THE CLUNIAC REFORMATION (910–1073) AND ITALY IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY[5]
End of the Dark Ages—Beginnings of the Cluniac Reformation—The
Congregation of Cluny—Cluniac ideals—Camaldoli and Vallombrosa—Henry
III. joins the Reformers—The German reforming Popes—Leo IX.—South
Italy and Sicily in the Eleventh Century—The first coming of the
Normans—Aversa—The sons of Tancred and the Conquest of Apulia—Robert
Guiscard—Leo IX. and the Normans—Battle of Civitate—Early Career of
Hildebrand—Nicholas II.—The Reform of Papal Elections—The Normans
become Papal Vassals—Milan submits to Rome—Roger’s Conquest of
Sicily—Feudalism in Southern Italy.
[Sidenote: End of the Dark Ages.]
The Dark Ages were well over by the middle of the eleventh century, and
after a century of anarchy, even feudalism had become a comparatively
tolerable form of government. The stronger military states had absorbed
their weaker neighbours, and, beyond the Alps at least, the
disintegrating tendency of feudal doctrine had received a decided check,
not only in the strong monarchy of the Germans, but even in the growth
of vigorous feudal potentates such as the margraves of the eastern
frontier of the Empire, the dukes of the Normans, and the counts of
Flanders or of Toulouse. There were again forces making towards order,
law, and peace. The state had been saved from absolute annihilation.
The Church was not yet in so sound a position. She had outlived the
worst brutalities of the tenth century, but the fierce, lawless,
grasping baron, who feared neither God nor man, was still an element to
be reckoned with. The revived lay-power tended of itself to correct the
worst abuses. The Empire had, as we have seen, reformed the Papacy. But
if the Church was to live, it could not owe its life to the patronage or
goodwill of outside reformers. The Church must reform itself.
Signs of such a purification of the Church from within had long been
manifest, but the little band of innovators found it no easy task to
preach to a world that knew no law but the law of the stronger. As ever
in the Middle Ages, a new monastic movement heralded in the work of
reformation. As the Carolingian reformation is associated with Benedict
of Aniane, so is the reformation of the eleventh century associated with
the monks of Cluny.
[Sidenote: The early history of Cluny.]
In 910 Duke William the Pious of Aquitaine founded a new monastery at
Cluny, in French Burgundy, a few miles from the bishop’s town of Macon.
He appointed Berno, a noble Burgundian, as its head, and procured for it
absolute immunity from all external ecclesiastical jurisdiction save
that of the Roman See. Berno strove to establish a complete and loyal
observance of the rule of St. Benedict, and the piety and earnestness of
his monks soon attracted attention, wealth, followers. Corrupt old
communities or new foundations sought the guidance or the protection of
the abbots of Cluny. But the Benedictine system was limited to a single
house, and afforded no room for the crowd of disciples who wished to
attach themselves to the model monastery. Odo, the second abbot
(927–941), started the memorable monastic reformation which, in a few
years, was embodied in the ‘Consuetudines Cluniacenses,’ and the
‘Congregation of Cluny.’ By it a plan was found for combining formal
adherence to the strict rule of St. Benedict with the practical
necessity of maintaining the rule of Cluny over its dependent
communities. If under the old system a new house were formed under the
direction of a famous monastery, the new establishment, when it had
received its constitution, parted company from its parent stock, and,
like a Greek colony, became independent and self-governing. The Cluniacs
prevented this by regarding the daughter communities as parts of
themselves. In whatsoever part of Christendom a monastery on Cluniac
lines was established, it was still in law a part of the great
Burgundian convent. [Sidenote: The Congregation of Cluny.] Its head was
the arch-abbot, the abbot of Cluny. What local self-government was
necessary was delegated to a prior, who was appointed by the abbot of
Cluny, to whom he was responsible. From time to time the dependent
communities sent representatives to the periodical chapters that met at
Cluny, under the presidency of the abbot. By this means a unity of
organisation, a military discipline, a control over weak brethren, and a
security was procured, which was impossible under the Benedictine rule.
When each monastery was as independent for all practical purposes as a
modern Congregational chapel, it was impossible, in an age when public
opinion hardly existed, to reform a lax community, and it was difficult
for an isolated flock of unwarlike men to protect themselves from feudal
violence or the equally fierce hostility of the secular clergy. Besides
unity of organisation, the control exercised over the whole order of
Cluny gave the brethren unity of purpose, doctrine, and policy.
