Chapter 8

§ 96.1.The Romish Pornocracy and the Emperor Otto I., †A.D.973.—Among the wild struggles of the Italian nobles which broke out after the Emperor Arnulf’s departure (§ 82, 8), the party of the Margrave Adalbert of Tuscany gained the upperhand. His mistress Theodora, a well born and beautiful, ambitious and voluptuous Roman, wife of a Roman senator, as well as her like-minded daughters Marozia and Theodora, filled for half a century the chair of St. Peter with their paramours, sons and grandsons. These constituted the base and corrupt line of popes known as the pornocracy.Sergius III.,A.D.904-911, Marozia’s paramour, starts this disgraceful series. After the short pontificates of the two immediately following popes, Theodora, because Ravenna was inconveniently distant for the gratification of her lust, called John, the archbishop of that place, to the papal chair under the title ofJohn X.,A.D.914-928. By means of a successful crusade which he led in person, he destroyed the remnant of Saracen robbers in Garigliano (§ 81, 2), and crowned the Lombard king Bernard I.,A.D.916-924, as emperor. But when he attempted to break off his disgraceful relations with the woman who had advanced him, Marozia had him cast into prison and smothered with a pillow. The two following popes on whom she bestowed the tiara enjoyed it only a short time, for inA.D.931 she raised her own son to the papal throne in the twentieth year of his age. His father was Pope Sergius, and he assumed the name ofJohn XI.But her other son Alberich, who inherited the temporal kingdom fromA.D.932, restricted this pope’s jurisdiction and that of his four successors to the ecclesiastical domain. After Alberich’s death his son Octavianus, an arch-profligate and blasphemer, though only in his sixteenth year, united the papacy and the temporal power, and called himself by the name ofJohn XII.A.D.955-963—the first instance of a change of name on assuming the papal chair. He would sell anything for money. He made a boy of ten years a bishop; he consecrated a deacon in a stable; in hunting and dice playing he would invoke the favour of Jupiter and Venus; in his orgies he would drink the devil’s health, etc. Meantime things had reached a terrible pass in Germany. After the death of Louis the Child, the last of the German Carolingians, inA.D.911, the Frankish dukeConrad I.,A.D.911-918, was elected king of the Germans. Although vigorously supported by the superior clergy, the Synod of Hohenaltheim inA.D.915 threatening the rebels with all the pains of hell, the struggle with the other dukes prevented the founding of a united German empire. His successor, the SaxonHenry I.,A.D.919-936, was the first to free himself from the faction of the clergy, and to grant to the dukes independent administration of internal affairs within their own domains. His greater son,Otto I.,A.D.936-973, by limiting the power of the dukes, by fighting and converting heathen Danes, Wends, Bohemians and Hungarians, by decided action in the French troubles, by gathering around him a virtuous German clergy, who proved true to him and the empire, secured after long continued civil wars a power and reputation such as no ruler in the West since Charlemagne had enjoyed. Called to the help of the Lombard nobles and the pope John XII. against the oppression and tyranny of Berengarius [Berengar] II., he conquered the kingdom of Italy, and was at CandlemasA.D.962 crowned emperor by the pope in St. Peter’s, after having really held this rank for thirty years. Thus was theHoly Roman Empire of German Nationalitiesfounded, which continued for centuries to be the centre around which the history of the church and the world revolved. The new emperor confirmed to the pope all donations of previous emperors with the addition of certain cities, without detriment, however, to the imperial suzerainty over the patrimony of St. Peter, and without lessening in any degree the imperial privileges maintained by Charlemagne. ThePrivilegium Ottonis, still preserved in the papal archives, and claiming to be an authentic document, was till quite recently kept secret from all impartial and capable investigators, so that the suspicion of its spuriousness had come to be regarded as almost a certainty. Under Leo XIII., however, permission was given to a capable Protestant scholar, Prof. Sickel of Vienna, to make a photographic facsimile of the document, the result of which was that he became convinced that the document was not the original but a contemporary official duplicate, a literally faithful transcript on purple parchment with letters of gold for solemn deposition in the grave of St. Peter. Its first part describes the donations of the emperor, the second the obligations of the pope in accordance with theConstitutio Romana, § 82, 4.—But scarcely had Otto left Rome than the pope, breaking his oath, conspired with his enemies, endeavoured to rouse the Byzantines and heathen Hungarians against him, and opened the gates of Rome to Adalbert the son of Berengarius [Berengar]. Otto hastened back, deposed the pope at the synod of Rome inA.D.963, on charges of incest, perjury, murder, blasphemy, etc., and made the Romans swear by the bones of Peter never again to elect and consecrate a pope, without having the emperor’s permission and confirmation. Soon after the emperor’s departure, however, the newly elected popeLeo VIII.,A.D.963-965, had to betake himself to flight. John XII. returned again to Rome, excommunicated his rival pope, and took cruel vengeance upon the partisans of the emperor. On his death soon afterwards, inA.D.964, the Romans elected Benedict V. as his successor; but he, when the emperor conquered Rome after a stubborn resistance, was obliged to submit to humiliating terms. Leo VIII. had inJohn XIII.,A.D.965-972, a virtuous and worthy successor. A new revolt of the Romans led soon after his election to his imprisonment; but he succeeded in making his escape inA.D.966. Otto now for the third time crossed the Alps, passed relentlessly severe sentences upon the guilty, and had his son, now thirteen years of age, crowned in Rome as Otto II.,A.D.967.§ 96.2.The Times of Otto II., III.,A.D.973-1002.—After the death of Otto I., since Otto II.,A.D.973-983, was restrained from a Roman campaign in consequence of Cisalpine troubles, the nobles’ faction under Crescentius, son of Pope John X. and the younger Theodora, again won the upperhand. This party had inA.D.974 overthrown PopeBenedict VI.,A.D.972-974, appointed by Otto I., and cast him into prison. But their own anti-pope Boniface VII. could not maintain his position, and fled with the treasures of St. Peter to Constantinople. By means of a compromise of partiesBenedict VII.,A.D.974-983, was now raised to the papal chair and held possession in spite of manifold opposition, till the arrival of the young emperor in Italy inA.D.980 obtained for him greater security. Otto II. again restored the imperial prestige in Rome inA.D.981, but inA.D.982 he suffered a complete defeat at the hand of the Saracens. He died in the following year at Rome, after he had inJohn XIV.,A.D.983-984, secured the appointment of a pope faithful to the empire. His son Otto III., three years old, was at the council of state, held at Verona, by the princes of Germany and Italy, there gathered together, elected king of both kingdoms. During the German civil wars under the regency of the Queen-mother Theophania, a Byzantine princess, and the able Archbishop Willigis, of Mainz, who, through his firmness and penetration saved the crown for the royal child Otto III.,A.D.983-1002, and maintained the existence and integrity of the German empire, Rome and the papacy fell again under the domination of the nobles, at whose head now stood the younger Crescentius, a son of the above mentioned chief of the same name. InA.D.984 the anti-popeBoniface VII., who had fled to Constantinople, made his appearance in Rome, won a following by Greek gold, got possession of John XIV. and had him cast into prison, but was himself soon afterwards murdered. The new popeJohn XV.,A.D.985-996, who was thoroughly venal, was an obedient tool of the tyranny of Crescentius, which, however, soon became so intolerable to him, that he yearned for the restoration of imperial rule under Otto III. At this same time great danger threatened the imperial authority from France. Hugh Capet had, after the death of the last Carolingian, Louis V., inA.D.987, taken possession for himself of the French crown. He insisted upon John XV. deposing the archbishop Arnulf of Rheims, who had opened the gates of Rheims to his uncle Charles of Lorraine, the brother of Louis V.’s father. The pope, who was then dependent upon German power, hesitated. Hugh then had Arnulf deposed at a synod at Rheims inA.D.921, and put in his place Gerbert, the greatest scholar (§100, 2) and statesman of that age. The council quite openly declared the whole French church to be free from Rome, whose bishops for a hundred years had been steeped in the most profound moral corruption, and had fallen into the most disgraceful servitude, and Gerbert issued a confession of faith in which celibacy and fasting were repudiated, and only the first four œcumenical councils were acknowledged. But the plan was shattered, not so much through the apparently fruitless opposition of the pope as through the reaction of the high church party of Clugny and the popular esteem in which that party was held. Gerbert could not maintain his position, and was heartily glad when he could shake the dust of Rheims off his feet by accepting an honourable call of the young emperor, Otto III., who inA.D.997 opened new paths for his ambition by inviting the celebrated scholar to be with him as his classical tutor. Hugh’s successor Robert reinstated Arnulf in the see of Rheims. John XV. called in Otto III. to his help against the intolerable oppression of the younger Crescentius, but died before his arrival inA.D.996. Otto directed the choice of his cousin Bruno, twenty-four years of age, the first German pope, who assumed the name ofGregory V.,A.D.996-999, and by him he was crowned emperor in Rome. Gregory was a man of an energetic, almost obstinate character, thoroughly in sympathy with the views of the monks of Clugny. The emperor having soon returned home, Crescentius violated his oath and made himself again master of Rome. Gregory fled to Pavia, where he held a synod inA.D.997, which thundered an anathema against the disturber of the Roman church. Meanwhile Crescentius raised to the papal throne the archbishop John of Piacenza, formerly Greek tutor to Otto III., under the title of John XVI. It was not till late in autumn of that year that the emperor could hasten to the help of his injured cousin. He then executed a fearfully severe sentence upon the tyrant and his pope. The former was beheaded, and his corpse dragged by the feet through the streets and then hung upon a gallows; the latter, whom the soldiers had cruelly deprived of his ears, tongue, and nose, was led through the streets seated backward on an ass, with the tail tied in his hands for reins.—From Pavia Gregory had issued a command to Robert, the French king, to put away his queen Bertha, who was related to him in the fourth degree, on pain of excommunication. But he died a suspiciously sudden death before he could bring down the pride of this king, which, however, his successor accomplished.§ 96.3.Otto III.now raised to the papal chair his teacher Gerbert, whom he had previously made Archbishop of Ravenna, under the title ofSylvester II.,A.D.999-1003. Already in Ravenna had Gerbert’s ecclesiastical policy been changed for the high church views of his former opponents, and as pope he developed an activity which marks him out as the worthy follower of his predecessor and the precursor of a yet greater Gregory (VII.). He energetically contended against simony, that special canker of the church, and by sending the ring and staff to his former opponent, Arnulf, made the first effort to assert the papal claim to the exclusive investiture of bishops. But he had previously, as tutor of Otto, by flattering his vanity, inspired the imaginative, high-spirited youth with the ideal of a restoration of the ancient glory of Rome and its emperors exercising universal sway. And just with this view had Otto raised him to the papal chair in order that he might have his help. The pope did not venture openly to withdraw from this understanding, for in the condition of Italy at that time in a struggle with the emperor, the victory would be his in the first instance, and that would be the destruction of the papal chair. So there was nothing for it but by clever tacking in spite of contrary winds of imperial policy, to make the ship of the church hold on as far as possible in the high church course and surround the emperor by a network of craft. The phantom of aRenovatio imperii Romaniwith the mummified form of the Byzantine court ceremonial and the vain parade of a title was called into being.On a pilgrimage to the grave of his saintly friend Adalbert in Gnesen (§93, 13) the emperor emancipated the Polish church from the German metropolitanate by raising its see into an archbishopric. He also, inA.D.1000, released the Polish duke Boleslaw Chrobry (§93, 7), the most dangerous enemy of Germany, who schemed the formation of a great Slavic empire, from his fealty as a vassal of the German empire, enlisting him instead as a “friend and confederate of the Roman people” in his new fantastic universal empire. In the same year, however, Sylvester, in the exercise of papal sovereignty, conferred the royal crown on Stephen the saint of Hungary (§93, 8), appointed the payment by him of a yearly tribute to the papal vicar with ecclesiastical authority over his country, and made that land ecclesiastically independent of Passau and Salzburg by founding a separate metropolitanate at Gran. Though Otto let himself be led in the hierarchical leading strings by his papal friend, he yet made it abundantly evident by bestowing upon his favourite pope eight counties of the States of the Church, that he regarded these as merely a free gift of imperial favour. He also lashed violently the extravagances as well as the greed of the popes, and declared that the donation of Constantine was a pure fabrication (§ 87, 4). The emperor, however, had meanwhile thoroughly estranged his German subjects and the German clergy by his un-German temperament. The German princes denounced him as a traitor to the German empire. Soon all Italy, even the much fondled Rome, rose in open revolt. Only an early deathA.D.1002 saved the unhappy youth of twenty-two years of age from the most terrible humiliation. With him, too, the star of the pope’s fortunes went down. He died not long after inA.D.1003, and left in the popular mind the reputation of a dealer in the black art, who owed his learning and the success of his hierarchical career to a compact with the devil.§ 96.4.From Henry II. to the Synod at Sutri,A.D.1002-1046.—After the death of Otto III.,Henry II.,A.D.1002-1024, previously duke of Bavaria, a great-grandson of Henry I. and as such the last scion of the Saxon line, obtained the German crown—a ruler who proved one of the ablest that ever occupied that throne. A bigoted pietist and under the power of the priests, although pious-hearted according to the spirit of the times and strongly attached to the church, and seeking in the bishops supports of the empire against the relaxing influence of the temporal princes, yet no other German emperor ruled over the church to the same extent that he did, and no one ventured so far as he did to impress strongly upon the church, by the most extensive appropriation of ecclesiastical property, especially of rich monasteries, that this was the shortest and surest way of bringing about a much needed reformation. Meanwhile in Rome, after the death of Otto III., Joannes Crescentius, the son of Crescentius II., who was beheaded by order of Otto, assumed the government, and set upon the chair of Peter creatures of his own, John XVII., XVIII., and Sergius IV. But as he and his last elected pope died soon after one another inA.D.1012, the long subjected faction of the Tusculan counts, successors of Alberich, came to the front again, and chose as pope a scion of one of their own families,Benedict VIII.,A.D.1012-1024. The anti-pope Gregory, chosen by the Crescentians, was obliged to retire from the field. He sought protection from Henry II. But this monarch came to an understanding with the incomparably nobler and abler Benedict, received from him for himself and his Queen Cunigunda, subsequently canonized by Innocent III., the imperial crown, inA.D.1014, and continued ever after to maintain excellent relations with him. These two, the emperor and the pope, were on friendly terms with the monks of Clugny. They both acknowledged the need of a thorough reformation of the church, and both carried it out so far as this could be done by the influence and example of their own personal conduct, disposition, and character. But the pope had so much to do fighting the Crescentians, then the Greeks and Saracens in Italy, and the emperor in quelling internal troubles in his empire and repelling foreign invasions, that it was only toward the close of their lives that they could take any very decided action. The pope made the first move, for at the Synod of Pavia inA.D.1018, he excommunicated all married priests and those living in concubinage, and sentenced their children to slavery. The emperor entertained a yet more ambitious scheme. He wished to summon a Western œcumenical council at Pavia, and there to engage upon the reformation of the whole church of the West. But the death of the pope inA.D.1024, which was followed in a few months by the death of the emperor, prevented the carrying out of this plan. After the death of the childless Henry II.,Conrad II.,A.D.1024-1039, the founder of the Franconian or Salic dynasty, ascended the German throne. To him the empire was indebted for great internal reforms and a great extension of power, but he gave no attention to the carrying out of his predecessor’s plans of ecclesiastical reformation. Still less, however, was anything of the kind to be looked for from the popes of that period. Benedict VIII. was succeeded by his brother Romanus, under the name ofJohn XIX.,A.D.1024-1033, as void of character and noble sentiments (§ 67, 2) as his predecessor had been distinguished. When he died, Count Alberich of Tusculum was able by means of presents and promises to get the Romans to elect his son Theophylact, who, though only twelve years old, was already practised in the basest vice. He took the name ofBenedict IX.,A.D.1033-1048, and disgraced the papal chair with the most shameless profligacy. The state of matters became better under Conrad’s son,Henry III.,A.D.1039-1056, who strove after the founding of a universal monarchy in the sense of Charlemagne, and by a powerful and able government he came nearer reaching this end than any of the German emperors. He was at the same time inspired with a zeal for the reformation of the church such as none of his predecessors or successors, with the exception of Henry II., ever showed. Benedict IX. was, inA.D.1044, for the second time driven out by the Romans. They now sold the tiara to Sylvester III., who three months after was driven out by Benedict. This pope now fell in love with his beautiful cousin, daughter of a Tusculan count, and formed the bold resolve to marry her. But the father of the lady refused his consent so long as he was pope. Benedict now sold the papal chair for a thousand pounds of silver to the archdeacon Joannes Gratian. This man, a pious simple individual, in order to save the chair of St. Peter from utter overthrow, took upon himself the disgrace of simony at the bidding of his friends of Clugny, among whom a young Roman monk called Hildebrand, son of poor parents of Soana, in Tuscany, was already most conspicuous. The new pope assumed the name ofGregory VI.,A.D.1044-1046. He wanted the talents necessary for the hard task he had undertaken. Benedict having failed in carrying out his matrimonial plans, again claimed to be pope, as did also Sylvester. Thus Rome had at one and the same time, three popes, and all three were publicly known to be simonists. The Clugny party cast off their protégé Gregory, and called in the German emperor as saviour of the church. Henry came and had all the the three popes deposed at theSynod at Sutri,A.D.1046. The Romans gave to him the right of making a new appointment. It fell upon Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who took the name ofClement II., and crowned the king emperor on Christmas,A.D.1046. The Romans were so delighted at having order restored in the city, that they gave over to the emperor with the rank of patrician the government of Rome and the right of papal election for all time, and swore never to consecrate a pope without the emperor’s concurrence. Henry took the ex-pope Gregory along with him, back to Germany, where he died in exile, at Cologne. Hildebrand, his chaplain, had accompanied him thither, and after his death retired into the monastery of Clugny.§ 96.5.Henry III. and his German Popes,A.D.1046-1057.—WithClement III., 1046-1047, begins a whole series of able German popes, who, elected by Henry III., wrought under his protection powerfully and successfully for the reform of the church. All interested in the reformation, the brethren of Clugny, as well as the disciples of Romuald and the settlers in Vallombrosa (§98, 1), agreed that at the root of all the corruption of the church of that age weresimony, or obtaining spiritual offices by purchase or bribery (Acts viii. 19), andNicolaitanism(§ 27, 8), under which name were included all fleshly lusts of the clergy, marriage as well as concubinage and unnatural vices. These two were, especially in Italy, so widely spread, that scarcely a priest was to be found who had not been guilty of both. Clement II., in the emperor’s presence, at a synod in Rome inA.D.1047, began the battle against simony. But he died before the end of the year, probably by poison. While Roman envoys presented themselves at the German court about the election of a new pope, Benedict IX., supported by the Tusculan party, again laid claim to the papal chair, and the emperor had to utter the severest threats before the man of his choice, Poppo, bishop of Brixen, was allowed to occupy the papal chair asDamasus II.Twenty-three days afterwards, however, he was a corpse. This cooled the ardour of German bishops for election to so dangerous a position, and only after long persuasion Bishop Bruno of Toul, the emperor’s cousin and a zealous friend of Clugny, accepted the appointment, on the condition that it should have the approval of the people and clergy of Rome, which, as was to be expected, was given with acclamation. He ascended the papal throne as Leo IX.,A.D.1049-1054. According to a later story conceived in the interests of Hildebrandism, Bruno is said not only to have made his definite acceptance of the imperial call dependent upon the supplementary free election of people and clergy of Rome, but also to have been prevailed upon by Hildebrand, who by his own request accompanied him, to lay aside his papal ornaments, to continue his journey in pilgrim garb, and to make his entrance into the eternal city barefoot, so that the necessary sanction of a formal canonical election might be given to the imperial nomination. Leo found the papal treasures emptied to the last coin and robbed of all its territorial revenues by the nobles. But Hildebrand was his minister of finance, and soon improved the condition of his exchequer. Leo now displayed an unexampled activity in church reform and the purifying of the papacy. No pope travelled about so much as he, none held as many synods in the most distant places and various lands. The uprooting of simony was in all cases the main point in their decrees. By bonds of gratitude and relationship, but above all of common interests, he was attached to the German emperor. He could not therefore think of emancipating the papacy from the imperial suzerainty. Practically Leo succeeded in clearing the Augean stable of the Roman clergy, and filled vacancies with virtuous men brought from far and near. In order to chastise the Normans, put by him under ban because of their rapacity, he himself took the field inA.D.1053, when the emperor refused to do so, but was taken prisoner after his army had been annihilated, and only succeeded, after he had removed the excommunication, in getting them to kiss his feet with the most profound devotion. He demanded from the Greek emperor full restitution of the donation of Constantine, so far as this was still in the possession of the Byzantines, and his envoys at Constantinople rendered the split between the Eastern and Western churches irreparable (§ 67, 3). Leo died inA.D.1054, the only pope for centuries whom the church honours as a saint. A Roman embassy called upon the emperor to nominate a new pope. He fixed upon Gebhardt, bishop of Eichstädt [Eichstadt], who now ascended the papal throne asVictor II.,A.D.1055-1057. Here again monkish tales have transformed a single matter of fact into a romance in the interests of their own party. The Romans wished Hildebrand himself for their pope, but he was unwilling yet to assume such a responsibility. He put himself, however, at the head of an embassy which convinced the emperor of the sinfulness of his former interferences in the papal elections, and persuaded him to set aside the tyrannical power of his patrician’s rank and to resign to the clergy and people their old electoral rights. As candidate for this election, Hildebrand himself chose bishop Gebhardt, the most trusted counsellor of the emperor. After long opposition Henry’s consent was won to this candidature, he even urged the bishop to accept it, who at last submitted with the words: “Now so do I surrender myself to St. Peter, soul and body, but only on the condition that you also yield to him what belongs to him.” The latter, however, seems not mere beating of the air, for the emperor restored to the newly elected pope the patrimony of Peter in the widest extent, and bestowed on him besides the governorship of all Italy.