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BOOK VI.
THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE
(1059-1250).
CHAPTER XVII.
THE QUARREL OVER INVESTITURES (1059-1122).
Complete supremacy of the Emperor Henry III
(1039-1056).—Hildebrand's effort to regenerate the Church and emancipate the
Papacy; Regulation of 1059.—Gregory VII (1073). His great Plans.—Boldness
of his first Acts.—Humiliation of the Emperor (1077).—Death of Gregory VII
(1085), and of Henry IV (1106). Henry V (1106). —The Concordat of Worms
(1122); End of the quarrel over Investitures.
OTTO the Great had revived the empire of
Charlemagne and had resumed the rights attached to the imperial
crown; among others those of using the ancient city of Rome as
capital of the new empire, of confirming the election of the sovereign
pontiff, and of exercising a great influence over all the affairs of
the Church. Henry III, son of Conrad the Salic (1039), was the one of the
German emperors who made the most of his power, and who best succeeded in
making the imperial authority respected on both sides of the Alps. He
forced the Duke of Bohemia to acknowledge his supremacy and to pay him a sum of
money; he reinstated Peter, the king of Hungary, in his kingdom and
received his homage for it. The two duchies of Lorraine had been united, but
he separated them; and when the duchies of Bavaria, Swabia, and Carinthia
fell vacant, he felt sure enough of his power to re-establish the ducal
office in order to give these provinces a more direct government, and one
more capable of enforcing the truce of God, which was still only an
empty name.
In southern Italy, however, the Emperor came into
collision with an enemy who seemed weak enough, but who was able to defy
him. Some Norman pilgrims, who had come to Rome toward the year 1016, had
been employed by the Pope against the Greeks who were attacking
Benevento; others, returning from Jerusalem, helped the inhabitants
of Salerno to drive away the Saracens, who were besieging them. The
fame of their success, and of the booty which they had gained, brought
many other Normans to join them. So many came that they
were soon strong enough to make themselves masters of the country. William of the Iron Arm, the oldest of the twelve sons of Tancred of Hauteville, a gentleman of Coutances,
was in 1043 elected chief of the country, with the title of Count of Venossa and Apulia. His brothers Drogo (1046),
Humphrey (1051), and Robert Guiscard (1057) succeeded him. The Papacy was
not slow to repent having brought such warlike neighbors upon itself.
Leo IX collected troops, obtaining some from Henry III, and uniting his
efforts with those of the Greek Emperor Constantine Monomachus marched against the Normans, who defeated him and made him prisoner.
But these wise people thought of Pippin and of Charlemagne; and said
to themselves that the popes could give a legal existence to what had
before only existed by right of force. They knelt before their prisoner,
declared themselves his vassals, and received all they had conquered as a
fief from his hands (1053). The Pope left his captivity the
suzerain of a new state, of the duchy of Apulia, to which the Normans soon
added Sicily, which was conquered by Roger, another brother of Robert
Guiscard; these provinces were all united finally into the kingdom of Sicily
(made a kingdom in 1130), and a Norman dynasty reigned at Naples, where
the counts of Anjou have also reigned, and where until recently the house of
Bourbon was still sovereign.
So Henry III met with a check in that direction;
although he did not attach any great importance to this war, and though
after all it appeared to terminate to his advantage, as the suzerainty gained
by the Pope came back to the Emperor, on whom the Pope depended. No
other emperor made more use of his right of interfering in ecclesiastical
elections, whether of the pope or of the bishops, and no one used it more
wisely. He deposed three popes who were disputing the possession of the
See at the same time, and three times awarded the tiara to German priests,
and awarded it wisely to Clement II, Damasus II,
and Leo IX. The council of Sutri had again
acknowledged that no pope could be elected without the consent of the
emperor.
Nevertheless, since the time of Charlemagne, the
Church had not ceased to grow in power and in moral authority. She
possessed temporal authority, for she owned a large part of the soil of
Christian Europe; she had moral authority, for every
one, great and small, accepted her commands submissively, and by
her weapon of excommunication she could force even kings to obey her; finally, she
had the advantage of unity, for the whole Church of the West recognized
the Roman pontiff as her head. Thus, during the eleventh century there
were two great powers in existence, the Pope and the Emperor, the
temporal power and the spiritual power, both of them very ambitious, as
they could not fail to be considering the customs, institutions, and
beliefs of the epoch. It was at this time that the great question came up
as to who should be the master of the world, the successor of St. Peter or
the successor of Augustus and Charlemagne.
The Church had never before had so lofty an
ambition, at least never in so clear and fixed a form. At the time
of the Iconoclasts, and under the successors of Charlemagne, the
Church aspired to emerge from the trammels of the state so as to develop
her own life with freedom. Now she aspired to control the lay society, and
even its rulers.
The Papacy was started on this new career by a
monk of humble origin, Hildebrand, the son of a carpenter of Soana, in Tuscany, who had resided in the monastery of
Cluny for some time, when Leo IX, stopping there on his way to take
possession of the Holy See, carried him away with him.
This was not the first time that a simple monk, by
the force of his character and genius, gained a supreme ascendency over
the whole Church. Just then a feeling of violent disapproval was felt in the
convents of the ambition of a certain number of bishops, of their
intrigues, their vices, and their worldly lives, of the traffic they made
of ecclesiastical dignities—a traffic called "simony"—and of
their very worldly passions. At the festivities of Whitsuntide, in
the year 1063, the mitred abbot of Fulda and the
bishop of Hildesheim disputed with their daggers the right
of precedence in the middle of the church. The Emperor just escaped
being killed, and the altar was covered with blood.
