them swear to combat both simony and concubinage. Presently he
forced this oath on the clergy. From this time forward he was
constantly followed by a crowd of men and women, who watched around
him night and day. He despised the churches, and rejected priests
as well as their functions, under pretext that they were defiled
with simony. They were called Patari, that is to say, beggars,
because the greater part of them belonged to the lowest orders."[20]
[20] Ap. Pertz, l.c., pp. 19, 20.
"What shall we do?" asked a large party at Milan. "This Ariald
tells us that if we receive the Holy Sacrament from married or
simoniacal priests, we eat our own damnation. We cannot live without
sacraments, and he has driven all the priests out of Milan."
The parties were so divided, that those who held with Ariald would
not receive sacraments from the priests, the heavenly gift on their
altars they esteemed as "dogs' dung;" they would not even join with
them, or those who adhered to them, in prayer. "One house was all
faithful," says Andrew of Strumi; "the next all unfaithful. In the
third, the mother and one son were believing, but the father and the
other son were unbelieving; so that the whole city was a scene of
confusion and contention."
In 1058 Guido assembled a synod at Fontanetum near Novara,
and summoned Ariald and Landulf Cotta to attend it. The synod
awaited their arrival for three days, and as they did not come,
excommunicated them as contumacious.
Landulf the younger, the biographer of Ariald, says that Pope
Stephen X. reversed the sentence of the synod; but this account
does not agree with what is related by Arnulf. Landulf the elder
confounds the dates, and places the synod in the reign of Alexander
II., and says that the Pope adopted a middle course, and sent
ambassadors to Milan to investigate the matter. Bonizo of Sutri says
the same. All agree that Hildebrand was one of these commissioners.
Hildebrand was therefore able to judge on the spot of the results
of an appeal to the passions of the people. It is the severest
condemnation to his conduct in 1073, to know for certain that he had
seen the working of the power he afterwards called out. He then saw
how great was that power; he must have been cruelly, recklessly,
wickedly indifferent to the crimes which accompanied its invocation.
Landulf the elder says that the second commissary was Anselm of
Lucca, whilst Bonizo speaks indifferently of the "bishops _a
latere_" as constituting the deputation. Guido was not in Milan when
it arrived, he did not dare to venture his person in the midst of
the people. The ambassadors were received with the utmost respect;
they took on themselves to brand the Archbishop as a simoniac and a
schismatic, and, according to Landulf, to do many other things which
they were not authorised by the Pope to do; so that the dissension,
so far from being allayed by their visit, only waxed more furious.
At the end of the year 1058, or the beginning of 1059, the Pope
sent Peter Damiani, the harsh Bishop of Ostia, and Anselm, Bishop
of Lucca, on a new embassy to Milan.[21] They were received with
respect by the Archbishop and clergy; but the pride of the Milanese
of all ranks was wounded by seeing the Bishop of Ostia enthroned in
the middle, with Anselm of Lucca, the suffragan of Milan, upon his
right, and their Archbishop degraded to the left of the Legate, and
seated on a stool at his feet. Milan assembled at the ringing of the
bells in all the churches, and the summons of an enormous brazen
trumpet which shrieked through the streets. The fickle people asked
if the Church of St. Ambrose was to be trodden under the foot of the
Roman Pontiff. "I was threatened with death," wrote Peter Damiani to
Hildebrand, "and many assured me that there were persons panting for
my blood. It is not necessary for me to repeat all the remarks the
people made on this occasion."
[21] We have a full account of this embassy in a letter of St.
Peter Damiani to the Archdeacon Hildebrand (Petri Dam. _Opp._
iii; _Opusc._ v. p. 37), besides the accounts by Bonizo, Arnulf,
and Landulf the elder.
But Peter Damiani was not the man to be daunted at a popular
outbreak. He placidly mounted the ambone, and asserted boldly the
supreme jurisdiction of the chair of St. Peter. "The Roman Church
is the mother, that of Ambrose is the daughter. St. Ambrose always
recognised that mistress. Study the sacred books, and hold us as
liars, if you do not find that it is as I have said."
