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

[Sidenote: A momentary peace.]

It remained to be seen whether Gregory’s failure implied Henry’s success. The Emperor returned to Germany, where a strong desire for peace had grown up and was taking practical shape. In some dioceses the Truce of God was proclaimed, which, under heavy ecclesiastical penalties, forbade hostilities during certain days of the week and certain seasons of the year. Henry took up this idea, which as yet was too partial to be effective, and in 1085, in a Synod at Mainz under his presidency, it was proclaimed for the whole kingdom. The unfortunate anti-King Herman found himself deserted, and died, a fugitive, in 1088. Henry’s moderation concluded what the desire for peace had begun, and even Saxony seemed to be reconciled to his rule.

[Sidenote: Urban II (1088-99).]

But his triumph was shortlived. Between him and any lasting peace stood the antiPope Clement III; for all who had received consecration at Clement’s hands were bound at all hazards to maintain the lawfulness of his election. Moreover, Clement’s opponent now was a man to be reckoned with. The first choice of the Gregorian party, Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, could not be consecrated for a year after his election, and four months later he was dead (September, 1087). The partisans of Clement were too strong in Rome, and the next election was carried out with total disregard of the decree of Nicholas II. It took place at Terracina in March, 1088, and was made by a large number of clergy in addition to the Cardinals. The choice fell upon Otto, Bishop of Ostia, a Frenchman of noble family and a monk of Cluny; but it was some years before Urban II could regard Rome as his headquarters.

[Sidenote: His policy against Henry.]

In some ways Urban was more uncompromising than his master Gregory. He upheld the papal legates in their strict treatment of the French bishops; he actually launched against Philip I of France the excommunication which Gregory had only threatened; to the prohibition of lay investiture he added an explicit command that bishops and clergy should not do homage to any layman. But while he showed himself thus in thorough sympathy with his predecessor, in his power of dealing with circumstances he proved himself by far the superior. A succession of clever if thoroughly unscrupulous measures restored the fortunes of the papal party. Henry had succeeded for the moment in dividing and isolating his enemies. Urban set himself to unite the chief opponents of Henry on both sides of the Alps. He planned a marriage between the middle-aged widow, the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, and the eighteen-year-old son of Welf, Duke of Bavaria (1089). Matilda was ready to sacrifice herself for the good of the cause. The Welfs, ignorant of Matilda’s gift of her lands to the Papacy, eagerly accepted the bait; but soon discovering that they were being used as tools, they ceased to give any help, and in fact became reconciled to the Emperor. But meanwhile the Pope had discovered other more deadly weapons with which to wound the Emperor. The deaths of the anti-Kings had left the papal party without a leader in Germany.

Events had shown the firm hold of the hereditary claim and the Salian House upon a large portion of the Empire. The only acceptable leader would be a member of Henry’s own house. Henry’s actions played into their hands. His eldest son, Conrad, had been crowned at Aachen in 1087 and sent into Italy to act as his father’s representative. He is described as a young man of studious and dreamy character, unpractical and easily influenced. In 1087 Henry lost his faithful wife Bertha, and a year later he married a Russian Princess, Praxedis, who was the widow of the Count of the Northern March. The marriage was unhappy; each accused the other of misconduct; and Henry, suspecting the relations of Conrad with his stepmother, put them both in prison.

Perhaps Conrad had already been worked upon by the papal party. He escaped, took refuge with the Countess Matilda, and was crowned King of Italy (1093). But he was only the tool of others. Far more immediately dangerous was the escape of Praxedis (1094), who laid before the Pope the foulest charges against Henry. To her lasting shame the Countess Matilda was the chief agent in these family revolts. The effect on Henry’s position in Italy was disastrous. Pope Urban finally recovered Rome, and Conrad, having won the cities of Lombardy, took an oath of fealty to the Papacy in return for a promise of the Empire.

[Sidenote: Beginning of the Crusades.]

And just as if the success of these diabolical schemes was not a sufficient triumph, fortune at this moment gave the Pope a chance of superseding the Emperor in the eyes of all Europe, by inaugurating a great popular movement of which under different circumstances the Emperor would have been the natural leader. In 1085 the Eastern Emperor Alexius had appealed to Henry against the Normans, but now Henry was a negligible quantity—excommunicated, crowned Emperor by an antipope, not likely to undertake a distant expedition. In 1095, therefore, when Alexius needed aid against the Seljuk Turks, it was to the Pope that he sent his envoys, who appeared at the Synod of Piacenza. Those late converts to Mohammedanism had established their kingdom of Roum over the greater part of Asia Minor with its capital at the venerable city of Nic�a, and had captured Jerusalem, which thus passed out of the hands of the tolerant Caliphs of Cairo into those of the most fanatical section of Mohammedans. Pilgrims returning from Jerusalem spread through Europe tales of the harsh treatment to which they were subjected. Then in 1087 a new tribe of Saracens, the Almoravides, crossed from Africa to Spain and inflicted a severe defeat upon a Christian army. It seemed almost as if a combined movement of the Mohammedan world had begun for the final extinction of Christendom. If Gregory had been free he would have wished to promote the reunion of the Churches by sending help to the Eastern Empire; so that it was no novel idea that was suggested to the assembled magnates at Piacenza. Urban II no doubt saw the opportunity offered for asserting the leadership of the western world. Alexius’ envoys were heard with sympathy; but Urban felt the need of appeal to a larger public, and summoned a great Council to Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne, where he would be among his own countrymen. Here in November, 1095, he delivered before a vast concourse of persons assembled in the open air an impassioned appeal on behalf of the suffering Christians of the east. The result answered his utmost expectation, and the cry of the assembled multitude, “God wills it,” was the ratification of the papal leadership. All methods were taken to stir the feelings of the west.

The vast ecclesiastical organisation was used in order to transmit invitations to possible crusaders; the penitential system of the Church was brought to bear on those already conscious of a sinful life; popular preachers, such as Peter the Hermit, were employed to rouse the interest of the masses; the Pope himself spent the succeeding months in a tour through Southern France; and arrangements were made for the start of the first expedition from the Italian ports at the end of the summer of 1096, under the leadership of a legate appointed by the Pope.

[Sidenote: The first Crusade.]

It is not possible here to follow the fortunes of the Crusaders.

Several unauthorised expeditions, which bore witness to the popular enthusiasm, made their way through Southern Germany; but the disorderly crowds which composed them perished either at the hands of the inhabitants of the Eastern Empire, whom they treated as schismatics, or among the Turks in Asia Minor. The real expedition passed partly by land, partly by sea from the Italian ports to Constantinople, whence the Crusaders set out across Asia Minor. Nic�a was taken in June, 1097; the Sultan of Roum was overthrown in battle at Doryl�um in July; Antioch detained the Crusaders from October, 1097, to June, 1098; and it was only in July, 1099, that after a siege of forty days Jerusalem was captured from the Saracens of Egypt, who had recently recovered it from the Turks.

[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 antiPope 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 antiPope 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