at last commenced, and men held their breath to watch what would be
the result of its arrival. "And he laid hold of the dragon, that old
serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him for a thousand
years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set
a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till
the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be
loosed a little season." (Revelation xx. 2, 3.) With this text all
the pulpits in Christendom had been ringing for a whole generation.
And not the pulpits only, but the refection-halls of convents, and
the cottages of the starving peasantry. Into the castle also of the
noble, we have seen, it had penetrated; and the most abject terror
pervaded the superstitious, while despair, as in shipwrecked vessels,
displayed itself amid the masses of the population in rioting and
insubordination. The spirit of evil for a little season was to be let
loose upon a sinful world; and when the observer looked round at the
real condition of the people in all parts of Europe--at the ignorance
and degradation of the multitude, the cruelty of the lords, and the
unchristian ambition and unrestrained passions of the clergy--it must
have puzzled him how to imagine a worse state of things even when the
chain was loosened from "that old serpent," and the world placed
unresistingly in his folds. Yet, as if men's minds had now reached
their lowest point, there was a perpetual rise from the beginning of
this date. When the first day of the thousand-and-first year shone
upon the world, it seemed that in all nations the torpor of the past
was to be thrown off. There were strivings everywhere after a new
order of things. Coming events cast their shadows a long way before;
for in the very beginning of this century, when it was reported that
Jerusalem had been taken by the Saracens, Sylvester uttered the
memorable words, "Soldiers of Christ, arise and fight for Zion." By
a combination of all Christian powers for one object, he no doubt
hoped to put an end to the party quarrels by which Europe was torn
in pieces. And this great thought must have been germinating in the
popular heart ever since the speech was spoken; for we shall see at the
end of the period we are describing how instantaneously the cry for
a crusade was responded to in all lands. In the mean time, the first
joy of their deliverance from the expected destruction impelled all
classes of society in a more honourable and useful path than they had
ever hitherto trod. As if by universal consent, the first attention
was paid to the maintenance of the churches, those holy buildings by
whose virtues the wrath of Heaven had been turned away. In France, and
Italy, and Germany, the fabrics had in many places been allowed to fall
into ruin. They were now renovated and ornamented with the costliest
materials, and with an architectural skill which, if it previously
existed, had had no room for its display. Stately cathedrals took the
place of the humble buildings in which the services had been conducted
before. Every thing was projected on a gigantic scale, with the idea of
permanence prominently brought forward, now that the threatened end of
all things was seen to be postponed. The foundations were broad and
deep, the walls of immense thickness, roofs steep and high to keep off
the rain and snow, and square buttressed towers to sustain the church
and furnish it at the same time with military defence. It was a holy
occupation, and the clergy took a prominent part in the new movement.
Bishops and monks were the principal members of a confraternity who
devoted themselves to the science of architecture and founded all their
works on the exact rules of symmetry and fitness. Artists from Italy,
where Roman models were everywhere seen, and enthusiastic students from
the south of France, where the great works of the Empire must have
exercised an ennobling influence on their taste and fancy, brought
their tribute of memory or invention to the design. Tall pillars
supported the elevated vault, instead of the flat roof of former days;
and gradually an approach was made to what, in after-periods, was
recognised as the pure Gothic. Here, then, was at last a real science,
the offspring of the highest aspirations of the human mind. Churches
rising in rich profusion in all parts of the country were the centres
of architectural taste. The castle of the noble was no longer to be a
mere mass of stones huddled on each other, to protect its inmates from
outward attack. The skill of the learned builder was called in, and on
picturesque heights, safe from hostile assault by the difficulty of
approach, rose turret and bartizan, arched gateway and square-flanked
towers, to add new features to the landscape, and help the march of
civilization, by showing to that allegorizing age the result, both
for strength and beauty, of regularity and proportion. For at this
time allegory, which gave an inner meaning to outward things, was in
full force. There was no portion of the parish church which had not
its mystical significance; and no doubt, at the end of this century,
the architectural meaning of the external alteration of the structure
was perceived, when the great square tower, which typified resistance
to worldly aggression, was exchanged for the tall and graceful spire
which pointed encouragingly to heaven. Occasions were eagerly sought
for to give employment to the ruling passion. Building went on in all
quarters. The beginning of this century found eleven hundred and eight
monasteries in France alone. In the course of a few years she was put
in possession of three hundred and twenty-six more. [A.D. 1035.] The
magnificent Abbey of Fontenelle was restored in 1035 by William of
Normandy; and this same William, whom we shall afterwards see in the
somewhat different character of Conqueror and devastator of England,
was the founder and patron of more abbeys and monasteries than any
other man. Many of them are still erect, to attest the solidity of his
work; the ruins of the others raise our surprise that they are not
yet entire--so vast in their extent and gigantic in their materials.
