Chapter 19

The removal of Edmund's children into so distant a country as Hungary was, next to their death, regarded by Canute as the greatest security to his government: he had no further anxiety, except with regard to Alfred and Edward, who were protected and supported by their uncle Richard, Duke of Normandy. Richard even fitted out a great armament, in order to restore the English princes to the throne of their ancestors; and though the navy was dispersed by a storm, Canute saw the danger to which he was exposed from the enmity of so warlike a people as the Normans. In order to acquire the friendship of the duke, he paid his addresses to Queen Emma, sister of that prince, and promised that he would leave the children whom he should have by that marriage in possession of the Crown of England. Richard complied with his demand and sent over Emma to England, where she was soon after married to Canute. The English, though they disapproved of her espousing the mortal enemy of her former husband and his family, were pleased to find at court a sovereign to whom they were accustomed, and who had already formed connections with them; and thus Canute, besides securing, by this marriage, the alliance of Normandy, gradually acquired, by the same means, the confidence of his own subjects. The Norman prince did not long survive the marriage of Emma; and he left the inheritance of the duchy to his eldest son of the same name, who, dying a year after him without children, was succeeded by his brother Robert, a man of valor and abilities.

Canute, having settled his power in England beyond all danger of a revolution, made a voyage to Denmark, in order to resist the attacks of the King of Sweden; and he carried along with him a great body of the English, under the command of Earl Godwin. This nobleman had here an opportunity of performing a service, by which he both reconciled the King's mind to the English nation and, gaining to himself the friendship of his sovereign, laid the foundation of that immense fortune which he acquired to his family. He was stationed next the Swedish camp, and observing a favorable opportunity, which he was obliged suddenly to seize, he attacked the enemy in the night, drove them from their trenches, threw them into disorder, pursued his advantage, and obtained a decisive victory over them. Next morning Canute, seeing the English camp entirely abandoned, imagined that those disaffected troops had deserted to the enemy: he was agreeably surprised to find that they were at that time engaged in pursuit of the discomfited Swedes. He was so pleased with this success, and with the manner of obtaining it, that he bestowed his daughter in marriage upon Godwin, and treated him ever after with entire confidence and regard.

In another voyage, which he made afterward to Denmark, Canute attacked Norway, and, expelling the just but unwarlike Olaus, kept possession of his kingdom till the death of that prince. He had now by his conquests and valor attained the utmost height of grandeur: having leisure from wars and intrigues, he felt the unsatisfactory nature of all human enjoyments; and equally weary of the glories and turmoils of this life, he began to cast his view toward that future existence, which it is so natural for the human mind, whether satiated by prosperity or disgusted with adversity, to make the object of its attention. Unfortunately, the spirit which prevailed in that age gave a wrong direction to his devotion: instead of making compensation to those whom he had injured by his former acts of violence, he employed himself entirely in those exercises of piety which the monks represented as the most meritorious. He built churches, he endowed monasteries, he enriched the ecclesiastics, and he bestowed revenues for the support of chantries at Assington and other places, where he appointed prayers to be said for the souls of those who had there fallen in battle against him. He even undertook a pilgrimage to Rome, where he resided a considerable time: besides obtaining from the pope some privileges for the English school erected there, he engaged all the princes through whose dominions he was obliged to pass to desist from those heavy impositions and tolls which they were accustomed to exact from the English pilgrims. By this spirit of devotion, no less than by his equitable and politic administration, he gained, in a good measure, the affections of his subjects.

Canute, the greatest and most powerful monarch of his time, sovereign of Denmark and Norway, as well as of England, could not fail of meeting with adulation from his courtiers; a tribute which is liberally paid even to the meanest and weakest princes. Some of his flatterers, breaking out one day in admiration of his grandeur, exclaimed that everything was possible for him; upon which the monarch, it is said, ordered his chair to be set on the sea-shore while the tide was rising; and as the waters approached, he commanded them to retire, and to obey the voice of him who was lord of the ocean. He feigned to sit some time in expectation of their submission; but when the sea still advanced toward him, and began to wash him with its billows, he turned to his courtiers, and remarked to them that every creature in the universe was feeble and impotent, and that power resided with one Being alone, in whose hands were all the elements of nature; who could say to the ocean, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther," and who could level with his nod the most towering piles of human pride and ambition.

