in his efforts, yet all such individual exertions, dependent upon
persuasion alone, could be but limited in their influence and temporary
in their results. Reform, to be universal and permanent, required to
be authoritative in its character and to proceed from above downward.
The papacy itself must cease to be a scandal to Christendom, and must
be prepared to wield the awful force of its authority, seconded by
the moral weight of its example, before disorders so firmly rooted
could be attacked with any hope of success. In 1044, Benedict IX. was
driven out of Rome by a faction of rebels or patriots, who elected
Silvester III. as pontiff in his place. A sudden revolution sent
Silvester into exile, and brought Benedict back, who, to complete the
confusion, sold the papal dignity to a new aspirant, known as Gregory
VI. The transaction was not one which could decently be recognized by
the church, and Benedict was held incapable of thus transferring the
allegiance of Christendom or of depriving himself of his position.
There were thus three popes, whose conflicting claims to reverence
threw all Europe into the doubt and danger of schism, nor could the
knotty question be solved by the power of distracted Italy. A more
potent judge was required, and the decision was referred, as a matter
of course, to the sagacious and energetic Emperor, Henry the Black,
whose success in repressing the turbulence of the empire, and whose
sincere reverence for the church gave reasonable promise of a happy
solution of the tangled problem.[452] His proceeding was summary. The
three competitors were unceremoniously dismissed, and Henry filled the
vacancy thus created by the appointment of Suidger, Bishop of Bamberg,
who assumed the name of Clement II.
Henry III. was moved by a profound conviction that a thorough and
searching reform was vitally necessary to the church. The conscientious
severity of his character led him to have little toleration for the
abuses and disorders which were everywhere so painfully apparent. How
far his views were in advance of those generally entertained, even by
ecclesiastical dignitaries, was clearly manifested as early as 1042,
when Gebhardt, Bishop of Ratisbon, urged the claims of his favorite
arch-priest Cuno for the vacant see of Eichstedt. Henry refused on
the ground that Cuno was the son of a priest, and therefore by the
established canons ineligible to the position. The reason, though
unanswerable, was so novel that Gebhardt refused to accept it as the
true one, and Henry, to pacify him, promised to nominate any other one
of the Ratisbon clergy whom Gebhardt might select. The choice fell upon
a young and unknown man, also named Gebhardt, whose abilities, brought
into notice thus accidentally, rendered him afterwards more conspicuous
as Pope Victor II.[453]
Henry did not neglect the opportunity now afforded him of carrying
into effect his reformatory views, and in his selection of a pontiff
he was apparently influenced by the conviction that the Italian clergy
were too hopelessly corrupt for him to expect from them assistance
in his plans. Clement exchanged with him promises of mutual support
in the arduous undertaking. We have nothing to do with the most
crying evil; the one first vigorously attacked, and the one which
was productive of the greatest real detriment to the church—simony.
That was everywhere open and avowed. From the blessing of the priest
to the nomination for a primacy, every ecclesiastical act was the
subject of bargain and sale, reduced in many places to a regular scale
of prices.[454] To remove this scandal, Clement set vigorously to
work, and soon found an united opposition which promised little for
the success of the undertaking. He was doubtless sincere, but he was
clearly alone in his struggle with the fierce Italian prelates, who
were resolved not to abandon the emoluments and indulgences to which
they had grown accustomed, and the result of his efforts did not fulfil
the expectations of the more sanguine aspirants for the purification
of the church. Even his patron the emperor appears to have doubted
his earnestness in the cause, for we find Henry not only addressing
him a letter urging him to fresh exertion, but intrusting it to Peter
Damiani, with a command to present it in person, and to use all his
powers of exhortation to stimulate the flagging zeal of the pope.
Damiani refused to leave his hermitage even at the imperial mandate,
but he enclosed the missive in one of his own, deploring the unhealed
wounds of the church, recapitulating the shortcomings of Clement, and
goading him to fresh efforts, in a style which savored little of the
reverence due to the Vicegerent of God.[455] The pontifical crown was
evidently not a wreath of roses. Clement sank under its weight, and
died October 9th, 1047, in less than ten months after he had accepted
the perilous dignity.