—Henry died inA.D.1056, after he had appointed his queen Agnes to the regency, and had recommended her to the counsel and good offices of the pope. But the pope’s days were already numbered. He died inA.D.1057. Hildebrand could not boast of having dominated him, but the position of the powerful monk of Clugny under him had become one of great importance.§ 96.6.The Papacy under the Control of Hildebrand,A.D.1057-1078.—After Victor’s death the cardinals without paying any regard to the imperial right, immediately elected Cardinal Frederick of Lorraine, at that time abbot of Monte Cassino, and Hildebrand travelled to Germany in order to obtain thepost factumapproval of the empress.Stephen IX.,A.D.1057-1058, for so Frederick styled himself, died before Hildebrand’s return. The Tusculan party took advantage of his absence to put forward as pope a partisan of their own, Benedict X.,A.D.1058. But an embassy of Hildebrand’s to the empress secured the succession to bishop Gerhard of Florence. Benedict was obliged to withdraw, and Gerhard ascended the papal throne as Nicholas II.,A.D.1058-1061. With him begins the full development of Hildebrand’s greatness, and from this time,A.D.1059, when he became archdeacon of Rome, till he himself mounted the papal chair, he was the moving spirit of the Romish hierarchy. By his powerful genius in spite of all hindrances he raised the papacy and the church to a height of power and glory never attained unto before. He thus wrought on, systematically, firmly, and irresistibly advancing toward a complete reformation in ecclesiastical polity. Absolute freedom of the church from the power and influence of the state, and in order to attain this and make it sure, the dominion of the church over the state, papal elections independent of any sort of temporal influence, the complete uprooting of all simoniacal practices, unrelenting strictness in dealing with the immorality of the clergy, invariable enforcement of the law of celibacy, as the most powerful means of emancipating the clergy from the world and the state, filling the sacred offices with the most virtuous and capable men, were some of the noble aims and achievements of this reformation. Hildebrand sought the necessary secular protection and aid for the carrying out of his plans among the Normans. Nicholas II., on the basis of the donation of Constantine, gave as a fief to their leader, Robert Guiscard (§95, 1), the lordship of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, out of which the Saracens had yet to be expelled, and exacted from him the oath of a vassal, by which he bound himself to pay a yearly tribute, to protect the papal chair against all encroachments of its privileges, and above all to maintain the right of papal elections by the “meliores cardinales.” Yet again, Nicholas, when, at a later period, by the help of the Normans, he had broken the power of the Tusculan nobles, issued a decree at a Lateran synod at Rome, inA.D.1059, by which papal elections (§ 82, 4) were regulated anew. Of the two extant recensions of this decree, which are distinguished as the papal and the imperial, the former is now universally acknowledged to be the more authentic form. According to it the election lies exclusively with the Roman cardinal priests (§97, 1); to the rest of the clergy as to the people there is left only the right of acclamation, that brought no advantage, and to the emperor, according to Boichorst, the right of concurrence after the election and investiture, according to Granert, the right of veto before the election. This decree, and not less the league with the Normans, were open slights to the imperial claims upon Italy and the papal chair. The empress therefore convened about Easter,A.D.1061, a council of German bishops, at which Nicholas was deposed, and all his decisions were annulled. Soon after the pope died. The Tusculan party, now joined with the Germans under the Lombard chancellor Wibert, asked a new pope from the empress. At the Council of Basel inA.D.1061, bishop Cadalus of Parma was appointed. He assumed the name of Honorius II.,A.D.1061-1072. But Hildebrand had already five weeks earlier in concert with the Margravine Beatrice of Canossa, wholly on his own responsibility, chosen bishop Anselm of Lucca, and had him consecrated asAlexander II.A.D.1061-1073. Honorius advanced to Rome, accompanied by Wibert, and frequently in bloody conflicts conquered the party of his opponent. Duke Godfrey the Bearded of Lorraine, the husband of Beatrice, now appeared as mediator. He made both popes retire to their dioceses and gave to the empress the decision of the controversy. But meanwhile a catastrophe occurred in Germany that led to the most important results. Archbishop Anno of Cologne, standing at the head of a rising of the princes, decoyed the young king of twelve years of age on board a ship at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, and took him to Cologne. The regency and the conduct of government were now transferred to the German bishops collectively, but lay practically in the hands of Anno, who meanwhile, however, sinceA.D.1063, found himself obliged to share the power with Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen. At a council held at Augsburg inA.D.1062, Alexander was acknowledged as the true pope, but Honorius by no means resigned his claims. With a small army he advanced upon Rome inA.D.1064, seized fort Leo, which had been built and fortified by Leo IV. for defence against the Saracens, entrenched himself in the castle of St. Angelo, and repeatedly routed his opponent’s forces. But Hildebrand reminded the Normans of their oath of fealty. At a council held at Mantua inA.D.1064 (or 1067?) Alexander was once again acknowledged, and Honorius, whose party the council sought in vain to break up by force of arms, was again deposed. The proud, ambitious and self-seeking priest of Cologne had meanwhile been obliged to transfer to his northern colleague, Adalbert of Bremen, the further education and training of the young king, who, though only fifteen years old was now proclaimed of age inA.D.1065, asHenry IV.,A.D.1056-1106. If the bishop of Cologne injured the disposition of the royal youth by his excessive harshness and severity, the bishop of Bremen did him irreparable damage by allowing him unrestrained indulgence in his evil passions.§ 96.7.Gregory VII.,A.D.1073-1085.—Hildebrand had at last brought the papacy to such a height of power that he was able now to put the finishing stroke to his own work in his own name, and so now he mounted the chair of the chief of the apostles, as Gregory VII., elected and enthroned by a disorderly mob. The Lombard and German bishops appealed to the emperor to have the election declared invalid. But he being on all sides threatened with wars and revolution, thought it advisable to forego the assertion of his rights and to win the favour of the pope by a letter full of devotion and humility. At the Roman Fast Synod ofA.D.1074, Gregory renewed the old law of celibacy and rendered it more strict, deposed all married priests or those who got office through simony, and pronounced their priestly acts invalid. The lower clergy, who were generally married, violently opposed the measure, but Gregory’s stronger will prevailed. Papal legates visited all lands, and, supported by the people, insisted upon the strict observance of the papal decree. At the next fast synod inA.D.1075, the pope began the contest against the usual investiture of the higher clergy by the temporal princes, with ring and staff as symbols of episcopal office. Whoever should accept ecclesiastical office from the hand of a layman was to be deposed, and any potentate who should give investiture should be put under the ban of the church. Here too he thundered his anathema against the counsellors of Henry who should meanwhile prove guilty of the sale of ecclesiastical offices. Henry, whose hands were fully occupied with the rebellious Saxons, at first dismissed his counsellors, but after the close of the wars he reinstated them, and quite ignored the papal prohibition of investiture. Gregory had for a while quite enough to do in Italy. Cencius, the head of the nobles opposed to reform, fell upon him on Christmas,A.D.1075, during Divine service, and made him prisoner, but the Romans rescued him, and Cencius had to take to flight. On New Year’s Day,A.D.1076, there appeared at the royal residence at Goslar a papal embassy which threatened the king with excommunication and deposition should he not immediately break off all relations with the counsellors under the ban, and reform his own infamous life. The king burst out in furious rage. He heaped insults upon the legates, and at the Synod of Worms, on 24th January, had the pope formally deposed as a perjured usurper of the papal chair, a tyrant, an adulterer and a sorcerer. The Lombard bishops, too, gave their consent to this decree (§97, 5). At the next Roman Fast Synod on 22nd February, the pope placed all bishops who had taken part in these proceedings under ban, and at the same time solemnly excommunicated and deposed the king, and released all his subjects from the obligation of their oaths of allegiance. Moreover he had the king’s ambassadors, whose life he had preserved from the fury of those present at the meeting of synod by his personal interference, cast into prison, and then in the most contemptuous manner led through the streets. The papal ban made a deep impression upon the German people and princes. One bishop after another gave in, the Saxons raised a new revolt, and at the princes’ conference at Tribur, in October,A.D.1076, the pope was invited to come personally to Augsburg on 2nd February, to meet and confer with the princes about the affairs of the king. It was resolved that if Henry did not succeed by 22nd February, the first anniversary of the ban, to get it removed, he should for ever forfeit the crown, but that meanwhile he should reside at Spires and continue in the exercise of all royal prerogatives.§ 96.8. It was for the pope’s advantage to have the business settled upon German soil with the greatest possible publicity. Therefore he scornfully refused the humble petition of the king to send him absolution from Rome, and hastened his preparations for travelling to Augsburg. But Henry went forth to meet him on the way. Shortly before Christmas he escaped from Spires with his wife and child, and in spite of a severe winter crossed Mount Cenis. The Lombards protected him in defying the pretensions of the pope. But Henry’s whole attention was now directed to overturning the machinations of the hostile German princes. So he suddenly appeared at Canossa, where Gregory was staying with the Margravine Matilda, daughter of Beatrice, a princess enthusiastically attached to him and his ideal. This meeting was unexpected and undesired by the pope. There during the cold winter days, from 25th to 27th January,A.D.1077, stood the son of Henry III. barefoot in the courtyard of the castle of Canossa, wearing a sackcloth shirt, fasting all day and supplicating access to the proud monk. With inflexible severity the pope refused, until at last the tears, entreaties, and reproaches of the margravine overcame his obduracy. Henry promised to submit himself to the future judgment of the pope in regard to his reconciliation with the German princes, and was absolved. Nevertheless the princes at the Assembly at Forcheim in March, with the concurrence of the papal legate, elected a new king in the person of Rudolph of Swabia, Henry’s brother-in-law. Roused to fury, Henry now hastened back to Germany, where soon he gathered round him a great army. Notwithstanding all pressure brought to bear upon him, Gregory maintained for three years a position of neutrality, but at last, inA.D.1080, at the Roman Fast Synod, where the envoys of the contending kings presented their complaints, he renewed the excommunication and deposition of Henry. Then the bishops of Henry’s party immediately met at Brixen, and hurled the anathema and pronounced sentence of deposition against Gregory, and elected as anti-pope Wibert, formerly chancellor, then archbishop of Ravenna, who assumed the title of Clement III.,A.D.1080-1100. After the death of Rudolph in battle, at Merseburg, inA.D.1080, Henry marched across the Alps and appeared at Pentecost before the gates of Rome, which were opened to him after a three years’ siege. Clement III. then at Easter,A.D.1084, set upon him and his queen the imperial crown. Gregory had withdrawn to the Castle of St. Angelo. Henry, however, was compelled by the appearance of a new rival for the crown, Henry, Count of Luxemburg, to return to Germany, and Robert Guiscard, the Norman duke, hastened from the south to deliver the pope, which he accomplished only after Rome had been fearfully devastated. Gregory died in the following year,A.D.1085, at Salerno. Gregory VII. also took the field against the dissolute and prodigal king of France, Philip I., and threatened him, because of simony, with interdict and deposition. His success here, however, was comparatively small. Philip avowedly submitted to the papal decree, but did not in the least alter his conduct, and Gregory felt that it was not prudent to push matters to an extremity. He showed himself more indulgent toward the powerful William the Conqueror of England, although this prince ruled the church of his dominions with an iron hand, pronounced all church property to be freehold, and was scarcely less guilty of simony than the kings of Germany and France. Yet the pope himself, who hoped to secure the aid of his arms against Henry IV., and sought therefore to dazzle him with the prospect of the imperial throne, winked at his delinquencies, and loaded him with expressions of his good-will. The primate of England, too, the powerful Conqueror’s right-hand supporter, Lanfranc of Canterbury, who bore a grudge against Gregory because of his patronage of the heretic Berengarius [Berengar] (§101, 2), showed no special zeal for the reforms advocated by the pope.At a synod held at Winchester inA.D.1076, the law of celibacy was enforced, with this limitation, however, that those of the secular clergy who were already married should not be required to put away their wives, but no further marriages among them were to be permitted.275§ 96.9.The Central Idea in Gregory’s Policywas the establishment of a universal theocracy, with the pope as its one visible head, the representative of Christ upon earth, who as such stands over the powers of the world. Alongside of it, indeed, the royal authority was to stand independently as one ordained of God, but it was to confine itself strictly to temporal affairs, and to be directed by the pope in regard to whatever might be partly within and partly without these lines. All states bearing the Christian name were to be bound together as members of one body in the great papal theocracy which had superior to it only God and His law. The princes must receive consecration and Divine sanction from the spiritual power; they are “by the grace of God,” not immediately, however, but only mediately, the church as the middle term stands between them and God. The pope is their arbiter and highest liege lord, whose decisions they are under obligation unconditionally to obey. Royalty stands related to the papacy as the moon to the sun, from which she receives her light and warmth. The church, which lends to the power of the world her Divine authority, can also withdraw it again when it is being misused. When this is done, the obligation of subjects to obey also ceases. Gregory began this gigantic work, not so much to raise himself personally to the utmost pinnacle of power, but rather to save the church from destruction. He certainly was not free from ambition and the lust of ruling, but with him higher than all personal interests was the idea of the high vocation of the church, and to the realizing of it he enthusiastically devoted all the energies of his life. On the other hand, he cannot escape the reproach of having striven with carnal weapons for what he called a spiritual victory, of having meted out unequal measures, where his interests demanded it, in the exercise of his assumed function as judge of kings and princes, and of having occupied himself more with political schemes and intrigues than with the ministry of the church of Christ. His whole career shows him to have been a man of great self reliance, yet, on the other hand, he was able to preserve the consciousness of the poor sinner who seeks and finds salvation only in the mercy of Christ. The strict morality of his life has been admitted even by his bitterest foes.Not infrequently too did he show himself in advance of his time in humanity and liberality of sentiment, ase.g.in the Berengarian controversy (§101, 2), and in his decided disapproval of the prosecution of witches and sorcerers.276§ 96.10.Victor III. and Urban II.,A.D.1086-1099.—Gregory VII. was succeeded by the talented abbot of Monte Cassino, Desiderius, under the title ofVictor III.,A.D.1086-1087. Only after great pressure was brought to bear upon him did he consent to leave the cloister, which under his rule had flourished in a remarkable manner; but now aged and sickly, he only enjoyed the pontificate for sixteen months. His successor was bishop Odo, of Ostia, a Frenchman by birth, and a member of the Clugny brotherhood, who took the name ofUrban II.,A.D.1088-1099. For a long time he was obliged to give up Rome to the party of the imperial anti-pope. But the enthusiasm with which the idea of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre was taken up, which he proposed to Western Christendom at the Council of Clermont, inA.D.1095 (§94), secured for him the highest position in his time, and made him strong enough to withstand the opposition of Philip I., king of France, whom he had put under ban at Clermont, on account of his adulterous connection with Bertrada. Returning to Italy from his victorious campaign through France, he was able to celebrate Christmas once again in the Lateran at Rome inA.D.1096. His main supporters in the conflict against the emperor were the powerful Margravine Matilda, and the emperor’s most dangerous opponent in Germany, duke Welf of Bavaria, whose son of the same name, then in his seventeenth year, was married by the pope to the widowed Matilda, who was now forty years of age, whence arose the first of the anti-imperial and strongly papistical Welf or Guelph party in Germany and Italy. On the other side the margravine succeeded in stirring up Conrad, the son of Henry IV., to rebel against his father, and had him crowned king inA.D.1087. At Cremona this prince held the pope’s stirrup, and took the oath of obedience to him. The emperor had him deposed inA.D.1098, and had his second son elected and crowned as Henry V. Urban, who received on his death-bed the news of the destruction of Jerusalem, died inA.D.1099, and his anti-pope Clement III., who had withdrawn to Ravenna, died in the following year.§ 96.11.Paschalis II., Gelasius II., and Calixtus II.,A.D.1099-1124.—Urban’s successor,Paschalis II.,A.D.1099-1118, also a member of the Clugny brotherhood, at once stirred up the fire of rebellion against the excommunicated emperor, and favoured a conspiracy of the princes. The young king, at the head of the insurgents, took his father prisoner, and obliged him to abdicate inA.D.1106. Six months afterwards the emperor died. The church’s curse pursued even his corpse. Twice interred in holy ground, first in the cathedral of Liège, then in the cathedral of Spires, his bones were exhumed and thrown into unconsecrated ground, until at last, inA.D.1111, his son obtained the withdrawal of the ban. At the Council of Guastalla inA.D.1106, Paschalis renewed the prohibition ofInvestiture. ButHenry V.,A.D.1106-1125, concerned himself as little about this prohibition as his father had done. No sooner had he seated himself upon the throne in Germany than he crossed the Alps to compel the pope to crown him emperor and concede to him the right of investiture. The pope, who was willing that the church should be poor if only she retained her freedom, being now without counsel or help (for Matilda was old and her warlike spirit was broken, and from the Normans no assistance could be looked for), was driven inA.D.1111, in his perplexity to offer a compromise, whereby the emperor should surrender investiture to the church, but on the other hand the clergy should return to him all landed property and privileges given them by the state since the times of Charlemagne, while the Patrimony of Peter should continue the property of the pope himself. On the basis of this agreement the coronation of the emperor was to be celebrated in St. Peter’s on 12th Feb.,A.D.1111. But when after the celebration had begun the document which set forth the compact was read, the prelates present in the cathedral raised loud cries of dissent and demanded that it should immediately be cancelled. The coronation was not proceeded with, the pope and his cardinals were thrown into prison, and a revolt of the Romans was suppressed. The pope was then compelled to rescind the synodal decrees and formally to grant to the king the right of investiture; he had also, after solemnly promising never again to put the emperor under ban, to proceed with the coronation. But Hildebrand’s party called the pope to account for this betrayal of the church. A synod at Rome inA.D.1112 declared the concessions wrung from him invalid, and pronounced the ban against the emperor. The pope, however, remembering his oaths, refused to confirm it, but it was nevertheless proclaimed by his legate in the French and German synods. Matilda’s death inA.D.1115 called the emperor again to Italy. She had even in the time of Gregory VII. made over all her goods and possessions to the Roman Church; but she had the right of free disposal only in regard to allodial property, not in regard to her feudal territories. Henry, however, now laid claim to all her belongings. At the Fast Synod ofA.D.1116 Paschalis asked pardon of God and man for his sin of weakness, renewed and made more strict the prohibition of investiture, but still stoutly refused to confirm the ban of the emperor. In consequence of a rebellion of the Romans he was obliged to take to flight, and he died in exile inA.D.1118. The high church party now choseGelasius II.,A.D.1118-1119, but immediately after the election he was seized by a second Cencius (see §96, 7) on account of a private grudge, fearfully maltreated and confined in chains within his castle. The Romans indeed rescued him, but the emperor’s sudden arrival in Rome led him, in order to avoid making inconvenient terms of peace, to seek his own and the church’s safety in flight. The people and nobles in concert with the emperor set up Gregory VIII. as anti-pope. So soon as the emperor left Rome, Gelasius returned. But Cencius fell upon him during Divine service, and only with difficulty he escaped further maltreatment by flight into France, where he died in the monastery of Clugny after a pontificate of scarcely twelve months. The few cardinals present at Clugny elected archbishop Guido of Vienne. He assumed the title ofCalixtus II.,A.D.1119-1124. Pope and emperor met together expressing desires for peace. But the auspiciously begun negotiations never got beyond the statement of the terms of contract, and ended in the pope renewing at the Council of Rheims, inA.D.1119, the anathema against the emperor and anti-pope. Next year Calixtus crossed the Alps. He received a hearty greeting in Rome. He laid siege to the anti-pope in Sutri, took him prisoner, and after the most contumelious treatment before the Roman mob, cast him into a monastic prison. The investiture question, now better understood through learned discussions on civil and ecclesiastical law, was at last definitely settled in theWorms Concordat, as the result of mutual concessions made at the National Assembly at Worms,A.D.1122. The arrangement come to was this: canonical election of bishops and abbots of the empire by the diocesan clergy and the secular nobles should be restored, and under imperial inspection made free from all coercion, but in disputed elections decisions should be given in accordance with the judgment of the metropolitan and the rest of the bishops, the investing of the elected with the sceptre in Germany before, in other parts of the empire after, consecration, should belong to the emperor, and investiture with ring and staff at the consecration should belong to the pope. This agreement was solemnly ratified at theFirst Œcumenical Lateran SynodinA.D.1123.