§ 96.5. Henry III. and his German Popes, A.D. 1046-1057.—With Clement III., 1046-1047, begins a whole series of able German popes, who, elected by Henry III., wrought under his protection powerfully and successfully for the reform of the church. All interested in the reformation, the brethren of Clugny, as well as the disciples of Romuald and the settlers in Vallombrosa (§ [98, 1]), agreed that at the root of all the corruption of the church of that age were simony, or obtaining spiritual offices by purchase or bribery (Acts viii. 19), and Nicolaitanism (§ [27, 8]), under which name were included all fleshly lusts of the clergy, marriage as well as concubinage and unnatural vices. These two were, especially in Italy, so widely spread, that scarcely a priest was to be found who had not been guilty of both. Clement II., in the emperor’s presence, at a synod in Rome in A.D. 1047, began the battle against simony. But he died before the end of the year, probably by poison. While Roman envoys presented themselves at the German court about the election of a new pope, Benedict IX., supported by the Tusculan party, again laid claim to the papal chair, and the emperor had to utter the severest threats before the man of his choice, Poppo, bishop of Brixen, was allowed to occupy the papal chair as Damasus II. Twenty-three days afterwards, however, he was a corpse. This cooled the ardour of German bishops for election to so dangerous a position, and only after long persuasion Bishop Bruno of Toul, the emperor’s cousin and a zealous friend of Clugny, accepted the appointment, on the condition that it should have the approval of the people and clergy of Rome, which, as was to be expected, was given with acclamation. He ascended the papal throne as Leo IX., A.D. 1049-1054. According to a later story conceived in the interests of Hildebrandism, Bruno is said not only to have made his definite acceptance of the imperial call dependent upon the supplementary free election of people and clergy of Rome, but also to have been prevailed upon by Hildebrand, who by his own request accompanied him, to lay aside his papal ornaments, to continue his journey in pilgrim garb, and to make his entrance into the eternal city barefoot, so that the necessary sanction of a formal canonical election might be given to the imperial nomination. Leo found the papal treasures emptied to the last coin and robbed of all its territorial revenues by the nobles. But Hildebrand was his minister of finance, and soon improved the condition of his exchequer. Leo now displayed an unexampled activity in church reform and the purifying of the papacy. No pope travelled about so much as he, none held as many synods in the most distant places and various lands. The uprooting of simony was in all cases the main point in their decrees. By bonds of gratitude and relationship, but above all of common interests, he was attached to the German emperor. He could not therefore think of emancipating the papacy from the imperial suzerainty. Practically Leo succeeded in clearing the Augean stable of the Roman clergy, and filled vacancies with virtuous men brought from far and near. In order to chastise the Normans, put by him under ban because of their rapacity, he himself took the field in A.D. 1053, when the emperor refused to do so, but was taken prisoner after his army had been annihilated, and only succeeded, after he had removed the excommunication, in getting them to kiss his feet with the most profound devotion. He demanded from the Greek emperor full restitution of the donation of Constantine, so far as this was still in the possession of the Byzantines, and his envoys at Constantinople rendered the split between the Eastern and Western churches irreparable (§ [67, 3]). Leo died in A.D. 1054, the only pope for centuries whom the church honours as a saint. A Roman embassy called upon the emperor to nominate a new pope. He fixed upon Gebhardt, bishop of Eichstädt [Eichstadt], who now ascended the papal throne as Victor II., A.D. 1055-1057. Here again monkish tales have transformed a single matter of fact into a romance in the interests of their own party. The Romans wished Hildebrand himself for their pope, but he was unwilling yet to assume such a responsibility. He put himself, however, at the head of an embassy which convinced the emperor of the sinfulness of his former interferences in the papal elections, and persuaded him to set aside the tyrannical power of his patrician’s rank and to resign to the clergy and people their old electoral rights. As candidate for this election, Hildebrand himself chose bishop Gebhardt, the most trusted counsellor of the emperor. After long opposition Henry’s consent was won to this candidature, he even urged the bishop to accept it, who at last submitted with the words: “Now so do I surrender myself to St. Peter, soul and body, but only on the condition that you also yield to him what belongs to him.” The latter, however, seems not mere beating of the air, for the emperor restored to the newly elected pope the patrimony of Peter in the widest extent, and bestowed on him besides the governorship of all Italy.—Henry died in A.D. 1056, after he had appointed his queen Agnes to the regency, and had recommended her to the counsel and good offices of the pope. But the pope’s days were already numbered. He died in A.D. 1057. Hildebrand could not boast of having dominated him, but the position of the powerful monk of Clugny under him had become one of great importance.
