missionaries to England, was that to which Hildebrand's ardent soul
clung with preternatural earnestness, as the only government fit for
turbulent and superstitious ages. He did not originate this idea, but he
defended and enforced it as had never been done before, so that to many
minds he was the great architect of the papal structure. It was a rare
spectacle to see a sovereign pontiff lay aside the insignia of his
grandeur at the bidding of this monk of Cluny; it was grander to see
this monk laying the foundation of an irresistible despotism, which was
to last beyond the time of Luther. Not merely was Leo IX. his tool, but
three successive popes were chosen at his dictation. And when he became
cardinal and archdeacon he seems to have been the inspiring genius of
the papal government, undertaking the most important missions, curbing
the turbulent spirit of the Roman princes, and assisting in all
ecclesiastical councils. It was by his suggestion that abbots were
deposed, and bishops punished, and monarchs reprimanded. He was the
prime minister of four popes before he accepted that high office to
which he doubtless had aspired while meditating as a monk amid the sunny
slopes of Cluny, since he knew that the exigences of the Church required
a bold and able ruler,--and who in Christendom was bolder and more
far-reaching than he? He might have been elevated to the chair of Saint
Peter at an earlier period, but he was contented with power rather than
glory, knowing that his day would come, and at a time when his
extraordinary abilities would be most needed. He could afford to wait;
and no man is truly great who cannot bide his time.
At last Hildebrand received the reward of his great services,--"a
reward," says Stephen, "which he had long contemplated, but which, with
self-controlling policy, he had so long declined." In the year 1073
Hildebrand became Gregory VII., and his memorable pontificate began as a
reformer of the abuses of his age, and the intrepid defender of that
unlimited and absolute despotism which inthralled not merely the princes
of Europe, but the mind of Christendom itself. It was he who not only
proclaimed the liberties of the people against nobles, and made the
Church an asylum for misery and oppression, but who realized the idea
that the Church was the mother of spiritual principles, and that the
spiritual authority should be raised over all temporal power.
In the great crises of States and Empires deliverers seem to be raised
up by Divine Providence to restore peace and order, and maintain the
first condition of society, or extricate nations from overwhelming
calamities. Thus Charlemagne appeared at the right time to prevent the
overthrow of Europe by new waves of barbaric invasion. Thus William the
Silent preserved the nationality of Holland, and Gustavus Adolphus gave
religious liberty to Germany when persecution was apparently successful.
Thus Richelieu undermined feudalism in France, and established
absolutism as one of the needed forces of his turbulent age, even as
Napoleon gave law and order to France when distracted by the anarchism
of a revolution which did not comprehend the liberty which was invoked.
So Hildebrand was raised up to establish the only government which could
rescue Europe from the rapacities of feudal nobles, and establish law
and order in the hands of the most enlightened class; so that, like
Peter the Great, he looms up as a reformer as well as a despot. He
appears in a double light.
Now you ask: "What were his reforms, and what were his schemes of
aggrandizement, for which we honor him while we denounce him?" We cannot
see the reforms he attempted without glancing at the enormous evils
which stared him in the face.
Society in Europe, in the eleventh century, was nearly as dark and
degraded as it was on the fall of the Merovingian dynasty. In some
respects it had reached the lowest depth of wretchedness which the
Middle Ages ever saw. Never had the clergy been more ignorant, more
sensual, and more worldly. They had not the piety of the fourth century,
nor the intelligence of the sixteenth century; they were powerful and
wealthy, but exceedingly corrupt. Monastic institutions covered the face
of Europe, but the monks had sadly departed from the virtues which
partially redeemed the miseries that succeeded the fall of the Roman
Empire. The lives of the clergy, regular and secular, still compared
favorably with the lives of the feudal nobility, who had, in addition to
priestly vices, the vices of robbers and bandits. But still the clergy
were notoriously ignorant, superstitious, and sensual. Monasteries
sought to be independent of all foreign control and of episcopal
jurisdiction. They had been enormously enriched by princes and barons,
and they owned, with the other clergy, half the lands of Europe, and
more than half its silver and gold. The monks fattened on all the
luxuries which then were known; they neglected the rules of their order
and lived in idleness,--spending their time in the chase, or in taverns
and brothels. Hardly a great scholar or theologian had arisen among them
since the Patristic age, with the exception of a few schoolmen like
Anselm and Peter Lombard. Saint Bernard had not yet appeared to reform
the Benedictines, nor Dominic and Saint Francis to found new orders.
