THE CONFLICT BETWEEN GREGORY VII AND HENRY IV
[Sidenote: The _Dictatus_ of Gregory VII.]
63. Among the writings of Gregory VII there is a very brief statement,
called the _Dictatus_, of the powers which he believed the popes to
possess. Its chief claims are the following: The pope enjoys a unique
title; he is the only universal bishop and may depose and reinstate
other bishops or transfer them from place to place. No council of the
Church may be regarded as speaking for Christendom without his consent.
The Roman Church has never erred, nor will it err to all eternity. No
one may be considered a Catholic Christian who does not agree with the
Roman Church. No book is authoritative unless it has received the papal
sanction.
Gregory does not stop with asserting the pope's complete supremacy over
the Church; he goes still further and claims for him the right to
restrain the civil government when it seems necessary in the cause of
righteousness. He says that "the Pope is the only person whose feet are
kissed by all princes"; that he may depose emperors and "absolve
subjects from allegiance to an unjust ruler." No one shall dare to
condemn one who appeals to the pope. No one may annul a decree of the
pope, though the pope may declare null and void the decrees of all other
earthly powers; and no one may pass judgment upon his acts.[109]
[Sidenote: Inadequacy of civil government in the Middle Ages.]
[Sidenote: The Church claims the right to interfere only when
necessary.]
These are not the insolent claims of a reckless tyrant, but the
expression of a theory of government which has had advocates among some
of the most conscientious and learned men of all succeeding ages. Before
venturing to criticise Gregory's view of his position we should
recollect two important facts. In the first place, what most writers
call the _state_, when dealing with the Middle Ages, was no orderly
government in our sense of the word; it was represented only by restless
feudal lords, to whom disorder was the very breath of life. When, on one
occasion, Gregory declared the civil power to be the invention of evil
men instigated by the devil, he was making a natural inference from what
he observed of the conduct of the princes of his time. In the second
place, it should be remembered that Gregory does not claim that the
Church should manage the civil government, but that the papacy, which is
answerable for the eternal welfare of every Christian, should have the
right to restrain a sinful and perverse prince and to refuse to
recognize unrighteous laws. Should all else fail, he claimed the right
to free a nation which was being led to disaster in this world and to
perdition in the next from its allegiance to a wicked monarch.
[Sidenote: Gregory VII puts his theories of the papal power into
practice.]
Immediately upon his election as pope, Gregory began to put into
practice his high conception of the rôle that the spiritual head of the
world should play. He dispatched legates throughout Europe, and from
this time on these legates became a powerful instrument of government.
He warned the kings of France and England and the youthful German ruler,
Henry IV, to forsake their evil ways, to be upright and just, and obey
his admonitions. He explains, kindly but firmly, to William the
Conqueror that the papal and kingly powers are both established by God
as the greatest among the authorities of the world, just as the sun and
moon are the greatest of the heavenly bodies.[110] But the papal power
is obviously superior to the kingly, for it is responsible for it; at
the Last Day Gregory must render an account of the king as one of the
flock intrusted to his care. The king of France was warned to give up
his practice of simony, lest he be excommunicated and his subjects freed
from their oath of allegiance. All these acts of Gregory appear to have
been dictated not by worldly ambition but by a fervent conviction of
their righteousness and of his duty toward all men.
[Sidenote: Death of Henry III, 1056.]
64. Obviously Gregory's plan of reform included all the states of
western Europe, but conditions were such that the most striking conflict
took place between him and the emperor. The trouble came about in this
way. Henry III had died in 1056, leaving only his good wife Agnes and
their little son of six years to maintain the hard-fought prerogatives
of the German king in the midst of ambitious vassals such as even Otto
the Great had found it difficulty to control.
[Sidenote: Accession of Henry IV, 1065.]
In 1065 the fifteen-year-old lad was declared of age, and his lifelong
difficulties began with a great rebellion of the Saxons. They accused
the young king of having built castles in their land and of filling them
with rough soldiers who preyed upon the people. Gregory felt it his duty
to interfere. To him the Saxons appeared a people oppressed by a
heedless youth under the inspiration of evil counselors.
As one reads of Henry's difficulties and misfortunes it seems miraculous
that he was able to maintain himself as king at all. Sick at heart,
unable to trust any one, and forced to flee from his own subjects, he
writes contritely to the pope: "We have sinned against heaven and before
thee and are no longer worthy to be called thy son." But when cheered
for a moment by a victory over the rebellious Saxons, he easily forgot
his promise of obedience to the pope. He continued to associate with
counselors whom the pope had excommunicated and went on filling
important bishoprics in Germany and Italy regardless of the pope's
prohibitions.
