their enemies their life and conduct were singularly
pure and simple. The stories of abominable practices among them
perhaps arose from the extreme asceticism of a sect which professed
voluntary poverty; but they were no more true than the similar tales
told of the early Christians. Nor shall we regard from the same point
of view as the Churchmen of the day the charge brought against them on
the ground of their intimate knowledge of the Scriptures. Of these
they had their own vernacular translations, and large portions of them
were committed to memory. But such translations spread broadcast views
unfettered by the traditional interpretation of the Church, and the
missionary zeal of the Waldenses was proof against the horrors of the
Inquisition with its prison, torture-chamber, and stake.

[Sidenote: Cathari.]

The most formidable development of hostility to the Church came from
the Manichæism of those who bore at various times and in different
places the names of Cathari, Patarius, or Albigenses. The attraction
of the Manichæan theory lay in its apparent explanation of the problem
of evil. There exist side by side in the world a good principle and an
evil principle. The latter is identifiable with matter and is the work
of Satan. Hence sin consists in care for the material creation. It
follows that all action tending to the reproduction of animal life is
to be avoided, so that marriage was strongly discouraged. To the
earlier views was added the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the
transmigration of souls, which, acting as a means of reward and
retribution, seemed fully to account for man's sufferings. These views
together explain the avoidance as food by the Cathari of everything
which was the result of animal propagation, and also the severity of
the ascetic practices which were charged against them.

[Sidenote: Their doctrines.]

In the sphere of doctrine the division between the Cathari and the
Catholic Church was absolute. According to these sectaries Satan is
the Jehovah of the Old Testament: hence all Scriptures before the
Gospels are rejected. They accepted the New Testament, but regarded
Christ as a phantasm and not a man. Thus the doctrine of the Real
Presence had no meaning for them, indeed, they rejected the sacraments
and all external and material manifestations of religion. Here, of
course, they had much in common with the Waldenses, whom the Church
confounded with them; and there seems little doubt that the way for
the preaching of Catharism in the south of France was paved by the
previous work of Peter de Bruis and, even more, of Henry of Lausanne.
But the reasons for opposition to the Church were not the same among
the Waldenses and the Cathari; and the latter soon parted company with
the seekers after primitive Christianity by developing an organisation
of their own. Thus as the Cathari grew in numbers and carried on a
vigorous missionary work, their devotees tended to form themselves
into a Church. At least two distinct Orders were recognised. The
Perfected were a kind of spiritual aristocracy who renounced all
property and were sworn to celibacy, while they submitted themselves
to penances of such rigour that their lives were often endangered, if
not shortened. Below them were the mass of believers who were allowed
to marry and to live in the world, assimilating themselves so far as
possible to the ideal set before them by the higher caste. From the
Perfected were chosen officers with the names of bishop and deacon,
the latter acting as assistants to the chief officers. The ritual was
simple but definite, and the most characteristic ceremony was the
Consolamentum, the baptism of the Holy Ghost, by which the believers
were placed in communion with the Perfected and so became absolved
from all sin. It was performed by the imposition of hands together
with the blessing and kiss of peace given by any two of the Perfected.
This was the process of "heretication," the name given by the
Inquisitors to admission into the Catharist Church; and, except in the
case of the ministers, it was postponed until the believer lay upon
his death-bed.

[Sidenote: Their effect.]

The charges of evil practices against the Cathari were perhaps no
truer than similar accusations against the Waldenses, and their
missionary zeal was proof against even death at the stake.
Nevertheless there is no doubt that the cause of progress and
civilisation lay with Catholicism rather than with its opponents. The
asceticism of the Cathari would have resulted, if not in the
extinction of the race, at least in the destruction of the family:
their identification of matter with the work of Satan would have been
a bar to attempts at material improvement. Moreover, if ever theirs
had become the conquering faith, they would have developed a
sacerdotal class as privileged as the Catholic priesthood. The
movement has been aptly described as "not a revolt against the Church,
but a renunciation of man's dominion over nature."

[Sidenote: Their origin and spread.]

Whether the Catharist movement was spread westwards by the Paulicians
who in the tenth century were transplanted from Armenia to Thrace, or
sprang spontaneously from teachers who saw in the dualistic philosophy
a condemnation, if not an explanation, of the materialisation of
Christianity by the Church, may not be very certain; but there is no
doubt that the Cathari of Western Europe always looked to the eastern
side of the Adriatic as to the headquarters of their faith. In the
eleventh century we hear of Cathari in certain places in North Italy,
in France, and even in Germany; but although in Italy the name of
Patarins came to be applied to the sect, we need trace no connection
in the popular rising at Milan, which was stirred up by the Church
reformers against the simony and clerical marriage practised by the
Church of St. Ambrose. In the twelfth century the movement is heard of
in an increasing number of places, in certain parts of France
including Brittany, in Flanders among all classes, in the Rhine lands.
Milan was supposed to be the headquarters in Italy. In England thirty
persons of humble birth, probably from Flanders, were condemned in
1166, and an article was inserted in the Assize of Clarendon against
them.

[Sidenote: Albigenses.]

But it was in the south of France that the Cathari, no less than the
Waldenses, were chiefly to be found; with this difference,
however--that, whereas the Waldenses confined themselves chiefly to
Provence and the valley of the Rhone, the Cathari were scattered over
a much larger area, although their chief strength lay in the valley of
the Garonne. The town of Albi gave them their name of Albigenses, and
Toulouse was the chief centre of their influence. In 1119 Calixtus II
condemned the heresy at its centre in Toulouse. In 1139, at the second
Lateran Council, Innocent II called upon the secular power for the
first time to assist in expelling from the Church those who professed
heretical opinions. In 1163 Alexander III, at the great Council of
Tours, demanded that secular princes should imprison them. But the
futility of these measures appeared from the colloquy held in 1165 at
Lombers, near Albi, between representatives of the Church and of the
Albigenses before mutually chosen judges, for it made plain the
boldness of the heretics and their claim of equality with the Church.
Indeed, in 1167 they actually held a council of their own at St. Felix
de Caraman, near Toulouse, at which the chief Bishop of the Catharists
was brought from Constantinople to preside, while a number of bishops
were appointed, and all the business transacted was that of an equal
and rival organisation to the Church of Rome.

[Sidenote: Attempts at suppression.]

During the next ten years (1167-77), while the religious allegiance of
Europe was divided by the schism in the Papacy, Catharism gained a
great hold over all classes in Languedoc and Gascony. Raymond V of
Toulouse, the sovereign of Languedoc, finding himself powerless to
check it, appealed for help; but the Kings of France and England
agreed to a joint expedition only to abandon it, and the papal mission
sent in 1178, composed of the papal legate, several bishops, and the
Abbot of Clairvaux, only made heroes of the few heretics whom they
ventured to excommunicate. In 1179, at the third Lateran Council,
Alexander III proclaimed a crusade against all enemies of the Church,
among whom were included, for the first time, professing Christians.
The Abbot of Clairvaux, as papal legate, raised a force and reduced to
submission Roger, Viscount of Béziers, who openly protected heretics;
but the crusading army melted away at the end of the time of
enlistment, and the only result of the expedition was the exasperation
produced by the devastation of the land. After this failure no real
attempt was made to stop the spread of heresy until the accession of
Innocent III, while the fall of Jerusalem in 1186 turned all crusading
ardour in the direction of Palestine.

[Sidenote: Raymond VI of Toulouse.]

Meanwhile, in 1194 Raymond V had been succeeded by his son, Raymond
VI, who, if he was not actually a heretic, was at least indifferent to
the interests of the Catholic faith. Most of his barons favoured
Catharism. He himself was surrounded by a gay and cultured court, and
was popular with his subjects. At the same time the local clergy
neglected their duties, the barons plundered the Church, and the
heretics, without persecuting the Catholics, were gradually
extinguishing them in the dominions of Toulouse. Immediately on his
accession in 1198 Innocent III appointed commissioners to visit the
heretical district; but the local bishop, from jealousy, would not
help. Some effect, however, was produced when, acting on the
suggestion of a Spanish prelate, Diego de Azevedo, Bishop of Osma,
they dismissed their retinues and started on a preaching tour among
the people. The Bishop was accompanied by the Canon Dominic, and this
mission was the germ out of which shortly grew the great Dominican
Order. But the Bishop went back to Spain, and twice the papal legate
excommunicated Raymond VI because he would give no help. Once Raymond
made his peace with the Church, but the second pronouncement against
him was shortly followed by the murder of the legate Peter of
Castelnau, who had made himself peculiarly obnoxious (1208). Raymond's
complicity was never proved, but Innocent was getting impatient, and
his commissioners had made up their minds that it was easier and
quicker to exterminate the heretics than to convert them. Raymond and
all concerned in the murder were excommunicated, and a crusade was
proclaimed against them. Philip Augustus of France allowed his barons
to go, but excused himself on the ground of his relations with John of
England. Raymond hoped to avoid the threatening storm by another
abject submission; but he was obliged to surrender his chief
fortresses and to join in person the army which now assembled for the
extirpation of heresy in his own lands.

[Sidenote: The Crusade.]

Although Raymond was thus forced to appear in the ranks of his
enemies, a leader in resistance was found in his nephew, Raymond
Roger, Viscount of Béziers (1209). But his capital Béziers was stormed
by the crusading army under the legate, who, when asked how the
soldiers could distinguish Catholics from heretics, is said to have
replied, "Slay them all: God will know His own." Then Carcassonne,
deemed impregnable, was besieged, and the young Viscount, decoyed into
the enemies' camp under pretence of negotiation, was kept a prisoner.
He died, and the city was surrendered. The conquered territory was
practically forced by the legate on Simon de Montfort, younger son of
the Count of Evreux, who, through his mother, was also Earl of
Leicester.

[Sidenote: Simon de Montfort.]

In 1211 the crusaders attacked Count Raymond's territories. He had
never yet been tried for the murder of the legate, of which he was
accused; and already Philip of France had warned the Pope that in any
question of Raymond's forfeiture, it was for the French King as
suzerain and not for the Pope to proclaim it. By a visit to Rome
Raymond hoped that he had gained permission to purge himself from the
impending charges; but at the last moment this was pronounced
impossible, because in having failed to clear his lands of heresy, as
he had promised to do, he was forsworn. In a war of sieges De
Montfort's skill took from Raymond everything except Toulouse and
Montauban. Raymond's brother-in-law, Pedro II of Aragon, now
intervened; but when Innocent III, misled by his legates, refused a
further offer of purgation on the part of Raymond, Pedro formally
declared war against De Montfort. He invaded and laid siege to Muret;
but his forces were defeated and he was killed (1213). So far Innocent
III had avoided the recognition of De Montfort's conquests in
Toulouse. But early in 1215 he ratified the act of the Council of
Montpellier which had elected Simon de Montfort as lord of the whole
conquered land. Raymond, although he had never yet been tried, was
declared deposed for heresy; and the fourth Lateran Council, while
confirming this decision, left a small portion of the territory still
unconquered, for his son. It seems likely that Innocent would have
been willing to deal fairly with the Count of Toulouse; but by this
time there were too many interested in the ruin of the House of
Toulouse, and the Pope was deliberately misled by his legates. Hence
it came that a judgment which might, as it was expected that it would,
have righted a great wrong, proved only a signal for revolt. Raymond
and his son were welcomed back by an united people, and finally in
1218 Simon de Montfort was killed while besieging Toulouse.

[Sidenote: A war of aggression.]

De Montfort's son could make no headway against a people in arms. But
in 1222 Raymond VI and Philip of France vainly tried to promote a
peaceful settlement between Amaury de Montfort and Raymond VII.
Amaury, despairing of success, offered his claims to the French King,
and in 1223 Philip's successor, Louis VIII, overpersuaded by the Pope,
accepted them. The young Count Raymond vainly endeavoured to ward off
the threatened invasion and showed every desire to be reconciled with
the Church. There was scarcely any longer a pretence of religious war.
From the first it had been largely a war of races, promoted by
northern jealousy at the wealth and civilisation of the south and by a
desire for the completion of the Frank conquest of Gaul. Thus from the
beginning of hostilities the whole population of the south, Catholic
as well as heretic, had stood together in resistance to the crusading
army, and despite his tergiversations Raymond VI had never lost their
affection and support. The war lasted for three years (1226-9); Louis
VIII led an expedition southwards, which for some inexplicable reason
turned back before it had achieved complete success; and after his
death the Queen-Regent, Blanche of Castile, with the encouragement of
Pope Gregory IX, came to terms with Raymond VII. By the Treaty of
Meaux (1229) Count Raymond agreed to hunt down all heretics, to assume
the cross as a penance, to give up at once about two-thirds of his
lands, while the remainder was to go to his daughter, who was to be
married to a French prince, with the ultimate reversion to the French
Crown. In 1237 Jeanne of Toulouse was married to Alfonso, brother of
Louis IX; in 1249, on the death of Raymond VII, they succeeded to his
dominions, and on their death in 1271 without children Philip III
annexed all their possessions to the dominions of the French Crown.

[Sidenote: Punishment for heresy.]

The question of the acquisition of territory was thus shown to be far
more important than the suppression of heresy. But a university was
established at Toulouse for the teaching of true philosophy, and the
Inquisition was set up under the Dominicans for the suppression of
false doctrine. The time had definitely gone by when the Church would
rely upon methods of persuasion in dealing with heretics. And yet for
a long time there was much hesitation among Churchmen. Even as late as
1145 St. Bernard pleads for reasoning rather than coercion. And the
application of methods of coercion was equally tentative. At first the
obstinate heretic was imprisoned or exiled and his property was
confiscated. But the practice of burning a heretic alive was long the
custom before it was adopted anywhere as positive law. Pedro II of
Aragon, the champion of Raymond VI, first definitely legalised it
(1197). In 1238 by the Edict of Cremona this became the recognised law
of the Empire, and was afterwards embodied in the Sachsenspiegel and
Schwabenspiegel, the municipal codes of Northern and Southern Germany
respectively. The Etablissements of Louis IX (1270) recognised the
practice for France. It is a tribute to English orthodoxy that the Act
"de haeretico comburendo" was not passed until 1401.

[Sidenote: The secular arm.]

