CENTURY
WITH the pontifical power, such as Hildebrand would have it, not to gain
a great deal was to lose a little. Now under the popes of the twelfth
century it was not much extended: they knew not how to reap the fruits
of the labours of Gregory VII. Pascal II. however, who reigned near
twenty years, from 1099 to 1118, very earnestly aspired to universal
monarchy; but his designs, opposed by circumstances, were still more so
by the weakness of his character. The antipope Guibert, who died in
1100, had for a long period for his successors, an Albert, a Theodoric,
a Maginulph: obscure persons, whose pretensions, nevertheless, though
weakly supported by a small Dumber of partisans, sufficed to intimidate
Pascal. He did not press the excommunication of Henry king of England,
when in 1101, the war of investitures was kindled between this monarch
and Anselm archbishop of Canterbury. If he evinced greater boldness
against Philip, king of France, it was, doubtless, because Urban II. had
commenced the quarrel, and that the notoriety, the censures with which
this prince had been struck, admitted of no retraction. Pascal II.
therefore, ventured to send legates into France, who were to
excommunicate king Philip anew, but still on account of his divorce.
Indignant at the attempts of these priests, William, count of Poitou,
and Duke of Aquitain, did himself honour under these circumstances, by a
courage, that Philip, however, did not imitate.—. Philip demanded
absolution of the pope, and obtained it, on swearing to renounce
Bertrade. He came with bare feet in the depth of winter to take, in a
council at Paris an oath which he did not observe.—We know of no
authentic act, which re-established the marriage of Bertrade with
Philip; but they continued to live together without being disturbed by
the church: the states and rights of their children were never called in
question.
At the same period that Matilda renewed her donation, Pascal II.
confirmed the anathemas of his predecessors against Henry IV.¹⁷² and
raised him an enemy in an ambitious and ungrateful son.
¹⁷² He writes in these terms to Robert, Count of Flanders: “Pursue
every where with all your power, Henry, the chief of heretics, and
his abettors. You can offer to God no more acceptable sacrifice
than to combat him who has raised himself against God; who
endeavours to deprive the church of the kingdom, and who has been
banished by the decree of the Holy Ghost, which the prince of the
apostles has pronounced. We appoint this undertaking to you, and
also to your vassals for the remission of your sins, and as a
means of arriving at the celestial Jerusalem.”
In vain did a paternal letter invite this son to repentance:¹⁷³ it was
replied, that an excommunicated person was not acknowledged as father,
or as king.
¹⁷³ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 2, p. 480.
Loosed from his oaths, and from his duties, by the sovereign pontiff,
the youthful Henry took up arms, and had himself elected emperor in a
diet held at Mayence. Henry the elder, retired to the castle of
Ingelheim: there the archbishops, sent by the Diet, came to summon him
to surrender to them the crown and other insignia of his power:
“Thou
“hast rent the church of God, said they to him,
“thou hast sold the bishopricks, the abbeys, every
“ecclesiastical dignity; thou hast in no case res−
“pected the sacred canons: for all these causes, it
“has pleased the pope and the German princes to
“expel thee from the throne as from the church.”
“I adjure you,” replied the monarch,
“you archbi−
“shop of Cologne, and you of Mayence, who
“hold of me your rich prelacies, to declare, what
“was the price at which you purchased them of
“me. Oh! if I only exacted from you the oath of fide−
“lity to me, wherefore do you become the accom−
“plices, the chiefs of my enemies? Could you
“not wait the termination of a life which so many
“misfortunes might abridge, and at least, permit
“my own hands to place the crown on the head of “my beloved son.”
But Henry was not speaking to fathers; he addressed himself to
inflexible prelates:
“Is it not to us, cried one of them, the privilege
“belongs to create kings, and to dethrone them
“when we have made a bad choice?”
At these words, the three archbishops fell on their sovereign; they tore
the imperial crown from his head; and while he assured them, that if he
suffered at this moment for the sins of his youth, they would not escape
the punishment due to their sacrilegious disloyalty, they smiled at his
menace, and to secure impunity for their crime by consummating it
speedily, they hastened to Mayence, to consecrate and bless in the name
of God the parricide Henry V.¹⁷⁴
Heniy IV. shut up in Louvain, saw an army of faithful subjects assemble
around him. At their head he obtained a victory over the rebels; but,
vanquished without resource, in a second combat, he fell into the hands
of his enemies, who loaded him with insults. “The hatred of the popes,”
writes this unhappy sovereign to Henry the I. King of France,¹⁷⁵
¹⁷⁴ Otho Friging. Chron. 1. 7, c. 8, 12.—Abb. Ursperg. Chron. p.
243.—Sigon. de Regno Italico. 1. 19.
¹⁷⁵ Sigeb. Gemblac. apud Stras, vol. 1, p. 866.—Otho Fris. Chron. 1.
7, c. 12.—Fleury’s eccles. Hist. vol. 66, n. 42.
“the hatred of the popes, has carried
“them so far as to violate the laws of nature; they
“have armed my son against me; this son, in con−
“tempt of the fidelity he had sworn to me as my
“subject, comes to invade my kingdom; and what
“I would I could conceal, he has even practised “on my life.”
Escaped from prison, but plunged into extreme misery, the old emperor
was reduced to solicit in a church, formerly built by his cures, a
subaltern employment, which he did not obtain. He died; they disinterred
him; Pascal II. would not allow an excommunicated corpse to repose in
peace; five years, the remains of an emperor who had distinguished
himself in sixty-six battles, remained without burial; the clergy of
liege, who ventured to collect them, was punished for it by anathemas,
and almost in our own days, a Jesuit named Longueval¹⁷⁶ has adjudged
the fidelity and boldness of this clergy to have been inexcusable.
