Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology, into which his name was introduced in 1584 by Gregory XIII. His translation, May 4th. Authorities: — His life by Paul Bernried, canon of Ratisbon (d. 1120); also the annals of Lambert of Hersfeld or of Aschaffenburg (1077). A life by Nicolas, cardinal of Aragon (d. 1362); another by Pandolf of Pisa (circ. 1 130). Benzo, bishop of Alba, Panegyricus rhythm^ in Henricum IV., a violent opponent, the Epistles of Gregory, himself. Bonizo, bishop of Sutri, Sigeber of Glembours and other historians of the time. ] It is impossible in the brief compass of such an article S. Gregory VIL as can here be devoted to Gregory VII., to give in anything like fulness the life of a man, whose history is that of contemporary Europe.
Gregory was a man whom many modern historians have misunderstood. He has been exhibited to the detestation of mankind as a monster of ambition and priestly arrogance. That his acts savoured of harshness, and that, on more occasions than one, he fell into fatal mistakes, can scarcely be disputed, but we read his character wrong if we attribute his actions to such mean motives as ambition or arrogance. From first to last, Hildebrand was governed by zeal for the glory of God, and the purification of the Church, and to him the only means that lay open for effecting his purpose, was the complete emancipation of the Church from the fatal subserviency into which it had been brought by the well-intentioned but dangerous precedents adopted by the Emperor Henry III., at a time when the papacy had fallen into the lowest depths of degradation, and when only the interference of the secular arm could lift its glory out of the mire.
Upon the death of John XVIII. in 1033, so little regard did his brother, the Count of Tusculum, then all potent in Rome, deem it necessary to pay to appearances, that he directed the election and consecration of his son, Theophylact, a boy of ten or twelve years old, to the chair of S. Peter.1 The unhappy youth was consecrated under the title of Benedict IX., and soon exemplified the unfitness of the selection by the giddy and precipitous manner in which, as soon as his years admitted it, he plunged into every species of debauchery and crime.2 At length, as if deter1 “ Puer ferine d ecennis."—Radolf Glaber. “ Ordinatus quidam puer aunorum circiter duodecim contra jus, fasque, quem sciliet sola pecunia auri et argenti plus comm en davit, quam aetas aut sanctitas." — Ibid. 3 “ Cujus vita quam turpis, quam fceda, quamqu execranda extiterit, honresco referre.” — Victor III. Dialog. “Post multa turpia adalteria et homicidia manibus suis perpetrata, postremo,” &c. — Bonino. mined to outrage public feeling to the utmost, he had the madness to think of marrying his first cousin. The father of the damsel refused to permit the marriage unless Benedict should resign the throne of S. Peter. The young pope sold the papacy to the arch-priest John Gratian, and consecrated him with his own hands as his successor, by the name of Gregory VI. Another party in Rome at once elected and consecrated a rival pontiff, Sylvester III., and then Benedict, finding his intended spouse withheld from him, and not feeling himself bound in honour by his bargain with Gratian, after an absence of three months, re-appeared in Rome, and asserted his former pretensions. But though he succeeded in occupying the Lateran [St. John Lateran, the pope’s cathedral in Rome] palace, he was not able to drive either of his competitors entirely out of the city. The world, therefore, beheld for some time the shameful spectacle of three popes opposed to each other, living at the same time in different palaces, and officiating at different altars of the papal city.
Averse as the Romans usually and naturally were to German control, the name of the young and energetic Henry III., who now filled the imperial throne, became familiar in their mouths as that of a desired and expected deliverer; and in a rhythmical saying which passed from mouth to mouth, he was implored to come, and, as the vice-gerent of the Almighty, rescue the Church of Rome from the climax of degradation it had reached.1 Henry III. entered Italy in 1046, and summoned a Council to meet at Sutri to settle the affairs of the Church. The Council deposed all three popes; and with the view of preventing, for the future, the scandals which had marked the election of the pontiffs for a long period, Henry exacted of the Romans that the elections should be placed for the 1 “ Una Sunamitis nupsit tribus maritis, Rex Henrice, Omnipotentis vice, Solve connubium triforme dubmm.,r — Annalista Saxo..S'. Gregory VII.
future under his entire control, and that no one should presume to nominate a pastor to the Apostolic see without the previous sanction of the imperial authority.1 Thereupon Henry having assumed the green mantle, the golden circlet, and the ring, which designated the dignity of Patrician of Rome, took the hand of Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, led him to the papal chair, and required the Church to acknowledge him as the new pope, under the title of Clement II. This estimable pontiff died, almost certainly by poison, in1047, and he had scarcely breathed his last, when the Tusculan faction arose once more in arms, and summoning their wretched creature, Benedict IX., from his retirement, seated the unhappy man once more upon the throne of S. Peter; a position in which he was enabled, by the swords of his partizans, to maintain himself during several months, whilst the evils and disorders to which Henry flattered himself he had put an effectual stop, began to reign anew. Many, therefore, of those who had most indignantly murmured at the complete subjection of the Church to an imperial master, were driven, by their sad circumstances, once more to entreat that master to become the arbiter of her fate. Henry, truly anxious to make a good selection, fixed his choice on Poppo, bishop of Brixen, who was installed under the name of Damasus II. But Damasus closed his earthly career within the brief space of three or four weeks from his formal assumption of the duties of his office; and the rapidity with which the one event succeeded the other, could not but tend to corroborate the suspicions already current respecting the decease of Clement, as well as to give rise to similar ones on the present occasion.2 Henry 1 “ Ut ad ejus mutum sancta Romana Ecclesia nunc ordinetur, ac prseter ejus auctoritatem apostolic® sedi nemo prorsus eligat sacerdotem.” — Damian. OJ>usc. 2 “Hunc pontificem (Damasum IX.) veneno a Benedicto IX. propinato extinctum assent Benno.” — Pagi, Breviar.
found among his German prelates, whom he first sounded on the subject, a general reluctance to accept a dignity which, if splendid, was fraught with peril. He therefore appointed Bruno, bishop of Toul, a kinsman, who ascended the Apostolic throne under the title of Leo IX. It will be seen by this sketch that the emperor had created a dangerous precedent, driven to it by the exigencies of the times; but it was one, the full danger of which was not slow in manifesting itself. He had converted the Church into a department of the state. The Pope was the creature of the emperor, as before he had been the creature of the faction which had set him up.