§ 96.12. The contemporaryEnglish Investiture Controversywas brought earlier to a conclusion. William the Conqueror had unopposed put Norman prelates in the place of the English bishops, and had homage rendered him by them, while they received from him investiture with the ring and the staff. William Rufus, the Conqueror’s son and successor,A.D.1087-1100, a domineering and greedy prince, after Lanfranc’s death inA.D.1089 (§101, 1) allowed the archbishopric of Canterbury to remain vacant for four years, in order that he might himself enjoy the undisturbed possession of the revenues. It was not tillA.D.1093, during a severe illness and under fear of death, that he agreed to bestow it upon Anselm, the celebrated Abbot of Bec (§101, 1,3), with the promise to abstain ever afterwards from simony. No sooner had he recovered than he repented him of his promise. He resumed his old practices, and even demanded of Anselm a large sum for his appointment. For peace sake Anselm gave him a voluntary present of money, but it did not satisfy the king. When, inA.D.1097, the archbishop asked permission to make a journey to Rome in order to have the conflict settled there, the king banished him. In Rome Anselm was honourably received and his conduct was highly approved; but neither Urban II. nor Paschalis II. could venture upon a complete breach with the king. William the Conqueror’s third son, Henry I. Beauclerk,A.D.1100-1135, who, having also snatched Normandy from his eldest brother Robert, needed the support of the clergy to secure his position, agreed to the return of the exiled primate, and promised to put a stop to every kind of simony; but he demanded the maintenance of investiture and the oath of fealty which Anselm now, in consequence of the decrees of a Roman synod which he had himself agreed to, felt obliged to refuse. Thus again the conflict was renewed. The king now confiscated the goods and revenues of the see, and the archbishop was on the point of issuing an excommunication against him, when at last an understanding was come to inA.D.1106, through the mediation of the pope, according to which the crown gave up the investiture with ring and staff, and the archbishop agreed to take the oath offealty.—In France, too, from the end of the 11th century, owing to the pressure used by the high church reforming party, the secular power was satisfied with securing the oath of fealty from the higher clergy, without making further claim to investiture.277§ 96.13.The Times of Lothair III. and Conrad III.,A.D.1125-1152.—After the death of Henry V. without issue, the SaxonLothair,A.D.1125-1137, was elected, and the Hohenstaufen grandson of Henry IV. descended in the female line was passed over.Honorius II.,A.D.1124-1130, successor of Calixtus II., hastened to confer the papal sanction upon the newly elected emperor, who already upon his election had, by accepting spiritual investiture before temporal investiture, and a minimising of the oath of fealty by ecclesiastical reservations, showed himself ready to support the claims of the clergy. But neither ban nor the preaching of a crusade against Count Roger II. of Sicily (§95, 1) could prevent him from building up a powerful kingdom comprehending all Southern Italy. The next election of the cardinals gives us two popes:Innocent II.,A.D.1130-1143, and Anacletus II.,A.D.1130-1138. The latter, although not the pope of the majority, secured a powerful support in the friendship of Roger II., whom he had crowned king by his legate at Palermo. Innocent, on the other hand, fled to France. There the two oracles of the age, the abbot Peter of Clugny and Bernard of Clairvaux, took his side and won for him the favour of all Cisalpine Europe. Both popes fished for Lothair’s favour with the bait of the promise of imperial coronation. A second edition of the Synod of Sutri would probably have enabled a more powerful king to attain the elevation of Henry III. But Lothair was not the man to seize the opportunity. He decided in favour of theprotégéof Bernard, led him back inA.D.1133 to the eternal city, had himself crowned emperor by him in the Lateran and invested with Matilda’s inheritance, which was declared by the curialists a fief of the empire. But Lothair’s repeated demands, that what had been acquired by the Concordat of Worms should be renounced, were set aside, through the opposition not so much of the pope as of St. Bernard and St. Norbert (§98, 2). At the prayer of the pope, who immediately after Lothair’s departure had been driven out by Roger, and moved by the prophetic exhortations of Bernard, the emperor prepared for a second Roman campaign inA.D.1136. Leaving the conquest of Rome to the eloquence of the prophet of Clairvaux, he advanced from one victory to another until he brought all Southern Italy under the imperial sway, and died on his return homeward in an Alpine hut in the Tyrol. Fuming with rage Roger now crossed over from Sicily and in a short time he reconquered his southern provinces of Italy. The appointment, however, of a new pope after the death of Anacletus miscarried, and Innocent was able at theSecond Œcumenical Lateran SynodinA.D.1139 to declare the schism at an end. The pope then renewed the excommunication of Roger and pronounced an anathema against the teachings of Arnold of Brescia (§108, 7), a young enthusiastic priest of the school of Abælard, who traced all ecclesiastical corruption back to the wealth of the church and the secular power of the clergy. He next prepared himself for war with Roger. That prince, however, waylaid him and had him brought into his tent, where he and his sons cast themselves at the holy father’s feet and begged for mercy and peace. The pope could do nothing else than play therôleof the magnanimous given him in this comedy. He had therefore to confirm the hated Norman in the possession of the conquered provinces as a hereditary monarchy with the ecclesiastical privilege of a native legate, and, as some set off to comfort himself with, the prince was to regard the territory as a fief of the papal see. But still greater calamities befell this pope. The republican freedom, which the cities of Tuscany and Lombardy won during the 12th century, awakened also among the Romans a love of liberty. They refused to render obedience in temporal matters to the pope and established in the Capitol a popular senate, which undertook the civil government in the name of the Roman Commune. Innocent died during the revolution. His successorCœlestine II.held the pontificate for only five months, andLucius II., after vainly opposing the Commune for seven months, was killed by a stone thrown in a tumult.Eugenius III.,A.D.1145-1153, a scholar and friend of St. Bernard, was obliged immediately after his election to seek safety in flight. An agreement, however, was come to in that same year: the pope acknowledged the government of the Commune as legitimate, while it recognised his superiority and granted to him the investiture of the senators. Yet, though taken back three times to Rome, he could never remain there for more than a few months. He visited France and Germany (Treves) inA.D.1147. In France he heard of the fall of Edessa. Supported by the fiery zeal of Bernard, the summons to a second crusade (§94, 2) aroused a burning enthusiasm throughout all the West. But in Rome he was unable to offer any effectual resistance to the demagogical preaching by which Arnold of Brescia fromA.D.1146 had inflamed the people and the inferior clergy with an ardent enthusiasm for his ideal constitution of an apostolic church and a democratic state. Since this change of feeling had taken place in Rome, both parties, that of the Capitol as well as that of the Lateran, had repeatedly endeavoured to win to their side the first Hohenstaufen on the German throne,Conrad III.,A.D.1138-1152, by promise of bestowing the imperial crown. But Conrad, meanwhile otherwise occupied, refrained from all intermeddling, and when at last he actually started upon a journey to Rome death overtook him on the way.§ 96.14.The Times of Frederick I. and Henry VI.,A.D.1152-1190.—The nephew and successor of Conrad III.,Frederick I. Barbarossa,A.D.1152-1190, began his reign with the firm determination to realize fully the ideas of Charlemagne (§ 82, 3) by his pope Paschalis III., whom at a later period, inA.D.1165, he had canonized. With profound contempt at heart for the Roman democracy of his time, he concluded a compact inA.D.1153 with the papal see, which confirmed him in the possession of the imperial crown and gave to the pope theDominium temporalein the Church States. After the death of Eugenius which soon followed, the agedAnastasius IV.occupied the papal chair for a year and a half, a time of peace and progress. He was succeeded by the powerfulHadrian IV.,A.D.1154-1159. He was an Englishman, Nicholas Breakspear, son of a poor English priest, the first and, down to the present time, the only one of that nation who attained the papal dignity. He pronounced an interdict upon the Romans who had refused him entrance into the inner part of the city and had treacherously slain a cardinal. Rome endured this spiritual famine only for a few weeks, and then purchased deliverance by the expulsion of Arnold of Brescia, who soon thereafter fell into the hands of a cardinal. He was indeed again rescued by force, but Frederick I., who had meanwhile inA.D.1154 begun his first journey to Rome, and on his way thither had humbled the proud Lombard cities struggling for freedom, urged by the pope, insisted that he should be surrendered up again, and subsequently gave him over to the Roman city prefect, who, inA.D.1155, without trial or show of justice condemned him to be burnt and had his ashes strewn upon the Tiber. In the camp at Sutri the pope personally greeted the king who, after refusing for several days, at length agreed to show him the customary honour of holding his stirrup, doing it however with a very bad grace. Soon too the senatorial ambassadors of the Roman people, who indulged in bombastic, turgid declamation, presented themselves professing their readiness on consideration of a solemn undertaking to protect the Roman republic, and on payment of five thousand pounds, to proclaim the German king from the Capitol Roman emperor and ruler of the world. With a furious burst of anger Frederick silenced them, and with scathing words showed them how the witness of history pointed the contrast between their miserable condition and the glory and dignity of the German name. Yet on the day of the coronation, which they were not able to prevent, the Romans took revenge for the insults he had heaped upon them by an attack upon the papal residence in the castle of Leo, and upon the imperial camp in front of the city, but were repelled with sore loss. Soon thereafter, inA.D.1155, the emperor made preparations for returning home, leaving everything else to the pope. The relations between the two became more and more strained from day to day. The Lombards, too, once again rebelled. Frederick therefore inA.D.1158 made his second expedition to Rome. On the Roncalian plains he held a great assembly which laid down to the Lombards as well as to the pope the imperial prerogatives. Hadrian would have given utterance to his wrath by thundering an anathema, but he was restrained by the hand of death.§ 96.15. The cardinals of the hierarchical party electedAlexander III.,A.D.1159-1181, those of the imperial party, Victor IV. A synod convened by the emperor at Pavia inA.D.1160 decided in favour of Victor, who was now formally recognised. Meanwhile Milan threw off the yoke that had been laid upon her. After an almost two years’ siege the emperor took the city inA.D.1162 and razed it to the ground. From France whither he had fled, Alexander, inA.D.1163, launched his anathema against the emperor and his pope. The latter died inA.D.1164, and Frederick had Paschalis III. (†A.D.1168) chosen his successor; but inA.D.1165, Alexander returning from France, pressed on in advance of him and was acknowledged by the Roman senate. Now for the third time inA.D.1166, Frederick crossed the Alps. A small detachment of troops that had been sent in advance to accompany the imperial pope to Rome under the leadership of the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz, in a bloody battle at Monte Porzio inA.D.1167 utterly destroyed a Roman army of twenty times its size. Frederick then himself hasted forward. After an eight days’ furious assault the fortress of Leo surrendered, and Paschalis was able to perform theTe Deumin St. Peter’s. The Transtiberines, too, after Alexander had sought safety in flight, soon took the oath of fealty to the emperor upon a guarantee of imperial protection of their republic. But at the very climax of his success “the fate of Sennacherib” befell him. The Roman malaria during the hot August became a deadly fever plague, thinned the lines of his army and forced him to withdraw. So weakened was he that he could not even assert his authority in Lombardy, but had to return to Germany inA.D.1168. The emperor’s disaster told also unfavourably upon the fortunes of his pope, whose successor Calixtus III. was quite disregarded. InA.D.1174 Frederick again went down into Italy and engaged upon a decisive battle with the confederate cities of Lombardy, but inA.D.1176 at Legnano he suffered a complete defeat, in consequence of which he agreed at the Congress of Venice, inA.D.1177, to acknowledge the freedom of the Lombard cities, abandoned the imperial claims upon Rome, and recognised Alexander III., who was also present there, as the rightful pope, kissing his feet and holding his stirrup according to custom. Rome, which he had not seen for nearly eleven years, would no longer shut her gates against the pope. Welcomed by senate and people, he made his public entrance into the Lateran in MarchA.D.1178, where in the following year he gathered together 300 bishops in theThird Lateran Council(the 11th œcumenical), in order by their advice to heal the wounds which the schism of the church had made. Here also, in order to prevent double elections in time to come, it was resolved that for a valid papal election two-thirds of the whole college of cardinals must be agreed. The right of concurrence assigned by the decree of Nicholas II. inA.D.1059 to the people and emperor was treated as antiquated and forgotten, and was not even alluded to.§ 96.16. Even before his victory over the powerful Hohenstaufen, Alexander III. during his exile won a yet more brilliant success in England. King Henry II.,A.D.1154-1189, wished to establish again the supremacy of the state over church and clergy, and thought that he would have a pliant tool in carrying out his plans inThomas à Becket, whom he made archbishop of Canterbury, inA.D.1162. But as primate of the English church, Thomas proved a vigorous upholder of hierarchical principles. Instead of the accommodating courtier, the king found the archbishop immediately upon his consecration the bold asserter of the claims of the church. The jovial man of the world became at once the saintly ascetic. At a council at Tours inA.D.1163, he returned into the pope’s own hand the pallium with which an English prince had invested him in name of the king, resigning also his archiepiscopal dignity, that he might receive these directly as a papal gift. Straightway began the conflict between the king and his former favourite. Henry summoned a diet at Clarendon, where he obtained the approval of the superior clergy for his anti-hierarchical propositions; Thomas also for a time withstood, promising at last, when urged on all sides, to assent to the constitutions, but refusing to sign the document when it was placed before him. The king now ordered a process of deposition to be executed against him, and Thomas then fled to France, where the pope was at that time residing. The pope released him from his promise, condemned the Constitutions of Clarendon, and threatened the king with anathema and interdict. At last, after protracted negotiations, inA.D.1170 by means of a personal interview on the frontiers of Normandy, a reconciliation was effected; by which, however, neither the king nor the archbishop renounced their claims. Thomas now returned to England and threatened with excommunication all bishops who should agree to the Constitutions of Clarendon. Four knights seized upon an unguarded word of the king which he had uttered in passion, and murdered the archbishop at the altar inA.D.1170. Alexander canonized the martyr to Hildebrandism, and the king was so sorely pressed by the pope, his own people and his rebellious sons, that he consented to do penance humbly at the tomb of his deadly sainted foe, and submitted to be scourged by the monks.Becket’s bones, for which a special chapel was reared at Canterbury, were visited by crowds of pilgrims until Henry VIII., when he had broken with Rome (§139, 4), formally arraigned the saint as a traitor, had his name struck out of the calendar and his ashes scattered to the winds.278—Thus byA.D.1178 Alexander III. had risen to the summit of ecclesiastical power; but in Rome itself as well as in the Church States, he remained as powerless politically as before. Soon, therefore, after the great council he again quitted the city for a voluntary exile, and never saw it more. His three immediate successors, too,Lucius III.(†A.D.1185),Urban III.(†A.D.1187), andGregory VIII.(†A.D.1187), were elected, consecrated and buried outside of Rome.Clement III.(†A.D.1191) was the first to enter the Lateran again inA.D.1188, on the basis of a compromise which acknowledged the republican constitution under the papal superiority. Meanwhile Frederick I., without regarding the protest of the pope as liege lord of the Sicilian crown, had inA.D.1186 consummated the fateful marriage of his son Henry with Constance, the posthumous daughter of king Roger, and aunt of his childless grandson William II. (†A.D.1194), and thus the heiress of the great Norman kingdom of Italy. From the crusade which he then undertook inA.D.1189 Frederick never returned (§94, 3). His successor,Henry VI.,A.D.1190-1197, compelled the new popeCœlestine III.,A.D.1191-1198, to crown him emperor inA.D.1191, conquered the inheritance of his wife, pushed back the boundaries of the Church States to the very gates of Rome, and asserted his imperial rights even over the city of Rome itself. He pressed on to the realizing of the scheme for making the German crown together with the imperial dignity for ever hereditary in his house. The princes of the empire inA.D.1196 elected his son Frederick II., when scarcely two years old, as king of the Romans. He then thought under the pretext of a crusade to conquer Greece, to which he had laid groundless claims of succession, but while upon the way his plans were overthrown by his sudden death at Messina.§ 96.17.Innocent III.,A.D.1198-1216.—After the death of Alexander III. the power and reputation of the Holy See had fallen into the lowest degradation. Then the cardinal deacon, Lothair Count of Segni in Anagni, succeeded inA.D.1198 in his 37th year, under the name of Innocent III., and raised the papacy again to a height of power and glory never reached before. In point of intellect and power of will he was not a whit behind Gregory VII., while in culture (§102, 9), scholarship, subtlety and adroitness he far excelled him. His piety, too, his moral earnestness, his enthusiasm and devotion to the church and the theocratical interest of the chair of St. Peter, were at least as powerful and decidedly purer, deeper and more spiritual than Gregory’s. And in addition to all these great endowments he enjoyed an invariable good fortune which never forsook him. His first task was the restoration of the Church States and his political prestige in Rome. In both these directions he was favoured by the sudden death of Henry VI. and the internal disorders of the Capitoline government of that time. On the very day of his enthronement the imperial prefect tendered him the oath of fealty and the Capitol did homage to him as the superior. And also before the second year had passed the Church States in their fullest extent were restored by the expulsion of the greater and smaller feudal lords who had been settled there by Henry VI. Rome was indeed once more the scene of wild party conflicts which forced the pope inA.D.1203 to fly to Anagni. He was able, however, to return inA.D.1204 and to conclude a definite and decisive peace with the Commune inA.D.1205, according to the terms of which the many-headed senate resigned, and a single senator or podestà nominated by the pope was entrusted with the executive authority. Meanwhile Innocent had been gaining brilliant successes beyond the limits of the States of the Church. These were won first of all in Sicily. The widow of Henry VI. had her son Frederick of four years old, after his father’s death, crowned king in Palermo. Unadvised and helpless, pressed upon all sides, she sought protection from Innocent, which he granted upon her renouncing the ecclesiastical privileges previously claimed by the king and making acknowledgment of the papal suzerainty. Dying inA.D.1198, Constance transferred to him the guardianship of her son, and the pope justified the confidence placed in him by the excellent and liberal education which he secured for his ward, as well as by the zeal and success with which he restored rest and peace to the land. In Germany, Philip of Swabia, Frederick’s uncle, was appointed to carry on the government in the name of his Sicilian nephew during his minority. The condition of Germany, however, demanded the direct control of a firm and vigorous ruler. The princes, therefore, insisted upon a new election, for which Philip also now appeared as candidate. The votes were split between two rivals; the Ghibellines voting for Philip,A.D.1198-1208, and the Guelph party forOtto IV.of Brunswick,A.D.1198-1218. The party of the latter referred the decision to the pope. For three years he delayed giving judgment, then he decided in favour of the Guelph, who paid for the preference by granting all the demands of the pope, and calling himself king by the grace of God and the pope. The States of the Church were thus represented as including the Duchy of Spoleto, and in the election of bishops the church was freed from the influence of the state. ByA.D.1204, however, Philip’s power and repute had risen to such a pitch that even the pope found himself obliged to take into account the altered position of matters. A papal court of arbitration at Rome to which both claimants had agreed to submit, was on the point of giving its decision unequivocally in favour of the Hohenstaufen, when the murder of Philip by Otto of Wittelsbach, inA.D.1208, rendered it void. Otto IV. was now acknowledged by all, and inA.D.1209 he was crowned by the pope after new concessions had been made. But as Roman emperor he either would not or could not perform what he had promised before and at his coronation. He took to himself the possessions of Matilda as well as other parts of the States of the Church, and was not prevented from pursuing his victorious campaign in Southern Italy by the anathema which Innocent thundered against him inA.D.1210. Then Innocent called to mind the old rights of his former pupil to the German crown, and insisted that they should be given effect to. InA.D.1212, Frederick II., now in his eighteenth year, accepted the call, was received in Germany with open arms, and was crowned inA.D.1215 at Aachen. Otto could not maintain his position against him, and so withdrew to his hereditary possessions, and died inA.D.1218.

