THE EMPIRE
AND
THE PAPACY
918–1273
BY
T. F. TOUT, M.A., D.Litt.
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND DIRECTOR OF ADVANCED STUDY IN HISTORY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
_PERIOD II_
_NINTH EDITION_
RIVINGTONS
_34 KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN_
LONDON
1921
_All rights reserved_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
The absence of any existing text-book, narrating with any approach to
fulness the history of the period with which this work is concerned,
induced the writer to think that the most useful course that he could
pursue would be to cover as much of the whole ground as his space
allowed. Finding that there was not room to treat all the aspects of
European history with the same fulness, the author resolved to limit
himself to the central struggle between the Papacy and the Empire, and
to the events directly connected with it. He has therefore only busied
himself with the affairs of Scandinavia, the Baltic lands, and the
Slavonic kingdoms of the East so far as they stand in direct relation to
the main currents of European history. The history of the Mohammedan
Powers has been treated in the same way, and even Christian Spain has
only been allowed a very small number of pages. This necessary
limitation has afforded more room for the main purpose of the writer,
which has been to narrate, with some amount of detail, the political and
ecclesiastical history of the chief states of Southern and Western
Europe, and in particular of Germany, Italy, France, and the Eastern
Empire. The expansion of the Latin and Catholic world at the expense of
both the Orthodox Greeks and the Mohammedans, stands so much in the
forefront of the history of the period that it could not be neglected,
though the writer has avoided treating the Crusades in much detail. Some
account of the general movements of thought and of the development of
the ecclesiastical system and of the religious orders seemed to him
necessary for the understanding even of the political history of a time
when everything was subordinated to the authority of the Church. He has,
however, endeavoured to bring this into some sort of connection with the
political history of the period, and has not felt it in his power to
enlarge upon the general history of civilisation in the way adopted by
the very valuable _Histoire Générale de l’Europe_, edited by MM. Lavisse
and Rambaud. He has, however, frequently availed himself of the help of
that book in his selection and arrangement of his facts, and would like
to refer his readers to it for such parts of the history as do not fall
within his scheme. He has indicated in notes at the beginning of the
various chapters some useful authorities in which readers will find a
more detailed account of various aspects of the time.
In conclusion, the writer must express his thanks to his wife, who has
helped him materially in nearly every part of the book, and has taken
the chief share in preparing the maps, tables, and index.
In preparing for fresh impressions such errors have been corrected as
the author has been able to find.
MANCHESTER, _Dec. 1908_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION, 1
II. THE SAXON KINGS OF THE GERMANS, AND THE REVIVAL OF THE
ROMAN EMPIRE BY OTTO I. (919–973), 12
III. THE GERMAN EMPIRE AT THE HEIGHT OF ITS POWER. THE LATER
SAXON AND EARLY SALIAN EMPERORS (973–1056), 36
IV. FRANCE AND ITS VASSAL STATES UNDER THE LAST CAROLINGIANS
AND THE EARLY CAPETIANS (929–1108), 66
V. THE CLUNIAC REFORMATION (910–1073), AND ITALY IN THE
ELEVENTH CENTURY, 96
VI. THE INVESTITURE CONTEST (1056–1125), 120
VII. THE EASTERN EMPIRE AND THE SELJUKIAN TURKS (912–1095), 151
VIII. THE EARLY CRUSADES AND THE LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM
(1095–1187), 177
IX. THE MONASTIC MOVEMENT AND THE TWELFTH CENTURY RENASCENCE, 198
X. GERMANY AND ITALY (1125–1152), 221
XI. FREDERICK BARBAROSSA AND ALEXANDER III. THE RENEWED
CONFLICT BETWEEN PAPACY AND EMPIRE (1152–1190), 245
XII. FRANCE, NORMANDY, AND ANJOU, AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE
GREATNESS OF THE CAPETIAN MONARCHY (1108–1189), 274
XIII. THE THIRD CRUSADE AND THE REIGN OF HENRY VI. (1187–1197), 295
XIV. EUROPE IN THE DAYS OF INNOCENT III. (1198–1216), 313
XV. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY; THE FOURTH
CRUSADE, AND THE LATIN EMPIRE IN THE EAST (1095–1261), 336
XVI. FREDERICK II. AND THE PAPACY (1216–1250), 358
XVII. FRANCE UNDER PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND ST. LOUIS (1180–1270), 393