Gluttony and idleness were perhaps the characteristic vices of the great
body of the monks, who numbered over one hundred thousand. Hunting and
hawking were the most innocent of their amusements. They have been
accused of drinking toasts in honor of the Devil, and celebrating Mass
in a state of intoxication. "Not one in a thousand," says Hallam, "could
address to one another a common letter of salutation." They were a
walking libel on everything sacred. Read the account of their banquets
in the annals which have come down to us of the tenth and eleventh
centuries, when convents were so numerous and rich. If Dugdale is to be
credited, their gluttony exceeded that of any previous or succeeding
age. Their cupidity, their drunken revels, their infamous haunts, their
disgusting coarseness, their hypocrisy, ignorance, selfishness, and
superstition were notorious. Yet the monks were not worse than the
secular clergy, high and low. Bishoprics and all benefices were bought
and sold; "canons were trodden under foot; ancient traditions were
turned out of doors; old customs were laid aside;" boys were made
archbishops; ludicrous stories were recited in the churches; the most
disgraceful crimes were pardoned for money. Desolation, according to
Cardinal Baronius, was seen in the temples of the Lord. As Petrarch said
of Avignon in a better age, "There is no pity, no charity, no faith, no
fear of God. The air, the streets, the houses, the markets, the beds,
the hotels, the churches, even the altars consecrated to God, are all
peopled with knaves and liars;" or, to use the still stronger language
of a great reviewer, "The gates of hell appeared to roll back on their
infernal hinges, that there might go forth malignant spirits to empty
the vials of wrath on the patrimony even of the great chief of the
apostles."
These vices, it is true, were not confined to the clergy. All classes
were alike forlorn, miserable, and corrupt. It was a gloomy period. The
Church, whenever religious, was sad and despairing. The contemplative
hid themselves in noisome and sepulchral crypts. The inspiring chants of
Ambrose gave place to gloomy and monotonous antiphonal singing,--that
is, when the monks confined themselves to their dismal vocation. What
was especially needed was a reform among the clergy themselves. They
indeed owned their allegiance to the Pope, as the supreme head of the
Church, but their fealty was becoming a mockery. They could not support
the throne of absolutism if they were not respected by the laity.
Baronial and feudal power was rapidly gaining over spiritual, and this
was a poor exchange for the power of the clergy, if it led to violence
and rapine. It is to maintain law and order, justice and safety, that
all governments are established.
Hildebrand saw and lamented the countless evils of the day, especially
those which were loosening the bands of clerical obedience, and
undermining the absolutism which had become the great necessity of his
age. He made up his mind to reform these evils. No pope before him had
seriously undertaken this gigantic task. The popes who for two hundred
years had preceded him were a scandal and a reproach to their exalted
position. These heirs of Saint Peter wasted their patrimony in pleasures
and pomps. At no period of the papal history was the papal chair filled
with such bad or incompetent men. Of these popes two were murdered, five
were driven into exile, and four were deposed. Some were raised to
prominence by arms, and others by money. John X. commanded an army in
person; John XI. died in a fit of debauchery; and John XII. was
murdered by one of the infamous women whom he patronized. Benedict IX.
was driven from the throne by robbery and murder, while Gregory VI.
purchased the papal dignity. For two hundred years no commanding
character had worn the tiara.
Hildebrand, however, set a new example, and became a watchful shepherd
of his fold. His private life was without reproach; he was absorbed in
his duties; he sympathized with learning and learned men. He was the
friend of Lanfranc, and it was by his influence that this great prelate
was appointed to the See of Canterbury, and a closer union was formed
with England. He infused by his example a quiet but noble courage into
the soul of Anselm. He had great faults, of course,--faults of his own
and faults of his age. I wonder why so _strong_ a man has escaped the
admiring eulogium of Carlyle. Guizot compares him with the Russian
Peter. In some respects he reminds me of Oliver Cromwell; since both
equally deplored the evils of the day, and both invoked the aid of God
Almighty. Both were ambitious, and unscrupulous in the use of tools.
