Theodora disappears; and Pope John X is found engaged in a fierce

contest for the mastery of Rome with Marozia and her lover or husband,

the marquis Alberic, by whom she had a son of the same name, afterwards

tyrant of the city. The vigorous and martial pontiff succeeds in

expelling Alberic from the city; Alberic probably met his death soon

after (925). It is said that he was murdered by the Romans in revenge

for some secret alliance entered into with the Hungarians, who were then

wasting Italy, and had reached the very frontiers of Calabria.

The death of her husband increased rather than weakened the power of

Marozia. Her personal charms, and her unscrupulous use of them, are said

to have multiplied to an infinite extent her adherents. Her paramours

made a strong party. The empire was vacant. There was no potentate to

whom the pope could appeal. Marozia seized the castle of St. Angelo, and

with this precious dowry, which commanded Rome, she sought to confirm

her power by some splendid alliance. Guido, the duke of Tuscany, the son

of Adalbert the marquis, did not disdain the nuptials with a profligate

woman who brought Rome as her marriage portion.

John X was left to contest alone the government of Rome with Marozia and

her Tuscan husband. Neither Rome nor the mistress of Rome regarded the

real services rendered by John X to Christendom and to Italy. The former

lover, as public scandal averred, of her mother, the saviour of Rome from

the Saracens, was surprised in the Lateran palace by this daring woman.

His brother Peter, as it appears, his great support in the contest for

the government of Rome, and therefore the object of peculiar hatred to

Guido and Marozia, was killed before his face. The pope was thrown into

prison, where some months after he died (929) either of anguish and

despair, or by more summary means. It was rumoured that he was smothered

with a pillow. No means were too violent for Marozia to employ even

against a pope.

Marozia did not venture at once to place her son on the papal throne.

A Leo VI was pope for some months; a Stephen VII for two years and one

month. That son may as yet have been too young even for this shameless

woman to advance him to the highest ecclesiastical dignity; her husband

Guido may have had some lingering respect for the sacred office, some

struggling feelings of decency. But at the death of Stephen, Marozia

again ruled alone in Rome; her husband Guido was dead, and her son

was pope. John XI (according to the rumours of the time, of which

Liutprand,[s] a follower of Hugo of Provence, may be accepted as a

faithful reporter) was the offspring of Marozia by the pope Sergius; more

trustworthy authorities make him the lawful son of her husband Alberic.

But the obsequious clergy and people acquiesced without resistance in the

commands of their patrician mistress; the son of Marozia is successor of

St. Peter.

But the aspiring Marozia, not content with having been the wife of a

marquis, the wife of the wealthy and powerful duke of Tuscany, perhaps

the mistress of one, certainly the mother of another pope, looked still

higher in her lustful ambition; she must wed a monarch. She sent to offer

herself and the city of Rome to the new king of Italy, Hugo of Provence,

who was not scrupulous in his amours, lawful or unlawful. Through policy

or through passion he was always ready to form or to break these tender

connections. The cautious Marozia would not allow his army to enter the

city, but received her royal bridegroom in the castle of St. Angelo.

There was celebrated this unhallowed marriage.

REBELLION OF ROME

[Sidenote: [931-953 A.D.]]

[Illustration: A BISHOP OF THE TENTH CENTURY]

But though the Romans would brook the dominion of a Roman woman, they

would not endure that of a foreigner. The coarse vices, the gluttony of

the soldiers of Hugo offended the fastidious Italians. The insolence of

Hugo himself provoked a rebellion. The nobles were called upon to perform

menial offices, usual probably in the half feudal transalpine courts but

alien to Italian manners. Alberic, the son of Marozia, was commanded

to hold the water in which King Hugo washed his hands. Performing his

office awkwardly or reluctantly, he spilled the water, and received a

blow on the face from the king. Already may Alberic have been jealous

of the promotion of his brother to the popedom, and have resented this

devotion of his mother to her new foreign connections. He was a youth of

daring; he organised a conspiracy among the nobles of Rome; he appealed

to the old Roman pride: “Shall these Burgundians, of old the slaves of

Rome, tyrannise over Romans?” At the tolling of the bell the whole people

flocked to his banner, and attacked the castle of St. Angelo before Hugo

could admit his own troops. Alberic remained master of the castle, of his

mother, and of the pope. These two he cast into prison, defied the king

of Italy, who made an ignominious retreat, and from that time remained

master of Rome.

For four years Pope John XI lingered in fact a prisoner, at least

without any share in the government of Rome, only permitted to perform

his spiritual functions. Alberic ruled undisturbed. King Hugo attempted

to bribe him to the surrender of Rome, by the offer of his daughter in

marriage; the more crafty Alberic married the daughter, and retained

possession of Rome. After the death of John a succession of popes,

appointed, no doubt, by the sole will of Alberic, Leo VII, Stephen IX,

Marinus II (or Martin III) Agapetus II, pass over the throne of the

popedom, with hardly a sign of their power in Rome, no indication of

their dignity, still less of their sanctity. They are still Popes beyond

the Alps. Nor was the supreme pontiff alone depressed in these turbulent

times. The great ecclesiastics are mingled in most of the treacherous and

bloody transactions of the period. Individual energy gave the bishops

of the city great power, but as they acted with as little restraint, so

these prelates were treated with as little reverence as secular princes.

During the whole reign of Hugo of Provence, notwithstanding the open or

treacherous assaults of that king, Alberic, whether as an armed tyrant

commanding Rome from the castle of St. Angelo, or as the head of a

republic and recognised by the voice of the Roman people, had maintained

his authority. He had ruled for twenty-two years; he bequeathed that

authority, on his death (953), to his son Octavian.

POPE JOHN XII

[Sidenote: [953-963 A.D.]]

Octavian, though only nineteen years old, aspired to unite, in his own

person, the civil and spiritual supremacy. He was already in holy orders;

two years after the death of his father Alberic, the pope Agapetus II

died; and Octavian, by the voluntary or enforced suffrages of the clergy

and the people, was elected pope. He was the first of the Roman pontiffs

who changed, or rather took a second ecclesiastical name; the civil

government seems to have been conducted in that of Octavian; the church

was administered under that of John XII.

In the meantime had arisen in Germany a monarch more powerful than had

appeared in Europe since the death of Charlemagne, Otto (Otho) the Great.

Otto made some disposition for a visit to Rome to receive the imperial

crown from the hands of the pope Agapetus. All Italy looked for the

coming of the new Charlemagne. On his appearance resistance vanished.

Berengar and Adalbert shut themselves up in their strongest fortresses.

It was a triumphal procession to Pavia--to Rome. At Pavia Otto the Great

was crowned king of Italy, at Rome the pope anointed him as emperor

(962). Thenceforth the king of Germany claimed to be Western emperor.

Otto swore to protect the church of Rome against all her enemies, to

maintain her rights and privileges, to restore her lands and possessions,

when he should have recovered them, and to make no change in the

government of Rome without the sanction of the pope. John XII and the

Roman people took the oath of allegiance to the emperor; they swore more

particularly to abandon all connection with Berengar and his son. The

oath was taken on the body of St. Peter.

Yet no sooner had the emperor returned to Pavia, than the perfidious

John, finding that he had unwarily introduced a master instead of an

obsequious ally, began to enter into correspondence with Adalbert, who,

driven from every Italian city, had found refuge with the Saracens.

Rumours of this treason reached the emperor. The noble German would not

believe the monstrous perfidy; he sent some trustworthy officers to

inquire into the truth; they returned with a fearful list of crimes, of

license, and cruelty, with which the son of Alberic, who seems entirely

to have sunk the character of pope in that of the young, warlike, secular

prince, was charged by the unanimous voice of Rome. In July, 963, Otto

marched upon the capital; the pontiff had reckoned on the cordial support

of the people; they recoiled; the pope and Adalbert fled together from

Rome.

TRIAL OF THE POPE

[Sidenote: [963-964 A.D.]]

The emperor summoned an ecclesiastical council; it was attended by the

archbishops of Aquileia (by deputy), of Milan, of Ravenna, and Hamburg;

by two German and two French metropolitans; by a great number of bishops

and presbyters from Lombardy, Tuscany, and all parts of Italy. The whole

militia of Rome assembled as a guard to the council round the church of

St. Peter. The proceedings of the council mark the times. Inquiry was

made why the pope was not present. A general cry of astonishment broke

forth from the clergy and the people: “The very Iberians, Babylonians,

and Indians have heard the monstrous crimes of the pope. He is not a

wolf who condescends to sheep’s clothing; his cruelty, his diabolical

dealings are open, avowed, disdain concealment.” The calmer justice

of the emperor demanded specific charges. The cardinal presbyter rose

and declared that he had seen Pope John celebrate mass without himself

communicating. Another, that he had ordained a bishop in a stable; that

he had taken bribes for the consecration of bishops, and had ordained a

bishop of Todi who was but ten years old. “For his sacrileges, all eyes

might behold them;” they alluded, probably, to the dilapidation of the

churches, which were open to the weather, and so much out of repair that

the worshippers could not assemble from fear lest the roofs should fall

on their heads.

Darker charges followed, mingled with less heinous, in strange confusion,

charges of adultery, incest, with the names of the females, one his

father’s concubines, another a widow and her niece; he had made the

Lateran palace a brothel; he had been guilty of hunting; charges of

cruelty, the blinding of one dignified ecclesiastic, the castrating

another, both had died under the operation; he had let loose fire and

sword, and appeared himself constantly armed with sword, lance, helmet,

and breast-plate. Both ecclesiastics and laymen accused him of drinking

wine for the love of the devil; of invoking, when gambling, heathen

deities, the devils Jove and Venus. He had perpetually neglected matins

and vespers, and never signed himself with the sign of the cross.

The emperor could speak only German; he commanded the bishop of Cremona

to address the assembly in Latin. Liutprand warned the council, he

adjured them by the blessed Virgin and by St. Peter, not to bring vague

accusations, nor such as could not be supported by accredited testimony,

against the holy father. Bishops, deacons, clergy, and people with one

voice replied, “If we do not prove these and more crimes against the

pope, may St. Peter, who holds the keys of heaven, close the gates

against us; may we be stricken with anathema, and may the anathema be

ratified at the day of judgment!” They appealed to the whole army of

Otto, whether they had not seen the pope in full armour on the other side

of the Tiber; but for the river he had been taken in that attire.

Letters were sent summoning the pope to answer to these accusations;

accusations some of them so obscene that they would have been thought

immodest if made against stage-players. If the pope dreaded any assault

from the enraged multitude, the emperor answered for the security of his

person. The pope’s reply was brief, contemptuous: “John, the servant of

God, to all the bishops. We hear that you design to elect a new pope; if

you do, in the name of Almighty God, I excommunicate you; and forbid you

to confer orders or to celebrate mass!”

Thrice was Pope John cited before the council. Messengers were sent to

Tivoli; the answer was, “The pope was gone out to shoot.” Unprecedented

evils demand unprecedented remedies. The emperor was urged to expel this

new Judas from the seat of the apostle, and to sanction a new election.

Leo, the chief secretary of the Roman see, was unanimously chosen, though

a layman, in the room of the apostate John XII.

But the army of Otto, a feudal army, and bound to do service for

a limited period, began to diminish; part had been injudiciously

dispersed on distant enterprises; the Romans, as usual, soon grew weary

of a foreign, a German yoke. The emissaries of Pope John watched the

opportunity; a furious insurrection of the people broke out against the

emperor and his pope. The valour of Otto, who forced the barricades

of the bridge over the Tiber, subdued the rebellion (964). He took a

terrible revenge. The supplications of Leo with difficulty arrested

the carnage. Otto soon after left Rome, and marched towards Camerino

(Camerinum) and Spoleto in pursuit of King Adalbert. The king Berengar

and his wife Willa were taken in the castle of St. Leo, and sent into

Germany.

[Sidenote: [964-966 A.D.]]

Hardly, however, had Otto left the city when a new rebellion, organised

by the patrician females of Rome, rose on the defenceless Leo, and opened

the gates of the city to John. Leo with difficulty escaped to the camp of

Otto. The remorseless John re-entered the city, resumed his pontifical

state, seized and mutilated the leaders of the imperial party; of one he

cut off the right hand, of another the tongue, the nose, and two fingers;

in this plight they appeared in the imperial camp. An obsequious synod

reversed the decrees of that which had deposed John. The Roman people had

now embraced the cause of the son of Alberic with more resolute zeal;

for the emperor was compelled to delay till he could reassemble a force

powerful enough to undertake the siege of the city. Ere this, however,

his own vices had delivered Rome from her champion or her tyrant,

Christendom from her worst pontiff. While he was pursuing his amours in a

distant part of the city, Pope John XII was struck dead (May 14th, 964),

by the hand of God, as the more religious supposed; others, by a more

natural cause, the poniard of an injured husband.

But it was a Roman or Italian, perhaps a republican feeling which had

latterly attached the citizens to the son of Alberic, not personal love

or respect for his pontifical character. They boldly proceeded at once,

without regard to the emperor, to the election of a new pope, Benedict V.