Early usage forbade the clergy to be concerned in judgments involving
death or mutilation. This finds expression in the Constitutions of
Clarendon (1164); and the fourth Lateran Council (1215) definitely
forbade clerks to utter a judgment of blood or to be present at an
execution. Thus the Church merely found a man a heretic and called
upon the secular authority to punish him. It was impressed upon all
secular potentates from highest to lowest that it was their business
to obey the behests of the Church in the extirpation of heresy.
Indeed, it may almost be said that the validity of this command of the
Church was the principal point at issue in the Albigensian crusade;
for Raymond's lands were declared forfeit merely because he would not
take an active part in the punishment of his heretical subjects. Thus
by the thirteenth century all hesitation as to the attitude of the
Church towards heretics had entirely disappeared. As Innocent III lays
it down, "faith is not to be kept with him who keeps not faith with
God," and Councils of this century declared that any temporal ruler
who did not persecute heresy must be regarded as an accomplice and so
as himself a heretic.

We cannot apply modern standards to the mediaeval feelings about
heresy. The noblest and most saintly among clergy and laity alike were
often the fiercest persecutors. Church and State were closely
intermingled; heresy was a crime as well as a sin; the heretic was a
rebel; mild measures only made him bolder; and in fear of the
overthrow of the whole social system the rulers of State and Church
combined to crush him.




CHAPTER XIII

THE MENDICANT ORDERS


[Sidenote: Need for new kinds of Orders.]

At the Lateran Council in 1215 Innocent III issued a decree which
practically forbade the foundation of new monastic Orders. The
increase of such Orders in the name of religious reform had not always
tended to the promotion of orthodoxy. Moreover, the monastic ideal was
the spiritual perfection of the individual, to be gained by separation
from the world; but the growth of large urban populations with the
accompanying disease and misery called for a new kind of dedication to
religion. There was strength in membership of an Order, and during the
twelfth century there were founded alongside of the newer monastic
Orders organisations devoted to social work of various kinds. Such was
the origin of the Hospitallers and perhaps of the Templars also, and
of a number of small Orders, most of them merely local in their work
and following, which were founded all over Western Europe for care of
the sick and pilgrims and for other charitable work.

A point that demanded even more immediate attention was the almost
total neglect of preaching by the parochial clergy and the consequent
success of the Waldensian and other heretical preachers. There were
isolated examples of missionary devotion among the clergy. Fulk of
Neuilly, a priest, obtained a licence from Innocent III to preach, and
met with marvellous success among the Cathari until he was turned
aside by Innocent's exhortation to preach a new crusade. But he died
before it set out (1202). Duran de Huesca, a Catalan, conceived the
idea of fighting the heretics with their own weapons, and founded the
Pauperes Catholici as an Order professing poverty and engaged in
missionary work. But the outbreak of the Albigensian War superseded
the work of the Order by more summary methods of dealing with
heretics.

[Sidenote: Dominicans.]

But these Poor Catholics were the precursors, if not the actual model
of the Preaching Friars of St. Dominic. The founder was a Spaniard,
who had studied long in the University of Palencia, and had become
sub-prior of the cathedral of Osma. He accompanied his bishop to Rome,
and thence on a mission among the Albigenses. He wandered as a
mendicant through the most heretical districts of Languedoc for three
years (1205-8) before the outbreak of war, holding religious
discussions with leading heretics. But amid the clash of arms his
activity took a different shape. Communities had been founded among
the Albigenses for the reception of the daughters of dead or ruined
nobles. For the protection of such and of any others of the gentle sex
who returned to Catholicism, Dominic founded the monastery of Prouille
(1206). This was established on the lines of houses in other Orders;
and although he led a life of extreme asceticism, he did not at first
contemplate imposing a rule of collective poverty upon his Order.
Indeed, he received for the use of Prouille gifts of all kinds in land
and movables, and even increased the possessions by purchase. Towards
the end of the war Dominic established a brotherhood which should
devote itself to preaching with a view to refuting heretics. In 1215
he appeared at the Lateran Council, in order to obtain the papal
approbation of this new Order. Innocent III, while taking under his
protection the monastery of Prouille, desired Dominic to choose an
already existing rule for his new community. The Dominican legend
depicts Innocent as converted to the recognition of the Order by a
dream, in which he saw the Lateran Church tottering and upheld by the
support of the Spanish saint. But Innocent died before Dominic had
decided with his followers that they would place themselves under the
rule of the Augustinian Canons; and it was from Honorius III that the
Friars Preachers obtained the confirmation of their Order. A parallel
story is told of the papal approval of the Franciscans; but there is
no proof that St. Francis was present at the Council, nor is it likely
that in the face of the decree against the foundation of new Orders
the sanction of the Pope should have been given to his rule. But the
meeting of the two great founders at Rome in 1216 is an historical
event of great importance; for the example of the Franciscans caused
the adoption of the life of poverty by the Dominicans also.

[Sidenote: Their spread.]

Immediately after the papal confirmation the Order began its work. The
first followers of Dominic included natives of Spain, England,
Normandy, and Lorraine, and the Friars Preachers are soon found in
every country of Western and Central Europe. The nature of the work to
which they set themselves made them from the beginning a congregation
of intellectual men. Honorius III conferred on Dominic himself the
Mastership of the Sacred Palace, which gave to him, and even more to
those who succeeded him in the headship of the Order, not merely the
religious instruction of the households of popes and cardinals, but
also the censorship of books. Paris, the headquarters of the
scholastic theology, and Bologna, the great law school of the Middle
Ages, became at once the chief seats of training. The Dominicans
spread so rapidly that at the death of their founder in 1221 they
possessed sixty houses, which had just been divided into eight
provinces. To these four were subsequently added. The death of
Dominic, like his life, has been almost overwhelmed in the miraculous;
but for whatever reason, it was not until thirteen years after his
death that he was enrolled among the recognised saints of the Church,
although the honour of canonisation had been paid to St. Francis eight
years earlier and within two years of his death.

[Sidenote: Popularity of the friars.]

Jealousy between the conventual and the parochial clergy had been of
long standing: it had been based upon the exemption of monks from the
jurisdiction of the local Church. The monks had, however, been
definitely warned off themselves taking part in parochial work. But
the friars began with a missionary purpose; and in 1227 Gregory IX,
who as Cardinal Ugolino had been Protector of the Franciscans,
conferred on both Orders the right not only of preaching, but also of
hearing confessions and granting absolution everywhere. The rules of
the Orders forbade them to preach in a church without the leave of the
parish priest; but they ignored this prohibition, set up their own
altars, at which a papal privilege allowed them to celebrate Mass, and
not only superseded the lazy secular clergy in all the work of the
cure of souls, but deprived them of the fees which were a chief source
of their income. The secular clergy bitterly resented the presence of
the intruders; but the Pope favoured the friars and heaped privileges
upon them, since they formed an international body easy to mobilise
for use against the hierarchy, and able to be used for transmitting
and executing papal orders. The people also welcomed them, because, at
first at any rate, they worked for their daily bread, and were
prevented by their vow of poverty from seeking endowments: while the
peripatetic character of his life made the friar popular as a
confessor who could know nothing about his penitents.

[Sidenote: Dominicans and University of Paris.]

The characteristic work of the Dominicans as preachers and teachers
rather determined the particular form which the struggle should assume
between them and the seculars. The University of Paris welcomed the
Dominicans on their first arrival; the new-comers soon fixed
themselves in the Hospital of St. Jacques (the site of the Jacobin
Club of 1789), on University ground, and many members of the
University became affiliated to their Order. In 1229 the privileges of
the University were violated by the municipality, and, since the Crown
would give no redress, the whole body of masters and students
dispersed themselves among different provincial towns. In 1231 a bull
of Gregory IX confirmed their privileges and brought them back to
Paris. But during their absence the Dominicans, with the approval of
the Bishop, admitted scholars to their house of St. Jacques and
appointed their own teachers; while several of the most famous secular
teachers took the Dominican habit. Thus after 1231 there were in the
University several theological chairs occupied by Mendicants. The
prosperity and aggressiveness of the friars, and political and
doctrinal differences between them and the seculars, caused great
tension. Not without reason the seculars complained that they were
likely to be deprived of all the theological teaching. Matters came to
an issue in 1253, when, on the murder of a scholar by the municipal
officers, the University in accordance with its privileges proclaimed
a cessation or suspension of the classes. In this act the Mendicants
refused to join without the papal sanction. The University attempted
to expel them from the teaching body, and under the leadership of
William of St. Amour it so far prevailed at Rome that Innocent IV, for
whatever reason, issued the "terrible" bull _Etsi Animarum_, by
which the Mendicants were deprived at one blow of all the privileges
which had given them the power of interfering in parochial life. But
in the legend of the Order Innocent was prayed to death by the
revengeful friars. Anyhow, his death (1254) saved the situation, since
his successor, Alexander IV, declared unreservedly for them. The
University was forced to receive them, and to acknowledge their rights
of preaching and hearing confessions. On the other hand, it was
arranged under Urban IV that the number of theological chairs to be
held by Mendicant teachers, whose representatives at the moment were
Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura, should be limited to three. But the
war against the Mendicants continued, and the bullying to which the
University was subjected, especially by Benedict Gaetani, the papal
legate, in 1290, accounts perhaps for the support given by the
University to Philip IV in his quarrel with Boniface VIII, and for the
political action of the University at a later date.

[Sidenote: Friars and Inquisition.]

The spread of heresy and the feeble attempts of the bishops to use the
machinery at their disposal for dealing with it, caused the gradual
growth of the system known as the Papal Inquisition. This was
feasible, partly because the civil government, led by Frederick II,
were enacting severe laws against heresy, but chiefly because in the
new Mendicant Orders there were now to be found men of sufficient
knowledge and training to cope with the difficulty of unmasking
heresy. But it is a mistake to suppose that the inquisitorial work was
a perquisite of the Dominicans. Both Orders alike were employed by the
Papacy in the unsavoury duty, although ultimately the Dominicans took
the larger share. For the service of the wretched, to which the
Franciscans primarily devoted themselves, soon necessitated a study of
medicine in order to cope with disease and a study of theology in
order to deal with heresy. If as a body they never came to represent
learning like the Dominicans, the names of Bonaventura, Roger Bacon,
and Duns Scotus sufficiently prove that there was no necessary
antagonism between learning and the Franciscan ideal.

[Sidenote: St. Francis.]

The modern and the Protestant world apparently finds the life of St.
Francis as interesting and wonderful as his contemporaries found it.
It seems no exaggeration to say that "no human creature since Christ
has more fully incarnated the ideal of Christianity" than he. Even the
extravagances of himself and some of his followers, scarcely
exaggerated by the mass of legends which has grown up around him and
the Order, cannot conceal the real beauty of his life; while they bear
eloquent witness not only to the impression which he made on his own
and succeeding generations, but also to the fact of his attempt to
realise the standard set up by Christ for human imitation. His
devotion to the wretched and the outcast, especially the lepers; his
deep humility; his childlike faith and absolute obedience, were the
outcome of a desire to attain to the simplicity of Christ and the
Apostles. But the essence of his system lay in the idealisation of
poverty as good in itself and the best of all good things. Poverty
was, indeed, the "corner-stone on which he founded the Order." But
this did not imply sadness, which St. Francis considered one of the
most potent weapons of the devil. Sociability, cheerfulness,
hopefulness were characteristics of himself and of the Order in its
early days. Here it is impossible to tell the fascinating story of his
own life, to describe his own graphic preaching, or to illustrate his
instinctive sympathy with animal life. But it must be noted that his
passionate love for Christ the Sufferer caused him to desire to
reproduce in detail the last hours of the Saviour's life on earth,
until the ecstasies may have ended in producing those physical marks
of the crucifixion upon the body known as the Stigmata. The evidence
is conflicting and not above suspicion, and the Dominicans always
treated the claim with ridicule. Certainly the Franciscan Order
exalted their founder with an extravagance which ultimately (1385)
ended in the production of a Book of Conformities, some forty in
number, in which, by implication, the simple friar becomes a second if
not a rival Christ.

It was in 1210 that Francis and the Brotherhood of Penitents which he
had founded at Assisi appeared in Rome, and obtained from Innocent III
a verbal confirmation of their rule and authority to preach. This rule
seems to have comprised nothing more than certain passages of
Scripture enjoining a life of poverty. The first disciples of Francis
were drawn from a variety of social classes, and a revelation from God
is said to have decided him and his little company to abandon their
first notion of a contemplative life in favour of one of active
service along evangelical lines. The missionary work began at once,
and they wandered in couples through Italy, finding their way quickly
into France, England, Germany, and all other European lands.

[Sidenote: Franciscan Rule.]

The future organisation of the Order was determined by a definitive
Rule sanctioned by Honorius III in 1223. Francis refused to alter any
of the clauses at the Pope's request, asserting that the Rule was not
his, but Christ's; whence it became a tradition of the Order that the
Rule had been divinely inspired. It was strictly enjoined that the
brethren should possess no property, should receive no money even
through a third person, and that all who were able to labour should do
so in return not for money, but for necessaries for themselves and
their brethren. And as if these plain directions were not enough, St.
Francis in his will enjoins that the words of the Rule are to be
understood "simply and absolutely, without gloss," and to be observed
to the end.

[Sidenote: Organization]

The organisation aimed at being non-monastic; the houses, which should
be mere headquarters of the simplest kind, were placed under guardians
who had neither the title nor the powers of the monastic abbot, and
were grouped into provinces; while the provincial ministers were
responsible to the General Minister stationed at Assisi, who was
himself chosen by the General Chapter of the provincials and guardians
called every three years, and could also be deposed by them. A
Cardinal watched the interests of the Order at Rome. The rapid spread
of the Franciscans is shown from the fact that the first General
Chapter in 1221 is said to have been attended by several thousand
members, while in 1260, when Bonaventura as General reorganised the
arrangements, a division was made into 33 provinces and 3 vicariates
which included in all 182 guardianships. England, for example,
comprised 7 guardianships with 49 houses and 1242 friars.

The Order included other branches than the fully professed friars.
Some time before 1216 a sisterhood was added in the Order of St.
Claire under a noble maiden of Assisi, who put herself under the
guidance of Francis and received from Pope Innocent for herself and
her sisters the "privilege of poverty." They observed the Franciscan
Rule in all its strictness, and their founder was canonised in 1255,
two years after her death.

[Sidenote: Tertiaries.]