[Sidenote: New prohibition of lay investiture.]
The popes who immediately preceded Gregory had more than once forbidden
the churchmen to receive investiture from laymen. Gregory reissued this
prohibition in 1075,[111] just as the trouble with Henry had begun.
Investiture was, as we have seen, the legal transfer by the king, or
other lord, to a newly chosen church official, of the lands and rights
attached to the office. In forbidding lay investiture Gregory attempted
nothing less than a revolution. The bishops and abbots were often
officers of government, exercising in Germany and Italy powers similar
in all respects to those of the counts. The king not only relied upon
them for advice and assistance in carrying on his government, but they
were among his chief allies in his constant struggles with his vassals.
[Sidenote: Henry IV angered by the language of the papal legates.]
Gregory dispatched three envoys to Henry (end of 1075) with a fatherly
letter[112] in which he reproached the king for his wicked conduct. But
he evidently had little expectation that mere expostulation would have
any effect upon Henry, for he gave his legates instructions to use
threats, if necessary, which were bound to produce either complete
subjection or out-and-out revolt. The legates were to tell the king that
his crimes were so numerous, so horrible, and so notorious, that he
merited not only excommunication but the permanent loss of all his royal
honors.
[Sidenote: Gregory VII deposed by a council of German bishops at Worms,
1076]
The violence of the legates' language not only kindled the wrath of the
king but also gained for him friends among the bishops. A council which
Henry summoned at Worms (in 1076) was attended by more than two thirds
of the German bishops. Here Gregory was declared deposed owing to the
alleged irregularity of his election and the many terrible charges of
immorality and ambition brought against him. The bishops renounced their
obedience to him and publicly declared that he had ceased to be their
pope. It appears very surprising, at first sight, that the king should
have received the prompt support of the German churchmen against the
head of the Church. But it must be remembered that the prelates owed
their offices to the king and not to the pope.
In a remarkable letter[113] to Gregory, Henry asserts that he has shown
himself long-suffering and eager to guard the honor of the papacy, but
that the pope has mistaken his humility for fear. "Thou hast not
hesitated," the letter concludes, "to rise up against the royal power
conferred upon us by God, daring to threaten to deprive us of it, as if
we had received our kingdom from thee. As if the kingdom and the Empire
were in thine and not in God's hands.... I, Henry, King by the grace of
God, together with all our bishops, say unto thee, come down, come down
from thy throne and be accursed of all generations."
[Sidenote: Henry IV deposed and excommunicated by the pope.]
Gregory's reply to Henry and the German bishops who had deposed him was
speedy and decisive. "Incline thine ear to us, O Peter, chief of the
Apostles. As thy representative and by thy favor has the power been
granted especially to me by God of binding and loosing in heaven and
earth. On the strength of this, for the honor and glory of thy Church,
in the name of Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I withdraw,
through thy power and authority, from Henry the King, son of Henry the
Emperor, who has risen against thy Church with unheard-of insolence, the
rule over the whole kingdom of the Germans and over Italy. I absolve all
Christians from the bonds of the oath which they have sworn, or may
swear, to him; and I forbid anyone to serve him as king." For his
intercourse with the excommunicated and his manifold iniquities, the
king is furthermore declared accursed and excommunicate.[114]
[Sidenote: Attitude of the German princes.]
For a time after the pope had deposed him everything went against Henry.
Even the churchmen now held off. Instead of resenting the pope's
interference, the discontented Saxons, and many other of Henry's
vassals, believed that there was now an excellent opportunity to get rid
of Henry and choose a more agreeable ruler. But after a long conference
the great German vassals decided to give Henry another chance. He was to
refrain from exercising the functions of government until he had made
peace with the pope. If at the end of a year he had failed to do this,
he was to be regarded as having forfeited the throne. The pope was,
moreover, invited to come to Augsburg to consult with the princes as to
whether Henry should be reinstated or another chosen in his stead. It
looked as if the pope was, in truth, to control the civil government.
[Sidenote: Henry submits to the pope at Canossa, 1077.]
Henry decided to anticipate the arrival of the pope. He hastened across
the Alps in midwinter and appeared as an humble suppliant before the
castle of Canossa, whither the pope had come on his way to Augsburg. For
three days the German king appeared before the closed door, barefoot and
in the coarse garments of a pilgrim and a penitent, and even then
Gregory was induced only by the expostulations of his influential
companions to admit the humiliated ruler. The spectacle of this mighty
prince of distinguished appearance, humiliated and in tears before the
nervous little man who humbly styled himself the "servant of the
servants of God," has always been regarded as most completely typifying
the power of the Church and the potency of her curses, against which
even the most exalted of the earth found no weapon of defense except
abject penitence.[115]
[Sidenote: A new king chosen.]