Many voices were lifted up against these disorders,
and among others that of Peter Damiani, the
cardinal bishop of Ostia, who demanded a radical reform in the Church,
a return to simplicity, to primitive poverty, and to the elections made by
the priests and people. Hildebrand threw himself into this reaction with all the ardor of an austere, eager, and sincere
character. He was not only impelled by his interest for religion, but also
by an interest for his Italian fatherland. He hoped, by means of a papacy
which should be supreme over Italy and all Christendom, to reform the
Church and set Italy free. But the Church herself must first be set free. We
have seen that the defeat of Leo IX at Civitella (1053) was worth more to him than a brilliant success would have been; for
as the Normans had declared themselves vassals of the Holy See, resolved
to defend it, the Pope henceforth had valiant warriors close at hand
who were at his disposal.
Henry III died in 1056, leaving a son, Henry IV,
whose minority was very stormy, a fact which greatly assisted
the projects of the Court of Rome. In 1059, a new Pope, Nicolas II,
also under Hildebrand's influence, published a decree which regulated the
election of the popes in a new manner. They were to be elected by the
cardinal bishops, priests, and deacons of the Roman territory;
the people were to give their consent afterward ; the Emperor was to retain his right of confirmation; and, finally, the
pope was to be chosen by preference from the Roman clergy. Another decree
forbade the clergy to receive the investiture to any ecclesiastical fief
from any temporal lord.
These decrees were of the highest importance, as
they withdrew the Pope from the Emperor's authority, and placed the
immense temporal power of the Church in the now free hand of the pontiff.
A number of bishops, chiefly those of Lombardy, who disliked the authority
of the Pope, especially in its new severity, still more than that of the Emperor,
and who, besides, were troubled by the anathemas pronounced against the simoniacal and married priests, brought about a schism
and obtained an anti-pope, Honorius II, from the imperial court, which was also
much irritated by the decrees. Hildebrand had on his side all the citizen
class and the nobility also, except at Rome, where the nobles feared lest
his power should prove dangerous to their independence. In the struggle
that followed between the two factions, Hildebrand was victorious, and his
triumph was complete, when he was chosen to the Holy See under the name of
Gregory VII (1073). He is the last Pope whose election was submitted to
the Emperor's sanction.
As Pope, Gregory now completed the work he had
begun as monk. His plans grew with his power. Charlemagne and Otto
the Great had made the Papacy subordinate to them, and had joined
the Church with the State. But now the royal authority, the
centralizing power, was declining throughout all Europe in proportion as feudalism,
or the local powers, those of the dukes, counts, and barons, increased.
The Church, on the other hand, had seen the faith of her people growing
even stronger in this century. It seemed to her chief that the time had
now come for her to grasp the government of the bodies as well as of
the souls of men, or at least to draw closer the ties that bound all
Christendom to the Holy See, and to exercise a constant surveillance and
activity, in order to put down the licentiousness of manners, violations
of justice, and all the causes that led to the destruction of the
soul. His aim was a lofty one, and his great ambition was
natural enough in a priest. It is fortunate, however, that he did not
succeed, and that the European nations preserved their independence, which
they would have lost under such an absolute papal authority.
Gregory aimed at four things : to emancipate the
Papacy from German supremacy; to reform the Church in her customs and
discipline; to make her independent of any temporal power; and to rule the
laity, both people and princes, in the name and in the interest of their
salvation.
The first point was gained by the decree of Nicholas
II the second by the many acts of Gregory VII for the reformation of the
clergy, which were especially directed toward the celibacy of the priests
and against simony; the third, by prohibiting the temporal princes from
giving and the clergy from receiving from them the investiture of any
ecclesiastical benefice; the fourth, by the intervention of the popes in the
government of the kingdoms of Europe.
The kings of Germany and of France, Henry IV
and Philip I, openly carried on a traffic in
ecclesiastical dignities; Gregory threatened to excommunicate them, and further
than that, to release their vassals from their oath of fealty. In England
he forced William the Conqueror to pay him Peter's pence. He claimed the
suzerainty over kingdoms of Hungary, Denmark, and Spain, which
had been conquered from the pagans or infidels "by the grace of
God", and he made the Duke of Croatia king of the Dalmatians, on the
condition of his paying homage to the Holy See. Nevertheless, the Pope,
though supreme in distant regions, was not so in Italy. In Rome, even,
the prefect Censius seized Gregory VII in a
church and kept him prisoner for some time. In Milan the citizens
drove out Herlembald, who under the pretext of
supporting the reforms of Gregory VII was exercising a genuine
tyranny in the city, and demanded an archbishop of Henry IV who sent
them a noble of Castiglione. This was the beginning of the struggle
between the Papacy and the Empire, one of the greatest dramas in history.
All the circumstances of the times were very
favorable to Gregory VII, and promised him support in Germany. Feudal
rebellions had shaken that country during the whole of the minority of
Henry Emperor, who was only six years old at the death of his father
in 1056. The bishops and nobles had wrested the regency, and even the care
of the young king, from the Empress Agnes. On his majority, Henry IV
attempted to repress the revolt of which Saxony was always the center.
A great victory gained by him in Thuringia seemed
to insure his success, when suddenly he heard the voice of the Pope
resounding in his ears, who commanded him to suspend the war, to leave the
decision of his quarrel with the Saxons to the Holy See, and to renounce
his claims to all his ecclesiastical investiture under pain of
excommunication; the legates added to this a summons to appear at Rome and
there to justify his private misconduct. Henry IV was equally vigorous in
his reply to this furious attack. In the synod of Worms (1076), which was
composed of twenty-four bishops, partisans of his cause, the
deposition of Gregory VII was solemnly pronounced.
