Descending in the scale, we may instance the priest Marino, who, though he lived openly with his wife, was a noted miracle-worker. Among quaint wonders wrought by him it is recorded that water rendered holy by his blessing, when sprinkled over the cornfields, had the power of driving away all caterpillars and other noxious insects. His child, Eleuchadio, was a most venerable man, who subsequently, as abbot of the monastery of the Virgin at Fiano, won the esteem and respect of even the stern Damiani himself.[444] In fact, the pious Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Casino, better known as pope under the name of Victor III., declares that throughout Italy, under the pontificate of Benedict, all orders, from bishops down, without shame or concealment, were publicly married and lived with their wives as laymen, leaving their children fully provided for in their wills; and what rendered the disgrace more poignant was the fact that the scandal was greatest in Rome itself, whence the light of religion and discipline had formerly illuminated the Christian world.[445] Another contemporary writer asserts that this laxity prevailed throughout the whole of Latin Christendom, sacerdotal marriage being everywhere so common that it was no longer punished as unlawful, and scarcely even reprehended.[446]
In becoming thus universal and tacitly permitted it was not incompatible with the most fervent piety; and though it may be an evidence of hierarchical disorganization, it can no longer be considered as indicating of itself a lowered standard of morals in the ministers of the church. This is forcibly illustrated in the case of St. Procopius, selected by Duke Ulric of Bohemia as the first abbot of the monastery of Zagow. He was regularly bred to the church under the care of Bishop Quirillus, and was noted for the rectitude of his deportment in the priesthood; yet we learn that he was married during this period, when we are told that, on being disgusted with the hollow vanities of the world, he abandoned wife and friends for the solitude of a hermit’s cave. Here an accidental meeting with Duke Ulric, while hunting, led to the foundation of Zagow and to the installation of Procopius as its head.[447]
Silently the church seemed to acquiesce in the violation of her canons, until, at length, she appeared content if her ministers would satisfy themselves with reputable marriage and avoid the grosser scandals. When Ulric, Abbot of Tegernsee, about 1041, deplored the evil influence of a priest who had two wives living, he seems to have felt that lawful marriage might be tolerated, but that polygamy was of evil example in a Christian pastor.[448] So when Albert the Magnificent, Archbishop of Hamburg, was accustomed to exhort his clergy to continence and to shun the pestiferous society of women, his worldly wisdom prompted him to add that, if they were unequal to the effort, they should at least keep unsullied the bonds of marriage and should live “si non caste, tamen caute.”[449]
If irregularities such as these existed, they are not justly imputable to the church itself. It can scarcely be a matter of wonder if the clergy, in assimilating themselves to the laity as regards the liberty of wedlock, should also have adopted the license which in that lawless age rendered the marriage-tie a slender protection for the weakness of woman. Though it was indissoluble according to the teachings of religion, yet the church, which at that time was the only protector of the feeble against the strong, had not acquired the commanding authority which subsequently enabled it to enforce its decrees everywhere and on all occasions. If, under a vigorous pope, the sentence of excommunication had been able to frighten a superstitious monarch like Robert the Pious, yet the pontiffs of the House of Tusculum were not men to trouble themselves, or to be successful had they made the attempt, to rectify the wrongs perpetrated in every obscure baronial castle or petty hamlet in Europe. The isolation and independence of the feudal system made every freeman, so to speak, the arbiter of his own actions. The wife whose charms ceased to gratify the senses of her husband, or whose temper threatened to disturb his equanimity, stood little chance of retaining her position, if an opportunity offered of replacing her to advantage, unless she was fortunate in having kindred able to resent the wrong which the church and the law were powerless to prevent or to punish.[450] If, then, the clergy occasionally indulged in similar practices, the evil is not attributable to the license of marriage which they had usurped. That license had, at all events, borne some fruits of good, for, during its existence, we hear somewhat less of the system of concubinage so prevalent before and after this period, and there is no authentic indication of the nameless horrors so suggestively intimated by the restrictions on the residence of relatives enjoined in the frequent canons promulgated at the close of the ninth century.
It is not to be supposed, however, that the race of ascetics was extinct. Amid the license which prevailed in every class, there were still some men who, disgusted with the turbulent and dissolute world, despairing of salvation among the temptations and trials of active life or the sloth and luxury of the monastic establishments, sought the path to heaven in solitude and maceration. Such men could not but look with detestation on the worldly priests who divided their thoughts between their sacred calling and the cares of an increasing household, and who profaned the unutterable mysteries of the altar with hearts and hands not kept pure from the lusts of the flesh.
