The Church and the Empire - D. J. Medley (first color ebook reader txt) 📗

[Sidenote: Honorius II.]

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

[Sidenote: Lothair II.]

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

[Sidenote: Lothair and the Concordat.]

Lothair’s election, then, was a triumph for the Papacy, and the Church party could not let pass so good an opportunity of revising the relations of State and Church in Germany. They had maintained from the first that the Concordat of Worms was a personal arrangement between Calixtus II and Henry V. But the exact nature of Lothair’s promise on election is a matter of great dispute. According to the account of an anonymous writer, he undertook that the Church should exercise entire freedom in episcopal elections without being controlled, “as formerly”

(an obvious reference to the Concordat of Worms), by the presence of the lay power or by a recommendation from it, and that after the consecration (not before, according to the terms of the Concordat) the Emperor should, without any payment, invest the prelate with the regalia by the sceptre and should receive his oath of fealty “saving his Order.” Lothair’s actual conduct, however, in the matter of appointments seems to have been guided by the terms of the Concordat.

[Sidenote: Lothair and the Hohenstaufen.]

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

[Sidenote: Schism in the Papacy.]

Meanwhile a crisis at Rome quite overshadowed the German disputes.

Honorius II died in February, 1130. Immediately the party of the Frangipani, who had stood around him, met and proclaimed a successor as Innocent II. This was irregular, and in any case the act was that of a minority of the Cardinals. It must have been, therefore, with some confidence in the justice of their cause that the opposition party met at a later hour, and by the votes of a majority of the College of Cardinals elected the Cardinal Peter Leonis, the grandson of a converted Jew and formerly a monk of Cluny, as Anacletus II.

There was no question of principle at stake; it was a mere struggle of factions. The partisans of Innocent charged Anacletus with the most heinous crimes. Clearly he was ambitious and able, wealthy and unscrupulous. Moreover, for the moment he was successful. By whatever means, he gradually won the whole of Rome; and Innocent, deserted, made his way by Pisa and Genoa to Burgundy, and so to France. His reception by the Abbey of Cluny was a great strength to his cause, and he there consecrated the new church, which had been forty years in building and was larger than any church yet erected in France. In order that the schism in the Papacy should not be reproduced in every bishopric and abbey of his kingdom, Louis VI of France summoned a Council at Etampes, near Paris, which should decide between the respective merits of the rival Popes.

[Sidenote: Bernard of Clairvaux.]

To this Council a special invitation was sent to the great monk who for the next twenty years dominates the Western Church and completely overshadows the contemporary Popes. We have of seen that it was the advent of Bernard and his large party at the monastery of Citeaux in 1113 that saved the newly founded Order from premature collapse.

Although only twenty-four years of age, Bernard was entrusted with the third of the parties sent forth in succession to seek new homes for the Order, and he and his twelve companions settled in a gloomy valley in the northernmost corner of Burgundy, which was henceforth to be known as Clairvaux. Here the hardships suffered by the monks in their maintenance of the strict Benedictine rule and the entire mastery over his bodily senses obtained by their young abbot built up a reputation which reacted on the whole body of the Cistercians, and soon made them the most revered and widespread of all the monastic Orders. Bernard himself became the unconscious worker of many miracles: he was the friend and adviser of great potentates in Church and State, and without the least effort on his own part he was gradually acquiring a position as the arbiter of Christendom.

[Sidenote: Acceptance of Innocent II.]

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

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

[Sidenote: Lothair at Rome.]

At length Lothair felt himself sufficiently free to fulfil his promise to Innocent. But the turbulent condition of Germany prevented him from bringing a force of any size, and, despite the vehement eloquence of Bernard, among the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany the friend of Innocent was still the German King and was viewed with much suspicion.

Fortunately, however, Roger of Sicily, the one strong supporter of Anacletus, was engaged in a struggle with his nobles and could give no help. But Lothair desired to avoid bloodshed if possible. He made no attempt, therefore, to get possession of St. Peter’s and the Leonine city, which were in the hands of Anacletus and his followers, but contented himself with the peaceful occupation of the rest of Rome. He and his wife were crowned in the church of St. John Lateran by Innocent (June, 1133). Lothair seems