¹⁷⁶ Hist, of the Gall. Church, vol. 8, p. 187.
The best authenticated history has almost the air of a moral fiction,
when after 1106, it represents Henry V. and Pascal occupied in avenging
one upon the other, their common outrages on the rights and repose of
Henry IV. Henry V. came to Rome, kissed the pope’s feet, and desired to
be crowned emperor. Pascal deemed the conjuncture a favourable one for
regaining a formal renunciation of the investitures, which he had just
condemned in a council held at Troyes. But he had hardly mentioned this
pretension, when he was arrested, carried off to the Sabine, and
confined in a fortress. There such a terror seized the Holy Father, that
he, with sixteen cardinals; signed a treaty, in which he secures to the
emperor, the right of investiture, provided he mingles with it no
simony; he did more, he bound himself never to excommunicate Henry V.
and consented to the inhumation of Henry IV. To seal this compact on the
faith of the most awful mysteries, a host is divided between the pope
and the emperor: “As these are divided into two parts, said the pontiff,
so may he be separated from the kingdom of Jesus Christ, who shall
violate this treaty.” Such was the oath which Pascal took, and which he
renewed after he had recovered his liberty.
From this period he had no resource from the reproaches addressed to him
by the Roman clergy, and which were redoubled in proportion as the
emperor and his army removed from Rome. Behold, then, the head of the
church, who permits himself to be taxed with prevarication, who retires
to Terracina to weep his error, who suffers cardinals to annul his
decrees and his promises! he was about, he said, to abdicate the tiara;
happily they opposed this design; and such is the docility of the holy
pontiff, that he constrains himself to preserve power, in order to make
a better use of it. Finally, he revokes, in a council, the treaty he had
the misfortune to subscribe; he declines, however, to excommunicate
Henry him-himself, so scrupulous is he still of violating his
engagement! It was the Cardinals who pronounced this anathema in the
presence of Pascal II. Not only did this Council condemn investitures,
but furthermore, it termed all those heretics who did not condemn them.
Henry V. conceived little danger from it. He came into Italy in 1116, to
take possession of the rich inheritance bequeathed by Matilda to St.
Peter. She had not transferred either sovereign rights or prerogatives,
nor yet fiefs, but merely landed property, which the Roman Church was to
enjoy as the proprietor, ‘jure proprietario’.¹⁷⁷ It matters not—the
emperor pretends that the countess had no power, even on these grounds,
to dispose of those domains; and during the whole of the 12th century,
the popes remained deprived of this inheritance. After having taken
possession, Henry advanced towards Rome; a sedition had burst out there
against Pascal, whose long pontificate displeased the great, and whose
person every one. While the pope fled to Monte Cas-sino, and shut
himself up in Beneventum, the excommunicated monarch entered Rome, as if
in triumph, and there received the imperial crown from the hands of
Bourdin, archbishop of Bruges. Pascal excommunicated Bourdin,
endeavoured to raise up against Henry, now France, now the Normans
established in Lower Italy, and, finally, terminated his career, rather
ingloriously, in the month of January, 1118.
¹⁷⁷ Chartula comittissæ Matbildia super concessione bono-rum suorum,
Roman, eccles. vol. 6, p. 384. Script, rer. Italic.
His partisans gave him for successor, Gelasius II. whom the Frangipani,
a family devoted to the emperor, were unwilling to recognize. Gelasius,
arrested, released, and pursued, took the determination to fly to Gaeta,
his country, from the time he was aware that Henry approached Rome.
Henry had Bourdin raised to the papacy, who, having taken the name of
Gregory VIII. crowned the new emperor. But the moment the latter quitted
Rome, Gelasius entered it secretly. Driven out by the Frangipani he
fled, returned, fled again, retired into Provence, and died at Cluni. He
had reigned but one year, if, indeed, it can be said he reigned at all.
From the time of Gregory VII. to Gelasius II. inclusive, almost all the
popes, drawn from the shade of the cloister, had borne to the throne the
obstinacy and asperity of the monastic spirit. Calixtus II. who replaced
Gelasius, sprung from the house of the counts of Burgundy. The relative
of the emperor, and of many other monarchs, he possessed at least some
idea of the art of governing, and of reconciling great interests. He had
the honour of terminating the disputes about investitures. A diet at
Worms ruled, that for the future the prelates should be elected only in
the presence of the emperor, or of his lieutenants:—that in case of
misunderstanding, the matter should be referred to the emperor, who
should take the opinion of the bishops: that, finally, the emperor
should bestow investiture by the sceptre, and not by the crozier and
ring¹⁷⁸ Calixtus ratified this treaty in the midst of the general
Lateran Council of 1123. We may also applaud this pontiff for saving the
life of his rival Bourdin; he contented himself with exposing him to the
jests of the populace, consigning him for ever to the depths of a
dungeon, and with causing himself to be represented trampling this
antipope under his feet.¹⁷⁹ Such was the generosity of this friend!
Calixtus pressed the king of England to restore a deposed bishop. ‘I
have sworn,’ replied the king, ‘never to suffer him to re-ascend his
seat.’ ‘You have sworn,’ said Calixtus, ‘very well, I am pope, and I
release you from your oath.’ ‘How, replied the monarch, ‘shall I çonfide
in this bishop’s oaths, or in your’s, if your will alone is necessary to
cancel them.’
¹⁷⁸ Concilior. vol. 10, p. 883.—Abb. Ursperg. Chron. p. 204.
—Muratori’s Antiquities of Italy, med. ævi. vol. 6, p. 72.
—Schill. de libertate eccles. German. 1. 4, c. 4, p. 545.