There was a growing party in Rome which trembled for the Church, as they saw that the imperial power was thus overshadowing her, and this party desired to emancipate the Church from imperial control. It was not only the Papacy which, by the zeal of Henry III, had been made subservient to the State, but throughout the empire the whole Church was more or less under State control, and was employed as a political rather than as a religious engine. In Germany and Italy the bishoprics and abbacies were donatives of the crown, and the emperor gave these ecclesiastical offices to his friends, or if needy, sold them to the highest bidder, and the bishops, to indemnify themselves for the purchase of their sees, sold the benefices in their patronage, so that simony had infected the whole of the German and Italian Church. It is obvious that in such a condition of affairs the moral authority of the Church languished, and that for a restoration of discipline and a reformation of abuses, the right of investiture by the monarch must be done away with. The princes claimed to confer bishoprics by the outward symbols of ring and staff, and the people would speedily be led to suppose that spiritual jurisdiction sprang from the crown. Gregory VII.
The history of Gregory VII. is the history of his warfare against the encroachment of imperial power upon spiritualities. It was not ambition to exalt himself which forced the great pope into contest with the emperor, it was zeal for the Church of God, over which he had been appointed overseer. We may regret the manner in which the contest was carried on, but we are bound to respect the motive which forced the pope to wage it.
Another of the purposes that animated Hildebrand was the abolition of clerical marriage, and the elevation of the moral tone of the clergy. Several of his predecessors had pronounced against it, but their words had fallen on ears unwilling to receive them, and neither the bishops nor the princes had cared to enforce their mandates. The battle that had to be fought was that of purity against impurity, of holiness against corruption. The clergy in the West who were married, were conscious that they had transgressed the decrees of popes and synods; and the priests who had habituated themselves to trample upon one precept bearing the impress of the Church’s authority, had passed the great moral barrier which separates the systematically, though imperfectly, dutiful from the habitually godless and profane; the consistency of their character was marred; and their progress to the worst excesses of vice, perhaps accomplished, by an easier transition than had been their first bold step from obedience to its opposite. One of two courses was open to the reforming pope, either to remove the married priest from his position of fellowship with every class of the licentious and profane, by adopting the less stringent code of the Greek Church, or to combat clerical incontinence by force. Seizing the means in his power, Gregory VII. adopted the latter cause, and set himself to achieve, and did achieve, a most important reformation.
To estimate aright the character of this great pope we must appreciate the magnitude of the opposition he encountered. It is a mistake to pass over lightly this opposition, rather let us note its vehemence, its universality, and then we shall be able to see how great was the resolution of that one man to master and crush it. Hildebrand, if not a Roman by birth, was an adopted Roman by education. He was of humble origin. His father was a carpenter in Saona, a small town on the southern border of Tuscany. His name implies a Teutonic descent. His youth was passed in a monastic house in Rome, S. Mary on the Aventine, of which his uncle was abbot. The disposition of Hildebrand was congenial to his education. He was a monk from his boyhood. Mortification in the smallest things taught him that self-command and rigour which he was afterwards to enforce on mankind. If he was stern to others, he was not gentle to himself. Rome was no favourable school for monastic perfection; yet perhaps the gross and revolting licentiousness of the city, and the abuses in the monastic system, may have hardened his austerity. Arrived at manhood, he determined to seek some better school for his ardent devotion, and to suppress in some cloister affording more shelter from temptation the yet mutinous passions of his adolescence. There were still, 'in the general degeneracy of the monastic institutes, some renowned for their sanctity. At no period were there wanting men who preserved in all their rigour the rules of Benedict or Columban. Among these was Odilo, abbot of Clugny, in Burgundy. With him Hildebrand found a congenial retreat, and he was strongly tempted to spend his days in the peaceful shades of Clugny. But holy retirement was not the vocation of his energetic spirit. Hildebrand is again in Rome; he is attached to that one of the three conflicting popes, whose MayasO S. Gregory VII 357 cause was most sure to command the sympathy of a man of devout feeling rigidly attached to canonical order. When Gregory VI., compelled to abdicate the papacy, retired into Germany, Hildebrand re-appears as the counsellor of Leo IX., then of Nicholas II., and of Alexander II. For a long period in the papal annals, Hildebrand alone seems permanent. Pope after pope dies, disappears; Hildebrand still stands unmoved. One by one they fall off, Clement, Damasus, Leo, Victor, Nicolas. The only one who rules for ten years is Alexander II.
While Hildebrand was thus rising to the height of power, and becoming more and more immersed in the affairs of the world, which he was soon to rule, S. Peter Damiani, his aged colleague under the reforming pope, S. Leo IX. (see April 19th), beheld his progress with amazement and regret. The similitude and contrast between these two men is characteristic. Damiani was still a monk at heart, and he had struggled with restless impatience against the burden of the episcopate laid on his shoulders by Pope Stephen. Damiani saw the monk in Hildebrand disappearing in the statesman, and trembled for his salvation. Hildebrand could not comprehend the shrinking of Damiani from the fore-front of the battle, when the Church was in peril. They separated to tread different paths; Damiani to subdue the world within himself; Hildebrand to subdue the world without.
Pope Alexander II. died April 21st, 1073. The clergy were assembled in the Lateran Church to celebrate his obsequies; Hildebrand, as archdeacon, was performing the mournful service. At once from the whole multitude of clergy and people burst a simultaneous cry, “Hildebrand is pope \” “S. Peter chooses the Archdeacon Hildebrand !” The archdeacon rushed towards the pulpit to allay the tumult, and repel the proffered honour; but Cardinal Hugh the White came forward and made himself heard above the acclamations of the multitude. “Well know ye,” he said, “that since the days of the blessed Leo this prudent archdeacon has exalted the Roman see, and delivered this city from many perils. Wherefore we, the bishops and cardinals, with one voice, elect him as the pastor and bishop of your souls.” The voice of Hugh was drowned in universal cries, “ It is the will of S. Peter; Hildebrand is pope.” Hildebrand was immediately led to the papal throne, arrayed with the scarlet robe, crowned with the papal tiara, and reluctant and in tears, enthroned in the chair of S. Peter. Hildebrand might well weep. The future before him was black with storm. Never did the Church need a firmer hand on the helm, never could a pope show firmness with less safety to himself. It was a momentary weakness. Then, like S. Peter, who first girt his fishers coat about him, and plunged into the waves, Hildebrand prepared himself for conflict, shook off his fears, and boldly struck out for himself the course which conscience indicated. He commenced his reign with cautiously securing an uncontested title. The decree of Nicolas II. had acknowledged that, after the nomination by the cardinals, the ratification by the clergy and people of Rome, the assent of the emperor was necessary to complete the full legal title. Hildebrand despatched messengers to Germany to inform Henry IV. of his elevation, and to solicit his assent Gregory, bishop of Vercelli, chancellor of Italy, was sent to Rome with the imperial ratification, and Hildebrand ascended the throne of S. Peter, under the title of Gregory VII., which he assumed in compliment to his unfortunate teacher and friend Gratian, who had been elevated to the chair of S. Peter by that name, but who had been deposed for simony.
