MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

Introduction

SECTION III .

THE CONTEST BETWEEN THE POPE AND THE EMPEROR FOR SUPREMACY, ORIGINATING IN ECCLESIASTICAL INVESTITURES AND LAY PATRONAGE.

It now becomes necessary to speak of the contest for supremacy between the then recognized Heads, spiritual and temporal, of Latin Christendom; and rightly to understand the character of this contest, it is requisite to look back to the primitive position of the Pope. Under the Western Empire, prior to its final overthrow by the Herule, Odoacer, the Pope appears to have been simply Bishop of Rome, though exercising metropolitan rights over Central and Southern Italy—then destitute of archbishops—with some degree, or some species, of general primacy due to the name of Rome, partly as having so long been mistress of the world, but principally as the reputed See of St. Peter. At the dissolution of the Western Empire, Rome and her Bishop transferred their allegiance to the Eastern; and the Pope, although elected by the clergy and people of Rome, could not, until sanctioned by the Constantinopolitan Emperor, take possession of his See. But Constantinople was too distant, and its court habitually too feeble, to afford’ protection or enforce obedience; and now the popes began to aspire to independence, asserting the superiority of all ecclesiastical, over all temporal, authority. But so little effort was made to support the assertion against real power, that a double papal election was referred to the Arian Ostrogoth, Theodoric, and decided by bishops whom he selected for the office. Nevertheless, the Roman pontiffs gradually assumed more and more the government of Rome, to the apparent satisfaction of the Romans, who ill brooked subjection to Constantinople, and valued their popes, both as chosen by themselves, and as, for the most part, men of exemplary character. Hence, when the dispute about images produced a lasting schism betwixt the Greek and Latin Churches, Pope Gregory II, after vainly endeavouring to recall the wanderers from his fold, ultimately authorized the Romans to refuse payment of taxes to Constantinopolitan officers, and to renounce allegiance to a heretical Emperor; thus, unquestionably, assuming temporal authority.

Under the influence of this Pope, Rome, hitherto included in the Exarchate of Ravenna, proclaimed herself a Republic, by the not very republican title of the Duchy of Rome. Of the internal condition of this Republic, little more seems to be known, than that, whilst the classical names of the old Roman Magistrates made a splendid figure therein, the turbulent ambition of the Roman Baronage filled the city with broils, whilst the Pope really governed it. In this state the duchy remained, until, later in the eighth century, a pope’s quarrels with the Arian Lombards induced the memorable, and, in its consequences, perdurably momentous, application to the Frank monarchs for protection.

Effectively, but not gratuitously, was that protection afforded. The Lombard kingdom of Northern and Central Italy, with the Lombard duchies in Southern Italy, were conquered, and from Lombard power neither pope nor Roman republic had thenceforward anything to fear. But this immense acquisition of territory, and the supreme authority in republican Rome, conferred by the title of Patrician, appeared to the Frank deliverer inadequate remuneration of his services. The Western Empire was revived, and, under the name of the Holy Roman Empire, vested in Charlemagne. The Pope, Leo III, affected to crown him Emperor without previous consultation, by sudden inspiration at the altar; nor, although the ceremonial was evidently prearranged, and the purpose, if not publicly announced, was yet, according to some writers, well known beforehand to be contemplated; did Charlemagne contradict the personally-flattering assertion. His silence afforded subsequent popes an argument, when insisting that the empire was their spontaneous gift; and Charlemagne himself must have learned to apprehend such a corollary from the style of the transaction, when he made his son Lewis, who was crowned during his own life, take the crown from the altar, and with his own hand place it upon his own head.

At the moment, however, from the relative positions of the Pope and the Emperor, no pretension of the kind was advanced. The Pope held in vassalage of the Emperor, not only the lands, whatever they were, granted by Charlemagne to the Roman See, but also the duchy of Rome itself, and knelt, it is averred, to do homage for all. Nay, Charlemagne was more than Lord Paramount of Rome, and official protector of the Church; he was, or acted as, its Head. He convoked Church Councils; and when no Council was sitting, he issued laws upon ecclesiastical, if not also upon spiritual subjects. He arbitrarily appointed bishops and abbots, whom he held amenable as the laity to his jurisdiction, and his sanction, at least, was indispensable to legalize the election of a pope. And so completely did the popes then acknowledge the sovereignty of the emperor, that not only did Charlemagne send his officers, Missi Dominici, to judge between Leo III and the nephew of his predecessor, who, after half murdering him, brought divers charges against him; even his son, the feeble Lewis the Debonnaire (whose Latin surname of Pius the Germans more correctly render by der Fromme, the Pious), exercised the like supreme authority. Pope Pascal I, being accused of a murder, sent legates to defend him before the Imperial tribunal; but Lewis, disregarding the legates, dispatched to Rome his own Missi Dominici (upon this occasion either a duke or an earl, and an abbot), who being perplexed by conflicting evidence, the Holy Father in person appeared before them, and cleared himself by making oath of his innocence. It was only when the division of the empire, and the dissensions and follies of the dividers, Charlemagne’s grandsons and great grandsons, had debilitated the Imperial authority, that Papal ambition revived. When the weak Charles the Bald, after the death of his brothers desired to be crowned Emperor, Pope John VIII haughtily said, “If he wants me to crown him, I must choose him, or, at least, sanction his election.”

Still the pretension was advanced only when circumstances favoured; and most favourable were they during the decline of the Carolingians. France and Germany were then engrossed and exhausted by war with each other, and by the ravages of the Northmen; Germany by those of the Magyars likewise; whilst Italy, devastated by the Magyars in the north, by the Saracens in the south, was distracted by the contentions of her princes with each other, and with the kings of both Burgundys, for the titles of King of Lombardy and Emperor. This continued to be the state of Italy, until Otho I was invited thither separately by the exasperated Pope, John XII, and by the beautiful Adelaide of Burgundy, the widow of one of those kings, persecuted by the murderers of her husband, to force her to marry one of them. Both implored him to rescue them from the tyranny of Berengario II, who at an earlier period had sought his protection against the equally tyrannical King Ugo, Adelaide’s father-in-law. Otho, the final deliverer of Germany from the Magyars, achieved this adventure likewise. He rescued, and, being a widower, wedded Adelaide, took Berengario prisoner, conquered Italy, and received the Imperial crown from the hands of the thankful Pope. He was the first non-Carolingian monarch so crowned.

The able, energetic, and powerful Otho, re-established the Imperial authority in its pristine vigour. The Italian princes, both northern and central, welcomed his sovereignty as a deliverance from tyranny; did so, although he weakened the formidably strong duchy of Friuli, by detaching from it a large district, which, as the march of Verona, he incorporated with the duchy of Bavaria, and emancipated from their yoke some thriving cities, which he made free, that is to say, dependent only upon the Imperial government. With Magna Grecia he meddled not, until, as before intimated, he had obtained, as the portion of his daughter-in-law, the Greek claim to sovereignty, of which he then required the recognition. And so far were the popes from disputing Otho’s sovereignty, that they looked to it for protection against their neighbours, whose violence they still dreaded. It is even positively asserted by some writers, that Leo VIII, by an act of the Lateran Council which sat A.D. 964, recognized the permanent union of the kingdom of Italy and the Empire with Germany, and the right of every lawfully elected German monarch, to both the Italian and the Imperial crowns, as also to the patriciate in, and sovereignty over, Rome, where Patrician and Pope appear to have ruled conjointly, or the latter through the former; recognizing farther his right to give prelates investiture by the ring and crozier, and to nominate the pope. The authenticity of this act has been, and indeed still is disputed; but it is certain that at this epoch the union of these states was willingly admitted because found convenient. A German monarch, naturally preferring his native land and largest realm as his residence, would be habitually absent, and therefore leave the pope, the great vassals, and the towns, more independent than would a less powerful emperor, always present in the Peninsula.