§ 96.6. The Papacy under the Control of Hildebrand, A.D. 1057-1078.—After Victor’s death the cardinals without paying any regard to the imperial right, immediately elected Cardinal Frederick of Lorraine, at that time abbot of Monte Cassino, and Hildebrand travelled to Germany in order to obtain the post factum approval of the empress. Stephen IX., A.D. 1057-1058, for so Frederick styled himself, died before Hildebrand’s return. The Tusculan party took advantage of his absence to put forward as pope a partisan of their own, Benedict X., A.D. 1058. But an embassy of Hildebrand’s to the empress secured the succession to bishop Gerhard of Florence. Benedict was obliged to withdraw, and Gerhard ascended the papal throne as Nicholas II., A.D. 1058-1061. With him begins the full development of Hildebrand’s greatness, and from this time, A.D. 1059, when he became archdeacon of Rome, till he himself mounted the papal chair, he was the moving spirit of the Romish hierarchy. By his powerful genius in spite of all hindrances he raised the papacy and the church to a height of power and glory never attained unto before. He thus wrought on, systematically, firmly, and irresistibly advancing toward a complete reformation in ecclesiastical polity. Absolute freedom of the church from the power and influence of the state, and in order to attain this and make it sure, the dominion of the church over the state, papal elections independent of any sort of temporal influence, the complete uprooting of all simoniacal practices, unrelenting strictness in dealing with the immorality of the clergy, invariable enforcement of the law of celibacy, as the most powerful means of emancipating the clergy from the world and the state, filling the sacred offices with the most virtuous and capable men, were some of the noble aims and achievements of this reformation. Hildebrand sought the necessary secular protection and aid for the carrying out of his plans among the Normans. Nicholas II., on the basis of the donation of Constantine, gave as a fief to their leader, Robert Guiscard (§ [95, 1]), the lordship of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, out of which the Saracens had yet to be expelled, and exacted from him the oath of a vassal, by which he bound himself to pay a yearly tribute, to protect the papal chair against all encroachments of its privileges, and above all to maintain the right of papal elections by the “meliores cardinales.” Yet again, Nicholas, when, at a later period, by the help of the Normans, he had broken the power of the Tusculan nobles, issued a decree at a Lateran synod at Rome, in A.D. 1059, by which papal elections (§ [82, 4]) were regulated anew. Of the two extant recensions of this decree, which are distinguished as the papal and the imperial, the former is now universally acknowledged to be the more authentic form. According to it the election lies exclusively with the Roman cardinal priests (§ [97, 1]); to the rest of the clergy as to the people there is left only the right of acclamation, that brought no advantage, and to the emperor, according to Boichorst, the right of concurrence after the election and investiture, according to Granert, the right of veto before the election. This decree, and not less the league with the Normans, were open slights to the imperial claims upon Italy and the papal chair. The empress therefore convened about Easter, A.D. 1061, a council of German bishops, at which Nicholas was deposed, and all his decisions were annulled. Soon after the pope died. The Tusculan party, now joined with the Germans under the Lombard chancellor Wibert, asked a new pope from the empress. At the Council of Basel in A.D. 1061, bishop Cadalus of Parma was appointed. He assumed the name of Honorius II., A.D. 1061-1072. But Hildebrand had already five weeks earlier in concert with the Margravine Beatrice of Canossa, wholly on his own responsibility, chosen bishop Anselm of Lucca, and had him consecrated as Alexander II. A.D. 1061-1073. Honorius advanced to Rome, accompanied by Wibert, and frequently in bloody conflicts conquered the party of his opponent. Duke Godfrey the Bearded of Lorraine, the husband of Beatrice, now appeared as mediator. He made both popes retire to their dioceses and gave to the empress the decision of the controversy. But meanwhile a catastrophe occurred in Germany that led to the most important results. Archbishop Anno of Cologne, standing at the head of a rising of the princes, decoyed the young king of twelve years of age on board a ship at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, and took him to Cologne. The regency and the conduct of government were now transferred to the German bishops collectively, but lay practically in the hands of Anno, who meanwhile, however, since A.D. 1063, found himself obliged to share the power with Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen. At a council held at Augsburg in A.D. 1062, Alexander was acknowledged as the true pope, but Honorius by no means resigned his claims. With a small army he advanced upon Rome in A.D. 1064, seized fort Leo, which had been built and fortified by Leo IV. for defence against the Saracens, entrenched himself in the castle of St. Angelo, and repeatedly routed his opponent’s forces. But Hildebrand reminded the Normans of their oath of fealty. At a council held at Mantua in A.D. 1064 (or 1067?) Alexander was once again acknowledged, and Honorius, whose party the council sought in vain to break up by force of arms, was again deposed. The proud, ambitious and self-seeking priest of Cologne had meanwhile been obliged to transfer to his northern colleague, Adalbert of Bremen, the further education and training of the young king, who, though only fifteen years old was now proclaimed of age in A.D. 1065, as Henry IV., A.D. 1056-1106. If the bishop of Cologne injured the disposition of the royal youth by his excessive harshness and severity, the bishop of Bremen did him irreparable damage by allowing him unrestrained indulgence in his evil passions.