M*y 2S-] iS. Gregory VI L The first official act of Gregory was to send Hugh the White as his legate [an official representative sent by the pope] into Spain, to insist on the abolition of the Mozarabic liturgy, and the reception in its place of the Roman ritual. But this mission had a further object, a more startling assertion of right, new to the king of Spain. Gregory in a letter addressed on April 30th, 1073, to the grandees of Spain, and committed to his newly-appointed legate, wrote: “Ye are not ignorant that the kingdom of Spain was of old time the property of S. Peter, nor that, notwithstanding its long occupation by Pagans, it still belongs of right to no mortal, but to the apostolic see.’7 And therefore he granted to a certain Count Eboli of Roceio as much land as he could conquer from the Moors [the Muslims of North Africa and Spain], to be held by him as a fief of the see of Rome [a bishop’s “see” is his diocese, named from his seat (Latin sedes)]. “ Of this we warn you all that, unless ye are prepared to recognize S. Peter's claim upon those territories, we will oppose you, by exerting our apostolic authority to forbid your attacking them.” The claim thus advanced by Gregory was new to those to whom it was addressed, and was unsupported by documentary or even traditionary proof. But the Spanish princes, feeling, no doubt, that some advantages would accrue to themselves from the admission of such a claim, do not appear to have opposed it. Engaged, as they were, in a perpetual holy war, the more complete identification of their cause with that of the Church would enable them, when occasion required it, to appeal, the more confidently, to the zeal and courage of their subjects. Almost the first public act of Gregory VII. was a declaration of implacable war against simony and the marriage of the clergy. The decree of the synod held in Rome in the eleventh month of his pontificate is not extant, but in its memorable provisions it went beyond the sternest of his predecessors. It almost invalidated all sacraments performed by simoniacal or married priests. If it did not declare that baptism, absolution, and the consecration of the Host were no baptisms, no absolutions, and no consecrations, when performed by their hands, by forbidding the laity to acknowledge them, it necessarily encouraged the idea that they were so; and thus directly led to the horrible impieties which we shall have shortly to describe. The laity were thrown into the position of judges of the priesthood and punishers of its irregularities. The same course had been adopted by Pope Victor at Milan, who had encouraged Ariald to stir up the people to plunder, mutilate, and expel the married clergy, with some success, and this policy was now to be applied over the whole empire.
Throughout Western Christendom these decrees met with furious or with sullen and obstinate opposition. Siegfried, archbishop of Mainz, would not promulgate the decree till he was formally threatened with the papal censure. Even then he attempted to temporize. He did not summon the clergy at once to show their obedience; he allowed them six months of delay for consideration. A synod met at Erfurt. The partisans of the marriage of the clergy assembled in prevailing numbers. Their language was unmeasured. They appealed to custom, to Scripture, to reason. Some of the more violent, with confused but intelligible menace, called for vengeance on him who dared to promulgate this execrable decree. The affrighted primate [the leading bishop of a country] expressed his readiness to appeal to Rome, and to endeavour to obtain some mitigation at least of the obnoxious law. But the zeal of Hildebrand would brook no modification or delay. And in the matter of his opposition to simony, he carried most consciences with him. Either the conflict about appointment to benefices must be fought at once, or the Church would sink into utter subserviency S. Gregory VIL and degradation.1 Gregory justly saw that it was impossible to suppress the wretched traffic in holy things so long as the power to confer and sell spiritual benefices lay in the hands of the temporal sovereign. In a council held at Rome, at the beginning of the year 1075, Gregory abrogated by one decree the whole right of investiture by the temporal princes. The prohibition was couched in the most comprehensive terms. It absolutely deposed every bishop, abbot, or inferior ecclesiastic, who should receive investiture of his spiritual benefice from any lay person. And if any emperor or nobleman should presume to grant such investiture of bishopric or inferior dignity, he was to be excommunicated. From this moment Henry IY. and Gregory VIL became resolute, declared, and remorseless enemies. Henry considered that the pope was robbing him of a cherished prerogative, and an important element of political power, one indispensable to his authority. Gregory regarded the emperor as his opponent in the reformation of the Church. Each was determined to put forth his full powers, each to enlist in his party the subjects of the other. Henry was not in a condition tamely to endure what he considered to be an aggression of the pope. He was supported by powerful allies, pledged by their interests to his cause, and incensed by the uncompromising manner in which the pope asserted his supre1 We may take, almost at haphazard, a passage from the history of the past in Italy, to instance the flagrant abuses that arose out of lay investiture. In 938 Hugh of Provence made one of his bastards bishop of Piacenza; another, archdeacon, with hopes of succession to the archbishopric of Milan. A relative, Hildnin, who had been expelled from his see in France, he made archbishop of Milan. He gave the bishoprics of Trent, Verona, and Mantua, to the ambitions Manasseh of Arles. Berengar, Marquis of Ivrea, bribed Adelard, the officer of Manasseb, into treason by promising him the bishopric of Como; but instead of fulfilling his engagement, gave the bishopric to Waldo, a lawless robber, who plundered the highways, and blinded his captives, and to Adelard he gave the see of Reggio.