Brought under the immediate jurisdiction of Rome, at a time when
monastic immunities from episcopal authority had not become common, the
Cluniacs taught from the beginning a high doctrine as to the power of
the apostolic see. They saw that the great danger to religion was in the
feudalisation of the Church. Bishops were in danger of becoming barons
in mitres. Kings looked upon prelates as officials bound to do them
service, and patrons sold benefices to the highest bidder. Monasteries
were often in danger of absolute secularisation. So corrupt and lax were
even the better sort of regulars that the Saxon monk Widukind, the
historian of his people, naïvely complains of the ‘grave persecution’
which beset the poor religious of his time, and laments the erroneous
doctrines of some bishops who maintained that it was better that there
should be a few ascetic regulars than houses filled with negligent
monks, forgetting, as he innocently adds, that the tares and the wheat
were ordered to grow up together until the harvest time. The chief
dangers of the Church were simony and the marriage of clerks. To keep
the Church apart from the world seemed to the Cluniac leaders the only
possible way of securing a better state of things. Their ideal was the
separation of the Church from the State, and the reorganisation of the
Church under discipline such as could only be exercised by the Pope, who
was to stand to the whole Church as the abbot of Cluny stood to each
scattered Cluniac priory—the one ultimate source of jurisdiction, the
universal bishop, appointing and degrading the diocesan bishops as the
abbot made and unmade the Cluniac priors. The bishop, the secular
priest, even the monk, had no rights of his own that were not ultimately
derivative from the unique source of ecclesiastical authority, the chair
of St. Peter. [Sidenote: Hierarchical and Papal ideals of Cluny.] The
Forged Decretals supplied convenient arguments for such a system. The
necessities of the times supplied a sort of justification for it. Feudal
anarchy made it natural for good men to identify the secular power with
the works of darkness, and regard the ecclesiastical power as alone
emanating from God. After-ages were to show that the remedy was almost
as bad as the disease, and that there was as much danger of secular
motives, greed for domination, for wealth and influence in the
uncontrolled exercise of ecclesiastical authority, as in the lay power
that they dreaded. But the early Cluniacs had faith in their principles,
and sought in realising them to promote the kingdom of God on earth.
They lived holy and self-denying lives in an age of brutal violence and
lust. A moral and an intellectual reformation preceded and prepared the
way for the ecclesiastical reformation that was preached from Cluny with
the fervour of a new gospel.
Under the influence of the reformed clergy, study and learning again
became possible to a large class. The monastic and cathedral schools
beyond the Alps became the centres of ardent study of philosophy,
theology, and science. In Italy grammarians expounded the classics, and
civilians commented upon the Roman law. The career of Gerbert is but
typical of that of a large number of others. The Lombard Lanfranc, and
the Burgundian Anselm, took the new culture over the Alps to the Norman
monastery of Le Bec, and prepared the way for the new birth of learning
in the twelfth century. Nor did the monastic reformation stop with the
Congregation of Cluny. [Sidenote: New orders In Italy.] In Italy in
particular, where a swarm of new orders arose, extreme asceticism and
utter self-renunciation stood in strange contrast to the violence,
greed, and profligacy that marked Italian life as a whole. [Sidenote:
Camaldoli.] Romuald of Ravenna, the spiritual director of Otto III.,
lived the life of a hermit, and gathered round himself great bands of
solitaries from whom sprang the order of Camaldoli, so called from an
inaccessible spot in the Apennines, near Arezzo, where one of Romuald’s
troops of followers had settled. A monk of this order, Peter Damiani,
soon took a very foremost part in the religious reformation of Italy,
and first made the enthusiastic anchorites minister to the spread of the
new hierarchical ideal. Not far from the hermits of Camaldoli, John
Gualbert, a Tuscan lord, established the strict cœnobitic order of
Vallombrosa. [Sidenote: Vallombrosa.] The same influence spread all over
Europe, and penetrated into even the most conservative cloisters of the
followers of St. Benedict. The faith, zeal, and enthusiasm of the
champions of the new order carried everything before it. Under Henry
III. the reformers had won over the Emperor himself to their cause.
[Sidenote: Henry III. won over by the reforming party.] The strong arm
of the king had purified the Papacy and handed over its direction to men
of the new school. But though willing to use the help of the secular arm
to carry out their forward policy, the Cluniac reformers never swerved
from their conviction that lay interference with the spiritual power lay
at the very root of the worst disorders of the time. Even when accepting
the favours of the great Emperor, they never lost sight of the need of
emphasising the independence of the spirituality. However needful was
the imperial sword to free the Papacy from the Tusculan tradition, and
to put down the lazy monk and the feudalist bishop, they saw clearly
that it stood in the way of the full realisation of their dreams.
[Sidenote: The German reforming Popes.]
After the synod of Sutri, a whole series of German Popes was nominated
by the Emperor, and received by the Church with hardly a murmur, though
the young deacon Hildebrand, soon to become the soul of the new
movement, attached himself to the deposed Gregory VI. and accompanied
him on his exile. But to most of the reformers the rude justice of Sutri
seemed a just if irregular solution of an intolerable situation. The
puritan zeal of the German Popes seemed the best result of the alliance
of the Emperor and the reforming party. The first two reigned too short
a time to be able to effect much, leaving it to Leo IX., the third
German Pope, to permanently identify the papal throne with the spirit of
Cluny.
[Sidenote: Leo IX., 1048–1054.]