* * * * *
St. Peter Damiani, who thus introduces himself to our notice, was one
of the remarkable men of the epoch. Born about the year 988 at Ravenna,
of a noble but decayed family, and the last of a numerous progeny,
he owed his life to a woman of the very class to the extirpation of
which he devoted all the energies of his prime. His mother, worn out in
the struggle with poverty, regarded his birth with aversion, refused
to suckle the infant saint, and neglected him until his forlorn and
emaciated condition awoke the compassion of a female retainer, the
wife of a priest, who remonstrated with the unfeeling parent until
she succeeded in arousing the sense of duty and restored to existence
the little sufferer, who was destined to bring unnumbered woes to all
who were of her condition.[456] His early years are said to have been
passed as a swineherd, till the opportunity for instruction offered
itself, which he eagerly embraced. Retiring at length from the world,
he joined the disciples of St. Romuald, who practised the strictest
monastic life, either as monks or hermits, at Avellana, near Agubio.
Immuring himself there in the desert, his austerities soon gained for
him the reputation of preëminent sanctity, and led to his election
as prior of the brotherhood. Gifted by nature with an intellect of
unusual strength, informed with all the learning of the day, his stern
asceticism, his dauntless spirit, and the uncompromising force of his
zeal brought him into notice and marked him as a fitting instrument in
the cause of reform. Occasionally, at the call of his superiors, he
left his beloved retreat to do battle with the hosts of evil, returning
with renewed zest to the charms of solitude, until, in 1057, Stephen
IX. forced him to accept the cardinalate and bishopric of Ostia—the
highest dignity in the Roman court. The duties of his episcopate,
however, conflicted with his monastic fervor, and after a few years he
rendered up the pastoral ring and staff and again returned to Avellana,
where he died in 1072, full of years and honors. His position and
authority can best be estimated from the terms employed by Alexander
II., who, when sending him on an important mission to France, described
him as next in influence to himself in the Roman church, and the chief
support of the Holy See.[457]
With a nature ardent and combative, worked up to the highest pitch of
ascetic intolerance by the introspective musings of his cell, it may
readily be conceived that the corruptions of the church filled him
with warm indignation and fierce desire to restore it to its pristine
purity. To this holy cause he devoted the last half of his life, and
was always ready, with tongue and pen, at the sacrifice of his dearly
prized solitude, to further the great movement on which he felt that
the future of Christianity depended. The brief hopes excited by the
promises of Clement and Henry were speedily quenched by the untimely
death of the German pontiff, and the most sanguine might well despair
at seeing the odious Benedict IX. reinstated as pope. But the emperor
was in earnest, and listened willingly to the cry of those who besought
him not to leave his good work unfinished. Nine brief months saw
Benedict again a wanderer, and another German prelate installed in his
place. Poppo of Brixen, however, enjoyed his new dignity, as Damasus
II., but twenty-one days, when he fell a martyr to the cause, perishing
miserably, either through the insalubrious heats of a Roman summer,
or the hidden vindictiveness of Italian party rage. It required some
courage to accept the honorable but fatal post, and six months elapsed
ere a worthy candidate could be found. Henry’s choice this time fell
upon Bruno of Toul, a prelate to whom admiring biographers ascribe
every virtue and every qualification. As Leo IX. he ascended the
pontifical throne in February, 1049, and he soon gave ample evidence
of the sincerity with which he intended to carry out the views of the
puritans whom he represented.
It was significant that he took with him to Rome the monk Hildebrand,
lately released from the service of his master Gregory VI., who had
died in his German exile, restored by a miracle at his death to the
honors of which he had been adjudged unworthy while living.[458] Still
more significant was the fact that Leo entered Rome, not as pope, but
as a barefooted pilgrim, and that he required the empty formality of
an election within the city, as though the nomination of the emperor
had given him no claim to his high office. Whether this was the result
of a voice from heaven, as related by the papal historians,[459] or
whether it was done at the suggestion of the high-churchman Hildebrand,
it showed that the new pontiff magnified his office, and felt that the
line of distinction between the clerk and the layman was to be sharply
drawn and vigorously defended.