A very distinctive feature of the Franciscans is the organisation
officially known as the Brothers and Sisters of Penitence, but more
popularly described as the Tertiaries of the Order. The affiliation of
laymen and women to religious Orders was no new thing. But the laity
of both sexes who attached themselves by bonds of brotherhood and in
associations for prayer to the great monasteries were mostly well-born
and wealthy, prospective if not actual patrons. The Franciscan
Tertiaries were as democratic as the Order itself. The papal sanction
was given in 1221. The members were required to live the ordinary
daily life in the world under certain restrictions. In addition to the
obligations of religion and morality, they were required to dress
simply and to avoid certain ways of amusement, while they were
forbidden to carry weapons except for the defence of their Church and
their land. The Dominicans possessed a similar organisation under the
name of _Militia Jesu Christi_, the Soldiery of Christ. In the
case of both Orders this close contact with the laity irrespective of
class was a source of great strength and influence. Many, from royal
personages downwards, enrolled themselves among the Tertiaries or
hoped to assure an entrance to heaven by assuming the garb of a friar
upon the death-bed.

[Sidenote: Friars as missionaries to the heathen.]

Since both Orders were founded with a missionary purpose, it is not
surprising to find that at a very early date they extended their
efforts beyond Europe. No real distinction of sphere can be profitably
made; but perhaps the Dominican work lay chiefly among heretics, while
the Franciscans devoted the greater attention to the heathen.
Certainly St. Francis himself did not deal with heretics as such. He
did, however, try to convert the Mohammedans and became for a while a
prisoner in the hands of the Sultan of Egypt. Both Orders established
houses in Palestine and both Orders were employed in embassies to the
Mongols. The Dominicans brought back the Jacobite Church of the East
into communion with Rome, while the Franciscans won King Haiton of
Armenia, who entered their Order. Stories of martyrdom were frequent.
At any rate, the friars were among the most enterprising of mediaeval
travellers, and were the first to bring large portions of the Eastern
world into contact with the West.

[Sidenote: Change from original principle.]

The story of the Dominican Order in the thirteenth century is one of
continual progress. It was devoted to poverty no less than its
companion Order. But circumstances soon showed that this was a
principle which in its strictness made too great a demand upon human
nature. Relaxation of the Rules was obtained from more than one pope;
the popularity of the Orders brought them great wealth, and land and
other property was held by municipalities and other third parties for
the use of the friars. Their houses and their churches became as
magnificent as those of the monks. But while this grave departure from
the original ideal gave rise to no qualms among the more worldly and
accommodating Dominicans, it rent asunder the whole Franciscan Order
in a quarrel which forms perhaps the most interesting and important
episode in the religious history of the Middle Ages.

[Sidenote: Development of extreme views among Franciscans.]

The conflict began at once after St. Francis' death. His successor as
General of the Order, Elias of Cortona, desired to supersede the
democratic constitution of the Order in favour of a despotic rule, and
obtained from Gregory IX a relaxation of the strict rule of poverty:
while he raised over the remains of the founder at Assisi a
magnificent church which the saint would have repudiated. The bitter
complaints of the Franciscans who wished to observe the Rule in the
spirit of their founder obliged the Pope to depose Elias, who took
refuge at the Court of Frederick II. But the tendency towards
relaxation continued and was favoured by the Papacy. For the
Spirituals--those who clung to the strict Rule and regarded it as a
direct revelation to St. Francis--by the severity of their practices
tended to isolate themselves from the life around them and so to
escape the discipline of the Church. In addition to this they became
involved in heresy by identifying themselves with the prophecies
attached to the name of Joachim de Flore. He was the Abbot of a
Calabrian monastery, who founded an Order at the end of the twelfth
century. He depicted the history of mankind as composed of three
periods--the first under the dispensation of the Father ending at the
birth of Christ; the second under the Son, which by various
calculations he determined would end in 1260; and the third ruled by
the Holy Ghost, in which the Eucharist, which had itself superseded
the paschal lamb, should give way to some new means of grace. Joachim
also foretold the rise of a new monastic order which should convert
the world, and this the Franciscans concluded to mean themselves.
Curiously enough, the Church did not condemn Joachim for his
prophecies: popes even encouraged him to write. In 1254 there appeared
in Paris a book entitled the _Introduction to the Everlasting
Gospel_, a name taken from a passage of the Revelation (xiv. 6). We
know it only from the denunciations of its enemies; but it was
apparently intended to consist of three undoubted works of Joachim
with explanatory glosses and an introduction. These were the work of
Friar Gerard of Borgo-san-Donnino, who is represented as having gone
beyond the views of the Calabrian prophet. He asserted that about the
year 1200 the spirit of life had left the Old and New Testaments in
order to pass into the Everlasting Gospel, and that this new
scripture, of which the text was composed of Joachim's three books,
was a new revelation which did not, as Joachim held, contain the
mystical interpretation of the Bible, but actually replaced and
effaced the Law of Christ as that had effaced the Law of Moses. It is
impossible to tell how far the author represented the views of all the
Spirituals. A share in the composition was ascribed to the Franciscan
General John of Parma (1248-57), who represented the purest Franciscan
tradition, and was chiefly responsible for the more extravagant forms
of the Franciscan legend. He was a gentle mystic, and his belief in
the prophetical utterances of the age probably did not go beyond the
actual works of Joachim. But his sympathy encouraged the extreme
Joachites, who manufactured and passed from hand to hand a large
number of spurious prophetical writings which were attributed to
Joachim.

[Sidenote: Popular manifestations.]

Moreover, the extravagances of the Spirituals were no isolated
outburst of religious liberty. In 1251 there appeared in France an
elderly preacher, known as the Hungarian, who, professing a revelation
from the Virgin Mary and preaching a social revolution, led a band of
peasants and rioters through country, until the leader was killed in a
scuffle and his followers were dispersed. In 1260 Italy was startled
by processions of persons of all classes and ages, stripped to the
waist, who flogged themselves at intervals in penance for their sins.
These movements of the Pasteauroux and the Flagellants were merely the
best known among many which bore witness to the restlessness and
yearning of the age.

[Sidenote: Papal action and its effect.]

But despite the manifest danger of these movements the Papacy acted
with great caution. In 1255 a tribunal of three Cardinals at Anagni
investigated the charges against Gerard's book. Joachim's orthodoxy
remained unquestioned the _Everlasting Gospel_ was condemned, but
the Bishop of Paris was told not to annoy the Franciscans. The most
important result was that John of Parma was deposed by the General
Chapter acting under the influence of the Conventual Franciscans, who
welcomed the relaxations of the severe Rule. For their new head was
Bonaventura, himself a mystic; but the fact that he had taken the
place of their beau ideal, that he distrusted the rule of absolute
poverty as tending to weaken the social worth of the Franciscan body,
and that he was a recognised leader in the Church--all increased the
alienation of the Spirituals from the Church and suggested to their
minds the idea of schism.

[Sidenote: Chances of separation.]

On the other hand, the Conventuals met the austere intolerance of the
extreme party by persecution. The most interesting victim of this
religious rancour was Peter John, the son of Olive, a French friar,
whose works were condemned more than once, although he died quietly in
1298. He allowed to the Franciscans only the sustenance necessary for
daily life and the furniture for the celebration of divine service. In
his view the Roman Church was Babylon, and the Rule of St. Francis was
the law of the Gospel. For those who held such views there was no
place in the Roman Church. The Spirituals began to seek relief in a
return to the eremitic life. But the sudden elevation of a hermit of
South Italy to the Papacy in the person of Celestine V seemed to
present to these dreamers the chance of the accomplishment of the new
Gospel. His hopeless failure and abdication turned their thoughts more
than ever to separation from the Church. Celestine, who had gathered
some of the extreme Franciscans into a community of his own, is said
to have released them from obedience to the Franciscan Order. In any
case, Boniface VIII not only secured the ex-Pope, but also attempted
to exterminate his followers. So far the question at issue had been a
disciplinary question which concerned the Franciscan Order--whether
for the Order absolute poverty was of the essence of the Rule. The
time was at hand when the question would assume a doctrinal form, and
the Church at large would be called upon to decide whether absolute
poverty was an article of the Christian faith.




CHAPTER XIV

THE CHURCH AND THE HEATHEN


[Sidenote: Hungary and Poland.]

From the time of Otto I it was the policy of the German Kings to
Germanise and Christianise the nations on their eastern border, as a
preparatory step to including them in the Empire. Otto had exacted
homage from the rulers of Hungary, Poland, and Bohemia, but under his
successors they broke away; and although, meanwhile, Christianity was
accepted by the rulers in all three countries, Hungary and Poland both
established their independence politically of the German King, and
ecclesiastically of the German Metropolitan of Mainz or Magdeburg.
Henry III reasserted the political influence in Germany; but it was to
the interest of the Pope to encourage the independent attitude of the
Churches in Hungary and Poland so long as they recognised the Roman
supremacy. But even politically Gregory VII told Solomon, King of
Hungary (1074), that his kingdom "belongs to the holy Roman Church,
having been formerly offered by King Stephen to St. Peter, together
with every right and power belonging to him, and devoutly handed
over." A similar claim, of which the basis was much more doubtful, was
made to Poland.

[Sidenote: Bohemia.]

The Czechs in Bohemia were less fortunate. Boleslas Chrobry, i.e. the
Brave, of Poland (992-1025), had aspired to rule over an united
kingdom of the Northern Slavs, but had to be content with the
independence of his own Polish kingdom. Bretislas of Bohemia (1037-55)
had a similar ambition; but he could not shake off the German yoke,
and his bishopric of Prague remained a suffragan of the Metropolitan
of Mainz.

[Sidenote: Adalbert of Bremen.]

North of Bohemia, in the country lying between the Baltic, the Elbe,
and the Oder, Otto had established a series of marks or border-lands
in which he had built towns, introduced German colonists, and founded
bishoprics which he had grouped round a new Metropolitan at Magdeburg.
Here for nearly a century and a half the House of Billung did much to
keep under the surging tide of paganism. It was the ambitions of
Adalbert, Archbishop of Bremen (1043-72), which for a time caused a
serious heathen reaction in this quarter. He was the rival of Hanno of
Koln for influence at the Court during Henry IV's minority. As the
most northern German Metropolitan he aspired to set up a patriarchate
in Northern Europe. He met with considerable success in Scandinavia.

[Sidenote: Scandinavia.]

The Christianisation of Denmark had been completed under Cnut, who
also ruled over England (1014-35). Norway was also being rapidly
converted; but the forcible methods of King Olaf, who afterwards
became the patron saint of his country, roused discontent. Cnut added
Norway to his dominions, and was anxious to make his realm
ecclesiastically independent. He established three bishoprics in
Denmark, but did not get his own metropolitan, and his empire fell
asunder at his death. Adalbert made a close alliance with Swein of
Denmark, and thus kept the Danish Church dependent. Harold Hardrada
struggled against Adalbert's attempts to assert his power in Norway.
Sweden had accepted Christianity under Olaf Stotkonung, i.e. the
Lap-King, who died in 1024. But until towards the end of the eleventh
century heathenism continued to maintain itself, and the difficulties
of the Christian party were considerably increased by the assertive
policy of Bremen. Adalbert's schemes were wide-reaching. He sent
bishops to the Orkneys, to Iceland, and even to Greenland, of which
the last two lands had been converted by missionaries from Norway and
ultimately became subject to the Metropolitan of Norway.

[Sidenote: Wends.]

But the real mischief of Adalbert's ambitious schemes was apparent
east of the Elbe. He founded the bishopric of Hamburg, and held it in
addition to Bremen. He sent bishops to Ratzeburg and Mecklenburg
across the Elbe. He encouraged Henry IV's schemes against the Saxons
in order to diminish the power of the House of Billung, who were his
rivals in that quarter. The various tribes of the Wends--Wagrians,
Obotrites, Wiltzes--had been drawn together into one kingdom under
Gottschalk (1047-66), himself a Christian, who founded churches and
monasteries, and has been likened to Oswald of Northumbria in that he
interpreted the missionaries' sermons to his heathen subjects. This
dominion had been established under the protection of the Saxon dukes.
But Henry IV's quarrels with Saxony distracted the attention of the
Billungs and their followers; and Gottschalk's death was followed by a
heathen reaction in which, together with the extirpation of other
marks of Christianity, the bishoprics were destroyed, and among them
Adalbert's own foundation of Hamburg. This was the beginning of the
end. Adalbert's successor had to be content with Bremen alone.
Moreover, in the investiture struggle he was loyal to Henry IV; and
since Eric of Denmark declared for the Pope, Urban II made the Danish
prelate of Lund the Metropolitan of the North (1103). This arrangement
caused discontent in the two other Scandinavian kingdoms, and
ultimately Eugenius III sent Cardinal Breakspear, the future Hadrian
IV, on a mission which resulted in the establishment of Nidaros or
Drontheim as the see of a primate for Norway, and of Upsala in a
similar capacity for Sweden. It may be mentioned in connection with
this point that Finland owed its conversion to Sweden very shortly
afterwards, though the Swedish attempts in Esthonia failed.

[Sidenote: Their final conversion.]

Meanwhile among the Wends Gottschalk's son revived his father's
authority and contact with German civilisation; but after 1131 the
Wendish kingdom fell to pieces, and from that moment we can mark the
steady advance of German power to the Oder. The Billung line of Saxon
dukes had become extinct in 1106, and Henry V had given the ducal name
to Lothair, who succeeded him as Emperor, and who as Duke aimed at
building up a strong dominion in north-eastern Germany. As Emperor he
took up the civilising rôle of Otto the Great and encouraged the
Germanisation of the Slavs. The actual work was done by his chief
adviser Norbert, whom he had almost forced to become Archbishop of
Magdeburg. He acted in conjunction with Albert the Bear, a descendant
in the female line of the Billung dukes and Margrave of the Northmark,
who himself founded bishoprics among his immediate neighbours the
Wiltzes. Albert's soldiers prepared the way for Norbert's
Premonstratensian canons, and bishoprics were founded with so little
regard for division of territory, even in Poland and Pomerania, that
both Gnesen and Lund found themselves for a time subordinated to
Magdeburg. Two names are especially associated with the conversion of
the Wends. In 1121, under the patronage of Lothair who was not yet
Emperor, Vicelin began his work among the Wagrians, and in 1149 he
became their Bishop with his see at Oldenburg. He died in 1154. It was
under the auspices of Henry the Lion, now Duke of Saxony, that Berno
preached to the Obotrites, converting the Wendish Prince and becoming
Bishop of Mecklenburg. The gradual advance of German colonisation had
weakened the Wendish resistance and prepared the way for this
restoration of Christianity. Henry the Lion finished the work. In
alliance with Waldemar II of Denmark he repeated with greater
completeness the work of founding bishoprics, establishing houses of
Premonstratensians, whose missionary activity was now shared by the
Cistercians, building towns and introducing colonists, until the whole
country between the Northmark and the Baltic was included in his Saxon
duchy.