On the death of Damasus, the Romans called upon Henry III., who was then
at Worms, to give them another Pope. The Emperor chose for this post his
cousin Bruno, the brother of Conrad of Carinthia, the sometime rival of
Conrad the Salic, and the son of the elder Conrad, uncle of the first of
the Salian emperors. Despite his high birth, Bruno had long turned from
politics to the service of the Church, and had become the ardent
disciple of the school of Cluny. As bishop of Toul, he had governed his
diocese with admirable care and prudence, and his great influence had
enabled him to confer many weighty services, both on Henry and his
father in Lorraine. When offered the Papacy by his kinsman, Bruno
accepted the post only on the condition that he should be canonically
elected by the clergy and people of Rome. Early in 1049 he travelled
over the Alps in the humble guise of a pilgrim. He visited Cluny on his
way to receive spiritual encouragement from his old teachers for the
great task that lay before him. He there added to his scanty following
the young monk Hildebrand, whose return to the city in the new Pope’s
train proclaimed that strict hierarchical ideas would now have the
ascendency at the Curia. Joyfully accepted by the Romans, Bruno assumed
the title of Leo IX. For the short five years of his pontificate, he
threw himself with all his heart into a policy of reformation. In an
Easter Synod in Rome (1049), stern decrees were fulminated against
simony and clerical marriage. But the times were not yet ripe for
radical cure, and Leo was compelled to depart somewhat from his original
severity. He soon saw that the cause he had at heart would not be best
furthered by his remaining at Rome, and the special characteristic of
his pontificate was his constant journeying through all Italy, France,
and Germany. During these travels Leo was indefatigable in holding
synods, attending ecclesiastical ceremonies, the consecration of
churches, the translation of the relics of martyrs. His ubiquitous
energy made the chief countries in Europe realise that the Papacy was no
mere abstraction, and largely furthered the centralisation of the whole
Church system under the direction of the Pope. Wherever he went, decrees
against simony and the marriage of priests were drawn up. In Germany,
Henry III. gave him active support. In France he excited the jealousy of
King Henry I. Invited to Reims by the archbishop for the consecration of
a church, he summoned a French synod to that city. Alarmed at this
exercise of jurisdiction within French dominions, Henry I. strove to
prevent his bishops’ attendance by summoning them to follow him to the
field. Only a few bishops ventured to disobey their king, but a swarm of
abbots, penetrated by the ideals of Cluny, gave number and dignity to
the Synod of Reims, and did not hesitate to join the Pope in
excommunicating the absent bishops. The restless Leo sought to revive
the feeble remnants of North African Christianity, and began the renewed
troubles with the Eastern Church, which soon led to the final breach
with the Patriarch Cærularius [see page 167]. The all-embracing activity
of Leo led to his active interference in southern Italy, where the
advent of a swarm of Norman adventurers had already changed the whole
complexion of affairs.
[Illustration: SOUTH ITALY BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST]
Early in the eleventh century, southern Italy and Sicily were still cut
off from the rest of Europe, and, as in the days of Charlemagne, were
still outposts both of the Orthodox and Mohammedan East. [Sidenote:
Southern Italy and Sicily in the Eleventh Century.] Sicily had been
entirely Saracen since the capture of Syracuse in 877 [see Period I. pp.
460–461]. Though the predatory hordes, which landed from time to time on
the mainland of Italy, had failed to establish permanent settlements,
the various attempts of the Eastern Emperors to win back their former
island possession had proved disastrous failures. In southern Italy the
Catapan or governor of the Greek Emperors still ruled over the ‘theme of
Lombardy’ from his capital of Bari, but in the tenth century, the
Lombard Dukes of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua won back much of the
ground that had been lost by their ancestors. The transient successes of
Otto II. (981–2), had done something to discourage Greeks and Saracens
alike, despite the ignominious failure that ultimately led to his flight
[see pages 38–39]. In the early years of the eleventh century, southern
Italy was still divided between Greeks and Lombards, and the growing
spirit of Catholic enthusiasm made the Orthodox yoke harder to bear by
those subjects of the theme of Lombardy who were Italian rather than
Greek in their sympathy. Between 1011 and 1013 Meles, a citizen of Bari,
a Catholic of Lombard origin, took advantage of a Saracen inroad to
revolt against the Eastern Emperor. Driven into exile by the failure of
his attempt, he sought all over southern Italy for allies to recommence
the struggle. [Sidenote: The first coming of the Normans, 1017.] The
fame of the Normans as soldiers was already known in the south of Italy,
and chance now threw Meles in the way of some Norman warrior-pilgrims,
whom devotion to the Archangel had taken to the sanctuary of St.
Michael, in Monte Gargano, in imitation of which a Neustrian bishop had
some generations before set up the famous monastery of St. Michael in
Peril of the Sea. Meles proposed to the pilgrim leader, Ralph de Toeny,
that he should join with him against the Greeks. Pope Benedict VIII.
encouraged the enterprise, and the adventurous Normans greedily welcomed
the opportunity. In 1017, Meles and his northern allies won a victory
over the Greeks at Civitate in the Capitanata. ‘This victory,’ sang the
Norman rhyming chronicler, William of Apulia, ‘mightily increased the
courage of the Normans. They saw that the Greeks were cowards, and that,
instead of meeting the enemy face to face, they only knew how to take
refuge in flight.’ [Sidenote: Meles and Ralph of Toeny.] Other Normans
flocked from their distant home on the report of rich booty and fair
lands to be won on easy terms in Apulia. But they despised their enemy
too much, and in 1019 a battle fought on the historic field of Cannæ
annihilated the little Norman band. Meles and Ralph hastened over the
Alps, in the hopes of interesting Henry II. in their cause. Even the
death of Meles was not fatal to the fortune of his allies. Some
survivors from Cannæ took service with the princes of Capua and Salerno,
and the abbot of Monte Casino. They were mere mercenaries, and willingly
sold their swords to the highest bidder. When Henry II. made his
transient appearance in southern Italy in 1022 [see page 50], he found
his chief obstacle in the new Greek fortress of Troja, obstinately
defended by some valiant Normans in the pay of their old foe the
Catapan.