The only memorable action which Canute performed after his return from Rome was an expedition against Malcolm, King of Scotland. During the reign of Ethelred, a tax of a shilling a hide had been imposed on all the lands of England. It was commonly called _danegelt_; because the revenue had been employed either in buying peace with the Danes or in making preparations against the inroads of that hostile nation. That monarch had required that the same tax should be paid by Cumberland, which was held by the Scots; but Malcolm, a warlike prince, told him that as he was always able to repulse the Danes by his own power, he would neither submit to buy peace of his enemies nor pay others for resisting them. Ethelred, offended at this reply, which contained a secret reproach on his own conduct, undertook an expedition against Cumberland; but though he committed ravages upon the country, he could never bring Malcolm to a temper more humble or submissive. Canute, after his accession, summoned the Scottish King to acknowledge himself a vassal for Cumberland to the Crown of England; but Malcolm refused compliance, on pretence that he owed homage to those princes only who inherited that kingdom by right of blood. Canute was not of a temper to bear this insult; and the King of Scotland soon found that the sceptre was in very different hands from those of the feeble and irresolute Ethelred. Upon Canute's appearing on the frontiers with a formidable army, Malcolm agreed that his grandson and heir, Duncan, whom he put in possession of Cumberland, should make the submissions required, and that the heirs of Scotland should always acknowledge themselves vassals to England for that province.

Canute passed four years in peace after this enterprise, and he died at Shaftesbury; leaving three sons, Sweyn, Harold, and Hardicanute. Sweyn, whom he had by his first marriage with Alfwen, daughter of the Earl of Hampshire, was crowned in Norway; Hardicanute, whom Emma had borne him, was in possession of Denmark; Harold, who was of the same marriage with Sweyn, was at that time in England.

HENRY III DEPOSES THE POPE

THE GERMAN EMPIRE CONTROLS THE PAPACY

A.D. 1048

FERDINAND GREGOROVIUS

JOSEPH E. DARRAS

(After the extinction of the Carlovingian line, A.D. 887, and the division of the empire, the Church of Rome and the Christian world fell into a highly demoralized state, attributable to the destitution to which ecclesiastical bodies were reduced by the frequent predations of bands of robbers, the immorality of the priesthood, and the power of electing the popes falling into the hands of intriguing and licentious patrician females, whom aspirants to the holy see were not ashamed to bribe for their favors. So depraved had the general spirit of the age become that Pope Boniface VII, A.D. 974, robbed St. Peter's Church and its treasury and fled to Constantinople; while Pope John XVIII, A.D. 1003, was prevented, by general indignation only, from accepting a sum of money from Emperor Basil to recognize the right of the Greek patriarch to the title of "Universal Bishop."

A child, son of one of the old noble houses, was consecrated pope as Benedict IX, A.D. 1033, according to some authorities, at the age of ten or twelve years. He became noted for his profligacy and was driven from his throne, the Romans electing, as Pope Sylvester III, John, Bishop of Sabina, who is said to have paid a high price for the dignity. Benedict, however, regained the papal seat shortly afterward, and drove Sylvester into a refuge, but later sold the office to John Gratianus, Arch-priest of Rome, who as Gregory VI made laudable attempts to effect a general reformation. He failed in his efforts, and a chaotic state ensued; three popes claiming the triple tiara and reigning in Rome: Gregory at the Vatican, Benedict in the Lateran, and Sylvester in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore.