Otto soon appeared before the walls; he summoned the city, and ordered

every Roman who attempted to escape to be mutilated. The republic was

forced to surrender. Benedict, the new pope, was brought before the

emperor. The cardinal archdeacon, who had adhered to the cause of Leo,

demanded by what right he had presumed to usurp the pontifical robes

during the life-time of Leo, the lawful pope. “If I have sinned,” said

the humbled prelate, “have mercy upon me.” The emperor is said to have

wept. Benedict threw himself before the feet of Otto, drew off the sacred

pallium, and delivered up his crosier to Leo. Leo broke it, and showed it

to the people. Benedict was degraded to the order of deacon and sent into

banishment in Germany. He died at Hamburg.

The grateful, or vassal pope, in a council, recognises the full right of

the emperor Otto and his successors in the kingdom of Italy, as Adrian

that of Charlemagne, to elect his own successors to the empire and to

approve the pope. This right was to belong forever to the king of the

Roman Empire, and to none else.

Early in the next year the emperor Otto recrossed the Alps. Leo VIII died

March, 965, and a deputation from Rome followed the emperor to Germany

to solicit the reinstatement of the exiled Benedict to the popedom.

But Benedict was dead also. The bishop of Narni (John XIII), with the

approbation or by the command of the emperor, was elected to the papacy.

[Sidenote: [966-974 A.D.]]

Scarcely had John XIII assumed the pontificate than the barons and the

people began to murmur against the haughtiness of the new pontiff. They

expelled him from the city with one consent. The prefect Rotfred, not

without personal insult to the pope, assumed the government of Rome; for

ten months John XIII was an exile from his see, at first a prisoner,

afterwards in freedom. From his retreat in Campania he wrote with urgent

entreaty to the emperor. Otto made the cause of John his own; for the

third time he descended the Alps; the terror of his approach appalled

the popular faction. In a counter insurrection in favour of the pope,

Rotfred the prefect was killed, and the gates opened to the pontiff; he

was received with hymns of joy and gratulation. At Christmas Otto entered

Rome; and the emperor and the pope wreaked a terrible vengeance at that

holy season on the rebellious city. The proud Roman titles seemed but

worthy of derision to the German emperor and his vassal pope. The body

of the prefect who had expelled John from the city was dug up out of his

grave and torn to pieces. The consuls escaped with banishment beyond

the Alps; but the twelve tribunes were hanged; the actual prefect was

set upon an ass, with a wine-bag on his head, led through the streets,

scourged, and thrown into prison. All Europe, hardened as it was to acts

of inhumanity, shuddered at these atrocities.

[Illustration: A BISHOP OF THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES]

The rebellion was crushed for a time; during the five remaining years of

John’s pontificate the presence of Otto overawed the refractory Romans.

He ruled in peace. At his death the undisturbed vacancy of the see for

three months implies the humble consultation of Otto’s wishes (he had now

returned to Germany) on the appointment of his successor.

The choice fell on Benedict VI, as usual of Roman birth (January 19th,

973). The factions of Rome now utterly baffle conjecture as to their

motives, as to the passions, not the principles, which actuated their

leaders. Twice (the second time after an interval of ten years, during

which he was absent from Rome), the same man, a cardinal deacon, seizes

and murders two popes; sets himself up as supreme pontiff; but though

with power to commit these enormities, he cannot maintain on either

occasion his ill-won tiara.

The formidable Otto the Great died the year of the accession of Benedict

VI (December 25th, 967). Otto II, whose character was as yet unknown, had

succeeded to the imperial throne; he had been already the colleague of

his father in the empire. He had been crowned at Rome by Pope John XIII.

[Sidenote: [974-985 A.D.]]

The year after the accession of Otto II, on a sudden, Boniface, surnamed

Francone, described as the son of Ferruccio, a name doubtless well known

to his contemporaries, seized the unsuspecting pope Benedict and cast

him into a dungeon (July, 974), where shortly after he was strangled.

Boniface assumed the papacy, but he had miscalculated the strength of his

faction; in one month he was forced to fly the city. Yet he fled not with

so much haste but that he carried off all the treasures, even the sacred

vessels from the church of St. Peter. He found his way to Constantinople,

where he might seem to have been forgotten in his retreat. The peaceful

succession of Benedict VII, the nephew or grandson of the famous

Alberic, may lead to the conclusion that the faction of that family

still survived, and was opposed to that of Boniface. The first act of

Benedict, as might be expected, was the assembling a council for the

excommunication of the murderer and anti-pope Boniface. This is the first

and last important act in the barren annals of Pope Benedict VII. Under

the protection of the emperor Otto II, or by the strength of his Roman

faction, he retained peaceful possession of the see for nine years, an

unusual period of quiet. He was succeeded, no doubt through the influence

of the emperor, by John XIV, who was no Roman, but bishop of Pavia. But

in the year of John’s accession (983), Otto II was preparing a great

armament to avenge a terrible defeat by the Saracens. He had hardly fled

from the conquering Saracens, and made his escape from a Greek ship by

leaping into the sea and swimming ashore. He now threatened with all the

forces of the realm to bridge the Straits of Messina, and reunite Sicily

to the empire of the West. In the midst of his preparations he died at

Rome.

The fugitive Boniface Francone had kept up his correspondence with Rome;

he might presume on the unpopularity of a pontiff, if not of German

birth, imposed by foreign influence, and now deprived of his all-powerful

protector. With the same suddenness as before, he reappeared in Rome,

seized the pope, imprisoned him in the castle of St. Angelo, of which

important fortress he had become master, and there put him to death by

starvation or by poison (August 20th, 984). He exposed the body to the

view of the people, who dared not murmur. He seated himself, as it seems,

unresisted, in the papal chair. The holy see was speedily delivered from

this murderous usurper. He died suddenly. The people revenged themselves

for their own base acquiescence in his usurpation by cowardly insults on

his dead body; it was dragged through the streets, and at length buried,

either by the compassion or the attachment (for Boniface must have had

a powerful faction in Rome) of certain ecclesiastics. These bloody

revolutions could not but destroy all reverence for their ecclesiastical

rulers in the people of Rome.[g]

CHARLES KINGSLEY ON TEMPORAL POWER

A united Italy suited the views of the popes then no more than it does

now. Not only did they conceive of Rome as still the centre of the

western world, but more, their stock in trade was at Rome. The chains of

St. Peter, the sepulchres of St. Peter and St. Paul, the catacombs filled

with the bones of innumerable martyrs--these were their stock in trade.

By giving these, selling these, working miracles with these, calling

pilgrims from all parts of Christendom to visit these _in situ_, they

kept up their power and their wealth.

Having obtained what they wanted from Pepin and Charlemagne, it was

still their interest to pursue the same policy; to compound for their

own independence, as they did with Charlemagne and his successors, by

defending the pretences of foreign kings to the sovereignty of the

rest of Italy. This has been their policy for centuries. It is their

policy still; and that policy has been the curse of Italy. This fatal

gift of the patrimony of St. Peter--as Dante saw, as Machiavelli saw,

as all clear-sighted Italians have seen--has kept her divided, torn by

civil wars, conquered and reconquered by foreign invaders. Unable, as a

celibate ecclesiastic, to form his dominions into a strong hereditary

kingdom; unable as the hierophant of a priestly caste to unite his people

in the bonds of national life; unable, as Borgia tried to do, to conquer

the rest of Italy for himself, and form it into a kingdom large enough

to have weight in the balance of power, the pope was forced, again and

again, to keep himself on his throne by intriguing with foreign princes,

and calling in foreign arms; and the bane of Italy, from the time of

Stephen III to that of Pius IX, was the temporal power of the pope. But

on the popes, also, the Nemesis came. In building their power on the

Roman relics, on the fable that Rome was the patrimony of Peter, they had

built on a lie; and that lie avenged itself.

Having committed themselves to the false position of being petty kings of

a petty kingdom, they had to endure continual treachery and tyranny from

their foreign allies--to see not merely Italy, but Rome itself, insulted

and even sacked by faithful Catholics, and to become more and more, as

the centuries rolled on, the tools of those very kings whom they had

wished to make their tools.

True, they defended themselves long, and with astonishing skill and

courage. Their sources of power were two, the moral and the thaumaturgic,

and they used them both; but when the former failed, the latter became

useless. As long as their moral power was real; as long as they and their

clergy were on the whole, in spite of enormous faults, the best men in

Europe, so long the people believed in them, and in their thaumaturgic

relics likewise. But they became by no means the best men in Europe.

Then they began to think that after all it was more easy to work the

material than the moral power--easier to work the bones than to work

righteousness. They were deceived. Behold! when the righteousness was

gone, the bones refused to work. People began to question the virtue of

the bones, and to ask, “We can believe that the bones may have worked

miracles for good men, but for bad men? We will examine whether they work

any miracles at all.” And then, behold, it came out that the bones did

not work miracles, and that possibly they were not saints’ bones at all;

and then the storm came; and the lie, as all lies do, punished itself.

That salt had lost its savour. They who had been the light of Europe,

became its darkness; they who had been first, became last; a warning to

mankind until the end of time, that on truth and virtue depends the only

abiding strength.[h]

FOOTNOTES

[91] Another ecclesiastic of the same name was elected by the people

immediately after the death of Zacharias; but he did not live to enjoy

his elevation. On the third morning after his election he was struck with

apoplexy, and as he had not been consecrated, he is sometimes omitted

in the pontifical calendar. See Platina,[i] p. 152, and Fleury.[j]

Baronius[k] appears to say that the omission of his name is wrong.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III. THE HIGH NOON OF THE PAPACY

[Sidenote: [985-1305 A.D.]]

During the minority of Otto III the Tuscan party exercised undisputed

sway in Rome, without any check from without. No sooner was Otto II dead

than Boniface VII reappeared from exile, and having seized his rival

John XIV, and put him to death by starvation, for two years occupied

unresisted the papal chair. Nevertheless Boniface VII was not a friend of

the Tuscan party. By the people his dead body was treated with insults.

Boniface’s successor, John XV, not proving as pliant as Crescentius the

consul desired, was driven from Rome and reduced to the necessity of

again appealing to the imperial authority. He was permitted to return.[b]

At his death, Otto III obliged the clergy and the people to elect

his nephew Bruno, a German, and only twenty years of age. But the

chief control of the city was at present in the hands of the senator

Crescentius (Cencius), a man whom the emperor could not fail to view

with feelings of fear and jealousy. On visiting Rome, therefore, for

the purpose of receiving consecration, he undertook measures for his

expulsion; but was prevented from putting them in practice by the

persuasions of his nephew, who had assumed the appellation of Gregory

V. The clemency of the pontiff was ill rewarded. Crescentius, on the

departure of the emperor, drove him from the city and bestowed the

pontifical dignity on a Greek, who took the name of John XVI. Gregory in

the meantime fled into Lombardy; and, having summoned the several bishops

to meet him at Pavia, he there excommunicated both Crescentius and John,

his sentence, it is said, being supported by nearly all Italy, Germany,

and France. The emperor, on his part, lost no time in proceeding to the

capital, where his appearance struck instant terror into the hearts of

the guilty Romans. John was apprehended when on the point of leaving

the city; and the officers of the emperor, dreading lest their master

should show any forbearance towards the culprit, immediately tore out

his tongue and his eyes. Crescentius suffered the gentler punishment of

decapitation; and Gregory, thus freed from his enemies, retained the

papal dignity till the year 999. He was succeeded by Gerbert, archbishop

of Ravenna, whom Otto caused to be elected in gratitude for the services

he had rendered him as his instructor.[c]

THE DREAM OF OTTO III

[Sidenote: [999-1046 A.D.]]

The emperor was victorious, and exercised undisputed sway in the city of

the cæsars. At this moment a grand scheme rose before his mental vision.

Rome was to occupy again her ancient place as the seat of empire. An

emperor was to sit on the throne of Constantine who would govern like

Constantine, and raise the empire once more to the pinnacle of power. A

truly apostolic pope was to be appointed, a second Silvester who would

reform the clergy and correct the infamous avarice and vice of the Roman

church.

On the death of Gregory V that scheme seemed about to be realised.

The decree issued by Otto III for the election of his tutor Gerbert,

who assumed the name of Silvester II, in allusion to the relations of

Constantine and Silvester I, declared Rome to be the capital of the

world, the Roman church to be the mother of churches; it described how

the dignity of the Roman church had been obscured by her neglectful

popes, how the property of the church had been squandered on the dregs of

mankind, how the prelates had made everything venal, and so despoiled the

very altars of the apostles. It denounced the donations of Constantine

and Charles the Bald as void and forgeries; it assumed the power not only

of electing, but, by God’s grace, of creating and ordaining the pope, and

it granted eight counties for his support. The millennial period of the

Christian era was to see all old abuses swept away, and the new régime

established. The new age was to begin with a new Constantine and a new

Silvester. The year 1000 was to inaugurate the change. But how vain are

the schemes of men! The looked-for year came. It found Otto III indeed at

Rome, with a palace built on the Aventine, with a regular administrative

system for the government of the capital established. It found his tutor,

Silvester II, on the chair of St. Peter to second and direct him. Before

three years both of them were dead.

