on the part of ecclesiastics, for these letters were circulars sent
to all the princes on whom he could depend, and he insured their
publicity by causing similar orders to be published in the churches
themselves. Thus Theodoric, Bishop of Verdun, who had inclined to
the side of Gregory and had secretly left the Assembly of Utrecht in
1076 to avoid countenancing by his presence the excommunication then
pronounced against the pope, in a letter to Gregory bitterly reproaches
his own folly in promulgating the decretal and in not foreseeing its
effect as destructive to the peace of the church, to the safety of the
clerical order, and as creating a disturbance which threatened even the
Christian faith.[547] So Henry, Bishop of Speyer, indignantly denounced
him as having destroyed the authority of the bishops and subjected the
church to the madness of the people;[548] and when the bishops, at the
Diet of Worms, threw off their allegiance to him, one of the reasons
alleged, in Henry’s letter to him, is the surrender which he had made
of the church to the laity.[549] Yet Gregory was not to be diverted
from his course, and he was at least successful in rousing the Teutonic
church from the attitude of passive resistance which threatened to
render his efforts futile. The princes of Germany, who were already
intriguing with Gregory for support in their perennial revolts against
their sovereign, were delighted to seize the opportunity of at once
obliging the pope, creating disturbance at home, and profiting by the
church property which they could manage to get into their hands by
ejecting the unfortunate married priests. They accordingly proceeded to
exercise, without delay and to the fullest extent, the unlimited power
so suddenly granted them over a class which had hitherto successfully
defied their jurisdiction; nor was it difficult to excite the people
to join in the persecution of those who had always held themselves as
superior beings, and who were now pronounced by the highest authority
in the church to be sinners of the worst description. The ignorant
populace were naturally captivated by the idea of the vicarious
mortification with which their own errors were to be redeemed by the
abstinence imposed upon their pastors, and they were not unreasonably
led to believe that they were themselves deeply wronged by the want
of purity in their ecclesiastics. Add to this the attraction which
persecution always possesses for the persecutor, and the license
of plunder so dear to a turbulent and barbarous age, and it is not
difficult to comprehend the motive power of the storm which burst over
the heads of the secular clergy, and which must have satisfied by its
severity the stern soul of Gregory himself.
A contemporary writer, whose name has been lost, but who is supposed
by Dom Martène to have been a priest of Trèves, gives us a very lively
picture of the horrors which ensued, and as he shows himself friendly
in principle to the reform attempted, his account may be received as
trustworthy. He describes what amounted almost to a dissolution of
society, slave betraying master and master slave; friend informing
against friend; snares and pitfalls spread before the feet of all;
faith and truth unknown. The peccant priests suffered terribly. Some,
reduced to utter poverty, and unable to bear the scorn and contempt
of those from whom they had been wont to receive honor and respect,
wandered off as homeless exiles; others, mutilated by the indecent
zeal of ardent puritans, were carried around to exhibit their shame
and misery; others, tortured in lingering death, bore to the tribunal
on high the testimony of blood-guiltiness against their persecutors;
while others, again, in spite of danger, secretly continued the
connections which exposed them to all these cruelties. In the midst
of these troubles, as might be expected, the offices of religion were
wholly neglected; the new-born babe received no holy baptism; the dying
penitent expired without the saving viaticum; the sinner could cleanse
his soul by no confession and absolution; and the devotee could no
longer be strengthened by the daily sacrifice of the mass.[550] Another
writer, of nearly the same date, relates with holy horror how the laity
shook off all the obedience which they owed to their pastors, and,
despising the sacraments prepared by them, trod the Eucharist under
foot and cast out the sacred wine, administered baptism with unlicensed
hands, and substituted for the holy chrism the filthy wax collected
from their own ears.[551]
When such was the fate of the pastors, it is easy to imagine the
misery inflicted on their unfortunate wives. A zealous admirer of
Gregory relates with pious gratulation, as indubitable evidence of
divine vengeance, how, maddened by their wrongs, some of them openly
committed suicide, while others were found dead in the beds which they
had sought in perfect health; and this being proof of their possession
by the devil, they were denied Christian sepulture. The case of Count
Manigold of Veringen affords a not uninstructive instance of the
frightful passions aroused by the relentless cruelty which thus branded
them as infamous, tore them from their families, and cast them adrift
upon a mocking world. The count had put in force the orders of Gregory
with strict severity throughout his estates in the Swabian Alps. One
miserable creature thus driven from her husband swore that the count
should undergo the same fate, and, in the blindness of her rage, she
poisoned the Countess of Veringen, whose widowed husband, overwhelmed
with grief, sought no second mate.[552]
Nor was the customary machinery of miracles wanting to stimulate the
zeal of the faithful in this pious work, and to convince the doubters
whose worldly wisdom or humanity might shrink from the task assigned
them. Unchaste priests at Mass would find sudden blasts of wind
overturn the cup, and scatter the sacred wine upon the ground, or
the holy wafer would be miraculously snatched out of their polluted
hands. The saintly virgin Herluca saw in a vision the Saviour, with his
wounds profusely bleeding, and was told that if she desired to escape a
repetition of the horrifying spectacle, she must no longer be present
at the ministrations of Father Richard, the officiating priest of her
convent—a revelation which she employed effectually upon him and his
parishioners. The same holy maiden being observed staring intently out
of the window, declared, upon being questioned, that she had seen the
soul of the priest of Rota carried off by demons to eternal punishment;
and, on sending to his habitation, it was found that he had expired at
the very moment.[553] Puerile as these tales may seem to us, they were
stern realities to those against whose weaknesses they were directed,
and whose sufferings were thus enhanced by every art which bigotry
could bring to bear upon the credulous passions of a barbarous populace.