¹⁷⁹ Art of verifying dates, vol. i. p. 283, 284.
Honorius II. who filled the Holy See from 1124 to 1180, is only
remarkable for his disputes with Roger, Count of Sicily, whom he wished
to prevent uniting Apulia and Calabria, an inheritance left him by
William II. his father, to his States. The pope fearing that Roger might
become powerful enough to invade the Ecclesiastical States, sent an army
against him, which was defeated. The king of France, Louis le Gros, was
then exposed to the censures of the bishops of his own kingdom: the
seditious conduct of the bishop of Paris having required repressive
measures, this prelate, whose temporalities were seized, dared to place
his own diocese, and the possessions of the king, under interdict. The
most praiseworthy action of Honorius is the removal of this interdict,
and the having coldly seconded the ardent zeal of St. Bernard, when this
pious abbot, treating his king as an infidel, a persecutor, a second
Herod, solicited the pope to bring this affair before the Holy See.
Louis was indebted for the tranquillity of the last ten years of his
reign; to the prudence of Honorius, whom St, Bernard accused of
weak-ness.¹⁸⁰
It was in the pontificate of this Honorius, that the two factions, the
imperial and the papal, originating as we have seen, in the tenth
centuiy,¹⁸¹ took, in a more decided form, the distinctions of Guelphs
and Ghibeli-. nes. These two appellations are the names of two German
houses, which in 1125, when Henry V. died, disputed the imperial crown.
One of these families, sometimes called* Salique, sometimes Guiebelinga
or Waiblinge, reigned in Franconia, and had furnished the four last
emperors; it was distinguished by its long disputes with the Church: the
other family, originally of Allfort, possessed Bavaria; and many of its
heads, devoted to the popes, had borne the name of Welf or Guelpho.
¹⁸⁰ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. iii. p. 73, 74.
¹⁸¹ Ibid. p. 88, 89.
The duke of Saxony, Lothaire, chosen at Mayence, as successor to Henry,
was impatient to manifest his attachment to the house of Guelph, by
espousing the heiress of Henry duke of Bavaria. The duke of Franconia,
Conrade, was then in Palestine; he hastened to combat Lothaire,
re-animated the partisans of the house of Ghibeline, and caused himself
to be crowned emperor, by the archbishop of Milan, while Honorius II.
declared himself in favour of the confederate of the house of Guelph.¹⁸²
¹⁸² Otto Frising. Chron. 1. 7, c. 17.—De Gestis. Fred. 1. 2, c.
2.—Mase. Comment, de rebus imperii sub Lothario ET. 1. 1, 8. 1. 9.
23; sub Conrade III. 1. 3, p. 141.—Chron. Weingen-tense de Guelfi
principibus, apurt Leibnitz, v. 1, p. 781.
At Rome, another powerful family, the Frangipani, had for rivals the
children of a Jew named Leo, who, opulent, and a convert, had become,
under these two qualifications, as formidable as famous. Peter de Leon,
the son of this Jew, sought, under the name of Anaclet, to succeed
Honorius II. to whom the Frangipani gave for a successor, Innocent IT.
The two popes were enthroned and consecrated at the same time in Rome:
but Anaclet proved the strongest there; Innocent took refuge in France,
where St. Bernard had him acknowledged, and held many councils up to the
year 1133. Returned to Rome, he crowned the Guelph, Lothaire, emperor,
in ceding to him the usufruct of Matilda’s domains. Anaclet died; his
successor Victor abdicated the tiara; the schism was extinguished; and
Pope Innocent II. considered himself sufficiently firm upon the
pontifical throne, to menace Count Robert, and the king of France, Louis
the Young. Roger defeated the troops of Innocent, who, fallen into the
hands of the conqueror, saw himself compelled to confirm the title of
king, given to Roger by Anaclet. Louis VII. defended himself with less
success: exercising the right which all his predecessors had exercised,
he had refused to ratify the election of an archbishop of Bourges.
Innocent received the pretended archbishop, consecrated him, and sent
him to take possession, spoke of the king as of a young man whom it was
necessary to instruct, that it was not proper he should in anywise
accustom himself to meddle in the affairs of the church,—and, enraged
with the opposition of this prince, he laid his kingdom under an
interdict: a sentence then so much the more terrible, as, echoed by the
French prelates supported by St. Bernard, it presented to Thibault,
Count of Champagne, a turbulent and hypocritical vassal, the opportunity
of exciting a. civil war. Louis armed himself against Thibault, entered
Vetry, and tarnished his victory by delivering thirteen hundred of its
unfortunate inhabitants to the flames. This excess was subsequently
expiated by a crusade which had itself needed expiation.
Celestine III. the successor of Innocent II. took off the interdict laid
on France, refused to confirm the treaties entered into by his
predecessors with Roger, king of Sicily, and declared himself against
Stephen, who had taken possession of the English throne. The pontificate
of Çelestine II. and that of Lucius II. who followed him, scarcely
completed two years; but these are memorable from the disturbances which
agitated the city and environs of Rome.
Arnauld of Brescia, an austere monk, but eloquent and seditious, had
denounced the ambition and the despotism of the clergy. To maxims of
independence, which were qualified political heresies, he united certain
less intelligible errors, which he adopted of Abelard, his master and
his friend. From 1139, Arnauld, condemned by the second Lateran council,
had left Italy, and had taken refuge in the territory of Zurich. During
his exile the Romans, discontented with Innocent II. restored some
semblance of their former liberty; and these attempts, more bold under
Çelestine II. became, under Louis, serious undertakings. They created a
patrician, popular magistrate, and president of a senate composed of
fifty-six members. The patrician was a brother of the antipope Anaclet;
the thirteen districts of Rome concurred in the choice of these
fifty-six senators. Deputies were sent by this senate to Conrade III.
whom the death of Lothaire had left in full possession of the empire.