§ 96.1.The Romish Pornocracy and the Emperor Otto I., †A.D.973.—Among the wild struggles of the Italian nobles which broke out after the Emperor Arnulf’s departure (§ 82, 8), the party of the Margrave Adalbert of Tuscany gained the upperhand. His mistress Theodora, a well born and beautiful, ambitious and voluptuous Roman, wife of a Roman senator, as well as her like-minded daughters Marozia and Theodora, filled for half a century the chair of St. Peter with their paramours, sons and grandsons. These constituted the base and corrupt line of popes known as the pornocracy.Sergius III.,A.D.904-911, Marozia’s paramour, starts this disgraceful series. After the short pontificates of the two immediately following popes, Theodora, because Ravenna was inconveniently distant for the gratification of her lust, called John, the archbishop of that place, to the papal chair under the title ofJohn X.,A.D.914-928. By means of a successful crusade which he led in person, he destroyed the remnant of Saracen robbers in Garigliano (§ 81, 2), and crowned the Lombard king Bernard I.,A.D.916-924, as emperor. But when he attempted to break off his disgraceful relations with the woman who had advanced him, Marozia had him cast into prison and smothered with a pillow. The two following popes on whom she bestowed the tiara enjoyed it only a short time, for inA.D.931 she raised her own son to the papal throne in the twentieth year of his age. His father was Pope Sergius, and he assumed the name ofJohn XI.But her other son Alberich, who inherited the temporal kingdom fromA.D.932, restricted this pope’s jurisdiction and that of his four successors to the ecclesiastical domain. After Alberich’s death his son Octavianus, an arch-profligate and blasphemer, though only in his sixteenth year, united the papacy and the temporal power, and called himself by the name ofJohn XII.A.D.955-963—the first instance of a change of name on assuming the papal chair. He would sell anything for money. He made a boy of ten years a bishop; he consecrated a deacon in a stable; in hunting and dice playing he would invoke the favour of Jupiter and Venus; in his orgies he would drink the devil’s health, etc. Meantime things had reached a terrible pass in Germany. After the death of Louis the Child, the last of the German Carolingians, inA.D.911, the Frankish dukeConrad I.,A.D.911-918, was elected king of the Germans. Although vigorously supported by the superior clergy, the Synod of Hohenaltheim inA.D.915 threatening the rebels with all the pains of hell, the struggle with the other dukes prevented the founding of a united German empire. His successor, the SaxonHenry I.,A.D.919-936, was the first to free himself from the faction of the clergy, and to grant to the dukes independent administration of internal affairs within their own domains. His greater son,Otto I.,A.D.936-973, by limiting the power of the dukes, by fighting and converting heathen Danes, Wends, Bohemians and Hungarians, by decided action in the French troubles, by gathering around him a virtuous German clergy, who proved true to him and the empire, secured after long continued civil wars a power and reputation such as no ruler in the West since Charlemagne had enjoyed. Called to the help of the Lombard nobles and the pope John XII. against the oppression and tyranny of Berengarius [Berengar] II., he conquered the kingdom of Italy, and was at CandlemasA.D.962 crowned emperor by the pope in St. Peter’s, after having really held this rank for thirty years. Thus was theHoly Roman Empire of German Nationalitiesfounded, which continued for centuries to be the centre around which the history of the church and the world revolved. The new emperor confirmed to the pope all donations of previous emperors with the addition of certain cities, without detriment, however, to the imperial suzerainty over the patrimony of St. Peter, and without lessening in any degree the imperial privileges maintained by Charlemagne. ThePrivilegium Ottonis, still preserved in the papal archives, and claiming to be an authentic document, was till quite recently kept secret from all impartial and capable investigators, so that the suspicion of its spuriousness had come to be regarded as almost a certainty. Under Leo XIII., however, permission was given to a capable Protestant scholar, Prof. Sickel of Vienna, to make a photographic facsimile of the document, the result of which was that he became convinced that the document was not the original but a contemporary official duplicate, a literally faithful transcript on purple parchment with letters of gold for solemn deposition in the grave of St. Peter. Its first part describes the donations of the emperor, the second the obligations of the pope in accordance with theConstitutio Romana, § 82, 4.—But scarcely had Otto left Rome than the pope, breaking his oath, conspired with his enemies, endeavoured to rouse the Byzantines and heathen Hungarians against him, and opened the gates of Rome to Adalbert the son of Berengarius [Berengar]. Otto hastened back, deposed the pope at the synod of Rome inA.D.963, on charges of incest, perjury, murder, blasphemy, etc., and made the Romans swear by the bones of Peter never again to elect and consecrate a pope, without having the emperor’s permission and confirmation. Soon after the emperor’s departure, however, the newly elected popeLeo VIII.,A.D.963-965, had to betake himself to flight. John XII. returned again to Rome, excommunicated his rival pope, and took cruel vengeance upon the partisans of the emperor. On his death soon afterwards, inA.D.964, the Romans elected Benedict V. as his successor; but he, when the emperor conquered Rome after a stubborn resistance, was obliged to submit to humiliating terms. Leo VIII. had inJohn XIII.,A.D.965-972, a virtuous and worthy successor. A new revolt of the Romans led soon after his election to his imprisonment; but he succeeded in making his escape inA.D.966. Otto now for the third time crossed the Alps, passed relentlessly severe sentences upon the guilty, and had his son, now thirteen years of age, crowned in Rome as Otto II.,A.D.967.