Then the charges against the clergy were investigated by the
legates, and not a single clerk in Milan was found who had not paid
a fee on his ordination; "for that was the custom, and the charge
was fixed," says the Bishop of Ostia. Here was a difficulty. He
could not deprive every priest and deacon in Milan, and leave the
great city without pastors. He was therefore obliged to content
his zeal with exacting from the bishops a promise that ordination
in future should be made gratuitously; and the Archbishop was
constrained to deposit on the altar a paper in which he pronounced
his own excommunication, in the event of his relaxing his rigour
in suppressing the heresy of the Simoniacs and Nicolaitans, by
which latter name those who insisted on the lawfulness of clerical
marriage were described.
To make atonement for the past, the Archbishop was required to
do penance for one hundred years, but to pay money into the
papal treasury in acquittal of each year; which, to our simple
understanding, looks almost as scandalous a traffic as imposing a
fee on all clergy ordained. But then, in the one case the money went
into the pocket of the bishops, and in the other into that of the
Pope.
The clergy who had paid a certain sum were to be put to penance for
five years; those who had paid more, for ten (also to be compensated
by a payment to Rome!), and to make pilgrimages to Rome or Tours.
After having accomplished this penance they were to receive again
the insignia of their offices.
Then Peter Damiani re-imposed on the clergy the oaths forced on them
by Ariald, and departed.
The Milanese contemporary historian, Arnulf, exclaims, "Who has
bewitched you, ye foolish Milanese? Yesterday you made loud
outcries for the priority of a see, and now you trouble the whole
organisation of the Church. You are gnats swallowing camels. You
say, perhaps, Rome must be honoured because of the Apostle. Well,
but the memory of St. Ambrose should deliver Milan from such an
affront as has been inflicted on her. In future it will be said
that Milan is subject to Rome."[22]
[22] Pertz, x. p. 21.
Guido attended a council held in Rome (April 1059), shortly after
this visitation. Ariald also was present, to accuse the Archbishop
of favouring simony and concubinage. The legates had dealt too
leniently with the scandal. Guido was defended by his suffragans of
Asti, Novara, Turin, Vercelli, Alba, Lodi, and Brescia. "Mad bulls,
they," says Bonizo; and Ariald was forced to retire, covered with
confusion. The Council pronounced a decree that no mercy should be
shown to the simoniacal and married clergy.[23] An encyclical was
addressed by Nicholas II. to all Christendom, informing it that the
Council had passed thirteen canons, one of which prevented a layman
from assisting at a mass said by a priest who had a concubine or a
_subintroducta mulier_. Priests, deacons, and sub-deacons who should
take "publicly" a concubine, or not send away those with whom they
lived, were to be inhibited from exercising all ministerial acts and
receiving ecclesiastical dues.
[23] "Nulla misericordia habenda est."
On the return of the bishops to their sees, one only of them,
Adelmann of Brescia, ventured to publish these decrees. He was
nearly torn to pieces by his clergy; an act of violence which
greatly furthered the cause of the Patarines.[24]
[24] Bonizo. It is deserving of remark that Bonizo, an ardent
supporter of Hildebrand and the reforming party, calls that Papal
party by the name of _Patari_, thus showing that it was really
made up of the Manichean heretics.
In the same year Pope Nicholas sent legates into different countries
to execute, or attempt to execute, the decrees passed against simony
and concubinage--as clerical marriage was called. Peter Damiani
travelled through several cities of Italy to exhort the clergy to
celibacy, and especially to press this matter on the bishops. Peter
Damiani was not satisfied with the conduct of the Pope in assuming
a stern attitude towards the priests, but overlooking the fact that
the bishops were themselves guilty of the same offence. A letter
from him to the Pope exists, in which he exhorts him to be a second
Phinehas (Numb. xxv. 7), and deal severely with the bishops, without
which no real reform could be affected.[25]
[25] _Opp._ t. iii.; _Opusc._ xiii. p. 188.
Anselm de Badagio, Bishop of Lucca, the instigator of Landulf and
Ariald, or at least their staunch supporter, was summoned on the
death of Nicholas to occupy the throne of St. Peter, under the title
of Alexander II. But his election was contested, and Cadalus, an
anti-Pope, was chosen by a Council of German and Lombard prelates
assembled at Basle. The contests which ensued between the rival
Pontiffs and their adherents distracted attention from the question
of clerical marriage, and the clergy recalled their wives.
In 1063, in Florence, similar troubles occurred. The instigator of
these was St. John Gualberto, founder of the Vallombrosian Order.
The offence there was rather simony than concubinage.
