Part 786

"From the most remote Christian antiquity, the marriage of clergymen had been regarded with the dislike, and their celibacy rewarded by the commendation, of the people. … This prevailing sentiment had ripened into a customary law, and the observance of that custom had been enforced by edicts and menaces, by rewards and penalties. But nature had triumphed over tradition, and had proved too strong for Councils and for Popes. When Hildebrand ascended the chair first occupied by a married Apostle, his spirit burned within him to see that marriage held in her impure and unhallowed bonds a large proportion of those who ministered at the altar, and who handled there the very substance of the incarnate Deity. It was a profanation well adapted to arouse the jealousy, not less than to wound the conscience, of the Pontiff. Secular cares suited ill with the stern duties of a theocratic ministry. Domestic affections would choke or enervate in them that corporate passion which might otherwise be directed with unmitigated ardour towards their chief and centre. Clerical celibacy would exhibit to those who trod the outer courts of the great Christian temple, the impressive and subjugating image of a transcendental perfection, too pure not only for the coarser delights of sense, but even for the alloy of conjugal or parental love. It would fill the world with adherents of Rome, in whom every feeling would be quenched which could rival that sacred allegiance. … With such anticipations, Gregory, within a few weeks from his accession, convened a council at the Lateran, and proposed a law, not, as formerly, forbidding merely the marriage of priests, but commanding every priest to put away his wife, and requiring all laymen to abstain from any sacred office which any wedded priest might presume to celebrate. Never was legislative foresight so verified by the result. What the great Council of Nicæa had attempted in vain, the Bishops assembled in the presence of Hildebrand accomplished, at his instance, at once, effectually, and for ever. Lamentable indeed were the complaints, bitter the reproaches, of the sufferers. Were the most sacred ties thus to be torn asunder at the ruthless bidding of an Italian priest? Were men to become angels, or were angels to be brought down from heaven to minister among men? Eloquence was never more pathetic, more just, or more unavailing. Prelate after prelate silenced these complaints by austere rebukes. Legate after legate arrived with papal menaces to the remonstrants. Monks and abbots preached the continency they at least professed. Kings and barons laughed over their cups at many a merry tale of compulsory divorce. Mobs pelted, hooted, and besmeared with profane and filthy baptisms the unhappy victims of pontifical rigour. It was a struggle not to be prolonged —broken hearts pined and died away in silence. Expostulations subsided into murmurs, and murmurs were drowned in the general shout of victory. Eight hundred years have since passed away. Amidst the wreck of laws, opinions, and institutions, this decree of Hildebrand's still rules the Latin Church, in every land where sacrifices are offered on her altars. … With this Spartan rigour towards his adherents, Gregory combined a more than Athenian address and audacity towards his rivals and antagonists. So long as the monarchs of the West might freely bestow on the objects of their choice the sees and abbeys of their states, papal dominion could be but a passing dream, and papal independency an empty boast. Corrupt motives usually determined that choice; and the objects of it were but seldom worthy. Ecclesiastical dignities were often sold to the highest bidder, and then the purchaser indemnified himself by a use no less mercenary of his own patronage; or they were given as a reward to some martial retainer, and the new churchman could not forget that he had once been a soldier. The cope and the coat-of-mail were worn alternately. The same hand bore the crucifix in the holy festival, and the sword in the day of battle. … In the hands of the newly consecrated Bishop was placed a staff, and on his finger a ring, which, received as they were from his temporal sovereign, proclaimed that homage and fealty were due to him alone. And thus the sacerdotal Proconsuls of Rome became, in sentiment at least, and by the powerful obligation of honour, the vicegerents, not of the Pontifex Maximus, but of the Imperator. To dissolve this 'trinoda necessitas' of simoniacal preferments, military service, and feudal vassalage, a feebler spirit would have exhorted, negotiated, and compromised. To Gregory it belonged to subdue men by courage, and to rule them by reverence. Addressing the world in the language of his generation, he proclaimed to every potentate, from the Baltic to the Straits of Calpé, that all human authority being holden of the divine, and God himself having delegated his own sovereignty over men to the Prince of the Sacred College, a divine right to universal obedience was the inalienable attribute of the Roman Pontiffs. … In turning ever the collection of the epistles of Hildebrand, we are every where met by this doctrine asserted in a tone of the calmest dignity and the most serene conviction. Thus he informs the French monarch that every house in his kingdom owed to Peter, as their father and pastor, an annual tribute of a penny, and he commands his legates to collect it in token of the subjection of France to the Holy See. He assures Solomon the King of Hungary, that his territories are the property of the Holy Roman Church. Solomon being incredulous and refractory, was dethroned by his competitor for the Hungarian crown. His more prudent successor, Ladislaus, acknowledged himself the vassal of the Pope, and paid him tribute. … From every part of the European continent, Bishops are summoned by these imperial missives to Rome, and there are either condemned and deposed, or absolved and confirmed in their sees. In France, in Spain, and in Germany, we find his legates exercising the same power; and the correspondence records many a stern rebuke, sometimes for their undue remissness, sometimes for their misapplied severity. The rescripts of Trajan scarcely exhibit a firmer assurance both of the right and the power to control every other authority, whether secular or sacerdotal, throughout the civilized world."