The death of Otto put an end to all attempts at reform. For none but Otto

in that lawless age rose above his surroundings, to project a new era of

improvement. None but his tutor, Silvester II, could sympathise with his

projects. When, comet-like, these two luminaries had darted across the

heaven and disappeared, the darkness of night grew thicker than before.[b]

With the disappearance of these two eminent men the popedom relapsed into

its former degradation. The feudal nobility--that very “refuse” which, to

use the expression of a contemporary writer, it had been Otto’s mission

“to sweep from the capital”--regained their ascendency, and the popes

became as completely the instruments of their will as they had once been

of that of the Eastern emperor. A leading faction among this nobility was

that of the counts of Tusculum, and for nearly half a century the popedom

was a mere appanage in their family. As if to mark their contempt for

the office, they carried the election of Theophylact, the son of Count

Alberic, a lad scarcely twelve years of age, to the office. Benedict

IX (1033-1045), such was the title given him, soon threw off even the

external decencies of his office, and his pontificate was disgraced by

every conceivable excess. As he grew to manhood his rule, in conjunction

with that of his brother, who was appointed the patrician or prefect

of the city, resembled that of two captains of banditti. The scandal

attaching to his administration culminated when it was known that, in

order to win the hand of a lady for whom he had conceived a passion, he

had sold the pontifical office itself to another member of the Tusculan

house, John, the arch-presbyter, who took the name of Gregory VI

(1045-1046). His brief pontificate was chiefly occupied with endeavours

to protect the pilgrims to Rome on their way to the capital from the

lawless freebooters (who plundered them of their costly votive offerings

as well as of their personal property), and with attempts to recover by

main force the alienated possessions of the Roman church. Prior, however,

to his purchase of the pontifical office, the citizens of Rome, weary of

the tyranny and extortions of Benedict, had assembled of their own accord

and elected another pope, John, bishop of Sabina, who took the name of

Silvester III (rival pope, 1044-1046).

[Sidenote: [1044-1054 A.D.]]

In the meantime Benedict had been brought back to Rome by his powerful

kinsmen, and now reclaimed the sacred office. For a brief period,

therefore, there were to be seen three rival popes, each denouncing the

other’s pretensions and combating them by armed force. But even in Rome

the sense of decency and shame had not become altogether extinguished;

and at length a party in the Roman church deputed Peter, their

archdeacon, to carry a petition to the emperor Henry III, soliciting his

intervention. The emperor, a man of deep religious feeling and lofty

character, responded to the appeal. He had long noted, in common with

other thoughtful observers, the widespread degeneracy which, taking

example by the curia, was growing throughout the church at large, and

especially visible in concubinage and simony, alike regarded as mortal

sins in the clergy. He forthwith crossed the Alps and assembled a council

at Sutri. The claims of the three rival popes were each in turn examined

and pronounced invalid, and a German, Suidger (Suidgar or Suger), bishop

of Bamberg, was elected to the office as Clement II (1046-1047).

THE GERMAN POPES

The degeneracy of the church at this period would seem to have been in

some degree compensated by the reform of the monasteries, and from the

great abbey of Cluny in Burgundy there now proceeded a line of German

popes who in a great measure restored the dignity and reputation of

their office. But, whether from the climate, always ill adapted to the

German constitution, or from poison, as the contemporary chronicles not

unfrequently suggest, it is certain that their tenure of office was

singularly brief. Clement II died before the close of the year of his

election. Damasus II, his successor, held the office only twenty-three

days. Leo IX, who succeeded, held it for the exceptionally lengthened

period of more than five years (1049-1054). This pontiff, although a

kinsman and nominee of the emperor, refused to ascend the throne until

his election had been ratified by the voice of the clergy and the people,

and his administration of the office presented the greatest possible

contrast to that of Benedict IX or Sergius III.

[Sidenote: [1049-1064 A.D.]]

In more than one respect it constitutes a crisis in the history of the

popedom. In conjunction with his faithful friend and adviser, the great

Hildebrand, he projected schemes of fundamental church reform, in which

the suppression of simony and of married life (or concubinage, as it was

styled by its denouncers) on the part of the clergy formed the leading

features. In the year 1049, at three great synods successively convened

at Rome, Rheims, and Mainz, new canons condemnatory of the prevailing

abuses were enacted, and the principles of monasticism more distinctly

asserted in contravention of those traditional among the secular clergy.

Leo’s pontificate closed, however, ingloriously.

In an evil hour he ventured to oppose the occupation by the Normans,

whose encroachments on Italy were just commencing. His ill-disciplined

forces were no match for the Norman bands, composed of the best warriors

of the age. He was himself made prisoner, detained for nearly a

twelvemonth in captivity, and eventually released only to die, a few days

after, of grief and humiliation. But, although his own career terminated

thus ignominiously, the services rendered by Leo to the cause of Roman

Catholicism were great and permanent; and of his different measures

none contributed more effectually to the stability of his see than the

formation of the college of cardinals.

THE COLLEGE OF CARDINALS

The title of “cardinal” was not originally restricted to dignitaries

connected with the church of Rome, but it had hitherto been a canonical

requirement that all who attained to this dignity should have passed

through the successive lower ecclesiastical grades in connection with

one and the same foundation; the cardinals attached to the Roman church

had consequently been all Italians, educated for the most part in the

capital, having but little experience of the world beyond its walls, and

incapable of estimating church questions in the light of the necessities

and feelings of Christendom at large. By the change which he introduced,

Leo summoned the leaders of the party of reform within the newly

constituted college of cardinals, and thus attached to his office a body

of able advisers with wider views and less narrow sympathies. By their

aid the administration of the pontifical duties was rendered at once more

easy and more effective.

The pontiff himself was liberated from his bondage to the capital, and,

even when driven from Rome, could still watch over the interests of both

his see and the entire church in all their extended relations; and the

popedom must now be looked upon as entering upon another stage in its

history--that of almost uninterrupted progress to the pinnacle of power.

According to Anselm[o] of Lucca, it was during the pontificate of Leo,

at the synod of Rheims above referred to, that the title of “apostolic

bishop” (_apostolicus_) was first declared to belong to the pope of Rome

exclusively.

The short pontificate of Nicholas II (1059-1061) is memorable chiefly

for the fundamental change then introduced in the method of electing to

the papal office. By a decree of the Second Lateran Council (1059), the

nomination to the office was vested solely in the cardinal bishops--the

lower clergy, the citizens, and the emperor retaining simply the right

of intimating or withholding their assent. It was likewise enacted that

the nominee should always be one of the Roman clergy, unless indeed no

eligible person could be found among their number. At the same time the

direst anathemas were decreed against all who should venture to infringe

this enactment either in the letter or the spirit.

The preponderance thus secured to the ultramontane party and to Italian

interests must be regarded as materially affecting the whole subsequent

history of the popedom. The manner in which it struck at the imperial

influence was soon made apparent in the choice of Nicholas’ successor,

the line of German popes being broken through by the election of Anselm,

bishop of Lucca (the uncle of the historian), who ascended the pontifical

throne as Alexander II (1061-1073) without having received the sanction

of the emperor. His election was forthwith challenged by the latter, and

for the space of two years the Roman state was distracted by a civil war,

Honorius II being supported as a rival candidate by the imperial arms,

while Alexander maintained his position only with the support of the

Norman levies. The respective merits of their claims were considered at

a council convened at Mantua, and the decision was given in favour of

Alexander. Cadalous, such was the name of his rival, did not acknowledge

the justice of the sentence, but he retired into obscurity; and the

remainder of Alexander’s pontificate, though troubled by the disputes

respecting a married clergy, was free from actual warfare. In these much

vexed questions of church discipline Alexander, who had been mainly

indebted for his election to Hildebrand, the archdeacon of the Roman

church, was guided entirely by that able churchman’s advice, and in 1073

Hildebrand himself succeeded to the office as Gregory VII (1073-1085).[d]

MILMAN ON THE MISSION OF THE PAPACY

[Sidenote: [1064-1073 A.D.]]

Hildebrand was now pope; the great contest for the dominion over the

human mind, the strife between the temporal and spiritual power,

which had been carried on for some centuries as a desultory and

intermitting warfare, was now to be waged boldly, openly, implacably,

to the subjugation of one or of the other. Sacerdotal, or rather papal

Christianity, had not yet fulfilled its mission, for, the papal control

withdrawn, the sacerdotal rule would have lost its unity, and with

its unity its authority must have dissolved away. Without the clergy,

not working here and there with irregular and uncombined excitement

on the religious feelings of man, awakening in one quarter a vigorous

enthusiasm, while in other parts of Europe men were left to fall

back into some new Christian heathenism, or into an inert habitual

Christianity of form; without the whole order labouring on a fixed

and determined system, through creeds sanctified by ancient reverence

and a ceremonial guarded by rigid usage; without this vast uniform,

hierarchical influence, where, in those ages of anarchy and ignorance, of

brute force and dormant intelligence, had been Christianity itself? And

looking only to its temporal condition, what had the world been without

Christianity?

The papacy has still the more splendid part of its destiny to accomplish.

It has shown vital power enough to recover from its seemingly

irrecoverable degradation. It might have been supposed that a moral and

religious deprivation so profound, would utterly have destroyed that

reverence of opinion which was the one groundwork of the papal power.

The veil had been raised; and Italy at least, if not Europe, had seen

within it, not a reflex of divine majesty and holiness, but an idol

not only hideous to the pure moral sentiment, but contemptible for its

weakness. If centuries of sanctity had planted deeply in the heart of

man his veneration for the successor of St. Peter, it would have been

paralysed (the world might expect) and extinguished by more than a

century of odious and unchristian vices. A spiritual succession must be

broken and interrupted by such unspiritual inheritors. Could the head of

Christendom, living in the most unchristian wickedness, perpetuate his

descent, and hand down the patrimony of power and authority, with nothing

of that piety and goodness which was at least one of his titles to that

transcendent power?

But that idea or that opinion would not have endured for centuries,

had it not possessed strength enough to reconcile its believers to

contradictions and inconsistencies. With all the Teutonic part of Latin

Christendom, the belief in the supremacy of the pope was coeval with

their Christianity; it was an article of their original creed as much

as the redemption; their apostles were commissioned by the pope; to him

they humbly looked for instruction and encouragement, even almost for

permission to advance upon their sacred adventure. Augustine, Boniface,

Ebbo, Anskar, had been papal missionaries. If the faith of Italy was

shaken by too familiar a view of that which the Germans contemplated

with more remote and indistinct veneration, the national pride, in Rome

especially, accepted the spiritual as a compensation for the loss of the

temporal supremacy; it had ceased to be the centre of the imperial, it

would not endure not to be that of ecclesiastical dominion. The jealousy

of a pope elected, or even born, elsewhere than in Italy, showed the

vitality of that belief in the papacy, which was belied by so many acts

of violence towards individual popes.

The religious minds would be chiefly offended by the incongruity between

the lives and the station of the pope; but to them it would be a part

of religion to suppress any rebellious doubts. Their souls were deeply

impressed with the paramount necessity of the unity of the church; to

them the papacy was of divine appointment, the pope the successor of St.

Peter; all secret questioning of this integral part of their implanted

faith was sin. However then they might bow down in shame and sorrow at

the inscrutable decrees of heaven, in allowing its vicegerent thus to

depart from his original brightness, yet they would veil their faces

in awe, and await in trembling patience the solution of that mystery.

In the Christian mind in general, or rather the mind within the world

of Christendom, the separation between Christian faith and Christian

morality was almost complete. Christianity was a mere unreasoning

assent to certain dogmatic truths, an unreasoning obedience to certain

ceremonial observances.

[Illustration: A POPE OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY

(Based on an effigy)]

Controversy was almost dead. In the former century, the predestinarian

doctrines of Gottschalk, in general so acceptable to the popular ear,

had been entirely suppressed by the sacerdotal authority. The tenets of

Berengar concerning the presence of Christ in the Sacrament, had been

restrained, and were to be once more restrained, by the same strong

hand; and Berengar’s logic was beyond his age. The Manichæan doctrines

of the Paulicians and kindred sects were doubtless spreading to a great

extent among the lower orders, but as yet in secrecy, breaking out now

in one place, now in another, yet everywhere beheld with abhorrence,

creating no wide alarm, threatening no dangerous disunion. In all the

vulgar of Christendom (and that vulgar comprehended all orders, all

ranks) the moral sentiment, as more obtuse, would be less shocked by that

incongruity which grieved and oppressed the more religious. The great

body of Christians in the West would no more have thought of discussing

the character of the pope than the attributes of God. He was to them

the apostle, the vicegerent of God, enveloped in the same kind of awful

mystery. They feared the thunders of the Lateran as those of heaven; and

were no more capable of sound discrimination as to the limits, grounds,

and nature of that authority than as to the causes of the destructive

fire from the clouds. Their general belief in the judgment to come was

not more deeply rooted than in the right of the clergy, more especially

the head of the clergy, to anticipate, to declare, or to ratify their

doom.