XVIII. THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE FRIARS, 428
XIX. THE LAST CRUSADES AND THE EAST IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY, 450
XX. THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIAN SPAIN, 464
XXI. THE FALL OF THE HOHENSTAUFEN AND THE GREAT INTERREGNUM
(1250–1273), 478
MAPS
1. Germany under the Saxon and Swabian Emperors, 11
2. Ecclesiastical Divisions of Germany, 24
3. France, showing the great fiefs, 93
4. South Italy before the Norman Conquest, 104
5. Middle Italy in the Eleventh Century, 111
6. The Eastern Empire in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries, 153
7. The Crusading States in Syria in the Twelfth Century, 185
8. Dominions of Saladin in 1193, 196
9. Possessions of the Guelfs in the days of Henry the Lion, 267
10. France in 1189, 293
11. The Latin Empire of Constantinople, 347
12. France and its neighbour lands in 1270, 426
13. Spain at the end of the Twelfth Century, 476
14. Spain at the end of the Thirteenth Century, 477
GENEALOGICAL TABLES
1. The Crescentii, 35
2. The Saxon and Salian Emperors, 65
3. The Capetian Kings of France, 94–95
4. The House of Tancred of Hauteville, 119
5. The Macedonian Dynasty, 176
6. The Early Kings of Jerusalem, 197
7. The Guelfs and the Hohenstaufen, 244
8. The House of Blois, 279
9. The Comneni and Angeli, 356
10. The Latin Emperors of Constantinople, 357
APPENDIX
TABLES OF POPES, EMPERORS, EASTERN EMPERORS, LATIN EMPERORS IN
THE EAST, LATIN KINGS OF JERUSALEM, AND KINGS OF FRANCE, 493
INDEX, 497
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
To the general modern authorities for French history for this period
must now be added the valuable new _Histoire de France_ edited by M.
Ernest Lavisse (Hachette), of which the three half-volumes covering this
period are now published. They are: _Les Premiers Capétiens (987–1137)_,
by Achille Luchaire, II. ii.; _Louis VII., Philippe Auguste, Louis
VIII._, by Achille Luchaire, III. i.; and _Saint Louis, Philippe le Bel,
les derniers Capétiens directs_, by Ch. V. Langlois, III. ii. A large
collection of facts covering the whole subject of this book will soon be
available in the relevant volumes of the Cambridge Mediæval History. The
maps in R. L. Poole’s _Oxford Historical Atlas_ are very valuable for
the elucidation of the historical geography of the period.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
General Characteristics of the Period—The End of the Dark Ages—The
Triumph of Feudalism—The Revival of the Roman Empire and Papacy—The
Struggles of Papacy and Empire—The Spread of Religion and
Civilisation—The Crusades and the Latin East—The Growth of National
Monarchies.
[Sidenote: The general characteristics of the period.]
It is a trite thing to say that all long periods of European history are
ages of transition. The old order is ever passing gradually away, and a
new society is ever springing up from amidst the ruins of the dying
system that has done its work. But the period with which this book is
concerned is transitional in no merely conventional sense. We take up
the story in the early years of the tenth century, when the Dark Ages
had not yet run their course. We end it in the closing years of the
thirteenth century, when the choicest flowers of mediæval civilisation
were already in full bloom. Starting at the end of a period of deep
depression and degradation, we have to note how feudalism got rid of the
barbarian invaders, and restored the military efficiency of Europe at
the expense of its order and civilisation. We learn how the revival of
the Roman Empire again set up an effective and orderly political power,
and led to the revival of the Church and religion, and the subsequent
renewal of intellectual life. But the Empire was never more than a
half-realised theory; and while the world had theoretically one master,
it was in reality ruled by a multitude of petty feudal chieftains. Thus
was brought about the universal monarchy of the Papacy, the Crusades,
the monastic revivals, the strong but limited intellectual renascence of
the twelfth century, and the marvellous development of art, letters, and
material civilisation that flowed from it. The conflict of Papacy and
Empire impaired the efficiency of both, and made possible the growth of
the great national states of the thirteenth century, from which the
ultimate salvation of Europe was to come. Turbulent as was the period
during which these great revolutions were worked out, it was one of
many-sided activity, and of general, but by no means unbroken, progress.
