To Hildebrand but one course seemed open, a desperate one, whose hazard showed the audacity of the genius that conceived it. It was nothing less than to declare the Papacy a world monarchy, and to force universal reform by the combined power of the secular and spiritual sceptre held in his own hand. In his bull against the Emperor Henry IV. he used these words: “Come now, I pray thee, O most holy Father, and ye princes [St. Peter and St. Paul], that all the world may know that if ye are able to bind and loose in heaven, ye are able on earth to take away, or to give to each according to his merits, empires, kingdoms, duchies, marquisates, counties, and the possessions of all men.... If ye judge in spiritual affairs, how great must be your power in secular! and if ye are to judge angels, who rule over proud princes, what may ye not do to these their servants! Let kings, then, and all the princes of the world learn what ye are and how great is your power, and fear to treat with disrespect the mandates of the church.”
To practicalize this enormous claim, the Pope made two demands, which threw Europe into a state of turmoil, (1) He ordered the renunciation of all investitures of religious office by secular potentates. The clergy held of the empire cities, duchies, entire provinces, rights of levying taxes, coinage, etc., amounting to one half of all property. The sees thus held Hildebrand declared to be vacated until their occupants should again receive them from his hand under pledge of absolute obedience to the papal, as opposed to the imperial, authority. By this stroke the Pope would gather to himself the practical control of all countries. (2) Hildebrand forbade the marriage of the clergy—a custom wide-spread at the time—and commanded those who had entered into matrimony, however innocently and legally, to forsake their wives, as having been but concubines, and their children, since logically they were but bastards. By enforcing the celibacy of the clergy, he would have at his call an army of men without domestic ties, care, or encumbrance, and, so far as possible to human nature, divested of individuality, and thus the pliant agents of his single will.
The audacity of Hildebrand’s scheme will be noted by comparing it with the attitude of the most devoted adherents to the papal authority previous to his time.
The capitularies of Charlemagne contain many rules for the regulation of religious duties. The emperor himself (794) presided at the Synod of Frankfort, though a papal legate was in attendance. While he brought the church all possible help as an ally, and yielded to it all obedience as a private Christian, he never allowed his imperial authority to be under so much as the shadow of control by the papal. He suffered but one religion in his domains, that which had the Pope for its chief administrator; but he held with equal strenuousness that the emperor was the vicar of God in things temporal.
From 964 to 1055 the popes had been the direct nominees of the emperor. In 1059 the papal election devolved for the first time upon the conclave of cardinals; but the Lateran Council decreed that the imperial confirmation must follow. Though in 1061 Alexander II. was chosen without imperial sanction, yet in 1073 Hildebrand himself, becoming Pope as Gregory VII., did not venture to discharge the duties of the office without first asking and obtaining the emperor’s assent.
But this outward deference to the secular power was only that he might grasp more securely the weapon with which he would beat that power to pieces. When the Emperor Henry IV. resented the sweeping claim of the Pope, Hildebrand launched against him all the terrors of the pontifical throne. His bull reads as follows: “Henry and all of his adherents I excommunicate and bind in the fetters of anathema; on the part of almighty God, I interdict him from the government of all Germany and Italy; I deprive him of all royal power and dignity; I prohibit every Christian from rendering him obedience as king; I absolve all who have sworn or shall swear allegiance to his sovereignty from their oaths.”
(For the details of this controversy and the general history of Hildebrand, the reader is referred to the previous volume in this series, Vincent’s “Age of Hildebrand.”)
This policy of the Papacy to make itself the world monarchy had a direct bearing upon the crusades and facilitated the enterprise. The astute mind of Hildebrand saw that a movement which should combine the Catholics of all countries in Europe under his command would immensely augment his prestige as their great overlord. During his pontificate there opportunely arrived at Rome messengers from the Greek emperor at Constantinople, beseeching the aid of Western Christendom in expelling the Turks, who were menacing the capital of the East. Hildebrand, consistently with his policy, prescribed as the condition of such aid the recognition on the part of the Greek Church of the headship of the Roman pontiff. But in this demand he overshot the mark, while at the same time the apathy of the Latin Christians towards their Greek brethren, and his own controversy with the German emperor, left him no opportunity to launch the movement. It was left to Urban II., his second successor in the pontificate, to undertake the great adventure. As Dean Milman remarks, “No event could be more favorable or more opportune for the advancement of the great papal object of ambition, the acknowledged supremacy over Latin Christendom, or for the elevation of Urban himself over the rival Pope [Guibert] and the temporal sovereign, his enemies.”
CHAPTER VII.
THE MOHAMMEDAN MENACE—THE RISE OF ISLAM—SARACENS—TURKS.
The rapid rise and wide-spread conquest of Mohammedanism make one of the most startling phenomena of history. If its story excites our wonder in these days, while we are watching its decadence, we may imagine the consternation wrought when its swarming hosts, with the prestige of having conquered all western Asia, were breaking through the barriers of Christendom.