§ 96.7. Gregory VII., A.D. 1073-1085.—Hildebrand had at last brought the papacy to such a height of power that he was able now to put the finishing stroke to his own work in his own name, and so now he mounted the chair of the chief of the apostles, as Gregory VII., elected and enthroned by a disorderly mob. The Lombard and German bishops appealed to the emperor to have the election declared invalid. But he being on all sides threatened with wars and revolution, thought it advisable to forego the assertion of his rights and to win the favour of the pope by a letter full of devotion and humility. At the Roman Fast Synod of A.D. 1074, Gregory renewed the old law of celibacy and rendered it more strict, deposed all married priests or those who got office through simony, and pronounced their priestly acts invalid. The lower clergy, who were generally married, violently opposed the measure, but Gregory’s stronger will prevailed. Papal legates visited all lands, and, supported by the people, insisted upon the strict observance of the papal decree. At the next fast synod in A.D. 1075, the pope began the contest against the usual investiture of the higher clergy by the temporal princes, with ring and staff as symbols of episcopal office. Whoever should accept ecclesiastical office from the hand of a layman was to be deposed, and any potentate who should give investiture should be put under the ban of the church. Here too he thundered his anathema against the counsellors of Henry who should meanwhile prove guilty of the sale of ecclesiastical offices. Henry, whose hands were fully occupied with the rebellious Saxons, at first dismissed his counsellors, but after the close of the wars he reinstated them, and quite ignored the papal prohibition of investiture. Gregory had for a while quite enough to do in Italy. Cencius, the head of the nobles opposed to reform, fell upon him on Christmas, A.D. 1075, during Divine service, and made him prisoner, but the Romans rescued him, and Cencius had to take to flight. On New Year’s Day, A.D. 1076, there appeared at the royal residence at Goslar a papal embassy which threatened the king with excommunication and deposition should he not immediately break off all relations with the counsellors under the ban, and reform his own infamous life. The king burst out in furious rage. He heaped insults upon the legates, and at the Synod of Worms, on 24th January, had the pope formally deposed as a perjured usurper of the papal chair, a tyrant, an adulterer and a sorcerer. The Lombard bishops, too, gave their consent to this decree (§ [97, 5]). At the next Roman Fast Synod on 22nd February, the pope placed all bishops who had taken part in these proceedings under ban, and at the same time solemnly excommunicated and deposed the king, and released all his subjects from the obligation of their oaths of allegiance. Moreover he had the king’s ambassadors, whose life he had preserved from the fury of those present at the meeting of synod by his personal interference, cast into prison, and then in the most contemptuous manner led through the streets. The papal ban made a deep impression upon the German people and princes. One bishop after another gave in, the Saxons raised a new revolt, and at the princes’ conference at Tribur, in October, A.D. 1076, the pope was invited to come personally to Augsburg on 2nd February, to meet and confer with the princes about the affairs of the king. It was resolved that if Henry did not succeed by 22nd February, the first anniversary of the ban, to get it removed, he should for ever forfeit the crown, but that meanwhile he should reside at Spires and continue in the exercise of all royal prerogatives.