[Sidenote: Pomerania.]

The fall of Henry the Lion was not followed by any anti-German
reaction; and meanwhile the work of conversion had been going forward
among the Slavs beyond the Oder. The first attempts of the Poles to
influence their troublesome Pomeranian neighbours failed. The ultimate
success of a mission was due to a German. Otto, a native of Suabia,
began as a schoolmaster in Poland. From chaplain to the Polish Prince
the Emperor Henry V made him Bishop of Bamberg (1102); and, when
Boleslas III had subdued part of Pomerania and found his bishops
unwilling to attempt its conversion, he offered the task to Otto of
Bamberg who, although an old man, undertook it with the consent of the
Pope and the Emperor. He paid two visits--in 1124 and 1128--both to
Western Pomerania, and established the bishopric of Wollin. The
conversion was naturally imperfect, but the country never relapsed.
The fierce islanders of Rgen could not then be touched, but ultimately
gave way in 1168 before the combined secular and spiritual weapons of
the Danish rulers.

[Sidenote: Livonia.]

From the middle of the twelfth century the cities of Bremen and
Lübeck had established trading connections with Livonia. Following in
the wake of the traders (1186) an Augustinian canon, Meinhard by name,
preached Christianity under permission from a neighbouring Russian
Prince, and he was made Bishop of Yrkill, on the Düna, under the
Archbishop of Bremen. His successors, however, impatient at failure,
organised a crusade from Germany. The third Bishop, Albert, took the
recently founded trading centre Riga as his bishopric, and organised
the knightly Order of the Brethren of the Sword (1202), to be under
the control of the Bishop. He aimed at an united spiritual and
temporal power in his own land, and in 1207 he accepted Livonia as a
fief from King Philip of Suabia. But Albert's chief foes were those of
his own household. The Knights of the Sword strove for independence
and tried to establish themselves in Esthonia. Albert appointed his
own nominee as Bishop there, who should act as a check upon the
knights. Innocent III, however, gave the ecclesiastical supervision of
Esthonia to the Danish Archbishop of Lund. But when the Danish King
attempted to follow this up by asserting a political authority his
forces were defeated by the Esthonians. German influences prevailed;
Albert took Dorpat, made it the seat of a new bishopric, and organised
the whole country ecclesiastically until his death in 1229; although
it was not until 1255 that Riga became the Metropolitan of the
Livonian and Prussian Churches. The Order of the Sword ceased to
resist, and in 1237 it merged itself in the Teutonic Order in Prussia.
The conversion of Livonia was followed by that of Semgallen in 1218,
and finally the inhabitants of Courland, threatened on all sides,
accepted baptism (1230) as the only alternative to slavery.

[Sidenote: Prussia.]

Between these lands and Pomerania lay the savage Prussians. Among them
Bishop Adalbert of Prague, the Apostle of Bohemia, had ended his life
by martyrdom in 997: and subsequent efforts, whether of bold
missionaries or of victorious Polish Kings, equally failed. At length
in 1207 some Cistercian monks from Poland obtained leave from Innocent
III to make another attempt on Prussia. They were well received, and
Christian of Oliva was consecrated bishop. But the rulers of
neighbouring lands, notably Conrad, Duke of Masovia, which lay just to
the south, schemed to turn these converted Prussians into political
dependents, and Christian welcomed their armies as a means of
hastening on the nominal change of religion. A crusade was set on
foot; but the natives resisted with success, and began to destroy the
monasteries established in the country. Consequently, in 1226 Duke
Conrad invited some members of the Teutonic Order to help him. In 1230
came a large number of the knights, and a devastating war which lasted
for more than fifty years (1230-83), ended in the nominal conversion
of the remaining inhabitants.

During the war German colonists were placed upon the conquered lands
and towns were founded--Königsberg (1256) in honour of Ottocar of
Bohemia, who lent his aid for a time; Marienburg (1270), which became
the headquarters of the Teutonic Order. Indeed, it was the Order which
reaped the benefit of the conquest. In 1243 Innocent IV divided the
country ecclesiastically into four bishoprics, which were placed
afterwards under the Livonian Archbishop of Riga as their
Metropolitan. One of these four--Ermland--freed itself both
ecclesiastically from Riga and politically from the Teutonic knights,
and placed itself directly under the Pope. The others were less
fortunate, and the Order successfully resisted the joint efforts of
the bishops and the Pope to place them in a similar position.

[Sidenote: Missions in Asia.]

The spread of Christianity among the tribes upon the Baltic coast,
imperfect though it was, led to permanent results. In the second great
field of missionary activity during this period the work of the Roman
Church was more interesting than effective. It is difficult now to
realise that in the fourteenth century emissaries from Rome had
nominally organised large districts of Asia as part of the Christian
Church. Nor was theirs the first announcement of the Gospel in those
regions. Christians of the Nestorian or Chaldean faith could claim
adherents from Persia across the Continent to the heart of China, and
had even converted several Turkish tribes.

[Sidenote: Prester John.]

About the middle of the twelfth century the report reached Europe of
the conversion as early as the beginning of the eleventh century of
the Khan of the Karaït, a Tartar tribe, lying south of Lake Baikal,
with its headquarters at Karakorum. The Syrian Christians, through
whom the report came, misinterpreted his Mongolian title Ung-Khan as
denoting a priest-king named John, and it was this distant Eastern
potentate who came to be known in Europe as Presbyter Johannes or
Prester John. It was the Syrian Christians who, in their desire to
outvie the boastful arrogance of their Latin neighbours, together with
many apochryphal tales invented a letter from this dignitary to some
of the sovereigns of Europe, including the Pope. Equally fabulous
seems to have been the report to Alexander III of a physician named
Philip, that this shadowy personage desired reception into the Roman
communion; for Alexander's answer apparently met with no response. In
1202 the tribe of the Karaïtes became the vassals of the great
conqueror Ghenghiz Khan, who is said to have added to his wives the
Christian daughter of the last Ung-Khan of the tribe. The kingdom of
Prester John, however, lived on in fables, of which the best known
relates how the Holy Grail, the cup consecrated by Christ at the Last
Supper, had withdrawn from the sinful West and found refuge in this
distant land.

[Sidenote: The Mongols in Europe.]

The conquests of Ghenghiz opened an entirely new chapter in the
relations between Western Europe and the Mongols. Ghenghiz himself
before his death in 1227 overran China, Central Asia, Persia, and
penetrated as far west as the Dnieper. His successors entered Russia
in 1237, conquered the Kipchaks about the Caspian Sea and pursued
their fugitives into Central Europe, defeated the Poles, ravaged
Saxony and Silesia, and overran Hungary (1240). It was fortunate for
Europe that the death of the Great Khan in 1242 caused the Mongol
leaders to withdraw their forces back to the East. The chief result of
this Mongolian raid was that 10,000 Kharizmians fleeing before the
Tartars entered the Egyptian service, and in 1244 captured Jerusalem
for the Egyptian Sultan. At the time of the Tartar invasion the Papacy
was vacant; but in 1243 Innocent IV was elected, and in 1245 at the
Council of Lyons a crusade was mooted. But the renewal of the papal
quarrel with Frederick II so far added to the general indifference
that no crusade was possible. Louis IX of France alone forced his
nobles to take the vow and fulfil it.

[Sidenote: Innocent IV's missions.]

To Innocent, however, is due the credit of inaugurating a new method
of approaching Eastern nations. It was well known that Christians were
to be found in the Mongolian armies; and the tolerant treatment
accorded to them was construed as a favourable feeling towards
Christianity itself. The truth was that for the purpose of reconciling
all nations to their rule the Mongols tolerated all religions among
their subjects. Already Mohammedanism and Buddhism competed with the
Christianity of the Nestorians for the favour of the Tartar Princes.
Their own religion has been characterised as a vague monotheism. Its
lack of definiteness led the early missionaries in their enthusiasm to
hope that its followers were in a state of mind to be easily persuaded
of the superior claims of the Catholic faith. Anyhow there existed for
some time quite an expectation in the West that the whole of Asia
would one day acknowledge the spiritual rule of Rome. Pope Innocent,
therefore, fully convinced of the friendly disposition of the Mongols,
despatched two embassies to them. One was composed of John of Piano
Carpini, a friend of St. Francis of Assisi, and three other
Franciscans. From the Khan of Kipchak at the Golden Horde on the Volga
they were passed on to the Great Khan, who ruled now from the old
capital of the Karaïtes at Karakorum. Here they were received in
friendly fashion by the newly elected Kuyuk, grandson of Ghenghiz. The
other embassy, composed of four Dominicans, visited Persia; but they
showed so much want of tact that their lives were endangered, and they
returned with letters written in the name of the Great Khan, in which
all princes of the earth were bidden to come and pay their homage.
Immediately, then, these visits were without result; but they had
opened the way for further communications.

[Sidenote: Louis IX's missions.]

It was known in the East that Louis IX of France was preparing to set
out on crusade; so that when he halted with his army in Cyprus he was
visited by an envoy purporting to come from Kuyuk and seeking an
alliance against Mohammedans. Louis sent two Dominicans to a Christian
monarch, as he supposed, armed with suitable presents; but Kuyuk was
dead, and the presents were treated as tribute. Perhaps in consequence
of this failure Louis turned his army against Egypt instead of Syria;
but the envoys returned to find him after the disastrous Egyptian
campaign in Palestine, where he spent four years. In consequence of
their report he sent to Kuyuk's successor, Mangu, a Franciscan,
William of Ruysbroek or Rubruquis. It was afterwards reported to the
Pope that Mangu and another Tartar Prince had been converted. Such
fabricated stories were only too common. Rubruquis has left us much
information about the Tartar Court; but his public discussions before
the Khan with Nestorians, Mohammedans and Buddhists led to no
practical result.

[Sidenote: Tartars and Mohammedans.]

On the death of Mangu (1257) his dominions were divided between his
two brothers. Hulagu, who became Khan of Persia, overthrew the
Caliphate of Bagdad; but the further progress of the Mongol armies was
stayed by the Mohammedan General, Bibars who, as a consequence of his
success, shortly became Sultan of Egypt. Henceforth the Mongols of
Persia constantly sought an alliance with the Christians of the West
against the Mohammedans as represented by Egypt, the one Mohammedan
power which as yet had opposed them with success. Thus in 1274, at the
second Council of Lyons, two Persian envoys invited the cooperation of
Christendom, and, perhaps by way of raising the expectations of such
contact, submitted to baptism; but the hostility of Greeks and Latins
and the selfish projects of Charles of Anjou prevented any response.
The long anarchy in Egypt which followed the death of Bibars (1277)
was too good an opportunity for the Mongols to lose; but Kelaun
secured the power in Egypt in time to repeat the exploits of Bibars.
But the remaining Latin princes in Syria had veered between the
Mohammedans and Mongols, and Kelaun determined to complete the
destruction of such an alien element. By 1291 the kingdom of Jerusalem
was wiped out. Europe watched with comparative indifference the easy
triumph of Mohammedanism. Not so the Mongols. Arghun, who became Khan
of Persia in 1284, made three definite efforts towards an alliance
which would mean a new crusade. In 1287 the Vicar of the Nestorian
Patriarch of China brought letters to the Pope and visited the Kings
of France and England; in 1289 a Genoese resident in Persia brought
the news of Arghun's intended invasion of Syria and his professed
desire for baptism; in 1290, to a yet more pressing call the Pope
returned a somewhat hopeful answer. But it was too late. Arghun died
in 1291, and although his eldest son, Ghazan, ultimately took up his
father's projects and even decisively defeated the Egyptian army in
Syria (1299), his losses forced him to return to Persia. It was
reported that he had died a Christian and in the Franciscan habit, but
there is no proof of this.

[Sidenote: Chinese missions.]

The more purely missionary efforts which were being made
contemporaneously with the events just related, were directed chiefly
to China which, on the death of Mangu, had fallen to the lot of Kublai
Khan. The opportunity for these was opened out by the relations
already established with the Mongolians on other grounds. The first
missionaries found Nestorian Christians who were subjects and others
who were captives acting as clerks, artisans and merchants at the
Tartar Court. Besides these, others in search of fortune or adventure
occasionally found their way from the West. Such were two Venetians,
Nicolo and Maffeo Polo, who, having traded with the Tartars of the
Golden Horde (1260), were led by force of circumstances further into
Asia, until they reached China. Kublai sent them back to Europe with a
request to the Pope for at least a hundred well-instructed persons who
should initiate his subjects in Western lore. They returned
practically alone; but Nicolo's son Marco accompanied them. They
remained for seventeen years in the service of the Khan (1275-93), and
Marco Polo has left a very celebrated account of his travels. This
establishment of friendly feeling was followed by a definite mission
of Franciscans, headed by John of Monte Corvino, who had already
organised the missions in Persia. He was welcomed by Kublai's
successor, and was allowed to preach. Despite the violent opposition
of the Nestorians he made converts and built churches. In 1307 he
became the first Archbishop of Cambaluc or Peking, while subsequently
no less than ten suffragans were grouped under him. Scarcely less
remarkable was the organisation in Persia of the archbishopric at
Sultanyeh and six subordinate sees. But this development belongs
almost entirely to the following period.




CHAPTER XV

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. (II)


[Sidenote: Honorius III (1216-27) and the Crusade.]