The German line of pontiffs had done much to reinvest the papacy in its

ancient sanctity. The Italian Alexander II had been at least a blameless

pontiff, and now every qualification which could array the pope in

imposing majesty, in what bordered on divine worship, seemed to meet in

Gregory VII. His life verified the splendid panegyric with which he had

been presented by Cardinal Hugo to the Roman people. He had the austerest

virtue, the most simple piety, the fame of vast theologic knowledge,

the tried ability to rule men, intrepidity which seemed to delight in

confronting the most powerful; a stern singleness of purpose, which,

under its name of churchmanship, gave his partisans unlimited reliance

on his firmness and resolution, and yet a subtle policy which bordered

upon craft. To them his faults were virtues; his imperiousness the due

assertion of his dignity; his unbounded ambition zeal in God’s cause; no

haughtiness could be above that which became his station. The terror by

which he ruled (he was so powerful that he could dispense with love), as

it was the attribute of the divinity now exclusively worshipped by man,

so was it that which became the representative of God on earth.

The first, the avowed object of Gregory’s pontificate, was the absolute

independence of the clergy, of the pope, of the great prelates throughout

Latin Christendom, down to the lowest functionary, whose person was to

become sacred; that independence under which lurked the undisguised

pretension to superiority. His remote and somewhat more indistinct

vision was the foundation of a vast spiritual autocracy in the person

of the pope, who was to rule mankind by the consentient but subordinate

authority of the clergy throughout the world. For this end the clergy

were to become still more completely a separate, inviolable caste; their

property equally sacred with their persons. Each in his separate sphere,

the pope above all and comprehending all, was to be sovereign arbiter of

all disputes; to hold in his hands the supreme mediation in questions

of war and peace; to adjudge contested successions to kingdoms; to be a

great feudal lord, to whom other kings became beneficiaries. His own arms

were to be chiefly spiritual, but the temporal power was to be always

ready to execute the ecclesiastical behest against the ungodly rebels who

might revolt from its authority; nor did the churchman refuse altogether

to sanction the employment of secular weapons, to employ armies in his

own name, or even to permit the use of arms to the priesthood.

For this complete isolation of the hierarchy into a peculiar and

inviolable caste was first necessary the reformation of the clergy in

two most important preliminary matters; the absolute extirpation of

the two evils, which the more rigid churchmen had been denouncing for

centuries, to the suppression of which Hildebrand had devoted so much of

his active energies. The war against simony and the concubinage of the

clergy (for under this ill-sounding name was condemned all connection,

however legalised, with the female sex), must first be carried to a

triumphant issue, before the church could assume its full and uncontested

domination.[92]

_Simony_

Like his predecessors, like all the more high-minded churchmen,

Hildebrand refused to see that simony was the inevitable consequence

of the inordinate wealth of the clergy. It was a wild moral paradox to

attempt to reconcile enormous temporal possessions and enormous temporal

power with the extinction of all temporal motives for obtaining, all

temptations to the misuse of these all-envied treasures. In the feudal

system, which had been so long growing up throughout western Europe,

bishops had become, in every respect, the equals of the secular nobles.

In every city the bishop, if not the very first of men, was on a level

with the first; without the city he was lord of the amplest domains.

Archbishops almost equalled kings; for who would not have coveted the

station and authority of a Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, rather than the

sovereignty of the feeble Carlovingian monarch?

Charlemagne himself had set the example of advancing his natural sons to

high ecclesiastical dignities. His feebler descendants, even the more

pious, submitted to the same course from choice or necessity. The evil

worked downwards. The bishop, who had bought his see, indemnified himself

by selling the inferior prebends or cures. What was so intrinsically

valuable began to have its money-price; it became an object of barter and

sale. The layman who purchased holy orders bought usually peace, security

of life, comparative ease. Those who aspired to higher dignities soon

repaid themselves for the outlay, however large and extortionate. The

highest bishops confessed their own guilt; the bishopric of Rome had too

often been notoriously bought and sold.

According to the strict law, the clergy could receive everything,

alienate nothing. But the frequent and bitter complaints of the violent

usurpation, or the fraudulent alienation by the clergy themselves of what

had been church property, show that neither party respected this sanctity

when it was the interest of both to violate it. While, on the one hand,

the clergy extorted from the dying prince or noble some important grant,

immunity, or possession, the despoiled heir would scruple at no means of

resuming his alienated rights or property. The careless, the profligate,

the venal, the warlike bishop or abbot, would find means, if he found

advantage, to elude the law; to surrender gradually and imperceptibly;

to lease out the land so as to annihilate its value to the church; to

grant in perpetuity for trifling compensations or for valueless service

the coveted estate; and so to relax the inexorable grasp of the church.

His own pomp and expenditure would reduce the ecclesiastic to the wants

and subterfuges of debtors and of bankrupts; and so the estates would,

directly or circuitously, return either to the original or to some new

owner.

_Celibacy of the Clergy_

With this universal simony was connected, more closely than may at

first appear, the other great vice of the age, as it was esteemed by

Hildebrand and his school, the marriage of the clergy. The celibacy of

the clergy was necessary to their existence, at the present period,

as a separate caste. Hereditary succession and the degeneracy of the

order were inseparable. Great as were the evils inevitable from the

dominion of the priesthood, if it had become in any degree the privilege

of certain families, that evil would have been enormously aggravated,

the compensating advantages annulled. Family affections and interests

would have been constantly struggling against those of the church. One

universal nepotism, a nepotism not of kindred but of parentage, would

have preyed upon the vital energies of the order. Every irreligious

occupant would either have endeavoured to alienate to his lay descendants

the property of the church, or bred up his still more degenerate

descendants in the certainty of succession to their patrimonial benefice.

Celibacy may be maintained for a time by mutual control and awe; by

severe discipline; by a strong corporate spirit in a monastic community.

But in a low state of morals as to sexual intercourse, in an order

recruited from all classes of society, not filled by men of tried and

matured religion; in an order crowded by aspirants after its wealth,

power, comparative ease, privileges, immunities, public estimation; in an

order superior to, or dictating public opinion (if public opinion made

itself heard); in a permanent order, in which the degeneracy of one age

would go on increasing in the next, till it produced some stern reaction;

in an order comparatively idle, without social duties or intellectual

pursuits; in an order not secluded in the desert, but officially brought

into the closest and most confidential relations as instructors and

advisers of the other sex, it was impossible to maintain real celibacy;

and the practical alternative lay between secret marriage, concubinage

without the form of marriage, or a looser and more corrupting intercourse

between the sexes.

Throughout Latin Christendom, throughout the whole spiritual realm of

Hildebrand, he could not but know there had been long a deep murmured,

if not an avowed doubt, as to the authority of the prohibitions against

the marriage of the clergy; where the dogmatic authority of the papal

canons was not called in question, there was a bold resistance or a tacit

infringement of the law. Italy has been seen in actual, if uncombined,

rebellion from Calabria to the Alps. The whole clergy of the kingdom of

Naples has appeared, under Nicholas II, from the highest to the lowest,

openly living with their lawful wives. The married clergy were still, if

for the present cowed, a powerful faction throughout Italy; they were

awaiting their time of vengeance. The memory of the married pope, Adrian

II, was but recent.

In Germany the power and influence of the married clergy will make

itself felt, if less openly proclaimed, as a bond of alliance with the

emperor and the Lombard prelates. The French councils denounce the crime

as frequent, notorious. Among the Anglo-Saxon clergy before Dunstan,

marriage was rather the rule, celibacy the exception.

GREGORY’S SYNOD AT ROME

[Sidenote: [1073-1074 A.D.]]

Almost the first public act of Gregory VII was a declaration of

implacable war against these his two mortal enemies, simony and the

marriage of the clergy. He was no infant Hercules; but the mature

ecclesiastical Hercules would begin his career by strangling these two

serpents--the brood, as he esteemed them, and parents of all evil.

The decree of the synod held in Rome (March 9th, 10th, 1074) in the

eleventh month of his pontificate is not extant, but in its inexorable

provisions it went beyond the sternest of his predecessors. It

absolutely invalidated all sacraments performed by simoniacal or married

priests; baptism was no regenerating rite; it might almost seem that

the eucharistic bread and wine in their unhallowed hands refused to be

transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. The communicants

guilty of perseverance at least in the sin shared in the sacerdotal

guilt. Even the priesthood was startled at this new and awful doctrine,

that the efficacy of the sacraments depended on their own sinlessness.

Gregory, in his headstrong zeal, was promulgating a doctrine used

afterwards by Wycliffe and his followers with such tremendous energy. And

this was a fearless, democratical provocation to the people; for it left

to notoriety, to public fame, to fix on anyone the brand of the hidden

sin of simony, or (it might be the calumnious) charge of concubinage; and

so abandoned the holy priesthood to the judgment of the multitude.[93]

But the extirpation of these two internal enemies to the dignity and the

power of the sacerdotal order was far below the holy ambition of Gregory;

this was but clearing the ground for the stately fabric of his theocracy.

If, for his own purposes, he had at first assumed some moderation in his

intercourse with the empire, over the rest of Latin Christendom he took

at once the tone and language of a sovereign. We must rapidly survey,

before we follow him into his great war with the empire, Gregory VII

asserting his autocracy over the rest of Latin Christendom.

[Sidenote: [1074-1076 A.D.]]

His letters to Philip I, king of France, are in the haughtiest, most

criminatory terms: “No king has reached such a height of detestable

guilt in oppressing the churches of his kingdom as Philip of France.”

He puts the king to the test; his immediate admission of a bishop of

Mâcon, elected by the clergy and people, without payment to the crown.

Either let the king repudiate this base traffic of simony, and allow fit

persons to be promoted to bishoprics, or the Franks, unless apostates

from Christianity, will be struck with the sword of excommunication, and

refuse any longer to obey him.

Hildebrand’s predecessor (and Alexander II did no momentous act without

the counsel of Hildebrand) had given a direct sanction to the Norman

conquest of England. Hildebrand may have felt some admiration, even awe,

of the congenial mind of the conqueror. He advances the claim to Peter’s

pence over the kingdom. William admits this claim; it was among the

stipulations, it was the price which the pope had imposed for his assent

to the conquest. But to the demand of fealty, the conqueror returns an

answer of haughty brevity: “I have not sworn, nor will I swear fealty

which was never sworn by any of my predecessors to yours.” And William

maintained his Teutonic independence--created bishops and abbots at

his will, was absolute lord over his ecclesiastical as over his feudal

liegemen.

To the kings of Spain, in one of his earliest letters, Pope Gregory

boldly asserts that the whole realm of Spain is not only within the

spiritual jurisdiction of the holy see, but her property. No part of

Latin Christendom was so remote or so barbarous as to escape his vigilant

determination to bring it under his vast ecclesiastical unity. While

yet a deacon he had corresponded with Sweyn, king of Denmark; on him he

bestows much grave and excellent advice. In a letter to Olaf, king of

Norway, he dissuades him solemnly from assisting the rebellious brothers

of the Danish king. Between the duke of Poland and the king of the

Russians he interposes his mediation. The son of the Russian had come to

Rome to receive his kingdom from the hands of St. Peter. The kingdom of

Hungary, as that of Spain, he treats as a fief of the papacy; he rebukes

the king Solomon for daring to hold it as a benefice of the king of the

Germans. He watches over Bohemia; his legates take under their care the

estates of the church; he summons the archbishop of Prague to Rome. Even

Africa is not beyond the care of Hildebrand. The clergy and people of

Carthage are urged to adhere to their archbishop--not to dread the arms

of the Saracens, though that once flourishing Christian province, the

land of Cyprian and Augustine, is so utterly reduced that three bishops

cannot be found to proceed to a legitimate consecration.

[Illustration: A BISHOP OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY]

But the empire was the one worthy, one formidable antagonist to

Hildebrand’s universal theocracy, whose prostration would lay the

world beneath his feet. The empire must acknowledge itself as a grant

from the papacy, as a grant revocable for certain offences against the

ecclesiastical rights and immunities; it must humbly acquiesce in the

uncontrolled prerogative of the cardinals to elect the pope; abandon all

the imperial claims on the investiture of the prelates and other clergy

with their benefices; release the whole mass of church property from all

feudal demands, whether of service or of fealty; submit patiently to

rebuke; admit the pope to dictate on questions of war and peace, and all

internal government where he might detect, or suppose that he detected,

oppression. This was the condition to which the words and acts of Gregory

aspired to reduce the heirs of Charlemagne, the successors of the western

cæsars.

As a Christian, as a member of the church, the emperor was confessedly

subordinate to the pope, the acknowledged head and ruler of the church.