The attempts which Italy, as forgetful of her sufferings prior to her subjugation by Otho, as regardless of her prosperity under him and his successors, made to rid herself of her, then as now, antipathetic German sovereigns, first upon the death of Otho III without children, then upon that of his equally childless cousin and successor, Henry II, wrought no permanent effect. Conrad II, surnamed the Salic, to mark him a Salic-Frank, the first emperor of the Franconian dynasty, fully established his sovereignty there; and the Normans, who were even then conquering Magna Grecia, eagerly sought a ratification of their doubtful titles to their new principalities, by doing homage for them to him. In like manner the few Lombard princes in the South, still unsubdued by the Normans, endeavoured to secure his protection; and Italy seems thenceforward, for a considerable period of time, to have acknowledged her allegiance bound by the suffrages of Germany.

But during this period some of the Italian princes greatly increased in power, and one of these was the Pope. The Chair of St. Peter, now an object of ambition, was no longer occupied by pious churchmen; princes aspired to its possession for their sons and brothers, and the whole character of the Papacy was changed. The simony, the licentiousness, in short the general corruption, defiling and desecrating the Church, which soon afterwards drove Pier Damiani to renounce his bishopric of Ostia, that in solitude he might escape from the knowledge of disgusting sinfulness, had extended to, if it did not emanate from, the Head. At Rome vice of every kind prevailed; three generations of profligate women, paramours or mothers of popes, strove to fix the papal crown hereditarily in their family; and to augment the confusion, two or three popes were sometimes simultaneously enthroned.

Such was the condition of the Church when Henry III, a prince in whom great abilities and great energy were united to virtue and genuine piety succeeded his father, Conrad II, and devoted his powers to three great objects. These were, the strengthening the Imperial authority, the rendering it hereditary in his own family, and the reformation of the Church, which he deemed the especial duty of the Emperor, as its official protector. With respect to the last and most momentous of these objects, he conceived his own task to be twofold; to eradicate the only ecclesiastical offence actually falling under his jurisdiction, to wit, simony; and to cleanse the Papal See of the vices that polluted it, by installing a pope such as the Spiritual Head of Christendom ought to be, to whom he might leave the general purification of the Church.

No one disputing the right of the Emperor to a prerogative repeatedly exercised by his predecessors, he visited Italy, and with the concurrence of the Roman clergy in Synod assembled, proceeded to depose the three Popes, who were then struggling to snatch the tiara from each others heads. He next required from the Roman clergy and the prelates present, a pledge never again to elect a pope without the sanction of the emperor, and he then looked round for a fitting supreme pontiff. The Italian ecclesiastics were too corrupt to afford a single eligible candidate for the spiritual sovereignty, except, perhaps, one of the three deposed popes, Gregory VI, whose only offence was having simoniacally purchased the Holy See. This sin he frankly confessed, and expiated by resigning the wrongfully attained dignity. But this expiation could not render him re-eligible, wherefore Henry successively seated four German prelates in St. Peter’s Chair; and the genuine Christian spirit that uniformly guided his choice has seldom been, as in truth it cannot well be, disputed.

Of these four popes, the first two died each within a a year from his nomination, poisoned, according to some contemporary chroniclers, by the Romans, because transalpine and not elected by them. The third, a kinsman of the Emperor’s, propitiated them, by seeking their confirmation of the imperial appointment, ere he would assume the pontifical office and the name of Leo IX, and proved more fortunate, being esteemed an actual Saint. His morals were the very perfection of purity, enhanced by ascetic austerity. He constantly wore sack­cloth next his skin, and as Pope, walked thrice every week barefoot to St. Peters. His unbounded charity, the refuge of all the destitute, was generally believed to have been supernaturally tested, and rewarded. The legend is, that Leo one night shared his bed with a poor leper to whom none would afford even house room, and in the morning the leper vanished, revealing himself as the Redeemer of mankind. Zealously did Leo set about the reforms desired by Henry, in which, as in the whole course of his pontificate, he was entirely governed by one of the most remarkable men of that age, the monk Hildebrand, afterwards Pope Gregory VII.

Of the early life of this extraordinary individual, little is positively known. He is reported to have been the son of a blacksmith or a carpenter of Saona, a Tuscan village, educated at Rome by monks; and it is certain, that very young he dedicated himself to the Church—the course by which, in those days, plebeian talent sought and found cultivation, distinction, eminence, thus qualifying, if it could not counterbalance, the rigid severance of ranks in the feudal world. Hildebrand had risen to the post of Chaplain to Gregory VI, who had been one of the instructors of his youth, and whom Henry, neglecting his more worthless competitors, Benedict IX and Sylvester III, took with him across the Alps. Hildebrand accompanied his fallen patron to the Abbey of Cluny, where the ex-pope passed some years. There Hildebrand took or renewed the monastic vows, and so won the esteem of both abbot and monks, that when the vacancy occurred he was made prior. Leo chancing to visit the abbey immediately after his nomination to the papacy, the new Prior was presented to him as a valuable counsellor by the Abbot, attended him to Rome, and was appointed Sub-Dean and Treasurer of the Holy See.

Whether Hildebrand then already nourished the ambitious projects for the Popedom, which he subsequently entertained and acted upon, or conceived them gradually, as his views expanded with success; whether he were an honestly bigoted zealot for the exaltation of ecclesiastical supremacy, or an artful and aspiring demagogue, reckless of the means by which his ends were attained—he has even been accused of poisoning some of his predecessors in St. Peter’s Chair; has been, and still is, disputed by antagonist partisans, whilst at this distance of time it were hard actually to decide the question. It may, however, be boldly pronounced, that he was neither the crafty, savage, and profligate, usurping tyrant that he has been represented by Imperialists and Protestants, nor the perfect spiritual Father of Christendom that he has been painted by the advocates of all papal pretensions. But to an impartial investigator of the course of events, and of individual conduct, it seems tolerably clear that both parties, Gregory VII and his antagonist, Henry IV, have been absurdly calumniated by their respective adversaries; that the former had the good and bad qualities usually accompanying genuine bigotry, as naturally resulting from conviction of the transcendent excellence, of ascetic habits and privations, or rather, indeed, from the austerely harsh, but strictly moral, temper that generates such conviction; and that, having dreamt he was called by St. Peter to reform and emancipate the Church, he really believed this visionary, magnified reflexion of his waking thoughts, to be a divine revelation. Nor, in those ages, can such fanatic credulity be pronounced inconsistent with a shrewd, and in other respects sound, masculine understanding. If this view of Hildebrand’s character be correct, it may be inferred that he must, in the first instance, have been highly gratified by Henry Ill's zeal for church reform, and would therefore, for awhile, co­operate cordially in carrying out his views.

The first object of Leo IX and his adviser, as of Henry III, was the purification of the Church from simony. To effect this, the Pope, attended by Hildebrand, visited different countries, everywhere convened national synods, in which he declaimed against the vices polluting the Church, and admonished all prelates who had obtained their dignities simoniacally of their guilt, exhorting them to confess, repent, and endeavour to expiate the sin by abdication, and threatening the refractory with excommunication. The fervour of his harangues proved efficacious; and whilst numbers cleared themselves, as he required, by oath, from the suspicion of simony, others, confessing their guilt, resigned their sees or abbeys. The excitement thus produced in the public mind in that age of passion and of piety, genuine if superstitious, when in toilsome and hazardous pilgrimages the seeds of future crusades was germinating, can, in these utilitarian days, hardly be conceived. It prepared the way for the ulterior operations of Hildebrand, perhaps even in his own breast; and was increased tenfold by the next papal reform. This was directed against the licentiousness of the clergy, under which name was included, as regards priests, lawful wedlock. The Pope forbade all who were in Holy Orders to marry; forbade the admission of married men to Ordination, and commanded ecclesiastics of all ranks to dismiss their concubines, the wives of the priests being thus classed with the frail companions of the higher ranks of the hierarchy.