Prominent among these holy anchorites was S. Giovanni Gualberto, who fled from the snares of the world to the forests of Camaldoli, where his austerities, his holiness, and his miracles soon attracted crowds of disciples, who formed a numerous community of humble imitators of his virtues. Restoring in its strictness the neglected Rule of Benedict, his example and his teaching wrought conviction, and the order of monks which he founded and carried with him to the peaceful shades of Vallombrosa became renowned for its sanctity and purity. Thus withdrawn by the will of heaven from the selfish egotism of a hermit’s existence, he labored earnestly to reform the laxity of priestly life in general, and his success was most encouraging. Moved by his admonitions, self-indulgent clerks abandoned wives and mistresses, devoted themselves to the performance of their sacred functions, or sought in monastic seclusion to make atonement for their past excesses.[451]
Though it may well be supposed that Gualberto was not unassisted in his efforts, yet all such individual exertions, dependent upon persuasion alone, could be but limited in their influence and temporary in their results. Reform, to be universal and permanent, required to be authoritative in its character and to proceed from above downward. The papacy itself must cease to be a scandal to Christendom, and must be prepared to wield the awful force of its authority, seconded by the moral weight of its example, before disorders so firmly rooted could be attacked with any hope of success. In 1044, Benedict IX. was driven out of Rome by a faction of rebels or patriots, who elected Silvester III. as pontiff in his place. A sudden revolution sent Silvester into exile, and brought Benedict back, who, to complete the confusion, sold the papal dignity to a new aspirant, known as Gregory VI. The transaction was not one which could decently be recognized by the church, and Benedict was held incapable of thus transferring the allegiance of Christendom or of depriving himself of his position. There were thus three popes, whose conflicting claims to reverence threw all Europe into the doubt and danger of schism, nor could the knotty question be solved by the power of distracted Italy. A more potent judge was required, and the decision was referred, as a matter of course, to the sagacious and energetic Emperor, Henry the Black, whose success in repressing the turbulence of the empire, and whose sincere reverence for the church gave reasonable promise of a happy solution of the tangled problem.[452] His proceeding was summary. The three competitors were unceremoniously dismissed, and Henry filled the vacancy thus created by the appointment of Suidger, Bishop of Bamberg, who assumed the name of Clement II.
Henry III. was moved by a profound conviction that a thorough and searching reform was vitally necessary to the church. The conscientious severity of his character led him to have little toleration for the abuses and disorders which were everywhere so painfully apparent. How far his views were in advance of those generally entertained, even by ecclesiastical dignitaries, was clearly manifested as early as 1042, when Gebhardt, Bishop of Ratisbon, urged the claims of his favorite arch-priest Cuno for the vacant see of Eichstedt. Henry refused on the ground that Cuno was the son of a priest, and therefore by the established canons ineligible to the position. The reason, though unanswerable, was so novel that Gebhardt refused to accept it as the true one, and Henry, to pacify him, promised to nominate any other one of the Ratisbon clergy whom Gebhardt might select. The choice fell upon a young and unknown man, also named Gebhardt, whose abilities, brought into notice thus accidentally, rendered him afterwards more conspicuous as Pope Victor II.[453]
Henry did not neglect the opportunity now afforded him of carrying into effect his reformatory views, and in his selection of a pontiff he was apparently influenced by the conviction that the Italian clergy were too hopelessly corrupt for him to expect from them assistance in his plans. Clement exchanged with him promises of mutual support in the arduous undertaking. We have nothing to do with the most crying evil; the one first vigorously attacked, and the one which was productive of the greatest real detriment to the church—simony. That was everywhere open and avowed. From the blessing of the priest to the nomination for a primacy, every ecclesiastical act was the subject of bargain and sale, reduced in many places to a regular scale of prices.[454] To remove this scandal, Clement set vigorously to work, and soon found an united opposition which promised little for the success of the undertaking. He was doubtless sincere, but he was clearly alone in his struggle with the fierce Italian prelates, who were resolved not to abandon the emoluments and indulgences to which they had grown accustomed, and the result of his efforts did not fulfil the expectations of the more sanguine aspirants for the purification of the church. Even his patron the emperor appears to have doubted his earnestness in the cause, for we find Henry not only addressing him a letter urging him to fresh exertion, but intrusting it to Peter Damiani, with a command to present it in person, and to use all his powers of exhortation to stimulate the flagging zeal of the pope. Damiani refused to leave his hermitage even at the imperial mandate, but he enclosed the missive in one of his own, deploring the unhealed wounds of the church, recapitulating the shortcomings of Clement, and goading him to fresh efforts, in a style which savored little of the reverence due to the Vicegerent of God.[455] The pontifical crown was evidently not a wreath of roses. Clement sank under its weight, and died October 9th, 1047, in less than ten months after he had accepted the perilous dignity.