On the invitation of the Roman people, Henry the Black, the young and zealous Emperor of Germany, repaired to Italy in 1045 and summoned a great ecclesiastical council at Sutri, which passed a decree deposing the three papal claimants. The same council elected to the tiara the German bishop of Bamberg, who reigned in the holy see as Clement II. One of his first ceremonies, carried out with all the gorgeous pomp of the Roman Church, was the imperial coronation of Henry and his wife Agnes.

But Henry's action, while "it dragged the Church out of the slough it had fallen into," startled the ecclesiastical world, and was a prelude to the struggle between pope and emperor which, under St. Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII, culminated in the independent establishment of the pontificate and papal power.)

FERDINAND GREGOROVIUS

Henry III, the son and successor of Conrad, was young, vigorous, and God-fearing; a noble prince called, like Charles and Otto the Great, to restore Rome, to deliver it from tyrants, and to reform the almost annihilated Church. For the papacy had been still further dishonored by Benedict IX. It seemed as if a demon from hell, in the disguise of a priest, occupied the chair of Peter and profaned the sacred mysteries of religion by his insolent courses.

Benedict IX, restored in 1038, protected by his brother Gregory, who ruled the city as senator of the Romans, led unchecked the life of a Turkish sultan in the palace of the Lateran. He and his family filled Rome with robbery and murder; all lawful conditions had ceased. Toward the end of 1044, or in the beginning of the following year, the populace at length rose in furious revolt; the Pope fled, but his vassals defended the Leonina against the attacks of the Romans. The Trasteverines remained faithful to Benedict, and he summoned friends and adherents; Count Gerard of Galeria advanced with a numerous body of horse to the Saxon gate and repulsed the Romans. An earthquake added to the horrors in the revolted city. The ancient chronicle which relates these events does not tell us whether Trastevere was taken by assault after a three-days' struggle, but merely relates that the Romans unanimously renounced Benedict, and elected Bishop John of the Sabina to the papacy as Sylvester III. John also owed his elevation to the gold with which he bribed the rebels and their leader, Girardo de Saxo. This powerful Roman had first promised his daughter in marriage to the Pope, and afterward refused her; for the Pope had not hesitated, in all seriousness, to sue for the hand of a Roman lady, a relative of his own. Her father lured him on with the hope of winning her, but required that Benedict should in the first place resign the tiara.

The Pope, burning with passion, consented and fulfilled his promise during the revolt of the Romans. He was mastered by the demon of sensuality; it was reported by the superstitious that he associated with devils in the woods and attracted women by means of spells. It was asserted that books of magic, with which he had conjured demons, had been found in the Lateran. His banishment meanwhile aroused the haughty spirit of his house, and anger at Gerard's treacherous conduct proved a further incentive to revenge. His numerous adherents still held St. Angelo, and his gold acquired him new friends. After a forty-nine days' reign, Sylvester III was driven from the apostolic chair, which the Tusculan reascended in March, 1045.

Benedict now ruled for some time in Rome, while Sylvester III found safety either within some fortified monument in the city or in some Sabine fortress, and continued to call himself pope. A beneficent darkness veils the horrors of this year. Hated by the Romans, insecure on his throne, in constant terror of the renewal of the revolution, Benedict eventually found himself obliged to abdicate. The abbot Bartholomew of Grotta Ferrata urged him to the step, but he unblushingly sold the papacy for money like a piece of merchandise. In exchange for a considerable income, that is to say, for the revenue of "Peter's pence" from England, he made over his papal dignities by a formal contract to John Gratianus, a rich archpriest of the Church of St. John at the Latin gate, on May 1, 1045.

Could the holiest office in Christendom be more deeply outraged than by a sale such as this? And yet so general was the traffic in ecclesiastical dignities throughout the world that when a pope finally sold the chair of Peter the scandal did not strike society as specially heinous.