The bull of summons to the Lateran Council of 1215 mentions as the two
great desires of the Pope's heart the recovery of the Holy Land and
the reformation of the Church Universal; and it is made clear that the
various measures of reform to be placed before the General Council are
intended to bring Christian princes and peoples, both clergy and
laity, into the frame of mind for sending aid to Palestine. Moreover,
at the Council it was agreed that an expedition should start from
Brindisi or Messina on June 1, 1216. In any case Innocent's death
would probably have caused a delay. His successor, Honorius III, was a
noble Roman of mild and gentle character, who, during Frederick's
youth, had been his tutor and the guardian of the kingdom of Sicily.
No less than his predecessor was he bent on carrying out the project
of a crusade, and immediately on his accession he appealed to all
Christians in the West to lay aside their enmities, and refused to
allow any excuse for not setting out to those who had taken the
crusading vow. But the apathy was general, and since Frederick could
not leave Europe so long as his rival Otto was alive, the expedition
was robbed of its natural chief. A crusade, however, did go, and in
accordance with the plan agreed upon at the Council the attack was
directed against Egypt. Damietta was taken (1219), but then a long
pause was made in the expectation of Frederick's coming. In 1221
arrived a German contingent under Frederick's friend Herman von Salza;
but the crusaders were now defeated and could only secure their
retreat by the surrender of Damietta.

[Sidenote: Frederick II.]

For despite the death of Otto in 1218 Frederick had been detained in
Europe. Before leaving he was anxious to secure the election of his
son Henry as King of Germany. This he did not accomplish until 1220,
and then only by the surrender to the German princes of many important
royal rights, especially the right of spoils. It was necessary also to
reassure the Pope, who feared the continued union of Sicily and
Germany. Honorius accepted Frederick's assurances and even crowned him
Emperor in St. Peter's (November, 1220); and Frederick again took the
cross. But he found that the royal rights in the kingdom of Sicily had
been much impoverished during his minority and his subsequent absence.
His efforts to recover them caused a further delay in his promised
crusade and brought him into conflict with papal claims. Honorius was
very long-suffering. In 1223 he agreed to a postponement of two years
on condition that Frederick should affiance himself to Iolanthe, the
daughter and heiress of John of Brienne, who in right of his wife bore
the title of King of Jerusalem. In 1225 Frederick not only married
Iolanthe but followed the example of his father-in-law by taking the
title of King of Jerusalem in right of his wife, who since her
mother's death was lawfully Queen. On the strength of this act of
self-committal he obtained another delay of two years until August,
1227, agreeing that if he did not then start he should be _ipso
facto_ excommunicate.

But lapse of time did not make it any easier for him to leave his
dominions. In 1226 the Lombards, fearing that Frederick's success in
the recovery of royal rights in the South was merely a prelude to his
renewal of imperial claims in North Italy, revived the old Lombard
League. Frederick put them to the ban of the Empire. But the Pope had
approved the League; and when both parties agreed to refer the quarrel
to him he naturally proposed an arrangement favourable to the
Lombards. A breach with Frederick was only averted by Honorius' death
(March, 1227).

[Sidenote: Gregory IX (1227-41).]

His successor was Gregory IX, a relative of Innocent III who had made
him a Cardinal and employed him on important embassies. He has been
described as a man "of strong passions and an iron strength of will."
He is said to have been more than eighty years of age at his
accession; but he was vigorous and alert in mind and body, a man of
blameless life and ardent faith, eloquent and learned, especially in
law. Hitherto he had been friendly to Frederick. But he held views
even more advanced than those of Innocent regarding the power of the
Papacy. Hence, while to Honorius the Crusade was the end towards which
his whole policy was directed, Gregory only desired to use the
crusading vow taken by temporal rulers as a weapon for the assertion
of the papal power against them. It was Gregory who as Cardinal
Ugolino had placed the cross in Frederick's hand at his imperial
coronation. As Pope he now demanded the immediate fulfilment of
Frederick's promise; and despite his reluctance to go and the outbreak
of an epidemic in his army, Frederick embarked at Brindisi on
September 18th, 1227. But three days later under the plea of sickness
he turned back. Gregory never hesitated. On September 29th in the
cathedral of Anagni in fulfilment of the terms agreed to by Frederick
himself, he excommunicated the Emperor with the accompaniment of every
kind of impressive ceremonial. There seems little doubt that the cause
of Gregory's determination to exact from Frederick the utmost penalty
for his failure to carry out the agreement lay in Frederick's Italian
policy. Frederick had postponed the crusade in order to build up a
power in Sicily, which he was now trying to extend to North Italy by
crushing the Lombard League. This was a fatal bar to the policy of a
papal state in Central Italy, inaugurated by Innocent III. No less
imminent was the danger from the success of Frederick in baffling the
papal schemes for the separation of the Sicilian and German crowns. It
was becoming apparent that only by the extinction of the Hohenstaufen
line could the papal policy be carried out.

[Sidenote: Frederick's crusade.]

The age of the Crusades was indeed over. Frederick, in justifying his
action to the princes of Europe, pointed to the conduct of the Papacy
to Raymond of Toulouse and John of England as a warning to secular
princes, and attributed the papal hostility not to a desire for the
promotion of a crusade, but to greed. Gregory's conduct seemed to bear
out this interpretation of his motives. Despite the excommunication
Frederick once more set sail in June, 1228. But an expedition under
such circumstances was an independent act subversive of all
ecclesiastical discipline. Consequently, instead of his departure
being the signal for the removal of his sentence, Frederick was
followed to Palestine by the anathema of the Church. The Pope having
got Frederick into his power intended to keep him there. Thus when
Frederick reached Palestine the Templars and Hospitallers held aloof,
while the Mendicant Orders preached against him; and when, in
accordance with his treaty with the Sultan, he entered Jerusalem, the
city and all the holy places were laid under an interdict. But
Frederick was not daunted. Since no ecclesiastic would crown him he
took the crown himself off the altar and placed it on his head. For as
in the case of the Pope, so with Frederick, it was from no religious
motives that he persisted in the crusade. It was a purely political
expedition. He put the Pope in the wrong in the eyes of European
princes by refuting the charge of the Roman supporters that he never
seriously intended to go on crusade. But, more important still, his
own attitude and act were a manifesto on behalf of the Empire against
the claim put forward by Innocent III for the Papacy as the head and
leader of Christendom. But the very means of his success added to his
enormities. It was nothing that he had gained for Christendom without
fighting more than had been won since the First Crusade. For he had
dealt with the Sultan of Egypt as an equal, and in the treaty which
gave him Jerusalem and several other places he had undertaken to
enforce certain articles favourable to the Sultan, even in the event
of opposition from Christian Princes. Thus it is not astonishing that
while Frederick was winning this success in Palestine Pope Gregory was
using papal emissaries, in the shape of the lately founded Orders of
mendicant friars, to denounce the Emperor in every country of Western
Europe, and even let loose on Frederick's Sicilian territories an army
of so-called crusaders under John of Brienne, who resented the
adoption of the title of King of Jerusalem by his imperial son-in-law.
This monstrous attack upon a successful crusader turned the sentiment
of Europe against the Pope. Frederick returned in June, 1229, and by
the help of his Saracen troops drove out the invaders. In return for
peace with the Church Frederick was willing to give to the Pope almost
extravagantly generous terms, and a treaty was arranged at San Germano
in August, 1230, by which Frederick surrendered his claim over the
Sicilian clergy and obtained in return the removal of the
excommunication, which carried with it a tacit recognition of his
crusade.

[Sidenote: The Pope and Roman claims.]

It was nine years before the struggle was openly renewed. There were
many causes of difference in the interval, but Pope and Emperor found
two occasions for common action. In the first place Gregory imitated
the policy of his great relative in using every method for extending
the immediate suzerainty of the Pope over the towns and barons within
the Roman duchy. But despite Innocent's civic victory the Roman
Commune desired to place themselves on a level with the other free
cities of Italy such as Milan and Florence, and claimed jurisdiction
over the whole district. Twice already had the Romans expelled Gregory
and recalled him before they demanded from him, in 1234, the surrender
of sovereign rights within the duchy. Gregory fled and appealed for
help to Christendom; and Frederick supplied the troops which restored
the Pope for the third time and forced the Romans to withdraw their
claims.

[Sidenote: Frederick and heresy.]

Pope and Emperor also pursued a common policy against heretics. The
Lateran Council of 1215 issued a series of ordinances against
heretics, making it the duty of the secular power to punish them under
pain of excommunication. But each country and even each city issued
its own regulations for giving effect to the injunctions of the
Council. Only gradually in the second quarter of the century was the
old episcopal jurisdiction over heresy superseded by the establishment
of the papal Inquisition. Meanwhile, in 1220 at his imperial
coronation Frederick put out in his own name an edict for the secular
suppression of heresy, which had been dictated to him from Rome. In
1231 this edict was enforced in Rome itself when Gregory IX
established the Inquisition there and made it the business of the
Senator, the head of the civic commune, to execute the sentences of
the Inquisitor. The regulations now drawn up for the conduct of the
secular power in such cases, were sent over all Europe with orders for
their enforcement. In the same year Frederick renewed his attack upon
heretics in his Sicilian Constitutions, and in the course of the next
eight years he issued "a complete and pitiless code" of "fiendish
legislation," placing the whole of the machinery of state at the
disposal of the Inquisitor. But Gregory was not deceived. Rather he
complained that Frederick's orthodoxy took the form of the punishment
of his personal enemies, of whom many were good Catholics. Certainly
Frederick's anti-heretical edicts were not prompted by religious zeal.
He was more detached than any ruler of the Middle Ages from the
current ideas of the time. He seems to have been, if it is possible,
utterly non-religious.

[Sidenote: Legislation of Emperor and Pope.]

Moreover, his regulations against heresy were part of his general code
of law for the government of the diverse races in his kingdom of
Sicily, and in this code issued in 1231, although their temporalities
were secured to the clergy, as a class they were subjected to taxation
and to the secular jurisdiction of the State. Pope Gregory's
counter-blast to this policy is contained in his addition to the Canon
Law known as his Decretals (1234). By these the clergy were declared
entirely exempt from secular taxation and jurisdiction, on the ground
that all secular law was subordinate to the law of the Church, and
that the duty of the secular power was to carry out the commands of
the Church.

[Sidenote: The second contest.]

Thus each side was maintaining its pretensions until the opportunity
should come for asserting them. This was found for the second time in
the affairs of Lombardy. The Lombard cities still feared the designs
of Frederick. In 1235 they renewed their League. Again the Pope was
accepted as arbiter, and again Frederick complained with justice that
he was too favourable to the cities. In 1236 Frederick declared war
against the League. His pretext of punishing heresy which was rife in
Lombardy, deceived no one; while his declaration, when Gregory desired
him to turn his arms to Palestine, that "Italy is my heritage, and
this the whole world knows," confirmed the worst apprehensions of the
Pope and the Lombards. Moreover, Frederick's first move was entirely
successful, and in 1237 he completely defeated the Lombards in battle
at Corte Nuova, took the Milanese standard and sent it to be placed in
the Capitol at Rome. The subjugation of the Lombards would mean the
union of Italy under Frederick's rule, while, since the acquisition of
Sicily by the Hohenstanfen, the Lombards remained the only allies of
the Papacy in Italy. Gregory therefore declared himself, and in March,
1239, he excommunicated Frederick and released his subjects from their
allegiance. Frederick issued a manifesto addressed to all Princes, in
which he appealed to a General Council. Gregory's counter-manifesto
was couched in terms of the most unrestrained violence. Frederick was
described as the beast in the Apocalypse (Rev. xiii. 1), which had
upon its seven heads the name of blasphemy; and he is charged with
saying that the world had been deceived by three impostors, Christ,
Moses and Mohammed, of whom two had died in glory, while the third had
been crucified.

This is not the place to investigate the interesting question of the
truth of Gregory's charges against Frederick. The French sent a
mission to Frederick to enquire as to the accusation of infidelity,
and he thanked them warmly and denied it. The Duke of Bavaria told
Gregory in 1241 that most of the German princes and prelates would
shortly go to Frederick's aid. In fact, the papal exactions had caused
intense disgust over all Western Europe, and no prince would allow
himself to be set up as a rival to Frederick. Yet the papal
condemnation caused many to hold aloof from the Emperor who, moreover,
did not venture to set up an antipope. He contented himself with
persecuting the friars who were the most active emissaries of Rome,
and with confiscating the estates of the Church, until it was said at
the papal Court that he had sworn to reduce the Pope to beggary and to
stable his horses in St. Peter's.

[Sidenote: Innocent IV (1243-54).]

Frederick had suggested the calling of a council, and Gregory summoned
one to Rome. But Frederick had begun to reduce the Roman duchy and,
anyhow, he did not want a council which would merely register the
papal decrees. So when a number of bishops ignored his prohibition and
met at Genoa in order to embark for Rome, the fleets of Pisa and
Sicily met them off the island of Meloria and captured nearly the
whole of the prospective Council. Frederick's attack upon Rome itself
was only averted by the death of Gregory IX on August 21, 1241. The
new Pope died seventeen days after his election, and then, for some
reason, the Papacy was vacant for two years. The delay was attributed
to Frederick; and the French actually declared to the Cardinals that
if a new Pope were not chosen quickly, the French nation, in
accordance with an ancient privilege given by Pope Clement to St.
Denys, would set up a Pope of their own. At length, in June, 1243,
Innocent IV was chosen; and Frederick, alluding to previous dealings
with him, remarked that by this election he had lost a friend among
the Cardinals, since no Pope could be a Ghibelline.

The truth of this was soon apparent. Innocent demanded the restoration
of all Frederick's conquests in the States of the Church in return for
peace; and although nothing was said about the time of the removal of
the excommunication, Frederick accepted the terms. But when Frederick
saw that there was no intention of absolving him, he refused to
surrender the papal cities and thereby technically broke the treaty.
Innocent intended to get a treaty which would carry an acknowledgment
of the Emperor's failure, and then to reduce him to submission by a
council held outside Italy. Negotiations continued until Innocent fled
to Lyons, a practically independent city. France, England and Aragon,
however, declined to receive him, and Innocent exclaimed that he must
come to terms with the Emperor, "for when the dragon has been crushed
or pacified, the little serpents will be quickly trodden underfoot."

[Sidenote: First Council of Lyons.]

