that new religion which was to shake the world, and to bring East and
West once more into a prolonged conflict. Mohammedanism, born in Arabia,
hurled itself first against Asia, then swept North Africa. By the end of
the seventh century it was threatening the Byzantine Empire on one side
of Europe, and the Gothic dominion in Spain on the other. On the other
hand, in the same period, Latin Christianity had decisively taken
possession of England, driving back that Celtic or Irish Christianity
which had been beforehand with it in making entry to the North.
Similarly, it was the Irish missionaries who began the conversion of the
outer Teutonic barbarians; but the work was carried out by the Saxon
Winfrid (Boniface) of the Latin Church.
The popes, however, during this century between Gregory I. and Gregory
II. again sank into a position of subordination to the imperial power.
Under the second Gregory, the papacy reasserted itself in resistance to
the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, the "Iconoclast," the "Image-breaker," who
strove to impose on Christendom his own zeal against images. To Leo,
images meant image-worship. To his opponents, images were useful
symbols. Rome defied the emperor's attempt to claim spiritual
dictatorship. East and West were rent in twain at the moment when Islam
was assaulting both West and East. Leo rolled back the advancing torrent
before Constantinople, as Charles Martel rolled it back almost
simultaneously in the great battle of Tours; but the Empire and the
West, Byzantium and Rome, never presented a united front to the Moslem.
The Iconoclastic controversy threw Italy against its will into the hands
of the image-worshipping Lombards; and hate of Lombard ascendancy turned
the eyes of Gregory's successors to the Franks, to Charles Martel; to
Pepin, who obtained from Pope Stephen sanction for his seizure of the
Frankish crown, and in return repressed the Lombards; and finally to
Charles the Great, otherwise Charlemagne, who on the last Christmas Day
of the eighth century was crowned (Western) emperor and successor of the
Caesars.
_II.--The Western Empire and Theocracy_
Charlemagne, the first emperor of the restored or Holy Roman Empire, by
his conquests brought into a single dominion practically all Western
Europe from the Elbe and the Danube to the Ebro. He stood the champion
and the head of Western Christendom, palpably the master, and not even
in theory the subordinate, of the Pontiff from whom he received the
imperial crown. But he established ecclesiastics as a territorial
nobility, counteracting the feudal nobility; and when the mighty emperor
was gone, and the unity of what was nominally one empire passed away,
this ecclesiastical nobility became an instrument for the elevation of
the spiritual above the temporal head of Christendom. The change was
already taking place under his son Louis the Pious, whose character
facilitated it.
The disintegration of the empire was followed by a hideous degradation
of the papacy. But the Saxon line of emperors, the Ottos, sprung from
Henry the Fowler, once more revived the empire; the third of them
established a worthy pope in Silvester II. But both emperor and pope
died just after the eleventh century opened. Elections of popes and
anti-popes continued to be accompanied by the gravest scandals, until
the Emperor Henry III. (Franconian dynasty) set a succession of Germans
on the papal throne.
The high character of the pontificate was revived in the persons of Leo
IX. and Victor II. (Gebhard of Eichstadt); many abuses were put down or
at least checked with a firm hand. But Henry's death weakened the
empire, and Stephen IX. added to the rigid enforcement of orthodoxy more
peremptory claims for the supremacy of the Holy See. His successor,
Nicholas II., strengthened the position as against the empire by
securing the support of the fleshly arm--the Normans. His election was
an assertion of the right of the cardinals to make their own choice.
Alexander II. was chosen in disregard of the Germans and the empire, and
the Germans chose an anti-pope. At the back of the Italian papal party
was the great Hildebrand. In 1073 Hildebrand himself ascended the papal
throne as Gregory VII. With Hildebrand, the great struggle for supremacy
between the empire and the papacy was decisively opened.
Gregory's aim was to establish a theocracy through an organised dominant
priesthood separated from the world, but no less powerful than the
secular forces; with the pope, God's mouthpiece, and vice-regent, at its
head. The temporal powers were to be instruments in his hand, subject to
his supreme authority. Clerical celibacy acquired a political value; the
clergy would concentrate on the glory of the Church those ambitions
which made laymen seek to aggrandise their families.