macy. The German Church, as shown at Erfurt, had a strong inclination to independence. Of the more powerful prelates some were old, some irresolute; but some, sharing in the condemnation of the emperor, were committed to his side. Siegfried of Mainz was timid and wavering. By the same Roman synod Lietmar, archbishop of Bremen, Werner of Strasburg, Herman of Bamberg, Henry of Spires, William of Pava, Cunibert of Turin, Dionysius of Piacenza, besides the three bishops of Constance, Zeitz, and Lausanne, were interdicted, as simoniacs, from the performance of their functions. Few of the bishops were disposed, by denying the legality of lay investiture, to imperil their own right to the estates of their churches. But the most determined and reckless resistance was among the partisans of the married clergy. Siegfried, yielding to the urgent commands of the pope, called a second synod at Mainz, and displayed the mandate of the apostolic see, that the bishops in their several dioceses should compel the priests to renounce their wives. The whole assembly rose; so resolute was their language, so fierce their gestures, that the archbishop again trembled for his life. He declared that from thenceforth he would not concern himself in such perilous matters. At Passau Bishop Altmann, on S. Stephen’s Day, 1074, mounted the pulpit, and read the papal brief. He would have been torn in pieces but for the intervention of some of the powerful citizens. Bishop Henry of Coire hardly escaped with his life when he promulgated the decree. But the execution of the decree was deft to the people. They were constituted by the dangerous fourth clause the judges and executioners of their clergy. And such an invitation, thus made, was, of course, readily and generally attended to. The occasion seemed to the selfish, the irreverent, and the profane, to sanction the gratification 61 Gregory VII.
of all the bad feelings, with which persons of those dispositions must ever regard the ministers of the Church; and priests, whose disobedience to the papal authority furnished any excuse for such conduct, were openly beaten, abused, and insulted by their rebellious flocks.1 Some were forced to fly with the loss of all that they possessed, some were deprived of limbs, and some were put to death in lingering torments. And to lengths, even more horrible than these, did the popular violence thus unhappily sanctioned proceed. Too many were delighted to find what they could consider as a religious excuse for neglecting religion itself, for depriving their children of baptism, and for making the holy sacrament of the altar the subject of the most degrading mockery, or of the most atrocious profanation.2 Many other distressing scenes occurred. The wives of the priests who had been married to them with ring and religious rite, and notarial deed, were torn from them and driven forth with the indignity of harlots, their children were degraded as bastards. In some cases these 1 “ Plebeius errot, quam semper qusesivit, opportunitate adept a, usque ad furoris sui satietatem injuncta sibi, ut ait, in cleri corum contumelias obedientia, crudeliter abutitur. Hi.. quocumque prodeunt, clamores insultantium, digitos ostendentium, colaphos pulsantium proferunt. Alii... egeni et pauperes profugiunt. Alii membris mutilati... Alii per longos cruciatus superbe necati.” Epist. cujusdam in Marlen. et Durand. Thesaurus Nov. Anecdotor. 2 “Quot parvuli salutari lavacro violenter frandati. Quot omnis conditionis homines a secundae purification is, quas in pcenitentia et reconciliatione consistit, remedio repulsi.” Epist. citat., M. et D. T. I., p. 240. ‘‘Laid sacra mysteria temerant, et de bis disputant, infantes baptizant, sordido humore aurium pro sacro oleo et christmate utentes, in extremo vitae viaticum Dominicum, et usitatum ecclesiae obsequium sepulturae a presbyteris conjugatis accxpere parvipendunt, decimas presbyteris deputatas igni cremant; et ut in uno caetera perpendas laid corpus Domini a presbyteris conjugatis consecratum, saepe pedibus conculcaverunt, et sanguinem Domini voluntarie effuderunt.” — Sigebert Gemblac, an. 1074. At Milan the people were taugbt that if they received the Communion from married priests they ate and drank to their own damnation.” — Vit. Arialdi. wretched women committed suicide, they flung themselves into the fires that consumed their homes, or were found dead in their beds from grief, or by their own hands. It was not only in Germany that the Hildebrandine decrees encountered fierce opposition. At the Council of Paris, when the decree was read, there was a loud outcry of appeal to S. Paul's Epistle to Timothy. The abbot of Pont Ishre dared to say that the pope's mandate must be obeyed. He was dragged out of the assembly, spat upon, struck in the face, and hardly rescued alive. The archbishop of Rouen, when endeavouring to read the decrees in his cathedral, was assailed by a shower of stones, and compelled to secure his safety by flight.1 Nor was this extraordinary; for it seems that the system of clerical marriage was so completely established and recognized in Normandy, that churches had become property heritable by the sons, and even by the daughters, of the clergy who enjoyed them.2 And this fact may be taken as as indication of the general condition of the Gallican Church, in which the process of secularization had made further strides than in her German sister. At the same time the French king continued to practise a simoniacal traffic in bishoprics and abbeys without remorse or shame. And in Germany Henry IY. sold or gave away bishoprics and abbeys in insolent defiance of the mandate of the pope, and to the grief of all right-thinking men.3 1 “Fugiensque de ecclesia, Deus, venerunt gentes In hsereditatem tuam ! fortiter clamavit.” — Ordericus Vitalis, lib. iv. 2 Gaufredus Grossus, in Vita Bernardi Ab. Tironiensis Mon, <j. vi. 8 When Pope Gregory had deposed Hermann, bishop of Bamberg, for simony, Henry nominated in his room, and invested with the sfee, one Rupert, a. man of infamous report among the people, being regarded as a mere creature of the king, and an instigator and abettor of all the disgraceful actions ascribed to Henry by the general voice. On the day immediately following Rupert’s nomination, while the king sat in council with his nobles on the disposal of the vacant abbey of Fulda, a crowd of abbots and monks bid publicly and unblushIn April, 1074, Gregory wrote to William the Conqueror, in the tone of a friend, adjuring him to seek the glory of God above all things in the government of the country which he had acquired. But neither in this, nor in an epistle written on the same day, with the view of supporting the above, to William’s queen, Mathilda, did Gregory make any allusion to his recent decrees; he did not, it would seem, conceive that his footing in England was sufficiently firm to warrant their promulgation. At any rate those relating to simony would hardly have been needed there. Nor did his friend Lanfranc, though he held in the following year a council in S. Paul’s for the reformation of the Church, venture, on this occasion, openly to promulgate them. And even the council of Winchester in 1076 — while enacting that no married priests should be admitted to orders — decreed that priests in burghs or villages who had wives already should be permitted to retain them. The ultimate adhesion of the Anglican Church to the principle of clerical celibacy was slow; for even in 1237, the council held in S. Paul’s cathedral, was obliged to pass a canon to prevent benefices becoming hereditary.1 The same may be said of the Churches of Spain and Hungary. In the former of these countries, the papal legate, Richard, abbot of Marseilles, was assailed by the clergy with menaces and outrages when attempting to enforce the observance of celibacy among them in 1089, at ingly before him, as at an auction, for that much coveted dignity. Some, says Lambert of Aschaffenhurg, proffered mountains of gold; some offered to make over to the crown large portions of the territory they sought to possess; some undertook to perform greater services than the fief had been accustomed to pay; promises were lavished without moderation or modesty. Even Henry was disgusted with the scene, and on this occasion acted with good feeling. Perceiving, amid the greedy crowd, a monk of Hersfeld, who bad come to court upon some business of his abbey, and took no part in the nefarious traffic, the king beckoned him to approach, suddenly invested him with the pastoral staff, and hailed him abbot.