The custom of giving fees to those who appointed to benefices
had become inveterate, and in many cases had degenerated into the
purchase of them. A Pope could not assume the tiara without a lavish
largess to the Roman populace. A bishop could not grasp his pastoral
staff without paying heavy sums to the Emperor and to the Pope. The
former payment was denounced as simony, the latter was exacted as
an obligation. But under some of the Emperors the bishoprics were
sold to the highest bidder. What was customary on promotion to a
bishopric became customary on acceptance of lesser benefices, and no
priest could assume a spiritual charge without paying a bounty to
the episcopal treasury. When a bishop had bought his throne, he was
rarely indisposed to sell the benefices in his gift, and to recoup
a scandalous outlay by an equally scandalous traffic. The Bishop
of Florence was thought by St. John Gualberto to have bought the
see. He was a Pavian, Peter Mediabardi. His father came to Florence
to visit his son. The Florentines took advantage of the unguarded
simplicity of the old man to extract the desired secret from him.[26]
[26] "Cui Florentini clam insidiantes tentando dicere coeperunt,"
&c.... "ille utpote simplicissimus homo coepit jurejurando
dicere," &c.--_Andrew of Genoa_, c. 62.
"Master Teulo," said they, "had you a large sum to pay to the King
for your son's elevation?"
"By the body of St. Syrus," answered the father, "you cannot get a
millstone out of the King's house without paying for it."
"Then what did you pay?" asked the Florentines greedily.[27]
[27] "Alacres et avidi rem scisitari."
"By the body of St. Syrus!" replied the old man, "not less than
three thousand pounds."
No sooner was the unguarded avowal made, than it was spread through
the city by the enemies of the bishop.[28]
[28] For the account of what follows, in addition to the
biography by Andrew of Strumi, we have the _Dialogues_ of
Desiderius of Monte Cassino, lib. iii.
St. John Gualberto took up the quarrel. He appeared in Florence,
where he had a monastery dedicated to St. Salvius, and began
vehemently to denounce the prelate as a simoniac, and therefore a
heretic. His monks, fired by his zeal, spread through the city, and
exhorted the people to refuse to accept the sacramental acts of
their bishop and resist his authority.
The people broke out into tumult. The bishop appealed to the secular
arm to arrest the disorder, and officers were sent to coerce the
monks of St. Salvius. They broke into the monastery at night,
sought Gualberto, but, unable to find him, maltreated the monks.
One received a blow on his forehead which laid bare the bone, and
another had his nose and lips gashed with a sword. The monks were
stripped, and the monastery fired. The abbot rolled himself in an
old cloak extracted from under a bed, where it had been cast as
ragged, and awaited day, when the wounds and tears of the fraternity
might be exhibited to a sympathising and excitable people. Nor were
they disappointed. At daybreak all the town was gathered around the
dilapidated monastery, and people were eagerly mopping up the sacred
blood that had been shed, with their napkins, thinking that they
secured valuable relics. Sympathy with the injured was fanned into
frenzied abhorrence of the persecutor.
St. John Gualberto appeared on the scene, blazing with the desire
of martyrdom,[29] and congratulated the sufferers on having become
confessors of Christ. "Now are ye true monks! But why did ye suffer
without me?"
[29] "Martyrii flagrans amore."--_Andr. Strum._
The secular clergy of Florence were, it is asserted, deeply tainted
with the same vice as their bishop. They had all paid fees at their
institution, or had bought their benefices. They lived in private
houses, and were for the most part married. Some were even suspected
to be of immoral life.[30]
[30] "Quis clericorum propriis et paternis rebus solummodo non
studebat? Qui potius inveniretur, proh dolor! qui non esset
uxoratus vel concubinarius? De simoniâ quid dicam? Omnes pene
ecclesiasticos ordines hæc mortifera bellua devoraverat, ut, qui
ejus morsum evaserit, rarus inveniretur."--_Andr. Strum._
But the preaching of the Saint, the wounds of the monks, converted
some of the clergy. Those who were convinced by their appeals, and
those who were wearied of their wives, threw themselves into the
party of Gualberto, and clubbed together in common life.[31]
[31] "Exemplo vero ipsius et admonitionibus delicati clerici,
spretis connubiis, coeperunt simul in ecclesiis stare, et
communem ducere vitam."--Atto Pistor., _Vit. S. Joan. Gualb._
The Vallombrosian monks appealed to Pope Alexander II. against the
bishop,[32] their thirst for martyrdom whetted not quenched.[33]
If the Pope desired it, they would try the ordeal of fire to prove
their charge. Hildebrand, then only sub-deacon, but a power in
the councils of the Pope, urged on their case, and demanded the
deposition of the bishop. But Alexander, himself among the most
resolute opponents of simony, felt that there was no case. There
was no evidence, save the prattle of an old man over his wine-cups.
