Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

‘Blessed Peter ... as thy representative I have received from God the power to bind and loose in Heaven and on earth. For the honour and security of thy Church, in the name of God Almighty, I prohibit Henry the King, son of Henry the Emperor, ... from ruling Germany and Italy. I release all Christians from the oaths of fealty they may have taken to him, and I order that no one shall obey him.’

This decree provided occasion for all German nobles whom Henry IV had alienated to gather under the banner of the papal legate, and for the oppressed Saxon countryside to renew the serious revolt which had broken out two years before. Even the German bishops grew frightened of the part they had played in deposing Gregory, so that the once-powerful ruler found himself looked upon as an outlaw with scarcely a real friend, save the wife he had ill-treated, and no hope save submission. In the winter of 1066, as an old story tells, when the mountains were frozen hard with snow and ice, he and his wife and one attendant crossed the Alps on sledges, and sought the Pope in his castle of Canossa, built amidst the highest ridges of the Apennines.

Gregory coldly refused him audience. The King, he intimated, might declare that he was repentant, he had done so often in the past, but words were not deeds. Putting aside his royal robes and clad in a penitent’s woollen tunic, Henry to show his sincerity remained barefoot for three days like a beggar, in the castle yard. Then only on the entreaty of some Italian friends was he admitted to the presence of the Pope, who at his cry of ‘Holy Father, spare me!’ raised him up and gave him formal forgiveness.

The scene at Canossa is so dramatic in its display of Hildebrand’s triumph and the Emperor’s humiliation that it has lived in the world’s memory: yet it was no closing act in their struggle, but merely an episode that passed and left little mark. Henry IV, as soon as he could win himself a following in Germany and Italy, returned to the practice of lay investiture, and Gregory VII, who had never believed in his sincerity, continued to denounce him and plan the coronation of rival emperors.

Imperial ambitions at last reached their height, for Henry IV succeeded in inducing German and Italian bishops to depose Gregory once more and even appoint an Anti-Pope, in whose name imperial armies ravaged Lombardy, forced their way as far south as Rome, and besieged Hildebrand in the castle of St. Angelo. From this predicament he was rescued by the Normans of South Italy under Robert Guiscard; but these ruthless vassals of the Church massacred and looted the Holy City directly they had scaled the walls, and when they turned homewards, carrying Gregory VII with them, they left half Rome in ruins.

Gregory VII died not long afterwards, homeless and deposed, but with unshaken confidence in the righteousness of his cause. ‘I have loved justice and hated iniquity,’ he said, during his last illness, ‘therefore I die in exile.’ ‘In exile thou couldst not die,’ replied a bishop standing at his bedside. ‘Vicar of Christ and His Apostles, thou hast received the nations for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.’ Future history was to show that Hildebrand in defeat had achieved more than his rival in victory.

Henry IV outlived his enemy by twenty-one years, but they were bitter with disillusionment. Harassed by Gregory VII’s successors who continued to advocate papal supremacy, faced by one rebellion after another in Germany and Italy, Henry IV yielded at last to weariness and old age, when he found his sons had become leaders of the forces most hostile to him. Even in his submission to their demands he found no peace, for he was thrust into prison, compelled to abdicate, and left to die miserably of starvation and neglect.

In the reign of his son, Henry V, a compromise on the ‘Investiture Question’ was arranged between Church and Empire. By the Concordat of Worms it was agreed first that rulers should renounce their claim to invest bishops and abbots with the ring and crozier. These were to be given by representatives of the Church to candidates chosen and approved by them; but the second point of importance was that this ceremony must take place in the presence of the king or his representative, to whom the new bishop or abbot would at once do homage for his lands and offices.

Almost a similar settlement had been arrived at between Church and State in England some fifteen years earlier, arising out of the refusal of Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, to do homage to Henry I, the Conqueror’s son. In this case there was no clash of bitterness and dislike, for the old archbishop was perfectly loyal to the king at heart, though prepared to go to the stake on a matter of conscience, as this question had become to earnest churchmen. His master, on his side, respected Anselm’s saintly character and only wished to safeguard his royal rights over all his subjects.

Compromise was therefore a matter of rejoicing on both sides, and with the decisions of the Council at Worms investiture ceased to be a vital problem. Its importance lies in the fact that it was one of the first battles between Church and State and, though a compromise, yet a formal victory for the Church. The dependence of the Papacy on the imperial government that Europe had considered natural in the days of Charlemagne, or of Otto the Great, was a thing of the past, for the acknowledgement of ecclesiastical freedom from lay supremacy, one of the main issues for which Hildebrand had struggled, schemed, and died, had been won by his successors following in his steps.