1 Maithew Paris, Chron. sub ann. 1237. the council of Burgos. And in the latter, even as late as 1092, the synod assembled at Szabulcha, under Ladislaus, prohibited to priests and deacons second marriages, as well as marriages with widows, or with those who had been divorced; but decreed that to priests who had contracted a first and legitimate marriage indulgence must be given. Thus, everywhere, in Italy, in Rome itself, in Spain, in France, throughout Germany, the decrees of Gregory were received with the most vigorous and stubborn oppugnance, and where carried out, occasioned scenes full of scandal and sacrilege.
Gregory acknowledges in his letters the reluctance with which his decree was submitted to by the clergy, the tardiness of the bishops in enforcing its penalties. Yet, not for one moment did he hesitate in his purpose. In obeying what he considered to be his duty, he was rigid as a rock. His course aroused the most implacable animosity. There is no epithet of scorn, no imaginable charge of venality, incapacity, cruelty, or even licentiousness, which was not heaped upon him, and that even by bishops.
In the meantime the pope’s position in Rome was imperilled. Cencius, a descendant of the turbulent barons of the Romagna, had availed himself of the various towers, or strongholds, which he possessed in Rome, to subject his fellow-citizens to a regular system of oppression and plunder. For this he had been imprisoned by the prefect of the city, and censured by the pontiff; and considering both these measures in the light of deadly insults, he awaited an opportunity of revenge. Taking advantage of the estrangement which existed between the emperor and the pope, now grown into bitter hostility, possibly with the sanction of Henry, almost certainly with the connivance of Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna, Cencius planned a daring attempt S. Gregory VI L to gain possession of the person of the pope, and make himself master of Rome.
On the eve of Chris tmas-day whilst the pope was saying midnight mass in the Church of S. Maria Maggiore, the soldiers of Cencius burst in, rushed to the altar, and seized the pontiff. One fatal blow might have ended the life of Hildebrand, and changed the course of events; it glanced aside, and only wounded his forehead. Bleeding, stripped of his holy vestments, but patient and gentle, the pope was led away, and imprisoned in a strong tower. The rumour ran rapidly through the city; all the night trumpets pealed, bells tolled. The clergy broke off their services, and ran about the streets summoning the populace to rescue. At dawn of day the prison of the pope was surrounded by a multitude, roaring, angry, threatening vengeance. Cencius shuddered at his own deed. One faithful friend and one noble matron had followed the pope into the dungeon. The man had covered his shivering body with furs, and was cherishing his chilled feet in his bosom; the woman had bound up the wound in his head, and sat weeping beside him. Cencius, cowardly as he was cruel, threw himself on the mercy of the outraged pontiff, and was promptly pardoned.
Gregory was brought out, and was earned in triumph to the Lateran. Cencius and his kindred fled; their houses were razed by the indignant populace. Two weeks after, Jan. 8th, 1076, Gregory wrote to the Emperor Henry IV., complaining of his resistance to the decrees, and requiring him peremptorily to appear on the 22nd of February following, at Rome, to answer for his offences, in supporting and encouraging prelates excommunicated by the pope. Thus the king of the Germans was solemnly cited as a criminal to the bar of the papal tribunal. The legates who brought the message to the emperor were dismissed with ignominy. Henry resolved on wiping out the insult by dethroning the pope. Messengers were despatched with breathless haste to summon the prelates to Germany to meet at Worms on Septuagesima Sunday, Jan. 24th, The day appointed beheld a numerous assemblage of bishops and abbots in the appointed city. Siegfried, the primate of Germany, was attended by the bishops of Treves [Trier in Germany], Utrecht, Metz, Spires, Toul, Strasbourg, and many others. And when the assembly was seated, and the session opened in form, the unprincipled Hugh the White, who had acted so conspicuous a part in Gregory’s election, stood forward as his accuser. This unhappy man, by his repeated misconduct, had drawn down on himself, for the third time, the censures of the apostolic see, and feeling the breach irreconcileable, now regarded him, whom he had assisted in raising to the papal chair, with the most determined hostility. Hugh laid before the council a variety of letters, purporting to come from different archbishops and bishops, and from the cardinals, senate, and people of Rome; but which were, in truth, forgeries of his own, or of his employers. They were filled with complaints of the pontiff’s conduct, and with entreaties for his immediate expulsion from the apostolic throne. And then, as though in explanation of these epistles, the apostate cardinal read, before the assembly, a document which, professing to contain an account of Gregory’s life and manner, was filled with calamities the most unfounded and incredible. Henry, if not himself accessory to the guilt of the forgery, must have been, at any rate, too well informed to believe in the truth of the greater part of the cardinal’s assertions. Such misrepresentations, however, suited his purpose, and he therefore raised no question respecting the accuser’s veracity.