The Romans invited Conrade to come and take in the midst of their city
the imperial crown:
“Let your wisdom, said they to
“him, call to mind the attempts undertaken by the
“popes against your august predecessors. The
“popes, their partisans, and the Sicilians, at the pre−
“sent time in league with them, prepare for you
“still greater outrages. But the senate is restored,
“the people have resumed their vigour; this
“people and this senate, by which Constantine,
“Theodosius, and Justinian governed the world,
“and whose vows, prayers and exertions, call you
“to a similar degree of power and glory.”
Conrade was perfectly aware of the projects of independence which this
language harboured, and did not think it prudent to imitate Lucius, who
also had addressed an epistle to him. Bold against enemies whom Conrade
had abandoned, and whom Roger threatened, Lucius advanced towards the
capital; he marched surrounded by priests and soldiers. This parade of
all his temporal and spiritual arms, however, was useless; a shower of
stones crushed the double army of the pope, and he himself received a
mortal wound. His party very hastily gave him a successor; but this
person, who was named Eugenius III. hastened to quit Rome, lest he
should see himself compelled to ratify the re-establishment of the
popular magistracy¹⁸³
¹⁸³ Otho. Frising. Chron. 1. 7. c. 22,27,31.—De Gest. Frid. re. 1. 1.
e. 21, 22, 27,26.—Moscow de reb. imperii sub Con rado HI. 1. 3,
pa. 114.
Eugenius armed against the Romans the inhabitants of Tivoli, and
nevertheless re-entered Rome only by recognizing the senate. He obtained
but the abolition of the dignity of patrician, and the re-establishment
of the prefect. These transactions did not lead to a permanent peace;
Eugeni us again took flight and passed into France, where he seconded as
far as possible St. Bernard, the apostle of the fatal crusade of 1147¹⁸⁴
During the absence of Eugenuis, Arnauld of Brescia returned to Rome,
followed by two thousand Swiss¹⁸⁵ he proposed restoring the consul, the
tribunes, the equestrian order of the ancient Republic of Rome, to allow
the pope the exercise of no civil power, and to limit the power they
were obliged to leave in the emperor’s hands. Eugenius re-appeared in
the capital in 1149, quitted again almost immediately, again returned in
1153 to quit it no more. Imploring the assistance of Barbarossa, who had
been elected emperor, he offered to crown him, and obtained from this
prince a promise to receive the pontifical authority at Rome. Louis VII.
broke at this time his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitain: this divorce,
the only one perhaps which has had fatal consequences for France, is
also the only one which has not experienced on the part of the church,
any sort of opposition. Neither the pope, nor the bishop, nor St.
Bernard complained of it.
¹⁸⁴ This expedition is connected with our subject, only by general
considerations, which we have already laid before oar readers—see
page 116.
¹⁸⁵ Chron. Corbeiens.
Suger, who had advised against it, no longer lived; the French prelates,
whom Louis condescended to consult, expressly approved of it; and the
heiress of Guienne and Poictou, repudiated under the usual pretext of
distant consanguinity, disinherited the daughters whom she had by the
king of France, married Henry Plantagenet, and added two large provinces
to Maine and Anjou, already possessed by Henry, who became afterwards
king of England. Here we behold one of the principal causes of the long
rivalry of these two kingdoms; and if the clergy, for a long time
accustomed to pass the limits prescribed by their profession, had
attempted to trangress them on the present occasion, for once, at least,
we should have been enabled to bless the abuse of their ecclesiastical
functions.
That which must render the pontificate of Eugenius III. memorable in the
History of the Power of the Popes is, the approbation which he bestowed
on Gratian’s Decree. The name of ‘Decree’ designates in this place, a
canonical compilation at first entitled ‘Concord of the Discordant
Canons,’ which was completed in 1152, by the aforesaid Gratian, a
Benedictine monk bom in Tuscany. The then recent discovery of
Justinian’s Pandects, caused the revival in Italy of the study of civil
jurisprudence: the collection of Gratian, became the ‘text’ of
ecclesiastical jurisprudence; and the first of these studies, soon
subjected to the other, appeared only as its appendage. This collection
is divided into three parts, of which one treats of general principles
and ecclesiastical persons, the second of judgment, and the third of
sacred things. The tautology, the impertinencies, the irregularity, the
errors in proper names, the disregard of correctness in the quotations,
are the smallest faults of the compiler; mutilated passages, canons,
false decretals, every species of falsehood, abound in this monstrous
production. Its success was only the more rapid; they began to expound
it in the schools, to cite it at the tribunals, to invoke it in
treaties; and it had almost become the general law of Europe, when the
return of learning slowly dissipated these gross impostures. The clergy
withdrawn from the secular tribunals; the civil power subjected to the
ecclesiastical supremacy; the estates of individuals, and the acts which
determined them, sovereignly regulated, confirmed, annulled, by the
canons, and by the clergy; the papal power freed from all restriction;
the sanction of all the laws of the church conferred on the Holy See,
itself independent of the laws published and confirmed by it: such are
the actual consequences of this system of jurisprudence. Some churches,
and that of France in particular, have modified it; but it is preserved
pure and unaltered in the Roman Church, which has availed itself of it
in the succeeding centuries to trouble the world. From the end of the
eighth century the decretals of Isidore had sowed the seeds of the whole
pontifical power. Gratian has compiled and enriched them. Represented as
the source of all irrefragable decisions, the universal tribunal
which-determines all differences, dissipates all doubts, clears up all
difficulties, the Court of Rome beholds itself consulted from all parts,
by metropolitans, bishops, chapters, abbots, monks, by lords, by
princes, and even by private individuals. The pontifical correspondence
had no limits but in the slowness of the medium of communication; the
flow of questions multiplied bulb, briefs and epistles; and from these
fictitious decretals, attributed to the popes of the first ages, sprung
up and multiplied, from the time of Eugenius III. millions of responses
and too well authenticated sentences. Matters, religious, civil,
judicial, domestic, all at this period more or less clogged with
pretended relations to the spiritual power; general interests, local
disputes, quarrels of individuals, all was referred as a ‘dernier
resort’, sometimes in both first and last instance, to the Vicar of
Jesus Christ; and the Court of Rome obtained that influence in detail,
if we may so term it, of all the most tremendous, precisely for this
reason, that each of its consequences, isolated from the rest, appeared
the more unimportant. Isidore and Gratian have transformed the pope into
a universal administrator.