He refused the petition of the monks, and was supported by the vast
majority of the bishops--there were over a hundred present.[34]
[32] For what follows, in addition to the above-quoted
authorities, we have Berthold's _Chronicle_ from 1054 to 1100;
Pertz, _Mon. Sacr._ v. pp. 264-326.
[33] "Securiores de corona, quam jam gustaverant,
martyrii."--_Andr. Strum._
[34] "Favebat enim maxima pars Episcoporum parti Petri, et omnes
pene erant monachis adversi."--_Andr. Strum._
Even St. Peter Damiani, generally unmeasured in his invectives
against simony, wrote to moderate the frantic zeal of the
Vallombrosian monks, which he denounced as unreasonable,
intemperate, unjust.
But the refusal of the Pope to gratify their resentment did not
quell the vehemence of the monks and the faction adverse to the
bishop. The city was in a condition of chronic insubordination
and occasional rioting. Godfrey Duke of Tuscany was obliged to
interfere; and the monks were driven from their monastery of St.
Salvi, and compelled to retire to that of St. Settimo outside of the
gates.
Shortly after, Pope Alexander visited Florence. The monks piled up
a couple of bonfires, and offered to pass between them in proof of
the truth of their allegation. He refused to permit the ordeal, and
withdrew, leaving the bishop unconvicted, and therefore unrebuked.
The clergy of Florence now determined to demand of the bishop that
he should either go through the ordeal himself, or suffer the monks
to do so. As they went to the palace, the people hooted them: "Go,
ye heretics, to a heretic! You who have driven Christ out of the
city! You who adore Simon Magus as your God!"
The bishop sullenly refused; he would neither establish his
innocence in the fire, nor suffer the monks to convict him by the
ordeal.
The Podesta of Florence then, with a high hand, drove from the town
the clergy who had joined the monastic faction. They went forth
on the first Saturday in Lent, 1067, amidst a sympathising crowd,
composed mostly of women,[35] who tore off their veils, and with
hair scattered wildly over their faces, threw themselves down in the
road before the confessors, crying, "Alas! alas! O Christ, Thou art
expelled this city, and how dost Thou leave us desolate? Thou art
not tolerated here, and how can we live without Thee? Thou canst
not dwell with Simon Magus. O holy Peter, didst thou once overcome
Simon? and now dost thou permit him to have the mastery? We deemed
him bound and writhing in infernal flames, and lo! he is loose, and
risen again to thy dishonour."
[35] "Maxime feminarum."
And the men said to one another, "Let us set fire to this accursed
city, which hates Christ."[36]
[36] "Et nos, viri fratres, civitatem hanc incendamus atque cum
parvulis et uxoribus nostris, quocumque Christus ierit, secum
camus. Si Christiani sumus, Christum sequamur."--_Andr. Strum._
The secular clergy were in dismay; denounced, deserted, threatened
by the people, they sang no psalms, offered no masses. Unable to
endure their position, they again visited the bishop, and entreated
him to sanction the ordeal of fire. He refused, and requested the
priests not to countenance such an unauthorised venture, should it
be made. But the whole town was bent on seeing this ordeal tried,
and on the Wednesday following, the populace poured to the monastery
of St. Settimo. Two piles of sticks were heaped near the monastery
gate, measuring ten feet long by five wide, and four and a half feet
high. Between them lay a path the length of an arm in width.
Litanies were chanted whilst the piles were reared, and then the
monks proceeded to elect one who was to undergo the fire. The lot
fell on a priest named Peter, and St. John Gualberto ordered him at
once to the altar to say mass. All assisted with great devotion, the
people crying with excitement. At the _Agnus Dei_ four monks, one
with the crucifix, another with holy water, the third with twelve
lighted tapers, the fourth with a full censer, proceeded to the
pyres, and set them both on fire.