In relation to this, now so generally reprobated, point of Romanist discipline, it may here be observed that some modern philosophic investigators of the past have adopted an opinion that, in times the tendency of which to make everything hereditary was as strong as it was in the middle ages, to the celibacy of the clergy alone may their not having become a caste, like the Indian Brahmins, be due. And, in fact, endeavours to render benefices hereditary had been made—in regard to the papacy one has just been mentioned—instances had occurred of a canon’s daughter receiving a canonry as her wedding portion. But if a political evil has been thus obviated, neither Leo nor Hildebrand in inculcating clerical celibacy were actuated by political views. If they even thought of detaching the priesthood from worldly ties and interests, Leo assuredly would see this consequence solely under its religious aspect; nor does it appear likely that Hildebrand, whatever he might do at a later period, then looked at it in any other light. Admiration of asceticism was at its zenith, and indisputably inspired an injunction so consonant with the high appreciation of virginity apparent from the earliest times in the Church. The same opinions and feelings that dictated the Papal decree, produced the eager approbation with which it was received by the great body of the laity, as by the whole of the regular clergy. That in the married priests—and it should seem that, except in Italy, the majority of parish priests were at this time married men—in their families, and in those of their wives, it provoked the most determined opposition was inevitable; and at this opposition those prelates who solaced their celibacy with illicit attachments, connived, if they did not stimulate it. Hildebrand was too prudent to think of trying to inforce two reforms at once, or actually to compel the sudden disruption of all family ties. Celibacy was enjoined, wedlock forbidden to the clergy. With this first step he was, for the moment, content, and as yet no ecclesiastical law positively constrained priests to repudiate their wives. The seed was sown, and left to strike root.

Thus, in some degree of fermentation touching both simony and clerical celibacy, but in a materially improved state of morality and discipline, and apparently submissive to the recognized Imperial sovereignty, the Church remained, throughout the pontificate of Leo IX, and of his immediate successor, Victor II, similarly appointed by Henry III, and similarly governed by Hildebrand. In temporal affairs, Henry, a really able monarch, had been equally successful; he had considerably overawed the most powerful of the German princes; he had strengthened the sub-vassals and vavassours, whose loyalty his father had secured, by making their fiefs legally hereditary; he had procured the election of his infant son, as his colleague and successor; and, had his life been prolonged, it would seem as if he might indeed have achieved his great temporal objects, have bequeathed to his posterity an absolute, hereditary, imperial sovereignty over both Germany and Italy, as also over popes ruling a purified Church: but concerning the probable effects of such success upon the destiny of Europe, it were idle to speculate. In the full vigour of manhood, Henry’s progress was arrested by death, the result, if the ever recurring mediaeval accusation be credited, of poison administered by those who feared him. His successor was not quite six years old.

But the widowed Empress Agnes appeared to be imbued with his spirit, who bequeathed her the regency. With a firm hand she grasped the helm, governing conformably to the principles of her deceased consort; and Hildebrand, upon the death of Victor II, hastened to her court, to ask her pleasure respecting his successor. She named another German prelate, a brother of the Duke of Lower Lorrain, whom Henry had offended and she hoped to conciliate, by giving his brother the triple crown. Hildebrand submissively accepted her nominee, who took the name of Stephen IX; and if what he saw of the cabals forming to wrest the regency from the Empress mother, by showing him an opportunity in prospect, perhaps gave birth to the scheme of completely emancipating the Papal See from Imperial control, he also saw that the hour for putting the scheme in execution had not yet struck. And when upon the death of Stephen, the powerful family of Tusculum, in consideration of a large bribe exerting itself as of old, carried the election of a Roman pope, Hildebrand at once denounced the election as illegal, appealed to the Empress, and prevailed upon the Roman clergy to abandon the intrusive pontiff, as an antipope, to await her decision, and finally to accept the Burgundian prelate she selected, as Pope Nicholas II.

Nicholas, like his predecessors, was implicitly governed by Hildebrand, now Cardinal Archdeacon, whose superior intellect was generally acknowledged ; and under this pontificate he took the first decided step towards relieving the popedom from that imperial sovereignty, which even in that step he distinctly admitted. He induced Nicholas to regulate papal elections, by a law which vested the right of suffrage solely in the cardinals, to the exclusion both of the other clergy and of the citizens of Rome, who had hitherto taken a sort of share in electing either the imperial nominee, or the candidate supported by less lawful lay power. But this law explicitly recognized the Imperial sanction as indispensable to the validity of the election. Agnes was naturally displeased with this encroachment upon the prerogative, constantly exercised by her lost consort, and hitherto by herself; as the imperial right was, however, acknowledged, and she was annoyingly as awkwardly hampered by the above-mentioned cabals, she prudently confined her opposition to remonstrances against this interference of Cardinals with an Imperial prerogative.

Hildebrand nevertheless deemed it expedient to secure efficient support against future more active opposition from the Regent or her son; and this he sought in the warlike Normans, who were now masters of the great part of Magna Grecia. The twelve Norman adventurers who originally held that region in separate counties were, as before said, avowedly vassals of the Emperor. But since doing homage to Henry III, they had triumphed over an Italian confederacy for their expulsion, taking the chief confederate, Leo IX, prisoner; when it occurred to them that a pope, almost destitute of temporal power, would be a more convenient suzerain than a mighty emperor, and they gladly transferred their homage to their holy captive. That the Emperor had not sanctioned the transfer, is a matter of course. With similar willingness, prompted by similar motives, Robert Guiscard, who by courage, prowess, and craft, had absorbed the several counties of his brothers and other countrymen, into a duchy for himself, now met Hildebrand’s overtures; swore allegiance to Nicholas II, and received from him investiture of the duchy of Apulia, and of all that he should subsequently conquer from the Saracens. It will be remembered that the popes claimed suzerainty over all lands won from misbe­lievers, to whomsoever they might have originally belonged.

During all these pontificates church reform had been in progress, and with respect to simony much had been effected; under that of Nicholas some attempts had been made to enforce the observance of clerical celibacy. Violent resistance was provoked, and no where more than in Lombardy. There most of the parish priests were married; and the Earl-Archbishop of Milan, in his zeal for the spiritual independence of his See, as that of St. Ambrose, encouraged their refractory disposition. The irritation produced by these circumstances led, upon the death of Nicholas, A.D. 1061, to a double papal election; the Lombard prelates, regardless of the law of the deceased Pope, electing Cadaloo Bishop of Parma, who thereupon entitled himself Honorius II, even whilst the Cardinals, duly assembled at Rome, were electing Anselmo Bishop of Lucca, who took the name of Alexander II. Both parties hastened to solicit the sanction of the Empress. The Lombard messenger was naturally the first to reach her court, and Agnes, much dissatisfied with both the new law concerning papal election, and the assumption of the right to create and give investiture of a duchy of Apulia, as also with some other of Hildebrand’s recent proceedings, confirmed the election of Cadaloo. But effective support she could not give him, this being nearly the last act of her regency, which, together with the person of her little son, was about to be violently torn from her.

The cabals against the Em press-Regent had resulted in a conspiracy of prelates, princes, and nobles, headed by Hanno, Archbishop of Cologne, Adalbert, Archbishop of Bremen, and Otho, previously Margrave of Nordheim, to whom Agnes, upon assuming the regency, had given the duchy of Bavaria, conferred upon herself by her late husband. The conspirators had tried to get up a rebellion against female rule; but so satisfactory to the nation had been the Regent’s government, that this was found impracticable. They then adopted a different course. They captured the royal child by stratagem, committing his custody and education to Hanno. This virtually gave Hanno the regency, government being administered in the name, as if by the act, of the little monarch; and the prelate’s confederates quickly became as jealous of his power, as they had previously been of the Empress-mother’s. During their struggle for the person of the young King, and for their own individual interest, they concerned themselves very little about the contest for the papacy, in which Hanno declared for Alexander, and his chief ally and rival, Adalbert, for Honorius.

