The Age of Reason - D. J. Medley (free novels .txt) 📗

of twelve, as Benedict IX. It suited the Emperor, Conrad II, to use him and therefore to acknowledge him; but twice the scandalised Romans drove out the youthful debauchee and murderer, and on the second occasion they elected another Pope in his place. But the Tusculan influence was not to be gainsaid. Benedict, however, sold the Papacy to John Gratian, who was reputed a man of piety, and whose accession as Gregory VI, even though it was a simoniacal transaction, was welcomed by the party of reform. But Benedict changed his mind and attempted to resume his power. Thus there were three persons in Rome who had been consecrated to the papal office. The Archdeacon of Rome appealed to the Emperor Conrad's successor, Henry III, who caused Pope Gregory to summon a Council to Sutri. Here, or shortly afterwards at Rome, all three Popes were deposed, and although Benedict IX made another attempt on the papal throne, and even as late as 1058 his party set up an anti-pope, the influence of the local factions was superseded by that of a stronger power.

[Sidenote: Imperial influence.]

But the alternative offered by the German Kings was no more favourable in itself to the schemes of the reformers than the purely local influences of the last 150 years. As Otto I in 963, so Henry III in 1046 obtained from the Romans the recognition of his right, as patrician or princeps, to nominate a candidate who should be formally elected as their bishop by the Roman people; and as Otto III in 996, so Henry III now used his office to nominate a succession of men, suitable indeed and distinguished, but of German birth. This was not that freedom of the Church from lay control nor the exaltation of the papal office through which that freedom was to be maintained. Indeed, so long as fear of the Tusculan influence remained, deference to the wishes of the German King, who was also Emperor, was indispensable, and when that King was as powerful as Henry III it was unwise to challenge unnecessarily and directly the exercise of his powers.

[Sidenote: Leo IX (1048-54).]

But Henry, although, like St. Henry at the beginning of the century, he kept a strong hand on his own clergy, was yet thoroughly in sympathy with what may be distinguished as the moral objects of the reformers; and, indeed, the men whom he promoted to the Papacy were drawn from the class of higher ecclesiastics who were touched by the Cluniac spirit. Henry's first two nominees were short-lived. His third choice was his own cousin, Bruno, Bishop of Toul, who accepted with reluctance and only on condition that he should go through the canonical form of election by the clergy and people of Rome. On his way to Rome, which he entered as a pilgrim, he was joined by the late chaplain of Pope Gregory VI, Hildebrand, who had been in retirement at Cluny since his master's death. Not only did the new Pope, Leo IX, take this inflexible advocate of the Church's claims as his chief adviser, but he surrounded himself with reforming ecclesiastics from beyond the Alps. Thus fortified he issued edicts against simoniacal and married clergy; but finding that their literal fulfilment would have emptied all existing offices, he was obliged to tone down his original threats and to allow clergy guilty of simony to atone their fault by an ample penance. But Leo's contribution to the building up of the papal power was his personal appearance, not as a suppliant but as a judge, beyond the Alps. Three times in his six years' rule he passed the confines of Rome and Italy. On the first occasion he even held a Council at Rheims, despite the unfriendly attitude of Henry I of France, whose efforts, moreover, to keep the French bishops from attendance at the Council met with signal failure. Here and elsewhere Pope Leo exercised all kinds of powers, forcing bishops and abbots to clear themselves by oath from charges of simony and other faults, and excommunicating and degrading those who had offended. And while he reduced the hierarchy to recognise the papal authority, he overawed the people by assuming the central part in stately ceremonies such as the consecration of new churches and the exaltation of relics of martyrs. All this was possible because the Emperor Henry III supported him and welcomed him to a Council at Mainz. Nor was it a matter of less importance that these visits taught the people of Western Europe to regard the Papacy as the embodiment of justice and the representative of a higher morality than that maintained by the local Church.

[Sidenote: Effect of Henry III's death.]

Quite unwittingly Henry III's encouragement of Pope Leo's roving propensities began the difficulties for his descendants. It is true he nominated Leo's successor at the request of the clergy and people of Rome; but Henry's death in 1056 left the German throne to a child of six under the regency of a woman and a foreigner who found herself faced by all the hostile forces hitherto kept under by the Emperor's powerful arm. And when Henry's last Pope, Victor II, followed the Emperor to the grave in less than a year, the removal of German influence was complete. The effect was instantaneous. The first Pope elected directly by the Romans was a German indeed by birth, but he was the brother of Duke Godfrey of Lorraine, who, driven from Germany by Henry, had married the widowed Marchioness of Tuscany. and was regarded by a small party as a possible King of Italy and Emperor. Whatever danger there was in the schemes of the Lotharingian brothers was nipped in the bud by the death of Pope Stephen IX seven months after his election. Then it became apparent that the removal of the Emperor's strong hand had freed not only the upholders of ecclesiastical reform but also the old Roman factions. The attempt was easily crushed, but it became clear to the reformers that the papal election must be secured beyond all possibility of outside interference. At Hildebrand's suggestion and with the approval of the German Court, a Burgundian, who was Bishop of Florence, was elected as Nicholas II. The very name was a challenge, for the first Nicholas (858-67) was perhaps the Pope who up to that time had asserted the highest claims for the See of Rome.

[Sidenote: Provision for papal election.]