As a subject of the empire, the pope owed temporal allegiance to the

emperor. The authority of each depended on loose and flexible tradition,

on variable and contradictory precedents, on titles of uncertain

signification; each could ascend to a time when they were not dependent

upon each other. The emperor boasted himself the successor to the whole

autocracy of the cæsars, to Augustus, Constantine, Charlemagne: the pope

to that of St. Peter, or of Christ himself.[e] But all-powerful as was

the pope abroad, in Italy his authority was restricted. Even in Rome the

prefect Cencius dared to lay hands on Gregory VII, to tear him from the

sanctuary of a church during a riot, and afterwards held him some time a

prisoner. At Milan the citizens expelled Herlembald and his tool Atto,

who exercised actual tyranny in the city under pretext of carrying out

the pope’s reforms, and demanded an archbishop of Henry IV, who sent

them a noble from Castiglione. This was the commencement of the struggle

between sacerdotal and imperial power that culminated in one of the

greatest and most stirring dramas of all history.

Events began auspiciously for Gregory, many points of support being

promised him in Germany. Feudal rebellions had kept that country in a

state of agitation during the minority of Henry IV, who was but six years

old when his father died in 1056. The regency and even the person of

the young king had been wrested from the empress Agnes by the dukes of

Saxony and Bavaria. Once arrived at man’s estate, Henry IV set about

suppressing the revolt that had, as usual, arisen among the Saxons. An

important victory won in Thuringia seemed to promise him a continuance

of success, when suddenly the voice of the pope thundered down upon

him, ordering him, with unexampled audacity, to suspend all warlike

operations, and to leave to the holy see the right of decision in his

quarrel with the Saxons; furthermore, to abandon all pretensions to

ecclesiastical investiture, under pain of excommunication. To this the

legates joined the summons to appear at Rome to answer certain personal

charges that had been brought against him. Henry IV replied to this

furious attack with equal vigour, and in the synod of Worms, composed

of eighteen prelates, his partisans, he caused sentence of deposition

solemnly to be pronounced against Gregory VII (1076).

[Sidenote: [1076-1077 A.D.]]

This decree, instead of alarming the pope, but excited him to fresh

aggression. No sooner was he delivered by a popular movement from the

hands of his enemy, Cencius, the Roman prefect, than he began once more

to thunder forth denunciations; he hurled a bull of excommunication at

the emperor, in which he proclaimed him a rebel to the holy see, and

declared his vassals free from all allegiance to him. This bull was

mercilessly put into execution by the Saxons and Swabians, all enemies

of the house of Franconia. At their head was Rudolf of Swabia and the

Italian, Welf, of the house of Este, whom Henry himself had created duke

of Bavaria. They convoked a diet at Tribur, suspended the functions of

the emperor and menaced him with deposition if he did not win absolution

from the curse of Rome. Henry acceded humbly, and promised to assemble

a general diet at Augsburg, which he begged the pope to attend for the

purpose of absolving him. Alive, however, to the danger of allowing his

enemies to come together in a body, he resolved to anticipate the action

of the proposed diet and went himself to Italy to implore pardon of the

pope.

The price Gregory set upon this absolution was such as no other monarch

ever had to pay. The pope was inhabiting at the time the château of

Canossa, in the domains of the celebrated countess Matilda, a devout

adherent of the holy see and the most powerful sovereign in Italy,

since she included among her possessions the marquisates of Tuscany

and Spoleto, Parma, Piacenza, and several points in Lombardy, the

Marches, etc. Henry IV came to this castle to solicit an audience, but

was compelled to wait barefooted in the snow three days before he was

received. At last on the fourth day he was admitted and given absolution.

Gregory, however, too adroit to lay down arms at once, refused to decide

the question relative to the German crown, and deferred all consideration

of it to a special diet, thereby reserving to himself a means of

throwing Henry into fresh embarrassment. Could the king do other than

tremble before a man who was the acknowledged representative of divinity

on earth, and who believed himself so secure in the favour of heaven

that, taking half of a “host,” he adjured God upon it to annihilate

him instantly if he were guilty of the crimes imputed to him? When he

presented the second half of the “host” to the king, asking him to swear

a similar oath, Henry shrank back affrighted (1077).

By this timely bowing of the head Henry IV avoided the blow that was

about to be aimed at him by a coalition of his enemies; the moment of

danger once passed, he straightened up like a bow relieved from tension.

Indeed he had no alternative save definitively to relinquish his hopes

of the crown or again to risk all upon a single chance, since the German

rebels had undertaken to answer the question left open by Gregory, and

had appointed to the throne Rudolf of Swabia, who had purchased the

protection of the legates by promising to abjure investiture (1077), and

had been solemnly acknowledged by the pope.

[Sidenote: [1077-1125 A.D.]]

Having gathered around himself a body of partisans, Henry IV began to

wage war with success. The battle of Wolksheim, in which Rudolf was

slain by the hand of Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, who

carried the imperial standard, made him master of Germany (1080). He

determined to repeat this success in Italy, where a victory won by his

son had already paved the way; and the countess Matilda was stripped of

a part of her possessions, Rome was taken, and the archbishop of Ravenna

was appointed pope under the name of Clement III. Gregory himself would

have fallen into the hands of the man he had so deeply outraged, had not

Robert Guiscard and his Normans, faithful allies of the holy see, come

to his rescue. He died among them (1085) with the words: “For no other

reason than that I have loved justice and pursued iniquity, I must die in

exile.”

Up to the final moment he appeared to believe that universal dominance

was an inalienable right of the holy see, and his idea was certainly not

devoid of logic.

Gregory’s death came too soon; had he lived a few years longer he would

have seen his enemy expire in a condition far more miserable than that

in which he had been placed at Canossa. Urban II, made pope in 1088,

found his main support in the Normans, and conferred upon Roger, duke of

Sicily, the title of king. He revealed the papacy in all its grandeur

on the occasion of the First Crusade, and revived most of Gregory’s

old judgments against the emperor. After a transitory triumph Henry

IV was successively attacked by his two sons, whom the church had

armed against him, and after having been stripped of all the imperial

insignia, was made prisoner by his younger son. In vain he invoked the

succour of the king of France, who had been his “most faithful friend”;

all help was refused him, and he was reduced to soliciting the post of

under-choir-master in a church, “having a considerable knowledge of

music.” He died in 1106 at Liège in the depths of poverty, calling down

the “vengeance of God upon the parricide”; and his body remained five

years without sepulture.

It was, however, this very parricidal son Henry V who at last put a

stop to the quarrels resulting from the vexed question of investitures.

The decision was retarded some time by the opening of the succession of

Countess Matilda, who had bequeathed all her estates to the holy see.

Henry laid claim to the entire inheritance, to the fiefs as sovereign

of the empire, to the allodial lands as the countess’ nearest heir,

and succeeded in entering upon possession of them all. As can readily

be believed, this was a cause for fresh dissension in the future. The

opening dispute being provisorily settled, the two sides, recognising

that a struggle would but weaken them while it confirmed the independence

of the feudal lords and of the Italian middle classes, resolved to close

the matter by an equitable and, as nearly as possible, an equal division

of the rights under dispute. The Concordat of Worms (1122) was couched

in the following terms: “I agree,” said Pope Calixtus II to the emperor,

“that the elections of the bishops and abbots of the Teutonic kingdom

shall take place without violence or simony in your presence, so that in

case any difference shall arise you can give your sanction and protection

to the side having greater holiness, according to the judgment of the

metropolitan and the co-provincials. The elect shall receive from you the

prerogatives of his office, and, except that duty that he owes the Roman

church, shall render you obedience in all things.”

“I remit to the pope,” said the king, “all right to confer investiture

by ring and cross, and in the churches of my kingdom and my empire,

I authorise canonical elections and free consecration.” This wise

compromise, which vested the temporal and spiritual power respectively

in the temporal and spiritual rulers, was accompanied by words of

reconciliation. But the design of Gregory VII was not yet fulfilled; the

tie of vassalage that united the clergy to the prince was by no means

severed, and church remained a part of the state in its main portion at

least, if not in its outlying members.

The house of Franconia became extinct with Henry V (1125) after having,

by a provisory issue, dissolved the rivalry that existed between the

papacy and the empire. The reign of Lothair II, successor of Henry V, was

like an interlude between two acts of a drama; during the pause the stage

was cleared and reset for the scene that was to follow.[f]

BRYCE ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CONCORDAT

The Concordat of Worms was in form a compromise designed to spare either

party the humiliation of defeat. Yet the papacy remained master of the

field. The emperor retained but one-half of those rights of investiture

which had formerly been his. At any moment his sceptre might be shivered

in his hand by the bolt of anathema, and a host of enemies spring up from

every convent and cathedral.

Two other results of this great conflict ought not to pass unnoticed.

The emperor was alienated from the church at the most unfortunate of

all moments, the end of the Crusades. The religious feeling which the

Crusades evoked turned wholly against the opponent of ecclesiastical

claims and was made to work the will of the holy see. A century and a

half later the pope did not scruple to preach a crusade against the

emperor himself.

Again, it was now the first seeds were sown of that fear and hatred

wherewith the German people never thenceforth ceased to regard the

encroaching Romish court. Branded by the church and forsaken by the

nobles, Henry IV retained the affections of the faithful burghers of

Worms and Liège. It soon became a test of Teutonic patriotism to resist

Italian priestcraft.[g]

RIVAL CLAIMANTS

[Sidenote: [1119-1155 A.D.]]

On the death of Paschal (1118), the bishops of Porto, Ostia, and others

elected John of Gaeta, who was chancellor of Rome, to the vacant chair.

But his elevation was strongly opposed by the emperor’s minister, Cenzio

Frangipani, who, following him to the church where the investiture was

to take place, seized him by the throat, and after exposing him to every

species of violence from his attendants, dragged him by the hair of the

head to his house, and there left him chained, to await the orders of the

emperor. He subsequently made his escape to his native place, of which he

was made bishop; and Henry, in the meanwhile, raised Maurice Bourdin, by

the name of Gregory VIII, to the throne.

Gelasius, as John of Gaeta was called, attempted to recover his dignity,

but finding that he could not remain in Italy with safety, fled to

Provence, where he died the following year. The anti-pope Gregory,

though the way was now open for his accession to the throne, gained no

advantage by the death of his rival. Guido, archbishop of Ravenna, a man

of considerable powers of mind and vast influence, ascended the papal

chair as Calixtus II.[94] The contest which he was obliged to carry on

with Gregory ended completely in his favour; and the defeated pretender

died, after suffering innumerable miseries,[95] in a monastery. Calixtus

himself died shortly after (1124); and his successor, Honorius II, passed

a reign of five years in fruitless contention with Roger of Sicily, by

whom his troops were entirely defeated. Innocent II and Anacletus II both

pretended to the dignity at his death; and the former, before he could

establish his sole claim to the prize, had to spend several years as an

exile in France.

We pass over the obscure pontificates of his immediate successors. But in

1145, Bernard, abbot of St. Anastasius at Rome, and a favourite disciple

of the celebrated saint of the same name, was elected to the see as

Eugenius III. But whatever were the virtues of Eugenius, or the credit

due to him from his intimacy with a man so full of wisdom and holiness

as St. Bernard, the factious spirit which had long prevailed at Rome

broke out into new excesses at the period of his elevation. Urged on by

the popular eloquence of Arnold of Brescia, they were suddenly inflamed

with the desire of restoring the institutions and government of the

ancient capital; but the tumult which was commenced with this pretence

soon carried its authors to the commission of every species of violence;

and the dazzling vision of Rome, restored to its consular dignity, was

lost in the clouds and thick darkness which rose from the destruction of

some of its finest buildings. Eugenius, by a timely exertion of energy,

quelled these disorders; and his return to Rome was attended with all

the marks of a triumph. The signs, however, of sedition were still too

manifest on the faces of the Romans to allow of his remaining secure

among them, and he retired for some time into France. He came back to

Italy about the year 1153, and died almost immediately after, at his

residence in the town of Tibur.

ADRIAN IV _versus_ BARBAROSSA

[Sidenote: [1155-1158 A.D.]]

The successor of Eugenius was Adrian IV, by birth an Englishman,[96] and

strongly characterised by all the ruling passions of the dignified clergy

of this age.[97] Frederick Barbarossa had, in the meanwhile, ascended the

imperial throne, and his pride and ambition were fitting though dangerous

companions for the haughtiness of Adrian. It was not long before an

opportunity was afforded these two distinguished men to try the strength

of their resolution and principles. Frederick, having been crowned king

of the Lombards, hastened towards Rome; but before he arrived at the gate

of the city he was met by three cardinals, who acquainted him that the

pontiff could not hold any conference with a prince from whom he had as

yet received no assurance of obedience and of fidelity to the church.

