clergy. If we may believe the testimony of one who was almost a
contemporary, the candidate for holy orders was strictly examined
as to his learning and morals. These being satisfactory, he was, if
unmarried, asked if he had strength to remain so, and if he replied in
the negative, he could forthwith betroth himself and marry with the
ordinary legal and religious ceremonies. Second marriages were not
allowed, and the Levitical law as to the virginity of the bride was
strictly observed. Those who remained single were objects of suspicion,
while those who performed their sacred functions duly, and brought up
their families in the fear of God, were respected and obeyed by their
flocks as pastors should be, and were eligible to the episcopate.
Concubinage was regarded as a heinous offence, and those guilty of it
were debarred from all promotion[504]—in this reversing the estimate
placed upon the respective infractions of discipline by the Roman
church.
* * * * *
The see of Lucca consoled Anselmo di Badagio for the failure of his
aspirations towards the archiepiscopate, and the other disappointed
candidates for a while cherished their mortification in silence.
Landolfo and Arialdo were inclined to asceticism, and a visit which
Anselmo paid to Milan stimulated them to undertake a reform which
could not but prove a source of endless trouble to their successful
competitor Guido. Leaders of the people, and masters of the art of
inflaming popular passion, they caused assemblies to be held in which
they inveighed in the strongest terms against the irregularities of the
clergy, whose sacraments they stigmatized as the foulest corruption,
whose churches they denounced as dens of prostitution, and whose
property they assumed to be legitimate prey for the spoiler. Guido in
vain endeavored to repress the agitation thus produced, argued in favor
of the married clergy, and was sustained by the party of the nobles.
In a city like Milan, it was not difficult to excite a tumult. Besides
the influence of the perennial factions, ever eager to tear each
other’s throats, the populace were ready to yield to the eloquence of
the bold reformers. The Manichæan heresy had taken deep root among the
masses, who, afraid to declare their damnable doctrines openly, were
rejoiced in any way to undermine the authority of the priesthood, and
whose views were in accordance with those now broached on the subject
of marriage.[505] While these motives would urge forward the serious
portion of the citizens, the unthinking rabble would naturally be
prompt to embrace any cause which promised a prospect of disturbance
and plunder. Party lines were quickly drawn, and if the reformers were
able to revive a forgotten scandal by stigmatizing their opponents as
Nicolites, the party of the clergy and the nobles had their revenge.
The meetings of Landolfo and Arialdo were held in a spot called
Pataria, whence they soon became known as Paterins—a term which
for centuries continued to be of fearful import, as synonymous with
Manichæans.[506]
Matters could not long remain in this condition. During an altercation
in the church of San Celso, a hot-headed priest assaulted Arialdo,
whom Landolfo extricated from the crowd at considerable personal risk.
Thereupon the reformers called the people together in the theatre;
inflammatory addresses speedily wrought up the popular passions to
ungovernable fury; the priests were turned out of the churches,
their houses sacked, their persons maltreated, and they were finally
obliged to purchase a suspension of oppression by subscribing a paper
binding themselves to chastity. The nobles, far from being able to
protect the clergy, finding themselves also in danger, sought safety
in flight; while the rabble, having exhausted the support derivable
from intramural plunder, spread over the country and repeated in the
villages the devastations of priestly property which they had committed
in Milan.[507]
The suffering clergy applied for relief to the bishops of the province,
and finding none, at length appealed to Rome itself. Stephen IX.,
who then filled the papal chair, authorized the archbishop to hold a
synod for the purpose of restoring peace. It met, in the early part
of 1058, at Fontaneto, near Novara. The prelates were unanimous in
sustaining their clergy, and the reformers Landolfo and Arialdo were
excommunicated without a dissentient voice. They disregarded the
interdict, however, redoubled their efforts with the people, whom they
bound by a solemn oath to adhere to the sacred cause, and even forced
the priests to join in the compact. Arialdo then proceeded to Rome,
where he developed in full the objects of the movement, and pointed
out that it would not only result in restoring purity and discipline,
but might also be used to break down the dangerous independence of
the Ambrosian church and reduce it to the subjection which it owed
and refused to the Apostolic see. The arguments were convincing, the
excommunication was removed, and Arialdo returned to his work with zeal
more fiery than ever.[508]
Meanwhile the nobles had taken heart and offered armed resistance to
the Patarian faction, resulting in incessant fights and increasing
bloodshed. Nicholas II., who by this time had succeeded Stephen IX.,
sent Hildebrand and Anselmo di Badagio on a mission to Milan, with
instructions to allay the passions which led to such deplorable
results, and, while endeavoring to uphold the rules of discipline,
to pacify if possible the people, and to arrange such a basis of
reconciliation as might restore peace to the distracted church.