The royal child, Henry IV, himself, is allowed by the less virulent amongst his enemies, to have been endowed by nature with all the great and good qualities that should have rendered him an excellent sovereign. But the various unintentional or intentional and conflicting faults of his education, went nigh to extinguish them. If, as his abductors alleged, he had been somewhat over indulged by his widowed mother, the gloomily ambitious Hanno, cloaking his design under colour of severe discipline’s being indispensable to remedy such over indulgence, really endeavoured, by harshness and privations, to cow his future master into permanent subserviency. From Archbishop Hanno’s clutches the royal boy was cleverly rescued by Archbishop Adalbert, another able, ambitious, and unscrupulous statesman, but unlike Hanno, a patron of learning and the arts, and, according to his adversaries, an agreeable libertine. He sought to perpetuate his own authority by unfitting his royal ward for the duties and labours of the high station to which he was born, enervating his character, and plunging him into the most degrading sensuality. It required very many years of the painful schooling of adversity to correct the evils produced by this variously, and in the last instances, intentionally vicious education.

The ambition of the great vassals, and the maladministration of worthless favourites, who won the adolescent monarch’s confidence, by fostering his follies, his passions, his vices, provoked rebellion; whilst his desire to obtain a divorce from a wife, whose only fault was having been forced upon him, enthralled him to the designing. Siegfried, Archbishop of Mainz, promised the divorce as the price of Henry’s obtaining for him the withheld tithes of Thuringia, which large province Henry I had united to the duchy of Saxony. The prelate got his tithes; but the monarch did not get his divorce, and by his support of the Mainz claim incurred the bitter hatred of the Saxons, whose every feeling was previously indisposed to a Franconian Emperor. They had not yet forgiven the Franks for the Frank Charlemagne’s subjugation of their ancestors after a long and often repeated struggle, or his massacre of 4,500 of their ancestors after quelling one of their insurrections; they were proud of the liberties they had extorted from the conqueror, proud of the brilliant dynasty of sovereigns they had given the Empire, and irritated at the retransfer of the crown to a Frank of Franconian family, upon the extinction of that Saxon dynasty.

Whilst Germany was thus immersed in civil broil, intrigue, and profligacy, the contest for the tiara had been decided in Italy. Hildebrand had obtained for his Pope, already strong in the support of the Normans, the adhesion of the only other, really formidable, Italian vassal potentate, the Marchioness of Tuscany. That she was formidable was due to the Franconian Emperors. Conrad II had united the duchies of Tuscany and Lucca with the county of Mantua to bestow them upon Marchese Bonifacio, who seems to have retained that title rather than take the ducal, but whose excessive haughtiness is recorded in his hesitation to sit down at the imperial table in company with some noble subvassals, whom the Emperor had seen fit to invite to dinner. To this arrogant Marquess, who appears to have been constantly increasing his dominions, Henry III gave in marriage a niece of his mother, the Empress Gisela’s; Beatrice, daughter of Frederic Duke of Upper Lorrain, the last male of his line, whence Beatrice inherited his ample patrimony though not his duchy. The sole surviving fruit of this union was the celebrated Countess Matilda. Bonifacio was accidently, or purposely slain in a hunting party, when the widowed Beatrice wedded Godfrey, the deposed Duke of Lower Lorrain, giving her daughter to his son, Godfrey the Humpbacked. The father had forfeited his duchy by rebelling against Henry III, in resentment of that Emperor’s refusal to reunite Upper and Lower Lorrain in his favour, and he perhaps instilled his own enmity towards Henry into his wife’s mind. She however repaired to her imperial cousin’s court, accompanied by her daughter, to implore her new husband’s pardon. She obtained it, and even the restoration of his duchy, but was with her daughter detained at the Imperial court, partly as hostages for his good conduct, partly in punishment for their having married enemies of the Empire without their suzerain’s permission. Agnes upon assuming the regency had at once released both mother and daughter, sending them honourably home; and as a further conciliatory measure, raised Godfrey’s brother, Stephen IX, to the papacy. But the German, as well as the Italian members of this mighty family, were more mindful of wrongs than of benefits. Duke Godfrey is said to have devised the stratagem by which the infant Henry IV was in childhood stolen from his mother, and their alliance was assured to the opponents of the Emperor’s family. Alexander triumphed, and Honorius, despite his Lombard partisans, is ranked amongst anti-popes.

During Alexander’s pontificate of twelve years, little was done towards in forcing clerical celibacy, his energies and Hildebrand’s being still chiefly directed against simony; but it is now that the idea of the complete emancipation of the Church from lay sovereignty first appears, suggested possibly by the disregard of her concerns, the heedlessness of papal movements, that the parties contending for the regency evinced, and confirmed by the vices which, disgracing Henry’s early youth, might well be judged to unfit him for the head of that Church. The idea once started, rapidly gained ground. Henry himself, looking to the Pope for the divorce he was still eagerly seeking, and implicated by the misconduct of the favourites to whom, in his reluctance to suffer business to interfere with his pleasures, he left the government of his realms, in the appearance of simony, an offence of which he seems to have been individually guiltless, tacitly sanctioned, by not resisting, papal encroachment upon his jurisdiction. For instance, he suffered a question as to the alleged uncanonical election of a Bishop of Constance to be referred to the Pope. The example thus set was followed elsewhere, and Henry looked supinely on, whilst German and Italian prelates were learning to hold their elections imperfect until confirmed by the Pope. With respect to the divorce, which was to be the recompense of such forbearance, Henry, after incurring much obloquy and enmity in its pursuit, saw, at length, that it was unattainable; whereupon he reconciled himself to a wife he could not shake off, and, if still not an exemplary husband, seems to have lived in perfect amity with her, till their union, which gave him three children, was severed by her death.

Again, upon the death of Alexander II in 1073, Hildebrand exhibited his professed respect for the Imperial sovereignty. The Roman people, enthusiastically attached to the able Cardinal, whose counsels had so exalted their late pontiffs, and them in their pontiffs, at once, ere the conclave could assemble, tumultuously proclaimed him, Hildebrand, Pope; and the Cardinals, fully sympathizing with the people, confirmed the proclamation by electing him. But Hildebrand refused to assume the papacy until Henry IV should have ratified the election. Whilst awaiting his pleasure, although he acted provisionally as Pope, he signed himself only, Gregorius, in Romanum pontificum electus. But this was his last act of deference towards the Head of the Empire; and even the pontifical name that he took, was a symptom of disclaiming that Head’s authority; it was Gregory VII, implying that the deposed Gregory VI had been a lawful Pope. The ratification solicited was promptly given, the youthful Emperor apparently not having conceived any suspicion of hostile designs in the new Pope.

But had he been less trusting opposition would have been unavailing, for most propitious to papal pretension was the moment at which Gregory VII began the war. Henry, young, ill-educated, indolent, and dissolute, involved in civil broils, detested by the Saxons, and surrounded by princes eager to break the bonds in which his father and grandfather had hampered them, and to revenge themselves for having been obliged to submit, on the one side; on the other an able, experienced and resolute Pope, still in the vigour of life, if no longer young, idolized by his flock, in intimate alliance with the warlike Normans of Apulia, and zealously supported by the Great Countess, Matilda of Tuscany. But Matilda is too important a personage to the era in which she lived, as well as to the impending contest, not to require a less summary introduction.