The monarch readily accorded the required professions of allegiance; and

a chevalier appointed for the purpose swore solemnly in his name, and

on the holy relics, the cross and the Gospel, that he would preserve

in safety the life, the liberty, and honour of both the pope and the

cardinals. Adrian then intimated his readiness to crown him emperor, and

was conducted with great pomp towards the sovereign’s tent.

But here a new cause of contention arose. Frederick had too high a sense

of his imperial dignity to manifest any servile complaisance for papal

pride. Instead, therefore, of hastening, as some other princes had done,

to perform the part of an esquire to the pontiff, he quietly awaited him

in his pavilion; which so offended Adrian, that he positively refused

to grant him the kiss of peace, till he should perform the humiliating

ceremonies to which the pride of churchmen and the pusillanimity of

princes had given a species of legitimacy. A whole day was expended in

disputing whether the emperor should continue the practice or not. But

Adrian was inflexible; and the following morning the haughty Frederick in

the presence of his army, purchased the kiss of peace by standing like a

menial at the side of the pope’s horse, till he descended and freed him

from his degrading situation.

A powerful faction at Rome hailed with joy the approach of Frederick.

The desire of limiting the despotism of the pope, and the expectation of

drawing large sums as a largess from the imperial treasury, appear to

have exercised an almost equal influence on their minds at this time. In

their address to Frederick the deputies of this party assumed the station

of men who had an unconquered country to present as a free-will offering

to the valour and noble qualities of the prince they sought. They had,

however, greatly mistaken the ideas of the emperor on the state of Italy.

Frederick told them, and with a sternness which presaged a coming storm,

that their country had been long and often conquered; that he was truly

and lawfully their master. He took possession forthwith of the church

of St. Peter (1155), and Adrian placed the imperial crown on the head

of the sovereign with far greater willingness than he would have done,

had he not seen that his agreement with the prince was now essential to

his safety and to the preservation of the church. The populace, finding

themselves set at nought by both the pope and the emperor, rose in a

mass, and several of the German soldiers fell slaughtered in the aisles

of St. Peter. But their death was amply revenged; the emperor attacked

the Romans on all sides, and near one thousand citizens paid with their

lives the forfeit of their licentiousness or their indiscretion.

Restless and ambitious minds, like those of Adrian and Frederick

Barbarossa, could not remain long at peace, when the power and privileges

they possessed in their dependence upon each other were so ill defined.

The first cause of dispute, after the pacification above related, was a

letter which Adrian wrote to the emperor, accusing him of ingratitude for

the benefits he had enjoyed through his ministration.

Adrian found it necessary to appease the anger which both Frederick and

his subjects expressed at these instances of assumption, and tranquillity

was for a brief space restored. But scarcely had the angry feelings

generated in the late dispute subsided, when the pontiff again manifested

his inclination to oppose the views of the emperor by refusing to confirm

the archbishop of Ravenna, whom Frederick had elevated to that station,

in his appointment. The fierceness with which the pontiff spoke and wrote

on this occasion, threatened Christendom with a rupture as injurious

to its peace as that between the unfortunate Henry and Gregory VII.

But Frederick’s firmness was unshaken; and a barrier was thus erected

against the attempts of the pope, which, intended only as a protection

to particular rights, did, in reality, afford support to the universal

principles of civil government. To Adrian’s threat that he would deprive

him of his crown, he replied that he held his crown, not from him but

from his own royal predecessors. “In the days of Constantine,” he asked,

“had St. Silvester anything to do with the royal dignity? Yet this was

the prince to whom the church was indebted for its peace and its liberty:

and all that you enjoy as pope, whence comes it but from the emperors?

Render unto God that which is God’s, and to Cæsar the things that are

Cæsar’s. Our churches and our cities are shut against your cardinals;

because they are not preachers but robbers, they are not peacemakers

but plunderers; we see that instead of coming to preach the Gospel and

promote peace, their whole desire and endeavour is to amass gold and

silver. When we find that they are what the church would have them, we

will refuse them nothing good for their support. It is horrible that

pride, that monster so detestable, should be able to steal even into the

chair of St. Peter.”[c]

ADRIAN’S FIRMNESS

[Illustration: A BISHOP OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY]

[Sidenote: [1158 A.D.]]

Peace became more hopeless. As a last resource, six cardinals on the

part of the pope, and six German bishops on that of the emperor, were

appointed to frame a treaty. But the pope demanded the re-establishment

of the compact made with his predecessor Eugenius. The imperial bishops

reproached the pope with his own violation of that treaty by his alliance

with the king of Sicily; the Germans unanimously rejected the demands

of the pope: and now the emperor received with favour a deputation from

the senate and people of Rome. These ambassadors of the republican party

had watched; had been present at the rupture of the negotiations. The

pope, with the embers of Arnold’s rebellions mouldering under his feet;

with the emperor at the head of all Germany, the prelates as well as the

princes; with no ally but the doubtful, often perfidious Norman, stood

unshaken; betrayed no misgivings. He threatened the emperor with a public

excommunication.

Did the bold sagacity of Adrian foresee the heroic resolution with which

Milan and her confederate Lombard cities would many years afterwards,

and after some dire reverses and long oppression, resist the power of

Barbarossa? Did he calculate with prophetic foresight the strength of

Lombard republican freedom? Did he anticipate the field of Legnano, when

the whole force of the Teutonic empire was broken before the carroccio

of Milan? Already was the secret treaty framed with Milan, Brescia, and

Crema. These cities bound themselves not to make peace with the emperor

without the consent of the pope and his Catholic successor. Adrian was

preparing for the last act of defiance, the open declaration of war,

the excommunication of the emperor, which he was pledged to pronounce

after the signature of the treaty with the republics, when his death put

an end to this strange conflict, where each antagonist was allied with

a republican party in the heart of his adversary’s dominions. Adrian

IV died at Anagni; his remains were brought to Rome, and interred with

the highest honours, and with the general respect if not the grief of

the city, in the church of St. Peter. Even the ambassadors of Frederick

were present at the funeral. So ended the poor English scholar, at open

war with perhaps the mightiest sovereign who had reigned in transalpine

Europe since Charlemagne.[e]

TWO RIVAL POPES

[Sidenote: [1158-1164 A.D.]]

The death of Adrian saved the church from the danger which had threatened

it during the government of that fierce and overbearing pontiff. But,

while delivered from one set of evils, it was surrounded by others little

less calculated to injure its interests. The cardinals, having assembled

to elect a new pope, chose by a large majority of their body Rolando,

a cardinal, and chancellor of the Roman church. Their vote, however,

was opposed by Cardinal Octavian, who had expected to be nominated by

his colleagues to the vacant dignity; and when Rolando, who assumed

the name of Alexander III, was invested with the pontifical cope, he

rudely and sacrilegiously pulled it from his shoulders, and, but for the

interference of the persons present, would have put it on himself. As

he was disappointed in this, he obtained, by signal, a cope of the same

kind, which he suddenly threw over his shoulders, placing, in his haste,

the hind part before. Loud laughter followed this mistake; but Octavian

felt no shame at the mingled ridicule and rebuke with which he was

assailed. Going forth from the assembly, which he awed into silence by a

band of armed men, he exercised, under the name of Victor IV, the part of

sovereign pontiff; and for some days kept Alexander in close confinement.

The emperor Frederick did not look with indifference on these

occurrences. A division in the church was equivalent to a great increase

in his own power; and he warmly espoused the cause of Octavian, chiefly,

as it appears, because he was the head of a faction. He at last, however,

summoned a council to consider the question between the rival popes. The

council assembled at Pavia, and Octavian was declared pope by the fifty

bishops, the numerous abbots, and other dignitaries, of whom the meeting

was composed. But Alexander was supported by the whole of that powerful

party which contended for the doctrine of papal supremacy; and despising

the decree of deposition passed against him at Pavia, he excommunicated

the emperor for the part he had taken, and absolved his subjects from

their oath of allegiance. Victor, on the other hand, was recognised as

lawful pope, not only in Germany, but in England and France; by the

monarchs of which countries he was received at Couci on the Loire, with

all the pomp and ceremony which had been demanded for his successors by

the haughty Adrian.

[Sidenote: [1164-1198 A.D.]]

He died in the year 1164; but the schism was continued by the immediate

election of Paschal III, who retained the semblance of authority about

three years. Alexander, on the death of Victor, had ventured to return

to Rome, which he did not dare to attempt during the life-time of that

ecclesiastic. A pestilence, which swept off the flower of Frederick’s

army, saved the pope from ruin; and the emperor, obliged as he was to

make his escape into Germany as he best might, at length expressed his

willingness to heal the schism which he had created in the church. Peace

was accordingly restored, and Alexander returned.

On the death of Alexander, Ubaldo, bishop of Ostia, was elected without

opposition, and assumed the name of Lucius III (1181-1185), and it has

been noted, that at his election the cardinals first appropriated the

right of choosing the supreme pontiff without the interference of the

people, or of the other orders of the clergy. Popular indignation was

loudly expressed. Obliged to seek safety by flight, he called upon the

great European states to furnish him with supplies for the support of his

rights against the disaffected citizens. His claims were allowed, and

the riches of England and other countries were poured freely into his

treasury. With these he made head against the insurgents; but such was

the fierceness with which they resisted him, that they tore out the eyes

of the clergy whom they met beyond the walls of the city; and obliged him

to fix his residence at Verona, where he died in 1185. Urban III, Gregory

VIII, and Clement III, passed their brief pontificates at a distance

from Rome. The last-named pope, however, made peace with the senate

and the people; and his successor, Celestine III, was enabled, by the

strength of his position, to exercise the most important of his assumed

privileges without interruption. Henry VI, who at one time received from

his hands[98] the imperial crown, was at another punished by him with the

ban of excommunication.[c] On his death he was succeeded by Innocent III.

INNOCENT III

[Sidenote: [1198 A.D.]]

Under Innocent III, the papal power rose to its utmost height.[99] The

thirteenth century is nearly commensurate with this supremacy of the

pope. Innocent III at its commencement calmly exercised as his right,

and handed down strengthened and almost irresistible to his successors,

that which, at its close, Boniface asserted with repulsive and ill-timed

arrogance, endangered, undermined, and shook to its base.

The essential inherent supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal

power, as of the soul over the body, as of eternity over time, as of

Christ over Cæsar, as of God over man, was now an integral part of

Christianity. Ideas obtain authority and dominion, not altogether from

their intrinsic truth, but rather from their constant asseveration,

especially when they fall in with the common hopes and fears, the wants

and necessities of human nature. The mass of mankind have neither leisure

nor ability to examine them; they fatigue, and so compel the world into

their acceptance; more particularly if it is the duty, the passion, and

the interest of one great associated body to perpetuate them, while it is

neither the peculiar function, nor the manifest advantage of any large

class or order to refute them.

The unity of the vast Christian republic was an imposing conception,

which, even now that history has shown its hopeless impossibility, still

infatuates lofty minds; its impossibility, since it demands for its head

not merely that infallibility in doctrine so boldly claimed in later

times, but absolute impeccability, in every one of its possessors; more

than impeccability, an all-commanding, indefeasible, unquestionable

majesty of virtue, holiness, and wisdom. Without this it is a baseless

tyranny, a senseless usurpation. In those days it struck in with the

whole feudal system, which was one of strict gradation and subordination;

to the hierarchy of church and state was equally wanting the crown, the

sovereign liege lord.

When this idea was first promulgated in all its naked sternness by

Gregory VII, it had come into collision with other ideas rooted with

almost equal depth in the mind of man, that especially of the illimitable

Cæsarian power, which though transferred to a German emperor, was still

a powerful tradition, and derived great weight from its descent from

Charlemagne. The humiliation of the emperor was degradation; it brought

contempt on the office, scarcely redeemed by the abilities, successes,

or even virtues of new sovereigns; the humiliation of the pope was a

noble suffering in the cause of God and truth, the depression of patient

holiness under worldly violence. In every schism the pope who maintained

the loftiest churchmanship had eventually gained the superiority which

the imperialising popes had sunk into impotence, obscurity, ignominy.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CRUSADES ON PAPAL POWER

[Sidenote: [1198-1201 A.D.]]

The Crusades, as elsewhere described, had made the pope not merely the

spiritual, but in some sort the military suzerain of Europe; he had the

power of summoning all Christendom to his banner; the raising the cross,

the standard of the pope, was throughout Europe a general and compulsory

levy, the _Heerbann_ of all who bore arms, of all who could follow an

army. That which was a noble act of devotion had become a duty; not to

assume the cross was sin and impiety. The Crusades thus became a kind

of forlorn hope upon which all the more dangerous and refractory of the

temporal sovereigns might be employed, so as to waste their strength, if

not lose their lives, by the accidents of the journey, or by the sword

of the Mohammedan. If they resisted, the fearful excommunication hung

over them, and was ratified by the fears and by the wavering allegiance

of their subjects. If they obeyed and returned, as most of them did,

with shame and defeat, they returned shorn of their power, lowered in

the public estimation, and perhaps still pursued, on account of their

ill success, with the inexorable interdict. It was thus by trammelling

their adversaries with vows which they could not decline, and from which

they could not extricate themselves; by thus consuming their wealth and

resources on this wild and remote warfare, that the popes, who themselves

decently eluded, or were prevented by age or alleged occupations from

embarkation in these adventurous expeditions, broke and wasted away the

power and influence of the emperors.