It was the time of the development and perfection of all the most
essential features of that type of civilisation which is called
mediæval. It was the age of feudalism, of the Papacy and Empire, of the
Crusades, of chivalry, of scholasticism and the early universities, of
monasticism in its noblest types, of mediæval art in its highest
aspects, and of national monarchy in its earliest form. Before our
period ends, the best characteristics of the Middle Ages had already
manifested themselves. Fertile as were the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries in their promise of later developments, they bore witness only
to the decline of what was most characteristic of the period that we now
have to consider.
Let us dwell for a moment on some of the leading features of this period
in a little more detail.
[Sidenote: The Dark Ages.]
We begin in a time of gloom and sorrow. The Carolingian Empire, which
had united the vigour of the barbarians with the civilisation of the
Roman world, had broken up. The sacred name of Emperor had been assumed
so constantly by weaklings that it had ceased to have much hold upon the
minds of men. The great kingdoms, into which the Carolingian Empire had
resolved itself, seemed destined to undergo the process that had
destroyed the parent state. The East Frankish realm—the later
Germany—was breaking up into its four national duchies of Saxony,
Franconia, Bavaria, and Swabia. The West Frankish realm was the prey of
the rivalry of the Carolings and the Robertians. The Middle Kingdom was
in still worse plight. Italy had fallen away under a line of nominal
Italian or Lombard kings, but the south was Greek or Saracen, and the
north was in hopeless confusion. The northern parts of the Middle
Kingdom, to which alone the name Lotharingia clung, were tending towards
their ultimate destiny of becoming a fifth national duchy of the German
realm, though their loyalty for the Carolingian house brought them more
than once back to the West Frankish kingdom. The lands between this
restricted Lotharingia and the Mediterranean had become the kingdom of
Arles or Burgundy by the union, in 932, of the two Burgundian states
that had grown up in the days of chaos. But of the six kingdoms which
now represented the ancient Empire, not one was effectively governed.
The administrative system of the Carolingians had altogether
disappeared. The kings were powerless, the Church was corrupt, the
people miserable and oppressed, the nobles self-seeking and brutal. The
barbarian invader had profited by the weakness of civilisation. The
restored Rome of Charlemagne, like the old Rome of Constantine and
Theodosius, was threatened with annihilation by pagan hordes. The
Norsemen threatened the coasts of the west; the Saracens dominated the
Mediterranean, captured the islands, and established outposts in
southern Gaul and Italy. The Slavs overran Germany. The Magyars
threatened alike Germany and Italy. Everywhere civilisation and
Christianity were on the wane.
Yet the darkest hour was already past when the tenth century had begun.
The feudal system had saved Europe from its external enemies. The feudal
cavalry and the feudal castle had proved too strong for the barbarians.
The Norse plunderers had gone home beaten, or had settled with Rolf in
Neustria, or with Guthrum in eastern England. [Sidenote: The end of the
Dark Ages.] The Saracens had been driven from Italy, and were soon to be
chased out of Provence. The Wends and the Magyars were soon to feel the
might of Henry the Fowler. The Saxon dukes were restoring the East
Frankish realm. The Robertians were getting the upper hand in France.