It cannot be a matter of surprise if men, who were thus threatened
with almost every worldly evil, should seek to defend themselves by
means as violent as those employed by their persecutors. Their cruel
intensity of fear is aptly illustrated by what occurred at Cambrai in
1077, where a man was actually burned at the stake as a heretic for
declaring his adhesion to the Hildebrandine doctrine that the masses
of simoniacal and concubinary priests were not to be listened to by
the faithful.[554] So, in the same year, when the pseudo-emperor
Rodolf of Swabia was elected by the papalists at the Diet of Forcheim
as a competitor to Henry IV., he manifested his zeal to suppress
the heresies of avarice and lust by refusing the ministration of a
simoniacal deacon in the coronation solemnities at Mainz. The clergy
of that city, who had so successfully resisted, for two years, the
efforts of their archbishop Siegfrid to reduce them to subjection to
the canons, were dismayed at the prospect of coming under the control
of so pious a prince, who would indubitably degrade them or compel
them to give up their wives and simoniacally acquired churches. They
therefore stirred up a tumult among the citizens, who were ready to
espouse their cause; and when Rodolf left his palace for vespers, he
was attacked by the people. The conflict was renewed on his return,
causing heavy slaughter on both sides, and though the townsmen were
driven back, Rodolf was forced to leave the city.[555]
* * * * *
This incident affords us a glimpse into the political aspects of
the reform. In the tremendous struggle between the empire and
papacy, Gregory allied himself with all the disaffected princes of
Germany, and they were careful to justify their rebellions under the
specious pretext of zeal for the apostolic church. They of course,
therefore, entered heartily into his measures for the restoration of
ecclesiastical discipline, and professed the sternest indignation
towards those whom he placed under the ban. Thus, after Henry, in 1076,
had caused his bishops to declare the degradation of Gregory, when the
revolted princes held their assembly at Tribur, and in turn decreed
the deposition of Henry, they used the utmost caution to exclude all
who had communicated with Henry since his excommunication, together
with those who had obtained preferment by simony, or who had joined in
communion with married priests.[556] The connection, indeed, became so
marked that the papalists throughout Germany were stigmatized by the
name of Patarini—a term which had acquired so sinister a significance
in the troubles of Milan.[557] In this state of affairs it was natural
that common enmities and common dangers should unite the persecuted
clergy and the hunted sovereign. Yet it is a curious illustration
of the influence which the denunciations of sacerdotal marriage had
exercised over the public mind, that although Henry tacitly protected
the simoniacal and married ecclesiastics, and although they rallied
around him and afforded him unquestionable and invaluable aid, still
he never ventured openly to defend them. Writers both then and since
have attributed the measure of success with which he sustained the
fluctuating contest, and the consequent sufferings of the unbending
pope, to the efforts of the recalcitrant clergy who resisted the yoke
imposed on them by Rome.[558] Yet Henry had formally and absolutely
pledged his assistance when Gregory commenced his efforts, and had
repeated the promise in 1075;[559] and from this position he never
definitely withdrew. Even when the schismatic bishops of his party,
at the synod of Brixen, in 1080, pronounced sentence of deposition on
Gregory, and filled the assumed vacancy with an anti-pope, the man
whom they elected never ventured to dispute the principle of Gregory’s
reforms, although the Lombard prelates, at that very time, were warmly
defending their married and simoniacal clergy.[560] Indeed, Guiberto
of Ravenna, or Clement III., took occasion to express his detestation
of concubinage in language nearly as strong as that of his rival,
although he threatened with excommunication the presumptuous laymen
who should refuse to receive the sacraments of priests that had not
been regularly tried and condemned at his own papal tribunal.[561] In
thus endeavoring to place himself as a shield between the suffering
priesthood and the persecuting populace, he was virtually striving
to annul the reforms of Gregory, since in no other way could they be
carried into effect; but he was forced to coincide with Gregory as to
the principle which dictated those reforms. Notwithstanding all these
precautions, however, the papalists were not disposed to allow their
opponents to escape the responsibility of the alliance which brought
them so much strength by dividing the church, and no opportunity was
lost of stigmatizing them for the license which they protected. When
Guiberto and his cardinals were driven out of Rome in 1084 by Robert
Guiscard and his Normans, the flying prelates were ridiculed, not
for their cowardice, but for their shaven chins, and the wives and
concubines whom they publicly carried about with them.[562]
At length Henry and his partisans appear to have felt it necessary to
make some public declaration to relieve themselves from the odium of