At Lyons there met in 1245 the General Council to which Frederick had
appealed, and which is reckoned by the Romans as the thirteenth of the
OEcumenical Assemblies of the Church; 140 archbishops and bishops,
besides numerous lesser clergy, were present. Frederick was
represented by a celebrated jurist, Thaddeus of Suessa, who pleaded
the Emperor's cause. Several points were proposed for settlement; but
all other matters were brushed aside, and Innocent hurried on the
third and last session of the Council in which Frederick was declared
deposed, his subjects were released from their allegiance, the German
princes told to elect another King, and Sicily kept for disposal by
the Pope in consultation with the Cardinals. All remonstrances were
unavailing; even Louis IX quite failed to move the Pope. Frederick
realised that it was a fight to a finish, and in a protest he called
upon the other princes of the West to help him in depriving the clergy
of the wealth which had choked their spiritual power. But this was
interpreted as a design for the destruction of the Church, and despite
the testimonies to Frederick's orthodoxy published by the Archbishop
of Palermo, the papal charge of heresy against him gained wide belief.
Innocent in his reply asserted among other things that the Pope was
the Legate of Christ who had entrusted him with full powers to act as
judge over the earth, and that the Emperor should take an oath of
subjection to the Pope who, as overlord, gave him his title and crown.
Thus the claims now made on behalf of the Papacy left no room for a
belief in the balance of spiritual and secular authority.

[Sidenote: Death of Frederick.]

Both sides resorted to every kind of expedient. Frederick, aiming
especially at the friars, ordered that any who spread or even received
the papal letters of condemnation against him should be burnt!
Innocent declared an actual crusade against Frederick, stirred up
revolt in Sicily, and at length succeeded in raising a rival King in
Germany. Henry Raspe, Landgrave of Thuringia, owed his election (1246)
almost exclusively to the great prelates of the Rhine; but he died the
next year and, although another King was put forward in the person of
William Count of Holland, a young man of twenty, he made no progress
so long as Frederick lived. Moreover, in Italy Frederick's cause was
gaining ground, until the revolt of Parma and the failure of his
efforts to retake it ended in the complete rout of his forces (1248).
In 1250 Frederick himself died directing by his will that all the
rights of the Church should be restored in so far as they did not
conflict with the claims of the Empire, provided that the Church
herself should recognise the imperial rights. Almost to the last
Frederick had been quite willing to be reconciled to the Church, and
he died unsubdued. But the Papacy was fighting for that supremacy
which experience had shown to be the condition of its existence. Not
that any Emperor ever cherished the thought of destroying the Papacy
any more than the Pope dreamed of annihilating the Empire. Many
passages have been cited to prove that Frederick contemplated the
establishment of a Church of his own in Sicily. Here perhaps he did
not aim at anything more than Henry VIII afterwards accomplished in
England or the barons under Louis IX, as we have seen, threatened on
one occasion in France. The language used by his followers was
extravagant, even blasphemous, and he did not discourage it. How far
he ever aimed as setting himself up as Pope is more doubtful. But in
any case, and however much we may be inclined to sympathise with him,
it must be allowed that there was abundant reason for the hostility of
the Pope.

[Sidenote: A papal candidate for Sicily.]

And the reasons which caused the Papacy to hound Frederick to death,
also determined it not to rest until it had exterminated the whole
"viper's brood." Innocent IV expressed the most indecent joy at
Frederick's death, and refused all offers of peace from his son and
successor, Conrad IV. But being too weak to wrest Sicily from the
Hohenstaufen he sought for some prince who would accept it as a papal
fief. It was refused on behalf of Louis IX's brother, Charles of
Anjou, and also by Henry III's brother, Richard Earl of Cornwall, who
said that the Pope might as well offer him the moon. Henry III,
however, accepted it for his second son Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, a
boy of eight, promising to pay the expenses of the conquest. The
Pope's action was utterly unscrupulous. In May, 1254, Conrad died in
the twenty-sixth year of his age, and the only legitimate Hohenstaufen
representative who remained, was his son, distinguished as Conradin,
who was under the guardianship of Berthold Marquis of Hohenburg.
Conrad's Regent in Italy had been his half-brother Manfred, the son of
Frederick by an Italian lady, and the most brilliant of all
Frederick's children. Berthold, alarmed at the difficulties, made way
for Manfred, who found Innocent ready to come to terms. To Manfred was
confirmed the principality of Tarento originally the gift of his
father, and he was recognised as Papal Vicar for the greater part of
the Sicilian kingdom. But the grant of Sicily was confirmed to Edmund
of Lancaster, and the Pope determined to take possession of the
kingdom in person. Manfred, now a vassal of the Church, held the
bridle of the Pope's horse as he entered his new dominions. But
Manfred soon found that the Pope's object was to reduce him to
harmlessness and then to get rid of him. He therefore raised the
standard of revolt and defeated the papal forces (December, 1254).

[Sidenote: Alexander IV (1254-61).]

At this juncture Innocent IV died at Naples. Matthew Paris relates the
dream of a Cardinal who saw the Church accusing the Pope before the
throne of God because he had enslaved the Church, had made her a table
of money-changers and had shaken faith, abolished justice, and
obscured truth. However necessary to the independence of the Papacy
was this strenuous struggle, the utterly unscrupulous means employed
and the almost complete identification of its spiritual power with its
temporal interests is impossible to justify or even to excuse. The new
Pope, Alexander IV, a nephew of Gregory IX, without Innocent's ability
tried to follow the policy of his predecessor. In 1255 he ratified the
grant of Sicily to the young English prince on severe conditions.
Indeed, he surpassed his predecessors in the demands made on Henry III
and the English Church; until in 1258 his claim for the repayment of
the money which he alleged to have been expended in the prosecution of
Edmund's cause, brought on a grave constitutional crisis in England
and reduced Henry III to impotence.

[Sidenote: King Manfred.]

Meanwhile Manfred had regained all the dominions of the Sicilian crown
in the name of Conradin, but in 1258 he quietly set aside his nephew
and accepted the throne for himself. However necessary such a step
might be, it divided Sicily from Germany. This was what the papal
party desired: but Manfred, the son of an Italian mother, aimed, like
his father, at an Italian monarchy. Consequently Alexander declared
against him. In Italy, however, the cessation of supplies from England
left Alexander almost powerless, and Manfred was accepted as the head
of the Ghibellines in the peninsula.

[Sidenote: The rival Kings of the Romans.]

But before his death in May, 1261, Alexander had gained a distinct
success in Germany. The young King, William of Holland, the destined
Emperor, had been killed in 1256. The Pope forbade the choice of
Conradin, and the votes of the German princes were divided between the
Englishman, Richard Earl of Cornwall, and Alfonso the Wise, King of
Castile and grandson of Philip of Suabia. Richard, wealthy and
attracted by the imperial title, was crowned Emperor at Aachen in 1257
and bought himself a measure of support so long as he remained in
Germany. Alfonso, on the other hand, did nothing to secure his new
dominions. Alexander and his successors, by professing a judicial
attitude, gradually established the impression in Germany that the
decision in these matters rested with the Papacy.




CHAPTER XVI

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE AND OF THE PAPACY


[Sidenote: Urban IV (1261-4).]

The date of Alexander's death marks the beginning of a new episode in
the history of the mediæval Papacy. His successor, Urban IV, was a
Frenchman. With more vigour than his predecessor he pursued the policy
of the destruction of the Hohenstaufen. Since the English prince had
proved a useless tool and no more money could be wrung from the
English people, he obtained the renunciation of the claims of Edmund
to the Sicilian crown and turned to his native country for a
candidate. Louis IX refused the offer for a son, but it was accepted
by his brother, Charles of Anjou, whose wife, the daughter and heiress
of Raymond Berengar of Provence, desired to be the equal of her three
elder sisters, the Queens, respectively, of France, England, and
Germany. For the next twenty years the papal policy centres round the
doings of Charles as much as it had centred for thirty years round the
aims of Frederick II. The Guelf party in Rome had already elected
Charles as senator, or head of the civic commune, in opposition to the
Ghibelline Manfred. Thus the Pope and the Italian Guelfs once more
combined to betray Italy to the foreign conqueror. Urban was able to
obtain a promise that Charles would not accept the senatorship for
life, although the need for Charles' presence in Italy as a check upon
the victorious Manfred enabled the new King to obtain better terms in
regard to Sicily than the Pope had offered at first.

[Sidenote: Clement IV (1265-8).]

Fortune favoured Charles from the outset. Before he could reach Italy
Urban had died in Perugia (October, 1264), having never entered Rome
during his pontificate. His successor, Clement IV, a Provençal and
therefore a subject of Charles, had been overpersuaded to accept the
tiara, and naturally continued his predecessor's work. Charles arrived
by sea, was welcomed in Rome where he assumed the office of senator,
and was invested with the crown of Sicily (June, 1265). But from the
very first he showed the arbitrariness and violence which were to
characterise his relations with Italy. He came destitute of money; he
took possession of the Lateran palace until the Pope's remonstrances
forced him to withdraw. His army marched through Italy to join him,
plundering as it came. The Pope was helpless; he had not yet even
ventured to come to Rome. Charles and his wife were crowned King and
Queen of Sicily by a commission of Cardinals; and theirs was the first
coronation of any sovereign other than an Emperor, which had taken
place in St. Peter's.

[Sidenote: End of the Hohenstaufen.]

Meanwhile Manfred was doing everything to meet the new attack. But
there was no patriotism among the Italians of the south. Frederick II
in founding his strong monarchy had alienated nobles and the cities;
the clergy, of course, were his bitter foes. All seemed to think that
Charles' advent would bring freedom and peace. They were soon to be
disabused. On Charles' march southwards Manfred, relying solely on
Germans and Saracens, met him at Benevento, but was beaten and fell in
the fight (February 26, 1266). Charles entered Naples and the papal
aims seemed attained. Charles was their vassal for Sicily, and was now
obliged to lay down his office of senator. The German influence in
Italy was destroyed; the "German" Empire was a thing of the past. But
the Romans still kept the Pope at arms' length. In 1252 they had for
the first time introduced a foreign senator in the Bolognese
Brancaleone who, before his death in 1258, was twice overthrown and
restored to power. Thus the election of Charles was no new departure.
And as his successor was chosen Henry, brother of Alfonso the Wise of
Castile, titular King of the Romans. He maintained the interests of
the commune against the Pope, and then, from hatred to Charles, the
Ghibelline cause against the papal party. The Ghibellines found a
rallying ground in Tuscany, and sent to Germany for Conradin. The boy,
now fourteen years of age, was welcomed by the senator in Rome; but
his forces were utterly defeated by Charles at Tagliacozzo on August
23, 1268. Conradin fled, but was captured and executed.

[Sidenote: Schemes of Charles.]

This time it was Charles, and not the Pope, whose success was the
obvious fact. Whether the Pope interceded for the last of the
Hohenstaufens or approved his execution, is a matter of some doubt.
But Charles was now elected senator of Rome for life, and Clement
offered no opposition to this violation of the original agreement.
Moreover, on Clement's death (November, 1268), the divisions among the
Cardinals assembled at Viterbo prolonged the vacancy in the papal
chair for nearly three years. During that time Charles developed the
most ambitious schemes. With the Ghibelline position he took up the
Ghibelline aims. Thus the papal plans for reviving the Crusades were
nothing to him, but he desired to obtain for himself the crown of
Jerusalem; and since Constantinople had been recovered by the Greeks
in 1261, while on the one side he make a treaty with the Latin
ex-Emperor, Baldwin II, whereby the reversion of the Byzantine throne
should go to the King of Sicily, on the other side the papal project
for an union of the Greek and Latin Churches was an obstacle to his
hostile design. Charles, in fact, began to equip an expedition against
Constantinople. Louis IX for the moment checked his brother's schemes
and took him off on the crusade from which Louis himself was not to
return. The diversion of the expedition from Palestine or Egypt to
Tunis is generally attributed to the influence of the King of Sicily,
whose Norman predecessors had once held the north coast of Africa: but
this charge can scarcely be maintained, for the crusade thither
interfered with his schemes against Constantinople, which were resumed
immediately on his return to Europe.

[Sidenote: Gregory X (1272-6).]

But again Charles was destined to meet with a serious check. When at
length the Church obtained a new Pope it was no servile henchman of
Charles who was elected. Gregory X, a Visconti of Piacenza, had spent
his life outside Italy, and was with Edward I of England in Palestine
when he was chosen. He was the first Pope since Honorius III, who set
before himself the promotion of a crusade as his primary object. As an
indispensable prerequisite of this be desired to promote the union of
the Latin and Greek Churches. It was these unselfish objects of his
which enabled him to check both Charles' power and his schemes. There
was a still further point. The fall of the Hohenstaufen had destroyed
the imperial house, and had left the Papacy not only isolated but face
to face with one who was proving himself "a burdensome protector." The
equilibrium of Europe had been seriously shaken. The election of two
rival Kings of the Romans had not helped to restore it. But now
Richard of Cornwall, who had tried to assert his position, was dead,
and Gregory refused to recognise the claims of Alfonso of Castile. But
Louis IX was dead also, and Charles would be likely to influence his
nephew the new King of France more than he had ever influenced his
high-souled brother. It was necessary to find a new King of the Romans
who might be a counterpoise in Europe, and perhaps even in Italy, to
Charles. Thus encouraged and almost coerced by the Pope, the German
princes elected Rudolf Count of Hapsburg (September 1273), a man of
"popular qualities" who was not too powerful.

[Sidenote: Second Council of Lyons.]

The success of the papal policy was to be advertised to Europe in a
second Council of Lyons (May-July, 1274). This was attended by five
hundred bishops and innumerable other clergy. An opportunity was taken
to issue a canon, the object of which was to prevent the recurrence of
the long vacancy in the papal see which had preceded Gregory's
election. It was decreed that ten days after the death of the Pope the
Cardinals should meet and should be confined in one conclave until a
choice had been made. All intercourse with the outside world was
forbidden; the food was to be supplied through a window, the amount of
it being diminished after three days; while a further diminution was
to take place five days later. The duty of supervision was entrusted
to the magistrates of the city in which the election might be held.
Despite the stringent resistance of the Cardinals the canon was passed
with the aid of the bishops; and although it was more than once
suspended, it has continued to direct the procedure at papal elections
to the present day.

[Sidenote: Union of Eastern and Western Churches.]