Even the consolidation of the two Burgundies made for unity. In the east
the Macedonian dynasty was ruling over the Greek Empire in uneventful
peace, and extending its sway to the farthest limits of Asia Minor. In
Spain the Christians had definitely got the better of the Moors. The
break-up of the Caliphate robbed Islam both of its political and
religious unity, and destroyed for the time its capacity for aggression.
[Sidenote: Feudalism.] The first gleams of a religious revival began
with the foundation of Cluny. But despite all these glimpses of hope,
the state of western Europe was still deplorable. The feudal nobles were
the masters of the situation. Their benefices were rapidly becoming
hereditary, their authority more recognised and systematic. But no
salvation was to be expected from a system that was the very abnegation
of all central and national authority. It was but little more than
organised anarchy when the west had to depend upon a polity that made
every great landholder a petty tyrant over his neighbours. The military
strength of feudalism had given it authority. Its political weakness was
revealed when the feudal baron had to govern as well as fight.
[Sidenote: The Holy Roman Empire.]
Feudalism was not long in undisputed possession of the field. From the
revival of the German kingdom by the Saxon kings sprang the Holy Roman
Empire of the German nation, beginning with the coronation of Otto the
Great in 962. Less universal, less ecclesiastical, less truly Roman than
the Carolingian Empire, the Empire of the Saxons and Franks was based
essentially upon the German kingship, yet was ever trying to outgrow its
limitations, and to claim in its completeness the Carolingian heritage.
Within a century of the coronation of Otto, the revived Empire included
in its sphere the German, Italian, Burgundian, and Lotharingian
realms—in short, all the Empire of Charles the Great, save the West
Frankish states, ruled since 987 by Hugh Capet and his descendants.
Moreover, the Empire had pushed forward the limits of Christianity and
civilisation in the barbarous north and east. It had extended its direct
rule over a wide stretch of marchlands. The Scandinavians, Wends, Poles,
Bohemians, and Hungarians all received the Christian faith from
missionaries profoundly impressed with the imperial idea, and their
conversion involved at least temporary dependence upon the power that
again aspired to be lord of the world. At home the Emperors checked and
restrained, though recognising and utilising, the feudal principle. In
their fear of the lay aristocracy, no less than in their zeal for
religion and order, they associated themselves closely with the work of
reforming the Church. But the restoration of religion soon involved the
restoration of Papacy and hierarchy, and thus they raised up the power
before which Emperors were finally to succumb. Yet the Empire did not
fall until it had kept central Europe together for nearly three
centuries, at a time when no other power could possibly have
accomplished the task. From the coronation of the Saxon to the fall of
the Hohenstaufen, the Holy Roman Empire had no small claim to the
lordship of the world.
[Sidenote: The Hildebrandine Reformation and the Papacy.]
The darkest hour of the State was the darkest hour of the Church. The
last faint traces of the Carolingian revival of religion disappeared
amid the horrors of Danish, Saracen, and Hungarian invasions. The
feudalism that saved Europe from the barbarians now began to infect what
remained of Christian life with its own ferocity, greed, and lust. The
spiritual offices of the Church were becoming heritable property,
dissociated from all effective spiritual duties. But amidst the turmoil
of feudal times, a few nobler spirits sought salvation from the
wickedness that lay thick around them in the solitude of the cloister.
Before the end of the tenth century, the Cluniac revival presented to
Europe an ideal of life very different from feudal militarism. In
alliance with the Empire, the Cluniacs restored religion in central
Europe, and missionaries, working in their spirit, spread the Gospel
beyond the bounds of the Empire among the barbarians of the north and
east. But from Cluny also came new theories of the province of the
Church, which soon brought religion into sharp conflict with the
temporal authority. When the power of the State lay almost in abeyance,
it was natural that the Church should encroach upon the sphere it left
vacant. From Cluny came the Hildebrandine Reformation, and from the
theories of Hildebrand sprang two centuries of conflict between Papacy
and Empire. [Sidenote: The struggles of Papacy and Empire.] The great
struggle of Popes and Emperors (the highest expression of the universal
struggle of the spiritual and temporal swords), was the central event of
the Middle Ages. It first took the form of the Investiture Contest, but
when the Investiture Contest had been ended by the substantial victory
of the Church, the eternal strife was soon renewed under other pretexts.