Other Normans now flocked to the land of promise. Among these was a
chieftain named Ranulf, who joined Sergius, Prince of Naples, a vassal
of the Greeks, in his war against the Lombard prince Pandulf of Capua.
In reward for his services Ranulf received one of the richest districts
of the Terra di Lavoro, where he built in 1030 a town named Aversa, the
first Norman settlement in Italy. [Sidenote: Foundation of Aversa,
1030.] This foundation makes a new departure in Norman policy. The
Normans no longer came to Italy as isolated adventurers willing to sell
their swords to the highest bidder. By much the same arts as those by
which their brethren later got hold of the fairest parts of Wales and
Ireland, the adventurers strove to carve feudal states for themselves
out of the chaos of southern Italy. Whilst cleverly utilising the feuds
that raged around them, they pursued their interests with such
dexterity, courage, and clear-headed selfishness, that brilliant success
soon crowned their efforts. Conrad II. sojourned at Capua in 1038,
deposed Pandulf and confirmed Ranulf in the possession of Aversa, which
he erected into a county owing homage to the Western Emperor. Three of
the twelve sons of the Norman lord, Tancred of Hauteville, now left
their scanty patrimony in the Côtentin and joined the Normans in Italy.
Their names were William of the Iron Arm, Drogo, and Humphrey.
[Sidenote: The sons of Tancred of Hauteville.] In 1038 they joined the
Greeks under George Maniaces in an attempt to expel the Mohammedans from
Sicily. Messina and Syracuse were captured, but an affront to their
companion-in-arms Ardouin drove the Normans back to the mainland in the
moment of victory, and led them to wreak their vengeance on the Greeks
by a strange compound of violence and treachery. Ardouin their friend
took the Greek pay and became governor of Melfi, the key of Apulia. He
proposed to the Normans that he should deliver Melfi to them, and make
that a starting-point for the conquest of Apulia, which he proposed to
divide between them and himself. The northerners accepted his proposals.
[Sidenote: Conquest of Apulia, 1041–2.] In 1041 Melfi was delivered into
their hands, and a long war broke out between them and their former
allies. By shrewdly putting Adenulfus, the Lombard Duke of Benevento at
the head of their armies, the Normans got allies that were probably
necessary in the early years of the struggle. But they were soon strong
enough to repudiate their associate. The divisions of the Greeks further
facilitated their task. In 1042 William of the Iron Arm was proclaimed
lord of the Normans of Apulia, with Melfi as the centre of his power.
In 1046 William of Apulia died, and Drogo, his brother, succeeded him.
Henry III., then in Italy, recognised Drogo as Count of Apulia, while
renewing the grant of Aversa to another Ranulf. He also urged the
Normans to drive out of Benevento the Lombards, who after the spread of
the Norman power were making common cause with the Greeks. [Sidenote:
Robert Guiscard.] About this time a fourth son of Tancred of Hauteville
came to Italy, where he soon made himself the hero of the Norman
conquerors. Anna Comnena, the literary daughter of the Emperor Alexius,
describes Robert Guiscard as he appeared to his enemies. ‘His high
stature excelled that of the most mighty warriors. His complexion was
ruddy, his hair fair, his shoulders broad, his eyes flashed fire. It is
said that his voice was like the voice of a whole multitude, and could
put to flight an army of sixty thousand men.’ A poor gentleman’s son,
Robert was consumed by ambition to do great deeds, and joined to great
bravery and strength an extraordinary subtlety of spirit. His surname of
Guiscard is thought to testify to his ability and craft. Badly received
by his brothers in Apulia, he was reduced to taking service with the
Prince of Capua against his rival of Salerno. Events soon gave him an
opportunity of striking a blow for himself.
Meanwhile, a formidable combination was forming against the Normans.
Argyrus, son of Meles, had deserted his father’s policy and came from
Constantinople, as Patrician and Catapan (Governor), with special
commissions from the Emperor. [Sidenote: Leo IX. turns against the
Normans.] Unable to persuade the Normans to take service with the
Emperor against the Persians, he soon waged war openly against them, and
procured the murder of Count Drogo in 1051, but was soon driven to take
refuge in Bari. Meanwhile Leo IX. had become Pope, and his all-absorbing
curiosity had led him to two journeys into southern Italy, where he
persuaded the inhabitants of Benevento to accept the protection of the
Holy See against the dreaded Northmen. It looked as if the Eastern and
Western Empires were likely to combine with the Papacy and the Lombards
to get rid of the restless adventurers. In 1052 Henry III. granted the
duchy of Benevento to the Roman Church, and Leo hurried from Hungary to
southern Italy to enforce his claims on his new possession.