§ 96.8. It was for the pope’s advantage to have the business settled upon German soil with the greatest possible publicity. Therefore he scornfully refused the humble petition of the king to send him absolution from Rome, and hastened his preparations for travelling to Augsburg. But Henry went forth to meet him on the way. Shortly before Christmas he escaped from Spires with his wife and child, and in spite of a severe winter crossed Mount Cenis. The Lombards protected him in defying the pretensions of the pope. But Henry’s whole attention was now directed to overturning the machinations of the hostile German princes. So he suddenly appeared at Canossa, where Gregory was staying with the Margravine Matilda, daughter of Beatrice, a princess enthusiastically attached to him and his ideal. This meeting was unexpected and undesired by the pope. There during the cold winter days, from 25th to 27th January, A.D. 1077, stood the son of Henry III. barefoot in the courtyard of the castle of Canossa, wearing a sackcloth shirt, fasting all day and supplicating access to the proud monk. With inflexible severity the pope refused, until at last the tears, entreaties, and reproaches of the margravine overcame his obduracy. Henry promised to submit himself to the future judgment of the pope in regard to his reconciliation with the German princes, and was absolved. Nevertheless the princes at the Assembly at Forcheim in March, with the concurrence of the papal legate, elected a new king in the person of Rudolph of Swabia, Henry’s brother-in-law. Roused to fury, Henry now hastened back to Germany, where soon he gathered round him a great army. Notwithstanding all pressure brought to bear upon him, Gregory maintained for three years a position of neutrality, but at last, in A.D. 1080, at the Roman Fast Synod, where the envoys of the contending kings presented their complaints, he renewed the excommunication and deposition of Henry. Then the bishops of Henry’s party immediately met at Brixen, and hurled the anathema and pronounced sentence of deposition against Gregory, and elected as anti-pope Wibert, formerly chancellor, then archbishop of Ravenna, who assumed the title of Clement III., A.D. 1080-1100. After the death of Rudolph in battle, at Merseburg, in A.D. 1080, Henry marched across the Alps and appeared at Pentecost before the gates of Rome, which were opened to him after a three years’ siege. Clement III. then at Easter, A.D. 1084, set upon him and his queen the imperial crown. Gregory had withdrawn to the Castle of St. Angelo. Henry, however, was compelled by the appearance of a new rival for the crown, Henry, Count of Luxemburg, to return to Germany, and Robert Guiscard, the Norman duke, hastened from the south to deliver the pope, which he accomplished only after Rome had been fearfully devastated. Gregory died in the following year, A.D. 1085, at Salerno. Gregory VII. also took the field against the dissolute and prodigal king of France, Philip I., and threatened him, because of simony, with interdict and deposition. His success here, however, was comparatively small. Philip avowedly submitted to the papal decree, but did not in the least alter his conduct, and Gregory felt that it was not prudent to push matters to an extremity. He showed himself more indulgent toward the powerful William the Conqueror of England, although this prince ruled the church of his dominions with an iron hand, pronounced all church property to be freehold, and was scarcely less guilty of simony than the kings of Germany and France. Yet the pope himself, who hoped to secure the aid of his arms against Henry IV., and sought therefore to dazzle him with the prospect of the imperial throne, winked at his delinquencies, and loaded him with expressions of his good-will. The primate of England, too, the powerful Conqueror’s right-hand supporter, Lanfranc of Canterbury, who bore a grudge against Gregory because of his patronage of the heretic Berengarius [Berengar] (§ [101, 2]), showed no special zeal for the reforms advocated by the pope.At a synod held at Winchester in A.D. 1076, the law of celibacy was enforced, with this limitation, however, that those of the secular clergy who were already married should not be required to put away their wives, but no further marriages among them were to be permitted.[275]