Frederick Barbarossa was then the principal obstacle to the progress of
pontifical power. Young, ambitious and enterprising, he was connected,
by the ties of blood, with the families of Guelph and Ghibeline. He
seemed destined to extinguish, or at least to suspend, the fury of the
two factions. He announced the design of confirming in Italy the
imperial power; and it could not have been anticipated, that a new
crusade should divert him as speedily from it, after the misfortunes
attendant on that of 1147.
In the mean time, Adrian IV. born in a village in the neighbourhood of
the abbey of St. Alban, mounted the chair of St. Peter in the month of
December 1154.¹⁸⁶ The king of England, Henry II. congratulated himself
on seeing an Englishman at the head of the Church, and asked his
permission to take possession of Ireland, in order to establish
Christianity there in its primitive purity. Adrian consented to it, with
this observation, that all the isles, in which the Christian faith had
been preached, belonged indubitably to the Holy See, even as Henry
himself acknowledged. The pope, then, did consent to dispose of Ireland
in favour of the king of England, on condition that the king should
cause the Roman church to be paid an annual tax of one penny out of each
house in Ireland. Fleury¹⁸⁷ supposes that John of Salisbury was one of
the ambassadors sent by the king to the pontiff to solicit Ireland from
him; but Matthew Paris¹⁸⁸ names the deputies without mentioning John of
Salisbury; however, the latter might have been commissioned to second
the application to Adrian, whose intimate friend he was.—They passed
three months together at Beneventum. There it was that Adrian, having
asked John what they said of the Roman Church, was answered, that she
passed for the step-mother rather than the mother of other churches,
that the Pope himself was a great expense to the world, and that so many
violences, so much avarice, and so much pride disgusted Christendom. Is
that, said the pope, your own opinion of the matter? “I am really
puzzled,” replied John; “but since the Cardinal Guy Clement joins the
public on this point, I cannot be of a different sentiment. You are most
Holy Father out of the right way; wherefore exact of your children such
enormous tributes? and that which you have received freely, why not
freely bestow it¹⁸⁹ ?” The pope, says Fleury,¹⁹⁰ began to laugh, and to
exculpate Rome, alleged the fable of the stomach and the other members.
But in order that the application should be correct, says the same
historian, it would have been requisite that the Roman Church should
have extended to other churches similar benefits to those she derived
from them.
¹⁸⁶ Guill. Neubrig, Rer. Angl. 1. 2. c. 6. et 9,—Ciacon. de Vitis
pont. Rom. Hadr. 4.
¹⁸⁷ Petri Bles. Op. p. 252, 263.—Concilior. v. 9. p. 1143. Hist,
eccles. 1. 70. n. 16.
¹⁸⁸ Hist. Angl. anno. 1155.
¹⁸⁹ Joann. Sarisb: Polycrat. 1. 6. c. 24; 1. 8. c. 22.
¹⁹⁰ Hist, eccles. 1.70. n. 15.
At the above period, reigned in Sicily, William sumamed the Bad, who
enraged at receiving from the pope only the title of lord, in the place
of that of king, carried hostilities into the ecclesiastical states.¹⁹¹
Adrian, after having excommunicated him, raised against him the nobles,
vassals of this prince, promising to support their privileges with an
invincible constancy, and to have them restored to the heritages of
which they had been deprived. However, the pope shut up in Beneventum,
saw himself obliged to capitulate, and to sacrifice the Sicilians who
had armed themselves in his defence. William of Tyre has blamed him for
it;¹⁹² but according to Baronius,¹⁹³ we must only pity him, for he
lacked the means of remaining faithful to his engagements; and he was so
far from free, that he was constrained to acknowledge, by authentic
deed, that he enjoyed a perfect liberty. However it was, William the
Bad, and the pope were reconciled; and there were none discontented save
the barons, who, on the word of the holy father, had expected never to
be abandoned.
¹⁹¹ Baron. Ann. ecdes. ann. 1154.—Pagi. Act. ann. 1154, n. 4.
¹⁹² Lib. 18. c. 2. et segg.
¹⁹³ Ann.eccles. ann 1166.—Concilior vol. 10. pa. 1151.