With loud, unanimous acclamation, the synod declared that Gregory VII. had forfeited the power of binding and loosing, he was no more Pope. The form of renunciation of allegiance was drawn up in the most explicit form. But two of them, Adalbert of Wurzburg, and Hermann of Metz, spoke out against the impropriety of condemning any prelate, much more the Pope, without his having been cited to appear, or heard in his own defence. But the urgency of William, bishop of Utrecht, one of Henry's most ardent partizans, prevailed upon them at length to add their signatures to those of their brethren; and the king himself placed his name at the head of the list. In Lombardy, Guibert, archbishop of Ravenna, and a large number of the clergy, joined in the revolt against Gregory. A synod held at Piacenza ratified the decree of Worms. A priest of the church of Parma, Roland by name, undertook to bear a copy of the acts of the two councils together with Henry's letters, to those whom they concerned in Rome; and setting forth and without delay to execute his mission, he arrived in the papal city at the moment in which the synod, to which Henry had been summoned, was meeting, in the second week in Lent [the forty days of fasting before Easter]. The council being assembled, the echoes of the solemn strain, “Veni Creator Spiritus,” and having scarcely died away amid the holy aisles of the Lateran, Roland suddenly stepped forward before the pontiff and his prelates. “ The king," said he, addressing Gregory, “ and the united bishops, as well of Germany as of Italy, transmit to thee this command— Come down without delay from the throne of S. Peter ! " And then, turning to the bishops and clergy present, “To you, brethren, it is commanded, at the feast of Pentecost, to present yourselves before the king, to receive a pope and father from his hands.” The synod in vehement indignation burst forth into an unanimous cry for judgment on the sovereign who had dared to trample on the Holy See. What follows exhibits in strange contrast puerility combined with power. Gravely, before the excited throng of bishops, Hildebrand produced an egg from his bosom, which had been found outside the church of S. Peter, and on which was visible in strange relief something like a serpent armed with sword and shield, attempting to rise, but falling back, twisting as in mortal agony. On this sight sat gazing the mute ecclesiastical senate, whilst the Pope, with the gravity of an ancient augur, proceeded to expound the sign. The serpent was the dragon of the Apocalypse raging against the Church; and in the same old Roman spirit, he drew the omen of victory from its discomfiture. The synod broke forth in a cry, “ Most holy Father, utter such a sentence against this blasphemer, this tyrant, as may crush him to the earth, and make him a warning to future ages ! ”
The formal sentence of excommunication was delayed till the next day. On the morning arrived letters from prelates of Germany and Italy, disclaiming the acts of the synod at Worms and Piacenza. The pontiff again took his seat in the Lateran, encircled by 1x0 bishops and abbots. The first sentence fell on the prelates who had concurred in the proceedings at Worms. They were suspended from their episcopal functions, interdicted from the holy Eucharist, unless in the hour of death, and after due penance. The prelates who met at Piacenza were condemned to the same punishment. Then Hildebrand pronounced sentence against the Emperor, interdicting him from the government of the whole realm of Germany and of Italy; absolving all Christians from the oaths which they had sworn to him, and forbidding all obedience to him as king. Henry heard in Utrecht, March 27, the sentence of the Pope. His first impression was that of dismay; but he soon recovered •51. Gregory VII.
himself, and affected to treat it with contempt. The first measure, which, when he had time to collect his thoughts, suggested itself, was that Gregory should be publicly excommunicated by some of the prelates of his court. And as Pibo, bishop of Toul, was suspected by him to waver in his adhesion to his cause, he resolved to put that prelate to the proof, by directing him to perform the ceremony on the following morning. Pibo durst not openly refuse; but he, together with Dietrich, bishop of Verdun, fled in the night from Utrecht, where the king then was. Ignorant of his flight, the king in the morning took his seat in the Cathedral, and, for some time, impatiently awaited his appearance. At length, the truth becoming known, and it being felt that every appearance of failure should, at this critical moment, be avoided, William of Utrecht himself pronounced the sentence, and poured forth from the altar a torrent of virulent abuse; calling Gregory perjured, an adulterer, a false apostle. One circumstance could not fail to strike those who were disposed to act aright without sufficient information to investigate for themselves the intricacies of the question at issue. All the habitually irreligious, all the notoriously profane, seemed to have attached themselves, as it were naturally, to the party of the king. The excommunicated nobles, the most worldly prelates, and the most dissolute of the clergy, the patrons and practisers of simony throughout the empire, were all ranged on Henry’s side: nor could thoughtful people well believe that a cause was that of zeal for the Church which gathered, as though by a natural process, to its support, all those by whom her laws were openly broken, or her authority was openly defied. Most strenuous amongst the opponents of Gregory was William, bishop of Utrecht, whose indecent violence had rudely shocked the religious feelings of the people in his excommunication of Gregory VII., in his cathedral. But a month had not intervened since that event when the irreverent prelate was seized with a rapid disease, and ended his life in a state of delirious despair, forbidding his friends to pray for one who was irretrievably lost. The sentence which had been pronounced at Utrecht was conveyed to Italy. A council met at Pavia, summoned by Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna, and it concurred in anathematizing Gregory.
But while these vain thunders had no effect on the rigid churchmen and the laity who adhered to the pope, the excommunication was working in the depths of the German mind, and mingling itself up with, and seeming to hallow all the other motives of jealousy, hatred and revenge, which prevailed in so many parts of the empire. A vast and formidable conspiracy began to organise itself. Henry saw on all sides of him hostility, disaffection, and desertion; the princes meditating revolt; the prelates either openly renouncing or shaken in their allegiance. Everything seemed blasted with a curse and turned against him. His strength ebbed daily away. An expedition into Saxony to quell the insurrection then ended in total and disgraceful failure. A diet met at Tribur (October 16th, ro76), near Darmstadt. Thither came Rudolf of Swabia, Otto of Saxony, Guelf of Bavaria, the two first of whom were rivals for the throne, if it should be vacant by the deposition of Henry. All his old enemies, all his revolted friends, the bishops who had opposed, the bishops who had consented, some even who had advised his lofty demeanour towards the Pope, appeared drawn together by their ambition, by their conscientious churchmanship, or by their base resolution to be on the stronger side. The two legates of the pope were present to lend their weight and sanction to the proceedings. On the other side of the Rhine, at Oppenheim, the Mayas-] S. Gregory VII 373 deserted Henry, with a few faithful nobles, and still fewer bishops, kept his diminished and still dwindling Court. The vigour of Henry's character seemed crushed by the universal defection. He sank into abject submission and accepted the hard terms the diet imposed upon him. The terms were that his conduct as Emperor should be investigated and judged by the supreme Pontiff, who was to hold a council at Augsburg for the purpose on the feast of the Purification in the ensuing year, and in the meantime to resign the insignia of royalty and disband his army. Henry bowed to his fate. He dismissed his councillors, disbanded his army, and sank into a private station.