Neither of them was stained by vulgar vices, nor seduced from his course
by love of ease or pleasure. Both are to be contemplated in the double
light of reformer and usurper. Both were honest, and both were
unscrupulous; honest in seeking to promote public morality and the
welfare of society, and unscrupulous in the arts by which their power
was gained.
That which filled the soul of Hildebrand with especial grief was the
alienation of the clergy from their highest duties, their worldly lives,
and their frail support in his efforts to elevate the spiritual power.
Therefore he determined to make a reform of the clergy themselves,
having in view all the time their assistance in establishing the papal
supremacy. He attacked the clergy where they were weakest. They--the
secular ones, the parish priests--were getting married, especially in
Germany and France. They were setting at defiance the laws of celibacy;
they not only sought wives, but they lived in concubinage.
Now celibacy had been regarded as the supernal virtue from the time of
Saint Jerome. It was supposed to be a state most favorable to Christian
perfection; it animated the existence of the most noted saints. Says
Jerome, "Take axe in hand and hew down the sterile tree of marriage."
This notion of the superior virtue of virginity was one of the fruits of
those Eastern theogonies which were engrafted on the early Church,
growing out of the Oriental idea of the inalienable evil of matter. It
was one of the fundamental principles of monasticism; and monasticism,
wherever born--whether in India or the Syrian deserts--was one of the
established institutions of the Church. It was indorsed by Benedict as
well as by Basil; it had taken possession of the minds of the Gothic
nations more firmly even than of the Eastern. The East never saw such
monasteries as those which covered Italy, France, Germany, and England;
they were more needed among the feudal robbers of Europe than in the
effeminate monarchies of Asia. Moreover it was in monasteries that the
popes had ever found their strongest adherents, their most zealous
supporters. Without the aid of convents the papal empire might have
crumbled. Monasticism and the papacy were strongly allied; one supported
the other. So efficient were monastic institutions in advocating the
idea of a theocracy, as upheld by the popes, that they were exempted
from episcopal authority. An abbot was as powerful and independent as a
bishop. But to make the Papacy supreme it was necessary to call in the
aid of the secular priests likewise. Unmarried priests, being more like
monks, were more efficient supporters of the papal throne. To maintain
celibacy, therefore, was always in accordance with papal policy.
But Nature had gradually asserted its claims over tradition and
authority. The clergy, especially in France and Germany, were setting at
defiance the edicts of popes and councils. The glory of celibacy was in
an eclipse.
No one comprehended the necessity of celibacy, among the clergy, more
clearly than Hildebrand,--himself a monk by education and sympathy. He
looked upon married life, with all its hallowed beauty, as a profanation
for a priest. In his eyes the clergy were married only to the Church.
"Domestic affections suited ill with the duties of a theocratic
ministry." Anything which diverted the labors of the clergy from the
Church seemed to him an outrage and a degeneracy. How could they reach
the state of beatific existence if they were to listen to the prattle of
children, or be engrossed with the joys of conjugal or parental love? So
he assembled a council, and caused it to pass canons to the effect that
married priests should not perform any clerical office; that the people
should not even be present at Mass celebrated by them; that all who had
wives--or concubines, as he called them--should put them away; and that
no one should be ordained who did not promise to remain unmarried during
his whole life.
Of course there was a violent opposition. A great outcry was raised,
especially in Germany. The whole body of the secular priests exclaimed
against the proceeding. At Mentz they threatened the life of the
archbishop, who attempted to enforce the decree. At Paris a numerous
synod was assembled, in which it was voted that Gregory ought not here
to be obeyed. But Gregory was stronger than his rebellious
clergy,--stronger than the instincts of human nature, stronger than the
united voice of reason and Scripture. He fell back on the majestic
power of prevailing ideas, on the ascetic element of the early Church,
on the traditions of monastic life. He was supported by more than a
hundred thousand monks, by the superstitions of primitive ages, by the
example of saints and martyrs, by his own elevated rank, by the
allegiance due to him as head of the Church. Excommunications were
hurled, like thunderbolts, into remotest hamlets, and the murmurs of
indignant Christendom were silenced by the awful denunciations of God's
supposed vicegerent. The clergy succumbed before such a terrible
spiritual force, The fear of hell--the great idea by which the priests
themselves controlled their flocks--was more potent than any temporal
good. What priest in that age would dare resist his spiritual monarch on
almost any point, and especially when disobedience was supposed to
entail the burnings of a physical hell forever and ever? So celibacy was
re-established as a law of the Christian Church at the bidding of that
far-seeing genius who had devised the means of spiritual despotism. That
law--so gloomy, so unnatural, so fraught with evil--has never been
repealed; it still rules the Catholic priesthood of Europe and America.