§ 96.2.The Times of Otto II., III.,A.D.973-1002.—After the death of Otto I., since Otto II.,A.D.973-983, was restrained from a Roman campaign in consequence of Cisalpine troubles, the nobles’ faction under Crescentius, son of Pope John X. and the younger Theodora, again won the upperhand. This party had inA.D.974 overthrown PopeBenedict VI.,A.D.972-974, appointed by Otto I., and cast him into prison. But their own anti-pope Boniface VII. could not maintain his position, and fled with the treasures of St. Peter to Constantinople. By means of a compromise of partiesBenedict VII.,A.D.974-983, was now raised to the papal chair and held possession in spite of manifold opposition, till the arrival of the young emperor in Italy inA.D.980 obtained for him greater security. Otto II. again restored the imperial prestige in Rome inA.D.981, but inA.D.982 he suffered a complete defeat at the hand of the Saracens. He died in the following year at Rome, after he had inJohn XIV.,A.D.983-984, secured the appointment of a pope faithful to the empire. His son Otto III., three years old, was at the council of state, held at Verona, by the princes of Germany and Italy, there gathered together, elected king of both kingdoms. During the German civil wars under the regency of the Queen-mother Theophania, a Byzantine princess, and the able Archbishop Willigis, of Mainz, who, through his firmness and penetration saved the crown for the royal child Otto III.,A.D.983-1002, and maintained the existence and integrity of the German empire, Rome and the papacy fell again under the domination of the nobles, at whose head now stood the younger Crescentius, a son of the above mentioned chief of the same name. InA.D.984 the anti-popeBoniface VII., who had fled to Constantinople, made his appearance in Rome, won a following by Greek gold, got possession of John XIV. and had him cast into prison, but was himself soon afterwards murdered. The new popeJohn XV.,A.D.985-996, who was thoroughly venal, was an obedient tool of the tyranny of Crescentius, which, however, soon became so intolerable to him, that he yearned for the restoration of imperial rule under Otto III. At this same time great danger threatened the imperial authority from France. Hugh Capet had, after the death of the last Carolingian, Louis V., inA.D.987, taken possession for himself of the French crown. He insisted upon John XV. deposing the archbishop Arnulf of Rheims, who had opened the gates of Rheims to his uncle Charles of Lorraine, the brother of Louis V.’s father. The pope, who was then dependent upon German power, hesitated. Hugh then had Arnulf deposed at a synod at Rheims inA.D.921, and put in his place Gerbert, the greatest scholar (§100, 2) and statesman of that age. The council quite openly declared the whole French church to be free from Rome, whose bishops for a hundred years had been steeped in the most profound moral corruption, and had fallen into the most disgraceful servitude, and Gerbert issued a confession of faith in which celibacy and fasting were repudiated, and only the first four œcumenical councils were acknowledged. But the plan was shattered, not so much through the apparently fruitless opposition of the pope as through the reaction of the high church party of Clugny and the popular esteem in which that party was held. Gerbert could not maintain his position, and was heartily glad when he could shake the dust of Rheims off his feet by accepting an honourable call of the young emperor, Otto III., who inA.D.997 opened new paths for his ambition by inviting the celebrated scholar to be with him as his classical tutor. Hugh’s successor Robert reinstated Arnulf in the see of Rheims. John XV. called in Otto III. to his help against the intolerable oppression of the younger Crescentius, but died before his arrival inA.D.996. Otto directed the choice of his cousin Bruno, twenty-four years of age, the first German pope, who assumed the name ofGregory V.,A.D.996-999, and by him he was crowned emperor in Rome. Gregory was a man of an energetic, almost obstinate character, thoroughly in sympathy with the views of the monks of Clugny. The emperor having soon returned home, Crescentius violated his oath and made himself again master of Rome. Gregory fled to Pavia, where he held a synod inA.D.997, which thundered an anathema against the disturber of the Roman church. Meanwhile Crescentius raised to the papal throne the archbishop John of Piacenza, formerly Greek tutor to Otto III., under the title of John XVI. It was not till late in autumn of that year that the emperor could hasten to the help of his injured cousin. He then executed a fearfully severe sentence upon the tyrant and his pope. The former was beheaded, and his corpse dragged by the feet through the streets and then hung upon a gallows; the latter, whom the soldiers had cruelly deprived of his ears, tongue, and nose, was led through the streets seated backward on an ass, with the tail tied in his hands for reins.—From Pavia Gregory had issued a command to Robert, the French king, to put away his queen Bertha, who was related to him in the fourth degree, on pain of excommunication. But he died a suspiciously sudden death before he could bring down the pride of this king, which, however, his successor accomplished.

§ 96.3.Otto III.now raised to the papal chair his teacher Gerbert, whom he had previously made Archbishop of Ravenna, under the title ofSylvester II.,A.D.999-1003. Already in Ravenna had Gerbert’s ecclesiastical policy been changed for the high church views of his former opponents, and as pope he developed an activity which marks him out as the worthy follower of his predecessor and the precursor of a yet greater Gregory (VII.). He energetically contended against simony, that special canker of the church, and by sending the ring and staff to his former opponent, Arnulf, made the first effort to assert the papal claim to the exclusive investiture of bishops. But he had previously, as tutor of Otto, by flattering his vanity, inspired the imaginative, high-spirited youth with the ideal of a restoration of the ancient glory of Rome and its emperors exercising universal sway. And just with this view had Otto raised him to the papal chair in order that he might have his help. The pope did not venture openly to withdraw from this understanding, for in the condition of Italy at that time in a struggle with the emperor, the victory would be his in the first instance, and that would be the destruction of the papal chair. So there was nothing for it but by clever tacking in spite of contrary winds of imperial policy, to make the ship of the church hold on as far as possible in the high church course and surround the emperor by a network of craft. The phantom of aRenovatio imperii Romaniwith the mummified form of the Byzantine court ceremonial and the vain parade of a title was called into being.On a pilgrimage to the grave of his saintly friend Adalbert in Gnesen (§93, 13) the emperor emancipated the Polish church from the German metropolitanate by raising its see into an archbishopric. He also, inA.D.1000, released the Polish duke Boleslaw Chrobry (§93, 7), the most dangerous enemy of Germany, who schemed the formation of a great Slavic empire, from his fealty as a vassal of the German empire, enlisting him instead as a “friend and confederate of the Roman people” in his new fantastic universal empire. In the same year, however, Sylvester, in the exercise of papal sovereignty, conferred the royal crown on Stephen the saint of Hungary (§93, 8), appointed the payment by him of a yearly tribute to the papal vicar with ecclesiastical authority over his country, and made that land ecclesiastically independent of Passau and Salzburg by founding a separate metropolitanate at Gran. Though Otto let himself be led in the hierarchical leading strings by his papal friend, he yet made it abundantly evident by bestowing upon his favourite pope eight counties of the States of the Church, that he regarded these as merely a free gift of imperial favour. He also lashed violently the extravagances as well as the greed of the popes, and declared that the donation of Constantine was a pure fabrication (§ 87, 4). The emperor, however, had meanwhile thoroughly estranged his German subjects and the German clergy by his un-German temperament. The German princes denounced him as a traitor to the German empire. Soon all Italy, even the much fondled Rome, rose in open revolt. Only an early deathA.D.1002 saved the unhappy youth of twenty-two years of age from the most terrible humiliation. With him, too, the star of the pope’s fortunes went down. He died not long after inA.D.1003, and left in the popular mind the reputation of a dealer in the black art, who owed his learning and the success of his hierarchical career to a compact with the devil.

§ 96.4.From Henry II. to the Synod at Sutri,A.D.1002-1046.—After the death of Otto III.,Henry II.,A.D.1002-1024, previously duke of Bavaria, a great-grandson of Henry I. and as such the last scion of the Saxon line, obtained the German crown—a ruler who proved one of the ablest that ever occupied that throne. A bigoted pietist and under the power of the priests, although pious-hearted according to the spirit of the times and strongly attached to the church, and seeking in the bishops supports of the empire against the relaxing influence of the temporal princes, yet no other German emperor ruled over the church to the same extent that he did, and no one ventured so far as he did to impress strongly upon the church, by the most extensive appropriation of ecclesiastical property, especially of rich monasteries, that this was the shortest and surest way of bringing about a much needed reformation. Meanwhile in Rome, after the death of Otto III., Joannes Crescentius, the son of Crescentius II., who was beheaded by order of Otto, assumed the government, and set upon the chair of Peter creatures of his own, John XVII., XVIII., and Sergius IV. But as he and his last elected pope died soon after one another inA.D.1012, the long subjected faction of the Tusculan counts, successors of Alberich, came to the front again, and chose as pope a scion of one of their own families,Benedict VIII.,A.D.1012-1024. The anti-pope Gregory, chosen by the Crescentians, was obliged to retire from the field. He sought protection from Henry II. But this monarch came to an understanding with the incomparably nobler and abler Benedict, received from him for himself and his Queen Cunigunda, subsequently canonized by Innocent III., the imperial crown, inA.D.1014, and continued ever after to maintain excellent relations with him. These two, the emperor and the pope, were on friendly terms with the monks of Clugny. They both acknowledged the need of a thorough reformation of the church, and both carried it out so far as this could be done by the influence and example of their own personal conduct, disposition, and character. But the pope had so much to do fighting the Crescentians, then the Greeks and Saracens in Italy, and the emperor in quelling internal troubles in his empire and repelling foreign invasions, that it was only toward the close of their lives that they could take any very decided action. The pope made the first move, for at the Synod of Pavia inA.D.1018, he excommunicated all married priests and those living in concubinage, and sentenced their children to slavery. The emperor entertained a yet more ambitious scheme. He wished to summon a Western œcumenical council at Pavia, and there to engage upon the reformation of the whole church of the West. But the death of the pope inA.D.1024, which was followed in a few months by the death of the emperor, prevented the carrying out of this plan. After the death of the childless Henry II.,Conrad II.,A.D.1024-1039, the founder of the Franconian or Salic dynasty, ascended the German throne. To him the empire was indebted for great internal reforms and a great extension of power, but he gave no attention to the carrying out of his predecessor’s plans of ecclesiastical reformation. Still less, however, was anything of the kind to be looked for from the popes of that period. Benedict VIII. was succeeded by his brother Romanus, under the name ofJohn XIX.,A.D.1024-1033, as void of character and noble sentiments (§ 67, 2) as his predecessor had been distinguished. When he died, Count Alberich of Tusculum was able by means of presents and promises to get the Romans to elect his son Theophylact, who, though only twelve years old, was already practised in the basest vice. He took the name ofBenedict IX.,A.D.1033-1048, and disgraced the papal chair with the most shameless profligacy. The state of matters became better under Conrad’s son,Henry III.,A.D.1039-1056, who strove after the founding of a universal monarchy in the sense of Charlemagne, and by a powerful and able government he came nearer reaching this end than any of the German emperors. He was at the same time inspired with a zeal for the reformation of the church such as none of his predecessors or successors, with the exception of Henry II., ever showed. Benedict IX. was, inA.D.1044, for the second time driven out by the Romans. They now sold the tiara to Sylvester III., who three months after was driven out by Benedict. This pope now fell in love with his beautiful cousin, daughter of a Tusculan count, and formed the bold resolve to marry her. But the father of the lady refused his consent so long as he was pope. Benedict now sold the papal chair for a thousand pounds of silver to the archdeacon Joannes Gratian. This man, a pious simple individual, in order to save the chair of St. Peter from utter overthrow, took upon himself the disgrace of simony at the bidding of his friends of Clugny, among whom a young Roman monk called Hildebrand, son of poor parents of Soana, in Tuscany, was already most conspicuous. The new pope assumed the name ofGregory VI.,A.D.1044-1046. He wanted the talents necessary for the hard task he had undertaken. Benedict having failed in carrying out his matrimonial plans, again claimed to be pope, as did also Sylvester. Thus Rome had at one and the same time, three popes, and all three were publicly known to be simonists. The Clugny party cast off their protégé Gregory, and called in the German emperor as saviour of the church. Henry came and had all the the three popes deposed at theSynod at Sutri,A.D.1046. The Romans gave to him the right of making a new appointment. It fell upon Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who took the name ofClement II., and crowned the king emperor on Christmas,A.D.1046. The Romans were so delighted at having order restored in the city, that they gave over to the emperor with the rank of patrician the government of Rome and the right of papal election for all time, and swore never to consecrate a pope without the emperor’s concurrence. Henry took the ex-pope Gregory along with him, back to Germany, where he died in exile, at Cologne. Hildebrand, his chaplain, had accompanied him thither, and after his death retired into the monastery of Clugny.

