The Church and the Empire

D >> D. J. Medley >> The Church and the Empire

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

[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 proteges 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 _conge
d'elire_ 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.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19