Nor will it be repealed so long as the ideas of the Middle Ages have
more force than enlightened reason. It is an abominable law, but who can
doubt its efficacy in cementing the power of the popes?
But simony, or the sale of ecclesiastical benefices, was a still more
alarming evil to the mind of Gregory. It was the great scandal of the
Church and age. Here we honor the Pope for striving to remove it. And
yet its abolition was no easy thing. He came in contact with the
selfishness of barons and kings. He found it an easier matter to take
away the wives of priests than the purses of princes. Priests who had
vowed obedience might consent to the repudiation of their wives, but
would great temporal robbers part with their spoils? The sale of
benefices was one great source of royal and baronial revenues.
Bishoprics, once conferred for wisdom and piety, had become prizes for
the rapacious and ambitious. Bishops and abbots were most frequently
chosen from the ranks of the great. Powerful Sees were the gifts of
kings to their favorites or families, or were bought by the wealthy; so
that worldly or incapable men were made overseers of the Church of
Christ. The clergy were in danger of being hopelessly secularized. And
the evil spread to the extremities of the clerical body. The princes and
barons were getting control of the Church itself. Bishops often
possessed a plurality of Sees. Children were elevated to episcopal
thrones. Sycophants, courtiers, jesters, imbecile sons of princes,
became great ecclesiastical dignitaries. Who can wonder at the
degeneracy of the clergy when they held their cures at the hands of lay
patrons, to whom they swore allegiance for the temporalities of their
benefices? Even the ring and the crozier, the emblems of spiritual
authority,--once received at the hand of metropolitan archbishops alone,
were now bestowed by temporal sovereigns, who claimed thereby fealty and
allegiance; so that princes had gradually usurped the old rights of the
Church, and Gregory resolved to recover them. So long as emperors and
kings could fill the rich bishoprics and abbacies with their creatures,
the papal dominion was weakened in its most vital point, and might
become a dream. This evil was rapidly undermining the whole
ecclesiastical edifice, and it required a hero of prodigious genius,
energy, and influence to reform it.
Hildebrand saw and comprehended the whole extent and bearing of the
evil, and resolved to remove it or die in the attempt. It was not only
undermining his throne, but was secularizing the Church and destroying
the real power of the clergy. He made up his mind to face the difficulty
in its most dreaded quarters. He knew that the attempt to remove this
scandal would entail a desperate conflict with the princes of the earth.
Before this, popes and princes were generally leagued together; they
played into each other's hands: but now a battle was to be fought
between the temporal and spiritual powers. He knew that princes would
never relinquish so lucrative a source of profit as the sale of
powerful Sees, unless the right to sell them were taken away by some
tremendous conflict. He therefore prepared for the fight, and forged his
weapons and gathered together his forces. Nor would he waste time by
idle negotiations; it was necessary to act with promptness and vigor. No
matter how great the danger; no matter how powerful his enemies. The
Church was in peril; and he resolved to come to the rescue, cost what it
might. What was his life compared with the sale of God's heritage? For
what was he placed in the most exalted post of the Church, if not to
defend her in an alarming crisis?'
In resolving to separate forever the spiritual from the temporal power,
Hildebrand followed in the footsteps of Ambrose. But he had also deeper
designs. He resolved to raise, if possible, the spiritual _above_ the
temporal power. Kings should be subject to the Church, not the Church to
the kings of the earth. He believed that he was the appointed vicar of
the Almighty to rule the world in peace, on the principles of eternal
love; that Christ had established a new theocracy, and had delegated his
power to the Apostle Peter, which had descended to the Pope as the
Apostle's legitimate successor.