John Gratian, or Gregory VI, set aside the canon law with a defiant courage which perhaps was only understood by the minority of his compatriots; he bought the papacy in order to wrest it from the hands of a criminal, and this remarkable Pope, although regarded as an idiot in that terrible period, was possibly an earnest and high-minded man. Scarcely had Peter Damian knowledge of this traffic when he wrote to Gregory VI on his elevation, rejoicing that the dove with the olive branch had returned to the ark. The Saint may have known the Pope personally and have been persuaded of his spiritual virtues. Even the chroniclers of the time, who represent him--assuredly with injustice--as so rude and simple that he was obliged to appoint a representative, are unable to fasten any crime upon him. The Cluniacs in France and the congregations of Italy all hailed his elevation as the beginning of a better time, and side by side with this simonist Pope a young and brave monk suddenly appears, who, after the heroic exertions of a lifetime, was to raise the degenerate papacy to a height hitherto undreamed of. Hildebrand first issues from obscurity by the side of Gregory VI; he became the Pope's chaplain, and this fact alone proves that Gregory was no idiot. How far Hildebrand's activity already extended, whether he had any share in Gregory's illegal elevation, we do not know; but in the "representative" spoken of by the chronicles, we may easily recognize the gifted young monk who was Gregory's counsellor, and who later took the name of Gregory VII in grateful recollection of his predecessor.

While Benedict IX pursued his wild career in Tusculum or Rome, Gregory VI remained Pope for nearly two years. His desire was to save the Church, which stood in need of a drastic reform--and which soon afterward obtained it. The papacy, lately a hereditary fief of the counts of Tusculum, was utterly ruined; the _dominium temporale_, the ominous gift of the Carlovingians, the box of Pandora in the hands of the Pope from which a thousand evils had arisen, had disappeared, since the Church could scarcely command the fortresses in the immediate neighborhood of the city. A hundred lords, the captains or vassals of the Pope, stood ready to fall upon Rome; every road was infested with robbers, every pilgrim was robbed; within the city the churches lay in ruins, while the priests caroused. Daily assassinations made the streets insecure. Roman nobles, sword in hand, forced their way into St. Peter's itself to snatch the gifts which pious hands still placed upon the altar.

The chronicler who describes this state of things extols Gregory for having repressed it. The captains, it is true, besieged the city, but the Pope boldly assembled the militia, restored a degree of order, and even conquered several fortresses in the district. Sylvester had apparently made an attempt on Rome; he was, however, defeated by Gregory's energy. The short and dark period of Gregory's pontificate was terrible, and his severity toward the robbers soon made him hated by the nobles and even by the equally rapacious cardinals.

Whatever he may have done under the influence of French and Italian monks to rescue the Church from its state of barbarous confusion, it was--as in the time of Otto the Great--by the German dictatorship alone that it could be saved. The exertions of Gregory VI soon ceased to bear any result; his means were exhausted, and his opponents gradually overpowered him. So utter was the state of anarchy that it is said that all three popes lived in the city at the same time: one in the Lateran, a second in St. Peter's, and a third in Santa Maria Maggiore.

The eyes of the better citizens at length turned to the King of Germany. The archdeacon Peter convoked a synod without consulting Gregory, and it was here resolved urgently to invite Henry to come and take the imperial crown and raise the Church from the ruin into which it had fallen.

Henry, coming from Augsburg, crossed the Brenner, and arrived at Verona in September, 1046, accompanied by a great army and filled with the ardent desire of becoming the reformer of the Church. No enemy opposed him, the bishops and dukes, among them the powerful margrave Boniface of Tuscany, did homage without delay. The Roman situation was provisionally discussed at a great synod in Pavia. Gregory VI now hastened to meet the King at Piacenza, where he hoped to gain the monarch to his side. Henry, however, dismissed him with the explanation that his fate and that of the antipopes would be canonically decided by a council.

