Yet, instead of seeking to deprive bishops and abbots of wealth and troops and political influence, Hildebrand wanted them to have more. He encouraged Anselm of Lucca to lead the Tuscan troops; he proposed in person to lead the Christian armies against the Turks. Throughout life he called for more men and more money, and he never hesitated an instant to set swords flying if he could gain his religious aim by that means. He was as warlike as a full-blooded Norman. Bishop Mathew calls him "truculent," and reminds us how, before he became Pope, Abbot Didier wanted to punish an abbot, who had gouged out the eyes of some of his monks for their sins, but Hildebrand protected the man and afterwards made him a bishop. Didier and Damiani were equally shocked at his political activity. He scorned the distinction between spiritual and temporal things—except when he was endeavouring to keep laymen in their proper place—and argued repeatedly that, if a Pope had supreme power in matters of religion, he very clearly had it in the less important concerns of earth: if a Pope could open and close the gates of heaven, he could most assuredly open and close the gates of earthly kingdoms. He went so far as to say that "all worldly things, be they honours, empires, kingdoms, principalities, or duchies," he could bestow on whomsoever he wished.[207] On this ground he, as we shall see, grasped the flimsiest pretexts for claiming a kingdom as a fief of the Roman See, relying often on forged or perverted texts, and he quite clearly aimed at bringing all the countries in Christendom under the feudal lordship of the Papacy, to be bestowed for "obedience" and withdrawn for "disobedience" at the will of the Pope. I do not admit that he was ambitious, even ambitious for his See. He believed that this sacerdocracy was willed by God and was the only means of maintaining religion and morality in Europe. But there were human aspects of these questions which Gregory ignored, and his bitter and numerous opponents retorted that he was a fool or a fanatic.
This ideal did not merely grow in Gregory's mind in the heat of his combats. It is seen in his earliest letters. Before he was consecrated he wrote to remind "the Princes of Spain" that that country belonged to the Roman See; that the Popes had never abandoned their right to it, even when it was held by the Moors: and that the kings who were now wresting it from the Moors held their kingdoms "on behalf of St. Peter" (ex parte S. Petri) and on condition that they rendered feudal military service when summoned to do so.[208] A few weeks later he wrote to Duke Godfrey, referring to Henry IV.: "If he returns hatred for love, and shows contempt for Almighty God for the honour conferred on him, the imprecation which runs, 'Cursed is he that refraineth his sword from blood,' will not, with God's help, fall on us."[209] In June he told Beatrice and Mathilda that he would resist the King, if necessary, "to the shedding of blood."[210] In the same month he compelled Landulph of Benevento and Richard of Capua to swear fealty to the Roman See. In November he told Lanfranc, the greatest prelate of England, that he was astounded at his "audacity" (frons) in neglecting Papal orders.[211] In December he wrote to a French bishop that if King Philip did not amend his ways he would smite the French people with "the sword of a general anathema" and they would "refuse to obey him further."[212] A remarkable record for the first nine months of his Pontificate.
I shall not in the least misrepresent his work if I dismiss other matters briefly and enlarge on his attempts to realize his sacerdocratic ideal: especially his struggle with Henry IV. His campaign against simony and clerical incontinence fills the whole period of his Pontificate, but cannot be described in detail. Year by year his handful of Italian bishops—remoter bishops generally ignored his drastic orders to come to Rome—met in Lenten synods at Rome, held their lighted candles while he read the ever-lengthening list of the excommunicated, and shuddered at his vigorous imprecations. Then his legates went out over Europe, but few prelates were willing or able to promulgate the decrees they brought, and the campaign succeeded only where it could rely on the staves of the Patarenes or the swords of the Pope's allies. Other episcopal functions, such as settlements of jurisdiction, occupy a relatively small part of his correspondence. It is enough to say that his eye ranged from Lincoln to Constantinople, from Stockholm to Carthage.
In Italy, his chief concern was to concentrate the southern States under his lead and form a military bulwark against the northerners. The Roman militia was strengthened: the petty princes of Benevento and Capua were persuaded that their shrunken territories were safer from the aggressions of Robert Guiscard if they paid allegiance to St. Peter: Mathilda of Tuscany did not even need to be persuaded to hold her troops at his disposal. It would be safe to say that Italy alone would have wrecked Gregory's policy but for the lucky accident of Tuscany passing to the pious Mathilda. She clung to Gregory so tenaciously that his opponents affected to see a scandal in the association.