Instead of being alarmed by this the Pope redoubled
his attacks. Though only just rescued by a popular movement from his
enemy Censius, he made use of all his
weapons; he published against the Emperor a bull of excommunication which
declared him deposed for rebelling against the Holy See, and he released
his subjects from their oath of fealty. Agents, to execute this bull
without mercy, were easily found in the Saxons and the Swabians,
who were both hostile to the house of Franconia. They had at
their head Rudolf of Swabia, and Welf, an
Italian, of the house of Este, whom Henry himself had made Duke of
Bavaria. They convoked a diet at Tibur, suspended the Emperor from
the exercise of his functions, and threatened to depose him if he did not get
absolution from the anathemas of Rome. Henry consented to the humiliation,
and a general diet was determined upon, to meet at Augsburg, at which
the Pope was to appear to decide upon his absolution. But as he felt the danger
of letting his enemies come together he resolved to anticipate the
promised diet and go himself to Rome to implore the pardon of the Pope.
Gregory VII forced him to purchase his absolution
at the price of humiliations such as no other sovereign has ever
undergone. The Pope was then staying at the castle of Canossa, on the
lands of the celebrated Countess Matilda, the most powerful suzerain in
Italy, as the possessor of the Marquisate of Tuscany and of many other
important feudal possessions in Central Italy, and who was a devoted
adherent of the Holy See. Here Henry IV came to beg an audience, and
waited during three days outside the wall, standing barefooted in the
snow. On the fourth day he was admitted to the presence of the Pope, and
his ban of excommunication removed. But Gregory was too wise to give
up all his weapons at once, and made it a condition of his absolution that
Henry should come to an agreement with his enemies in Germany. So that the
Pope still reserved some means of embarrassing Henry's movements. It is
not strange that Henry should have trembled before a man who was.
recognized as the direct representative of the Deity, and who was so sure of
the approval of Heaven, that, as it was said after taking half the Host
and abjuring God to destroy him at once if he was guilty of the. crimes of which he was accused, he gave Henry the
other half and proposed that he should make the same declaration; the
latter drew back and refused the test (1077).
By yielding, Henry had avoided the blow aimed at
him by the enemies who were allied against him. As soon as this
moment of danger had passed, he retrieved his losses. He certainly had no
other alternative that again taking every risk, or else of renouncing
his throne; for the German princes who were opposed to him had taken
the final and decisive step. They elected as their king Rudolf of Swabia,
who had bought the support of the legate by promising to give up his
claims to the appointment of bishops (1077), but whose solemn recognition
the Pope had wisely delayed. Henry IV, gathering together all his
partisans, made war upon them with great success. A battle, not far from Merseburg, where Rudolf was killed, it is said, by
Godfrey of Bouillon, afterwards duke of Lower Lorraine, made him master of
Germany [1080.] He wished also to be supreme in Italy, and he met with
varying success there in different expeditions. He seemed at one
time about to destroy the power of the Countess Matilda; he took Rome
and made the Archbishop of Ravenna Pope, under the name of Clement III,
and was crowned Emperor by him. Gregory himself would have fallen into the
hands of the man he had so insulted if Robert Guiscard and
his Normans, the faithful allies of the Holy See, had not rescued
him. He died among them (1085), saying : "I
have loved justice and hated iniquity, and therefore I die
in exile." He seemed to think, to his last moment, that
the universal dominion of the Holy See was her strict right, an idea
which is certainly logical in many respects.
Gregory died too soon, for if he had lived a few
years longer he would have seen his enemy dying in even
greater misery than he had suffered at the gates of Canossa.
Under Urban II who became Pope in 1088 the actual power of the Papacy
reached a very high point. He renewed the decrees of Gregory VII against
the Emperor. After a fleeting triumph, Henry IV. was successively attacked by his two sons whom the Church had armed
against him, was taken prisoner by the younger and stripped of the
imperial insignia, and though he recovered his liberty and
again assumed the title of Emperor, he could not recover his power.
He vainly besought the aid of the King of France, "the most faithful
of his friends", who made no response. But few of the German princes
gave him their support, and he died in 1106 at Liege, Emperor scarcely
more than in name, but forgiving his enemies and sending his ring
and his sword to his rebellious son. His body remained five years
without a tomb, until finally the ban of the Church was removed by the
Pope.
Nevertheless, it was this parricide son, Henry V,
who brought the quarrel over investitures to a conclusion. The final
decision was somewhat retarded by the discussion concerning the succession of
the Countess Matilda, who had wished to bequeath her property to the Holy
See. Henry claimed all she had left, the fiefs as head of the empire,
the allodial lands as the acknowledged heir of the
countess, and took possession of everything. This became a cause of new
quarrels in the future, as we shall see. When this point of the
inheritance had been settled for the time being, the two opposing parties,
at last recognizing that the dispute over investitures served only to
weaken themselves, agreed to conclude it by a
just and nearly equal division of the disputed rights. The Concordat of
Worms was drawn up in the following words (1122). From Pope Calistus II to the Emperor : "I agree that the elections of the bishops and the abbots, who
hold immediately from the kingdom, shall be made in your presence, but
without violence or simony ; so that if any dispute shall arise, you may give
your assent and protection to the better side, following the opinion of
the metropolitan and the bishops of that province. The one elected
shall receive from you through investiture with the sceptre,
the regalia, excepting those which belong to the Roman Church, and
shall render to you all the services which you have a right to
demand." The Emperor returns: "I leave to the Pope all investiture by the ring and staff; and I permit in the
churches of my kingdom and empire, canonical elections and free
consecrations." This wise compromise, assigning the temporal authority
to the temporal sovereign and the spiritual to the spiritual sovereign,
was accompanied by words of reconciliation. But Gregory VII's full plan
had not been carried out. The vassal bond between the prince and the
clergy was not broken; all the members of the Church, if not her head,
were still subject to the State. The house of Franconia became extinct
with Henry V (1125), who died after having temporarily settled the contest
between the papacy and the empire. The reign of his successor, Lothar II (1125-1137), seemed like an interlude, during
which the world's stage was being arranged for a new era of struggle.