Shortly before Christmas he assembled one thousand and forty-six bishops and Roman clergy at Sutri. The three popes were summoned, and Gregory and Sylvester III actually appeared. Sylvester was deposed from his pontificate and condemned to penance in a monastery. Gregory VI, however, gave the council cause to doubt its competence to judge him. Gregory, who was an upright man, or one at least conscious of good intentions, consented publicly to describe the circumstances of his elevation, and was thereby forced to condemn himself as guilty of simony and unworthy of the papal office. He quietly laid down the insignia of the papacy, and his renunciation did him honor. Henry, with the bishops and the margrave Boniface, immediately started for the city, which did not shut its gates against him; for Benedict II had hid himself in Tusculum, and his brothers did not venture on any resistance. Rome, weary of the Tusculum horrors, joyfully accepted the German King as her deliverer. Never afterward was a king of Germany received with such glad acclamations by the Roman people; never again did any other effect such great results or achieve the like changes. With the Roman expedition of Henry III begins a new epoch in the history of the city, and more especially of the Church. It seemed as if the waters of the deluge had subsided, and as if men from the ark had landed on the rock of Peter to give new races and new laws to a new world. What law, that stern and terrible power which kills, binds, and holds together, signifies in human affairs, has indeed been experienced by few periods so fully as by that with which we have now to deal.

A synod, assembled in St. Peter's on December 23d, again pronounced all three popes deposed, and a canonical pope had consequently to be elected. Like Otto III before his coronation, Henry had also at his side a man who was to wear the tiara and to confer the crown upon himself.

Adalbert of Hamburg and Bremen having refused the papacy, the King chose Suidger of Bamberg. The royal command was all that was required to place the candidate on the sacred chair. Henry, however, would not violate any of the canonical forms. As King of Germany he possessed no right either over that city or yet over the papal election. The right must first be conferred upon him, and this was done by a treaty which he had already concluded with the Romans at Sutri. "Roman Signors," said Henry at the second sitting of the synod on December 24th, "however thoughtless your conduct may hitherto have been, I still accord you liberty to elect a pope according to ancient custom; choose from among this assembly whom you will."

The Romans replied: "When the royal majesty is present, the assent to the election does not belong to us, and, when it is lacking, you are represented by your _patricius_. For in the affairs of the republic the patricius is not patricius of the pope, but of the emperor. We admit that we have been so thoughtless as to appoint idiots as popes. It now behooves your imperial power to give the Roman republic the benefit of law, the ornament of manners, and to lend the arm of protection to the Church."

The senators of the year 1046, who so meekly surrendered the valuable right to the German King, heeded not the shades of Alberic and the three Crescentii; since these--their patricians--would have accused them of treason.

The Romans of these days were, however, ready for any sacrifice so that they obtained freedom from the Tusculum tyranny. Nothing more clearly shows the utter depth of their exhaustion and the extent of their sufferings than the light surrender of a right which it had formerly cost Otto the Great such repeated efforts to extort from the city. Rome made the humiliating confession that she possessed no priest worthy of the papacy, that the clergy in the city were rude and utter simonists. All other circumstances, moreover, forbade the election of a Roman or even of an Italian to the papacy.

The Romans besought Henry to give them a good pope; he presented the Bishop of Bamberg to the assenting clergy, and led the reluctant candidate to the apostolic chair. Clement II, consecrated on Christmas Day, 1046, immediately placed the imperial crown on Henry's head and on that of his wife Agnes. There were still many Romans who had been eye-witnesses of like transactions--that is to say, of papal election and imperial coronation following one the other in immediate succession--in the case of Otto III and Henry V; who, as they now saw the second German pope mount the chair of Peter, may have recalled the fact that the first had only lived a few sad years in Rome and had died in misery.

The coronation of Henry III was performed under such significant conditions and in such perfect tranquillity that it offers the most fitting opportunity for describing in a few sentences the ceremonial of the imperial coronation.

Since Charles the Great, these repeated ceremonies, with the more frequent coronations or Lateran processions of the popes, formed the most brilliant spectacle in Rome.