The Crusades, too, had now made the western world tributary to the

popedom; the vast subventions raised for the Holy Land were to a certain

extent at the disposal of the pope. The taxation of the clergy on his

authority could not be refused for such an object; a tenth of all the

exorbitant wealth of the hierarchy passed through his hands. An immense

financial system grew up; papal collectors were in every land, papal

bankers in every capital to transmit these subsidies.

But after all none of these accessory and, in some degree, fortuitous

aids, could have raised the papal authority to its commanding

height,[100] had it not possessed more sublime and more lawful claims to

the reverence of mankind. It was still an assertion of eternal principles

of justice, righteousness, and humanity. However it might trample on all

justice, sacrifice righteousness to its own interests, plunge Europe

in desolating wars, perpetuate strife in states, set sons in arms

against their fathers, fathers against sons, it was still proclaiming

a higher ultimate end. The papal language, the language of the clergy,

was still ostentatiously, profoundly religious; it professed, even if

itself did not always respect, even though it tampered with, the awful

sense of retribution before an all-knowing, all-righteous God. In his

highest pride, the pope was still the servant of the servants of God; in

all his cruelty he boasted of his kindness to the transgressor; every

contumacious emperor was a disobedient son; the excommunication was the

voice of a parent, who affected at least reluctance to chastise.

If this great idea was ever to be realised of a Christian republic

with a pope at its head--and that a pope of a high Christian character

(in some respects, in all perhaps but one, in tolerance and gentleness

almost impossible in his days, and the want of which, far from impairing,

confirmed his strength)--none could bring more lofty, more various

qualifications for its accomplishment, none could fall on more favourable

times than Innocent III. Innocent was Giovanni Lothario Conti, an

Italian of noble birth, but not of a family inextricably involved in the

petty quarrels and interests of the princedoms of Romagna. He was of

the Conti,[101] who derived their name in some remote time from their

dignity. The elevation of his uncle to the pontificate as Clement III

paved the way to his rapid rise. He was elevated in his twenty-ninth year

to the cardinalate under the title vacated by his uncle.

Celestine on his death-bed had endeavoured to nominate his successor; he

had offered to resign the papacy if the cardinals would elect John of

Colonna. But, even if consistent with right and with usage, the words of

dying sovereigns rarely take effect. Of twenty-eight cardinals, five only

were absent; of the rest the unanimous vote fell on the youngest of their

body, on the cardinal (Giovanni) Lothario. Lothario was only thirty-seven

years old, almost an unprecedented age for a pope.[102] The cardinals

who proclaimed him saluted him by the name of Innocent, in testimony of

his blameless life. In his inauguration sermon broke forth the character

of the man; the unmeasured assertion of his dignity, protestations of

humility which have a sound of pride. “Ye see what manner of servant

that is whom the Lord hath set over his people; no other than the

vicegerent of Christ, the successor of Peter. He stands in the midst

between God and man; below God, above man; less than God, more than man.

He judges all, is judged by none, for it is written, ‘I will judge.’ But

he whom the pre-eminence of dignity exalts is lowered by his office of

a servant, that so humility may be exalted, and pride abased; for God

is against the high-minded, and to the lowly he shows mercy; and he who

exalteth himself shall be abased. Every valley shall be lifted up, every

hill and mountain laid low!”

The letters in which he announced his election to the king of France,

and to the other realms of Christendom, blend a decent but exaggerated

humility with the consciousness of power; Innocent’s confidence in

himself transpires through his confidence in the divine protection.

The state of Christendom might have tempted a less ambitious prelate to

extend and consolidate his supremacy. Wherever Innocent cast his eyes

over Christendom and beyond the limits of Christendom, appeared disorder,

contested thrones, sovereigns oppressing their subjects, subjects in arms

against their sovereigns, the ruin of the Christian cause. In Italy the

crown of Naples on the brows of an infant; the fairest provinces under

the galling yoke of fierce German adventurers; the Lombard republics,

Guelf or Ghibelline, at war within their walls, at war or in implacable

animosity against each other; the empire, distracted by rival claimants

for the throne, one vast scene of battle, intrigue, almost of anarchy;

the tyrannical and dissolute Philip Augustus king of France, before long

the tyrannical and feeble John of England.

The Byzantine Empire is tottering to its fall; the kingdom of Jerusalem

confined almost to the city of Acre. Every realm seems to demand, or

at least to invite, the interposition, the mediation, of the head of

Christendom; in every land one party at least, or one portion of society,

would welcome his interference in the last resort for refuge or for

protection.

Nor did Innocent shrink from that which might have crushed a less

energetic spirit to despair; from the Jordan to the Atlantic, from the

Mediterranean to beyond the Baltic, his influence is felt and confessed;

his vast correspondence shows at once the inexhaustible activity of

his mind; he is involved simultaneously or successively in the vital

interests of every kingdom in the western world.[e]

THE AUTOCRACY OF INNOCENT III

In order to secure Sicily for her son, the empress Constantia, pressed

hard by parties, was obliged to accept the papal investment under the new

conditions prescribed by the pontiff. After Constantia’s death (the 27th

of November, 1198) Innocent ruled over all Sicily in the character of

guardian. Still further the disputed imperial election, by which Germany

was divided between Philip, duke of Swabia, and Otto, duke of Saxony,

encouraged the pope to a larger extension of his power. Immediately after

his accession, Innocent had already taken the oath of fealty to the

imperial _præfectus urbis_; now he dislodged the vassals of the empire

from the territory of Matilda, and established in Tuscany a civic league.

[Sidenote: [1201-1216 A.D.]]

After he had thus consolidated his power in Italy, he commenced an

energetic interference in German politics; for he forthwith claimed the

right to decide on a disputed imperial election. He must naturally have

been inclined rather to the Guelf than to the Hohenstaufen candidate,

so maintaining his pretensions he actually decided (1201) in favour of

Otto IV. However, he was resisted with great energy by Philip’s party,

and the flame of discord only burned so much the brighter in Germany.

As Philip continued to gain more decisive advantages over his enemy,

Innocent began negotiations with him, which seemed fraught with danger

to Otto. Meanwhile Philip was murdered by Otto of Wittelsbach in Bamberg

(1208). Otto IV was then universally recognised as emperor, and after he

had satisfied the pope’s demands in all points he was crowned by him. But

so soon as Otto had reached this goal of his wishes, he began again to

vindicate the imperial rights in Italy, and to overthrow the pope’s new

creations, without suffering himself to be turned from his path by the

sentence of excommunication and dethronement which the deluded Innocent

pronounced against him in November, 1210. Now he himself encouraged the

canvass of the only surviving Hohenstaufen. Frederick appeared in Germany

in 1212, and, upheld as he was by the pope and the king of France, he

quickly won most of all ranks to his side. On the 25th of July, 1215, he

received the German king’s crown at Aachen, and Otto down to his death

(1218) had to content himself with his ancestral territories in Brunswick.

UNIVERSAL SWAY OF THE POPE

On every side, the thunder of Rome broke over the heads of princes. A

certain Swero is excommunicated for usurping the crown of Norway. A

legate, in passing through Hungary, is detained by the king: Innocent

writes in tolerably mild terms to this potentate, but fails not to

intimate that he might be compelled to prevent his son’s accession to the

throne. The king of Leon had married his cousin, a princess of Castile.

Innocent subjects the kingdom to an interdict. When the clergy of Leon

petition him to remove it, because when they ceased to perform their

functions the laity paid no tithes and listened to heretical teachers

when orthodox mouths were mute, he consented that divine service with

closed doors, but not the rites of burial, might be performed. The king

at length gave way, and sent back his wife.

But a more illustrious victory of the same kind was obtained over Philip

Augustus, who, having repudiated Ingeborg of Denmark, had contracted

another marriage. The conduct of the king, though not without the usual

excuse of those times, nearness of blood, was justly condemned; and

Innocent did not hesitate to visit his sins upon the people by a general

interdict. This, after a short demur from some bishops, was enforced

throughout France; the dead lay unburied, and the living were cut off

from the offices of religion, till Philip, thus subdued, took back his

divorced wife. The submission of such a prince, not feebly superstitious,

like his predecessor Robert, nor vexed with seditions, like the emperor

Henry IV, but brave, firm, and victorious, is perhaps the proudest trophy

on the scutcheon of Rome.

Compared with this, the subsequent triumph of Innocent over the

pusillanimous John seems cheaply gained, though the surrender of a

powerful kingdom into the vassalage of the pope may strike us as a proof

of stupendous baseness on one side and audacity on the other.

A disputed election furnished Innocent with an opportunity of thrusting

forward the cardinal Stephen Langton into the archbishopric of

Canterbury against the king’s will. When John resisted with anger,

the pope laid England under an interdict, in 1208, and afterwards

excommunicated the king; the latter sought by reckless cruelty to avenge

himself on the clergy, and by severe oppression to make sure of his

vassals. At last Innocent deposed him from his kingdom, and handed it

over to the king of France. But while he was arming himself for the

conquest, John, unable to trust his vassals, yielded in all points, and

even received his kingdom in fee from the pope under circumstances of the

greatest humiliation. Now was England yielded up to the discretion of an

arbitrary pope and a contemptible king; this united the prelates and the

barons to wrest Magna Charta from the king in 1215. In vain the pope with

spiritual and the king with temporal weapons strove to effect its repeal;

John’s death, however, in 1216, quickly put an end to internal discord.

Still greater prospects seemed to open themselves before the pope in

Constantinople. Although the enthusiasm for crusades was already much

diminished, nevertheless Innocent had succeeded, by unwearied efforts, in

collecting a new army at Venice in 1202. The crafty doge, Enrico Dandolo,

notwithstanding all papal admonitions, had first made use of the army for

the reconquest of Zara (Jadera); it was then induced by the magnificent

promises of a Greek prince, Alexius, to undertake an expedition against

Constantinople; and when the reinstated emperor Isaac Angelus was

unable to fulfil these promises, Constantinople was conquered, and a

Latin empire established there, by the exaltation of Baldwin, count

of Flanders, to the throne. Thus the church of Constantinople seemed

now to be brought into subjection to the Roman see. However, even now,

no one doubted the precariousness of this acquisition. For the new

empire already contained the germ of dissolution; on the other hand it

completely foiled the powerful enterprise in behalf of Palestine.

In the latter year of his life Innocent devoted especial attention to

the Holy Land: King Frederick took the cross even at his coronation;

and at the Lateran council of the year 1215, one of the most brilliant

which had ever been held, the accomplishment of another crusade was one

of the chief ends in view. The enthusiasm for the Holy Land was indeed

by no means extinct; but in Germany the continuance of the twofold reign

of Frederick and Otto led to many unfavourable opinions of the Roman

see, which necessarily obstructed its readiness to undertake a fresh

crusade.[k]

MILMAN’S ESTIMATE OF INNOCENT III

[Sidenote: [1198-1216 A.D.]]

In the full vigour of his manhood died Innocent III, 1216. He, of all

the popes, had advanced the most exorbitant pretensions, and those

pretensions had been received by an age most disposed to accept them

with humble deference. The high and blameless, in some respects wise and

gentle, character of Innocent might seem to approach more nearly than

any one of the whole succession of Roman bishops to the ideal height

of a supreme pontiff; in him, if ever, might appear to be realised the

churchman’s highest conception of the vicar of Christ.

Gregory VII and Boniface VIII, the first and the last of the aggressive

popes, and the aged Gregory IX, had no doubt more rugged warfare to

encounter, fiercer and more unscrupulous enemies to subdue. But in

all these there was a personal sternness, a contemptuous haughtiness;

theirs was a worldly majesty. The pride of Innocent was calmer, more

self-possessed; his dignity was less disturbed by degrading collisions

with rude adversaries; he died on his unshaken throne, in the plenitude

of his seemingly unquestioned power. Yet if we pause and contemplate,

as we cannot but pause and contemplate, the issue of this highest,

in a certain sense noblest and most religious contest for the papal

ascendency over the world of man, there is an inevitable conviction of

the unreality of that papal power. With all the grandeur of his views,

with all the persevering energy of his measures, throughout Innocent’s

reign, everywhere we behold failure, everywhere immediate discomfiture,

or transitory success which paved the way for future disaster. The

higher the throne of the pope the more manifestly were its foundations

undermined, unsound, unenduring.

Even Rome does not always maintain her peaceful subservience. Her

obedience is interrupted, precarious; that of transient awe, not of deep

attachment, or rooted reverence. In the empire it is impossible not to

burden the memory of Innocent with the miseries of the long civil war.

