The Church and the Empire

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[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 Koln, 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 Koln 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."

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