CHAPTER XVIII.
STRUGGLE BETWEEN ITALY AND GERMANY (1152-1250).
Three Epochs in the struggle between the Papacy and
the Empire.—Strength of German Feudalism; Weakness of Lothar II (1125); the Hohenstaufen (1138).—Division of Italy; Progress of the
small Nobles and of the Republics.—Arnold of Brescia
(1144).—Frederick I, Barbarossa (1152); Overthrow of Milan (1162); the
Lombard League (1164); Peace of Constance (1183).—Emperor Henry
VI (1190); Innocent III (1198); Guelfs and Ghibellines in
Italy.— Frederick II (1212-1250). Second Lombard League (1226).—Inncent IV. (1243); Fall of German Power
in Italy (1250).
WHILE the Pope and the Emperor were contending
for the mastery of the world, France, which had kept out of the great
debate, was carrying on the first crusade. There are, as it were, two
parallel series of events taking place at this period of the world's
history, both of which began at the same time, toward the end of the
eleventh century, and ended in the middle of the thirteenth century. A
chronological order of events would demand that the two histories should
be carried on together, while a good understanding of them requires that
they should be treated separately. We shall, accordingly, continue our
description of the struggle between Italy and Germany, up to the time of
the final solution of the difficulties, then we
shall return to the crusades. This method will disturb the sequence of
time, but it will be to the advantage of logical sequence.
The quarrel between the Papacy and the Empire is
a drama in three acts. In the first the Pope and the Emperor dispute
for the supremacy over Christian Europe; the Concordat of
Worms (1122) requires mutual concessions and a division which
modern times have kept sacred though at the same time seeking the solution
of the problem in another direction, namely, a free church within a free
state. In the second act of the great debate, the action centers around the
struggle for independence in Italy, which the emperors of the Swabian house wish to make subject to their power, and
which is freed by the peace of Constance (1183); in the third act, the
independence of the Holy See is in peril, the death of Frederic II saves
it (1250). The first struggle has already been described, the second and
third now follow.
The Franconian dynasty had felt the power of
German feudalism growing under its sway and had made vain efforts to
arrest its progress. It was in vain that, in the midst of
the duchies, a host of smaller immediate lordships and imperial
cities were created, holding directly of the Emperor; it was in vain
that the right of heredity was granted to the smaller nobles, a
policy followed in Italy, too, and embodied in the edict of 1037;
the great vassals, who had long had the right of hereditary succession,
had preserved or recovered their advantage over the elective royalty by
continual revolts. Even the Emperor's agents, the palatine counts, sent by him
to the great fiefs or to his own domains, there to represent his
authority, even the burggrafen holding the same
trust in the cities, began to imitate the royal officers of the time of
the Carolingian emperors, in making themselves independent and
their offices hereditary. The result of these continued efforts was
that feudalism, on the accession of Lothar, was a
very formidable force, and became more so during his reign. He was a
weak prince and bowed his head low before the Holy See. Innocent II gave
him the imperial crown, while presuming to call himself master of it, to
dispose of it at will; he went so far as to commemorate his claim in a
picture where the Emperor was represented on his knees in the attitude of
one doing homage to the pontiff. Underneath is written in Latin verse : "The King becomes the man of the Pope, who
bestows the crown upon him". Lothar humbled
himself again on a question fully as important; he consented to hold in fief of
the Holy See the lands of the Countess Matilda.
Within the empire Lothar was
hard pressed by two powerful houses : the house
of Swabia, which he fought, but was not able to put down; and that of
Bavaria, whose power he increased by marrying his daughter to the
duke, Henry the Proud, who, on the death of Lothar,
inherited all his domains, the duchy of Saxony in Germany, and
in Italy the fiefs of the great countess. The power of Henry the
Proud extended then from the Baltic to the Tiber, but his fiefs were
separated and the division was fatal to his strength. The Hohenstaufen
lands, on the other hand, were more closely united; they consisted of the
duchy of Swabia, and large possessions in Franconia.
When Lothar died in 1137, it
was evident that the crown would pass to one of these two great houses.
Saxony seemed sure of obtaining it, but many of the German vassals
began to think it unwise to put too strong a master over them, and they
elected, almost surreptitiously, in a diet convoked at Coblenz, in the
absence of the Saxon and Bavarian princes, Conrad of Hohenstaufen, lord
of Waiblingen. Henry the Proud protested. He was
the head of the Welf house, and their respective
partisans adopted party cries from these names, which also
crossed the Alps and became fixed in Italy as Guelfs and Ghibellines. As
the house of Swabia was hostile to the Holy See, the Ghibelline party was
favorable to the Emperor, while the Guelfs were friends of Italian
independence and the papacy.
Henry the Proud, who was placed by Conrad under
the ban of the empire, was despoiled of his duchies; his son, Henry
the Lion, recovered Saxony it is true, but it was Saxony curtailed of the
mark of Brandenburg, which was converted into a fief direct of the empire,
for the benefit of Albert the Bear of the Ascanian house, while Bavaria was given to the markgraf of
Austria, and kept by him until 1156. It reverted then to Henry the Lion,
with the exception of Austria, which was raised to the rank of an immediate
duchy. The brilliant dynasty of the Hohenstaufen began with Conrad III.