I say nothing here of this monstrous claim, of this ingenious falsehood,
on which the monarchical power of the Papacy rests. It is the great
fraud of the Middle Ages. And yet, but for this theocratic idea, it is
difficult to see how the external unity of the Church could have been
preserved among the semi-barbarians of Europe. And what a necessary
thing it was--in ages of superstition, ignorance, and anarchy--to
preserve the unity of the Church, to establish a spiritual power which
should awe and control barbaric princes! There are two sides to the
supremacy of the popes as head of the Church, when we consider the
aspect and state of society in those iron and lawless times. Would
Providence have permitted such a power to rule for a thousand years had
it not been a necessity? At any rate, this is too complicated a question
for me to discuss. It is enough for me to describe the conflict for
principles, not to attempt to settle them. In this matter I am not a
partisan, but a painter. I seek to describe a battle, not to defend
either this cause or that. I have my opinions, but this is no place to
present them. I seek to describe simply the great battle of the Middle
Ages, and you can draw your own conclusions as to the merits of the
respective causes. I present the battle of heroes,--a battle worthy of
the muse of Homer.
Hildebrand in this battle disdained to fight with any but great and
noble antagonists. As the friend of the poor man, crushed and mocked by
a cold and unfeeling nobility; as the protector of the Church, in danger
of being subverted by the unhallowed tyranny and greed of princes; as
the consecrated monarch of a great spiritual fraternity,--he resolved to
face the mightiest monarchs, and suffer, and if need be die, for a cause
which he regarded as the hope and salvation of Europe. Therefore he
convened another council, and prohibited, under the terrible penalty of
excommunication,--for that was his mighty weapon,--the investiture of
bishoprics and abbacies at the hands of laymen: only he himself should
give to ecclesiastics the ring and the crozier,--the badges of spiritual
authority. And he equally threatened with eternal fire any bishop or
abbot who should receive his dignity from the hand of a prince.
This decree was especially aimed against the Emperor of Germany, to
whom, as liege lord, the Pope himself owed fealty and obedience. Henry
IV. was one of the mightiest monarchs of the Franconian dynasty,--a
great warrior and a great man, beloved by his subjects and feared by the
princes of Europe. But he, as well as Gregory, was resolved to maintain
the rights of his predecessors. He also perceived the importance of the
approaching contest. And what a contest! The spiritual and temporal
powers were now to be arrayed against each other in a fierce antagonism.
The apparent object of contention changed. It was not merely simony; it
was as to who should be the supreme master of Germany and Italy, the
emperor or the pope. To whom, in the eyes of contemporaries, would
victory incline,--to the son of a carpenter, speaking in the name of the
Church, and holding in his hands the consecrated weapon of
excommunication; or the most powerful monarch of his age, armed with the
secular sword, and seeking to restore the dignity of Roman emperors? The
Pope is supported by the monks, the inferior clergy, and the vast
spiritual powers universally supposed to be delegated to him by Christ,
as the successor of Saint Peter; the Emperor is supported by large
feudal armies, and all the prestige of the successors of Charlemagne. If
the Pope appeals to an ancient custom of the Church, the Emperor appeals
to a general feudal custom which required bishops and abbots to pay
their homage to him for the temporalities of their Sees. The Pope has
the canons of the Church on his side; the Emperor the laws of
feudalism,--and both the canons of the Church and feudal principles are
binding obligations. Hitherto they have not clashed. But now feudalism,
very generally established, and papal absolutism, rapidly culminating,
are to meet in angry collision. Shall the kings of the earth prevail,
assisted by feudal armies and outward grandeur, and sustained by such
powerful sentiments as loyalty and chivalry; or shall a priest, speaking
in the name of God Almighty, and appealing to the future fears of men?
What conflict grander and more sublime than this, in the whole history
of society? What conflict proved more momentous in its results?
I need not trace all the steps of that memorable contest, or describe
the details, from the time when the Pope sent out his edicts and
excommunicated all who dared to disobey him,--including some of the most
eminent German prelates and German princes. Henry at this time was
engaged in a desperate war with the Saxons, and Gregory seized this
opportunity to summon the Emperor--his emperor--to appear before him at
Rome and answer for alleged crimes against the Saxon Church. Was there
ever such audacity? How could Henry help giving way to passionate
indignation; he--the successor of the Roman Caesars, sovereign lord of
Germany and Italy--summoned to the bar of a priest, and that priest his
own subject, in a temporal sense? He was filled with wrath and defiance,
and at once summoned a council of German bishops at Worms, "who
denounced the Pope as a usurper, a simonist, a murderer, a worshipper of
the Devil, and pronounced upon him the empty sentence of a deposition"