§ 96.5.Henry III. and his German Popes,A.D.1046-1057.—WithClement III., 1046-1047, begins a whole series of able German popes, who, elected by Henry III., wrought under his protection powerfully and successfully for the reform of the church. All interested in the reformation, the brethren of Clugny, as well as the disciples of Romuald and the settlers in Vallombrosa (§98, 1), agreed that at the root of all the corruption of the church of that age weresimony, or obtaining spiritual offices by purchase or bribery (Acts viii. 19), andNicolaitanism(§ 27, 8), under which name were included all fleshly lusts of the clergy, marriage as well as concubinage and unnatural vices. These two were, especially in Italy, so widely spread, that scarcely a priest was to be found who had not been guilty of both. Clement II., in the emperor’s presence, at a synod in Rome inA.D.1047, began the battle against simony. But he died before the end of the year, probably by poison. While Roman envoys presented themselves at the German court about the election of a new pope, Benedict IX., supported by the Tusculan party, again laid claim to the papal chair, and the emperor had to utter the severest threats before the man of his choice, Poppo, bishop of Brixen, was allowed to occupy the papal chair asDamasus II.Twenty-three days afterwards, however, he was a corpse. This cooled the ardour of German bishops for election to so dangerous a position, and only after long persuasion Bishop Bruno of Toul, the emperor’s cousin and a zealous friend of Clugny, accepted the appointment, on the condition that it should have the approval of the people and clergy of Rome, which, as was to be expected, was given with acclamation. He ascended the papal throne as Leo IX.,A.D.1049-1054. According to a later story conceived in the interests of Hildebrandism, Bruno is said not only to have made his definite acceptance of the imperial call dependent upon the supplementary free election of people and clergy of Rome, but also to have been prevailed upon by Hildebrand, who by his own request accompanied him, to lay aside his papal ornaments, to continue his journey in pilgrim garb, and to make his entrance into the eternal city barefoot, so that the necessary sanction of a formal canonical election might be given to the imperial nomination. Leo found the papal treasures emptied to the last coin and robbed of all its territorial revenues by the nobles. But Hildebrand was his minister of finance, and soon improved the condition of his exchequer. Leo now displayed an unexampled activity in church reform and the purifying of the papacy. No pope travelled about so much as he, none held as many synods in the most distant places and various lands. The uprooting of simony was in all cases the main point in their decrees. By bonds of gratitude and relationship, but above all of common interests, he was attached to the German emperor. He could not therefore think of emancipating the papacy from the imperial suzerainty. Practically Leo succeeded in clearing the Augean stable of the Roman clergy, and filled vacancies with virtuous men brought from far and near. In order to chastise the Normans, put by him under ban because of their rapacity, he himself took the field inA.D.1053, when the emperor refused to do so, but was taken prisoner after his army had been annihilated, and only succeeded, after he had removed the excommunication, in getting them to kiss his feet with the most profound devotion. He demanded from the Greek emperor full restitution of the donation of Constantine, so far as this was still in the possession of the Byzantines, and his envoys at Constantinople rendered the split between the Eastern and Western churches irreparable (§ 67, 3). Leo died inA.D.1054, the only pope for centuries whom the church honours as a saint. A Roman embassy called upon the emperor to nominate a new pope. He fixed upon Gebhardt, bishop of Eichstädt [Eichstadt], who now ascended the papal throne asVictor II.,A.D.1055-1057. Here again monkish tales have transformed a single matter of fact into a romance in the interests of their own party. The Romans wished Hildebrand himself for their pope, but he was unwilling yet to assume such a responsibility. He put himself, however, at the head of an embassy which convinced the emperor of the sinfulness of his former interferences in the papal elections, and persuaded him to set aside the tyrannical power of his patrician’s rank and to resign to the clergy and people their old electoral rights. As candidate for this election, Hildebrand himself chose bishop Gebhardt, the most trusted counsellor of the emperor. After long opposition Henry’s consent was won to this candidature, he even urged the bishop to accept it, who at last submitted with the words: “Now so do I surrender myself to St. Peter, soul and body, but only on the condition that you also yield to him what belongs to him.” The latter, however, seems not mere beating of the air, for the emperor restored to the newly elected pope the patrimony of Peter in the widest extent, and bestowed on him besides the governorship of all Italy.—Henry died inA.D.1056, after he had appointed his queen Agnes to the regency, and had recommended her to the counsel and good offices of the pope. But the pope’s days were already numbered. He died inA.D.1057. Hildebrand could not boast of having dominated him, but the position of the powerful monk of Clugny under him had become one of great importance.

§ 96.6.The Papacy under the Control of Hildebrand,A.D.1057-1078.—After Victor’s death the cardinals without paying any regard to the imperial right, immediately elected Cardinal Frederick of Lorraine, at that time abbot of Monte Cassino, and Hildebrand travelled to Germany in order to obtain thepost factumapproval of the empress.Stephen IX.,A.D.1057-1058, for so Frederick styled himself, died before Hildebrand’s return. The Tusculan party took advantage of his absence to put forward as pope a partisan of their own, Benedict X.,A.D.1058. But an embassy of Hildebrand’s to the empress secured the succession to bishop Gerhard of Florence. Benedict was obliged to withdraw, and Gerhard ascended the papal throne as Nicholas II.,A.D.1058-1061. With him begins the full development of Hildebrand’s greatness, and from this time,A.D.1059, when he became archdeacon of Rome, till he himself mounted the papal chair, he was the moving spirit of the Romish hierarchy. By his powerful genius in spite of all hindrances he raised the papacy and the church to a height of power and glory never attained unto before. He thus wrought on, systematically, firmly, and irresistibly advancing toward a complete reformation in ecclesiastical polity. Absolute freedom of the church from the power and influence of the state, and in order to attain this and make it sure, the dominion of the church over the state, papal elections independent of any sort of temporal influence, the complete uprooting of all simoniacal practices, unrelenting strictness in dealing with the immorality of the clergy, invariable enforcement of the law of celibacy, as the most powerful means of emancipating the clergy from the world and the state, filling the sacred offices with the most virtuous and capable men, were some of the noble aims and achievements of this reformation. Hildebrand sought the necessary secular protection and aid for the carrying out of his plans among the Normans. Nicholas II., on the basis of the donation of Constantine, gave as a fief to their leader, Robert Guiscard (§95, 1), the lordship of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, out of which the Saracens had yet to be expelled, and exacted from him the oath of a vassal, by which he bound himself to pay a yearly tribute, to protect the papal chair against all encroachments of its privileges, and above all to maintain the right of papal elections by the “meliores cardinales.” Yet again, Nicholas, when, at a later period, by the help of the Normans, he had broken the power of the Tusculan nobles, issued a decree at a Lateran synod at Rome, inA.D.1059, by which papal elections (§ 82, 4) were regulated anew. Of the two extant recensions of this decree, which are distinguished as the papal and the imperial, the former is now universally acknowledged to be the more authentic form. According to it the election lies exclusively with the Roman cardinal priests (§97, 1); to the rest of the clergy as to the people there is left only the right of acclamation, that brought no advantage, and to the emperor, according to Boichorst, the right of concurrence after the election and investiture, according to Granert, the right of veto before the election. This decree, and not less the league with the Normans, were open slights to the imperial claims upon Italy and the papal chair. The empress therefore convened about Easter,A.D.1061, a council of German bishops, at which Nicholas was deposed, and all his decisions were annulled. Soon after the pope died. The Tusculan party, now joined with the Germans under the Lombard chancellor Wibert, asked a new pope from the empress. At the Council of Basel inA.D.1061, bishop Cadalus of Parma was appointed. He assumed the name of Honorius II.,A.D.1061-1072. But Hildebrand had already five weeks earlier in concert with the Margravine Beatrice of Canossa, wholly on his own responsibility, chosen bishop Anselm of Lucca, and had him consecrated asAlexander II.A.D.1061-1073. Honorius advanced to Rome, accompanied by Wibert, and frequently in bloody conflicts conquered the party of his opponent. Duke Godfrey the Bearded of Lorraine, the husband of Beatrice, now appeared as mediator. He made both popes retire to their dioceses and gave to the empress the decision of the controversy. But meanwhile a catastrophe occurred in Germany that led to the most important results. Archbishop Anno of Cologne, standing at the head of a rising of the princes, decoyed the young king of twelve years of age on board a ship at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, and took him to Cologne. The regency and the conduct of government were now transferred to the German bishops collectively, but lay practically in the hands of Anno, who meanwhile, however, sinceA.D.1063, found himself obliged to share the power with Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen. At a council held at Augsburg inA.D.1062, Alexander was acknowledged as the true pope, but Honorius by no means resigned his claims. With a small army he advanced upon Rome inA.D.1064, seized fort Leo, which had been built and fortified by Leo IV. for defence against the Saracens, entrenched himself in the castle of St. Angelo, and repeatedly routed his opponent’s forces. But Hildebrand reminded the Normans of their oath of fealty. At a council held at Mantua inA.D.1064 (or 1067?) Alexander was once again acknowledged, and Honorius, whose party the council sought in vain to break up by force of arms, was again deposed. The proud, ambitious and self-seeking priest of Cologne had meanwhile been obliged to transfer to his northern colleague, Adalbert of Bremen, the further education and training of the young king, who, though only fifteen years old was now proclaimed of age inA.D.1065, asHenry IV.,A.D.1056-1106. If the bishop of Cologne injured the disposition of the royal youth by his excessive harshness and severity, the bishop of Bremen did him irreparable damage by allowing him unrestrained indulgence in his evil passions.

§ 96.7.Gregory VII.,A.D.1073-1085.—Hildebrand had at last brought the papacy to such a height of power that he was able now to put the finishing stroke to his own work in his own name, and so now he mounted the chair of the chief of the apostles, as Gregory VII., elected and enthroned by a disorderly mob. The Lombard and German bishops appealed to the emperor to have the election declared invalid. But he being on all sides threatened with wars and revolution, thought it advisable to forego the assertion of his rights and to win the favour of the pope by a letter full of devotion and humility. At the Roman Fast Synod ofA.D.1074, Gregory renewed the old law of celibacy and rendered it more strict, deposed all married priests or those who got office through simony, and pronounced their priestly acts invalid. The lower clergy, who were generally married, violently opposed the measure, but Gregory’s stronger will prevailed. Papal legates visited all lands, and, supported by the people, insisted upon the strict observance of the papal decree. At the next fast synod inA.D.1075, the pope began the contest against the usual investiture of the higher clergy by the temporal princes, with ring and staff as symbols of episcopal office. Whoever should accept ecclesiastical office from the hand of a layman was to be deposed, and any potentate who should give investiture should be put under the ban of the church. Here too he thundered his anathema against the counsellors of Henry who should meanwhile prove guilty of the sale of ecclesiastical offices. Henry, whose hands were fully occupied with the rebellious Saxons, at first dismissed his counsellors, but after the close of the wars he reinstated them, and quite ignored the papal prohibition of investiture. Gregory had for a while quite enough to do in Italy. Cencius, the head of the nobles opposed to reform, fell upon him on Christmas,A.D.1075, during Divine service, and made him prisoner, but the Romans rescued him, and Cencius had to take to flight. On New Year’s Day,A.D.1076, there appeared at the royal residence at Goslar a papal embassy which threatened the king with excommunication and deposition should he not immediately break off all relations with the counsellors under the ban, and reform his own infamous life. The king burst out in furious rage. He heaped insults upon the legates, and at the Synod of Worms, on 24th January, had the pope formally deposed as a perjured usurper of the papal chair, a tyrant, an adulterer and a sorcerer. The Lombard bishops, too, gave their consent to this decree (§97, 5). At the next Roman Fast Synod on 22nd February, the pope placed all bishops who had taken part in these proceedings under ban, and at the same time solemnly excommunicated and deposed the king, and released all his subjects from the obligation of their oaths of allegiance. Moreover he had the king’s ambassadors, whose life he had preserved from the fury of those present at the meeting of synod by his personal interference, cast into prison, and then in the most contemptuous manner led through the streets. The papal ban made a deep impression upon the German people and princes. One bishop after another gave in, the Saxons raised a new revolt, and at the princes’ conference at Tribur, in October,A.D.1076, the pope was invited to come personally to Augsburg on 2nd February, to meet and confer with the princes about the affairs of the king. It was resolved that if Henry did not succeed by 22nd February, the first anniversary of the ban, to get it removed, he should for ever forfeit the crown, but that meanwhile he should reside at Spires and continue in the exercise of all royal prerogatives.

