The Makers of Modern Rome, in Four Books

by Mrs. Oliphant

"Our heart is full of sadness and sorrow to think that for the pride of one man so many thousands of Christians may be delivered over to death both temporal and eternal, the Christian religion shaken to its foundations, and the Roman Empire precipitated into ruin. Both of these kings seek aid from us, or rather from the Apostolic See, which we occupy, though unworthy; and we, trusting in the mercy of Almighty God, and the help of the blessed Peter, with the aid of your advice, you who fear God and love the Church, are ready to examine with care the right on either side and to help him whom justice notoriously calls to the administration of the kingdom....

"You know, dear brethren, that since our departure from Rome we have lived in the midst of dangers among the enemies of the faith; but neither from fear nor from love have we promised any help, but justice to one or other of these kings. We prefer to die, if necessary, rather than to consent by our own will that the Church of God should be put from her place; for we know that we have been ordained and set upon the apostolic chair in order to seek in our life not our own interests but those of Christ, and to follow through a thousand labours in the steps of the fathers to the future and eternal repose, by the mercy of God."

The reader must remember that Gregory had very good reason for all that he said, and that irrespective of the claims of the Church a wise and impartial umpire at such a moment might have been of the last importance to Germany; also that his services had been asked for in this capacity, and that therefore he had a right to insist upon being heard. The position which he claimed had been offered to him; and he was entitled to ask that such an important matter should not be settled in his absence.

The remonstrances which the Pope continued to make by his own voice and those of his legates as long as any remonstrance was possible, were however regarded by neither party. Neither the authority of Rome nor the visible wisdom of settling a question which must convulse the world and tear Germany in pieces, peacefully and on the foundation of justice if that were possible, as urged by Gregory—could prevail, nor ever has prevailed on any similar occasion against the passions and ambitions of men. It was a devout imagination, appealing to certain minds here and there by the highest motives, and naturally by very different ones to all the interested souls likely to be advantaged by it, which always form the reverse of the medal; but men with arms in their hands and all the excitements of faction and party, of imperial loss and gain around them, were little like to await a severe and impartial judgment. The German bishops made a curious remonstrance in their turn against the reception by Gregory of Henry's professions of penitence, and on either side there was a band of ecclesiastics, presumably not all good or all bad perplexing every judgment.

We have fortunately nothing to do with the bloody struggles of Rudolf and Henry. When the latter made his way again over the Alps, to defend his rights, carrying with him the Iron Crown which Gregory's refusal had prevented him from assuming—he carried it away however, though he did not dare to put it on, a curious mixture of timidity and furtive daring—the Pope, up to that moment virtually confined within the circle of the mountain strongholds of Tuscany, returned to Rome: where he continued to be assailed by constant and repeated entreaties to take up one or the other side, his own council of the Lateran inclining towards Henry. But nothing moved him from his determination that this question should be decided by a Diet under his own presidence, and by that alone. This question runs through the entire story of the period from year to year. No council—and in addition to the usual yearly council held always in the beginning of Lent, at the Lateran, there seem to have been various others between whiles, made compulsory by the agitation of the time—could take place without the arrival of the two bands of German ambassadors, one from Henry and the other from Rudolf, to plead the cause of their respective masters, both professing all obedience, and inviting a decision in their favour by every argument: but neither taking a single step to bring about the one thing which the Pope demanded—a lawful assembly to settle the question.

There is no pretence that Gregory treated them with anything but the severest impartiality, or that he at any time departed from the condition he had proposed from the first—the only preference given to one above the other being that he is said to have sent his apostolical blessing to Rudolf, a virtuous prince and his friend, and not to Henry the apostate and false penitent, which is scarcely wonderful. But it is easy to understand the agitation in which the constant arrival of these ambassadors must have kept Rome, a city so prone to agitation, and with so many parties within its own walls, seditious nobles and undisciplined priests, and the ever-restless, ever-factious populace, struggling continually for some new thing. The envoys of Henry would seem to have had more or less the popular favour: they were probably a more showy band than the heavier Saxons: and Henry's name and the prestige of his great father, and all those royal shows which must still have been remembered in the city, the coronation of the former Henry in St. Peter's, and all its attendant ceremonials and expenses, must have attached a certain interest to his name. Agnes too, the empress, who had died so recently in the odour of sanctity among them, must have left behind her, whether she loved him or not, a certain prepossession in favour of her son. And the crowd took sides no doubt, and in its crushing and pressing to see the strangers, in the great Lateran square or by the gates of their lodging, formed itself into parties attracted by a glance or a smile, made into enemies by a hasty word, and preparing for the greater troubles and conflicts which were about to come.

In the midst of these continual arrivals and departures and while the trumpets of the Saxon or the German party were still tingling in the air, and the velvet and jewels of the ambassadors had scarcely ceased to gleam among the dark robes of the clergy, there came up other matters of a nature more suitable to the sacred courts and the interests of the Church. Berengarius of Tours, a mild and speculative thinker, as often convincing himself that he was wrong as proving himself to be right, appeared before the council of 1079 to answer for certain heresies respecting the Eucharist, of which there had often already been question. His opinions were those of Luther, of whom he is constantly called the precursor: but there was little of Luther's strength in this gentle heretic, who had already recanted publicly, and then resumed his peculiar teachings, with a simplicity that for a time disarmed criticism. Gregory had always been his friend and protector, tolerating if not sharing his opinions, which were not such as moved or interested deeply the Church at the moment: for the age was not heretical, and the example of such a candid offender, who did not attempt to resist the arguments brought against him, was rather edifying than otherwise. At least there were no theological arguments of fire and sword, no rack or stake for the heretic in Gregory's day. The pressure of theological judgment, however, became too strong for the Pope to resist, preoccupied as he was with other matters, and Berengarius was once more compelled to recant, which he did cordially, with the same result as before.

