Opposition to further reforms.
The reform party which directed the policy of the popes had, it hoped, freed the head of the Church from the control of worldly men by putting his election in the hands of the Roman clergy. It now proposed to emancipate the Church as a whole from the base entanglements of earth: first, by strictly forbidding the married clergy to perform religious functions and by exhorting their flocks to refuse to attend their ministrations; and secondly, by depriving the kings and feudal lords of their influence over the choice of the bishops and abbots, since this influence was deemed the chief cause of worldliness among the prelates. Naturally these last measures met with far more general opposition than the new way of electing the pope. An attempt to expel the married clergy from Milan led to a popular revolt, in which the pope's legate actually found his life in danger. The decrees forbidding clergymen to receive their lands and offices from laymen received little attention from either the clergy or the feudal lords. The magnitude of the task which the popes had undertaken first became fully apparent when Hildebrand himself ascended the papal throne, in 1073, as Gregory VII.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN GREGORY VII AND HENRY IV
The Dictatus of Gregory VII.
63. Among the writings of Gregory VII there is a very brief statement, called the Dictatus, of the powers which he believed the popes to possess. Its chief claims are the following: The pope enjoys a unique title; he is the only universal bishop and may depose and reinstate other bishops or transfer them from place to place. No council of the Church may be regarded as speaking for Christendom without his consent. The Roman Church has never erred, nor will it err to all eternity. No one may be considered a Catholic Christian who does not agree with the Roman Church. No book is authoritative unless it has received the papal sanction.
Gregory does not stop with asserting the pope's complete supremacy over the Church; he goes still further and claims for him the right to restrain the civil government when it seems necessary in the cause of righteousness. He says that "the Pope is the only person whose feet are kissed by all princes"; that he may depose emperors and "absolve subjects from allegiance to an unjust ruler." No one shall dare to condemn one who appeals to the pope. No one may annul a decree of the pope, though the pope may declare null and void the decrees of all other earthly powers; and no one may pass judgment upon his acts.[109]