Upon the death of her mother Matilda had succeeded to the principality granted by Conrad II to Boniface, which the Marquess had considerably increased. His daughter through great part of her life continued to do the same, and she eventually possessed, besides the original grant of Tuscany, including with the suzerainty of Sardinia and Corsica, as Pisan property, Lucca and Mantua, the duchies of Spoleto, Parma, Modena and Reggio, the Ferrarese, parts of the march of Ancona, and some districts of Liguria; whilst she exercised an influence, almost amounting to sovereignty, over great part of Lombardy. This powerful princess, who was usually addressed with the forms peculiar to crowned heads, was entitled indifferently Duchess, Marchioness, and Countess, but signed herself “Matilda by the Grace of God if anything,” after this fashion she was usually called the Great Countess. In her, the blind devotion of the age was combined both with feminine virtues, viz., woman’s singleness of purpose and self-sacrificing enthusiasm, and with masculine courage, energy, and abilities. In war she habitually headed her armies in person, and is said at the early age of fifteen, whilst under maternal authority, to have led two expeditions, despatched by Marchioness Beatrice to the assistance of Alexander II. In peace her life was as nearly that of a nun, as was compatible with her princely duties. Her government was wise, just and prosperous. She was extraordinarily learned, a great patroness of science, especially of legal science, the cultivation of which she deemed essential to a ruler, and a great collector of books. Two accusations have been brought against Matilda. The first, by old Imperialists, and modern Protestants and Infidels, is, that her attachment to Gregory VII was of a licentious character, which might be thought satisfactorily refuted by the austere nature of both parties. Matilda, though twice married, is believed by her admirers to have died a virgin, and is so termed in her epitaph; it is certain that she speedily separated herself from both her husbands. If this refutation be deemed insufficient, it may be corroborated by the observation, that she as zealously supported his predecessor and his successors, thus proving that her attachment was to the papacy not to the individual Pope. The second charge is the device of modern liberals, who tolerate popes through sheer intolerance of emperors, and ascribe to the middle ages the opinions and feelings of the nineteenth century. They allege that she cared neither for Pope, Papacy, nor Church, supporting them merely because it was her interest so to do, because she wanted protection against Imperial enmity and rapacity. To mention this supposition is almost to refute it; for who can conceive that the powerful and energetic Matilda feared the then weak, vacillating, and harassed Henry IV, who would have purchased her friendship at any price that she could have set upon it.

Thus supported and thus favoured by circumstances, Gregory entered upon his pontificate with fearless activity, dedicated in the first instance to enforcing the celibacy of the clergy. To this end he not only renewed in the strongest terms the previous prohibitions and denunciations, but pronounced the rites and Sacraments of the Church worse than nugatory when administered by a married priest. The reform of this pseudo-heresy for a while absorbed his exertions, even to the neglect of what had till now seemed the great object of his life, viz., the prevention of simony. It is not unlikely that he had by this time discovered how much more useful an instrument for carrying out his views—views naturally expanding from day to day—would be a priesthood unfettered by family ties, than the existing clergy; and until he should have the command of such an instrument he might well be reluctant to alienate the young Emperor, who, whatever his disorders, had hitherto cordially co-operated with him in his reforms, and, when not overruled by his bribed favourites, selected fitting prelates. Even, when two years later, AD 1075, he took steps decidedly adverse to lay patronage, and encroachments upon Imperial authority; summoning a General Council without the concurrence of the Emperor, and issuing, conjointly with this Council, a prohibition to ecclesiastics to receive investiture of abbey, or bishopric at the hands of a layman (to which investiture he now gave the name of simony), he adopted no means of enforcing that law, as though he had wished it to lie a while unnoticed.

But such usurpations of authority could not pass unnoticed, even when nominal. The bare promulgation of the decree deeply offended Henry, who was thoroughly indisposed to resign a right transmitted to him by his predecessors, who assumed or obtained it as a means of excluding objectionable prelates, and become actually indispensable, since the ecclesiastics, whom Gregory sought to make independent of his authority, held half his realm in fief. In fact, the Church could not acquire worldly wealth without forfeiting something of her independence. Accordingly, even Wolfgang Menzel, a liberal, and, therefore, anti­imperial, but philosophic writer, observes that in this contest the aggression was always on the part of the popes, and never of the emperors, who merely strove to maintain prescriptive rights. Nowhere, except in Italy, had earlier popes professed to interfere with the election or appointment of prelates, though, when circumstances were peculiarly favourable, as in the case of a foreign prelate dying at Rome, they would obtrude a nominee upon the Chapter. In most countries the other suffragan bishops of the province, conjointly with the clergy, and originally, and still occasionally, with the laity of the diocese, proposed a candidate, whom the sovereign approved or rejected. If he approved, he gave investiture, and consecration by the metropolitan, or, in the case of an archbishop sometimes by the pope, followed of course. Gradually the Chapter of the Cathedral superseded the body of the clergy, and the practice of the monarch’s recommending a candidate began to prevail very generally, as it always had in Germany. In Italy, chapter, clergy of the diocese, brother suffragans, laity, prince, and pope, con­tended for the right of election, and succeeded or failed, according to their relative force or address. The Pope alleged, with truth, that everywhere enormous abuses of lay patronage disgraced the Church: for instance, in Ireland many sees had become hereditary in great families, lay members of which were often appointed bishops, and discharged their episcopal and ecclesiastical functions through ill-paid Vicars: the archbishopric of Armagh is said to have been thus abusively held for two hundred years. But, on the other hand, abuses as gross, if different, prevailed in Italy, where there was little regular lay patronage, and where prelates sold benefices quite as notoriously as could any lay patron.

Henry, disregarding the Pope’s prohibition, continued to confer sees and abbeys as before; and, as his choice was generally good, Gregory for a while closed his eyes to the offence. But now the married clergy appealed to the Emperor for protection for themselves and their families. The marriage of ecclesiastics was especially the cause of the Middle Orders (if the phrase may be anachronistically used when a real middle order hardly existed), to which both parish-priests and their wives belonged. In this class Henry had always found loyal subjects, staunch supporters against the rebellions of the princes and great vassals, and he, in return, cordially espoused their cause. Gregory, already exasperated by the strenuous resistance which his injunctions upon this point had encountered, not in Germany only, but throughout Europe, was so exasperated by this double offence of the Emperor's, that he cast all cautious temporizing aside for ever, and resorted to decidedly hostile measures. He was perhaps confirmed in this determination by the consciousness that an alteration which he had made in the oath archbishops took at their consecration, had unobservedly secured to the papacy, prospectively at least, a more despotic sovereignty over the whole ecclesiastical body than it had yet possessed. This oath had hitherto merely expressed spiritual obedience; he changed the words to absolute subjection, and rendered the obtaining the pall contingent upon taking this slavish oath. Idle thraldom of the metropolitan necessarily included that of his suffragan bishops and their clergy.

Thus resolved, Gregory excommunicated, for alleged simony, five of Henry’s favourite courtiers, and commanded the monarch to dismiss from his councils and presence those whom the Church had condemned. The monarch disobeyed the papal mandate; whereupon the Pope summoned his sovereign to appear before the papal tribunal, there to justify, if that were possible, his conduct, denouncing excommunication against his royal and imperial self, should he persist in his disobedience. Henry did persist in retaining his favourites, and Gregory launched the excommunication, silencing the remonstrances of his own Council against a measure conceived to be illegal, by asking whether Christ had expressly excluded kings from the flock he committed to the charge of St. Peter. A question the more effective from Philip I of France having, to avert a similar anathema, submitted to clear himself of simony in the form required by Gregory.

It was now open war between the Pope and the Emperor. German and Italian synods, Convoked by the Emperor, and comprising the chief prelates of either country, formally deposed the Pope upon the accusation of hostile Italian cardinals, who charged him with every crime, every vice. Gregory received due notice of these proceedings, and forthwith prospectively deposed the Emperor, should he not by a certain day have submitted so fully to the Church, even admitting the Pope’s arbitration or judgment between himself and his rebellious subjects, as to have merited and received absolution. A second Lombard synod retaliated, by excommunicating the deposed Pope.