The chief thorn in his side was Robert Guiscard, who had founded a kingdom in southern Italy and refused to do homage. He laid waste the territory of the Pope's allies, and smiled at the anathema put on him. Gregory, as usual, turned to the sword. The Eastern Emperor had asked aid against the Turks, and Gregory summoned all Christian princes to contribute troops. He would lead the army in person, he said: supported by the aged Beatrice and the tender Mathilda. The northern princes smiled, and the plan of a crusade came to naught. But it was not merely concern for Constantinople which made Gregory dangerously ill when his plan miscarried. Historians generally overlook his letter to William of Burgundy,[213] in which he plainly states that he wants the troops for the purpose of intimidating—if not conquering—Robert: "perhaps," he says, they may afterwards proceed to the East. He was still more irritated when Robert himself entered into an alliance with Constantinople. Gregory angrily wrote to ask the King of Denmark to send his son with an army and wrest the south of Italy from the "vile heretics" who held it.[214]
He was similarly thwarted in nearly every country in Europe, and his anathemas were terrible to hear. I have already referred to his haughty language to Lanfranc, yet the English bishops continued, year after year, to ignore the imperious summons to attend his Roman synods. In 1079 Gregory wrote to Lanfranc that he understood that the King prevented them from coming, and was surprised that the "superstitious love" or fear of any man should come between him and his duty.[215] Lanfranc still evaded, almost fooled, him, and, when Gregory threatened to suspend him, affected to be engaged in examining the claims of an Anti-Pope whom Henry IV. had set up. With William himself Gregory was bitterly disappointed. When, in 1080, he ordered the King to collect the arrears of Peter's Pence and acknowledge his feudal obligations to Rome, William somewhat contemptuously replied that he would forward the money, but would pay allegiance to no man. Gregory was so angry that he told his legates that the money was no use without the "honour."[216]
The bishops of France were equally deaf to his annual summons to his Lenten synods and his orders that they should punish their King. He threatened, not only to pronounce an interdict, but that he would "endeavour in every way to take the kingdom of France from him."[217] A similar threat of military action was sent to Spain. King Alphonso of Leon married a relative, and Gregory wrote to the abbot of Cluny that if the King did not obey his orders and dismiss her he would "not think it too great a trouble to go ourselves to Spain and concert severe and painful action [evidently military action] against him."[218] This policy of promoting or blessing invasions and usurpations was carried out in the case of smaller kingdoms. King Solomon was ejected from Hungary and appealed to Rome. Gregory blessed the usurper (who craftily promised to be a good son of the Church) and told Solomon that he had deserved the calamity by receiving his kingdom, which had been given to St. Peter by the earlier King Stephen, at the hand of Henry IV.[219] Then Ladislaus of Hungary seized Dalmatia and sought to strengthen his position by paying fealty to the Pope for it; so that, when the Dalmatians attempted to recover their independence, Gregory denounced them as "rebels against the Blessed Peter."[220] Lastly, when the Russian king was displaced by his brothers, and promised to acknowledge the feudal supremacy of Rome if he were restored, Gregory induced Boleslaus of Poland to restore him.
If this kind of procedure incurred the censure of Gregory's great friend and successor, Abbot Didier, we can easily understand the violent language of his opponents. These are usually writers of the Lombard-German faction, and we must now endeavour to disentangle from the contradictory narratives of the partisan writers the truth about his relations with Henry IV. The facts I have hitherto given are taken from the authentic letters of Gregory.
Henry IV. was a boy at the time of his father's death, and it is beyond dispute that the prelates and nobles who quarrelled for power shamefully neglected, or consciously misdirected, his education. When he came to the throne he was a wilful, loose-living, and imperious young man, forced into marriage with a woman whom he disliked. Exhortations to abandon simony and avoid evil companions fell lightly on such ears, and, as we saw, Gregory's early letters threatened war. Five of Henry's favourites were under sentence of excommunication, yet the young King would not part with them. Gregory turned to the bishops, but they flatly refused to allow his legates to call a synod in Germany, and his excommunication of the Archbishop of Hamburg only embittered them. Suddenly, however, before the end of 1073, Gregory was delighted to receive a most humble and submissive letter from Henry, and legates were sent to absolve him.
The cause of this action of the imperious young King gives us at once a most important clue to what is called the later triumph of Gregory at Canossa. The popular impression that that famous scene represented a triumph of spiritual power over the passions of man is wholly wrong. It was an episode in a political struggle. Henry's kingdom embraced Saxony and Swabia; and the Saxons cherished a sombre memory of their recent incorporation, while Rudolph of Swabia had a mind to make profit by the troubles of his suzerain and astutely courted the favour of the Pope. Gregory could not fail to grasp the situation, and his struggle against Henry is a series of attempts by the Pope to foment and take advantage of Henry's difficulties with his vassals, ending in the complete triumph of the King.