Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Greek Law" to "Ground-Squirrel" / Volume 12, Slice 5

by Various

The relations of Gregory to the remaining European states were powerfully influenced by his German policy; for Germany, by engrossing the bulk of his powers, not infrequently compelled him to show to other rulers that moderation and forbearance which he withheld from the German king. The attitude of the Normans brought him a rude awakening. The great concessions made to them under Nicholas II. were not only powerless to stem their advance into central Italy but failed to secure even the expected protection for the papacy. When Gregory was hard pressed by Henry IV., Robert Guiscard left him to his fate, and only interfered when he himself was menaced with the German arms. Then, on the capture of Rome, he abandoned the city to the tender mercies of his warriors, and by the popular indignation evoked by his act brought about the banishment of Gregory.

In the case of several countries, Gregory attempted to establish a claim of suzerainty on the part of the see of St Peter, and to secure the recognition of its self-asserted rights of possession. On the ground of “immemorial usage” Corsica and Sardinia were assumed to belong to the Roman Church. Spain and Hungary were also claimed as her property, and an attempt was made to induce the king of Denmark to hold his realm as a fief from the pope. Philip I. of France, by his simony and the violence of his proceedings against the church, provoked a threat of summary measures; and excommunication, deposition and the interdict, appeared to be imminent in 1074. Gregory, however, refrained from translating his menaces into actions, although the attitude of the king showed no change, for he wished to avoid a dispersion of his strength in the conflict soon to break out in Germany. In England, again, William the Conqueror derived no less benefit from this state of affairs. He felt himself so safe that he interfered autocratically with the management of the church, forbade the bishops to visit Rome, filled bishoprics and abbeys, and evinced little anxiety when the pope expatiated to him on the different principles which he entertained as to the relationship of church and state, or when he prohibited him from commerce or commanded him to acknowledge himself a vassal of the apostolic chair. Gregory had no power to compel the English king to an alteration in his ecclesiastical policy, so chose to ignore what he could not approve, and even considered it advisable to assure him of his particular affection.

Gregory, in fact, established relations—if no more—with every land in Christendom; though these relations did not invariably realize the ecclesiastico-political hopes connected with them. His correspondence extended to Poland, Russia and Bohemia. He wrote in friendly terms to the Saracen king of Mauretania in north Africa, and attempted, though without success, to bring the Armenians into closer contact with Rome. The East, especially, claimed his interest. The ecclesiastical rupture between the bishops of Rome and Byzantium was a severe blow to him, and he laboured hard to restore the former amicable relationship. At that period it was impossible to suspect that the schism implied a definite separation, for prolonged schisms had existed in past centuries, but had always been surmounted in the end. Both sides, moreover, had an interest in repairing the breach between the churches. Thus, immediately on his accession to the pontificate, Gregory sought to come into touch with the emperor Michael VII. and succeeded. When the news of the Saracenic outrages on the Christians in the East filtered to Rome, and the political embarrassments of the Byzantine emperor increased, he conceived the project of a great military expedition and exhorted the faithful to participation in the task of recovering the sepulchre of the Lord (1074). Thus the idea of a crusade to the Holy Land already floated before Gregory’s vision, and his intention was to place himself at the head. But the hour for such a gigantic enterprise was not yet come, and the impending struggle with Henry IV. turned his energies into another channel.

In his treatment of ecclesiastical policy and ecclesiastical reform, Gregory did not stand alone, but on the contrary found powerful support. Since the middle of the 11th century the tendency—mainly represented by Cluny—towards a stricter morality and a more earnest attitude to life, especially on the part of the clergy, had converted the papacy; and, from Leo IX. onward, the popes had taken the lead in the movement. Even before his election, Gregory had gained the confidence of these circles, and, when he assumed the guidance of the church, they laboured for him with extreme devotion. From his letters we see how he fostered his connexion with them and stimulated their zeal, how he strove to awake the consciousness that his cause was the cause of God and that to further it was to render service to God. By this means he created a personal party, unconditionally attached to himself, and he had his confidants in every country. In Italy Bishop Anselm of Lucca, to take an example, belonged to their number. Again, the duchess Beatrice of Tuscany and her daughter the Margravine Matilda, who put her great wealth at his disposal, were of inestimable service. The empress Agnes also adhered to his cause. In upper Italy the Patarenes had worked for him in many ways, and all who stood for their objects stood for the pope. In Germany at the beginning of his reign the higher ranks of the clergy stood aloof from him and were confirmed in their attitude by some of his regulations. But Bishop Altmann of Passau, who has already been mentioned, and Archbishop Gebhard of Salzburg, were among his most zealous followers. That the convent of Hirschau in Swabia was held by Gregory was a fact of much significance, for its monks spread over the land as itinerant agitators and accomplished much for him in southern Germany. In England Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury probably stood closest to him; in France his champion was Bishop Hugo of Dié, who afterwards ascended the archiepiscopal chair of Lyons.