[Sidenote: Battle of Civitate, 1053.]
In May 1053 Leo IX. reached Monte Casino. There soon flocked round him a
motley army, drawn together from every district of central and southern
Italy and eager to uphold the Holy Father against the Norman usurpers;
but the few hundred Germans, who had followed the Pope over the Alps,
were probably more serviceable in the field than the mixed multitude of
Italians. The Normans, abandoned by their allies, united all their
scanty forces for a decisive struggle. The armies met on 18th June near
Civitate (Civitella) on the banks of the Fortore, the place of the first
Norman victory in Italy. The longhaired and gigantic Germans affected to
despise their diminutive Norman foes, and the fiercest fight was fought
between the Pope’s fellow-countrymen and Humphrey of Hauteville, the new
Count of Apulia, who commanded the Norman right. There the Norman horse
long sought in vain to break up the serried phalanx of the German
infantry. But the left and centre of the Normans, led respectively by
Richard, the new Count of Aversa, and Robert Guiscard, easily scattered
the enemies before them, and, returning in good time from the pursuit,
enabled Humphrey to win a final victory over the Germans. Leo IX. barely
escaped with his liberty from the fatal field. Peter Damiani and the
zealots denounced him for his unseemly participation in acts of
violence, and the object which had induced him to depart from his sacred
calling had been altogether unfulfilled. [Sidenote: Peace between the
Normans and the Pope.] He retired to Benevento, where he soon came to an
understanding with the Normans, giving them his apostolic blessing and
absolving them from their blood-guiltiness. Even in the moment of
victory the Normans had shown every respect to the head of the Church,
and self-interest now combined with enthusiasm to make them his friends.
But Leo entered into no formal treaty with them. He remained at
Benevento, carefully watching their movements and corresponding with
Constantine Monomachus in the hope of renewing the league against them.
But his dealings with the Greek Empire soon broke down owing to the
theological differences which the acute hostility of Leo and Michael
Cærularius now brought to a head. Leo gave up all hope of western help
when he fulminated the excommunication against Cærularius, which led at
once to the final split of Catholic and Orthodox. In the spring of 1054
he returned to Rome and died. His exploits and holy life had given him a
great reputation for holiness, and he was canonised as a saint. Even the
disaster of Civitate and the eastern schism did little to diminish his
glory.
[Sidenote: Victor II., 1054–1057.]
Leo IX.’s successor as Pope was another German, Gebhard, bishop of
Eichstädt, who took the name of Victor II. (1054–1057). He continued to
work on the lines of Pope Leo, though more in the spirit of a
politician. During Victor’s pontificate, Henry III. made his second and
last visit to Italy (1055). His presence was highly necessary.
[Sidenote: Henry III.’s last visit to Italy, 1055.] His strongest
Italian enemy, the powerful Marquis Boniface of Tuscany, was dead,
leaving an only daughter Matilda heiress of his great inheritance.
Boniface’s widow Beatrice soon found a second husband in Godfrey the
Bearded, Duke of Lower Lorraine, the chief enemy of Henry in Germany. In
this union there was a danger of the German and Italian opposition to
the Empire being combined. But the formidable league dissolved at once
on Henry’s appearance. Godfrey fled from Italy, and Beatrice and her
daughter were led into honourable captivity in Germany. Godfrey’s
brother Frederick, hitherto a scheming ecclesiastic, renounced the
world, and became one of the most zealous of the monks of Monte Casino.
But the death of the Emperor and the long minority that followed, soon
restored the power of the heiress of Boniface. The Countess Matilda,
powerful alike in Tuscany and north of the Apennines, became the most
zealous of the allies of the Papacy. [Sidenote: Position of the Countess
Matilda.] Her support gave that material assistance without which the
purely spiritual aims of the Papacy could hardly prevail. At the moment
when the Papacy had permanently absorbed the teachings of Cluny, it was
a matter of no small moment that the greatest temporal power of middle
Italy was on its side. It was a solid compensation for Leo’s failure
against the Normans.
[Illustration: MIDDLE ITALY IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY]
[Sidenote: Hildebrand’s early career and character.]
We have now come to one of the real crises of history. The new spirit
had gained ascendency at Rome, and the great man had arisen who was to
present the papal ideal with all the authority of genius. Hildebrand of
Soana[6] was the son of a well-to-do Tuscan peasant; he had been brought
up by his uncle, abbot of the strict convent of St. Mary’s on the
Aventine, which was the centre of the Cluniac ideas in Rome, and where
he made his profession as monk. He became the chaplain of Gregory VI.
who, though he bought the Papacy with gold, had striven his best to
carry out the work of reformation. When deprived of his office at Sutri,
Gregory VI. had been compelled to retire to Germany with the Emperor.