§ 96.9. The Central Idea in Gregory’s Policy was the establishment of a universal theocracy, with the pope as its one visible head, the representative of Christ upon earth, who as such stands over the powers of the world. Alongside of it, indeed, the royal authority was to stand independently as one ordained of God, but it was to confine itself strictly to temporal affairs, and to be directed by the pope in regard to whatever might be partly within and partly without these lines. All states bearing the Christian name were to be bound together as members of one body in the great papal theocracy which had superior to it only God and His law. The princes must receive consecration and Divine sanction from the spiritual power; they are “by the grace of God,” not immediately, however, but only mediately, the church as the middle term stands between them and God. The pope is their arbiter and highest liege lord, whose decisions they are under obligation unconditionally to obey. Royalty stands related to the papacy as the moon to the sun, from which she receives her light and warmth. The church, which lends to the power of the world her Divine authority, can also withdraw it again when it is being misused. When this is done, the obligation of subjects to obey also ceases. Gregory began this gigantic work, not so much to raise himself personally to the utmost pinnacle of power, but rather to save the church from destruction. He certainly was not free from ambition and the lust of ruling, but with him higher than all personal interests was the idea of the high vocation of the church, and to the realizing of it he enthusiastically devoted all the energies of his life. On the other hand, he cannot escape the reproach of having striven with carnal weapons for what he called a spiritual victory, of having meted out unequal measures, where his interests demanded it, in the exercise of his assumed function as judge of kings and princes, and of having occupied himself more with political schemes and intrigues than with the ministry of the church of Christ. His whole career shows him to have been a man of great self reliance, yet, on the other hand, he was able to preserve the consciousness of the poor sinner who seeks and finds salvation only in the mercy of Christ. The strict morality of his life has been admitted even by his bitterest foes.Not infrequently too did he show himself in advance of his time in humanity and liberality of sentiment, as e.g. in the Berengarian controversy (§ [101, 2]), and in his decided disapproval of the prosecution of witches and sorcerers.[276]
§ 96.10. Victor III. and Urban II., A.D. 1086-1099.—Gregory VII. was succeeded by the talented abbot of Monte Cassino, Desiderius, under the title of Victor III., A.D. 1086-1087. Only after great pressure was brought to bear upon him did he consent to leave the cloister, which under his rule had flourished in a remarkable manner; but now aged and sickly, he only enjoyed the pontificate for sixteen months. His successor was bishop Odo, of Ostia, a Frenchman by birth, and a member of the Clugny brotherhood, who took the name of Urban II., A.D. 1088-1099. For a long time he was obliged to give up Rome to the party of the imperial anti-pope. But the enthusiasm with which the idea of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre was taken up, which he proposed to Western Christendom at the Council of Clermont, in A.D. 1095 (§ [94]), secured for him the highest position in his time, and made him strong enough to withstand the opposition of Philip I., king of France, whom he had put under ban at Clermont, on account of his adulterous connection with Bertrada. Returning to Italy from his victorious campaign through France, he was able to celebrate Christmas once again in the Lateran at Rome in A.D. 1096. His main supporters in the conflict against the emperor were the powerful Margravine Matilda, and the emperor’s most dangerous opponent in Germany, duke Welf of Bavaria, whose son of the same name, then in his seventeenth year, was married by the pope to the widowed Matilda, who was now forty years of age, whence arose the first of the anti-imperial and strongly papistical Welf or Guelph party in Germany and Italy. On the other side the margravine succeeded in stirring up Conrad, the son of Henry IV., to rebel against his father, and had him crowned king in A.D. 1087. At Cremona this prince held the pope’s stirrup, and took the oath of obedience to him. The emperor had him deposed in A.D. 1098, and had his second son elected and crowned as Henry V. Urban, who received on his death-bed the news of the destruction of Jerusalem, died in A.D. 1099, and his anti-pope Clement III., who had withdrawn to Ravenna, died in the following year.
§ 96.11. Paschalis II., Gelasius II., and Calixtus II., A.D. 1099-1124.