The state of the Church and the Empire, out of which this warfare rose, required a somewhat detailed explanation; its progress may be more concisely despatched. The German rebels, in furtherance of their own views, promptly acknowledged the right of arbitration assumed by Gregory; and in the end Henry found it expedient to purchase absolution, by submitting to a painful and humiliating penance. For so submitting he has been severely condemned as mean and dastardly; but whatever his faults, and by this time bitter experience had pretty well corrected them, mean or dastardly Henry never was. His censurers both forget the ills consequent upon the sentence, when its power over the public mind was absolute, and measure him by a standard of later times. In those days, the highest in station and proudest in character, submitted unhesitatingly to every penance imposed by the Church. Without recurring to the Emperor Theodosius, grovelling in sackcloth and ashes at the church-door, before Archbishop Ambrose, it may suffice to observe that, not only had Henry’s predecessor, the canonized Henry II, done penance, barefoot and in sackcloth, at a church-door, in expiation of a silly practical joke upon a bishop; but that his own energetic father, Henry III, and the haughty Marchese Bonifacio, had, as a church penance, submitted to be scourged. The idea was suggested by Gregory’s arrogant as brutal prolongation of the painful situation; and surely, had Henry, after he had begun, refused to persevere in standing barefoot and fasting in the snow, his so doing would have been imputed to effeminate impatience of cold and hunger.

But perhaps it was yet more the failure of Henry’s penance and imperfect absolution to effect its object, that has given the transaction the aspect of Gregory’s triumph, and, consequently, of Henry’s defeat. For the absolution so arduously purchased availed him little. His excommunication had been but the pretence of princes who sought to supplant him, and when deprived of that they found others. Gregory certainly now, if not before, extended his views from the emancipation of the Church to the subjection of the Emperor, whom he sought not, however, to degrade in relation to any save the Pope, since the greater the servant the greater the master. In pursuance of his claim to judge between monarch and subjects, between king and anti-king, he again summoned his sovereign to appear before his tribunal, and clear himself from his subjects’ accusations. This was claiming temporal sovereignty, not spiritual authority; and Henry, who perhaps regretted having fruitlessly humbled himself, refused to humble the Imperial dignity. Gregory, thereupon, sanctioned the election of an anti-king, Henry acknowledged an anti-pope, and on both sides the exasperation daily increased. The German Emperor now found his best support in Italy, in the Lombard clergy of all ranks, even in a Roman synod; and, in spite of Matilda, he installed his anti-pope in the Lateran, and besieged Gregory in the Castle of St. Angelo. Gregory was in imminent danger of capture, when Robert Guiscard brought a Norman army to rescue him, in doing which he burnt Rome from the Lateran to the Coliseum. Gregory accompanied his deliverers to Salerno; and there, the Romans being too much irritated by the disaster attending his rescue to admit of his return, he died in exile. His death was consonant to, and illustrative of, his character. When entreated, in proof of his forgiveness of his enemies, to absolve all whom he had excommunicated, he said, “With the exception of Henry, styled by his followers King of Germany, of Guibert, the usurping pretender to the Roman See (Henry’s Pope), and of those who, by advice or assistance, promote their evil and ungodly views” [that is to say, of all his own enemies], “I absolve and bless all men.” And after this tolerably comprehensive, unchristian exception, his last words were, “ Because I have loved justice, and hated iniquity, therefore do I die in exile.”

The death of Gregory was of no advantage to Henry. His successors, Victor III, Urban II, and Pascal II, whom the Cardinals, as a corollary from the newly-asserted independence of the Church, successively elected without the slightest reference to the Emperor, pursued the same object with Gregory; and, being in every way inferior to him, pursued it, especially Urban, with more unscrupulous virulence. And they were supported as zealously as he had been by the Great Countess, whose excessive piety seems to have so hoodwinked her powerful intellect, as to blind her to the criminality of the papal course. Urban II, as Head of the Church, stirred up Henry’s second wife, a Russian Princess, called Adelaide or Agnes (this last being the German form of the Russian Yanka), to accuse him of the most improbable as well as most revolting offences; stirred up his two sons successively to revolt and snatch at their father’s crown. And the eldest, Conrad, whom his father had left in Italy as Imperial Vicar, or Viceroy, must have required some seducing, since he is described as of so reverentially filial a nature, that even in rebellion he never would suffer his father to be spoken of disrespectfully in his hearing; but his excessive piety threw him into the hands of papal emissaries. When they had served the Pope’s purpose, both he and his stepmother died neglected, not improbably of mortification and repentance; the son at the court of the Great Countess, no longer his patroness, the wife in a nunnery. Matilda was accused by Henry’s friends of poisoning both, to prevent their retracting their accusations. But the accusers of Matilda have not even attempted to support the charge, which is as utterly repugnant to her character, as it is a fearful, and surely slanderous, exaggeration of Urban’s recklessness in the pursuit of his object. It will be seen in the course of the narrative that, in those days, the premature death of a person of consequence was invariably ascribed to poison; a melancholy characteristic of the age, however innocent might be the accused. The second son, Henry, ambitious, unscrupulous, energetic, and able, would need little stimulus beyond his own impatience, to wrest all remaining power from the father, who had already procured the ungrateful son’s election and coronation, as his own subordinate colleague and future successor. The Emperor was now weakened by the Crusade, which had robbed him of his best warrior, in one of his most loyal vassals, Godfrey of Lower Lorrain, the nephew and adopted heir of Matilda’s first husband, and of many faithful adherents among the inferior nobles, while none of the rebellious princes had taken the Cross. The towns, indeed, were steady in their loyalty. Worms expelled her Bishop for his disloyalty, and was rewarded with chartered rights, as also by becoming Henry IV’s favourite residence. Bodies of the yet unfree mechanics, who had hitherto borne arms only to defend their walls, followed him to the field under the Heads of their Guilds. Even the peasantry repeatedly rose in arms to defend their persecuted Emperor, although the nobles when victorious, punished, what they called the presumption of villeins, by the most horrible mutilation of their prisoners. But grief at this second filial defection had overwhelmed the unhappy father. The Emperor failed his friends, dying of a broken heart.

To the Pope, this fruit of their machinations was, for the moment, the reverse of profitable. Henry V, upon the throne, adopted the imperial policy for pursuing which he, professedly, had rebelled against his father, and he acted upon it with all the vigour of his character and of his youth. He first reduced his realm to such tranquillity that war was felt to be hopeless, and even Matilda frankly proffered the oath of allegiance, only stipulating not to be required to assist against the papal see. Henry, who just then wanted not her contingent, and admired this prototype of our own Elizabeth, assented, visited her to receive her homage, addressed her as a mother, and appointed her Imperial Vicar in Lombardy. He then approached Rome in such force, that Pascal II at once proposed a compromise of the grand question of the right of investiture. This Pope’s main object evidently was to get rid of the homage done by ecclesiastics to laymen; and to accomplish this he offered, on behalf of the Church, to resign all fiefs for which homage was done, in consideration of the Emperor’s relinquishing the pretended right of investiture; the Church thenceforward subsisting upon tithes and free gifts. Henry readily agreed to a plan that would place half of Germany and no small part of Italy in his hands, and proceeded to Rome for his coronation.

But prior to the ceremony the treaty was to be signed, and, for this purpose, first read aloud in St. Peter’s church. Henry entertained so much apprehension as to the probable reception of the terms, that he would not enter the Basilica until the guard of every door was given to his troops. Then he presented himself, and the treaty was read; when the cardinals, prelates, and clergy present, vehemently protested against such spoliation. A tumult arose; Pascal confessed his inability to fulfil the conditions he had himself proposed. Henry thereupon pronounced the treaty void, and the Pope refused to crown him. The Emperor now seized Pope and Cardinals, carrying them off as prisoners; and the Holy Father, to redeem himself and them from captivity, signed another treaty, recognizing and confirming the Imperial right of giving investiture. He was released; he crowned Henry Emperor, and as a free agent ratified the treaty he had signed in prison, further pledging himself never to excommunicate the Emperor. A Roman Synod, nevertheless, cancelled the treaty, as having been extorted under duress, and excommunicated Henry V; Pascal submitting to the decision of the Synod. Again war raged between Pope and Emperor, and, thereby enkindled, also between the Emperor and many of the Princes of the Empire.