It inspired the contest of Alexander III. with Frederick Barbarossa, of
Thomas of Canterbury with Henry of Anjou, of Innocent III. with half the
princes of Europe, and the final great conflict between the successors
of Innocent and Frederick II. At last the Empire succumbed before the
superior strength of the Papacy. But the Hohenstaufen were soon
revenged; and, within two generations of the death of Frederick II., the
victorious Papacy was degraded from its pride of place by its ancient
ally.
[Sidenote: Religious and monastic revivals.]
From the triumphs of Hildebrand and his successors sprang the religious
revivals that enriched the Middle Ages with all that was fairest and
most poetical in the life of those times. The Cistercians and the
Carthusians revived the ideals of St. Benedict, with special precautions
against the dangers before which the old Benedictine houses had
succumbed. The orders of Canons Regular sought to unite the life of the
monk with the work of the clerk. They paved the way for the more
complete realisation of their ideal in the thirteenth century, when the
mendicant orders of Friars arose under Francis and Dominic. From the
monastic movement sprang a revival of spiritual religion and a renewed
interest in the world of thought and art. [Sidenote: Art.] The artistic
impulses of the time found their highest expression in the vast and
stern Romanesque minsters of the older orders, and in the epic
literature of the _chansons de geste_. The transition during the twelfth
century from Romanesque to Gothic architecture, and the parallel change
in vernacular literature from the epic to the romance, mark a new
development in the European spirit. Side by side with them went the
great intellectual renascence of the same momentous century. While an
Anselm sought to enlist philosophy in the service of the Church, an
Abelard began to question the very sources of authority. In Abelard the
intellectual movement outgrew its monastic parentage, and in his
conflict with Bernard the dictator of Christendom, the old and the new
spirit came into the sharpest antagonism. [Sidenote: Revival of
speculative activity.] The systematic schoolmen of later ages had
neither the independence of Abelard nor the limitation of Bernard.
Learning passed from monastic to secular hands, but the scholastic
philosophy was already enlisted on the side of the Church, and active as
was its intelligence, it henceforth worked within self-appointed limits.
Side by side with the revival of philosophy, came the work of Irnerius
and Gratian, the revival of the systematic study of Civil Law, and the
building up of the great structure of ecclesiastical jurisprudence.
[Sidenote: Law.] From the multiplication of students and studies sprang
the organisation of teachers and learners into the universities.
[Sidenote: The Universities.] From the ignorance and barbarism of the
tenth century, there is a record of continuous progress until the end of
our period. Yet the thirteenth century does not only illustrate the
crowning glories of the Middle Ages: it suggests new modes of thought
that indicate that the Middle Ages themselves are passing away. The
triumph of the Church bore with it the seeds of its own ruin, in the
world of thought as well as in the world of action.
[Sidenote: The Crusades and the Latin rule in the East.]
From the Hildebrandine revival sprang also the Crusades, and the
combination of the military and religious ideals of the Latin world in
the pursuit of a holy war for the recovery of Christ’s Sepulchre. The
Turkish advance was checked; the Eastern Empire was saved from imminent
destruction; and a series of Latin states in Syria and Greece extended
the scope of western influence at the expense of Orthodox and Mohammedan
alike. But the diversion of the Fourth Crusade to overthrow the Empire
of Constantinople indicates the high-water mark of the Latin Christian
power in the East; and the change in the current of western ideas made
the Crusades of the thirteenth century but vain attempts to restore a
vanished dream. Before the end of our period, the Christian domination
in the East had shrunk to the lordship of a few Greek islands. The
Palæologi brought back Byzantine rule to the Byzantine capital; and the
strongest kings of the West could not save the remnants of the Latin
states in Syria. The Mongol invasions threatened Christian and Saracen
alike. While the western prospects were so fair, in the East barbarism
was on the highway to ascendency.