But the same character of permanence extended to all the works of
this great builder's[B] hands--the systems of government no less than
the fabrics of churches. The remains of his feudalism in our country,
no less than the fragments of his masonry at Bayeux, Fecamp, and St.
Michael's, attest the cyclopean scale on which his superstructures were
reared. Nor were these great architectural efforts which characterize
this period made only on behalf of the clergy. It gives a very narrow
notion, as Michelet has observed, of the uses and purposes of those
enormous buildings, to view them merely as places for public worship
and the other offices of religion. The church in a district was, in
those days, what a hundred other buildings are required to make up in
the present. It was the town-hall, the market-place, the concert-room,
the theatre, the school, the news-room, and the vestry, all in one.
We are to remember that poverty was almost universal. The cottages in
which the serfs and even the freemen resided were wretched hovels.
They had no windows, they were damp and airless, and were merely
considered the human kennels into which the peasantry retired to sleep.
In contrast to this miserable den there arose a building vast and
beautiful, consecrated by religion, ornamented with carving and colour,
large enough to enable the whole population to wander in its aisles,
with darker recesses under the shade of pillars, to give opportunity
for familiar conversation or the enjoyment of the family meal. The
church was the poor man's palace, where he felt that all the building
belonged to him and was erected for his use. It was also his castle,
where no enemy could reach him, and the love and pride which filled his
heart in contemplating the massive proportions and splendid elevation
of the glorious fane overflowed towards the officers of the church.
The priest became glorified in his eyes as the officiating servant in
that greatest of earthly buildings, and the bishop far outshone the
dignity of kings when it was known that he had plenary authority over
many such majestic fabrics. Ascending from the known to the unknown,
the Pope of Rome, the Bishop of Bishops, shone upon the bewildered mind
of the peasant with a light reflected from the object round which all
his veneration had gathered from his earliest days--the scene of all
the incidents of his life--the hallowed sanctuary into which he had
been admitted as an infant, and whose vaults should echo to the funeral
service when he should have died.
But this century was distinguished for an upheaving of the human
mind, which found its development in other things besides the bursting
forth of architectural skill. It seemed that the chance of continued
endurance, vouchsafed to mankind by the rising of the sun on the first
morning of the eleventh century, gave an impulse to long-pent-up
thoughts in all the directions of inquiry. The dulness of unquestioning
undiscriminating belief was disturbed by the freshening breezes of
dissidence and discussion. The Pope himself, the venerable Sylvester
the Second, had acquired all the wisdom of the Arabians by attending
the Mohammedan schools in the royal city of Cordova. There he had
learned the mysteries of the secret sciences, and the more useful
knowledge--which he imported into the Christian world--of the Arabic
numerals. The Saracenic barbarism had long yielded to the blandishments
of the climate and soil of Spain; and emirs and sultans, in their
splendid gardens on the Guadalquivir, had been discussing the most
abstruse or subtle points of philosophy while the professed teachers
of Christendom were sunk in the depths of ignorance and credulity.
Sylvester had made such progress in the unlawful learning accessible at
the head-quarters of the unbelievers, that his simple contemporaries
could only account for it by supposing he had sold himself to the
enemy of mankind in exchange for such prodigious information. He was
accused of the unholy arts of magic and necromancy; and all that
orthodoxy could do to assert her superiority over such acquirements
was to spread the report, which was very generally credited, that when
the years of the compact were expired, the paltering fiend appeared
in person and carried off his debtor from the midst of the affrighted
congregation, after a severe logical discussion, in which the father
of lies had the best of the argument. This was a conclusive proof
of the danger of all logical acquirements. But as time passed on,
and the darkness of the tenth century was more and more left behind,
there arose a race of men who were not terrified by the fate of the
philosophic Sylvester from cultivating their understandings to the
highest pitch. Among those there were two who particularly left their
marks on the genius of the time, and who had the strange fortune also
of succeeding each other as Archbishops of Canterbury. These were
Lanfranc and Anselm. [A.D. 1042.] When Lanfranc was still a monk at
Caen, he had attracted to his prelections more than four thousand
scholars; and Anselm, while in the same humble rank, raised the schools
of Bec in Normandy to a great reputation. From these two men, both
Italians by birth, the Scholastic Philosophy took its rise. The old
unreasoning assent to the doctrines of Christianity had now new life
breathed into it by the permitted application of intellect and reason
to the support of truth. In the darkness and misery of the previous
century, the deep and mysterious dogma of Transubstantiation had made
its first authoritative appearance in the Church. Acquiesced in by the
docile multitude, and accepted by the enthusiastic and imaginative as
an inexpressible gift of fresh grace to mankind, and a fitting crown
and consummation of the daily-recurring miracles with which the Mother
and Witness of the truth proved and maintained her mission, it had been
attacked by Berenger of Tours, who used all the resources of reason and
ingenuity to demonstrate its unsoundness. [A.D. 1059.] But Lanfranc
came to the rescue, and by the exercise of a more vigorous dialectic,
and the support of the great majority of the clergy, confuted all that
Berenger advanced, had him stripped of his archdeaconry of Angers and
other preferments, and left him in such destitution and disfavour
that the discomfited opponent of the Real Presence was forced to
read his retractation at Rome, and only expiated the enormity of his
fault by the rigorous seclusion of the remainder of his life. The
hopeful feature in this discussion was, that though the influence of
ecclesiastic power was not left dormant, in the shape of temporal
ruin and spiritual threats, the exercise of those usual weapons of
authority was accompanied with attempts at argument and conviction.