The milder Anselmo might perhaps have succeeded in this errand of
charity, but the unbending Hildebrand was not likely to listen to
aught but unconditional subjection to the canons and to Rome. The
quarrel therefore waxed fiercer and deadlier; the turmoil became
more inextricable as daily combats embittered both parties, and
the missionaries departed, leaving Guido with scarcely a shadow of
authority over his rebellious city, and the seeds of discord more
widely scattered and more deeply planted than ever.[509]
Again, in 1059, a papal legation was sent with full authority to force
the recalcitrant clergy to submission. Anselmo again returned to his
native city, accompanied this time by Peter Damiani. Their presence
and their pretensions caused a fearful tumult, in which Damiani and
Landolfo were in deadly peril.[510] An assembly was at length held,
where the legates asserted the papal preëminence by taking the place of
honor, to the general indignation of the Milanese, who did not relish
the degradation of their archbishop before the representatives of a
foreign prelate. The question in debate hinged upon the authority of
Rome, which was stoutly denied by the Lombards.[511] Peter, in a long
oration, showed that Rome had christianized the rest of Western Europe,
and that St. Ambrose himself had invoked the papal power as superior to
his own. The pride of the Ambrosian church gave way, and the supremacy
of St. Peter was finally acknowledged. This granted, the rest followed
as a matter of course, and the heretical errors of simony and marriage
had to be abandoned. Peter thought himself merciful in his triumph;
where all alike were guilty, punishment for the past became impossible,
and he restricted himself to provisions for the future. The archbishop
and his clergy signed a paper expressing their contrition in the most
humiliating terms, and binding themselves and their successors, under
penalty of eternal damnation, to render simony thereafter unknown.
As regards the Nicolitan heresy, a significant caution was observed,
for its extirpation was only promised in as far as it should be found
possible;[512] and when Arnolfo, the nephew of Guido, swore for
his uncle that in future monks should be the only persons ordained
without a preliminary oath that no money had been paid or received,
it is observable that the maintenance of chastity was discreetly
passed over. Then the archbishop and his clergy swore, in the hands
of Damiani at the altar, their faithful observance of the pledge to
destroy the simoniacal and Nicolitan heresies, under penalties the
most tremendous; and Guido prostrating himself on the ground, humbly
deplored his negligence in the past, imposed on himself a penitence of
a hundred years (redeemable at a certain sum per annum), and vowed a
pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella to atone for his sin. Not content
with this, Damiani mounted the pulpit and made both priests and people
take an oath to extirpate both heresies; and the clergy, before being
reconciled to the church and restored to the positions which they had
forfeited by their contumacy, were forced individually under oath to
anathematize all heresies, and especially those of simony and marriage.