—Urban’s successor, Paschalis II., A.D. 1099-1118, also a member of the Clugny brotherhood, at once stirred up the fire of rebellion against the excommunicated emperor, and favoured a conspiracy of the princes. The young king, at the head of the insurgents, took his father prisoner, and obliged him to abdicate in A.D. 1106. Six months afterwards the emperor died. The church’s curse pursued even his corpse. Twice interred in holy ground, first in the cathedral of Liège, then in the cathedral of Spires, his bones were exhumed and thrown into unconsecrated ground, until at last, in A.D. 1111, his son obtained the withdrawal of the ban. At the Council of Guastalla in A.D. 1106, Paschalis renewed the prohibition of Investiture. But Henry V., A.D. 1106-1125, concerned himself as little about this prohibition as his father had done. No sooner had he seated himself upon the throne in Germany than he crossed the Alps to compel the pope to crown him emperor and concede to him the right of investiture. The pope, who was willing that the church should be poor if only she retained her freedom, being now without counsel or help (for Matilda was old and her warlike spirit was broken, and from the Normans no assistance could be looked for), was driven in A.D. 1111, in his perplexity to offer a compromise, whereby the emperor should surrender investiture to the church, but on the other hand the clergy should return to him all landed property and privileges given them by the state since the times of Charlemagne, while the Patrimony of Peter should continue the property of the pope himself. On the basis of this agreement the coronation of the emperor was to be celebrated in St. Peter’s on 12th Feb., A.D. 1111. But when after the celebration had begun the document which set forth the compact was read, the prelates present in the cathedral raised loud cries of dissent and demanded that it should immediately be cancelled. The coronation was not proceeded with, the pope and his cardinals were thrown into prison, and a revolt of the Romans was suppressed. The pope was then compelled to rescind the synodal decrees and formally to grant to the king the right of investiture; he had also, after solemnly promising never again to put the emperor under ban, to proceed with the coronation. But Hildebrand’s party called the pope to account for this betrayal of the church. A synod at Rome in A.D. 1112 declared the concessions wrung from him invalid, and pronounced the ban against the emperor. The pope, however, remembering his oaths, refused to confirm it, but it was nevertheless proclaimed by his legate in the French and German synods. Matilda’s death in A.D. 1115 called the emperor again to Italy. She had even in the time of Gregory VII. made over all her goods and possessions to the Roman Church; but she had the right of free disposal only in regard to allodial property, not in regard to her feudal territories. Henry, however, now laid claim to all her belongings. At the Fast Synod of A.D. 1116 Paschalis asked pardon of God and man for his sin of weakness, renewed and made more strict the prohibition of investiture, but still stoutly refused to confirm the ban of the emperor. In consequence of a rebellion of the Romans he was obliged to take to flight, and he died in exile in A.D. 1118. The high church party now chose Gelasius II., A.D. 1118-1119, but immediately after the election he was seized by a second Cencius (see § [96, 7]) on account of a private grudge, fearfully maltreated and confined in chains within his castle. The Romans indeed rescued him, but the emperor’s sudden arrival in Rome led him, in order to avoid making inconvenient terms of peace, to seek his own and the church’s safety in flight. The people and nobles in concert with the emperor set up Gregory VIII. as anti-pope. So soon as the emperor left Rome, Gelasius returned. But Cencius fell upon him during Divine service, and only with difficulty he escaped further maltreatment by flight into France, where he died in the monastery of Clugny after a pontificate of scarcely twelve months. The few cardinals present at Clugny elected archbishop Guido of Vienne. He assumed the title of Calixtus II., A.D. 1119-1124. Pope and emperor met together expressing desires for peace. But the auspiciously begun negotiations never got beyond the statement of the terms of contract, and ended in the pope renewing at the Council of Rheims, in A.D. 1119, the anathema against the emperor and anti-pope. Next year Calixtus crossed the Alps. He received a hearty greeting in Rome. He laid siege to the anti-pope in Sutri, took him prisoner, and after the most contumelious treatment before the Roman mob, cast him into a monastic prison. The investiture question, now better understood through learned discussions on civil and ecclesiastical law, was at last definitely settled in the Worms Concordat, as the result of mutual concessions made at the National Assembly at Worms, A.D. 1122. The arrangement come to was this: canonical election of bishops and abbots of the empire by the diocesan clergy and the secular nobles should be restored, and under imperial inspection made free from all coercion, but in disputed elections decisions should be given in accordance with the judgment of the metropolitan and the rest of the bishops, the investing of the elected with the sceptre in Germany before, in other parts of the empire after, consecration, should belong to the emperor, and investiture with ring and staff at the consecration should belong to the pope. This agreement was solemnly ratified at the First Œcumenical Lateran Synod in A.D. 1123.