From the commencement of his pontificate Adrian had been relieved of
Amauld of Brescia. An interdict launched for the first time against the
churches of Rome, terrified the people, and compeled the senators to
exile Arnauld, who scarcely out of the city, was delivered to the
sovereign pontiff by Frederick Barbarossa, and buried alive at the break
of day, without the knowledge of the people. His ashes were thrown into
the Tiber, for fear, says Fleury¹⁹⁴ that the people should collect them
as those of a martyr. But this service rendered by Frederick to Adrian
did not prevent their becoming enemies. From the year 1155, when
Frederick came to Rome to receive the imperial crown, the first germs of
their discord were perceptible.¹⁹⁵ Frederick, after having refused to
hold the stirrup for the pope, acquitted himself of it with a very bad
grace. He observed in the palace of the Lateran a picture, in which the
Emperor Lothaire was represented on his knees before the pontif with the
well known inscription:
Rex venit ante fores, jurans prim urbis honores;
Post homo, fit paps, sumit, quo dante, coronam:—
that is to say, “the king presents himself at the gates; and after
having recognised the rights of the city, becomes the vassal of the
pope, who bestows on him the crown.” Frederick complained of these two
verses, as well as of the emblems they explained, and obtained but the
vague promise of their future suppression. They still subsisted when, in
the month of April, 1157, the pope’s legates presented themselves before
the emperor, who held a court at Besancon¹⁹⁶ and placed in his hands a
letter from Adrian. It had for its purport an attack committed in the
emperor’s states on the person of the Bishop of Lunden.:
“How, said the pope, can
“the impunity of such a crime be explained? Is it
“negligence? Can it be indifference? Can the
“emperor have forgotten the benefits conferred on
“him by the Holy See? Has not the sovereign
“pontiff willingly conferred on him the imperial
“crown? Are there not other favours still which
“he may be disposed to confer?”
This language highly displeased the princes by whom Frederick was
surrounded; they murmured, they menaced; and when one of the legates
replied to them, “of whom then does the emperor hold the crown, if he
holds it not from the pope?” one of the princes no longer restrained his
indignation; he drew his sword, and he had infallibly cut off the
legate’s head, if Frederick had not hastened to oppose his imperial
authority to this violence, and to have the envoys of the Holy See
conducted to their residences, directing them to depart very early the
following morning, and to return to Rome by the shortest road, without
resting at the houses of either bishops or abbots.¹⁹⁷
¹⁹⁴ Hist, eccles. 1. 70, n. 4.—Otho Frising. de Gert. Frider. Anoborb.
1. 2, c. 21.—Vit. Adrioni ed à card. Arrag.
¹⁹⁵ Otho Frising. de Oert. Frid. 1.2, c. 14,15,20.—Radev. de Gert.
Frid. 1.1, c. 11.—Bossnet’s Def. Gull Church. 1.3, e« 18.
¹⁹⁶ Radevic. 1. 1, c. 8, 9, 10.
¹⁹⁷ Concilior. vol. x. p. 1144.
Adrian took the step of addressing the bishops of Germany; he exhorted
them to neglect no means of bringing Frederick back to more humble
sentiments.¹⁹⁸ We have the reply of these prelates;¹⁹⁹ it is judicious
and firm:
“Your
“words, they say to the holy fathers, have shocked
“the whole court, and we cannot approve them.—
“The emperor can never suppose, that he holds
“from you his dignity: he swears that when the
“Church wishes to subject thrones, such ambition
“comes not from God; he speaks of figures and
“inscriptions which you possess, and which outrage
“his authority; he will not suffer, he says, such
“gross attempts. We invite you to destroy these
“movements of hostility between the empire and
“the priesthood; we adjure you to pacify a chris−
“tian sovereign, in addressing to him henceforth a
“language more conformable to the Gospel.”
At the same time that the bishops wrote this epistle, Frederick prepared
to pass into Italy.!²⁰⁰ Adrian called to mind William of Sicily and
perceived that it was time to shew some deference to the emperor.
Legates more skilful and more complying, came to Augsburgh, and
presented Frederick with another epistle from Adrian²⁰¹ The pope
explained in it the terms of his first letter, and the explanation
amounted to a retraction. “By the word ‘beneffcium,’ he says, we
understand not a benefice or a fief, but a benefit or a service. In
speaking of your crown, we do not pretend having conferred it on you; we
refer only to the honour we have had of placing it on your august head;
‘contulimus’ that is to say, imposuimus.” This commentary, which by no
means pleases Baronius,²⁰² satisfied the emperor, and produced between
this prince and the pope a reconciliation which was not of long
duration.
In the month of October 1150,²⁰³ Frederick held at Roncaille, between
Parma and Placentia, an assembly, in which the bishops and abbots
acknowledged that they held from him their royal privileges.
Dissatisfied with this declaration, and with the asperity with which the
officers of the emperor asserted the right of forage over the lands of
the Roman Church, Adrian wrote an epistle to Frederick which has not
been preserved; but Radevic, who gives us a relation of it,²⁰⁴ says,
that it concealed, under humble and gentle terms, much bitterness and
hauteur. In replying to it, Frederick affected to place, in the
inscription, his own name before that of the sovereign pontiff.²⁰⁵ It
was to revert to an ancient custom, to which were substituted for some
time past forms supposed to be more respectful. This bagatelle nettled
the holy, father; and history relates, that letters were intercepted
which he wrote to the Milanese, and other subjects of Frederick, to
invite them to revolt. We do not possess those letters; but the reply of
Adrian to the emperor has been transmitted to us.²⁰⁶
“To place your name before ours, says the servant “of the
servants of Christ, is arrogance, is insolence; “and to cause
bishops to render homage to you, “those whom the Scriptures call
Gods, sons of the “Most High, is to want that faith which you
“have sworn to St. Peter, and to us. Hasten then “to amend, lest
that in taking to yourself that which “does not belong to you,
you lose the crown with “which we have gratified you.”
This epistle²⁰⁷ did not remain unreplied to; the minds of both became
inflamed, and in despite of the négociations attempted in an assembly at
Bologna in 1159, war was going to break out, had not the pope died the
first of September of the same year, at the very moment, says an
historian²⁰⁸ at which he pronounced the excommunication of Frederick.