The collision between Rome and the emperor came quickly. The victory at
the outset fell to the pope, and Henry IV. was compelled to humble
himself and entreat pardon as a penitent at Canossa. Superficially, the
tables were turned later; when Gregory died, Henry was ostensibly
victor.
But Gregory's successor, Urban, as resolute and more subtle, retrieved
what had only been a check. The Crusades, essentially of ecclesiastical
inspiration, were given their great impulse by him; they were a movement
of Christendom against the Paynim, of the Church against Islam; they
centred in the pope, not the emperor, and they made the pope, not the
emperor, conspicuously the head of Christendom.
The twelfth century was the age of the Crusades, of Anselm and Abelard,
of Bernard of Clairvaux, and Arnold of Brescia. It saw the settlement of
the question of investitures, and in England the struggle between Henry
II. and Becket, in which the murder of the archbishop gave him the
victory. It saw a new enthusiasm of monasticism, not originated by, but
centring in, the person of Bernard, a more conspicuous and a more
authoritative figure than any pope of the time. To him was due the
suppression of the intellectual movement from within against the
authority of the Church, connected with Abelard's name.
Arnold of Brescia's movement was orthodox, but, would have transformed
the Church from a monarchial into a republican organisation, and
demanded that the clergy should devote themselves to apostolical and
pastoral functions with corresponding habits of life. He was a
forerunner of the school of reformers which culminated in Zwingli.
In the middle of the century the one English pope, Hadrian IV., was a
courageous and capable occupant of the papal throne, and upheld its
dignity against Frederick Barbarossa; though he could not maintain the
claim that the empire was held as a fief of the papacy. But the strife
between the spiritual and temporal powers issued on his death in a
double election, and an imperial anti-pope divided the allegiance of
Christendom with Alexander III. It was not till after Frederick had been
well beaten by the Lombard League at Legnano that emperor and pope were
reconciled, and the reconciliation was the pope's victory.
_III.--Triumph and Decline of the Papacy_
Innocent III., mightiest of all popes, was elected in 1198. He made the
papacy what it remained for a hundred years, the greatest power in
Christendom. The future Emperor Frederick II. was a child entrusted to
Innocent's guardianship. The pope began by making himself virtually
sovereign of Italy and Sicily, overthrowing the German baronage therein.
A contest for the imperial throne enabled the pope to assume the right
of arbitration. Germany repudiated his right. Innocent was saved from
the menace of defeat by the assassination of the opposition emperor. But
the successful Otho proved at once a danger.
Germany called young Frederick to the throne, and now Innocent sided
with Germany; but he did not live to see the death of Otho and the
establishment of the Hohenstaufen. More decisive was his intervention
elsewhere. Both France and England were laid under interdicts on account
of the misdoings of Philip Augustus and John; both kings were forced to
submission. John received back his kingdom as a papal fief. But Langton,
whom Innocent had made archbishop, guided the barons in their continued
resistance to the king, whose submission made him Rome's most cherished
son. England and the English clergy held to their independence. Pedro of
Aragon voluntarily received his crown from the pope. In every one of the
lesser kingdoms of Europe, Innocent asserted his authority.
Innocent's efforts for a fresh crusade begot not the overthrow of the
Saracen, but the substitution of a Latin kingdom under the Roman
obedience for the Greek empire of Byzantium. In effect it gave Venice
her Mediterranean supremacy. The great pope was not more zealous against
Islam than against the heterogeneous sects which were revolting against
sacerdotalism; whereof the horrors of the crusade against the Albigenses
are the painful witness.
Not the least momentous event in the rule of this mightiest of the popes
was his authorisation of the two orders of mendicant friars, the
disciples of St. Dominic, and of St. Francis of Assisi, with their vows
of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and their principle of human
brotherhood. And in both cases Innocent's consent was given with
reluctance.
It may be said that Frederick II. was at war with the papacy until his
death in the reign of Innocent III.'s fourth successor, Innocent IV.
With Honorius the emperor's relations were at first friendly; both were
honestly anxious to take a crusade in hand. The two were brought no
further than the verge of a serious breach about Frederick's exercise of
authority over rebellious ecclesiastics. But Gregory IX., though an
octogenarian, was recognised as of transcendent ability and indomitable
resolution; and his will clashed with that of the young emperor, a
brilliant prince, born some centuries too early.