supporting and favoring a practice which was popularly regarded as a
heresy and a scandal. When the papalists, under their King Hermann,
at the Easter of 1085 (April 20th), convened a general assembly of
their faction at Quedlinburg and again forbade all commerce with women
to those in orders,[563] the imperialists lost no time in putting
themselves on the same record with their rivals. Three weeks later
Henry gathered around him, at Mainz, all the princes and prelates who
professed allegiance to him, for the purpose of securing the succession
to his eldest son, Conrad, as King of Germany, and there, in that
solemn diet, marriage was formally prohibited to the priesthood.[564]
Gregory was then lying on his dying bed in the far off castle of
Salerno, and ere the news could reach him he was past the vanities of
earthly triumph. Could he have known, however, that the cause for which
he had risked the integrity and independence of the church had thus
received the support of its bitterest enemies, and that his unwavering
purpose had thus achieved the moral victory of forcing his adversaries
to range themselves under his banner, his spirit would have rejoiced,
and his confidence in the ultimate success of the great theocratic
system, for the maintenance of which he was thus expiring in exile,
would have softened the sorrows of a life which closed in the darkness
and doubt of defeat.
XV.
CENTRAL EUROPE.
Hildebrand had passed away, leaving to his successors the legacy of
inextinguishable hate and unattained ambition. Nor was the reform for
which he had labored as yet by any means secured in practice, even
though his opponents had been reduced to silence or had been forced
to render a formal adhesion to the canons which he had proclaimed so
boldly.
The cause of asceticism, it is true, had gained many adherents among
the laity. Throughout Germany, husbands and wives separated from each
other in vast numbers, and devoted themselves to the service of the
church, without taking vows or assuming ecclesiastical garments; while
those who were unmarried renounced the pleasures of the world, and,
placing themselves under the direction of spiritual guides, abandoned
themselves entirely to religious duties. To such an extent did this
prevail, that the pope was applied to for his sanction, which he
eagerly granted, and the movement doubtless added strength to the party
of reform.[565] Yet but little had thus far been really gained in
purifying the church itself, notwithstanding the fearful ordeal through
which its ministers had passed.
As for Germany, the indomitable energy of Henry IV., unrepressed by
defeat and unchilled by misfortune, had at length achieved a virtual
triumph over his banded enemies. But four bishops of the Empire—those
of Wurzburg, Passau, Worms, and Constance—owed allegiance to Urban
II. All the other dioceses were filled by schismatics, who rendered
obedience to the anti-pope Clement. In 1089 the Catholic or papalist
princes offered to lay down their arms and do homage to Henry if he
would acknowledge Urban and make his peace with the true church. The
emperor, however, had a pope who suited him, and he entertained too
lively a recollection of the trials from which he was escaping to open
the door to a renewal of the papal pretensions, which he had at length
successfully defied, nor would he consent to stigmatize his faithful
prelates as schismatics.[566] He therefore pursued his own course, and
Guiberto of Ravenna enjoyed the honors of the popedom, checkered by
alternate vicissitudes of good and evil fortune, until removed by death
in the year 1100,[567] his sanctity attested by the numerous miracles
wrought at his tomb, which only needed the final success of the
imperialist cause to enrich the calendar with a St. Clement in place of
a St. Gregory and a St. Urban.[568]
Under such auspices, no very zealous maintenance of ecclesiastical
discipline was to be expected. If Clement’s sensibilities were humored
by a nominal reprobation of sacerdotal marriage, he could scarcely
ask for more or insist that Henry should rekindle the embers of
disaffection by enforcing the odious rules which had proved so powerful
a cause of trouble to their authors and his enemies. Accordingly,
it cannot surprise us to observe that Urban II., in following out
the views of his predecessors, felt it necessary to adopt measures
even more violent than those which in Gregory’s hands had caused so
much excitement and confusion, but whose inefficiency was confessed
by the very effort to supplement them. In 1089, the year after his
consecration, Urban published at the council of Amalfi a decree by
which, as usual, married ecclesiastics were sentenced to deposition,
and bishops who permitted such irregularities were suspended; but where
Gregory had been content with ejecting husbands and wives, and with
empowering secular rulers to enforce the edict on recalcitrants, Urban,
with a refinement of cruelty, reduced the unfortunate women to slavery,
and offered their servitude as a bribe to the nobles who should aid in
thus purifying the church.[569] If this infamous canon did not work
misery so wide-spread as the comparatively milder decretals of Gregory,
it was because the power of Urban was circumscribed by the schism,
while he was apparently himself ashamed or afraid to promulgate it in