This threw the people into an ecstasy of excitement, and the voice
of the priest was drowned in the clamour of their tongues. The
priest finished mass, and laid aside his chasuble. Holding the
cross, in alb and stole and maniple, he came forth, followed by St.
John Gualberto and the monks, chanting. Suddenly a silence fell
on the tossing concourse, and a monk appointed by the abbot stood
forth, and in a clear voice said to the people, "Men, brethren, and
sisters! we do this for the salvation of your souls, that henceforth
ye may learn to avoid the leprosy of simony, which has infected
nearly the whole world; for the crime of simony is so great, that
beside it every other crime is as nothing."
The two piles were burning vigorously. The priest Peter prayed,
"Lord Christ, I beseech Thee, if Peter of Pavia, called Bishop of
Florence, has obtained the episcopal throne by money, do Thou assist
me in this terrible ordeal, and deliver me from being burned, as
of old Thou didst deliver the three children in the midst of the
burning furnace." Then, giving the brethren the kiss of peace, he
stepped fearlessly between the burning pyres, and came forth on the
farther side uninjured.
His linen alb, his silken stole and maniple, were unburnt. He
would have again rushed through the flames in the excess of his
confidence, but was prevented by the pious vehemence of the people,
who surrounded him, kissed his feet, clung to his vestments, and
would have crushed him to death in their eagerness to touch and see
him, had he not been rescued by the strong arms of burly monks.
In after years he told, and talked himself into believing, that as
he passed through the fire, his maniple fell off. Discovering his
loss ere he emerged, he turned back, and deliberately picked it up.
But of this nothing was said at the time.[37]
[37] It is not mentioned in the epistle of the Florentines to the
Pope, narrating the ordeal and supposed miracle, which is given
by Andrew of Strumi and Atto of Pistoja.
A letter was then drawn up, appealing to the Pope in the most
vehement terms, to deliver the sheep of the Florentine flock
from the ravening wolf who shepherded them, and urging him, not
obscurely, to use force if need be, and compel by his troops the
evacuation of the Florentine episcopal throne. Peter of Pavia, the
bishop, a man of gentle character, yielded to the storm. He withdrew
from Florence, and was succeeded by another Peter, whom the people
called Peter the Catholic, to distinguish him from the Simoniac. But
Muratori adduces evidence that the former continued to be recognised
by the Pope some time after his supposed degradation. Thus ended
the schism of Florence in the entire triumph of the Patarines.
Hildebrand was not unobservant; he proved afterwards not to be
forgetful of the lesson taught by this schism,--the utilization of
the rude mob as a powerful engine in the hands of the fanatical or
designing. It bore its fruit in the canons of 1074.
II.
Anselmo de Badagio, Bishop of Lucca, had succeeded Nicholas II. to
the Papal throne in 1061. Cadalus of Parma had been chosen by the
German and Lombard prelates on October 28th, and he assumed the name
of Honorius II. But no Roman Cardinal was present to sanction this
election. Cadalus was acknowledged by all the simoniacal and married
clergy, when he entered Italy; but the Princess Beatrice and the
Duke of Tuscany prevented him from advancing to Rome. From Parma
Cadalus excommunicated Alexander, and from Rome, Alexander banned
Honorius. The cause of Alexander was that of the Patarines, but the
question of marriage and simony paled before the more glaring one,
of which of the rival claimants was the actual Pope.
The voice of Landulf Cotta was silenced. A terrible cancer had
consumed the tongue which had kept Milan for six years in a blaze
of faction. But his room was speedily filled by a more implacable
adversary of the married clergy--his brother, Herlembald, a stern,
able soldier. An event in Herlembald's early life had embittered his
heart against the less rigid clergy. His plighted bride had behaved
lightly with a priest. He was just returned from a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, his zeal kindled to enthusiasm. He went to Rome, where he
was well received by Alexander II. He came for authority to use his
sword for the Patarines. The sectaries in Milan had said to him, "We
desire to deliver the Church, besieged and degraded by the married
priests; do thou deliver by the law of the sword, we will do so by
the law of God." Alexander II., in a public consistory, created
Herlembald "Defender of the Church," gave him the sacred banner of
St. Peter, and bade him go back to Milan and shed blood--his, if
necessary, those of the anti-Patarines certainly--in this miserable
quarrel.