It was a more congenial occupation for the vigilant head of the Church to watch over the extension of the faith than to promote the internal discipline of the fold of Christ by prosecutions for heresy. His gaze penetrated the mists of the far north, and we find Gregory forestalling (as indeed his great predecessor the first Gregory had done before him) the missionaries of our own day in the expedient of training young natives to preach the faith among their countrymen, over which there was much modern rejoicing when it was first adopted in recent days, as an entirely new and altogether wise thing. Gregory the Great had already practised it with his Anglo-Saxon boys: and Gregory VII. recommended it to Olaf, king of Norway, to whom he wrote that he would fain have sent a sufficient number of priests to his distant country: "But as this is very difficult because of the great distance and difference of language, we pray you, as we have also asked from the king of Denmark, to send to our apostolical court some young nobles of your country in order that being nourished with care in divine knowledge under the wings of St. Peter and St. Paul, they may carry back to you the counsels of the Apostolical See, arriving among you, not as men unknown, but as brothers—and preaching to you the duties of Christianity, not as strangers and ignorant, but as men whose language is yours, and who are yet trained and powerful in knowledge and morals." Thus, while the toils were gathering round his feet at home, and the most ancient centre of Christianity was ready to cast him out as a fugitive, the great Pope was extending the invisible links of Christian fealty to the ends of the earth.

It was in the year 1080, three years after the events of Canossa, that the next step was taken by Gregory. In that long interval he had never ceased to insist upon the only lawful mode of settling the quarrel, i.e., the assembly in Germany of all the persons most concerned, to take the whole matter into solemn consideration and come to a permanent conclusion upon grounds more solid than the appeal to arms which ravaged the empire, and which, constantly fluctuating, gave the temporary victory now to one side, now to the other. The age was far from being ripe for any such expedient as arbitration, and the ordeal of arms was its most natural method: yet the proposal had proceeded in the first place from the Teutonic princes themselves, and it was entirely in accordance with German laws and primitive procedure. And except the Pope, or some other great churchman, there was no possible president of such a Diet, or any one who could have had even a pretence of impartiality. He was the only man who could maintain the balance and see justice done, even in theory: for the awe of his presence and of his spiritual powers might have restrained these fierce princes and barons and made some sort of reasonable discussion possible. For all these reasons, and also no doubt to assert practically the claim he had made for himself and his successors to be the judges of the earth and settle all such disputes as representatives of God, he was very unwilling to give up the project. It had come to be evident, however, in the spring of 1080 when Lent began and the usual Council of the Lateran assembled, that Henry would never consent to this Diet, the very reason for which was the discussion of claims which he held as divine and infallible. Rudolf, his rival, was, or professed to be, as anxious for it as the Pope, though he never had taken any step to make Gregory's journey across the Alps possible. But at last it would seem that all parties gave up the thought of any such means of making peace. The state of affairs in Germany was daily becoming more serious, and when the envoys of Rudolf, after many fruitless visits to Rome, appeared at last with a sort of ultimatum, demanding that some decisive step should be taken to put an end to the suspense, there was no longer any possibility of further delay. Henry also sent ambassadors on the same occasion: but they came late, and were not received. The Council of the Lateran met, no doubt with many searchings of heart and a great excitement pervading the assembly where matters of such importance were about to be settled, and such a decision as had never been asked from any Pope before, was about to be given from the chair of St. Peter to a half-believing, half-rebellious world. Whether any one really believed that a question involving the succession to the empire could be solved in this way, it is impossible to tell: but the envoys of Rudolf, whose arms had been for the moment victorious, and who had just driven Henry a fugitive before him, made their appeal to the Pope with a vehemence almost tragic, as to one whose power and responsibility in the matter were beyond doubt. The statement of their case before the Council was as follows:

"We delegates of our lord the King, Rudolf, and of the princes, we complain before God, and before St. Peter to you our father and this holy Council, that Henry, set aside by your Apostolic authority from the kingdom, has notwithstanding your prohibition invaded the said kingdom, and has devastated everything around by sword and fire and pillage; he has with impious cruelty, driven bishops and archbishops out of their sees, and has distributed their dignities as fiefs among his partisans. Werner of holy memory, archbishop of Magdeburg, has perished by his tyranny; Aldebert, bishop of Worms, is still held in prison contrary to the Apostolic order; many thousands of men have been slaughtered by his faction, many churches pillaged, burned and destroyed. The assaults of Henry upon our princes because they withdrew their obedience from him according to the command of the Apostolic See, are numberless. And the assembly which you have desired to call together, Holy Father, for the establishment of the truth and of peace, has not been held, solely by the fault of Henry and his adherents. For these reasons we supplicate your clemency in our own name and that of the Holy Church of God to do justice upon the sacrilegious violator of the Church."