His reign in a manner was dedicated to establishing his family upon the throne
which they held for more than a century with great glory;
accordingly he was not able to visit Italy. But when, on the return
of the second crusade, his death gave the crown to his son, Germany
began to interest itself in Italy again, and the struggle which had been
suspended since 1122 broke out more violently than ever.
Italy's aspect had entirely changed. The edict of
1037 had borne its fruit. Dukes, margraves, counts, bishops, lost
their sovereignty and their jurisdiction. The last representative
of the great feudal nobles had disappeared, on the Countess
Matilda's death. Nothing but a mixture of little independent lords
and republican cities was to be seen from the Alps to Benevento, where the
Norman monarchy began, renowned not only for the brilliancy of its
victories but also for the poetry which the troubadours, attracted from
the south of France, sang at the court of its kings. Just at that time the
Italian republics were taking shape and giving a new life to
the ruins of Roman municipal government. They had each their consuls,
varying in number : twelve at Milan, six
at Genoa, four at Florence, six at Pisa, etc., usually invested with
executive and judiciary powers. Generally, also, a kind of
senate (credenza) assisted them. The general assembly of free
citizens, or parliament, gathering by wards at the sound of the bell
from the belfry tower on the public square, was the only sovereign power
and judge in the last resort. The nobles of the neighboring castles were
admitted to it as citizens, though they continued to hold their domains
and their serfs outside the walls.
Rome had as yet been saved the revolution which
had changed the other Italian cities, by the influence of her bishop,
the sovereign pontiff; but her turn came in the middle of the twelfth
century. A monk named Arnold of Brescia, a disciple of Abelard, the doctor
who preached the distinction between reason and faith, was the first to demand the separation of church and state, the
suppression of government by priests and the re-establishment of
the Roman Republic. In 1143, a republican government was organized
for Rome in opposition to the Pope, Innocent II. A senate of 56 members
was formed, the four sacred letters, S. P. Q. R., reappeared in the public
documents, and the date was reckoned "from the restoration of the
sacred senate". Lucius II, successor to Innocent, who tried
to use force in resistance, was thrown down from the steps of the capitol,
and the revolution triumphed. Throughout the peninsula, except for the Kingdom
of Naples, from Rome to the least and smallest city, the republican form of
government prevailed. The nobility considered themselves fortunate if they were included within this organization, Everything had worked
together toward this end, the force of arms, the prosperity born of commerce,
affection for past memories and the power of new ideas. St. Bernard resigned
himself to the position accorded to the Pope, and wrote to his disciple
Eugenius to leave the Romans alone, that stiff-necked generation, and to
exchange Rome for the world. (Urbam pro orbe mutatam).
But Frederick I, called Barbarossa, was not disposed
to give up Italy so easily; no emperor yet had shown such energy of
character joined to so much obstinacy in his claims to the peninsula. It
is very hard to say what he did not claim. Royal rights over a1ll the
towns, imperial rights at Rome, the heritage of the Countess Matilda, Naples,
Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia. He crossed the Alps; Italy welcomed
him with a naive confidence which had more than once delivered her
into the hands of a stranger. But the sky was soon overcast. He burned Chieri and razed Tortona to the
ground, because the one refused to submit to the Marquis of Montferrat and
the other to break its alliance with Milan, which city was the head and
front of Lombard independence. He advanced toward Rome, whither Hadrian IV
called him; seized and delivered into the hands of the Pope, Arnold
of Brescia, who was burned at the stake; and on the same day on which
he received the imperial crown his soldiers killed 1000 men in defending
him against the revolted city. He showed such harshness in the exercise of
his authority in Italy, that soon the whole country rose in revolt.
Hadrian, whose power the Emperor had restored, quarreled with him for
the sake of reconciling himself with his subjects.
Nothing is more curious than the dialogues carried on
by those three great historical personages, the Emperor of Germany, the Pope,
and the Roman People, all three invoking in their defense the mere memories of
the past; all three reproaching each other and revealing only the decay of
their power to the world. The Romans had sent ambassadors to Barbarossa to say
that the empire belonged to them, and that they would offer it to him
provided he would swear to respect their rights and customs and give
them 5000 marks of silver. The Emperor replied : "You exalt the ancient glory of your city, and I can well appreciate
it; but, as one of your writers has said, 'Rome was fuit. Your
Rome is ours... Your senate, your consuls, your knights,
are now reckoned among the Germans. Charles the Great and Otto have
conquered your empire. . . . Your duty is to obey". The Pope claimed
the lands of Matilda, and desired that no Imperial envoy should enter Rome
without his consent; the Emperor wrote to him: "What did the Church
possess at the time of Constantine, before the donations of the emperors? The
demon of pride is stealing into the chair of St. Peter". And the Pope replied : "The Emperor is pretending to equal power
with ourselves, as if we were restrained to a little corner of the earth, like
Germany, the smallest of kingdoms until the moment when the popes raised her to
eminence. Did not the Frankish kings ride in carts drawn by oxen before
Charlemagne was consecrated by Zacharias? Just as Rome is superior to
Aix-la-Chapelle, in the forests of Gaul, so we are superior to this
king". And he promised him, if he would be obedient toward the
Church, that he would confer still greater benefits upon him. Those
words, majora beneficia,
which might be understood as meaning benefice in the technical sense, and
seemed to indicate that the imperial crown was held by a feudal tenure, roused
the indignation of the German diet where they were pronounced. The legate, who
was present, raised their wrath to the highest pitch when he cried out,
"From whom then does the Emperor hold his crown if not from the Pope?"
The claim of the Roman people was the merest shadow ; the other two were still living forces, powerful
and absolute.