The whole life-work of Gregory VII. was based on his conviction that the church has been founded by God and entrusted with the task of embracing all mankind in a single society in which His will is the only law; that, in her capacity as a divine institution, she outtops all human structures; and that the pope, qua head of the church, is the vice-regent of God on earth, so that disobedience to him implies disobedience to God—or, in other words, a defection from Christianity. Elaborating an idea discoverable in St Augustine, he looked on the worldly state—a purely human creation—as an unhallowed edifice whose character is sufficiently manifest from the fact that it abolishes the equality of man, and that it is built up by violence and injustice. He developed these views in a famous series of letters to Bishop Hermann of Metz. But it is clear from the outset that we are only dealing with reflections of strictly theoretical importance; for any attempt to interpret them in terms of action would have bound the church to annihilate not merely a single definite state, but all states. Thus Gregory, as a politician desirous of achieving some result, was driven in practice to adopt a different standpoint. He acknowledged the existence of the state as a dispensation of Providence, described the coexistence of church and state as a divine ordinance, and emphasized the necessity of union between the sacerdotium and the imperium. But at no period would he have dreamed of putting the two powers on an equality; the superiority of church to state was to him a fact which admitted of no discussion and which he had never doubted. Again, this very superiority of the church implied in his eyes a superiority of the papacy, and he did not shrink from drawing the extreme conclusions from these premises. In other words, he claimed the right of excommunicating and deposing incapable monarchs, and of confirming the choice of their successors. This habit of thought needs to be appreciated in order to understand his efforts to bring individual states into feudal subjection to the chair of St Peter. It was no mere question of formality, but the first step to the realization of his ideal theocracy comprising each and every state.

Since this papal conception of the state involved the exclusion of independence and autonomy, the history of the relationship between church and state is the history of one continued struggle. In the time of Gregory it was the question of appointment to spiritual offices—the so-called investiture—which brought the theoretical controversy to a head. The preparatory steps had already been taken by Leo IX., and the subsequent popes had advanced still further on the path he indicated; but it was reserved for Gregory and his enactments to provoke the outbreak of the great conflict which dominated the following decades. By the first law (1075) the right of investiture for churches was in general terms denied to the laity. In 1078 neglect of this prohibition was made punishable by excommunication, and, by a further decree of the same year, every investiture conferred by a layman was declared invalid and its acceptance pronounced liable to penalty. It was, moreover, enacted that every layman should restore, under pain of excommunication, all lands of the church, held by him as fiefs from princes or clerics; and that, henceforward, the assent of the pope, the archbishop, &c., was requisite for any investiture of ecclesiastical property. Finally in 1080 the forms regulating the canonical appointment to a bishopric were promulgated. In case of a vacancy the election was to be conducted by the people and clergy under the auspices of a bishop nominated by the pope or metropolitan; after which the consent of the pope or archbishop was to be procured; if any violation of these injunctions occurred, the election should be null and void and the right of choice pass to the pope or metropolitan. In so legislating, Gregory had two objects: in the first place, to withdraw the appointment to episcopal offices from the influence of the king; in the second, to replace that influence by his own. The intention was not to increase the power of the metropolitan: he simply desired that the nomination of bishops by the pope should be substituted for the prevalent nomination of bishops by the king. But in this course of action Gregory had a still more ambitious goal before his eyes. If he could once succeed in abolishing the lay investiture the king would, ipso facto, be deprived of his control over the great possessions assigned to the church by himself and his predecessors, and he could have no security that the duties and services attached to those possessions would continue to be discharged for the benefit of the Empire. The bishops in fact were to retain their position as princes of the Empire, with all the lands and rights of supremacy pertaining to them in that capacity, but the bond between them and the Empire was to be dissolved: they were to owe allegiance not to the king, but to the pope—a non-German sovereign who, in consequence of the Italian policy of the German monarchy, found himself in perpetual opposition to Germany. Thus, by his ecclesiastical legislation, Gregory attempted to shake the very foundations on which the constitution of the German empire rested, while completely ignoring the historical development of that constitution (see [Investiture]).

That energy which Gregory threw into the expansion of the papal authority, and which brought him into collision with the secular powers, was manifested no less in the internal government of the church. He wished to see all important matters of dispute referred to Rome; appeals were to be addressed to himself, and he arrogated the right of legislation. The fact that his laws were usually promulgated by Roman synods which he convened during Lent does not imply that these possessed an independent position; on the contrary, they were entirely dominated by his influence, and were no more than the instruments of his will. The centralization of ecclesiastical government in Rome naturally involved a curtailment of the powers of the bishops and metropolitans. Since these in part refused to submit voluntarily and attempted to assert their traditional independence, the pontificate of Gregory is crowded with struggles against the higher ranks of the prelacy. Among the methods he employed to break their power of resistance, the despatch of legates proved peculiarly effective. The regulation, again, that the metropolitans should apply at Rome in person for the pallium—pronounced essential to their qualifications for office—served to school them in humility.