Lanfranc, indeed, in the very writings in which he used his talents
to confute the heretic, made such use of his reasoning and inductive
faculties that he nearly fell under the ban of heresy himself. He had
the boldness to imagine a man left to the exercise of his natural
powers alone, and bringing observation, argument, and ratiocination
to the discovery of the Christian dogmas; but he was glad to purchase
his complete rehabilitation, as champion of the Church, by a work in
which he admits reason to the subordinate position of a supporter or
commentator, but by no means a foundation or inseparable constituent of
an article of the faith. Any thing was better than the blindness and
ignorance of the previous age; and questions of the purest metaphysics
were debated with a fire and animosity which could scarcely have been
excited by the greatest worldly interests. The Nominalists and Realists
began their wordy and unprofitable war, which after occasional truces
may at any moment break out, as it has often done before, though it
would now be confined to the professorial chairs in our universities,
and not exercise a preponderating influence on the course of human
affairs. The dispute (as the names of the disputants import) arose
upon the question as to whether universal ideas were things or only
the names of things, and on this the internecine contest went on.
All the subtlety of the old Greek philosophies was introduced into
the scholasticisms and word-splittings of those useless arguers; and
vast reputations, which have not yet decayed, were built on this very
unsubstantial foundation.
It shows how immeasurably the efforts of the intellect, even when
misapplied, transcend the greatest triumphs of military skill, when we
perceive that in this age, which was illustrated by the Conquest of
England, first by the Danes, and then by William, by the marvellous
rise and triumphant progress of the sons of Tancred of Hauteville, and
by the startling incidents of the First Crusade,--the central figure
is a meagre, hard-featured monk, who rises from rank to rank, till
he governs and tramples on the world under the name of Gregory the
Seventh. It may seem to some people, who look at the present condition
of the Romish Church, that too prominent a place is assigned in these
early centuries to the growth and aggrandizement of the ecclesiastical
power; but as the object of these pages is to point out what seems
the main distinguishing feature of each of the periods selected for
separate notice, it would be unpardonable to pass over the Papacy,
varying in extent of power and pretension at every period when it
comes into view, and always impressing a distinct and individualizing
character on the affairs with which it is concerned. It is the most
stable, and at the same time the most flexible, of powers. Kingdoms
and dynasties flourish and decay, and make no permanent mark on the
succeeding age. The authority of a ruler like Charlemagne or Otho
rises in a full tide, and, having reached its limits, yields to the
irresistible ebb. But Roman influence knows no retrocession. Even when
its pretensions are defeated and its assaults repulsed, it claims as
_de jure_ what it has lost _de facto_, and, though it were reduced to
the possession of a single church, would continue to issue its orders
to the habitable globe.
Like the last descendant of the Great Mogul, who professed to rule over
Hindostan while his power was limited to the walls of his palace at
Delhi, the bearer of the Tiara abates no jot of his state and dignity
when every vestige of his influence has disappeared. While ridiculed
as a puppet or pitied as a sufferer at home, he arrogates more than
royal power in regions which have long thrown off his authority, and
announces his will by the voice of blustering and brazen heralds to a
deaf and rebellious generation, which looks on him with no more respect
than the grotesquely-dressed conjurers before a tent-door at a fair.
But the herald's voice would have been listened to with respect and
obedience if it had been heard at the Pope's gate in 1073. There had
never been such a pope before, and never has been such a pope since.
Others have been arrogant and ambitious, but no one has ever equalled
Hildebrand in arrogance and ambition. Strength of will, also, has been
the ruling character of many of the pontiffs, but no one has ever
equalled Hildebrand in the undying tenacity with which he pursued his
object. He was like Roland, the hero of Roncesvalles, who even in
defeat knew how to keep his enemies at a distance by blowing upon his
horn. When Durandal foiled the vanquished Gregory, he spent his last
breath in defiant blasts upon his Olifant.