Damiani lost no time in stimulating the stranger to the duties
expected of him by the party of reform. From the retreat of Avellana
he addressed to Leo an essay, which is the saddest of all the sad
monuments bequeathed to us by that age of desolation. With cynical
boldness he develops the frightful excesses epidemically prevalent
among the cloistered crowds of men, attributable to the unnatural
restraints imposed upon the passions of those unfitted by nature
or by training to control themselves; and his laborious efforts to
demonstrate the propriety of punishing the guilty by degradation show
how hideous was the laxity of morals which was disposed to regard
such crimes with indulgence.[460] Like the nameless horrors of the
Penitentials, it is the most convincing commentary on the system which
sought to enforce an impossible exaltation of purity on the ministers
of a religion whose outward formalism had absorbed its internal
life.[461]
Leo IX. was not long in manifesting his intentions, and his first point
of attack was chosen with some skill, the ecclesiastical rank of the
victim and his want of power rendering him at once a striking example
and an easy sacrifice. Dabralis, Archbishop of Salona (or Spalatro) in
Dalmatia, was married and lived openly with his wife. Leo sent a legate
to investigate and punish. Called before a synod, Dabralis could not or
deigned not to deny his guilt, but boldly justified it, as the woman
was his lawful wife, and he instanced the customs of the Greek church
in his defence. This only aggravated his guilt, and he was promptly
degraded forever.[462]
Leaving, for a time, the Italian church for subsequent efforts at
reformation, Leo undertook a progress throughout Northern Europe, for
the purpose of restoring the neglected discipline of those regions.
Before the year of his installation had expired, in November, 1049,
we find him presiding with the emperor at a council in Mainz, where
the simony and marriage of the clergy were condemned under severe
penalties.[463] That the influence thus brought to bear had some
effect, at least in externals, is shown by the courtly Albert of
Hamburg, who, on returning from the council to his see, revived a
forgotten regulation of his predecessors, by virtue of which the women
of ecclesiastics were ordered to live outside of the towns, in order
to avoid public scandal.[464] A few weeks before, in France, Leo had
presided over a national council at Rheims, where his vigorous action
against simony caused numerous vacancies in the hierarchy. The records
and canons of this council contain no allusions to the subject of
marriage or concubinage, but it is altogether improbable that they
escaped attention, for they were indulged in without concealment by all
classes of ecclesiastics, and some subsequent writers assert that they
were rigorously prohibited by the council, but that the injunctions
promulgated were unavailing.[465]
Returning to the South, the Easter of 1051 beheld a council assembled
at Rome for the purpose of restoring discipline. Apparently, the
Italian prelates were disposed to exercise considerable caution in
furthering the wishes of their chief, for they abstained from visiting
their indignation on the guilty priests, and directed their penalties
against the unfortunate females. In the city itself these were declared
to be enslaved, and were bestowed on the cathedral church of the
Lateran, while all bishops throughout Christendom were desired to apply
the rule to their own dioceses, and to seize the offending women for
the benefit of their churches.[466] The atrocity of this legislation
against the wives of priests is all the more noteworthy when contrasted
with the tenderness shown to worse crimes committed by men whose high
position only rendered their guilt the more heinous. At this council,
Gregory, Bishop of Vercelli, was convicted of what, by the rules of the
church, was considered as incest—an amour with a widow betrothed to
his uncle. For this aggravated offence he was merely excommunicated,
and when, soon after, he presented himself in Rome, he was restored to
communion on his simple promise to perform adequate penance.[467]
The reformatory zeal of Leo and of the monastic followers of Damiani
was thus evidently not seconded by the Italian church. A still more
striking proof of this was afforded by the attempt to hold a council
at Mantua early in 1053. The prelates who dreaded the result conspired
to break it up. A riot was provoked between their retainers and the
papal domestics; the latter, taken unawares and speedily overpowered,
fled to the council-chamber for safety, and Leo, rushing to the door
to protect them, was in imminent danger from the arrows and stones
which hurtled thickly around him.[468] The reckless plot succeeded, and
the council dispersed in undignified haste. Whether Leo was disgusted
with his want of success and convinced of the impracticability of the
undertaking, or whether his attention was thenceforth absorbed by his
unlucky military operations against the rapidly augmenting Norman power
in Southern Italy, it is not easy now to ascertain: suffice it to say
that no further indications remain of any endeavor to carry out the
reforms so eagerly commenced in the first ardor of his pontificate.