Frederick was pledged to a crusade; Gregory demanded that the expedition
should sail. Frederick was quite warranted in saying that it was not
ready; and through no fault of his. Gregory excommunicated him, and
demanded his submission before the sentence should be removed. Frederick
did not submit, but when he sailed it was without the papal support.
Frederick endeavoured to proceed by treaty; it was a shock to Moslems
and to Christendom alike. The horrified Gregory summoned every
disaffected feudatory of the empire in effect to disown the emperor. But
Frederick's arms seemed more likely to prosper. Christendom turned
against the pope in the quarrel. Christendom would not go crusading
against an emperor who had restored the kingdom of Jerusalem. The two
came to terms. Gregory turned his attention to becoming the Justinian of
the Church.
But a rebellion against Frederick took shape practically as a renewal of
the papal-imperial contest. Gregory prepared a league; then once more he
launched his ban. Europe was amazed by a sort of war of proclamations.
Nothing perhaps served the pope better now than the agency of the
mendicant orders. The military triumph of Frederick, however, seemed
already assured when Gregory died. Two years later, Innocent IV. was
pope. After hollow overtures, Innocent fled to Lyons, and there launched
invectives against Frederick and appeals to Christendom.
Frederick, by attaching, not the papacy but the clergy, alienated much
support. Misfortunes gathered around him. His death ensured Innocent's
supremacy. Soon the only legitimate heir of the Hohenstaufen was an
infant, Conradin; and Conradin's future depended on his able but
illegitimate uncle, Manfred. But Innocent did not live long to enjoy his
victory; his arrogance and rapacity brought no honour to the papacy.
English Grostête of Lincoln, on whom fell Stephen Langton's mantle, is
the noblest ecclesiastical figure of the time.
For some years the imperial throne remained vacant; the matter of first
importance to the pontiffs--Alexander, Urban, Clement--was that
Conradin, as he grew to manhood, should not be elected. Manfred became
king of South Italy, with Sicily; but with no legal title. Urban, a
Frenchman, agreed with Charles of Anjou, brother of St. Louis, that he
should have the crown, on terms. Manfred fell in battle against him at
Beneventum, and with him all real chance of a Hohenstaufen recovery. Not
three years after, young Conradin, in a desperate venture after his
legitimate rights, was captured and put to death by Charles of Anjou.
A temporary pacification of Western Christendom was the work of Gregory
X.; his aim was a great crusade. At last an emperor was elected, Rudolph
of Hapsburg. But Gregory died. Popes followed each other and died in
swift succession. Presently, on the abdication of the hermit Celestine,
Boniface VIII. was chosen pope. His bull, "Clericis laicos," forbidding
taxation of the clergy by the temporal authority, brought him into
direct hostility with Philip the Fair of France, and though the quarrel
was temporarily adjusted, the strife soon broke out again. The bulls,
"Unam Sanctam" and "Ausculta fili," were answered by a formal
arraignment of Boniface in the States-General of France, followed by the
seizure of the pope's own person by Philip's Italian partisans.
_IV.--Captivity, Seclusion, and Revival_
The successor of Boniface was Benedict IX. He acted with dignity and
restraint, but he lived only two years. After long delays, the cardinals
elected the Archbishop of Bordeaux, a subject of the King of England.
But before he became Clement V. he had made his pact with the King of
France. He was crowned, not in Italy, but at Lyons, and took up his
residence at Avignon, a papal fief in Provence, on the French borders.
For seventy years the popes at Avignon were practically the servants of
the King of France.
At the very outset, Clement was compelled to lend his countenance to the
suppression of the Knights Templars by the temporal power. Philip forced
the pope and the Consistory to listen to an appalling and incredible
arraignment of the dead Boniface; then he was rewarded for abandoning
the persecution of his enemy's memory by abject adulation: the pope had
been spared from publicly condemning his predecessor.