But the real object of the meeting of the Council was that it should
witness the reconciliation of the Eastern Church with the Western.
More than two centuries earlier (1054) the long jealousy of Rome and
Constantinople had ended in the rupture of communion between the
Christians of West and East; and the Crusades and the Latin Empire of
Constantinople had prevented any real attempt at re-union. But just
now circumstances were favourable. Michael Palæologus, who had
reconquered Constantinople for the Greeks and made himself Emperor,
was in difficulties at home with a section of the clergy, and,
threatened by the designs of Charles of Sicily, he coerced the Greek
clergy into accepting the union with the Western Church, which gave
the only chance of such help as would hold Charles in check. An
embassy of Greeks appeared at Lyons; and although Bonaventura and
Thomas Aquinas were present to argue the case for the Western Church,
no persuasion was needed. The Greeks expressed a readiness to accept
the primacy of Rome, the doctrine that the Holy Ghost proceeded from
both Father and Son (whereas they had maintained His procession from
the Father alone), and all the customs of the Western Church. It
seemed as if at length a crusade were really possible. The chief
sovereigns of Europe had taken the cross, and Gregory had even
persuaded Charles of Sicily and the Greek Emperor to sign a truce.

[Sidenote: Nicholas III (1277-80).]

But it was not to be. Gregory's death (January 10, 1276) undid all his
work. Charles of Sicily alone rejoiced at the vacancy, and made
desperate efforts to secure the nomination to the Papacy again. But
two nominees died in quick succession; and when on the death of John
XXI after a similarly short reign, Charles again interfered, he was
met by the election of Nicholas III of the family of Orsini, who
returned to Rome and spent the three years of his pontificate in
neutralising Charles' power. For this purpose he used the new King of
the Romans. Charles was forced to resign the vicariate of Tuscany,
which was made over to Rudolf. Charles also resigned the senatorship
of Rome which he had held for ten years. To this Nicholas got himself
elected, and issued a decree by which he hoped to make it impossible
for any foreign prince to be elected, or for anyone to hold the post
for more than a year without the papal favour.

[Sidenote: Revival of the Empire.]

But Nicholas was only able to give a German prince once more a footing
in Italy because Rudolf had been effectually barred from reviving the
Hohenstaufen claims. Already at the Council of Lyons the envoys of
Rudolf had appeared and in his name had taken the oaths previously
exacted from Otto IV and Frederick II. Rudolf had subsequently met
Pope Gregory at Lausanne in 1275, and had confirmed the act of his
representatives. Thus Gregory obtained from a crowned German King an
acknowledgment of all the claims advanced by the Papacy since the days
of Charles the Great. Rudolf was too busy ever to visit Rome; but in
negotiations with regard to his coronation as Emperor, Nicholas III
exacted the confirmation of all that was promised to Gregory, and this
included especially the lands of the old Exarchate and the district of
Pentapolis, which had never yet been actually in the hands of papal
officers.

[Sidenote: Martin IV (1281-5).]

Dante has banned the memory of Nicholas as the simoniacal Pope. He
certainly used his enormous patronage to enrich his own family. But
his death (August, 1280) nearly proved fatal to the freedom of Europe;
for Charles at length obtained his own nominee to the Papacy in the
person of a Frenchman, Martin IV, who proceeded to hand over to the
King for life the Roman senatorship conferred upon the Pope. All the
work of the preceding Popes was undone. The temporary union of the
Churches was dissolved by the excommunication of the Greek Emperor on
the pretext that he had not carried out his promises; and Charles, who
had obtained a footing in the Greek peninsula and made a league with
Venice, prepared to start on his expedition against Constantinople.
There seemed every prospect of his success.

[Sidenote: Sicilian Vespers]

But Charles' brutality had been imitated by his French officials; and
the rising known as the "Sicilian Vespers" in March, 1282, cleared the
French out of Sicily and finally overthrew all Charles' plans. The
fleet prepared for Constantinople had to be turned against the rebel
islanders. The Pope, thinking to play the game of his royal master,
refused to mediate; the Sicilians thereupon declared that from St.
Peter they would turn for aid to another Peter, and offered the crown
to Peter, King of Aragon, the husband of Manfred's daughter,
Constance, who for some years had welcomed Sicilian refugees at his
court and had been ready for the summons. The Pope deprived Peter of
his hereditary dominions and bestowed them on Charles' great nephew
Charles of Valois, a son of Philip III of France; but the Aragonese
fleet under Roger di Loria defeated Charles' fleet and captured his
son and heir Charles the Lame. On January 7, 1285, Charles himself
died, and was followed to the grave very shortly by Pope Martin IV.
The same year saw also the death of Philip III of France and of Peter
of Aragon. Pope Honorius IV followed the policy of his predecessor,
and to him succeeded Nicholas IV. It was during his pontificate that
the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, the result of the First Crusade, was
finally wiped out by the capture of Acre (1291), and the little stir
made by this event affords a measure of the decay of the crusading
spirit.

[Sidenote: Celestine V (1294).]

On the death of Nicholas the division among the Cardinals reflecting
the jealousies of the Roman families of Orsini and Colonna, caused a
vacancy in the papal office for more than two years. Then by a sudden
whim, which in the event of a successful result would have been called
an inspiration, the name of a hermit, Peter, whose austerities in his
cell on Monte Murrone in the Abruzzi had won him great reverence, was
suggested apparently in all sincerity to the wearied and perplexed
Cardinals. He was elected and took the title of Celestine V. In
accordance with the desire of Charles II of Naples, he took up his
abode at Naples. But he was utterly unfit for his high office, and
after a pontificate of less than four months (August to December,
1294) he resigned, thus perpetrating that "great refusal" which won
Dante's immortal phrase of scorn. How far his act was due to the
machinations of Cardinal Gaetani is uncertain. At any rate Gaetani had
evidently obtained Charles' sanction beforehand to his own elevation,
which took place ten days later. But the new Pope did not intend that
anyone should be his master. For the moment he and Charles needed each
other, and it was agreed between them that Sicily should be recovered
for Charles, while Celestine should be given into the keeping of his
successor lest he should become a centre for disaffection.

[Sidenote: Boniface VIII (1294-1303).]

Boniface VIII--such was the name of the new Pope--returned to Rome
escorted by Charles II and his son, Charles Martel of Hungary; and his
coronation surpassed that of all previous Popes in magnificence. The
late Pope was soon secured and placed in a tower on the top of a
mountain, where he died in 1296. It was not so easy for Boniface to
fulfil his part of the compact with regard to Sicily. James, the son
of Peter of Aragon, agreed to surrender Sicily on the understanding
that the new Pope would withdraw the award of Aragon made by Martin IV
to a French prince, and confirm it him. But the Sicilians refused to
return to their French ruler and found a champion in James' younger
brother Frederick, who was their Governor. He was crowned King of
Sicily at Palermo in 1296. Charles II was too feeble to make any real
headway against Frederick, and even the title of Standard-bearer of
the Church conferred by the Pope on James of Aragon, did not keep
Frederick's brother permanently on the papal side. In 1301 Boniface
fell back upon the French prince Charles of Valois, to whom Pope
Martin had given Aragon, and sent for him to attack "the new Manfred"
in Sicily. Charles having first failed in an attempt to appease the
Florentine factions, passed on to the south, and here Frederick
ultimately forced him to peace and a recognition of his title as King
of Sicily (1302). At first Boniface would not ratify a peace from
which all reference to Pope or Church had been omitted; but in 1303
circumstances caused him to accept it, though he exacted as a
condition that Frederick should acknowledge himself a papal vassal.
Frederick, however, never paid any tribute.

[Sidenote: Quarrel with Colonnas.]

Boniface held views of the papal power of the most exalted kind. It
was in accordance with these that he once more made Rome the
headquarters of the papacy. But he soon found himself involved in a
quarrel which, purely local in origin, assumed an European importance.
The family of Colonna by favour of Pope Nicholas IV had become one of
the most powerful in Rome and the neighbourhood. The centre of the
family property was the city of Palestrina. Cardinal Jacopo Colonna,
who as the eldest brother administered it, did not distribute it
fairly to his brothers, but rather favoured his nephews, the sons of
his dead brother John who had been Senator of Rome. One of these was
the Cardinal Peter. Uncle and nephew were the most influential members
of the Roman Curia, and as Roman nobles they resented Boniface's
design of humbling the Roman aristocracy. They refused the papal
admonitions to deal justly with the other members of the family; they
withdrew from the papal Court, and having already turned from
Ghibelline to Guelf, they once more became Ghibelline and made an
alliance with Frederick of Sicily. They published a manifesto in which
they refused to recognise Boniface on the ground that Pope Celestine's
abdication had been unlawful. But Celestine was dead and the Colonnas
had voted for his successor. Boniface deposed the Cardinals and
excommunicated them, even declaring a crusade against them! The
struggle centred round Palestrina, and it is said that the Pope
fetched from a Franciscan cloister a once famous Ghibelline general,
Guy of Montefeltro, by whose advice he decoyed the Colonnas out of
their fortress by promises which he did not intend to keep. Palestrina
was levelled to the ground and the Colonnas fled (1298), finding
refuge among the enemies of Boniface and preparing the way for the
final catastrophe.

[Sidenote: Papal Jubilee.]

Boniface, however, had become his own master at home to an extent
attained by none of his predecessors since Innocent III. His reign
reached what may be termed its high-water mark in the Papal Jubilee of
1300. The cessation of the Crusades had largely increased the crowds
of pilgrims to Rome, until in 1299 there awoke an expectation of
special spiritual privileges in connection with the end of the
century. Indulgences had been so freely scattered in attempts to
promote the Crusades that a craving for them had been created.
Boniface recognised the importance of exploiting the popular feeling,
and after a mock enquiry he issued a bull promising generous
indulgences to all who should visit the Churches of SS. Peter and Paul
during the year for so many successive days, and directing that a
similar pilgrimage should be proclaimed every hundredth year. Pilgrims
flocked to Rome; 30,000 are reckoned to have entered and left daily,
while 200,000 were in Rome at any given moment. The amount of the
offerings must have been enormous, and the Ghibellines naturally
declared that the Jubilee had its origin in the papal need for money.
But most of the pilgrims were poor; and even if the size of the crowds
were a just measure of the continued hold of the Roman Church upon the
people of Western Europe, the absence of all the monarchs except
Charles Martel, the claimant of Hungary, was significant. Indeed,
Boniface had already experienced a foretaste of the independent
attitude of the secular princes, which eventually proved fatal to him.
Rudolf of Hapsburg died in 1291, and the German princes, rejecting the
claims of his son Albert, elected Adolf of Nassau as their King. But
Adolf proved less submissive than his electors had hoped to find him.
He was deposed and fell in battle, and Albert was chosen and crowned
without any reference to the Pope--the first occasion on which the
German princes had acted without papal authority. Boniface had already
barred Albert's claims. He now refused to recognise him, declaring
that the Empire owed all its honour and dignity to the papal favour.
Nevertheless, in 1303 circumstances forced him to accept Albert,
especially since Albert was willing in return to confirm all that his
father Rudolf had granted to the Papacy.

[Sidenote: First quarrel with France and England.]

But this quarrel with Germany sinks into insignificance before the
great contest of Boniface with France, with which his English dispute
was also closely connected. The Hohenstaufen had fallen before the
Papacy because their German kingdom and the "German" Empire rested on
no solid foundation. But in his attempts to coerce France and England
into obedience the Pope found himself face to face with two strong
national monarchies. Boniface failed to grasp the position. Edward I
of England and Philip IV of France were engaged in war. Each resorted
to every available method of raising money for the conduct of the war,
and among other ways laid heavy taxes on the clergy. Boniface having
failed to make the Kings submit their quarrels to his judgment, issued
a bull, _Clericis Laicos_ (February, 1296), by which he forbade,
under pain of excommunication, that any prelate or ecclesiastical body
should pay or laymen should exact from the clergy any taxes under any
pretext without papal leave. Edward I met this manifesto by
confiscating the lay fees of all ecclesiastics; while Philip forbade
the export of all money from France, thus depriving the Pope and all
Italian ecclesiastics endowed with French benefices, of the usual
sources of income from France. The English clergy, with the exception
of the Archbishop of Canterbury, made their own arrangements with the
King. But in order to avoid a rupture with France Boniface issued
another bull, _Ineffabilis_, in which he explained that
ecclesiastics were not forbidden to contribute to the needs of the
State; and by subsequent letters he allowed that they might pay taxes
of their own free will, and even that in cases of necessity the King
might take taxes without waiting for the papal leave. He certainly
told his legates to excommunicate the King and his officials if they
should prevent money coming from France; but in order to gain Philip's
favour he granted him the tithe of the French clergy for three years,
he placed Louis IX among the recognised saints of the Church, and he
promised that Philip's brother, Charles of Valois, should be made
German King and Emperor.

Good relations having been established Philip and Edward now agreed to
submit their differences to Boniface. Philip, however, stipulated that
Boniface should act in the matter not as Pope but in a personal
capacity, and the Pope issued his award "as a private person and
Master Benedict Gaetani" (June 30,1298). But the judgment was in the
form of a bull, and ordered that the lands to be surrendered on either
side should be placed in the custody of the papal officers. Philip
could not reject the award; but he determined to prepare for a
conflict which was clearly inevitable. He gave refuge to some members
of the Colonna family, and he made an alliance with Albert of Austria
(1299).

[Sidenote: Second quarrel with England.]

Meanwhile Boniface began a second quarrel with England. Edward I had
refused the papal offers of mediation on behalf of Scotland. But after
the battle of Falkirk the national representatives of Scotland
appealed to Boniface as suzerain of the kingdom. The Pope wrote to
Edward claiming that from ancient times the kingdom of Scotland had
belonged by full right to the Roman Church, and demanding that Edward
should submit all causes of difference between himself and the Scots
to the Papacy. The English answer was given in a Parliament called for
the purpose to Lincoln (1301), by which a document addressed to the
Pope asserted for the English Kings a right over Scotland from the
first institution of the English kingdom, and denied that Scotland had
ever depended in temporal matters on the Roman Pontiff. Any further
action was prevented by the beginning of the final quarrel between
Boniface and Philip.

[Sidenote: With France.]