This battle for the foundation of papal omnipotence within the church is connected with his championship of compulsory celibacy among the clergy and his attack on simony. Gregory VII. did not introduce the celibacy of the priesthood into the church, for even in antiquity it was enjoined by numerous laws. He was not even the first pope to renew the injunction in the 11th century, for legislation on the question begins as early as in the reign of Leo IX. But he took up the struggle with greater energy and persistence than his predecessors. In 1074 he published an encyclical, requiring all to renounce their obedience to those bishops who showed indulgence to their clergy in the matter of celibacy. In the following year he commanded the laity to accept no official ministrations from married priests and to rise against all such. He further deprived these clerics of their revenues. Wherever these enactments were proclaimed they encountered tenacious opposition, and violent scenes were not infrequent, as the custom of marriage was widely diffused throughout the contemporary priesthood. Other decrees were issued by Gregory in subsequent years, but were now couched in milder terms, since it was no part of his interest to increase the numbers of the German faction. As to the objectionable nature of simony—the transference or acquisition of a spiritual office for monetary considerations—no doubt could exist in the mind of an earnest Christian, and no theoretical justification was ever attempted. The practice, however, had attained great dimensions both among the clergy and the laity, and the sharp campaign, which had been waged since the days of Leo IX., had done little to limit its scope. The reason was that in many cases it had assumed an extremely subtle form, and detection was difficult when the simony took the character of a tax or an honorarium. The fact, again, that lay investiture was described as simony, inevitably brought with it an element of confusion, and, in the case of a charge of simoniacal practices, enormously accentuates the difficulty of determining the actual state of affairs. The war against simony in its original form was undoubtedly necessary, but it led to highly complicated and problematic issues. Was the priest or bishop, whose ordination was due to simony, actually in the possession of the sacerdotal or episcopal power or not? If the answer was in the affirmative, it would seem possible to buy the Holy Ghost; if in the negative, then obviously all the official acts of the respective priest or bishop—which, according to the doctrine of the church, presupposed the possession of a spiritual quality—were invalid. And, since the number of simoniacal bishops was at that period extremely large, incalculable consequences resulted. The difficulty of the problem accounts for the diversity of solutions propounded. The perplexity of the situation was aggravated by the fact that, if the stricter view was adopted, it followed that the sacrament of ordination must be pronounced invalid, even in the cases where it had been unconsciously sought at the hands of a simoniac, for the dispenser was in point of fact no bishop, although he exercised the episcopal functions and his transgressions were unknown, and consequently it was impossible for him to ordain others. In the time of Gregory the conflict was still swaying to and fro, and he himself in 1078 declared consecration by a simoniac null and void.

The pontificate of Gregory VII. came to a melancholy close, for he died an exile in Salerno; the Romans and a number of his most trusted coadjutors had renounced him, and the faithful band in Germany had shrunk to scant proportions. Too much the politician, too rough in his methods, too exclusively the representative of the Roman see and its interests, he had gained more enemies than friends. He was of course a master of statecraft; he had pursued political ends with consummate skill, causing them to masquerade as requirements of religion; but he forgot that incitement to civil war, the preaching of rebellion, and the release of subjects from their oaths, were methods which must infallibly lead to moral anarchy, and tend, with justice, to stifle the confidence once felt in him. The more he accustomed his contemporaries to the belief that any and every measure—so long as it opened up some prospect of success—was good in his sight, no matter how dangerous the fruits it might mature, the fainter grew their perception of the fact that he was not only a statesman but primarily the head of the Christian Church. That the frail bonds of piety and religious veneration for the chair of St Peter had given way in the struggle for power was obvious to all, when he himself lost that power and the star of his opponent was in the ascendant. He had given the rein to his splendid gifts as a ruler, and in his capacity of pope he omitted to provide an equivalent counterpoise. We are told that he was once an impressive preacher, and he could write to his faithful countesses in terms which prove that he was not wanting in religious feeling; but in the whirlpool of secular politics this phase of his character was never sufficiently developed to allow the vice-gerent of Christ to be heard instead of the hierarch in his official acts.

But to estimate the pontificate of Gregory by the disasters of its closing years would be to misconceive its significance for the history of the papacy entirely. On the contrary, his reign forms an important chapter in the history of the popedom as an institution; it contains the germs of far-reaching modifications of the church, and it gave new impulses to both theory and practice, the value of which may indeed be differently estimated, but of which the effects are indubitable. It was he who conceived and formulated the ideal of the papacy as a structure embracing all peoples and lands. He took the first step towards the codification of ecclesiastical law and the definite ratification of the claims of the apostolic chair as corner-stones in the church’s foundation. He educated the clergy and the lay world in obedience to Rome; and, finally, it was due to his efforts that the duty of the priest with regard to sexual abstinence was never afterwards a matter of doubt in the Catholic Christianity of the West.