But there were many circumstances which not only rendered the rise
of such a person possible, but made his progress easy and almost
unavoidable. First of all, the crusading spirit which commenced with
this century had introduced a great change in the principles and
practice of the higher clergy. It is a mistake to suppose that the
expedition to Jerusalem, under the preaching of Peter the Hermit, which
took place in 1094, was the earliest manifestation of the aggressive
spirit of the Christian, as such, against the unbeliever. A holy
war was proclaimed against the Saracens of Italy at an early date.
An armed assault upon the Jews, as descendants of the murderers of
Christ, had taken place in 1080. Even the Norman descent on England was
considered by the more devout of the Papist followers in the light of
a crusade against the enemies of the Cross, as the Anglo-Saxons were
not sufficiently submissive to the commands of Rome. Bishops, we saw,
were held in a former century to derogate from the sanctity of their
characters when they fought in person like the other occupants of
fiefs. But the sacred character which expeditions like those against
Sicily and Salerno gave to the struggle made a great difference in
the popular estimate of a prelate's sphere of action. He was now held
to be strictly in the exercise of his duty when he was slaying an
infidel with the edge of the sword. He was not considered to be more
in his place at the head of a procession in honour of a saint than at
the head of an army of cavaliers destroying the enemies of the faith.
Warlike skill and personal courage became indispensable in a bishop
of the Church; and in Germany these qualities were so highly prized,
that the inhabitants of a diocese in the empire, presided over by a man
of peace and holiness, succeeded in getting him deposed by the Pope
on the express ground of his being "placable and far from valiant."
The epitaph of a popular bishop was, that he was "good priest and
brave chevalier." The manners and feelings of the camp soon became
disseminated among the reverend divines, who inculcated Christianity
with a battle-axe in their hands. They quarrelled with neighbouring
barons for portions of land. They seized the incomes of churches and
abbeys. Bishop and baron strove with each other who could get most
for himself out of the property of the Church. The layman forced his
serfs to elect his infant son to an abbacy or bishopric, and then
pillaged the estate and stripped the lower clergy in the minor's name.
Other abuses followed; and though the strictness of the rule against
the open marriage of priests had long ceased, and in some places the
superiority of wedded incumbents had been so recognised that the
appointment of a pastor was objected to unless he was accompanied by
a wife--still, the letter of the Church-law, enjoining celibacy on
all orders of the clergy, had never been so generally neglected as at
the present time. No attempt was made to conceal the almost universal
infraction of the rule. Bishops themselves brought forward their wives
on occasions of state and ceremony, who disputed the place of honour
with the wives of counts and barons. When strictly inquired into,
however, these alliances were not allowed to have the effect of regular
matrimony. They were looked upon merely as a sort of licensed and not
dishonourable concubinage, and the children resulting from them were
deprived of the rights of legitimacy. Yet the wealth and influence
of their parents made their exclusion from the succession to land of
little consequence. They were enriched sufficiently with the spoil of
the diocese to be independent of the rights of heirship. This must
have led, however, to many cases of hardship, when the feudal baron,
tempted by the riches of the neighbouring see, had laid violent hands
on the property, and by bribery or force procured his own nomination as
bishop. The children of any marriage contracted after that time lost
their inheritance of the barony by the episcopal incapacity of their
father, and must have added to the general feeling of discontent caused
by the junction of the two characters. For when the tyrannical lord
became a prelate, it only added the weapons of ecclesiastic domination
to the baronial armory of cruelty and extortion. He could now withhold
all the blessings of the Church, as bishop, unless the last farthing
were yielded up to his demands as landlord. An appalling state of
things, when the refractory vassal, who had escaped the sword, could be
knocked into submission by the crozier, both wielded by the same man.
The Church, therefore, in its highest offices, had become as mundane
and ambitious as the nobility. And it must have been evident to a far
dimmer sight than Hildebrand's, that, as the power and independence
of the barons had been gained at the expense of the Crown, the wealth
and possessions of the bishops would weaken their allegiance to the
Pope. Sprung from the lowest ranks of the people, the grim-hearted monk
never for a moment was false to his order. He looked on lords and kings
as tyrants and oppressors, on bishops themselves as lording it over
God's heritage and requiring to be held down beneath the foot of some
levelling and irresistible power, which would show them the nothingness
of rank and station; and for this end he dreamed of a popedom,
universal in its claims, domineering equally over all conditions of
men--an incarnation of the fiercest democracy, trampling on the people,
and of the bitterest republicanism, aiming at more than monarchical
power. He had the wrath of generations of serfdom rankling in his
heart, and took a satisfaction, sweetened by revenge, in bringing low
the haughty looks of the proud. And in these strainings after the
elevation of the Papacy he was assisted by several powers on which he
could securely rely.