[Sidenote: Henry again excommunicated.]
65. The pardon which Henry received at Canossa did not satisfy the
German princes; for their main object in demanding that he should
reconcile himself with the Church had been to cause him additional
embarrassment. They therefore proceeded to elect another ruler, and the
next three or four years was a period of bloody struggles between the
adherents of the rival kings. Gregory remained neutral until 1080, when
he again "bound with the chain of anathema" Henry, "the so-called king,"
and all his followers. He declared him deprived of his royal power and
dignity and forbade all Christians to obey him.
[Sidenote: Henry triumphs over Gregory.]
[Sidenote: Death of Gregory.]
The new excommunication had precisely the opposite effect from the first
one. Henry's friends increased rather than decreased. The German clergy
were again aroused, and they again deposed "this same most brazen
Hildebrand." Henry's rival fell in battle, and Henry, accompanied by an
anti-pope, betook himself to Italy with the double purpose of putting
his pope on the throne and winning the imperial crown. Gregory held out
for no less than two years, but at last Rome fell into Henry's hands and
Gregory withdrew and soon died. His last words were, "I have loved
justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die an exile," and the
fair-minded historical student will not question their truth.[116]
[Sidenote: Henry IV's further troubles.]
The death of Gregory did not put an end to Henry's difficulties. He
spent the remaining twenty years of his life in trying to maintain his
rights as king of Germany and Italy against his rebellious subjects on
both sides of the Alps. In Germany his chief enemies were the Saxons and
his discontented vassals. In Italy the pope was now actively engaged as
a temporal ruler, in building up a little state of his own. He was,
moreover, always ready to encourage the Lombard cities--which were
growing more and more powerful and less and less willing to submit to
the rule of a German--in their opposition to the emperor.
[Sidenote: Rebellion at home and in Italy.]
[Sidenote: Treason of Henry's sons.]
[Sidenote: Death of Henry IV, 1106.]
A combination of his Italian enemies called Henry again to Italy in
1090, although he was forced to leave Germany but half subdued. He was
seriously defeated by the Italians; and the Lombard cities embraced the
opportunity to form their first union against their foreign king. In
1093 Milan, Cremona, Lodi, and Piacenza joined in an offensive and
defensive alliance for their own protection. After seven years of
hopeless lingering in Italy, Henry returned sadly across the Alps,
leaving the peninsula in the hands of his enemies. But he found no peace
at home. His discontented German vassals induced his son, whom he had
had crowned as his successor, to revolt against his father. Thereupon
followed more civil war, more treason, and a miserable abdication. In
1106 death put an end to perhaps the saddest reign that history records.
[Sidenote: Henry V, 1106-1125.]
The achievement of the reign of Henry IV's son, Henry V, which chiefly
interests us was the adjustment of the question of investitures. Pope
Paschal II, while willing to recognize those bishops already chosen by
the king, provided they were good men, proposed that thereafter
Gregory's decrees against lay investiture should be carried out. The
clergy should no longer do homage and lay their hands, consecrated to
the service of the altar, in the blood-stained hands of the nobles.
Henry V, on the other hand, declared that unless the clergy took the
oath of fealty the bishops would not be given the lands, towns, castles,
tolls, and privileges attached to the bishoprics.
[Sidenote: Settlement of the question of lay investiture in the
Concordat of Worms, 1122.]
After a succession of troubles a compromise was at last reached in the
Concordat of Worms (1122), which put an end to the controversy over
investitures in Germany.[117] The emperor promised to permit the Church
freely to elect the bishops and abbots and renounced his old claim to
invest with the spiritual emblems of the ring and the crosier. But the
elections were to be held in the presence of the king, and he was
permitted, in a separate ceremony, to invest the new bishop or abbot
with his fiefs and secular prerogatives by a touch of the scepter. In
this way the spiritual rights of the bishops were obviously conferred by
the churchmen who elected him; and although the king might still
practically invalidate an election by refusing to invest with the
coveted temporal privileges, still the direct appointment of the bishops
and abbots was taken out of his hands. As for the emperor's control over
the papacy, too many popes, since the advent of Henry IV, had been
generally recognized as properly elected without the sanction of the
emperor, for any one to believe any longer that his sanction was
necessary.