But in this intolerable condition he could not remain; he could not endure the prospect of a trial before the Pontiff with his rebellious subjects as his accusers, in the heart of his own empire. He resolved to undergo, if it must be undergone, the deep humiliation of submission in Italy rather than the Diet of the empire, in the face, amid the scorn and triumph, of his revolted subjects. He resolved to anticipate the journey of the Pope to Germany. Before the feast of the Purification he must meet Gregory in Italy. But his design became known. The dukes of Bavaria and Carinthia, enemies of Henry, jealously watched the passes of the Alps. With difficulty Henry collected from his still diminishing partisans sufficient money to defray the expenses of his journey. With his wife and infant son, and one faithful attendant, the emperor began his journey. Nature seemed to conspire with the Pope against the fallen king. So hard a winter had not been known for years. The passage of Mont Cenis was blocked with snow. But the fatal day was hastening on; the king must reach Italy or forfeit the crown for ever. With incredible suffering and danger the icy pass was surmounted. The queen and her infant son were lowered from the summit in the skins of oxen, as in sledges. No sooner was the king’s unexpected arrival made known in Italy than the princes and the bishops assembled in great numbers, and received him with the highest honours; in a few days he found himself at the head of a formidable army. The great cause of his popularity with them was the notion that he had crossed the Alps to depose the Pope. He did not nndeceive them. He could not risk the total loss of Germany for the sake of their precarious favours. He hurried forward to Canossa, a fortress on a craggy hill, where was Gregory at the moment. On a dreary winter morning (Jan. 25, 1077), with the ground deep in snow, the king, the heir of a long line of emperors, was permitted to enter within the two outer of the three walls which girded the castle of Canossa. He had laid aside every mark of royalty; clad in the thin white linen dress of the penitent, he stood fasting, and blue with cold, at the door, in humble patience waiting on the pleasure of the Pope. But the gates did not unclose. A second day he stood cold, hungry, and mocked by vain hope. And yet a third day dragged on from morning to evening over the unsheltered head of the discrowned king. Every heart was moved except that of the stern Gregory. Even in the presence of the Pope there was low deep murmurs against his severity. The patience of Henry could endure no more; he took refuge in an adjacent chapel of S. Nicolas, where he found the Countess Mathilda, the great patroness and benefactress of Gregory, and with tears he implored her to use her merciful interference. Gregory at length yielded an ungracious permission for the king to approach his presence. With bare feet, still in the garb of penitence, stood the king, a man of singularly tall and noble person, with a countenance accustomed to flash command and terror upon his adversaries, before the Pope, the poor carpenter’s son, a greyhaired man, bowed with years, of small unimposing stature. The terms exacted from Henry, who was far too deeply humiliated to dispute anything, had no redeeming touch of gentleness and compassion. He was to appear in the place and at the time which the Pope should name to answer the charges of his subjects before the Pope himself. If he should repel these charges, he was to receive his kingdom back from the hands of the Pope. If found guilty, he was peaceably to resign his kingdom. On these conditions the Pope consented to grant absolution. But even yet Henry had not tasted the dregs of humiliation. Pie had been degraded before men, he was to be degraded in the presence of God.
After the absolution had been granted in due form, the Pope proceeded to celebrate the awful mystery of the Eucharist. He called the king towards the altar, he lifted in his hands the Body of the Lord, and said, “I have been accused by thee of having usurped the Apostolic See by simoniacal practices. Behold the Lord’s Body. If I be guilty, may God strike me dead at once.’' He took and ate the Sacrament. A pause ensued. “ Do thou, my son, as I have done ! The Princes of the German Empire have accused thee of crimes heinous and capital. If thou art guiltless, take and eat/' The king shrank away, selfconvicted.
When Henry left Canossa, he met with sullen and averted faces. The Lombards [a Germanic people who ruled much of Italy from 568 to 774] had come not to see the king, but the Pope humbled. Angry discontent spread through the camp. There was a general cry that the king should abdicate, and that his son Conrad should be proclaimed. With him at their head they would march to Rome, elect another Pope, who should crown him emperor, and annul all the acts of Gregory VII. The tumult was with difficulty quelled, and Henry retired in shame and sorrow to Reggio.
But Hildebrand had overshot his mark. The severity with which he had treated the emperor was felt in Germany as an insult to the nation; and on all sides men returned to their allegiance. The revolted German princes had gone too far to retreat. They assembled a diet at Forscheim, on March 13, 1077, and elected Rudolf of Swabia to be king in the room of Henry. He was consecrated at Mainz by Archbishop Siegfried, and the papal legates gave the sanction of their presence to the ceremony. Thus was civil war proclaimed throughout Germany. For seventeen years wars and seditions raged throughout the Roman Empire. Bishops rose against bishops, the clergy against the clergy, the people against the people, father against son, son against father, brother against brother. The assumption of the throne by a rival monarch called into action all the slumbering forces of Henry’s cause. The people of Mainz broke out in a sudden access of fidelity to the king. Worms shut her gates against Rudolf. The three bishops of Wurtzburg, Metz and Passau, alone adhered to Rudolf; some at once declared for Henry. The emperor had in the mean time invested Canossa, to prevent the pope from making his way to Augsburg, where the German princes awaited him. The emperor’s army rapidly grew. Sieghardt, patriarch [the title of the bishops of the great ancient sees: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem] of Aquileia, opened Carniola to him, and Henry marched into Germany. On reaching Ulm, he held a diet, and placed Rudolf and his adherents under the ban of the empire.
The whole of Germany was divided into two parties, that of the emperor, and that of S. Peter, and this gave rise to the great division in the German nation, which, at a later period, attained such melancholy celebrity as the strife between the Welfs and the Waiblinger, or Guelphs and Ghibellines. The nobility and the bishops were May2S.] S. Gregory VII \ 377 divided in their allegiance; the cities and free states all pronounced in favour of the emperor. In Augsburg, Matthias Corsany preached against, and Geroch in favour of the Pope; the latter was driven by the citizens out of the town.