John XXII. was not, in the same sense, a tool of the last monarchs of
the old House of Capet, of which, during his rule, a younger branch
succeeded in the person of Philip of Valois. John was at constant feud
with the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, and also, within the ecclesiastical
pale, with the Franciscan Order. Louis of Bavaria died during the
pontificate of Clement VI., and Charles of Bohemia, already emperor in
the eyes of the pope, was accepted by Germany. He virtually abdicated
the imperial claim to rule in Italy; but by his "Golden Bull" he
terminated the old source of quarrel, the question of the authority by
which emperors were elected. The "Babylonish captivity" ended when
Gregory XI. left Avignon to die in Italy; it was to be replaced by the
Great Schism.
For thirty-eight years rival popes, French and Italian, claimed the
supremacy of the Church. The schism was ended by the Council of
Constance; Latin Christianity may be said to have reached its
culminating point under Nicholas V., during whose pontificate the Turks
captured Constantinople.
* * * * *
LEOPOLD VON RANKE
History of the Popes
Leopold von Ranke was born at Wiehe, on December 21, 1795, and
died on May 23, 1886. He became Professor of History at Berlin
at the age of twenty-nine; and his life was passed in
researches, the fruits of which he gave to the world in an
invaluable series of historical works. The earlier of these
were concerned mainly with the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries--in English history generally called the Tudor and
Stuart periods--based on examinations of the archives of
Vienna and Rome, Venice and Florence, as well as of Berlin. In
later years, when he had passed seventy, he travelled more
freely outside of his special period. The "History of the
Popes in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" here
presented was published in 1834-7. The English translation by
Sarah Austin (1845) was the subject of review in one of
Macaulay's famous essays. It is mainly concerned with the
period, not of the Reformation itself, but of the century and
a quarter following--roughly from 1535 to 1760, the period
during which the religious antagonisms born of the Reformation
were primary factors in all European complications.
_I.--The Papacy at the Reformation_
The papacy was intimately allied with the Roman Empire, with the empire
of Charlemagne, and with the German or Holy Roman Empire revived by
Otto. In this last the ecclesiastical element was of paramount
importance, but the emperor was the supreme authority. From that
authority Gregory VII. resolved to free the pontificate, through the
claim that no appointment by a layman to ecclesiastical office was
valid; while the pope stood forth as universal bishop, a crowned
high-priest. To this supremacy the French first offered effectual
resistance, issuing in the captivity of Avignon. Germany followed suit,
and the schism of the church was closed by the secular princes at
Constance and Basle. The papacy was restored in form, but not to its old
supremacy.
The pontificates of Sixtus IV. and the egregious Alexander VI. were
followed by the militant Julius II., who aimed, with some success, at
making the pope a secular territorial potentate. But the intellectual
movement challenged the papal claim, the direct challenge emanating from
Germany and Luther. But this was at the moment when the empire was
joined with Spain under Charles V. The Diet of Worms pointed to an
accord between emperor and pope, when Leo X. died unexpectedly. His
successor, Adrian, a Netherlander and an admirable man, sought vainly to
inaugurate reform of the Church from within, but in brief time made way
for Clement VII.
Hitherto, the new pope's interests had all been on the Spanish side, at
least as against France; everything had been increasing the Spanish
power in Italy, but Clement aimed at freedom from foreign domination.
The discovery of his designs brought about the Decree of Spires, which
gave Protestantism a legal recognition in the empire, and also the
capture and sack of Rome by Frundsberg's soldiery. Charles's ascendancy
in Italy and over the papacy was secured. Clement, now almost at his
beck, would have persuaded him to apply coercion to the German
Protestants; but this did not suit the emperor, whose solution for
existing difficulties was the summoning of a general council, which
Clement was quite determined to evade. Moreover, matters were made worse
for the papacy when England broke away from the papal obedience over the
affair of Katharine of Aragon.
Paul III., Clement's immediate successor, began with an effort after
regeneration by appointing several cardinals of the Contarini type,
associates of the Oratory of Divine Love, many of whom stood, in part at
least, on common ground with avowed Protestants, notably on the dogma of
justification by faith. He appears seriously to have desired a
reconciliation with the Protestants; and matters looked promising when a
conference was held at Ratisbon, where Contarini himself represented the
pope.
Terms of union were even agreed on, but, being referred to Luther on one
side and Paul on the other, were rejected by both, after which there was
no hope of the cleavage being bridged. The regeneration of the Church
would have to be from within.