The consistent Damiani opposed the warlike aspirations of the pontiff,
but Leo persisted in leading his armies himself. A lost battle threw
Leo into the power of the hated Normans, when, after nine months, he
returned to Rome to die, in April, 1054, and to be reverenced as a
saint after death by those who had withstood him during life in every
possible manner.[469]
It is not easy to repress a smile on seeing Leo, who had been so
utterly unable to enforce the canons of the Latin church at home,
seriously undertaking to procure their adoption in Constantinople.
From his prison, in January, 1054, he sent Cardinal Humbert of Silva
Candida on a mission to convert the Greek church. There is extant a
controversy between the legate and Nicetas Pectoratus, a learned Greek
abbot, on the various points in dispute. I cannot profess to decide
which of the antagonists had the advantage on the recondite questions
of the use of unleavened bread, the Sabbath fasts, the calculation
of Easter, &c., but the contrast between the urbanity of the Greek
and the coarse vituperation of the Latin is strikingly suggestive as
a tacit confession of defeat on the part of the latter. In view of
the frightful immorality of the Italian clergy, there is something
peculiarly ludicrous in the mingled anger, contempt, and abhorrence
with which Humbert alludes to the marriage of the Greek clergy, which,
as he declares, renders their church the synagogue of Satan and the
brothel of Balaam and Jezebel, with other equally courteous and
convincing arguments. Humbert attributes priestly marriage altogether
to the heresy of the Nicolites, and lays down the law on the subject
as inexorably as though it were at the time observed in his own
church.[470]
After an interval of about a year, the line of German pontiffs was
continued in the person of Gebhardt, Bishop of Eichstedt (Victor II.),
whose appointment by the emperor was owing in no small degree to the
influence of Hildebrand—an influence which was daily making itself more
felt. Installed in the pontifical seat by Godfrey, Duke of Tuscany,
his efforts to continue the reformation commenced by his predecessors
aroused a stubborn resistance. There may be no foundation for the
legend of his being saved by a miracle from a sacramental cup poisoned
by a vengeful subdeacon, nor for the rumors that his early death was
hastened by the recalcitrant clergy who sought to escape the severity
of his discipline. There is some probability in the stories, however,
for, during his short pontificate, interrupted by a lengthened stay in
Germany and the perpetual vicissitudes of the Neapolitan troubles, he
yet found time to hold a synod at Florence, where he degraded numerous
prelates for simony and licentiousness; but, whether true or false, the
existence of the reports attests at once the sincerity of his zeal and
the difficulties of the task.[471]
His death in July, 1057, was followed after but a few days’ interval
by the election of Frederic, Duke of Lorraine—the empire having passed
in 1056 from the able hands of Henry III. to the feeble regency of his
empress, Agnes, as guardian of the unfortunate infant Henry IV.—thus
releasing the Roman clergy from the degrading dictation of a Teutonic
potentate. That Frederic should have abandoned the temptations and
ambitions of his lofty station to embrace the austerities of monastic
life in the abbey of Monte Casino, is a sufficient voucher that he
would not draw back from the work thus far hopelessly undertaken by his
predecessors. Notwithstanding the severity of the canons promulgated
during the previous decade, and the incessant attempts to enforce
them, Rome was still full of married priests, and the battle had to be
recommenced, as though nothing had yet been done. Immediately on his
installation, as Stephen IX., he addressed himself unshrinkingly to the
task. For four months, during the most unhealthy season, he remained
in Rome, calling synod after synod, and laboring with both clergy and
people to put an end to such unholy unions,[472] and he summarily
expelled from the church all who had been guilty of incontinence since
the prohibitions issued in the time of Leo.[473] One case is related
of a contumacious priest whose sudden death gave him the opportunity
of striking terror into the hearts of the reckless, for the mutilated
funeral rites which deprived the hardened sinner of the consolation of
a Christian burial it was hoped would prove an effectual warning to
his fellows.[474] Feeling the necessity of support in these thankless
labors, he forced Damiani to leave the retirement of the cloistered
shades of Avellana, and to bear, as Bishop of Ostia, his share of the
burden in the contest which he had done so much to provoke—but it was
all in vain.