A penance was imposed on every one involved in simony—no allusion being
made to those who were married; some, who were manifestly unfit for
their sacred duties, were suspended, and the legates returned, after
triumphantly accomplishing the objects of their mission.[513]
If Damiani fancied that argumentative subtlety and paper promises,
even though solemnly given in the name of God and all his saints,
were to settle a question involving the fiercest passions of men,
the cloistered saint knew little of human nature. The pride of the
Milanese was deeply wounded by a subjection to Rome, unknown for many
generations, and ill endured by men who gloried in the ancient dignity
of the Ambrosian church. When, therefore, in 1061, their townsman,
Anselmo di Badagio, was elevated from the episcopate of Lucca to that
of the Holy See, Milan, in common with the rest of Lombardy, eagerly
embraced the cause of the anti-pope Cadalus. One of Anselmo’s earliest
acts as pope was to address a letter to the Milanese, affectionately
exhorting them to amendment, and expressing a hope that his pontificate
was to witness the extinction of the heresies which had distracted
and degraded the church.[514] He could scarcely have entertained
the confidence which he expressed, for though Landolfo and Arialdo
endeavored, with unabated zeal, to enforce the canons, the Nicolitan
faction, regardless of the pledges given to Damiani, maintained the
contest with equal stubbornness. Landolfo, on a mission to Rome, was
attacked at Piacenza, wounded, and forced to return. Soon after this he
was prostrated by a pulmonary affection, lost his voice, and died after
a lingering illness of two years.[515] The Paterins, thus deprived of
their leader, found another in the person of his brother, Erlembaldo,
just then returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Gifted with
every knightly accomplishment, valiant in war, sagacious in council, of
a commanding presence, and endowed with eloquence to sway the passions
of the multitude, he was the impersonation of a popular leader;
while, in the cause to which he was now called, his deep religious
convictions lent an attraction which was heightened by an unpardonable
personal wrong—for, early in life, he had been betrothed to a young
girl, who fell under the seductive wiles of an unprincipled priest.
Yet Erlembaldo did not embark in civil strife without a hesitation
which reflects honor on his character. He refused, at first, but was
persuaded to seek counsel of the pope. Arialdo accompanied him to Rome,
and urged Alexander to adopt him as military leader in the war against
sacerdotal marriage. Alexander, too, shrank from the responsibility of
authorizing war in such a cause, but Arialdo sought the assistance of
Hildebrand, and the scruples of the pope were removed by the prospect
of asserting the authority of Rome. When Erlembaldo heard the commands
of the Vicegerent of God, and received a sacred banner to be borne
through the expected battles, he could no longer doubt as to his duty.
He accepted the mission, and to it he devoted his life.[516]
Returning to Milan with this sanction, the zeal and military experience
of Erlembaldo soon made themselves felt. He enrolled secretly all the
young men whom persuasion, threats, or promises could induce to follow
his standard, and thus supported by an organized body, he endeavored to
enforce the decretals inhibiting simony and marriage. All recalcitrant
priests presuming to officiate were torn from the altars. The riots,
which seem to have ceased for a time, became, with varying fortune,
more numerous and alarming than ever, and the persecution of the clergy
was greatly intensified. Guido, at length, after vainly endeavoring to
uphold and protect the sacerdotal body, was driven from the city, and
the popular reformers seemed at last to have carried their point, after
a civil war which had now lasted, with short intervals, for nearly ten
years.[517]
As though to confirm the victory, Arialdo, in 1066, at a council held
in Rome, procured the excommunication of his archbishop, Guido, with
which he returned triumphantly to Milan. Some popular revolution among
the factions, however, had brought Guido back to the city, where he
maintained a precarious position. Disregarding the excommunication, he
resolved to officiate in the solemn services of Pentecost (June 4th,
1066), and, braving all opposition, he appeared at the altar. Excited
to fury at this unexpected contumacy, the popular party, led on by
Erlembaldo and Arialdo, attacked him in the church; his followers
rallied in his defence, but, after a stubborn fight, were forced to
leave him in the hands of his enemies, by whom he was beaten nearly
to death. Shocked by this outrage, many of the citizens abandoned
the party of the reformers, and the nobles, taking advantage of the
revulsion of feeling, again had the ascendency. Arialdo was obliged to
fly for his life, and endeavored to conceal himself, travelling only by
night. The avengers were close upon his track, however; he was betrayed
by a priest, and the satellites of Guido carried him to an island in
Lago Maggiore, where (June 27th, 1066) they put him to death, with all
the refinement of cruelty. A series of miracles prevented the attempted
concealment of the martyred corpse, and ten months later Erlembaldo
recovered it, fresh and untouched by corruption. Carried to Milan, it
was interred with stately pomp in the monastery of San Celso, where the
miracles wrought at his tomb proclaimed the sanctity of him who had
died for the faith, and ere long his canonization formally enrolled St.