_Sir J. Stephen, Hildebrand (Edinburgh Review, April, 1845)._

{2430}

"At first Gregory appeared to desire to direct his weapons against King Philip of France, 'the worst of, the tyrants who enslaved the Church.' … But with a more correct estimate of the circumstances of Germany and the dangers which threatened from Lombardy, he let this conflict drop and turned against Henry IV. The latter had so alienated Saxony and Thuringia by harsh proceedings, that they desired to accuse him to the Pope of oppression and simony. Gregory immediately demanded the dismissal of the councillors who had been excommunicated by his predecessor. His mother, who was devoted to the Pope, sought to mediate, and the Saxon revolt which now broke out (still in 1073) still further induced him to give way. He wrote a submissive letter to the Pope, rendered a repentant confession at Nuremberg in 1074 in the presence of his mother and two Roman cardinals, and, along with the excommunicated councillors, who had promised on oath to surrender all church properties obtained by simony, was received into the communion of the Church. … But … Henry, after overthrowing his enemies, soon returned to his old manner, and the German clergy resisted the interference of the Pope. At the Roman Synod (February, 1075) Gregory then decreed numerous ecclesiastical penalties against resistant German and Lombard bishops, and five councillors of the King were once more laid under the ban on account of simony. But in addition, at a Roman synod of the same year, he carried through the bold law of investiture, which prohibited bishops and abbots from receiving a bishopric or abbacy from the hands of a layman, and prohibited the rulers from conferring investiture on penalty of excommunication. Before the publication of the law Gregory caused confidential overtures to be made to the King, in order, as it seems, to give the King an opportunity of taking measures to obviate the threatening dangers which were involved in this extreme step. At the same time he himself was threatened and entangled on all hands; Robert Guiscard, whom he had previously excommunicated, he once more laid under the ban. … Henry, who in the summer of 1075 still negotiated directly with the Pope through ambassadors, after completely overthrowing the Saxons now ceased to pay any attention. … At Worms (24th January 1076) he caused a great portion of the German bishops to declare the deposition of the Pope who, as was said, was shattering the Empire and degrading the bishops. The Lombard bishops subscribed the decree of deposition at Piacenza and Pavia. Its bearers aroused a fearful storm against themselves at the Lenten Synod of Rome (1076), and Gregory now declared the excommunication and deposition of Henry, and released his subjects from their oath. Serious voices did indeed deny the Pope's right to the latter course; but a portion of the German bishops at once humbled themselves before the Pope, others began to waver, and the German princes, angered over Henry's government, demanded at Tribur in October, 1076, that the King should give satisfaction to the Pope, and the Pope hold judgment on Henry in Germany itself; if by his own fault Henry should remain under the ban for a year's time, another King was to be elected. Henry then resolved to make his peace with the Pope in order to take their weapon out of the hands of the German princes. Before the Pope came to Germany, he hastened in the winter with his wife and child from Besançon, over Mont Cenis, and found a friendly reception in Lombardy, so that the Pope, already on the way to Germany, betook himself to the Castle of Canossa to the Margravine Matilda of Tuscany, fearing an evil turn of affairs from Henry and the Lombards who were hostile to the Pope. But Henry was driven by his threatened position in Germany to seek release from the ban above every thing. This brought him as a penitent into the courtyard of Canossa (January 1077), where Gregory saw him stand from morning till evening during three days before he released him from the ban at the intercession of Matilda."