§ 96.8. It was for the pope’s advantage to have the business settled upon German soil with the greatest possible publicity. Therefore he scornfully refused the humble petition of the king to send him absolution from Rome, and hastened his preparations for travelling to Augsburg. But Henry went forth to meet him on the way. Shortly before Christmas he escaped from Spires with his wife and child, and in spite of a severe winter crossed Mount Cenis. The Lombards protected him in defying the pretensions of the pope. But Henry’s whole attention was now directed to overturning the machinations of the hostile German princes. So he suddenly appeared at Canossa, where Gregory was staying with the Margravine Matilda, daughter of Beatrice, a princess enthusiastically attached to him and his ideal. This meeting was unexpected and undesired by the pope. There during the cold winter days, from 25th to 27th January,A.D.1077, stood the son of Henry III. barefoot in the courtyard of the castle of Canossa, wearing a sackcloth shirt, fasting all day and supplicating access to the proud monk. With inflexible severity the pope refused, until at last the tears, entreaties, and reproaches of the margravine overcame his obduracy. Henry promised to submit himself to the future judgment of the pope in regard to his reconciliation with the German princes, and was absolved. Nevertheless the princes at the Assembly at Forcheim in March, with the concurrence of the papal legate, elected a new king in the person of Rudolph of Swabia, Henry’s brother-in-law. Roused to fury, Henry now hastened back to Germany, where soon he gathered round him a great army. Notwithstanding all pressure brought to bear upon him, Gregory maintained for three years a position of neutrality, but at last, inA.D.1080, at the Roman Fast Synod, where the envoys of the contending kings presented their complaints, he renewed the excommunication and deposition of Henry. Then the bishops of Henry’s party immediately met at Brixen, and hurled the anathema and pronounced sentence of deposition against Gregory, and elected as anti-pope Wibert, formerly chancellor, then archbishop of Ravenna, who assumed the title of Clement III.,A.D.1080-1100. After the death of Rudolph in battle, at Merseburg, inA.D.1080, Henry marched across the Alps and appeared at Pentecost before the gates of Rome, which were opened to him after a three years’ siege. Clement III. then at Easter,A.D.1084, set upon him and his queen the imperial crown. Gregory had withdrawn to the Castle of St. Angelo. Henry, however, was compelled by the appearance of a new rival for the crown, Henry, Count of Luxemburg, to return to Germany, and Robert Guiscard, the Norman duke, hastened from the south to deliver the pope, which he accomplished only after Rome had been fearfully devastated. Gregory died in the following year,A.D.1085, at Salerno. Gregory VII. also took the field against the dissolute and prodigal king of France, Philip I., and threatened him, because of simony, with interdict and deposition. His success here, however, was comparatively small. Philip avowedly submitted to the papal decree, but did not in the least alter his conduct, and Gregory felt that it was not prudent to push matters to an extremity. He showed himself more indulgent toward the powerful William the Conqueror of England, although this prince ruled the church of his dominions with an iron hand, pronounced all church property to be freehold, and was scarcely less guilty of simony than the kings of Germany and France. Yet the pope himself, who hoped to secure the aid of his arms against Henry IV., and sought therefore to dazzle him with the prospect of the imperial throne, winked at his delinquencies, and loaded him with expressions of his good-will. The primate of England, too, the powerful Conqueror’s right-hand supporter, Lanfranc of Canterbury, who bore a grudge against Gregory because of his patronage of the heretic Berengarius [Berengar] (§101, 2), showed no special zeal for the reforms advocated by the pope.At a synod held at Winchester inA.D.1076, the law of celibacy was enforced, with this limitation, however, that those of the secular clergy who were already married should not be required to put away their wives, but no further marriages among them were to be permitted.275

§ 96.9.The Central Idea in Gregory’s Policywas the establishment of a universal theocracy, with the pope as its one visible head, the representative of Christ upon earth, who as such stands over the powers of the world. Alongside of it, indeed, the royal authority was to stand independently as one ordained of God, but it was to confine itself strictly to temporal affairs, and to be directed by the pope in regard to whatever might be partly within and partly without these lines. All states bearing the Christian name were to be bound together as members of one body in the great papal theocracy which had superior to it only God and His law. The princes must receive consecration and Divine sanction from the spiritual power; they are “by the grace of God,” not immediately, however, but only mediately, the church as the middle term stands between them and God. The pope is their arbiter and highest liege lord, whose decisions they are under obligation unconditionally to obey. Royalty stands related to the papacy as the moon to the sun, from which she receives her light and warmth. The church, which lends to the power of the world her Divine authority, can also withdraw it again when it is being misused. When this is done, the obligation of subjects to obey also ceases. Gregory began this gigantic work, not so much to raise himself personally to the utmost pinnacle of power, but rather to save the church from destruction. He certainly was not free from ambition and the lust of ruling, but with him higher than all personal interests was the idea of the high vocation of the church, and to the realizing of it he enthusiastically devoted all the energies of his life. On the other hand, he cannot escape the reproach of having striven with carnal weapons for what he called a spiritual victory, of having meted out unequal measures, where his interests demanded it, in the exercise of his assumed function as judge of kings and princes, and of having occupied himself more with political schemes and intrigues than with the ministry of the church of Christ. His whole career shows him to have been a man of great self reliance, yet, on the other hand, he was able to preserve the consciousness of the poor sinner who seeks and finds salvation only in the mercy of Christ. The strict morality of his life has been admitted even by his bitterest foes.Not infrequently too did he show himself in advance of his time in humanity and liberality of sentiment, ase.g.in the Berengarian controversy (§101, 2), and in his decided disapproval of the prosecution of witches and sorcerers.276

§ 96.10.Victor III. and Urban II.,A.D.1086-1099.—Gregory VII. was succeeded by the talented abbot of Monte Cassino, Desiderius, under the title ofVictor III.,A.D.1086-1087. Only after great pressure was brought to bear upon him did he consent to leave the cloister, which under his rule had flourished in a remarkable manner; but now aged and sickly, he only enjoyed the pontificate for sixteen months. His successor was bishop Odo, of Ostia, a Frenchman by birth, and a member of the Clugny brotherhood, who took the name ofUrban II.,A.D.1088-1099. For a long time he was obliged to give up Rome to the party of the imperial anti-pope. But the enthusiasm with which the idea of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre was taken up, which he proposed to Western Christendom at the Council of Clermont, inA.D.1095 (§94), secured for him the highest position in his time, and made him strong enough to withstand the opposition of Philip I., king of France, whom he had put under ban at Clermont, on account of his adulterous connection with Bertrada. Returning to Italy from his victorious campaign through France, he was able to celebrate Christmas once again in the Lateran at Rome inA.D.1096. His main supporters in the conflict against the emperor were the powerful Margravine Matilda, and the emperor’s most dangerous opponent in Germany, duke Welf of Bavaria, whose son of the same name, then in his seventeenth year, was married by the pope to the widowed Matilda, who was now forty years of age, whence arose the first of the anti-imperial and strongly papistical Welf or Guelph party in Germany and Italy. On the other side the margravine succeeded in stirring up Conrad, the son of Henry IV., to rebel against his father, and had him crowned king inA.D.1087. At Cremona this prince held the pope’s stirrup, and took the oath of obedience to him. The emperor had him deposed inA.D.1098, and had his second son elected and crowned as Henry V. Urban, who received on his death-bed the news of the destruction of Jerusalem, died inA.D.1099, and his anti-pope Clement III., who had withdrawn to Ravenna, died in the following year.

§ 96.11.Paschalis II., Gelasius II., and Calixtus II.,A.D.1099-1124.—Urban’s successor,Paschalis II.,A.D.1099-1118, also a member of the Clugny brotherhood, at once stirred up the fire of rebellion against the excommunicated emperor, and favoured a conspiracy of the princes. The young king, at the head of the insurgents, took his father prisoner, and obliged him to abdicate inA.D.1106. Six months afterwards the emperor died. The church’s curse pursued even his corpse. Twice interred in holy ground, first in the cathedral of Liège, then in the cathedral of Spires, his bones were exhumed and thrown into unconsecrated ground, until at last, inA.D.1111, his son obtained the withdrawal of the ban. At the Council of Guastalla inA.D.1106, Paschalis renewed the prohibition ofInvestiture. ButHenry V.,A.D.1106-1125, concerned himself as little about this prohibition as his father had done. No sooner had he seated himself upon the throne in Germany than he crossed the Alps to compel the pope to crown him emperor and concede to him the right of investiture. The pope, who was willing that the church should be poor if only she retained her freedom, being now without counsel or help (for Matilda was old and her warlike spirit was broken, and from the Normans no assistance could be looked for), was driven inA.D.1111, in his perplexity to offer a compromise, whereby the emperor should surrender investiture to the church, but on the other hand the clergy should return to him all landed property and privileges given them by the state since the times of Charlemagne, while the Patrimony of Peter should continue the property of the pope himself. On the basis of this agreement the coronation of the emperor was to be celebrated in St. Peter’s on 12th Feb.,A.D.1111. But when after the celebration had begun the document which set forth the compact was read, the prelates present in the cathedral raised loud cries of dissent and demanded that it should immediately be cancelled. The coronation was not proceeded with, the pope and his cardinals were thrown into prison, and a revolt of the Romans was suppressed. The pope was then compelled to rescind the synodal decrees and formally to grant to the king the right of investiture; he had also, after solemnly promising never again to put the emperor under ban, to proceed with the coronation. But Hildebrand’s party called the pope to account for this betrayal of the church. A synod at Rome inA.D.1112 declared the concessions wrung from him invalid, and pronounced the ban against the emperor. The pope, however, remembering his oaths, refused to confirm it, but it was nevertheless proclaimed by his legate in the French and German synods. Matilda’s death inA.D.1115 called the emperor again to Italy. She had even in the time of Gregory VII. made over all her goods and possessions to the Roman Church; but she had the right of free disposal only in regard to allodial property, not in regard to her feudal territories. Henry, however, now laid claim to all her belongings. At the Fast Synod ofA.D.1116 Paschalis asked pardon of God and man for his sin of weakness, renewed and made more strict the prohibition of investiture, but still stoutly refused to confirm the ban of the emperor. In consequence of a rebellion of the Romans he was obliged to take to flight, and he died in exile inA.D.1118. The high church party now choseGelasius II.,A.D.1118-1119, but immediately after the election he was seized by a second Cencius (see §96, 7) on account of a private grudge, fearfully maltreated and confined in chains within his castle. The Romans indeed rescued him, but the emperor’s sudden arrival in Rome led him, in order to avoid making inconvenient terms of peace, to seek his own and the church’s safety in flight. The people and nobles in concert with the emperor set up Gregory VIII. as anti-pope. So soon as the emperor left Rome, Gelasius returned. But Cencius fell upon him during Divine service, and only with difficulty he escaped further maltreatment by flight into France, where he died in the monastery of Clugny after a pontificate of scarcely twelve months. The few cardinals present at Clugny elected archbishop Guido of Vienne. He assumed the title ofCalixtus II.,A.D.1119-1124. Pope and emperor met together expressing desires for peace. But the auspiciously begun negotiations never got beyond the statement of the terms of contract, and ended in the pope renewing at the Council of Rheims, inA.D.1119, the anathema against the emperor and anti-pope. Next year Calixtus crossed the Alps. He received a hearty greeting in Rome. He laid siege to the anti-pope in Sutri, took him prisoner, and after the most contumelious treatment before the Roman mob, cast him into a monastic prison. The investiture question, now better understood through learned discussions on civil and ecclesiastical law, was at last definitely settled in theWorms Concordat, as the result of mutual concessions made at the National Assembly at Worms,A.D.1122. The arrangement come to was this: canonical election of bishops and abbots of the empire by the diocesan clergy and the secular nobles should be restored, and under imperial inspection made free from all coercion, but in disputed elections decisions should be given in accordance with the judgment of the metropolitan and the rest of the bishops, the investing of the elected with the sceptre in Germany before, in other parts of the empire after, consecration, should belong to the emperor, and investiture with ring and staff at the consecration should belong to the pope. This agreement was solemnly ratified at theFirst Œcumenical Lateran SynodinA.D.1123.

§ 96.12. The contemporaryEnglish Investiture Controversywas brought earlier to a conclusion. William the Conqueror had unopposed put Norman prelates in the place of the English bishops, and had homage rendered him by them, while they received from him investiture with the ring and the staff. William Rufus, the Conqueror’s son and successor,A.D.1087-1100, a domineering and greedy prince, after Lanfranc’s death inA.D.1089 (§101, 1) allowed the archbishopric of Canterbury to remain vacant for four years, in order that he might himself enjoy the undisturbed possession of the revenues. It was not tillA.D.1093, during a severe illness and under fear of death, that he agreed to bestow it upon Anselm, the celebrated Abbot of Bec (§101, 1,3), with the promise to abstain ever afterwards from simony. No sooner had he recovered than he repented him of his promise. He resumed his old practices, and even demanded of Anselm a large sum for his appointment. For peace sake Anselm gave him a voluntary present of money, but it did not satisfy the king. When, inA.D.1097, the archbishop asked permission to make a journey to Rome in order to have the conflict settled there, the king banished him. In Rome Anselm was honourably received and his conduct was highly approved; but neither Urban II. nor Paschalis II. could venture upon a complete breach with the king. William the Conqueror’s third son, Henry I. Beauclerk,A.D.1100-1135, who, having also snatched Normandy from his eldest brother Robert, needed the support of the clergy to secure his position, agreed to the return of the exiled primate, and promised to put a stop to every kind of simony; but he demanded the maintenance of investiture and the oath of fealty which Anselm now, in consequence of the decrees of a Roman synod which he had himself agreed to, felt obliged to refuse. Thus again the conflict was renewed. The king now confiscated the goods and revenues of the see, and the archbishop was on the point of issuing an excommunication against him, when at last an understanding was come to inA.D.1106, through the mediation of the pope, according to which the crown gave up the investiture with ring and staff, and the archbishop agreed to take the oath offealty.—In France, too, from the end of the 11th century, owing to the pressure used by the high church reforming party, the secular power was satisfied with securing the oath of fealty from the higher clergy, without making further claim to investiture.277