regions where obedience was doubtful. When Pibo, Bishop of Toul, in the
same year, 1089, sent an envoy to ask his decision on various points
of discipline, including sacerdotal marriage (the necessity of such
inquiry showing the futility of previous efforts), Urban transmitted
the canons of Amalfi in response, but omitted this provision, which
well might startle the honest German mind.[570] Perhaps, on reflection,
Urban may himself have wished to disavow the atrocity, for in a
subsequent council, when again attacking the ineradicable sin, he
contented himself with simply forbidding all such marriages, and
ordering all persons who were bound by orders or vows to be separated
from their wives or concubines, and to be subjected to due penance.[571]
Yet even in those regions of Germany which persevered in resisting
Henry and in recognizing Urban as pope, the persecution of twenty
years was still unsuccessful, and the people had apparently relapsed
into condoning the wickedness of their pastors. In an assembly held
at Constance in 1094, it was deemed necessary to impose a fine on all
who should be present at the services performed by priests who had
transgressed the canons.[572] When this was the case in the Catholic
provinces, it is easy to imagine that in the imperialist territories
the thunders of Gregory and Urban had long since been forgotten, and
that marrying and giving in marriage were practised with as little
scruple as ever. A fair illustration, indeed, of the amount of respect
paid to the rules of discipline is afforded by a discussion on the
choice of a successor to Cosmo Bishop of Prague, who died in 1098.
Duke Brecislas, in filling the vacancy with his chaplain Hermann,
endeavored to rebut the arguments of those who objected to the foreign
birth of the appointee by urging that fact as a recommendation, since,
as a stranger, he would not be pressed upon by a crowd of kindred nor
be burdened with the care of children, thus showing that the native
priesthood, as a general rule, were heads of families.[573] For this,
moreover, they could not plead ignorance, for a Bohemian penitential
of the period expressly prohibits priests from having companions whose
society could give rise to suspicion of any kind.[574]
* * * * *
At length the duel which, for more than thirty years, Henry had so
gallantly fought with the successors of St. Peter drew to a close. Ten
years of supremacy he had enjoyed in Germany, and he looked forward
to the peaceful decline of his unquiet life, when the treacherous
calm was suddenly disturbed. Papal intrigues in 1093 had caused the
parricidal revolt of his eldest born, the weak and vacillating Conrad,
whose early death had then extinguished the memory of his crime. That
unnatural rebellion had gained for Rome the North of Italy; and as
the emperor’s second son, Henry, grew to manhood, he, too, was marked
as a fit instrument to pierce his father’s heart, and to extend the
domination of the church by the foulest wrongs that man can perpetrate.
The startling revolution which in 1105 precipitated Henry from a throne
to a prison, from an absolute monarch to a captive embracing the knees
of his son and pleading for his wretched life, established forever the
supremacy of the papacy over Germany. The consequent enforcement of the
law of celibacy became only a question of time.
As the excuse for the rebellion was the necessity of restoring the
empire to the communion of Rome, one of the first measures of the
conspirators was the convocation of a council to be held at Nordhausen,
May 29, 1105, and one of the objects specified for its action was the
expulsion of all married priests.[575] The council was duly held,
and duly performed its work of condemning the heresy which permitted
benefices to be occupied and sacred functions exercised by those who
were involved in the ties of matrimony.[576] Pope Paschal II. was not
remiss in his share of the ceremony, by which he was to receive the
fruits of his treacherous intrigues. The following year a great council
was held at Guastalla, where, after interminable discussions as to the
propriety of receiving without re-ordination those who had compromised
themselves or who had been ordained by schismatics, he admitted into
the fold all the repentant ecclesiastics of the party of Henry IV.[577]
The text of the canon granting this boon to the imperialist clergy
bears striking testimony to the completeness of the separation which
had existed between the Teutonic and the Roman churches in stating that
throughout the empire scarce any Catholic ecclesiastics were to be
found.[578] It scarcely needed the declaration which Paschal made in
1107 at the synod of Troyes, condemning married priests to degradation
and deprivation,[579] to show that the doctrines of Damiani and
Hildebrand were thenceforth to be the law of the empire.
The question thus was definitely settled in prohibiting the priests
of Germany from marrying or from retaining the wives whom they had
taken previous to ordination. It was settled, indeed, in the rolls
of parchment which recorded the decrees of councils and the trading
bargains of pope and kaiser, yet the perennial struggle continued, and
the parchment roll for yet awhile was powerless before the passions of
man, who did not cease to be man because his crown was shaven and his
shoulders wore cope and stole.