_W. Moeller, History of the Christian Church in the Middle Ages, pages 256-258._

"It was on the 25th of January, 1077, that the scene took place, which, as is natural, has seized so strongly upon the popular imagination, and has so often supplied a theme for the brush of the painter, the periods of the historian, the verse of the poet. … The king was bent upon escaping at any sacrifice from the bond of excommunication and from his engagement to appear before the Pontiff, at the Diet summoned at Augsburg for the Feast of the Purification. The character in which he presented himself before Gregory was that of a penitent, throwing himself in deep contrition upon the Apostolic clemency, and desirous of reconciliation with the Church. The Pope, after so long experience of his duplicity, disbelieved in his sincerity, while, as a mere matter of policy, it was in the highest degree expedient to keep him to his pact with the German princes and prelates. … On three successive days did he appear barefooted in the snowy court-yard of the castle, clad in the white garb of a penitent, suing for relief from ecclesiastical censure. It was difficult for Gregory to resist the appeal thus made to his fatherly compassion, the more especially as Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, and the Countess Matilda besought him 'not to break the bruised reed.' Against his better judgment, and in despite of the warnings of secular prudence, the Pope consented on the fourth day to admit to his presence the royal suppliant. … The conditions of absolution imposed upon the king were mainly four: that he should present himself upon a day and at a place, to be named by the Pontiff, to receive the judgment of the Apostolic See, upon the charges preferred by the princes and prelates of Germany, and that he should abide the Pontifical sentence—his subjects meanwhile remaining released from their oath of fealty; that he should respect the rights of the Church and carry out the papal decrees; and that breach of this engagement should entitle the Teutonic magnates to proceed to the election of another king. Such were the terms to which Henry solemnly pledged himself, and on the faith of that pledge the Pontiff, assuming the vestments of religion, proceeded to absolve him with the appointed rites. … So ends the first act in this great tragedy. Gregory's misgivings as to the king's sincerity soon receive too ample justification. 'Fear not,' the Pontiff is reported to have said, with half contemptuous sadness to the Saxon envoys who complained of his lenity to the monarch: 'Fear not, I send him back to you more guilty than he came.' Henry's words to the Pope had been softer than butter; but he had departed with war in his heart. … Soon he lays a plot for seizing Gregory at Mantua, whither the Pontiff is invited for the purpose of presiding over a Council. But the vigilance of the Great Countess foils the proposed treachery. {2431} Shortly the ill-advised monarch again assumes an attitude of open hostility to the Pope. … The Teutonic princes, glad to throw off an authority which they loathe and despise—not heeding the advice to pause given by the Roman legates—proceed at the Diet of Forchein to the election of another king. Their choice falls upon Rudolph of Swabia, who is crowned at Metz on the 20th of March, 1077. The situation is now complicated by the strife between the two rival sovereigns. … At last, in Lent, 1080, Gregory, no longer able to tolerate the continual violation by Henry of the pledges given at Canossa, and greatly moved by tidings of his new and manifold sacrileges and cruelties, pronounces again the sentence of excommunication against him, releasing his subjects from their obedience, and recognizing Rudolph as king. Henry thereupon calls together some thirty simoniacal and incontinent prelates at Brixen, and causes them to go through the form of electing an anti-pope in the person of Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna, an ecclesiastic some time previously excommunicated by Gregory for grave offences. Then the tide turns in Henry's favour. At the battle of the Elster (15th October, 1080), Rudolph is defeated and mortally wounded, and on the same day the army of the Great Countess is overthrown and dispersed at La Volta in the Mantuan territory. Next year, in the early spring, Henry crosses the Alps and advances towards Rome. … A little before Pentecost Henry appears under the walls of the Papal city, expecting that his party within it will throw open the gates to him; but his expectation is disappointed. … In 1082, the monarch again advances upon Rome and ineffectually assaults it. In the next year he makes a third and more successful attempt, and captures the Leonine city. … On the 21st of March, 1084, the Lateran Gate is opened to Henry by the treacherous Romans, and the excommunicated monarch, with the anti-pope by his side, rides in triumph through the streets. The next day, Guibert solemnly takes possession of St. John Lateran, and bestows the Imperial Crown upon Henry in the Vatican Basilica. Meanwhile Gregory is shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo. Thence, after six weeks, he is delivered by Guiscard, Duke of Calabria, the faithful vassal of the Holy See. But the burning of the city by Guiscard's troops, upon the uprising of the Romans, turns the joy of his rescue into mourning. Eight days afterwards he quits 'the smoking ruins of his once beautiful Rome,' and after pausing for a few days, at Monte Casino, reaches Salerno, where his life pilgrimage is to end."