Otto without the aid of the pope could not have maintained the contest

for a year; with all the pope’s aid he had sunk into contempt, almost

insignificance; he was about to be abandoned, if not actually abandoned,

by the pope himself. The casual blow of the assassin alone prevented

the complete triumph of Philip. Already he had extorted his absolution;

Innocent was compelled to yield, and could not yield without loss of

dignity. The triumph of Otto leads to as fierce, and more perilous

resistance to the papal power than could have been expected from the

haughtiness of the Hohenstaufen. The pope has an irresistible enemy in

Italy itself. Innocent is compelled to abandon the great object of the

papal policy, the breaking the line of succession in the house of Swabia,

and to assist in the elevation of a Swabian emperor. He must yield to the

union of the crown of Sicily with that of Germany, and so bequeath to his

successors the obstinate and perilous strife with Frederick II.

[Illustration: A THIRTEENTH CENTURY MONK]

In France, Philip Augustus is forced to seem, yet only seem, to

submit; the miseries of his unhappy wife are but aggravated by the

papal protection. The death of Agnes of Méran, rather than Innocent’s

authority, heals the strife. The sons of the proscribed concubine succeed

to the throne of France.

In England the barons refuse to desert John when under the interdict of

the pope; when the pope becomes the king’s ally, resenting the cession

of the realm, they withdraw their allegiance. Even in Stephen Langton,

who owes his promotion to the pope, the Englishman prevails over the

ecclesiastic; the Great Charter is extorted from the king when under the

express protection of the holy see, and maintained resolutely against the

papal sentence of abrogation; and in the Great Charter is laid the first

stone of the religious as well as the civil liberties of the land.

Venice, in the crusade, deludes, defies, baffles the pope. The crusaders

become her army, besiege, fight, conquer for her interests. In vain the

pope protests, threatens, anathematises; Venice calmly proceeds in the

subjugation of Zara. To the astonishment, the indignation of the pope,

the crusaders’ banners wave not over Jerusalem, but over Constantinople.

But for her own wisdom, Venice might have given an emperor to the capital

of the East; she secures the patriarchate almost in defiance of the pope;

only when she has entirely gained her ends does she submit to the petty

and unregarded vengeance of the pope.

Even in the Albigensian war the success was indeed complete; heresy was

crushed, but by means of which Innocent disapproved in his heart. He had

let loose a terrible force, which he could neither arrest nor control.

The pope can do everything but show mercy or moderation. He could not

shake off, the papacy has never shaken off, the burden of its complicity

in the remorseless carnage perpetrated by the crusaders in Languedoc, in

the crimes and cruelties of Simon de Montfort. A dark and ineffaceable

stain of fraud and dissimulation too has gathered around the fame of

Innocent himself.[103] Heresy was quenched in blood; but the earth sooner

or later gives out the terrible cry of blood for vengeance against

murderers and oppressors.

The great religious event of this pontificate, the foundation of

the Mendicant orders, that which perhaps perpetuated, or at least

immeasurably strengthened, the papal power for two centuries, was

extorted from the reluctant pope. Both St. Dominic and St. Francis were

coldly received, almost contemptuously repelled. It was not till either

his own more mature deliberation or wiser counsel, which took the form

of divine admonition, prevented this fatal error and prophetically

revealed the secret of their strength and of their irresistible influence

throughout Christendom, that Innocent awoke to wisdom. He then bequeathed

these two great standing armies to the papacy; armies maintained without

cost, sworn, more than sworn, bound by the unbroken chains of their own

zeal and devotion to unquestioning, unhesitating service throughout

Christendom, speaking all languages. They were colonies of religious

militia, natives of every land, yet under foreign control and guidance.

Their whole power, importance, perhaps possessions rested on their

fidelity to the see of Rome, that fidelity guaranteed by the charter of

their existence. Well might they appear so great as they are seen by the

eye of Dante, like the cherubim and seraphim in paradise.[e]

FREDERICK II AT WAR WITH THE PAPACY

[Sidenote: [1216-1244 A.D.]]

Honorius III, previously called Cencio Savelli, who succeeded Innocent,

1216, and governed the Roman church more than ten years, did not

perform so many deeds worthy of being recorded; yet he was very careful

that the Romish power should receive no diminution. Pursuing this

course, he had a grievous falling out with the emperor Frederick II,

a magnanimous prince, whom he himself had crowned at Rome in the year

1220. Frederick, imitating his grandfather, laboured to establish and

enlarge the authority of the emperors in Italy, to depress the minor

states and republics of Lombardy, and to diminish the immense wealth and

power of the pontiffs and the bishops; and to accomplish these objects,

he continually deferred the crusade, which he had promised with an

oath. Honorius, on the other hand, continually urged Frederick to enter

on his expedition to Palestine; yet he secretly encouraged, animated,

and supported the cities and republics that resisted the emperor, and

raised various impediments to the latter’s increasing power. Still, this

hostility did not, at present, break out in open war.

But under Gregory IX--whose former name was Ugolino, and who was elevated

from the bishopric of Ostia to the pontificate, 1227, an old man, but

still bold and resolute--the fire, which had been long burning in secret,

burst into a flame.[104] In the year 1227 the pontiff excommunicated the

emperor, who still deferred his expedition to Palestine; but without

proceeding in due form of ecclesiastical law, and without regarding the

emperor’s excuse of ill health. In the year 1228 the emperor sailed with

his fleet to Palestine; but instead of waging war as he was bound to

do, he made a truce with Saladin on recovering Jerusalem. While he was

absent the pontiff raised war against him in Apulia, and endeavoured to

excite all Europe to oppose him. Therefore Frederick hastened back, in

the year 1229, and after vanquishing his enemies, made his peace with

the pontiff in the year 1230. But this peace could not be durable, as

Frederick would not submit to the control of the pontiff. Therefore, as

the emperor continued to press heavily on the republics of Lombardy,

which were friendly to the pontiff, and transferred Sardinia, which the

pontiff claimed as part of the patrimony of the church, to his son Enzio;

and wished to withdraw Rome itself from the power of the pontiff; and did

other things very offensive to Gregory--the pontiff, in the year 1239,

again laid him under anathemas; and accused him to all the sovereigns

of Europe of many crimes and enormities, and particularly of speaking

contemptuously of the Christian religion.

The emperor, on the other hand, avenged the injuries that he received,

both by written publications and by his military operations in Italy,

in which he was for the most part successful; and thus he defended his

reputation, and also brought the pontiff into perplexity and difficulty.

To rescue himself, in some measure, in the year 1240 Gregory summoned a

general council to meet at Rome, intending to hurl the emperor from his

throne by the united suffrages of the assembled fathers. But Frederick,

in the year 1241, captured the Genoese fleet, which was carrying a great

part of the fathers to the council at Rome, and seizing as well their

treasures as themselves, he cast them into prison. Broken down by these

calamities, and by others of no less magnitude, Gregory shortly after

sank into the grave.

The successor of Gregory, Goffredo Castiglione of Milan, who assumed the

name of Celestine IV, died before his consecration; and after a long

interregnum, in the year 1243, Senibaldi, a Genoese, descended from the

counts Fieschi, succeeded under the pontifical name of Innocent IV, a

man inferior to none of his predecessors in arrogance and insolence of

temper. Between him and Frederick there were at first negotiations for

peace; but the terms insisted on by the pontiff were deemed too harsh

by the emperor. Hence Innocent, feeling himself unsafe in any part of

Italy, in 1244 removed from Genoa to Lyons in France; and the next year

assembled a council there, in the presence of which, but without its

approbation (whatever the Roman writers may affirm to the contrary), he

declared Frederick unworthy of the imperial throne.

[Sidenote: [1244-1274 A.D.]]

This most unrighteous decision of the pontiff had such influence upon the

German princes, who were infected with the superstition of the times,

that they elected first Henry, landgraf of Thuringia, and on his death

William, count of Holland, to the imperial throne. Frederick continued

the war vigorously and courageously in Italy, and with various successes,

until a dysentery terminated his life in Apulia, on the 13th of December,

1250. On the death of his foe, Innocent returned to Italy in the year

1251. From this time especially (though their origin was much earlier)

the two noted factions of Guelfs and Ghibellines, of which the former

sided with the pontiffs and the latter with the emperors, most unhappily

rent asunder and devastated all Italy.

Alexander IV, whose name as count of Segni and bishop of Ostia was

Rinaldo, became pontiff on the death of Innocent (1254) and reigned six

years and six months. Excepting some efforts to put down a grandson of

Frederick II, called Conradin, and to quiet the perpetual commotions of

Italy, he busied himself more in regulating the internal affairs of the

church than in national concerns. The mendicant friars, Dominicans and

Franciscans, are under especial obligations to him. Urban IV, before his

election to the pontificate in 1261, was James, patriarch of Jerusalem,

a man born of obscure parentage at Troyes. He distinguished himself more

by instituting the festival of the Body of Christ than by any other

achievement. He indeed formed many projects: but he executed few of them,

being prevented by death, in the year 1264, after a short reign of three

years. Not much longer was the reign of Clement IV, a Frenchman and

bishop of Sabina, under the name of Guido Fulcodi (Guy Foulques), who

was created pontiff in the year 1265. Yet he is better known on several

accounts, but especially for conferring the kingdom of Naples on Charles

of Anjou, brother to Louis IX, the king of France. Charles is well known

to have beheaded Conradin, the only surviving grandson of Frederick II,

after conquering him in battle, and this, if not by the counsel, at least

with the consent of the pontiff.[105]

On the death of Clement IV[106] there were vehement contests among the

cardinals, respecting the election of a new pontiff; which continued till

the third year, when, at last, 1271, Teobaldo of Piacenza, archdeacon of

Liège, was chosen, and assumed the name of Gregory X. He had been called

from Palestine, where he had resided; and having witnessed the depressed

state of the Christians in the Holy Land, nothing more engaged his

thoughts than sending them succour.

COUNCIL AT LYONS

[Sidenote: [1274-1294 A.D.]]

Accordingly, as soon as he was consecrated, he appointed a council to be

held at Lyons in France, and attended it in person in the month of May,

1274. The principal subjects discussed were the re-establishment of the

Christian dominion in the East, and the reunion of the Greek and Latin

churches. This has commonly been reckoned the fourteenth general council,

and is particularly noticeable for the new regulations it established for

the election of Roman pontiffs, and the celebrated provision which is

still in force requiring the cardinal electors to be shut up in conclave.

Neither did the pontiff, though of a milder disposition than many others,

hesitate to repeat and inculcate that odious maxim of Gregory VII, that

the pontiff is supreme lord of the world, and especially of the Roman

Empire. For in the year 1271 he sent a menacing letter to the princes

of Germany, admonishing them to elect an emperor, and without regarding

the wishes or the claims of Alfonso, king of Castile; otherwise he would

appoint a head of the empire himself. Accordingly, the princes assembled,

and elected Rudolf I, of the house of Habsburg.

Gregory X died in the year 1276, and his three immediate successors were

all chosen and died in the same year. Innocent V, previously Pietro di

Tarantaisia, was a Dominican monk, and bishop of Ostia. Adrian V was a

Genoese, named Ottoboni, and cardinal of St. Adrian. John XXI, previously

Pedro, bishop of Tusculum, was a native of Portugal. The next pontiff,

who came to the chair in 1277, reigned longer. He was Giovanni Gaetano,

of the family of Ursini, a Roman, and cardinal of St. Nicholas, who

assumed the title of Nicholas III. He greatly enlarged what is called the

patrimony of St. Peter; and, as his actions show, had formed other great

projects, which he would undoubtedly have accomplished, as he was a man

of energy and enterprise, had he not prematurely died in the year 1280.

His successor, Martin IV, elected by the cardinals in 1281, was a French

nobleman, Simon de Brion, a man of equal boldness and energy of character

with Nicholas. For he excommunicated Michael Palæologus, the Greek

emperor, because he had violated the compact of union with the Latins,

which was settled at the Council of Lyons. Pedro of Aragon he deprived

of his kingdoms and of all his property, because he had seized upon

Sicily; and he bestowed them gratuitously on Charles, son to the king of

France. He was projecting many other things, consonant with the views of

the pontiffs, when he was suddenly overtaken by death in 1285. His plans

were prosecuted by his successor, Giacomo Savelli, who was elected in

1285 and took the name of Honorius IV. But a distressing disease in his

joints, of which he died in 1287, prevented him from attempting anything

further. Nicholas IV, previously Girolamo d’Ascoli, bishop of Palestrina,

who attained to the pontifical chair in 1288, and died in 1292, was able

to attend to the affairs both of the church and of the nations with

more diligence and care. Hence he is represented in history sometimes

as the arbiter in the disputes of sovereign princes, sometimes as the

strenuous asserter of the rights and prerogatives of the church, and

again as the assiduous promoter of missionary labours among the Tatars

and other nations of the East. But nothing lay nearer his heart than the

restoration of the dominion of the Christians in Palestine, where their

cause was nearly ruined. In this he laboured strenuously indeed, but in

vain; for death intercepted all his projects.