In little more than half a year Stephen found refuge from strife and
turmoil in the tomb. The election of his successor, Gerard, Bishop of
Florence, was the formal proclamation that the church was no longer
subjected to the control of the secular authority. January 18th, 1058,
saw the power of the emperor defied, and the gauntlet thrown for the
quarrel which for three centuries was to plunge Central and Southern
Europe in turmoil and bloodshed. Henry III. had labored conscientiously
to rescue the papacy from the disgrace into which it had fallen. By
removing it from the petty sphere of the counts of Tusculum and the
barons of the Campagna, and by providing for it a series of highminded
and energetic pontiffs, he had restored its forfeited position, and
indeed had conferred upon it an amount of influence which it had never
before possessed. His thorough disinterestedness and his labors for its
improvement had disarmed all resistance to the exercise of his power,
but when that power passed into the hands of an infant but five years
old, it was natural that the church should seek to emancipate itself
from subjection; and if almost the first use made of its new-found
prerogatives was to crush the hand that had enabled it to obtain them,
we must not tax with ingratitude those who were undoubtedly penetrated
with the conviction that they were only vindicating the imprescriptible
rights of the church, and that to them was confided the future of
religion and civilization.
* * * * *
In the revolution which thus may date its successful commencement
at this period the two foremost figures are Damiani and Hildebrand.
Damiani the monk, with no further object than the abolition of simony
and the enforcement of the austerities which he deemed indispensable to
the salvation of the individual and to the purity of the church, looked
not beyond the narrow circle of his daily life, and sought merely
to level mankind by the measure of his own stature. Hildebrand, the
far-seeing statesman, could make use of Damiani and his tribe, perhaps
equally fervent in his belief that the asceticism of his fellow laborer
was an acceptable offering to God, but yet with ulterior views of
transcendently greater importance. In his grand scheme of a theocratic
empire, it became an absolute prerequisite that the church should hold
undivided sway over its members; that no human affection should render
their allegiance doubtful, but that their every thought and action
should be devoted to the common aggrandizement; that they should be
separated from the people by an impassable barrier, and should wield
an influence which could only be obtained by those who were recognized
as superior to the weaknesses of common humanity; that the immense
landed possessions of the church should remain untouched and constantly
increasing as the common property of all, and not be subjected to
the incessant dilapidations inseparable from uxorious or paternal
affections at a time when the restraints of law and of public opinion
could not be brought to bear with effect. In short, if the church was
to assume and maintain the position to which it was entitled by the
traditions of the canon law and of the False Decretals, it must be a
compact and mutually supporting body, earning by its self-inflicted
austerities the reverence to which it laid claim, and not be diverted
from its splendid goal by worldly allurements or carnal indulgences
and preoccupations. Such was the vision to the realization of which
Hildebrand devoted his commanding talents and matchless force of will.
The temporal success was at length all that he could have anticipated.
If the spiritual results were craft, subtlety, arrogance, cruelty, and
sensuality, hidden or cynical, it merely proves that his confidence
in the strength of human nature to endure the intoxicating effects of
irresponsible power was misplaced. Meanwhile he labored with Damiani
at the preliminary measures of his enterprise, and together they bent
their energies to procure the enforcement of the neglected rules of
discipline.
The new pope, Nicholas II. by name, entered unreservedly into their
views. Apparently taught by experience the fruitlessness of additional
legislation when the existing canons were amply sufficient, but
their execution impossible through the negligence or collusion of
the ecclesiastical authorities, he assembled, in 1059, a council of
a hundred and thirteen bishops, in which he adopted the novel and
hazardous expedient of appealing to the laity, and of rendering them
at once the judges and executioners of their pastors. A canon was
promulgated forbidding all Christians to be present at the mass of
any priest known to keep a concubine or female in his house.[475]
This probably remained, like its predecessors, a dead letter for the
present, but we shall see what confusion it excited when it was revived
and put effectually in force by Gregory VII. some fifteen years later.
Meanwhile I may observe that it trenched very nearly on the Donatist
heresy that the sacrament was polluted in polluted hands, and it
required the most careful word-splitting to prevent the faithful from
drawing a conclusion so natural.[476]