The death of the Great Countess soon afterwards complicated the quarrel, by adding a new, and long continuing cause of contention, of which a few words will explain the nature, to those already dividing the Spiritual and Temporal Heads of Christendom. Matilda, after the death of her first consort, Godfrey the Humpbacked, finding herself a childless widow in middle-age, without near relations, alienated from her nearest, the Emperor, and impelled by her devotion to the papal see, made a deed of gift of her possessions to that see, merely reserving to herself a life interest therein. At a later period, in order to gain an important partisan to the Pope, she contracted a second marriage. The partisan to. be gained was the Italian Welf, Duke of Bavaria. This Welf, son of the Welf Cunegunda by Marchese Azzo d’Este, already a very considerable Italian prince, upon the death of his uncle Welf, the last male of that old and illustrious Swabian family, had, by Henry IV’s permission, been invited from Italy, to become the heir and representative of the Welfs. He married the daughter of the rebel Duke of Bavaria and joined in his rebellion; had subsequently obtained the duchy as the price of deserting his father-in­law, and since then had been faithful to Henry IV. But what fidelity could be proof against the idea of uniting the splendid dominions of Matilda, to his duchy of Bavaria, and his ample possessions in this duchy and in Swabia? Welf the son wedded the elderly Matilda, and Welf the father rebelled against the Emperor. But all parties were disappointed by the results of these unhallowed political nuptials. The temper and habits of the Great Countess were ill fitted to brook marital control; and young Welf, when he found the possessions, to obtain which he had sacrificed himself, would never be his, was little disposed to conciliate their delusive mistress. The ill-assorted pair soon parted, and the angry Duke of Bavaria became once more the faithful, if the word must be so prostituted, vassal of Henry IV.

Such being the position of the Great Countess, at her death Henry V claimed, and took possession of her fiefs, as lapsed to the crown for want of natural heirs, and of her allodial lands as next of kin. Pascal II produced the deed of gift, in virtue of which, the wording of the deed being indefinite—Matilda’s own intentions are still a disputed question—he claimed her whole heritage, fiefs which were not her’s to give, as well as allodia, while the Emperor denied her right so to dispose even of the allodia, as to alienate them from the empire; and her widower, Welf, asserted, though he attempted not to inforce, his right to inherit the property of his wife. The war between Pope and Emperor was now fiercer than ever; but Henry kept possession of the Matildan heritage, and installed an anti-pope, elected by the Romans at his instigation in the Lateran.

At length in 1123 this long strife between the two Heads of Christendom was, if not ended yet, temporarily suspended by a treaty, termed indifferently the Calixtine Concordat, from the name of the Pope, Calixtus I, with whom it was concluded, and the Peace of Worms from the place where the negotiation was carried on. This treaty settled the question of investiture by a compromise; the Emperor relinquishing the right of conferring see, or abbey, by ring and crozier, and the Pope recognizing his right to give with the sceptre investiture of, and to receive homage for, the fiefs and temporalities belonging to such see or abbey; and further recognizing his right to be present, either in person or by deputy, at the election of prelates, and to decide in cases of double or disputed elections. The right of pronouncing upon the fitness of the person elected, the Pope reserved to himself or the Metropolitan; but the Emperors, by refusing investitures, still managed to reject prelates whom they did not choose to intrust with the fiefs of the see.

This Calixtine Concordat has been represented as a complete victory gained by Henry V, and it did, in fact, give up one point which the more zealous popes, especially Pascal II, were bent upon carrying. This was the exemption of ecclesiastics from doing homage to a layman; the exemption of hands that had held the consecrated host, from being placed in hands reeking from bloodshed or midnight orgies, in the hands of one devoted to worldly business, if not to worldly pleasures. Nevertheless it was not an unfair compromise; the Emperor, on his part, relinquishing the assumed right of giving the Church office or dignity, whilst he retained his sovereignty over the temporalities attached to that office or dignity. Thus a step towards the emancipation of the Church from lay sovereignty, this certainly was; the magnitude of which, that is to say, the degree of imperial power over the election of prelates remaining, depended much upon the order of the proceeding, whether investiture were to precede or follow consecration, a point which Calixtus had, in all likelihood, purposely left questionable, so that the order most favourable to the papacy might be claimed under more propitious circumstances. Upon this ground the victory has been claimed for the Pope; but a more real victory, is the virtual abandonment of the imperial claim to authority in papal elections, of which no mention is made. The treaty took no notice of the contention for the Matildan heritage. Calixtus disgraced his partial victory by his brutal treatment of the forsaken anti-pope Burdino, Archbishop of Braga, a man of exemplary cha­racter and venerable age, whom, after subjecting him to insulting exposure, he imprisoned for life, and that not even in a monastery, but in the dungeon of a fortress.

Two years after the conclusion of this treaty Henry V died without children; the epoch selected for the opening of the ensuing history. But ere commencing the regular narrative, this preliminary sketch must be completed by a survey, first of the political changes wrought by the half century of strife between the spiritual and temporal authorities, and then of the state of letters, of the arts, and of society, in the year 1125.

That all the princes and great vassals prodigiously increased their power, during a life-long strife in which both parties courted their favour, was a matter of course; this was especially the case in Germany, and in none was this increase more striking than in the spiritual princes. The Rhine Archbishops now held themselves actual ecclesiastical princes, of the character of the national Dukes, and the Archbishop of Mainz was decidedly the first prince of the Empire. The other prelates, while not attempting to vie with their acknowledged chiefs, had maintained their relative position. But if exalted in relation to the Emperor, both by their acquisition of power and by the Calixtine Concordat, the Clergy was degraded in relation to the Pope. His authority over the whole body was now despotic, and the instincts of despotism revealed themselves in jealousy of intermediate authorities. He withdrew much of their natural business from the prelates, to commit it to officers of his own; the prelates, excluded from their proper sphere of activity, turned their ambition more entirely to secular objects; and much of the corruption, from which Henry III and Gregory VII had cleared the Church, is said to have reappeared.

A simultaneous change had occurred in the constitution of the Cathedral Chapters. Much liberty in electing their bishops and archbishops they had not gained, having simply exchanged imperial for papal dictation; but during the struggle they had pretty generally emancipated themselves from all annoyance of claustral restraint, having established themselves in separate houses, and discharging their ecclesiastical duties through salaried vicars. These changes rendered stalls in a chapter objects of desire to nobles, even to princes, as provision for younger sons; and they began to be so occupied, to the gradual exclusion of men of humbler birth, who had formerly obtained them either as the remuneration of teachers in the Cathedral schools, as the recompense of learning and talent, or to afford means of pursuing profound studies untroubled, by the necessity of earning a subsistence; and such laboriously studious canons had been permitted, in order to escape interruptions by their ecclesiastical duties, to perform these vicariously. Intense study had then been deemed the only excuse for such a transfer of duty, or for holding more than one church benefice, upon neither of which was there now, practically, any restriction. These noble Chapters, when allowed to choose their prelate, elected only their noble kinsmen; and plebeian bishops, though still occurring, became rare exceptions.

In the lay vassalage, the chief alteration to be noted appeared in the position of the Ministeriales, Germaniae Dienstleute, and Anglicé household officers, or servants of princes and monarchs. These ministeriales had long been held in supreme contempt by the Germans, as menials; and originally, no doubt, all the officers of the palace, except the Chaplain and Palsgrave or palace judge, were so; nor is it recorded when or how the non free, or the very lowest of the free, were supplanted in the upper department of palace service, by haughty nobles. It may, however, be conjectured that the influence which these menials, like the freedmen of ancient Rome, would naturally acquire by being constantly about the Emperor’s person, early excited envy, and that the real importance of their posts—for it has been seen there was no regular ministry, the chief Chaplain acting as the Emperor’s Secretary, while his treasures were in the custody of the despised ministerialis his Chamberlain, through whose hands all public money passed—would gradually render those posts objects of ambition. But still, long after the highborn had judged it expedient to condescend to be imperial ministeriales, they incurred such degradation, thereby, partly because becoming subject to the jurisdiction of the Palace Judge, as to be deemed unfit to intermarry with nobles owing none but military service. The practice of remunerating the higher ministeriales with fiefs held by military service, combined with the real power they acquired, gradually modified this contempt, till at length it so completely died away, that Princes of the Empire, even national Dukes, accepted such Imperial household offices as Arch-Chamberlain, Arch-Marshal and the like, upon state occasions performing in person the offices thereunto belonging. For the ordinary service of the palace, nobles or princes of inferior dignity held the posts of Chamberlain, &c.; as some less exalted bishops did that of Chancellor. The imperial household offices do not appear to have as yet become hereditary.