¹⁹⁸ Concilior, vol. 10, p. 1145.
¹⁹⁹ Radev. Gest. Frider. 1.1, c. 16.
²⁰⁰ Radev. 1. 17, c. 23.
²⁰¹ Concilior. vol. 10, p. 1147.
²⁰² Ana. eccles. ann. 1158. 76.—According to Bossuet, this letter of
Adrian IV. alone, is requisite to annihilate all the conclusions
which the Ultramontanes pretend to deduce from the ceremony of the
coronation of kings.
²⁰³ Radev.l. 2. c. 1—15.
²⁰⁴ Lib. 2. c. 18*
²⁰⁵ App. p. 562.
²⁰⁶ Concilior vol. 10.
²⁰⁷ Ego dixi: Dii estis et filii Excelsi omnes Ps. 81. r. 6.
²⁰⁸ Abb. Ursperg. Chron. p. 221.
Alexander III. elected pope after Adrian IV. did not die until 1181. His
pontificate is the longest of the twelfth century. But four anti-popes,
who succeeded each other in the lapse of these twenty-eight years, under
the names of Victor III., Pascal III., Calixtus III., and Innocent III.,
disputed and weakened the authority of the head of the church. Alexander
who had been at Besancon as one of the envoys of Adrian, found in
Frederick Barbarossa a formidable enemy. This emperor seeing that they
had at the same moment elected two successors of Adrian, Alexander and
Victor, summoned them to appear at Pavia, where he would decide between
them in a council convoked by him. Victor appeared there and was
pronounced the true pontiff. Alexander excommunicated by this council,
in return excommunicated Frederick and Victor, loosed from their oaths
the subjects of the former, and took refuge in France, then the usual
common asylum of the popes expelled from Rome. Returned to this city in
1165, after the decease of Victor, he left it again in 1167, and behold
in what way. The Romans besieged by the Germans, conjured him to
sacrifice to their safety the title disputed with him,:
“No! he replied, a sovereign
“pontiff is not subject, to the judgment of any mor−
“tal, neither of kings nor of people, nor yet of the
“church; let them know that no power on earth
“shall make me descend from the rank to which God
“has elevated me;”
and, while the cardinals carried to the citizens of Rome this pontifical
reply, the holy father stole away without noise.²⁰⁹ Frederick at this
time supported a famous war against almost all Italy, confederated under
the name of the League of Lombardy. Alexander III. became the head of
the Lombards, who gave the name of Alexandria, to a city built by them
in 1168, at the confluence of the Tanaro and the Bormida. The pope
excited the Greek emperor Manuel to arm against the emperor of the West,
and attempted to reconcile the two churches, separated since the
pontificate of Leo IX. But when Manuel required that the Holy See should
be established at Constantinople, this condition caused the failure of
both projects. To occupy a secondary rank in a capital inhabited,
possessed, and ruled by a secular sovereign, this subordinate situation,
which for five centuries had suited the successors of St. Peter, was not
to be listened to by the successors of Gregory VII.
²⁰⁹ Vit Alex. III. edit, a card. Arrag. p. 468.—Acerbug Rfp-rena, p.
1151.—-Baron. Ann. eccles. Anji. 1167, s. 11.
As France, so England likewise, acknowledged Alexander III.
notwithstanding the protection he seemed to grant to Thomas a Becket,
Archbishop of Canterbury. This prelate elevated by the king, Henry II.,
to the most eminent dignities, dared to oppose himself to the punishment
of a priest convicted of assassination, and to determine that the sole
punishment should be, deprivation of his benefice.
The king wished that the common law should be applied, by the regular
tribunals, to the frequent crimes of the members of the church; he
desired that no bishop should without his permission go to Rome or
appeal to the Holy See, nor excommunicate or suspend a vassal or officer
of the crown. A parliament at Clarendon adopted these articles: Becket
after having at first rejected them without examination, next adopted
them without reserve, lastly accused himself to the pope of having
betrayed the rights of the clergy, did penance for it, and renounced the
exercise of his ministry until the sovereign pontiff had absolved him.
Treated as a rebel by all the peers of Great Britain, as well
ecclesiastical as secular, he took refuge in France, threatened the king
with the fate of Nebuchadnezzar, and pronounced anathemas against the
most faithful ministers and subjects of Henry. This prince attempted to
recal Becket to reason and his duty: he exhausted every way for the
purpose, even that of taking for arbiter his rival Louis the Young, king
of France. Let the archbishop, said he, conduct himself towards me, as
the most holy of his predecessors did with the least illustrious of
mine, and I shall be satisfied. An apparent reconciliation led Becket
back to England; but if he returned it was to excommunicate anew all the
clerks, curates, canons and bishops, who had declared against him. Henry
lost all patience; even to that degree that he exclaimed: will none of
my servants avenge me of the most meddling and ungrateful of men? Four
assassins went, in effect, to seek the arch-bishop, and dispatched him
in his church of Canterbury. Alexander, who had condemned the Articles
of Clarendon, placed Thomas a Becket in the number of the holy martyrs;
and the king, whose imprudent words had rendered him guilty both of the
murder and the canonization, finished, by tarnishing with the most
ignominious penance the rights and dignity of his throne. This quarrel
has given place to a multitude of letters, as well of Alexander III. as
of many English and French prelates: a deplorable correspondence, in
which we behold with what rapidity were propagated the unsocial maxims
preserved in the decree of Gratian.²¹⁰
²¹⁰ Matth. Paris. Hist. mag. p. 82, 83, 101, 104.—Collier’s
Ecclesiastical History, vol. 1, s. 12.—Concil. Magnse Britann.
vol. 1. p. 434.—Epistolæ et Vita Thomæ Cantuar. &c. Brux. 1682,
vol. 2. in 4to.—Natalis Alex. sec. 12, diss. 10, p. 833.—Telly’s
Hist, of France, vol. 3, p. 181, 198.