§ 96.12. The contemporary English Investiture Controversy was brought earlier to a conclusion. William the Conqueror had unopposed put Norman prelates in the place of the English bishops, and had homage rendered him by them, while they received from him investiture with the ring and the staff. William Rufus, the Conqueror’s son and successor, A.D. 1087-1100, a domineering and greedy prince, after Lanfranc’s death in A.D. 1089 (§ [101, 1]) allowed the archbishopric of Canterbury to remain vacant for four years, in order that he might himself enjoy the undisturbed possession of the revenues. It was not till A.D. 1093, during a severe illness and under fear of death, that he agreed to bestow it upon Anselm, the celebrated Abbot of Bec (§ [101, 1], [3]), with the promise to abstain ever afterwards from simony. No sooner had he recovered than he repented him of his promise. He resumed his old practices, and even demanded of Anselm a large sum for his appointment. For peace sake Anselm gave him a voluntary present of money, but it did not satisfy the king. When, in A.D. 1097, the archbishop asked permission to make a journey to Rome in order to have the conflict settled there, the king banished him. In Rome Anselm was honourably received and his conduct was highly approved; but neither Urban II. nor Paschalis II. could venture upon a complete breach with the king. William the Conqueror’s third son, Henry I. Beauclerk, A.D. 1100-1135, who, having also snatched Normandy from his eldest brother Robert, needed the support of the clergy to secure his position, agreed to the return of the exiled primate, and promised to put a stop to every kind of simony; but he demanded the maintenance of investiture and the oath of fealty which Anselm now, in consequence of the decrees of a Roman synod which he had himself agreed to, felt obliged to refuse. Thus again the conflict was renewed. The king now confiscated the goods and revenues of the see, and the archbishop was on the point of issuing an excommunication against him, when at last an understanding was come to in A.D. 1106, through the mediation of the pope, according to which the crown gave up the investiture with ring and staff, and the archbishop agreed to take the oath offealty.—In France, too, from the end of the 11th century, owing to the pressure used by the high church reforming party, the secular power was satisfied with securing the oath of fealty from the higher clergy, without making further claim to investiture.[277]
§ 96.13. The Times of Lothair III. and Conrad III., A.D. 1125-1152.—After the death of Henry V. without issue, the Saxon Lothair, A.D. 1125-1137, was elected, and the Hohenstaufen grandson of Henry IV. descended in the female line was passed over. Honorius II., A.D. 1124-1130, successor of Calixtus II., hastened to confer the papal sanction upon the newly elected emperor, who already upon his election had, by accepting spiritual investiture before temporal investiture, and a minimising of the oath of fealty by ecclesiastical reservations, showed himself ready to support the claims of the clergy. But neither ban nor the preaching of a crusade against Count Roger II. of Sicily (§ [95, 1]) could prevent him from building up a powerful kingdom comprehending all Southern Italy. The next election of the cardinals gives us two popes: Innocent II., A.D. 1130-1143, and Anacletus II., A.D. 1130-1138. The latter, although not the pope of the majority, secured a powerful support in the friendship of Roger II., whom he had crowned king by his legate at Palermo. Innocent, on the other hand, fled to France. There the two oracles of the age, the abbot Peter of Clugny and Bernard of Clairvaux, took his side and won for him the favour of all Cisalpine Europe. Both popes fished for Lothair’s favour with the bait of the promise of imperial coronation. A second edition of the Synod of Sutri would probably have enabled a more powerful king to attain the elevation of Henry III. But Lothair was not the man to seize the opportunity. He decided in favour of the protégé of Bernard, led him back in A.D. 1133 to the eternal city, had himself crowned emperor by him in the Lateran and invested with Matilda’s inheritance, which was declared by the curialists a fief of the empire. But Lothair’s repeated demands, that what had been acquired by the Concordat of Worms should be renounced, were set aside, through the opposition not so much of the pope as of St. Bernard and St. Norbert (§ [98, 2]). At the prayer of the pope, who immediately after Lothair’s departure had been driven out by Roger, and moved by the prophetic exhortations of Bernard, the emperor prepared for a second Roman campaign in A.D. 1136. Leaving the conquest of Rome to the eloquence of the prophet of Clairvaux, he advanced from one victory to another until he brought all Southern Italy under the imperial sway, and died on his return homeward in an Alpine hut in the Tyrol. Fuming with rage Roger now crossed over from Sicily and in a short time he reconquered his southern provinces of Italy. The appointment, however, of a new pope after the death of Anacletus miscarried, and Innocent was able at the Second Œcumenical Lateran Synod in A.D. 1139 to declare the schism at an end. The pope then renewed the excommunication of Roger and pronounced an anathema against the teachings of Arnold of Brescia (§ [108, 7]), a young enthusiastic priest of the school of Abælard, who traced all ecclesiastical corruption back to the wealth of the church and the secular power of the clergy. He next prepared himself for war with Roger. That prince, however, waylaid him and had him brought into his tent, where he and his sons cast themselves at the holy father’s feet and begged