_II.--Sixteenth Century Popes_
The interest of this period lies mainly in the antagonism between the
imperative demand for internal reform of the Church and the policy which
had become ingrained in the heads of the Church. For the popes, these
political aspirations stood first and reform second. Alexander Farnese
(Paul III.) was pope from 1534 to 1549. He was already sixty-seven when
he succeeded Clement. Policy and enlightenment combined at first to make
him advance Contarini and his allies, and to hope for reconciliation
with the Protestants. Policy turned him against acceptance of the
Ratisbon proposals, as making Germany too united. Then he urged the
emperor against the Protestants, but when the success of Charles was too
complete he was ill-pleased. He withdrew the Council from Trent to
Bologna, to remove it from imperial influences which threatened the
pope's personal supremacy. So far as he was concerned, reformation had
dropped into the background.
Julius III. was of no account; Marcellus, an excellent and earnest man,
might have done much had he not died in three weeks. His election, and
that of his successor, Caraffa, as Paul IV., both pointed to a real
intention of reform. Caraffa had all his life been a passionate advocate
of moral reform, but even he was swept away by the political conditions
and his hatred of Spain, which was an obsession. Professed detestation
of Spain was a sure way to his favour, which, his kinsfolk recognising,
they won his confidence only to their own ultimate destruction when he
discovered that he had been deceived. Half his reign was worse than
wasted in a futile contest with Spain; when it was done, he turned
rigorously to energetic disciplinary reforms, but death stayed his hand.
A very different man was Pius IV., the pontiff under whom the Council of
Trent was brought to a close. Far from rigid himself, he still could
not, if he would, have altogether deserted the paths of reform. But most
conspicuously he was inaugurator of a new policy, not asserting claims
to supremacy, but seeking to induce the Catholic powers to work hand in
hand with the papacy--Spain and the German Empire being now parted under
the two branches of the House of Hapsburg. In this policy he was most
ably assisted by the diplomatic tact of Cardinal Moroni, who succeeded
in bringing France, Spain, and the empire into a general acceptance of
the positions finally laid down by the Council of Trent, whereby the
pope's ecclesiastical authority was not impaired, but rather
strengthened.
On his death, he was succeeded by one of the more rigid school, Pius V.
(1563-1572). This pope continued to maintain the monastic austerity of
his own life; his personal virtue and piety were admirable; but, being
incapable of conceiving that anything could be right except on the exact
lines of his own practice, he was both extremely severe and extremely
intolerant; especially he was, in harmony with Philip of Spain, a
determined persecutor.
But to his idealism was largely due that league which, directed against
the Turk, issued in one of the most memorable checks to the Ottoman
arms, the battle of Lepanto.
Gregory XIII. succeeded him immediately before the massacre of St.
Bartholomew. It was rather the pressure of his surroundings than his
personal character that gave his pontificate a spiritual aspect. An
honourable care in the appointment of bishops and for ecclesiastical
education were its marks on this side. He introduced the Gregorian
Calendar. He was a zealous promoter of war, open and covert, with
Protestantism, especially with Elizabeth; his financial arrangements
were effective and ingenious. But he failed to obtain control over the
robber bands which infested the Papal States.
Their suppression was carried out with unexampled severity by Sixtus V.
Sixtus was learned and prudent, and of remarkable self-control; he is
also charged with being crafty and malignant. Not very accurately, he is
commonly regarded as the author of much which was actually due to his
predecessors; but his administration is very remarkable. Rigorous to the
verge of cruelty in the enforcement of his laws, they were themselves
commonly mild and conciliatory. He was energetic in encouraging
agriculture and manufactures. Nepotism, the old ingrained vice of the
popes, had been practised by none of his three immediate predecessors,
though he is often credited with its abolition. His financial methods
were successful immediately, but really accumulated burdens which became
portentously heavy.
The treatment of public buildings in Rome by Sixtus V., his destruction
of antiquities there, and his curious attempts to convert some of the
latter into Christian monuments, mark the change from the semi-paganism
of the times of Leo X. Similarly, the ecclesiastical spirit of the time
opposed free inquiry. Giordano Bruno was burnt. The same movement is
visible in the change from Ariosto to Tasso. Religion had resumed her
empire. The quite excellent side of these changes is displayed in such
beautiful characters as Cardinal Borromeo and Filippo Neri.