The Pope found it necessary to complain frequently of Philip's misuse
of the royal right of regale, and in 1301 relations became so strained
that he sent a legate, Bernard of Saisset, Bishop of Pamiers in the
south of France. But Bernard was arrogant, and on being claimed by
Philip as a subject, he exclaimed that he owned no lord but the Pope.
Since Boniface administered no reproof Philip procured the
condemnation of the Bishop for treason. The Pope in fury issued four
bulls in one day, the most important addressed to Philip and beginning
_Ausculta fili_, in which he asserted that God had set up the
Pope over Kings and kingdoms in order to destroy, to scatter, to build
and to plant in His name and doctrine. Philip caused the bull to be
publicly burnt--"the first flame which consumed a papal bull"--and
called an Assembly of the Estates of the Realm, in which for the first
time the commons were included. The Cardinals, in answering the
remonstrances sent by the nobles and commons, denied that the Pope had
ever told the King that he should be subject in temporal matters to
Rome; and Boniface assured the French clergy that he merely claimed
that the King was subject to him "in respect of sin."

[Sidenote: The final struggle.]

But in July, 1302, the burghers of Flanders inflicted a severe defeat
on the French forces in the battle of Courtray; and the Pope, taking
advantage of Philip's humiliation before Europe, immediately assumed a
more defiant attitude. In a Council at Rome and before the French
envoys, he declared that his predecessors had deposed three Kings of
France and, if necessary, he would depose the King "like a groom"
(_garcio_). He followed this up by issuing the most famous of his
bulls, _Unam Sanctam_, in which he roundly asserted that the
submission of every human creature to Rome was a condition of
salvation. Finally, while on the one side he excommunicated Philip
(April 13, 1303), he hastened to recognise Albert as King of Germany,
and ratified the peace made between Frederick of Sicily and Charles of
Valois. Philip on his side abandoned his Scots allies in order to make
peace with England (May 20, 1303), and called for a second time an
Assembly of the Estates. Before its members the aged Pope was accused
of heresy, murder, and even lust; and the appeal to a General Council
was now adopted by the representatives of the whole French nation. But
it was certain that the excommunication of Philip would be followed by
his deposition; and Philip and his councillors determined to forestall
this. Urged on by the Colonnas the French King conceived the plan of
seizing the person of the Pope and bringing him before a council to be
held at Lyons. Boniface was at his native Anagni, and Philip's
emissaries, in conjunction with many Italian enemies of the Pope,
forced their way into the town and seized the old man (September 3,
1303). He was rescued and taken back to Rome; but the shock of the
attack unhinged his reason and hastened his end. He died on October 11
at the age of eighty-six. His foes described his last days in lurid
colours; but the violent behaviour of his enemies caused strong
disgust throughout Christendom.

To a contemporary, Boniface was "magnanimus peccator," the
great-hearted sinner; while a modern historian describes him as
"devoid of every spiritual virtue." If Canossa was the humiliation for
the Empire which the ecclesiastical annalists describe, in the
pettiness of the stage and the insignificance of the actors Anagni was
an ample revenge of the lay spirit. The Papacy which had worn down the
Empire had dashed itself in vain against the new phenomenon of a
strong national spirit.




CHAPTER XVII

THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST


[Sidenote: The Eastern Church.]

A history of the Church Universal must needs take some notice of those
Christian communities which never acknowledged the supremacy of Rome.
Chief among these stands the Church of the Eastern Empire where the
Patriarch of Constantinople strove to make himself at least the equal
of the Bishop of Rome. This mutual jealousy of the old and the new
Rome was only one of the causes of quarrel between them, a quarrel
which was fanned from time to time by the appeal of a defeated party
in some ecclesiastical dispute at Constantinople to the Pope. The most
famous of these disputes was that begun by the deposition of the
aristocratic Ignatius from the patriarchate in favour of the learned
Photius. Both Emperor and Patriarch appealed from Constantinople to
Pope Nicholas I; but when that masterful bishop decided against the
new patriarch, Photius used his learning to summarise in eight
articles the differences between east and west. Of these, two
concerned such important matters as the doctrine of the procession of
the Holy Ghost and the practice of clerical celibacy.

[Sidenote: Breach between East and West.]

The schism made by this quarrel was healed for the moment, but for the
first time the points of difference between the two Churches had been
crystallised. The Eastern Emperors, however, who still possessed lands
in the Italian peninsula, felt it to their interest to remain friendly
with the pope, and in 1024 an attempt on the part of Basil II to
adjust the question of dignity by the suggestion that both the
Patriarch and the Pope should assume the title of Universal bishop,
was only defeated by the inextinguishable jealousy of the Western
Church. The presence of the Normans in Southern Italy should have
united Pope and Eastern Emperor against the intruders; but the Greek
Church only saw in the Norman successes a danger lest Southern Italy
should pass from the Greek to the Latin communion, and the Patriarch
Michael Caerularius joined with the Bulgarian Archbishop of Achrida in
publicly warning the inhabitants of Apulia against the errors of the
Latin Church. The one especially noted was the use of unleavened bread
at the Sacrament, with the addition of others of even less importance.
The Emperor Constantine Monomachos strove hard in the interests of
peace and even compelled a literary champion of the Greek Church,
Nicetas Pectoratus, a monk of the monastery of Studium, to repudiate
his own arguments. But the violence of the papal envoys and the
obstinacy of the Patriarch made agreement impossible. Finally the
legates laid upon the altar of St. Sophia's Church a document in which
Michael and all his party were anathematised; and the Patriarch
responded by summoning a Council, which in like manner banned the
Western Church (1054). Not only was Michael's action supported by the
clergy and people of Constantinople, but it was ratified by the
approval of the Patriarchs of Bulgaria and Antioch.

[Sidenote: Attempts at reconciliation.]

Attempts to promote reunion between the Churches were made at
intervals. The danger from the Mohammedans forced the Emperors of the
East to seek help in the West and encouraged the theologians of the
West in their maintenance of a perfectly rigid attitude. These
approaches began with the forced intercourse of the First Crusade, and
in 1098 Urban II held a Council at Bari among the Greeks of Southern
Italy, at which Anselm of Canterbury, then in voluntary exile, was put
forward to propound the Roman view. In 1112 Peter Grosolanus the
defeated candidate for the archbishopric of Milan, as an emissary of
Pope Pascal II discussed the points at issue before the Emperor
Alexius Comnenus and was answered by Eustratius Archbishop of Nicaea.
Again in 1135 Lothair III had sent as ambassador to John Comnenus a
Premonstratensian Canon Anselm afterwards Bishop of Havelberg, who
held a debate with Nicetas Archbishop of Nicomedia. According to the
report which he subsequently drew up at the request of Eugenius III,
the points discussed were the procession of the Holy Ghost, the use of
unleavened bread and the claims of Rome. A generation later the
Emperor Manuel Comnenus held a conference at Constantinople (1170) for
the promotion of a union which he sincerely desired; while extant
letters of Eugenius III and Hadrian IV to ecclesiastics of the Eastern
Church show that the head of the Western Church did not ignore the
question of Christian unity. But there were too many political causes
of division. The success of the crusaders involved the establishment
of the Latin Church in lands claimed by the Eastern Empire. And this
affected not only the principalities of Syria, but also Cyprus which
Richard Coeur de Lion conquered and handed over to Guy of Lusignan in
compensation for his lost kingdom of Jerusalem; as a consequence of
which the Greek clergy and monks there were cruelly persecuted. The
aggression of the Latin Church was even more conspicuous when the
Normans conquered Thessalonica in 1186 and treated the Greek churches
and services with contumely, and when Innocent III took advantage of
the fact that the Bulgarian monarch had repudiated the suzerainty of
Constantinople, to reassert over the Bulgarian Church the supremacy of
Rome. The Greeks did not suffer without protest and the massacre of
the Latins of Constantinople under the usurper Andronicus (1183)
showed the depth as well as the impotence of the Greek hatred. The
climax of all previous acts of usurpation was reached in the capture
of Constantinople and the organisation of a Latin Church beside the
Latin empire. But the Greek Emperors who ruled at Nicaea found it
politic to pretend a desire for union of the Churches, and in 1233 and
again in 1234 negotiations were carried on between the Greek Patriarch
Germanus and some Dominican and Franciscan emissaries of Gregory IX.
But the bargaining was one-sided; for while with Rome Christian unity
never rose above an object to be kept in view, to the Greeks of the
East it presented itself as the only condition on which they could
claim the help which might save them from gradual extinction. And this
became even more apparent than hitherto after the reconquest of
Constantinople by the Greeks; for it seemed as if the prospect of a
peaceful reunion of the Churches alone might remove the pretext now
given to the princes of the West for a new crusade directed against
Constantinople. This was no imaginary danger; for Charles of Anjou and
Naples had made himself the champion of the dispossessed Latin Emperor
and was preparing to attack. So Michael Palaeologus who had rewon
Constantinople for the Greeks and himself, made overtures to Pope
Urban IV; and negotiations were thus begun which ended in the
appearance of Greek delegates at the second Council of Lyons in 1274.
These accepted, on behalf of the Greek Church and empire, the primacy
of Rome and the Latin Creed. In return, the Bulgarian Church was once
more restored to its own Metropolitan at Achrida. But all Michael's
coercive efforts failed to make the union acceptable to his own clergy
and people. It was so difficult to carry out the promised assimilation
of the Greek to the Latin forms that the Popes became impatient; and
when Nicholas III, the opponent of Charles of Sicily, was succeeded by
Martin IV, the tool of that ambitious monarch, the excommunication
launched by the new Pope against the Eastern Emperor was merely a
preliminary step to the general attack on the empire planned by
Charles. Michael's son and successor Andronicus entirely repudiated
the agreement made at Lyons; but the misfortunes of Charles in Sicily
removed the serious danger of invasion from the West. Overtures for
ecclesiastical union were not renewed until the conquests of the Turks
in the Balkan peninsula forced the Greeks to seek external aid.

[Sidenote: Internal condition of Church.]

The internal condition of the Eastern Church during these centuries
does not call for much detailed treatment. The end of the iconoclastic
quarrel had been followed by the development of great elaboration of
ceremonial in the services. It is true that learning was not dead and
that the Emperors of the Comnenan house distinctly encouraged it. But
the literature of ancient Greece and the theological works of the
Fathers of the early Church appeared to the writers of these centuries
to have exhausted all earthly possibilities in their respective
spheres. The writings of learned Christians did not rescue their
religion from pure formalism; while the study of the classics led them
to the ancient philosophers and landed many of the students in
paganism. Under the circumstances it is not perhaps wonderful that
there arose a sect called Gnosimachi who deprecated any attempt after
knowledge of the Scriptures on the ground that God demands good deeds
done in all simplicity. It is, however, among the monks, if anywhere,
that personal piety should have been retained. But such as existed,
was inclined to take fantastic forms; and we are told of those who
wrapped themselves round with the odour of sanctity by self-inflicted
tortures of a useless and meaningless kind. There was no foundation of
new monastic Orders in the East such as during these centuries led to
the maintenance of the missionary spirit in the West. But it was from
the monastic bodies alone that any opposition was offered to the
actions of the Emperor. The most noteworthy case was that of the Abbot
Nicephorus Blemmydes whose attempts to promote an understanding
between the Eastern and Western Churches (1245) were foiled, because
he had the temerity to deal harshly with the mistress of the Emperor
John Dukas. Indeed the imperial authority was an influence stronger
than any other, with the possible exception of hatred of the Latin
Church. Such dogmatic discussions as occasionally arose, were
concerned with unimportant points: but the participation of the
Emperor did not necessarily tend to either truth or peace. Manuel I
not only intervened in such disputes, but even started them himself
and enforced his view by punishing those who took the opposite side.

[Sidenote: Heresies.]

The Eastern Church, like that of the West, had to deal with heretical
sects. The Paulicians who in the ninth century had formed a
politico-religious community on the confines of the empire, were
deprived of their political power by Basil I in 872; while in 969 John
Tzimisces transferred a portion of them from their settlements in Asia
Minor to the district of Philippopolis in Thrace. Here they throve,
until their desertion of the Emperor Alexius in his war against Robert
Guiscard and the Normans ended the toleration hitherto extended to the
exercise of their religion, and the "thirteenth apostle," as his
literary daughter Anna Comnena styles him, entered on a plan of
forcible conversion. Alexius also dealt severely with another body of
heretics. The Bogomiles were perhaps a revival of the earlier sect of
the Euchites or Messalians who are mentioned by writers of the fourth
century. The origin of the name is obscure, but it is said to mean
"Friends of God." Their tenets resembled those of the Cathari with
whom they were most probably connected. Alexius by pretending sympathy
got from their leader an avowal of his doctrines and then had him
burnt (1116). But in neither of these cases did violent suppression
achieve its purpose. Despite the foundation of the orthodox city of
Alexiopolis in the neighbourhood, the Paulicians still continued about
Philippopolis, where they were secretly strengthened in their
particularist attitude by the continued presence of the remnants of
the Bogomiles. Even a century later the Patriarch Germanus (1230)
attacks the latter on the plea that they are still secretly making
converts.

[Sidenote: Other Eastern Churches.]

Of the other Christian Churches of the East we have seen that the
Nestorians were very active among the Tartars throughout Asia. They
and their Syrian neighbours but dogmatic opponents, the Jacobites, a
monophysite body, adopted a conciliatory disposition towards the
crusaders. In 1237 the prior of the Dominicans in Jerusalem reported
to Gregory IX that the Maphrian of the Jacobites, a kind of lesser
patriarch, had acknowledged the supremacy of Rome; but a submission
given from stress of circumstances carried no permanent weight; and
subsequent correspondence between Innocent IV and officials of both
churches seems to have been wilfully misunderstood at Rome. There were
two other Christian churches whose conduct was guided by proximity to
the Mohammedans. The small body of the Maronites on Mount Lebanon kept
their ancient customs but attached themselves to the Roman Church in
1182 and remained faithful to her. The more important Armenian Church
wavered between Rome and Constantinople. Manuel Comnenus made
overtures to the Patriarch or Catholicos, which were prevented from
coming to any result by the emperor's death. Shortly afterwards Leo
the Great of Armenia was recognised as King by the Emperor Henry VI
and was crowned by the Archbishop of Mainz; and in return he and his
Catholicos recognised the supremacy of Rome. In 1240 the Greek
patriarch tried to win over the Catholicos to the Eastern Church. In
1292 the Armenian King Haiton II, who became a Franciscan friar,
persuaded his church to accept the Roman customs: but despite this
nominal subjection to Rome, the obstinacy of the people prevented any
real change in either doctrine or organisation.





End of Project Gutenberg's The Church and the Empire, by D. J. Medley