Arialdo among the saints of Heaven.[518]
Erlembaldo for a while remained quiet, but in secret he reconstructed
his party, and, undaunted by the fate of his associate, he suddenly
renewed the civil strife. Successful at first, he forced the clergy
to bind themselves by fresh oaths, and expelled Guido again from the
city; but the clerical party recovered its strength, and the war
was carried on with varying fortune, until, in 1067, Alexander II.
despatched another legation with orders to harmonize, if possible,
the endless strife. Cardinals Mainardo and Minuto appear to have been
sincerely desirous of reconciling the angry factions. They proclaimed
an amnesty and promulgated a constitution which protected the clergy
from abuse and persecution, and though they decreed suspension for
married and concubinary priests, they required that none should be
punished on suspicion, and laid down such regulations for trial as
gave great prospect of immunity.[519] There must have been pressing
necessity for some such regulations, if we may believe the assertion
of Landolfo that when Erlembaldo found his funds running low he
appointed thirty judges to examine all ecclesiastics in holy orders.
Those who could not procure twelve conjurators to swear with them on
the Gospels as to their immaculate purity since ordination, had all
their property confiscated. At the same time the rabble used to prowl
around at night and throw female ornaments and articles of apparel into
priests’ houses; then, breaking open the doors, they would proclaim the
criminality of the inmates, and plunder everything that they could lay
their hands on.[520]
Moderate men of both parties, wearied with the unceasing strife,
eagerly hailed the accommodation proposed by the papal legates,
and rejoiced at the prospect of peace. Erlembaldo, however, was
dissatisfied, and, visiting Rome, soon aroused a fresh cause of
quarrel. At the suggestion of Hildebrand he started the portentous
question of investitures, and on his return he endeavored to force
both clergy and laity to take an oath that in future their archbishops
should apply to the pope, and not to the emperor, for confirmation—thus
securing a chief devoted to the cause of reform. Guido sought to
anticipate this movement, and, in 1069, old and wearied with the
unending contention, he resigned his archbishopric to the subdeacon
Gotefrido, who had long been his principal adviser. The latter procured
his confirmation from Henry IV., but the Milanese, defrauded of
their electoral privileges, refused to acknowledge him. Erlembaldo
was not slow to take advantage of the popular feeling; a tumult was
readily excited, and Gotefrido was glad to escape at night from the
rebellious city. Guido added fresh confusion by asserting that he had
been deceived by Gotefrido, and by endeavoring to resume his see. To
this end he made a treaty with Erlembaldo, but that crafty chieftain,
obtaining possession of his person, imprisoned him in the monastery of
San Celso, and then proceeded to besiege Gotefrido in Castiglione. The
new archbishop defended himself bravely, until, in 1071, Erlembaldo was
forced to abandon the enterprise.[521]
Meanwhile another aspirant, Azzo, installed by Erlembaldo, fared no
better than his rivals. The people, unbidden guests, rushed in to his
inaugural banquet, unearthed him in the corner where he had hidden
himself, dragged him by the heels into the street, and, placing
him in a pulpit, forced him to swear that he would make no further
pretensions to the see; while the papal legate, who had presided over
the solemnities, was glad to escape with his life. Azzo, however, was
recognized by Rome; he was released from the obligation of his oath,
and money was furnished to enable him to maintain his quarrel. On the
other hand, Henry IV. sent assistance to Gotefrido, which enabled him
to carry on the campaign with some vigor; but he was unable to obtain a
foothold in Milan. Azzo fled to Rome, and the city remained without an
archbishop and under an interdict launched in 1074 by Hildebrand, who,
in April, 1073, had succeeded to Alexander II.[522]
The Milanese were disposed to disregard the interdict, while
Erlembaldo, who now held undisputed command of the city—and, indeed,
of almost all Lombardy—used every effort to enforce respect for it.