Hildebrand, now about twenty-five years old, accompanied his master in
his exile. In 1048 the deposed Pope died, and his chaplain betook
himself to Cluny, where he remained for a full year, and where, he tells
us, he would have gladly spent the rest of his life. But in 1049 Leo IX.
passed through Cluny on his way to Rome, and Hildebrand was commanded to
accompany him. With his return to Rome his active career began. As papal
sub-deacon he reorganised the crippled finances of the Holy See, and
strengthened the hold of the Pope over the unruly citizens. As papal
legate he was sent to France in 1054 to put down the heresy of Berengar
of Tours. But the death of Leo recalled him to Italy, whence he went to
the Emperor at the head of the deputation that successfully requested
the appointment of Victor II. With this Pope he was as powerful as with
Leo. But Victor II. died in 1057, and Frederick of Lorraine left his
newly-won abbot’s chair at Monte Casino to ascend the throne of St.
Peter as Stephen IX. [Sidenote: Stephen IX., 1057–1058.] Though a zealot
for the ideas of Cluny, Stephen, as the head of the house of Lorraine,
was the natural leader of the political opposition to the imperial house
both in Germany and Italy. He made Peter Damiani a cardinal, and
zealously pushed forward the warfare against simony in Germany.
Stephen’s early death in 1058, when Hildebrand was away in Germany,
brought about a new crisis. The Counts of Tusculum thought the moment
opportune to make a desperate effort to win back their old influence.
They terrorised Rome with their troops, and brought about the irregular
election of one of the Crescentii, who called himself Benedict X. The
prompt action of Hildebrand preserved the Papacy for the reforming
party. He hurried back to Florence, and formed a close alliance with
Duke Godfrey of Lorraine, Stephen’s brother, against the nominee of
Tusculum. The stricter cardinals met at Siena and chose Gerhard, Bishop
of Florence, a Burgundian by birth, as orthodox Pope. Gerhard held
another synod at Sutri, where the Antipope was formally deposed.
[Sidenote: Nicholas II., 1058–1061.] Early in 1059 he entered Rome in
triumph. By assuming the name of Nicholas II., he proclaimed himself the
successor of the most successful and aggressive of Popes. As Archdeacon
of Rome, Hildebrand acted as chief minister to the Pope whom he had
made. Henceforth till his death he dominated the papal policy. While
previous reformers had sought salvation by calling the Emperor over the
Alps, Hildebrand had found in Duke Godfrey and his wife champions as
effective for his purpose on Italian soil. With the establishment of
Pope Nicholas, through the arms of Godfrey and Matilda, the imperial
alliance ceases to become a physical necessity to the reforming party in
Italy. Hildebrand had won for the Church her freedom. Before long he
began to aim at domination.
Nicholas II. ruled as Pope from 1058 to 1061. Within those few years,
three events were brought about which enormously strengthened the
position of the Papacy, already possessed of a great moral force by its
permanent identification with the reforming party, and the final
abasement of the unworthy local factions, that had so long aspired to
wield its resources. These events were the settlement of the method of
papal elections, the establishment of a close alliance between the
Papacy and the Normans of southern Italy, and the subjection of Lombardy
to the papal authority.
[Sidenote: Lateran Synod and reform in Papal elections, 1059.]
In 1059 Nicholas held a synod in the Lateran which drew up the famous
decree that set aside the vague ancient rights of the Roman clergy and
people to choose their bishop, in favour of the close corporation of the
College of Cardinals. The decree was drawn up in studiously vague
language, but put the prerogative voice into the very limited circle of
the seven cardinal bishops of the suburbicarian dioceses. These were to
add to themselves the cardinal priests and deacons, whose assent was
regarded as including that of clergy and people at large. A Roman clerk
was to be preferred if worthy, and Rome was to be the ordinary place of
election; but, if difficulties intervened, any person could be chosen,
and any place made the seat of election. The due rights of King Henry
and his successors to confirm their choice were reserved, but in terms
that suggested a special personal favour granted of his own goodwill by
the Pope to a crowned Emperor, rather than the recognition of an
immemorial legal right. The decree did not, as was hoped, save the
Church from schisms like those of Benedict X. Neither was the
pre-eminence of the suburbicarian bishops permanently maintained. But
henceforth the legal right of the cardinals to be the electors of future
Popes became substantially uncontested. It is not likely that this
involved any real change of practice. But in embodying custom in a
formal shape it gave subsequent efforts to set up Antipopes the
condemnation of illegality, and so stood the Papacy in good stead in the
troubles that were soon to ensue. The council also witnessed the abject
degradation of the Antipope and the recantation of the heretic Berengar
of Tours.
[Sidenote: The Normans become the vassals of the Pope, 1059.]