§ 96.13.The Times of Lothair III. and Conrad III.,A.D.1125-1152.—After the death of Henry V. without issue, the SaxonLothair,A.D.1125-1137, was elected, and the Hohenstaufen grandson of Henry IV. descended in the female line was passed over.Honorius II.,A.D.1124-1130, successor of Calixtus II., hastened to confer the papal sanction upon the newly elected emperor, who already upon his election had, by accepting spiritual investiture before temporal investiture, and a minimising of the oath of fealty by ecclesiastical reservations, showed himself ready to support the claims of the clergy. But neither ban nor the preaching of a crusade against Count Roger II. of Sicily (§95, 1) could prevent him from building up a powerful kingdom comprehending all Southern Italy. The next election of the cardinals gives us two popes:Innocent II.,A.D.1130-1143, and Anacletus II.,A.D.1130-1138. The latter, although not the pope of the majority, secured a powerful support in the friendship of Roger II., whom he had crowned king by his legate at Palermo. Innocent, on the other hand, fled to France. There the two oracles of the age, the abbot Peter of Clugny and Bernard of Clairvaux, took his side and won for him the favour of all Cisalpine Europe. Both popes fished for Lothair’s favour with the bait of the promise of imperial coronation. A second edition of the Synod of Sutri would probably have enabled a more powerful king to attain the elevation of Henry III. But Lothair was not the man to seize the opportunity. He decided in favour of theprotégéof Bernard, led him back inA.D.1133 to the eternal city, had himself crowned emperor by him in the Lateran and invested with Matilda’s inheritance, which was declared by the curialists a fief of the empire. But Lothair’s repeated demands, that what had been acquired by the Concordat of Worms should be renounced, were set aside, through the opposition not so much of the pope as of St. Bernard and St. Norbert (§98, 2). At the prayer of the pope, who immediately after Lothair’s departure had been driven out by Roger, and moved by the prophetic exhortations of Bernard, the emperor prepared for a second Roman campaign inA.D.1136. Leaving the conquest of Rome to the eloquence of the prophet of Clairvaux, he advanced from one victory to another until he brought all Southern Italy under the imperial sway, and died on his return homeward in an Alpine hut in the Tyrol. Fuming with rage Roger now crossed over from Sicily and in a short time he reconquered his southern provinces of Italy. The appointment, however, of a new pope after the death of Anacletus miscarried, and Innocent was able at theSecond Œcumenical Lateran SynodinA.D.1139 to declare the schism at an end. The pope then renewed the excommunication of Roger and pronounced an anathema against the teachings of Arnold of Brescia (§108, 7), a young enthusiastic priest of the school of Abælard, who traced all ecclesiastical corruption back to the wealth of the church and the secular power of the clergy. He next prepared himself for war with Roger. That prince, however, waylaid him and had him brought into his tent, where he and his sons cast themselves at the holy father’s feet and begged for mercy and peace. The pope could do nothing else than play therôleof the magnanimous given him in this comedy. He had therefore to confirm the hated Norman in the possession of the conquered provinces as a hereditary monarchy with the ecclesiastical privilege of a native legate, and, as some set off to comfort himself with, the prince was to regard the territory as a fief of the papal see. But still greater calamities befell this pope. The republican freedom, which the cities of Tuscany and Lombardy won during the 12th century, awakened also among the Romans a love of liberty. They refused to render obedience in temporal matters to the pope and established in the Capitol a popular senate, which undertook the civil government in the name of the Roman Commune. Innocent died during the revolution. His successorCœlestine II.held the pontificate for only five months, andLucius II., after vainly opposing the Commune for seven months, was killed by a stone thrown in a tumult.Eugenius III.,A.D.1145-1153, a scholar and friend of St. Bernard, was obliged immediately after his election to seek safety in flight. An agreement, however, was come to in that same year: the pope acknowledged the government of the Commune as legitimate, while it recognised his superiority and granted to him the investiture of the senators. Yet, though taken back three times to Rome, he could never remain there for more than a few months. He visited France and Germany (Treves) inA.D.1147. In France he heard of the fall of Edessa. Supported by the fiery zeal of Bernard, the summons to a second crusade (§94, 2) aroused a burning enthusiasm throughout all the West. But in Rome he was unable to offer any effectual resistance to the demagogical preaching by which Arnold of Brescia fromA.D.1146 had inflamed the people and the inferior clergy with an ardent enthusiasm for his ideal constitution of an apostolic church and a democratic state. Since this change of feeling had taken place in Rome, both parties, that of the Capitol as well as that of the Lateran, had repeatedly endeavoured to win to their side the first Hohenstaufen on the German throne,Conrad III.,A.D.1138-1152, by promise of bestowing the imperial crown. But Conrad, meanwhile otherwise occupied, refrained from all intermeddling, and when at last he actually started upon a journey to Rome death overtook him on the way.

§ 96.14.The Times of Frederick I. and Henry VI.,A.D.1152-1190.—The nephew and successor of Conrad III.,Frederick I. Barbarossa,A.D.1152-1190, began his reign with the firm determination to realize fully the ideas of Charlemagne (§ 82, 3) by his pope Paschalis III., whom at a later period, inA.D.1165, he had canonized. With profound contempt at heart for the Roman democracy of his time, he concluded a compact inA.D.1153 with the papal see, which confirmed him in the possession of the imperial crown and gave to the pope theDominium temporalein the Church States. After the death of Eugenius which soon followed, the agedAnastasius IV.occupied the papal chair for a year and a half, a time of peace and progress. He was succeeded by the powerfulHadrian IV.,A.D.1154-1159. He was an Englishman, Nicholas Breakspear, son of a poor English priest, the first and, down to the present time, the only one of that nation who attained the papal dignity. He pronounced an interdict upon the Romans who had refused him entrance into the inner part of the city and had treacherously slain a cardinal. Rome endured this spiritual famine only for a few weeks, and then purchased deliverance by the expulsion of Arnold of Brescia, who soon thereafter fell into the hands of a cardinal. He was indeed again rescued by force, but Frederick I., who had meanwhile inA.D.1154 begun his first journey to Rome, and on his way thither had humbled the proud Lombard cities struggling for freedom, urged by the pope, insisted that he should be surrendered up again, and subsequently gave him over to the Roman city prefect, who, inA.D.1155, without trial or show of justice condemned him to be burnt and had his ashes strewn upon the Tiber. In the camp at Sutri the pope personally greeted the king who, after refusing for several days, at length agreed to show him the customary honour of holding his stirrup, doing it however with a very bad grace. Soon too the senatorial ambassadors of the Roman people, who indulged in bombastic, turgid declamation, presented themselves professing their readiness on consideration of a solemn undertaking to protect the Roman republic, and on payment of five thousand pounds, to proclaim the German king from the Capitol Roman emperor and ruler of the world. With a furious burst of anger Frederick silenced them, and with scathing words showed them how the witness of history pointed the contrast between their miserable condition and the glory and dignity of the German name. Yet on the day of the coronation, which they were not able to prevent, the Romans took revenge for the insults he had heaped upon them by an attack upon the papal residence in the castle of Leo, and upon the imperial camp in front of the city, but were repelled with sore loss. Soon thereafter, inA.D.1155, the emperor made preparations for returning home, leaving everything else to the pope. The relations between the two became more and more strained from day to day. The Lombards, too, once again rebelled. Frederick therefore inA.D.1158 made his second expedition to Rome. On the Roncalian plains he held a great assembly which laid down to the Lombards as well as to the pope the imperial prerogatives. Hadrian would have given utterance to his wrath by thundering an anathema, but he was restrained by the hand of death.

§ 96.15. The cardinals of the hierarchical party electedAlexander III.,A.D.1159-1181, those of the imperial party, Victor IV. A synod convened by the emperor at Pavia inA.D.1160 decided in favour of Victor, who was now formally recognised. Meanwhile Milan threw off the yoke that had been laid upon her. After an almost two years’ siege the emperor took the city inA.D.1162 and razed it to the ground. From France whither he had fled, Alexander, inA.D.1163, launched his anathema against the emperor and his pope. The latter died inA.D.1164, and Frederick had Paschalis III. (†A.D.1168) chosen his successor; but inA.D.1165, Alexander returning from France, pressed on in advance of him and was acknowledged by the Roman senate. Now for the third time inA.D.1166, Frederick crossed the Alps. A small detachment of troops that had been sent in advance to accompany the imperial pope to Rome under the leadership of the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz, in a bloody battle at Monte Porzio inA.D.1167 utterly destroyed a Roman army of twenty times its size. Frederick then himself hasted forward. After an eight days’ furious assault the fortress of Leo surrendered, and Paschalis was able to perform theTe Deumin St. Peter’s. The Transtiberines, too, after Alexander had sought safety in flight, soon took the oath of fealty to the emperor upon a guarantee of imperial protection of their republic. But at the very climax of his success “the fate of Sennacherib” befell him. The Roman malaria during the hot August became a deadly fever plague, thinned the lines of his army and forced him to withdraw. So weakened was he that he could not even assert his authority in Lombardy, but had to return to Germany inA.D.1168. The emperor’s disaster told also unfavourably upon the fortunes of his pope, whose successor Calixtus III. was quite disregarded. InA.D.1174 Frederick again went down into Italy and engaged upon a decisive battle with the confederate cities of Lombardy, but inA.D.1176 at Legnano he suffered a complete defeat, in consequence of which he agreed at the Congress of Venice, inA.D.1177, to acknowledge the freedom of the Lombard cities, abandoned the imperial claims upon Rome, and recognised Alexander III., who was also present there, as the rightful pope, kissing his feet and holding his stirrup according to custom. Rome, which he had not seen for nearly eleven years, would no longer shut her gates against the pope. Welcomed by senate and people, he made his public entrance into the Lateran in MarchA.D.1178, where in the following year he gathered together 300 bishops in theThird Lateran Council(the 11th œcumenical), in order by their advice to heal the wounds which the schism of the church had made. Here also, in order to prevent double elections in time to come, it was resolved that for a valid papal election two-thirds of the whole college of cardinals must be agreed. The right of concurrence assigned by the decree of Nicholas II. inA.D.1059 to the people and emperor was treated as antiquated and forgotten, and was not even alluded to.

§ 96.16. Even before his victory over the powerful Hohenstaufen, Alexander III. during his exile won a yet more brilliant success in England. King Henry II.,A.D.1154-1189, wished to establish again the supremacy of the state over church and clergy, and thought that he would have a pliant tool in carrying out his plans inThomas à Becket, whom he made archbishop of Canterbury, inA.D.1162. But as primate of the English church, Thomas proved a vigorous upholder of hierarchical principles. Instead of the accommodating courtier, the king found the archbishop immediately upon his consecration the bold asserter of the claims of the church. The jovial man of the world became at once the saintly ascetic. At a council at Tours inA.D.1163, he returned into the pope’s own hand the pallium with which an English prince had invested him in name of the king, resigning also his archiepiscopal dignity, that he might receive these directly as a papal gift. Straightway began the conflict between the king and his former favourite. Henry summoned a diet at Clarendon, where he obtained the approval of the superior clergy for his anti-hierarchical propositions; Thomas also for a time withstood, promising at last, when urged on all sides, to assent to the constitutions, but refusing to sign the document when it was placed before him. The king now ordered a process of deposition to be executed against him, and Thomas then fled to France, where the pope was at that time residing. The pope released him from his promise, condemned the Constitutions of Clarendon, and threatened the king with anathema and interdict. At last, after protracted negotiations, inA.D.1170 by means of a personal interview on the frontiers of Normandy, a reconciliation was effected; by which, however, neither the king nor the archbishop renounced their claims. Thomas now returned to England and threatened with excommunication all bishops who should agree to the Constitutions of Clarendon. Four knights seized upon an unguarded word of the king which he had uttered in passion, and murdered the archbishop at the altar inA.D.1170. Alexander canonized the martyr to Hildebrandism, and the king was so sorely pressed by the pope, his own people and his rebellious sons, that he consented to do penance humbly at the tomb of his deadly sainted foe, and submitted to be scourged by the monks.Becket’s bones, for which a special chapel was reared at Canterbury, were visited by crowds of pilgrims until Henry VIII., when he had broken with Rome (§139, 4), formally arraigned the saint as a traitor, had his name struck out of the calendar and his ashes scattered to the winds.278—Thus byA.D.1178 Alexander III. had risen to the summit of ecclesiastical power; but in Rome itself as well as in the Church States, he remained as powerless politically as before. Soon, therefore, after the great council he again quitted the city for a voluntary exile, and never saw it more. His three immediate successors, too,Lucius III.(†A.D.1185),Urban III.(†A.D.1187), andGregory VIII.(†A.D.1187), were elected, consecrated and buried outside of Rome.Clement III.(†A.D.1191) was the first to enter the Lateran again inA.D.1188, on the basis of a compromise which acknowledged the republican constitution under the papal superiority. Meanwhile Frederick I., without regarding the protest of the pope as liege lord of the Sicilian crown, had inA.D.1186 consummated the fateful marriage of his son Henry with Constance, the posthumous daughter of king Roger, and aunt of his childless grandson William II. (†A.D.1194), and thus the heiress of the great Norman kingdom of Italy. From the crusade which he then undertook inA.D.1189 Frederick never returned (§94, 3). His successor,Henry VI.,A.D.1190-1197, compelled the new popeCœlestine III.,A.D.1191-1198, to crown him emperor inA.D.1191, conquered the inheritance of his wife, pushed back the boundaries of the Church States to the very gates of Rome, and asserted his imperial rights even over the city of Rome itself. He pressed on to the realizing of the scheme for making the German crown together with the imperial dignity for ever hereditary in his house. The princes of the empire inA.D.1196 elected his son Frederick II., when scarcely two years old, as king of the Romans. He then thought under the pretext of a crusade to conquer Greece, to which he had laid groundless claims of succession, but while upon the way his plans were overthrown by his sudden death at Messina.

§ 96.17.Innocent III.,A.D.1198-1216.—After the death of Alexander III. the power and reputation of the Holy See had fallen into the lowest degradation. Then the cardinal deacon, Lothair Count of Segni in Anagni, succeeded inA.D.1198 in his 37th year, under the name of Innocent III., and raised the papacy again to a height of power and glory never reached before. In point of intellect and power of will he was not a whit behind Gregory VII., while in culture (§102, 9), scholarship, subtlety and adroitness he far excelled him. His piety, too, his moral earnestness, his enthusiasm and devotion to the church and the theocratical interest of the chair of St. Peter, were at least as powerful and decidedly purer, deeper and more spiritual than Gregory’s. And in addition to all these great endowments he enjoyed an invariable good fortune which never forsook him. His first task was the restoration of the Church States and his political prestige in Rome. In both these directions he was favoured by the sudden death of Henry VI. and the internal disorders of the Capitoline government of that time. On the very day of his enthronement the imperial prefect tendered him the oath of fealty and the Capitol did homage to him as the superior. And also before the second year had passed the Church States in their fullest extent were restored by the expulsion of the greater and smaller feudal lords who had been settled there by Henry VI. Rome was indeed once more the scene of wild party conflicts which forced the pope inA.D.1203 to fly to Anagni. He was able, however, to return inA.D.1204 and to conclude a definite and decisive peace with the Commune inA.D.1205, according to the terms of which the many-headed senate resigned, and a single senator or podestà nominated by the pope was entrusted with the executive authority. Meanwhile Innocent had been gaining brilliant successes beyond the limits of the States of the Church. These were won first of all in Sicily. The widow of Henry VI. had her son Frederick of four years old, after his father’s death, crowned king in Palermo. Unadvised and helpless, pressed upon all sides, she sought protection from Innocent, which he granted upon her renouncing the ecclesiastical privileges previously claimed by the king and making acknowledgment of the papal suzerainty. Dying inA.D.1198, Constance transferred to him the guardianship of her son, and the pope justified the confidence placed in him by the excellent and liberal education which he secured for his ward, as well as by the zeal and success with which he restored rest and peace to the land. In Germany, Philip of Swabia, Frederick’s uncle, was appointed to carry on the government in the name of his Sicilian nephew during his minority. The condition of Germany, however, demanded the direct control of a firm and vigorous ruler. The princes, therefore, insisted upon a new election, for which Philip also now appeared as candidate. The votes were split between two rivals; the Ghibellines voting for Philip,A.D.1198-1208, and the Guelph party forOtto IV.of Brunswick,A.D.1198-1218. The party of the latter referred the decision to the pope. For three years he delayed giving judgment, then he decided in favour of the Guelph, who paid for the preference by granting all the demands of the pope, and calling himself king by the grace of God and the pope. The States of the Church were thus represented as including the Duchy of Spoleto, and in the election of bishops the church was freed from the influence of the state. ByA.D.1204, however, Philip’s power and repute had risen to such a pitch that even the pope found himself obliged to take into account the altered position of matters. A papal court of arbitration at Rome to which both claimants had agreed to submit, was on the point of giving its decision unequivocally in favour of the Hohenstaufen, when the murder of Philip by Otto of Wittelsbach, inA.D.1208, rendered it void. Otto IV. was now acknowledged by all, and inA.D.1209 he was crowned by the pope after new concessions had been made. But as Roman emperor he either would not or could not perform what he had promised before and at his coronation. He took to himself the possessions of Matilda as well as other parts of the States of the Church, and was not prevented from pursuing his victorious campaign in Southern Italy by the anathema which Innocent thundered against him inA.D.1210. Then Innocent called to mind the old rights of his former pupil to the German crown, and insisted that they should be given effect to. InA.D.1212, Frederick II., now in his eighteenth year, accepted the call, was received in Germany with open arms, and was crowned inA.D.1215 at Aachen. Otto could not maintain his position against him, and so withdrew to his hereditary possessions, and died inA.D.1218.

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