At length, at Easter, 1075, he resolutely prevented the solemnization
of the sacred rites, and cast out the holy chrism which the priests
had persisted in preparing. This roused the populace to resistance;
both parties flew to arms, and, at the very commencement of the fray,
Erlembaldo fell mortally wounded under the shade of the papal banner,
which was still the emblem of his cause, and in virtue of which he was
canonized as a saintly martyr to the faith. The Milanese, sinking all
past animosities, united in promptly sending an embassy to Henry IV. to
congratulate him on the death of the common enemy, and to request the
appointment of another archbishop. To this he responded by nominating
Tedaldo, who was duly consecrated, notwithstanding the pretensions of
his competitors, Gotefrido and Azzo. Tedaldo was the leader of the
disaffected bishops who, at the synod of Pavia, in 1076, excommunicated
Pope Gregory himself; and though, after the interview at Canosa, in
1077, the Lombards, disgusted with Henry’s voluntary humiliation before
that papal power which they had learned to despise, abandoned the
imperialists for a time, yet Tedaldo kept his seat until his death in
1085, notwithstanding the repeated excommunications launched against
him by Gregory.[523]
* * * * *
In the later years of this long and bloody controversy, it is evident
that the political element greatly complicated the religious ground
of quarrel—that pope and emperor without made use of burgher and
noble within, and the latter took sides, as respects simony and
sacerdotal marriage, to further the ends of individual ambition. Still,
the disputed points of discipline were the ostensible causes of the
struggle, whatever might be the private aims of civic factions, or of
imperial and papal rivals; and these points gave a keener purpose to
the strife, and furnished an inexhaustible supply of recruits to each
contending faction. Thus, about the year 1070, a conference took place
at Milan between priests deputed by both sides, in which the question
of marriage was argued as earnestly as though it were the source of all
the intestine troubles.[524] So when, in 1073, Gregory, shortly after
his accession, addressed letters to Erlembaldo urging him to persevere
in the good work, and to the Lombard bishops commanding them to assist
him, the object of his labors is assumed to be the extirpation of
simony and the restoration of the clergy to the purity becoming their
sacred office.[525] And when, in 1076, the schismatic bishops, under
the lead of Tedaldo of Milan, met in council at Pavia to renounce
all obedience to Gregory, one of the articles of accusation brought
against him was that he separated husbands and wives, and preferred
licentiousness to marriage, thus giving, in their grounds of complaint
against him, especial prominence to his zeal for the introduction of
celibacy.[526]
Yet at last the question of sacerdotal marriage sank out of sight when
the civil broils of Milan merged into the European quarrel between the
empire and papacy. When, in 1093, Henry IV. was driven out of Italy
by the revolt of his son Conrad, and the latter was created King of
Lombardy by Urban II. and the Countess Matilda, the dependence of the
young king upon the pope rendered impossible any further open defiance
of the laws of the church, and public marriage there, as elsewhere,
was doubtless replaced by secret immorality.[527] The triumph of the
sacerdotal party was consummated at the great council of Piacenza,
held by Urban II. in February, 1095, to which prelates flocked from
every part of Europe, and the people gathered in immense numbers. If,
as the chronicler informs us, four thousand ecclesiastics and thirty
thousand laymen assembled on the occasion, and the sessions were held
in the open air because no building could contain the thronging masses,
we may reasonably attribute so unprecedented an assemblage to the wild
religious ardor which was about to culminate in the first Crusade.
That council condemned Nicolitism in the most absolute and peremptory
manner, and there is no reason to believe that the power of so
formidable a demonstration was lightly disregarded.[528] Yet in Milan,
as we shall see elsewhere throughout Europe, the custom of sacerdotal
marriage had become so thoroughly established that it could not be
eradicated suddenly. It continued to survive stubbornly after every
attempt at repression with more or less openness as the persecution of
married priests was more or less severe. A synod held in Milan in 1098
is discreetly silent as to wedlock or concubinage among ecclesiastics,
though it is severe upon the concurrent vice of simony, and though its
prohibition of hereditary succession in church benefices and dignities
would show that marriage among their incumbents must have been by no
means infrequent. Moreover, even as late as 1152, Mainerio Boccardo, a
canon of Monza, in his will specifies that certain provisions for the
benefit of his brother canons shall not be enjoyed by those who are
married, thus proving that the Hildebrandine reforms had not yet been
successful, though Rome had long since attained its object in breaking
down the independence of the Ambrosian church.[529]
* * * * *