In the years that followed the battle of Civitate, the Normans had
steadily extended their power over Apulia and Calabria. But the south of
Italy is so rugged and mountainous that even the bravest of warriors
could only win their way slowly. In 1057 the valiant Count Humphrey
died, leaving his sons so young that he had been constrained to beg his
brother Robert to act as their protector. But the barons of Apulia
insisted that Robert should be their count in full succession to
Humphrey. Soon after Roger of Hauteville, the youngest of the twelve
sons of Tancred, left the paternal roof to share the fortune of his
brothers. ‘He was,’ says Geoffrey of Malaterra, ‘a fine young man, of
lofty stature and elegant proportions. Very eloquent in speech, wise in
counsel, and gifted with extraordinary foresight, he was gay and affable
to all, and so strong and valiant that he soon gained the good graces of
every one.’ [Sidenote: Roger of Hauteville.] Robert Guiscard received
Roger in a more brotherly spirit than had been shown on his own first
arrival by Drogo and Humphrey. He gave him a sufficient following of
troops and sent him to Calabria, where he soon established himself as
lord of half the district, though under his brother’s overlordship.
Meanwhile, Richard of Aversa had driven out the Lombards from Capua and
added it to his dominions. The Normans were still, however, not free
from danger from the Popes. Victor II. had disapproved of Leo IX.’s
policy, yet before his death he had become their enemy. Stephen IX.
formed various projects against them. But Hildebrand now turned Nicholas
II. to wiser counsels. In 1059 Hildebrand went in person to Capua and
concluded a treaty with Count Richard, who, as the ally of the monks of
Monte Casino, was the most friendly of the Norman chieftains to the
Church. Almost immediately the archdeacon returned to Rome with a strong
Norman escort, and soon after a Norman army spread terror among the
partisans of the Antipope. [Sidenote: Synod of Melfi.] In the summer of
1059 Nicholas himself held a synod in Melfi, the Apulian capital, where
he passed canons condemning married priests. After the formal session
was over, the Pope made Robert Guiscard Duke of Apulia and Calabria, and
‘future Duke’ of Sicily, if he should ever have the good luck to drive
out the infidels. [Sidenote: Robert, Duke of Apulia; and Richard, Duke
of Capua.] In return Robert, ‘Duke by the grace of God and of St.
Peter,’ agreed to hold his lands as the Pope’s vassal, paying an annual
rent of twelve pence for each ploughland. Richard of Capua, either then
or earlier, took the same oath. Thus the famous alliance between the
Normans and the Papacy was consummated, which by uniting the strongest
military power in Italy to the papal policy, enabled the Holy See to
wield the temporal with almost as much effect as the spiritual sword.
Thus the Papacy assumed a feudal suzerainty over southern Italy which
outlasted the Middle Ages. Within seven years of the Synod of Melfi, the
establishment of the Norman duke William the Bastard in England, as the
ally of the Pope, still further bound the most restless, active, and
enterprising race in Europe to the apostolic see.
[Sidenote: The Patarini in Lombardy.]
The Pope now intervened decisively in the long struggle between the
traditional and the strict parties in Lombardy, where the ancient
independence of the archbishops of Milan had long been assailed by the
Patarini or rag-pickers, as the reformers were contemptuously called.
Lovers of old ways in the north, with the Archbishop Guido of Milan at
their head, had long upheld clerical marriage as the ancient custom of
the Church of St. Ambrose. Peter Damiani was now sent as papal legate to
Milan to uphold the ‘rag-bags’ in their struggle. At a synod held in
Milan, the zealous monk made short work of the married clerks and of the
immemorial rights of the archbishop. Guido proffered an abject
submission and received a contemptuous restitution of his archbishopric.
The continuance of the friendship of Godfrey and Matilda secured middle
Italy, as the alliance with Normans and Patarini had secured the south
and the north. [Sidenote: Milan submits to Rome.] The strongest princes
of Gaul and Burgundy were on the zealots’ side. The imperialist prelates
of Germany, headed by Anno of Cologne, made a faint effort to stem the
tide, but the decrees fulminated by German synods against Nicholas and
his work were unknown or disregarded in Italy.
[Sidenote: Alexander II. 1061–1073.]
The untimely death of Nicholas in no wise altered the course of events.
The next Pope, Alexander II., was Anselm, Bishop of Lucca, who had
shared with Peter Damiani in the victory over the simoniacs and married
clerks in Lombardy. His appointment by the cardinals without the least
reference to King Henry IV. gave the greatest offence in Germany, and
brought to a head the growing tension between Empire and Papacy. A synod
at Basel declared Pope Alexander’s election invalid, and set up an
Antipope, Cadalus, Bishop of Parma, who had been the real soul of the
opposition to the Patarini in Lombardy. Honorius II. (this was the name
he assumed) hurried over the Alps, and in 1062 was strong enough, with
the help of the Counts of Tusculum, to fight an even battle with
Alexander’s partisans, and for a time to get possession of St. Peter’s.
But the factions that controlled the government of the young Henry IV.
could not unite even in upholding an Antipope, while the religious
enthusiasm, which the reforming movement had evoked, was ardently on the
side of Alexander. Condemned by Anno of Cologne and his party in
Germany, Honorius was rejected in 1064 by a council at Mantua.
Nevertheless, he managed to live unmolested and with some supporters
until his own death in 1072. His successful rival Alexander only
outlived him a year. It was then time for the archdeacon himself to
assume the responsible leadership of the movement which he had so long
controlled. In 1073 Hildebrand became Pope Gregory VII.