Gregory, greatly disconcerted by this turn in affairs, temporized. The Saxons, irritated by this conduct, incited by Gebhardt, archbishop of Salzburg, who had been deposed by Henry, addressed three letters to him, which received the nickname of “the cockcrowing,” being intended, like the voice of S. Peter’s cock, to move his successor to remorse. The low state of Rudolf’s affairs compelled Gregory to a decision. If he allowed Rudolf to be crushed, the conqueror of Germany would remorselessly close his iron hand upon himself. At Rome, on March 7th, 1080, he fulminated once more the terrific sentence of excommunication and deposition against King Henry; and he prophesied that, unless Henry made his submission before the 29th of June, he would be deposed or dead; and if his vaticination failed, he bade men cease to believe in the authority of Gregory. And then, as the genuine crown of Charlemagne [king of the Franks, crowned emperor in 800] was in Henry’s possession, the pope sent to Rudolf a new diadem, for which he was to hold the empire as a papal fief; the inscription it bore ran thus, “Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rudolpho.” It was a maxim of Gregory that all sovereigns derived their rights, and held their thrones from the see of S. Peter. “ The Pope,” said he, “ is the sun, the emperor is the moon that shines with borrowed light.”
But the anathema had lost its terrors even in the popular mind. No defections took place; no desertions from the court, the council, or the army. All disclaimed at once further allegiance to Gregory. At Mainz ninteen bishops met, and with one voice renounced Hildebrand as pope. The archbishops of Milan and Ravenna assembled with thirty other bishops in a council at Brixen, confirmed the deposition of Gregory VII., and the archbishop of Ravenna was nominated in his stead, as Pope Clement III. Only fifteen bishops in Germany and Italy permanently sided with the pope.
On Oct. 25, ro8o, the armies of Henry and Rudolf met for a decisive battle near the Elster, in the great plain lying between Merseburg and Leipzig, famous for the victory gained by Henry the Fowler over the Hungarians.1 It might seem a religious no less than a civil war. Henry was accompanied to the battle by the Archbishop of Cologne and Treves, and fourteen other prelates. The Saxons advanced to the charge with the bishops of their party chanting the eighty-first (a. v. 82nd) psalm, “ God standeth in the congregation of the princes.7' Henry was defeated, but his reverse was more than counterbalanced by the fall of his rival. Some misgivings as to the justice of his cause embittered the last moments of Rudolf. His hand had been struck off by a sabre: as he gazed at it he said, “ With this hand I ratified my oath of fidelity to my sovereign. I have now lost life and kingdom. Bethink ye, ye who have led me, whether ye have guided me right.77 The death of Rudolf paralysed the adversaries of Henry for a time, and gave him leisure to turn his forces to chastise his more irreconcilable enemy. In the spring of the year 1081 Henry crossed the Alps in far different condition from that in which four years before he had stolen, a deserted and brokenspirited penitent, to the feet of the Pope. Heaven had not ratified the predictions of Gregory. Instead of defeat and death Henry had met with success, and now he came in the pride of conquest against the Pope. He laid siege to Rome, but for three successive years J See March Vol. p. 261-2.
without success. Year after year, summer, by its intolerable heats, and by sickness, thinned the ranks of the Germans, and compelled them to withdraw. At length, at Christmas, in 1083, Henry made himself master of Rome, but not of the person of the pope, who had hastily shut himself up within the impregnable walls of the castle of S. Angelo. But succour was at hand. The Norman invaders of Southern Italy had been under excommunication on account of their devastations. They had defeated Leo IX. in his ill-advised expedition against them. Now Gregory VII. removed the ban, and called them to his assistance. Robert Guiscard advanced rapidly to his aid at the head of a mixed body of adventures, Norman free-booters, and Saracens [medieval Christian name for Arab and Muslim peoples], seeking only pillage. Henry was not strong enough to cope with this formidable host. He evacuated the city three days before the Norman army appeared under its walls. But now that the deliverers of the Pope had arrived, the Romans refused to open their gates to them. They dreaded the Normans and Saracens, and adventurers of all lands who formed the army, far more than the disciplined troops of the emperor. But the Normans surprised the gate of S. Lorenzo and made themselves masters of Rome. Their first act was to release the Pope from his inprisonment in the castle of S. Angelo. They conducted him to the Lateran palace, and then spread over the city pillaging, violating, murdering, wherever they met with opposition. The Romans rushed upon the invaders when ' revelling in careless security, and began to cut them down. But with the discipline of practised soldiers they flew to arms; the whole city was in conflict. The remorseless Guiscard gave the word to fire the houses. From every quarter the flames rushed up— houses, palaces, convents, churches, as the night darkened, were seen in awful conflagration. The distracted inhabitants dashed wildly into the streets, no longer endeavouring to defend themselves, but to save their families. They were hewn down by hundreds. The Saracen allies of the Pope had been foremost in the pillage, they were now the foremost in the conflagration and the massacre. No house, no monastery, was secure from plunder, murder, and rape. Nuns were outraged, matrons forced, the rings cut from their living fingers. Gregory exerted himself, not without success, in saving the principal churches. It is probable, however, that neither Goth nor Vandal, neither Greek nor German, brought such desolation on the city as the capture by the Normans. From this period dates the desertion of the older part of the city, and the gradual extension of Rome over the site of the modern city.
Guiscard was at length master of the ruins of Rome, but his vengeance was yet unappeased. Many thousand Romans were sold publicly as slaves.
Unprotected by his Norman guard, the Pope could not now trust himself in the city. The miserable people regarded him as the author of their woes, they would have torn him to pieces in their rage. In the company of his ally and deliverer, Robert Guiscard, but oppressed with shame and affliction, he retired from the smoking ruins and desolated streets of the city of S. Peter, to the Norman’s strong tower of Salerno. In the meantime Henry was troubled with the news of another claimant to the throne, Hermann of Luxemburg, whom the Saxons had proclaimed their king, at Eisleben. He was nicknamed “the garlic king 99 on account of the quantity of garlic that grew around Eisleben.
Gregory, unshaken by the horrors he had witnessed, and the perils he had escaped, thundered out again his excommunication of Henry, from the castle of Salerno. From thence he watched the angry storm raging over the empire, May2S.] kS1. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi. 381 but there was no break on the horizon, and three years after, he died at Salerno bitterly murmuring, “ I have loved justice and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile.” Before his death he pronounced a general absolution over all mankind, yet stern to the last, excepting from it Henry and the bishops who adhered to him.