Nevertheless, Alexander III. thought of establishing himself, and
dreaded the consequences of too long a war with the emperor. He detached
himself from
Some English writers say that the four assassins, Fitzurse, Tracy,
Britton and Morville, were so far from having an order to kill Becket,
that they dared not re-appear at Court after the commission of the
crime. Hume adds, that the king suspecting the intention of these
gentlemen from some words which had escaped them, dispatched a messenger
after them, prohibiting their attacking the person of the prelate, but
that the messenger arrived too late.
the Lombard League, and came to Venice in 1177, to offer Frederick a
peace, which the reverses of this prince were to render useful and
glorious to the church. The pope reaped the fruits of the labours and
combats of Italy. Frederick acknowledged Alexander, kissed his feet,
held the stirrup of his horse, and restored the ecclesiastical goods,
without, however, including herein the inheritance of Matilda, and
signed a truce for six years²¹¹ For ten years past, Alexander had
invariably resided at Anagni; he seldom resorted to Rome, where the
seeds of sedition had not ceased to ferment. He returned to it in 1178;
his entry was solemn; he received the homage of the people and the oaths
of the nobles, and held in 1179 the third general council of the
Lateran. A crown being sent by him to the king of Portugal, Alphonso
Henriquez, in order that this conqueror should not reign without the
approbation of the Holy See, he was repaid by an annual tribute of two
marks of gold.²¹² Such have been the principal events of the
pontificate of Alexander III. to whom the college of cardinals is
indebted for the exclusive privilege of electing the popes; he ruled
that this election should be effected by the union of two thirds of the
suffrages in favour of one candidate. The memory of this pope has
remained dear to the Italians, who were pleased at beholding in him the
defender of their liberties; but he evinced still more zeal for the
aggrandizement of the ecclesiastical power. They owe greater praise to
his address and constancy than to his patriotism. He knew how to triumph
over obstacles, support long reverses, weary out the prosperity of
Frederick Barbarossa, and subject to the pontifical authority, the enemy
of the Italian republics.
²¹¹ Maratori’s Antiquit Ital. med. ævi. vol. 4, p. 249.— Orig. Guelph,
vol. 2, p. 479.
²¹² Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 3, p. 327.
Lucius III. the first elected in the the forms established by Alexander,
displeased the Romans on this very account, who compelled him to retire
to Verona. Urban III. and Gregory VIII. proposed a third crusade, which
was not undertaken until under Clement III. in 1189. To draw France and
England towards the Holy Land, it was requisite to deaden the ardour of
the quarrels which, from the divorce of Louis VII., divided the two
kingdoms. A legate of Clement III. threatened France with a general
interdict, if Philip Augustus did not hasten to reconcile himself to the
English.²¹³
"What do I care for
“your interdict, replied Philip: does it belong
“to Rome to threaten or disturb my States,
“when I think proper to bring back to duty my
“rebel vassals? we may plainly see you have got
“a relish for the sterling money of the English.”
Philip assumed the cross, nevertheless, as well as Richard, who had
succeeded his father, Henry, on the throne of England. Frederick
Barbarossa also took the cross and died in Armenia, in 1100, leaving the
empire to his son Henry, VI. Clement III. had need to occupy the peoples
minds with this remote expedition. The papal authority had been weakened
anew under the short and feeble pontificates of his two predecessors.
The Romans who had obtained royal privileges, restored them to the Holy
See, only on condition that the cities of Tusculum and of Tivoli should
be given up to their vengeance. Tusculum sacked and reduced to cinders
under Celestin III. took the name of Frescati, when branches of trees²¹⁴
served to form asylums for those that remained of the inhabitants.
Celestine III. elected in 1191, is the last pope of the 12th centuiy.
Innocent III. who reigned from 1198 to 1216 ought to be considered
belonging to the XII. Baronius relates²¹⁵ that in consecrating Heniy
VI. Çelestine pushed with his foot the imperial crown. Muratori disputes
the fact,²¹⁶ which proves, according to Baronius, the popes right to
depose the emperor: in fine there can no finer reason be given for such
a privilege. However it may be, Celestine excommunicated Heniy VI.
Leopold Duke of Austria, Alphonso X. king of Leon, and annulled the
decision of the French bishops, who had approved the repudiation of
Ingelburg II. the wife of Philip Augustus. It is to be remarked that
these anathemas although still formidable, had lost a large portion of
their unfortunate efficacy. Philip took a third wife, without any new
opposition on the part of Celestine. This pope, for some marcs of
silver, acknowledged, as king of Sicily, Frederick II. a child of three
years, son of the emperor Henry VI. In 1197, Henry died, and Germany was
divided between Philip of Swabia, and Otho of Saxony; the simultaneous
election of these two emperors became one of the causes of the
aggrandizement of the pontifical power. Divisions in Germany, rivalry
between France and England, new governments in almost all the states of
Italy, expeditions into Palestine, hostilities of the crusaders against
the emperors of the East, the propagation of the false decretals in the
West: all concurred to promise the most splendid success to the pontiff,
who, uniting boldness to skill, should reign sufficiently long to
conduct a great enterprise: and this pontiff was Innocent III.
²¹³ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 3, p. 327.
²¹⁴ Frasche.
²¹⁵ Ann. eccles. ann. 1191.
²¹⁶ Ann. d’ltal. ann. 1191.