for mercy and peace. The pope could do nothing else than play the rôle of the magnanimous given him in this comedy. He had therefore to confirm the hated Norman in the possession of the conquered provinces as a hereditary monarchy with the ecclesiastical privilege of a native legate, and, as some set off to comfort himself with, the prince was to regard the territory as a fief of the papal see. But still greater calamities befell this pope. The republican freedom, which the cities of Tuscany and Lombardy won during the 12th century, awakened also among the Romans a love of liberty. They refused to render obedience in temporal matters to the pope and established in the Capitol a popular senate, which undertook the civil government in the name of the Roman Commune. Innocent died during the revolution. His successor Cœlestine II. held the pontificate for only five months, and Lucius II., after vainly opposing the Commune for seven months, was killed by a stone thrown in a tumult. Eugenius III., A.D. 1145-1153, a scholar and friend of St. Bernard, was obliged immediately after his election to seek safety in flight. An agreement, however, was come to in that same year: the pope acknowledged the government of the Commune as legitimate, while it recognised his superiority and granted to him the investiture of the senators. Yet, though taken back three times to Rome, he could never remain there for more than a few months. He visited France and Germany (Treves) in A.D. 1147. In France he heard of the fall of Edessa. Supported by the fiery zeal of Bernard, the summons to a second crusade (§ [94, 2]) aroused a burning enthusiasm throughout all the West. But in Rome he was unable to offer any effectual resistance to the demagogical preaching by which Arnold of Brescia from A.D. 1146 had inflamed the people and the inferior clergy with an ardent enthusiasm for his ideal constitution of an apostolic church and a democratic state. Since this change of feeling had taken place in Rome, both parties, that of the Capitol as well as that of the Lateran, had repeatedly endeavoured to win to their side the first Hohenstaufen on the German throne, Conrad III., A.D. 1138-1152, by promise of bestowing the imperial crown. But Conrad, meanwhile otherwise occupied, refrained from all intermeddling, and when at last he actually started upon a journey to Rome death overtook him on the way.
§ 96.14. The Times of Frederick I. and Henry VI., A.D. 1152-1190.—The nephew and successor of Conrad III., Frederick I. Barbarossa, A.D. 1152-1190, began his reign with the firm determination to realize fully the ideas of Charlemagne (§ [82, 3]) by his pope Paschalis III., whom at a later period, in A.D. 1165, he had canonized. With profound contempt at heart for the Roman democracy of his time, he concluded a compact in A.D. 1153 with the papal see, which confirmed him in the possession of the imperial crown and gave to the pope the Dominium temporale in the Church States. After the death of Eugenius which soon followed, the aged Anastasius IV. occupied the papal chair for a year and a half, a time of peace and progress. He was succeeded by the powerful Hadrian IV., A.D. 1154-1159. He was an Englishman, Nicholas Breakspear, son of a poor English priest, the first and, down to the present time, the only one of that nation who attained the papal dignity. He pronounced an interdict upon the Romans who had refused him entrance into the inner part of the city and had treacherously slain a cardinal. Rome endured this spiritual famine only for a few weeks, and then purchased deliverance by the expulsion of Arnold of Brescia, who soon thereafter fell into the hands of a cardinal. He was indeed again rescued by force, but Frederick I., who had meanwhile in A.D. 1154 begun his first journey to Rome, and on his way thither had humbled the proud Lombard cities struggling for freedom, urged by the pope, insisted that he should be surrendered up again, and subsequently gave him over to the Roman city prefect, who, in A.D. 1155, without trial or show of justice condemned him to be burnt and had his ashes strewn upon the Tiber. In the camp at Sutri the pope personally greeted the king who, after refusing for several days, at length agreed to show him the customary honour of holding his stirrup, doing it however with a very bad grace. Soon too the senatorial ambassadors of the Roman people, who indulged in bombastic, turgid declamation, presented themselves professing their readiness on consideration of a solemn undertaking to protect the Roman republic, and on payment of five thousand pounds, to proclaim the German king from the Capitol Roman emperor and ruler of the world. With a furious burst of anger Frederick silenced them, and with scathing words showed them how the witness of history pointed the contrast between their miserable condition and the glory and dignity of the German name. Yet on the day of the coronation, which they were not able to prevent, the Romans took revenge for the insults he had heaped upon them by an attack upon the papal residence in the castle of Leo, and upon the imperial camp in front of the city, but were repelled with sore loss. Soon thereafter, in A.D. 1155, the emperor made preparations for returning home, leaving everything else to the pope. The relations between the two became more and more strained from day to day. The Lombards, too, once again rebelled. Frederick therefore in A.D. 1158 made his second expedition to Rome. On the Roncalian plains he held a great assembly which laid down to the Lombards as well as to the pope the imperial prerogatives. Hadrian would have given utterance to his wrath by thundering an anathema, but he was restrained by the hand of death.