The short pontificate of the new Nicholas was devoted largely to measures for securing the freedom of papal elections from secular interference. By a decree passed in a numerously attended Council at the Pope's Lateran palace, a College or Corporation was formed of the seven bishops of the sees in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome, together with the priests of the various Roman parish churches and the deacons attendant on them. To the members of this body was now specially arrogated the term Cardinal, a name hitherto applicable to all clergy ordained and appointed to a definite church. To all Roman clergy outside this body and to the people there remained merely the right of assent, and even this was destined to disappear. More important historically was the merely verbal reservation of the imperial right of confirmation, which was further made a matter of individual grant to each Emperor who might seek it from the Pope. In view of the revived influence of the local factions it was also laid down that, although Rome and the Roman clergy had the first claim, yet the election might lawfully take place anywhere and any one otherwise eligible might be chosen; while the Pope so elected might exercise his authority even before he had been enthroned.

[Sidenote: Papacy and Normans.]

But in the presence of a strong Emperor or an unscrupulous faction even these elaborate provisions Papacy might be useless. The Papacy needed a champion in the flesh, who should have nothing to gain and everything to lose by attempting to become its master. Such a protector was ready to hand in the Normans, who, recently settled in Southern Italy, felt themselves insecure in the title by which they held their possessions. Southern Italy was divided between the three Lombard duchies of Benevento, Capua and Salerno, and the districts of Calabria and Apulia, which acknowledged the Viceroy or Katapan of the Eastern Emperor in his seat at Bari. The Saracens, only recently expelled from the mainland, still held Sicily. Norman pilgrims returning from Palestine became, at the instigation of local factions, Norman adventurers, and their leaders obtaining lands from the local Princes in return for help, sought confirmation of their title from some legitimate authority. The Western Empire had never claimed these lands, but none the less Conrad II and Henry III, in return for the acceptance of their suzerainty, acknowledged the titles which the Norman leaders had already gained from Greek or Lombard. Rome was likely to be their next victim, and Leo IX took the opportunity of a dispute over the city of Benevento to try conclusions with them. A humiliating defeat was followed by a mock submission of the conqueror. The danger was in no sense removed. Pope Stephen's schemes for driving them out of Italy were cut short by his death, and meanwhile the Norman power increased. Thus there could be no question of expulsion, nor could the Papacy risk a repetition of the humiliation of Leo IX. It was Hildebrand who conceived the idea of turning a dangerous neighbour into a friend and protector. A meeting was arranged at Melfi between Pope Nicholas and the Norman princes, and there, while on the one side canons were issued against clerical marriage, which was rife in the south of Italy, on the other side Robert Guiscard, the Norman leader, recognised the Pope as his suzerain, and obtained in return the title of Duke of Apulia and Calabria and of Sicily when he should have conquered it. Pope Leo's agreement, six years before, had been made by a defeated and humiliated ecclesiastic with a band of unscrupulous adventurers. Pope Nicholas was dealing with an actual ruler who merely sought legitimate recognition of his title from any whose hostility would make his hold precarious. Thus resting on the shadowy basis of the donation of Constantine the Pope substituted himself for the Emperor, whether of West or of East, over the whole of Southern Italy. Truly the movement for the emancipation of the Church from the State was already shaping itself into an attempt at the formation of a rival power.

[Sidenote: Alexander II (1061-73) and Milan.]

The value of this new alliance to the Papacy was put to the test almost immediately. On the death of Pope Nicholas (1061) the papal and imperial parties proceeded to measure their strength against each other. The reformers, acting under the leadership of Hildebrand, chose as his successor a noble Milanese, Anselm of Baggio, Bishop of Lucca, who now became Alexander II. He was elected in accordance with the provisions of the recent Lateran decree, and no imperial ratification was asked. On the purely ecclesiastical side this choice was a strong manifesto against clerical marriage. The city of Milan as the capital of the Lombard kingdom of Italy had for many centuries held itself in rivalry with Rome. Moreover, it was the stronghold of an aristocratic and a married clergy, which based its practice on a supposed privilege granted by its Apostle St. Ambrose. But this produced a reforming democracy which, perhaps from the quarter whence it gained its chief support, was contemptuously named by its opponents the Patarins or Rag-pickers. The first leader of this democratic party had been Anselm of Baggio. Nicholas II sent thither the fanatical Peter Damiani as papal legate, and a fierce struggle ended in the abject submission of the Archbishop of Milan, who attended a synod at Rome and promised obedience to the Pope.

[Sidenote: German opposition.]

The weak point in the decree of Nicholas II had been that the German clergy were not represented at the Council which issued it, and it was construed in Germany as a manifest attempt of the reforming party to secure the Papacy for Italy as against the German influence maintained by Henry III. The Roman nobles also had seen in the decree the design of excluding them from any share in the election. It was only by the introduction of Norman troops into Rome that the new Pope could be installed at the Lateran. A few weeks later a synod met at Basle in the presence of the Empress-Regent and the young Henry IV. The latter was invested with the title of Patrician, and the election of Alexander having been pronounced invalid, a new Pope was chosen in the person of another Lombard, Cadalus Bishop of Parma, who had led the opposition to the Patarins in the province of Milan. The Normans were recalled to their dominions, and the imperialist Pope, Honorius II, was installed in Rome. The struggle between the rival