Frederick came back in 1158. The reaction against him
was general, and he punished it with cruelty. Milan was the chief victim. After raising up the rival of that city, Lodi, which they
had destroyed, he imposed upon them a tribute of 9000 marks of silver. Then, in
the diet of Roncalia, near Piacenza, he had his
pretensions to absolute power confirmed by the doctors of the Roman law, in the
school of Bologna : "Know that all power of the
people to enact laws", said their spokesman, the Archbishop of Milan,
"has been accorded to you. Your will is law, according to the words of the text : Everything that pleases the prince has the
force of law". In virtue of those principles of a former age, Frederick
played the master, and tried to place imperial podestas over
the Italian towns. Milan, Brescia, Piacenza, and Cremona rebelled. Hadrian IV
was dead, and the cardinals were divided : there was
an imperialist pope Victor IV, and a patriot pope Alexander III. The ensuing
struggle, involving, as it did, all interests, was terrible, especially at
Milan. That heroic city held out against a two years' siege, and yielded only
to famine. The Milanese were forced to break
their carroccio which
carried the standard of independence; they were scattered among four villages.
All the neighboring cities, who were filled with deadly hatred toward this
town, were allowed to exercise their vengeance upon it, and it was totally
destroyed (1162). Alexander III, driven from Italy, took refuge in France,
where he was recognized by Louis VII and by Henry II of England.
After having learned by cruel experience that division
is fatal, Italy tried to unite while Frederick was away seeking new forces in
Germany. The Lombard league was formed, and rapidly increased, gaining over to
its cause the whole valley of the Po, little by little, from Venice to
Piedmont, including even cities that had been hostile to Milan. That city was
restored; Alexander III took his place at the head of Italy to resist the
German domination which was continually raising new rivals against him. A city
called by his name, Alexandria, was built at the confluence of the Tanaro and Bormida rivers, to
threaten the Marquis of Montferrat and the imperial town of Pavia. The
Ghibellines named it, in derision, Alexandria of Straw; but it proved the rock
on which they split. In 1174 Frederick returned to Italy with only one-half of
Germany's forces; Henry the Lion, chief of the Welfs,
had refused to follow the Emperor, who had thrown himself on his knees before
him in vain. From this moment the Welfs were beloved
by Italy, which was in fact their native country. Alexandria of Straw
stopped Frederick for four months; during that time the army of the
confederates assembled. He attacked it near Legnano to the northwest of Milan (1176). Two Milanese corps, the battalion of the
Great Flag and the battalion of Death, led by the gigantic Albert Giussano,
gave the victory to the Italians. Frederick was thrown from his horse and for
many days he was reported as dead. It was fortunate for him that he could
obtain a truce by recognizing Alexander III, whom he went to meet at Venice.
Six years after (1183), the treaty of Constance
definitely determined the quarrel between the empire and Italian independence,
as the concordat of Worms had decided that between the empire and the papacy.
The Pope practically recovered the freehold lands of the Countess Matilda. The
cities preserved the regal rights which they had formerly possessed
: the right to raise armies, to fortify themselves with walls, to
administer civil as well as criminal jurisdiction within their walls, and to
form alliances among themselves. The Emperor kept only the right of confirming
their consuls by his legates, and of establishing a judge of appeals in each town
for certain cases. The imperial authority had again lost ground as in the year
1122, and the spirit of Gregory VII might rejoice in this two-fold triumph.
Beyond the mountains, however, Frederick was
all-powerful. Henry the Lion was put down, despoiled of his fiefs, the duchies
of Saxony, and Bavaria, and reduced to his patrimonial lands of Luneburg and
Brunswick, where he founded a house which still reigns in England; the kings of
Denmark and Poland acknowledged the sovereignty of Frederick, and foreign
ambassadors came to take part in his diets. The most celebrated of these
assemblies was held at Mainz (1184); from 40,000 to 70,000 knights were
gathered together in an immense field bordering the Rhine on a beautiful plain;
the feudal lords of Germany, Italy, and the Slavic countries all repaired
thither. The Emperor himself broke a lance in a brilliant tournament in spite
of his sixty-three years. Soon after the glorious old man was
drowned in the Seleph (Calycadnus)
while going to the conquest of Jerusalem (1190).
The northern part of Italy had escaped the Emperor,
but he had got possession of the south. By marrying his
son to Constance, daughter of Roger II, king of Sicily, Barbarossa
had gained for him a right to this kingdom. Henry VI (1190-1197) spent his
reign in making good his claims, and his efforts were crowned with
success. He conquered the Norman kingdom (1194), displaying great cruelty,
and he tried to exalt again throughout Italy the feudalism which his
predecessors had made a point of lowering. His death, the minority of his son,
aged four years, and the accession of Innocent III in 1198, changed the aspect
of affairs.
Innocent II was of the family of the Counts of Segna, and only thirty-seven years old when he was elected
pope, in spite of his resistance and even tears. But when the power he had not
sought was put into his hand, he conducted himself from the first like another
Gregory VII.
The question, what
should be the limits of the two powers, spiritual and temporal, was a difficult
one for the ardent believers of those times. The head of the Church, who held the keys of St.
Peter, had jurisdiction over the actions of the faithful, and could decide
whether they were righteous or sinful. But the question arises at once, what
actions performed by kings fall or do not fall under
this jurisdiction? What actions are those which do not lead to the eternal
safety or destruction of the princes themselves and of their subjects? Thus it
was not wrong ambition but the force of doctrine and a sort of obligation
imposed upon the shepherd of all souls which led to the interference of the
popes in the state government of those times.