_W. S. Lilly, The Turning-Point of the Middle Ages (Contemporary Review, August, 1882)._

Gregory died at Salerno on the 25th of May, 1085, leaving Henry apparently triumphant; but he had inspired the Papacy with his will and mind, and the battle went on. At the end of another generation—in A. D. 1122—the question of investitures was settled by a compromise called the Concordat of Worms. "Both of the contending parties gave up something, but one much more than the other; the Church shadows, the State substance. The more important elections should be henceforth made in the presence of the Emperor, he engaging not to interfere with them, but to leave to the Chapter or other electing body the free exercise of their choice. This was in fact to give over in most instances the election to the Pope; who gradually managed to exclude the Emperor from all share in Episcopal appointments. The temporalities of the See or Abbey were still to be made over to the Bishop or Abbot elect, not, however, any longer by the delivering to him of the ring and crozier, but by a touch of the sceptre, he having done homage for them, and taken the oath of obedience. All this was in Germany to find place before consecration, being the same arrangement that seven years earlier had brought the conflict between Anselm and our Henry I. to an end."

_R. C. Trench, Lectures on Medieval Church History, lecture 9._

ALSO IN: _A. F. Villemain, Life of Gregory VII., book 2._

_W. R. W. Stephens. Hildebrand and His Times._

_H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, books 6-8._

_E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, book 4._

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 973-1122; CANOSSA; ROME: A. D. 1081-1084.

PAPACY: A. D. 1059. Institution of the procedure of Papal Election.

"According to the primitive custom of the church, an episcopal vacancy was filled up by election of the clergy and people belonging to the city or diocese. … It is probable that, in almost every case, the clergy took a leading part in the selection of their bishops; but the consent of the laity was absolutely necessary to render it valid. They were, however, by degrees excluded from any real participation, first in the Greek, and finally in the western church. … It does not appear that the early Christian emperors interfered with the freedom of choice any further than to make their own confirmation necessary in the great patriarchal sees, such as Rome and Constantinople, which were frequently the objects of violent competition, and to decide in controverted elections. … The bishops of Rome, like those of inferior sees, were regularly elected by the citizens, laymen as well as ecclesiastics. But their consecration was deferred until the popular choice had received the sovereign's sanction. The Romans regularly despatched letters to Constantinople or to the exarchs of Ravenna, praying that their election of a pope might be confirmed. Exceptions, if any, are infrequent while Rome was subject to the eastern empire. This, among other imperial prerogatives, Charlemagne might consider as his own. … Otho the Great, in receiving the imperial crown, took upon him the prerogatives of Charlemagne. There is even extant a decree of Leo VIII., which grants to him and his successors the right of naming future popes. But the authenticity of this instrument is denied by the Italians. It does not appear that the Saxon emperors went to such a length as nomination, except in one instance (that of Gregory V. in 990); but they sometimes, not uniformly, confirmed the election of a pope, according to ancient custom. An explicit right of nomination was, however, conceded to the emperor Henry III. in 1047, as the only means of rescuing the Roman church from the disgrace and depravity into which it had fallen. Henry appointed two or three very good popes. … This high prerogative was perhaps not designed to extend beyond Henry himself. But even if it had been transmissible to his successors, the infancy of his son Henry IV., and the factions of that minority, precluded the possibility of its exercise. Nicolas II., in 1059, published a decree which restored the right of election to the Romans, but with a remarkable variation from the original form. {2432} The cardinal bishops (seven in number, holding sees in the neighbourhood of Rome, and consequently suffragans of the pope as patriarch or metropolitan) were to choose the supreme pontiff, with the concurrence first of the cardinal priests and deacons (or ministers of the parish churches of Rome), and afterwards of the laity. Thus elected, the new pope was to be presented for confirmation to Henry, 'now king, and hereafter to become emperor,' and to such of his successors as should personally obtain that privilege. This decree is the foundation of that celebrated mode of election in a conclave of cardinals which has ever since determined the headship of the church. … The real author of this decree, and of all other vigorous measures adopted by the popes of that age, whether for the assertion of their independence or the restoration of discipline, was Hildebrand"—afterwards Pope Gregory VII.

_H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 7, part 1 (volume 2)._

ALSO IN: _E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, book 4, number 1._

PAPACY: A. D. 1077-1102. Donation of the Countess Matilda.