[Sidenote: The Feudal Age.]
The failure of the Empire to rule the world led to a feudal reaction,
that was not least felt in the lands directly governed by the Emperors.
Our period witnesses both the triumph and the decay of feudalism. It is
the time when feudal ideas prevailed all over the western world,
following the Crusaders into the burning deserts of Syria, and the lands
of the Eastern Emperors. The Normans took feudalism to southern Italy
and Sicily, and developed the feudalism that they already found in
England. Even Scandinavia evolved a feudalism of its own, and the sons
and grandsons of the followers of William the Conqueror planted feudal
states side by side with the Celtic tribalism of Wales and Ireland. For
nearly four centuries the mail-clad feudal horseman was invincible in
battle, and the stone-built feudal castle, ever becoming more complex
and elaborate in structure, was impregnable except to famine. The better
side of feudal social ideals—chivalry, knighthood, honour, and
courtesy—did something to temper the brutality and pride of the average
baron, and found powerful expression in the vernacular literatures,
written to amuse nobles and gentry. But before our period ends, the days
of feudal ascendency were over. Hopeful of triumph in Germany, where the
German state suffered by its kings’ pursuit of the imperial vision,
feudalism found in Italy a powerful rival in strong municipalities
closely allied with the Church. In western Europe it was beginning to
give ground. The greater feudatories crushed their lesser neighbours,
and built up states that were powerful enough to stand by themselves.
The Church, though fitting itself into the feudal organisation of
society, could never repose simply on brute force. [Sidenote: The
Towns.] The towns, whose separate organisation was, in some parts of
Europe at least, as much the result of military, as of economic
necessities, became the centres of expanding trade and increasing
wealth. Within their strong walls they were able to hold their own, and
claim for themselves a part in the social system as well as baron or
bishop. But feudalism had at last met its master. With its decline
before the national spirit, we are on the threshold of modern times.
[Sidenote: The growth of national monarchies.]
The division of the Empire into local kingdoms, begun at the treaty of
Verdun, paved the way for the modern idea of a national state. The
Empire stifled the early possibilities of a German nation, and Empire
and Papacy combined to make impossible an Italian nation. But in France
other prospects arose. Through its virtual exclusion from the Empire,
France had been delivered from some very real dangers. The early
Capetians were shadows round which a mighty system revolved; but they
had a lofty theory and a noble tradition at their back, and the time at
last came when they could convert their theory into practice. Philip
Augustus made France a great state and nation. [Sidenote: Power passes
from Germany to France.] Under St. Louis the leadership of Europe passed
definitely from the Germans to the French—from the people ruled by the
visionary world-Empire to the people ruled by a popular and effective
national monarchy. The alliance between France and the Church, the
preponderance of French effort in the Crusades, the spread of the French
tongue and literature as the common expression of European chivalry, had
made the French nation famous, long before a large proportion of the
French nation had been organised into a French state. The Spanish
peoples acquired strong local attachments; the English became conscious
of their national life. Alfonso the Wise of Castile and Edward I. of
England rank with St. Louis and Philip the Fair. Even Frederick II. owed
his strength to his national position in Germany and Naples, rather than
to his imperial aspirations. Before our period ends, the national
principle had clearly asserted itself. Trade, art, literature, religion
began to desert cosmopolitan for national channels, and the beginnings
of the system of estates and representative institutions show that the
great organised classes of mediæval society aspired to share with their
kings the direction of the national destinies. The Empire had fallen;
the Papacy was soon to be overthrown; feudalism was decayed; the
cosmopolitan culture of the universities had seen its best days. It is
in the juxtaposition of what was best in the old, and what was most
fertile in the new, that gives its unique charm to the thirteenth
century. The transition from the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages had been
worked out. There were signs that the transition was beginning that
culminates in the Renascence and the Reformation.
[Illustration: GERMANY under the Saxon and Swabian Emperors]