The new Pope, who was going to show such haughtiness
of spirit, was not even master of his own episcopal city. He had to reduce the
senate of the city to subjection, to abolish its consulate, and to oblige the
prefect of Rome to acknowledge that he received his authority from the Pope and
not from the Emperor. In order to give back to the Holy See the prestige of the
time of Urban II, Innocent had a crusade preached, the fourth in number, which
the Venetians turned off upon Constantinople. Finally, on the strength of his
being entrusted with the moral direction of the world, as he claimed that he
was, he interfered in all the quarrels of the sovereigns of his day, and hurled
his thunderbolts upon the heads of all the kings, threatening some and
striking others.
By his anathemas he forced the King of France to take
back his wife, Ingeborg, and the kings of Castile and Portugal to make peace,
and unite against the Moors; he excommunicated a usurping king in Norway; and
in Aragon a king who was guilty of false coinage. In England he humbled John Lackland and exalted him by turns. The King of Hungary
detained one of the Pope's legates; he was threatened with seeing his son
dispossessed of the throne. In Germany two powerful princes were disputing the
empire, Philip, brother of Henry VI, and Otto of Brunswick, son of Henry the
Lion of the Guelf family; he claimed the decision of this question, having the
right "to examine, approve, anoint, consecrate, and crown, if he be found
worthy, the emperor elect; to reject him if unworthy". It is terrible to
think what would have happened if such pretensions as these had been made good,
if all the kingdoms of Europe had become fiefs of the Holy See, and
Christianity a sacerdotal autocracy where all liberty would have been dead and
all life extinguished.
In the German conflict Innocent declared for Otto, who
had no possessions in Italy, and against Philip, a member of that Hohenstaufen
family which had tried to get the mastery of the Peninsula and which was still
in possession of the kingdom of Sicily. It was then that the famous quarrel
between the Guelfs (Welfs) and the Ghibellines (Waiblinger) began. In the struggle which followed, and
which was first confined to the two German houses, but afterwards included all
Italy, the peninsula no longer retained the unity which had been enjoyed for a
brief space under Frederick Barbarossa. The towns were divided among themselves
and were each of them torn by factions. Innocent III had nothing on his side
but his genius and the great influence he had over Europe. The Guelf Emperor
chosen by him, and who since the assassination of Philip in 1208 had no rival
in power, was not slow in showing himself as self-willed in his pretensions as
the emperors of the Swabian house. Though the
name had changed, yet the same crown brought the same ambition with it to all
heads alike. Otto refused to give back the freehold lands of Matilda which the
popes had not ceased to claim, and he clearly indicated his determination to
maintain all imperial rights. The danger grew on this side : Innocent excommunicated his former favorite (1210), and, raising the Ghibelline
family which he had before overthrown, he presented young Frederick to the
Germans as their future emperor. Nevertheless he stipulated that Frederick
should abandon all claim to the two Sicilies so soon as he should have the imperial crown, for he felt
how great was the peril for Italy, and especially for the Holy See, in allowing
both Germany and the southern part of the Peninsula to remain in the same
hands.
The third and last struggle between the empire and the
papacy and Italy began with the accession of Frederick II (1212-1250), and
assumed an entirely new character. Frederick II, who was a Sicilian through his
mother and through the place of his birth, had been entrusted in his youth to
the care of Innocent III. He had, accordingly, an
Italian and ecclesiastical education. Otto of Brunswick called him the priests'
king, and he was, in fact, very different from such men as Henry IV and
Barbarossa. He was as active and energetic as they, but he had none of their
German roughness; his mind was fastidious and cultivated, and full of cunning,
sharpness, and incredulity. He preferred to gain his ends by diplomacy and was
very skillful at it. It was no longer the north but the south that threatened
the Holy See and Italian independence. Frederick had indeed pledged himself to
live in Germany and to give the two Sicilies to his
son; but he very much preferred the sky, the customs, and the poets of Italy,
and very soon appointed his son regent of Germany in his place, while he
returned to dwell in Sicily or Naples, which latter place he endowed with a
university. The struggle was slow in beginning, because Frederick was not
really emperor until 1218, after the death of his rival Otto, of Brunswick, who
had been conquered four years previously by Philip Augustus at Bouvines. That same year Frederick renewed his vow to go to
the Holy Land, and in 1220 Pope Honorius III (1216-1227) crowned him emperor.
His marriage to Yolande, daughter of John of Brienne, the
lately dispossessed King of Jerusalem, was a new incentive to
a crusade. But Frederick found fresh excuses for remaining at home
whenever he was urged to set out. Instead of proceeding to Jerusalem, he
delivered Sicily from the hands of a certain Mourad-bey who had stirred up the Saracens on the island, and he transported 20,000
of the infidels to the fortified town of Lucera,
in Apulia, feeling sure that the excommunications of the Church would
not unsettle their allegiance, which he had secured by means of great
benefits conferred. At the same time he, in conjunction with the lawyer Peter
of Vinea, was at work organizing his kingdom of
Sicily, which had never yet been well organized under Norman sway.
Honorius III was succeeded in 1227 by an imperious and
inflexible old man, Gregory IX, who reached his hundredth year while on the
pontifical throne. He did not feel satisfied with Frederick's excuses, and he
obliged him to embark in order to rid Italy of his presence. The Emperor
departed, but returned a few days after, giving as his excuse a serious
illness, which had made it impossible for him to go farther. Gregory
anathematized him, and Frederick thought it more prudent this time to make the
journey to Jerusalem (1228). When he arrived in the Holy City, which had been
offered and granted to him by a treaty with the Sultan of Egypt, he took in his
own hands the crown which no priest dared to place upon his excommunicated
head. He soon found out why his absence had been so much desired in Italy.
