century, every one denounced the lawlessness of the laity and the unchastity and simony of the clergy.[422:1]
The manifold corruptions of the tenth century and the first part of the eleventh produced a clergy that had almost forfeited its spiritual character. Religion was a cloak for immorality, for licentious self-indulgence, and for corruption and venality which can scarcely be equalled in the entire history of the Christian Church. It was a matter of common notoriety that France and Germany were addicted, almost equal to Italy, to a shameless traffic in ecclesiastical offices and preferments.
The most startling picture of the condition of the clergy comes from the pen of Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, who later became Pope Victor III.:
The Italian priesthood, and among them most conspicuously the Roman pontiffs, are in the habit of defying all law and all authority; thus utterly confounding together things sacred and profane. During all this time the Italian priesthood, and none more conspicuously than the Roman pontiffs, set at naught all ecclesiastical law and authority. The people sold their suffrages for money to the highest bidder; the clergy, moved and seduced by avarice and ambition, bought and sold the sacred rights of ordination, and carried on a gigantic traffic with the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Few prelates remained untainted with the vile pollution of simony; few, very few, kept the commandments of God, or served him with upright hearts; following their chiefs to do evil, the great sacerdotal herd rushed headlong down the precipice into the quagmire of licentiousness and profligacy: priests and deacons, whose duty it was to serve God with clean hands, and with chaste bodies to administer the sacraments of the Lord, took to themselves wives after the manner of the laity; they left families behind them, and bequeathed
their ill-gotten wealth to their children; yea, even bishops, in contempt of all shame and decency, dwelt with their wives under the same roof—a nefarious and execrable custom, prevailing, alas! most commonly in that city where the laws, thus shamefully set at naught, first issued from the sacred lips of the Prince of the Apostles and his holy successors.[423:1]
When Otto III., the last of the Saxon Emperors, died, the Papacy had become, apparently, merged in the state. The initiative of the Pope in all important matters seemed to flow from imperial rather than pontifical prerogative. The arbitrary erection of all sorts of ecclesiastical foundations, the unquestioned secular appointment to the highest offices in the Church, and the legislation by the state in ecclesiastical affairs, all point to a closer fusion of the two powers than since the year 476. But there was no deliberate intention to encroach upon ecclesiastical right. The alliance was reciprocally advantageous. There could be no Emperor without a Pope, and no Pope without an Emperor. The causes for this ascendancy of the temporal power were: (1) the decay of ecclesiastical organisation and discipline; (2) the disruption of society and the confusion of political matters in Italy and Europe generally; (3) the rise of the power and ambition of the German sovereigns; (4) the social demoralisation of the age—the wide-spread incontinence, perjury, venality, rapine, bribery, theft, and murder which infected the Church to its heart's core. Until these humiliating and devitalising forces were remedied, the Church could not hope to attain independence.[423:2]
Several distinct efforts at reform were made before
the time of Hildebrand, first by the German Emperors and secondly by the German Popes. Henry the Fowler (918-936) declared that he would abolish simony but failed to do so. Otto the Great (936-973) deposed the criminal Pope John XII., elected Leo VIII. in his place, and honestly intended to improve the Papacy. Otto III. (983-1002), a great religious enthusiast, desired to reform the Church through good Popes. Hence he chose Bruno, a man of piety and morality, as the first German Pope, and then appointed Gerbert renowned for sanctity and learning. Henry II., called the Saint (1002-1024), was the first genuine imperial reformer. He opened a campaign in Germany against simony and the marriage of the clergy. He reformed the monasteries by destroying or uniting small monasteries, by abolishing abuses, and by confiscating lands. With the King of France he agreed to hold a great council at Pavia to cure the evils in the Church both north and south of the Alps (1023). Notwithstanding these efforts little real reform was accomplished. Henry III. (1039-1056), thoroughly imbued with Clugniac zeal for reformation, had Leo IX. hold a big synod at Mainz (1049) in which simony was denounced, marriage of the clergy condemned, and local prelates ordered to abolish both evils. Personally this ruler was wholly free from simony and waged an unrelenting war against the abuse both in Italy and in Germany.[424:1] He deposed three bishops for sins and crimes. He appointed a series of Clugniac puritans to the papal chair[424:2] and thus paved the way for Hildebrand.
The German Popes were very active in reformatory efforts. Gregory V. (996-999), who was Bruno[425:1] of the royal house of Germany, appointed by Otto II., renowned for piety and of unblemished character, assumed a lofty, dignified attitude as Pope and soon made his power felt in Europe. He purified the papal court as far as possible and suppressed the independence of the French clergy, but died too soon to realise his hopes of reformation.
Gerbert, or Sylvester II. (999-1003),[425:2] born of poor parents, was educated as a teacher first in the Clugniac cloister of Aurillac and then taken by Count Borrel of Barcelona to Spain, where he studied mathematics and the natural sciences in the Mohammedan schools. There Bishop Hatto took a fancy to him and invited him to go to Rome where Pope John XIII. noticed him and recommended him to Otto the Great (971). The Emperor sent him to Rheims to be instructed in logic (972). The Archbishop Adelbert of Rheims soon made him a teacher in the cathedral school. There he taught the writings of Aristotle, the Latin classics, and the sciences. Boethius was his favourite author and science his "darling study." He had many pupils from far and near and gained great fame for his scholarship.[425:3]