[Sidenote: Later triumphs of Robert Guiscard, 1068–1085.]
The reconciliation with the Papacy stood the Normans in good stead.
Henceforth they posed as the champions of Western Catholicism against
Eastern Orthodoxy and Islam. Though the Norman chieftains still wrangled
hotly with each other, the tide in south Italy had definitely turned in
their favour. In 1071 the capture of Bari, after a three years’ siege,
finally expelled the Greeks from Italy. The Lombard principality of
Salerno was also absorbed, and the greater part of the territories of
the dukes of Benevento, save the city and its neighbourhood, which
Robert Guiscard, much to his own disgust, was forced to yield to his
papal suzerain. We shall see in other chapters how Robert crossed the
Straits of Otranto and aspired to conquer the Greek Empire, how he came
to the help of Gregory VII. in his greatest need, and how his son
Bohemund took part in the first Crusade and founded the principality of
Antioch. When Robert died in 1085, all southern Italy acknowledged him
as its lord, save the rival Norman principality of Capua, the half-Greek
republics of Amalfi and Naples, and the papal possession of Benevento.
While Robert Guiscard was thus consolidating his power in the peninsula,
an even harder task was being accomplished by his younger brother Roger,
sometimes in alliance, and sometimes in fierce hostility with the Duke
of Apulia. The grant of Nicholas II. had contemplated the extension of
the Norman rule to Sicily. The divisions of the Mohammedan world had cut
off the island from the Caliphate of the Fatimites, and its independent
Ameers were hardly equal to the task of ruling the island and keeping in
order a timid but refractory population of Christian serfs. [Sidenote:
Roger’s conquest of Sicily, 1060–1101.] The increasing power of Robert
was fatal to the independence of Roger in Calabria, and he gladly
accepted the invitation of the discontented Christians of Messina to
deliver them from the bondage of the infidel. In 1060 Roger led his
first expedition to Sicily, which was unsuccessful. But early next year
he came again, and this time the dissensions of the Mohammedans in
Sicily enabled him to have friends among Saracens as well as Christians.
In the summer of 1061 Robert came to his help. Messina was easily
captured, and proved invaluable as the starting-point of later
expeditions. The infidels were badly beaten at the battle of
Castrogiovanni, and before the end of the year the standards of Roger
had waved as far west as Girgenti. The first successes were not quite
followed up. In 1064 the Normans were forced to raise the siege of
Palermo. The compact Mussulman population of Western Sicily opposed a
very different sort of resistance to the invaders from that which they
had experienced in the Christian East. But the process of conquest was
resumed after the capture of Bari had given Robert leisure to come to
his brother’s help. In 1072 Palermo was taken by the two brothers
jointly. Robert claimed the lion’s share of the spoil. Roger, forced to
yield him the suzerainty of the whole island, and a great domain under
his direct rule, including Palermo and Messina, threw himself with
untiring zeal into the conquest of the parts of the island that still
adhered to Islam. Thirty years after his first expedition, the last
Saracens were expelled from the rocky fastnesses of the western coasts,
and the inaccessible uplands of the interior. [Sidenote: The
feudalisation of Naples and Sicily.] The Normans took with them to Italy
their language, their manners, their art, and above all, their polity.
On the ruins of the Greek, Lombard and Saracen power, the Normans
feudalised southern Italy so thoroughly that the feudalism of Naples and
Sicily long outlasted the more indigenous feudalism of Tuscany or
Romagna. Freed from his grasping brother’s tutelage after 1085, Roger
ruled over Sicily as count till his death in 1101. We shall see how his
son united Sicily with Apulia in a single sovereignty, which has in
various shapes endured as the kingdom of Naples or Sicily, until the
establishment of a united Italy in our own days.
GENEALOGY OF THE HOUSE OF TANCRED OF HAUTEVILLE.
Tancred of Hauteville.
|
+------------------+---------+-----+--------------+------------+
| | | | |
William of the Drogo, Humphrey, Robert ROGER I.,
Iron Arm, Count of Apulia, Count of Apulia, Guiscard, Count of
Lord of Apulia, _d._ 1051. _d._ 1057. Duke of Sicily,
_d._ 1046. Apulia, _d._ 1101.
_d._ 1085. |
| |
+----------------------------+ |
| |
Roger, ROGER II.,
Duke of Apulia, King of Sicily
_d._ 1111. and Duke
| of Apulia,
William, _d._ 1154.
Duke of Apulia, |
_d._ 1127. |
|
+----------------------------+-------------------+----+
| | |
Roger, WILLIAM I., Constance,
Duke of Apulia. the Bad, _m._ HENRY VI.
| _d._ 1166. _d._ 1197.
TANCRED of Lecce | |
(illegitimate), WILLIAM II., FREDERICK II.
_d._ 1194. the Good, _d._ 1250.
| _d._ 1189.
+----------+---+------------+ _m._ Joanna,
| | | daughter of
ROGER III., WILLIAM III., Albina, Henry II.
_d._ 1194. deposed by _m._ Walter of England.
Henry VI. in of
1194. Brienne.