The second Lombard league, formed about the year 1226,
was quietly gaining strength, and his father-in-law, John of Brienne, a soldier
in the employ of the Holy See, was leading his forces into the kingdom of
Sicily. Frederick, on his return, gathered his Saracens together, drove out
John of Brienne, and held a diet at Ravenna, in which he won over to his party Eccelino da Romano, lord of Verona and the most dreaded of
the nobles of the Mark Treviso. He thought then that he had restored peace to
the north, and he caused it to be preached by the monk John of Vicenza. All he
asked for was the repose which would allow him to dwell in his palaces at
Naples, Messina, and the "trilingual" Palermo, in the midst of his
people, who were made up of Greeks, Germans, Normans, and Saracens, and in
the midst of his court of artists, poets, astrologers, and lawyers. He was
himself a poet, and wrote verses in a new language, the so-called lingua cortigiana,
which was the language of his court.
He suddenly learned that his son Henry, King of the
Romans, had revolted against him at the instigation of the Holy See. His
indignation was roused, and he marched toward Lombardy with his Saracens,
defeated his son, and gained the great victory of Cortenuova (1237), over the Lombard league. Ten thousand Lombards were killed or taken prisoners, and the carroccio was
sent in derision to the Pope and the people of Rome. Frederick was now master
of Italy, and he appointed his second son, Enzio,
King of Sardinia, drove out from Sicily the Dominicans and Franciscans who had
conspired against him, and was pronounced by his lawyers the living law upon
the earth (lex animata in terris).
That the Emperor should make such a claim exasperated
the Pope, who spoke of him as the "beast full of names and
blasphemies," mentioned by St. John. Frederick, replying, used the names
of anti-Christ and of the great dragon of the Apocalypse, and the struggle
between the Church and the Empire broke out again with the same violence that
it had shown on two previous occasions—due less to the passions of the two
adversaries than to the irreconcilable opposition of the great principles
represented by them. Gregory IX proclaimed Frederick deposed, roused up the
towns of Tuscany and the Romagna against him, and offered the imperial crown to
Robert d'Artois, the brother of St. Louis. The latter
refused for his brother, and even reproached the Pope for "wishing, in the
person of the Emperor, to trample all kings beneath his feet". The war
brought success to Frederick. He conquered the Tuscans and the Romagna. The
Pope aroused Genoa and Venice , in vain. Most of the
towns tendered their submission. Gregory IX then built his hopes upon a council
which he convoked for the year 1241 at the Lateran. But Frederick blockaded
Rome, and ordered his ships, joined with those of Pisa, to attack the Genoese
fleet which bore the council. The Genoese were conquered at Meloria,
and lost twenty- four ships; two cardinals and a host of bishops, abbots, and
deputies from the Lombard towns fell into the hands of Frederick, who had
the prelates bound with silver chains. Gregory died of grief.
The Holy See was left vacant for two years. Finally
the Cardinals appointed in 1243, Sinibald Fieschi of Genoa, under the name of Innocent IV. Frederick
had divined what he might expect of him; "Simbald was my friend", he said, "the Pope will be
my enemy". Innocent IV did not try, like Gregory, to convoke a council at
Rome, but made his escape from that city and sent out from Genoa a demand to
St. Louis, and then to the kings of England and Aragon for a refuge in their
states. The man, before whom the whole world trembled, had
not where to lay his head; one proof among many that his strength was neither
in soldiers nor in fortresses. He decided to retreat to the town of
Lyons, which was at that time practically independent under its archbishop. He
charged the prelates to meet him there. The council opened on the 26th of June,
1245. Frederick had been condemned before, nevertheless he sent his chancellor,
Peter of Vinea, and Thaddeus of Suessa,
to present his justification. Peter maintained a silence that looked very much
like treason, and let his master be deposed. Thaddeus, after a long and useless
defense, vigorously protested against the sentence. "I have done my
duty", said the Pope, "the rest is with God."
When Frederick heard that his crown had been
disposed of he took it in his hands and placed it more firmly on
his head, crying, "It shall not fall from my head until blood
has flowed in streams". He called upon the sovereigns of
Europe for assistance : "If I perish, you
will all perish". He sent his Saracens out into Italy, while Innocent
IV stirred up Lombardy and Sicily through his monks, appointed a new
King of the Romans, and preached a new crusade against Frederick II. St.
Louis vainly interposed in the furious contest. The event was at first
uncertain; but when Enzio, Frederick's beloved son,
was taken prisoner, betrayed in his flight by a lock of his beautiful
hair, and kept in confinement by the Bolognese until he died, the Emperor's
spirit was broken. He saw all his friends falling around him, like
Thaddeus of Suessa and Enzio,
or else becoming traitors like Peter of Vinea, who
tried to poison him, and who, when his eyes were put out by the Emperor's
order, dashed his brains out against a wall. He thought of submitting, and
begged St. Louis to intercede for him with the Pope; he offered to abdicate, to
go and die in the Holy Land; he consented to the division of Germany and Sicily
provided they should be given to his legitimate children. Innocent
did not swerve from his course of annihilating that "race of vipers"
and conquering Sicily; he was inexorable. The Emperor, broken in spirit and
sick with rage, summoned more Saracens from Africa to avenge himself on Rome;
he almost called upon the Mongolians and Turks. Ec- celino da Romano, tyrant of Padua, tried to force his way
through to Frederick with fearful carnage, but the sudden death of the Emperor
at Fiorentino, in Apulia (December 13, 1250), spared
Italy a last struggle, which would have reached a paroxysm of fury. It also
brought about the fall of the German power and imperial authority in Italy. A
new era began for the Peninsula, an era of independence.
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