The princes of the Empire had followed the example of their sovereign in elevating the character of their households, though they had not like him a double set of noble officers. In Saxony, which, as before said, was the most free and least feudal part of Germany, this disdain of household service was not yet extinct, though slowly subsiding. It was still thought derogatory, except in the imperial and perhaps the ducal palaces, and those of the least affluent Saxon nobles who did so far condescend, chose the service of an ecclesiastical prince, as less degrading than that of a lay-prince who might himself be the ministerialis of another.

But the most permanently important change that had occurred, was perhaps in the condition of towns; they had made a stride towards that of Free Imperial Cities. When the distress of Henry IV led to their forming, for the first time, an integral part of a feudal army, the patricians acted as their chivalry, the richer citizens and traders as an inferior cavalry, and the poorer with the non-free mechanics were the infantry of these urban corps. The cities had thus felt their strength. Henry IV rewarded them with charters, allowing them to elect their own magistrates, though he dreamt not of those magistrates superseding or interfering with his own Burgrave in immediate, or the Lord’s Steward in mediate towns. Henry V, as lawful sovereign, learned to prize the loyalty, that had opposed him during his rebellion, and, as before said, enfranchised all the city handicraftsmen, thus authorizing them to bear arms. But though the guild organization was quite as well adapted for civic broils, for resisting oppression or extorting concessions, as for war, city ambition was as yet confined to the city aristocracy. No humbler citizen thought of disputing its authority, unless perhaps in Lower Lorrain where the democratic principle was earliest developed. East of the Rhine it was this city aristocracy only, that the consciousness of city power had, as yet, filled with ambition of ampler rights; that purchased or extorted concessions from their mesne Lords, or obtained from the Emperor new charters, often granting the most whimsical rights and privileges; as e.g. that the military service of the citizens should never remove them to such a distance as to prevent their going home to sleep.

In Italy the few great vassals remaining had, indeed, like their German brethren, increased in power; but the habitually absent emperor was to them so convenient a sovereign, that they sought not to weaken him further, still less to put one of themselves in his place. They were generally loyal, as were the prelates, whom the new reforms in the Church had irritated against the pope. The lesser nobles and subvassals or vavassours, who regarded the princes as their oppressors, of course embraced the opposite party, and were papalists or anti-imperialists.

In the Lombard cities a combination of circumstances had awakened a passion for liberty, or what they thought such, violent as are all Italian passions. Gregory VII, when the Lombard clergy so determinately resisted his will, sought a stay against them in the citizens. To this end Matilda courted and humoured the cities, to some conceding chartered rights, in others suffering her prerogatives as suzerain to slumber. The cities naturally supported the party to which they were so much indebted, although their gratitude was insufficient to induce them to rest content with the rights and privileges spontaneously granted. Lombard, and even Tuscan towns, Florence being one, had revolted against the Great Countess in her latter years; with all the energy of her youth she led her forces against the rebels, and in general compelled submission. But not even the Great Countess could always triumph over the awakened spirit of the age, and some cities extorted further concessions from her. Pisa, which alone in Tuscany had hitherto resisted both Bonifacio and his daughter, which had risen to such commercial prosperity, that Matilda’s Chaplain and Biographer, Domnitza, terms it a godless city, swarming with Turks, Syrians, Parthians, Chaldeans, and other Heathen. Pisa had obtained from Henry IV the strange promise not to appoint another Marquess of Tuscany, without the concurrence of this, his ever loyal, city. After the death of Matilda, the contest for her heritage offered an opportunity of which many Lombard and Tuscan cities availed themselves to usurp those rights and privileges that had excited their desires. Some Piedmontese cities followed their example, and threw off the yoke of the Marquess of Susa, or rather of the Earl of Savoy, for this marquisate having passed to the Lords of Maurienne by marriage, the title of Marquess seems to have been dropped, and the lesser to have been blended with the more considerable principality, into the County of Savoy. These cities organized their male population for war, in a manner very analogous to what has been described in Germany. They entitled themselves Comune, anglicé Commonwealth, but the independence to which they aspired being only of their immediate Lords, they dreamt not as yet of disowning the authority of the Emperor. They elected their magistrates, but did so subject to the Emperor’s approbation. They received an imperial officer as their governor, and in episcopal cities the Emperor usually so appointed the Bishop, partly because the bishops were in general imperialists, and partly to augment the power of his own deputy, by the union of spiritual with temporal authority. Under this Governor were the Consuls, selected from the aristocracy of the city, and in general, two of the before mentioned elected Councils; the one Great Council of which every free­man was a member, being found inconveniently numerous. As to the manner in which elections were conducted some uncertainty or confusion appears to exist, probably because it was different in different places, but always more or less complicated.

Very early in the career of these cities, the smaller nobles in their neighbourhood had found it desirable to seek their protection against the tyranny of the Princes; and obtained it by enrolling themselves among the citizens, which obliged them to reside six months of every year within the walls. More considerable nobles by degrees followed their example, and one and all converted their city mansions into strong towers, whence the lordly owners waged war with each other, or defied the authorities. If every citizen, who could afford it, emulated his superiors by converting his mansion into a fortress, as with respect to some towns is said, this fact may explain the prodigious number of such towers in every considerable city. Yet even this hypothesis cannot give probability to the statement, that Pisa in the eleventh century, with a population of 200,000 souls contained 10,000 such towers, one for every twenty inhabitants.

Consciousness of strength awoke ambition, and amongst the cities that strove to enslave their feebler neighbours, Milan stood pre-eminent. Her archbishop-earl had long been the most powerful prince in Lombardy; one of these arrogant prelates having presented Otho I, at his coronation, to the pope, every subsequent archbishop had claimed the right so to present the future emperor. Milan was excited to emulation by her prelate’s grandeur, even while struggling to free herself from his authority; a struggle begun by a confederation of the non-noble, calling itself La Motta, as early as the eleventh century. By the year 1125 she had subjugated Como, Crema, and Cremona, and was at war with Lodi. The equally powerful Genoa and Pisa were pretty much engrossed by their commercial pursuits, by their rivalry with each other everywhere, and with Venice in the eastern Mediterranean, and by their wars between themselves for the exclusive possession of Sardinia and Corsica. The more powerful and far more republican Queen of the Adriatic, Venice, though she transferred her allegiance backwards and forwards, as seemed most propitious to her actual independence, was too much absorbed in her concerns at Constantinople and in Syria, diversified by her wars with Hungary for portions of the opposite Dalmatian coast, where the very year of Henry V’s death she took Zara, to concern herself much about Italian politics. Rome, delighted as she had at first been with the successful ambition of her Popes, was soon infected. with the republican aspirations of her northern sisters, which revived the recollections of her own classical, republican grandeur. She often rebelled against her pontifical ruler, as often supported him against the Liege Lord of both, the Emperor; and yet oftener warred with her neighbours, whom she required, as of yore, to bow their necks to her yoke.

Another change had occurred in Southern Italy, or, at least, in Sicily, but little connected with these dissensions. The Arab Emirs of Sicily had thrown off their dependence upon Egypt, in order to divide the island amongst themselves. But the division soon gave rise to quarrels; and thus weakened, the Normans found them an easy prey. Roger, the youngest brother of Robert Guiscard, conquered them; and, forming the island into a county, assumed the title of Earl of Sicily, and was succeeded by his son, Roger II. Robert Guiscard was also dead, and had been succeeded in his duchy of Apulia by a son, and then by a grandson, William, the reigning Duke.

SECTION IV

INTELLECTUAL, ARTISTIC, AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF EUROPE IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY.