CRISTO RAUL.ORG

READING HALL

"THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY"

BLESSED BE THE PEACEFUL BECAUSE THEY WILL BE CALLED SONS OF GOD

EARLY CHRONICLERS OF ITALY.

CHAPTER V.

THE LATER CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE “PONTIFICAL BOOK” — BRUNO OF SEGNI — WIBERT OF TOUL — PAUL OF BERNRIED — “ANNALES ROMANI” — PETRUS PISANUS — PANDULPH — BOSO — POLEMICAL WRITINGS — ST. PETER DAMIANI — BONIZO’S “ LIBER AD AMICUM ” — THE LIFE OF ANSELM OF LUCCA — DOMNIZO’S LIFE OF THE COUNTESS MATILDA — THE LETTERS OF GREGORY VII.

“The blessed Pope Gregory (VII) used to relate to us many things touching this man (Leo IX), and it is from him that I remember having heard most of what I have been telling hitherto. Now one day when speaking of him (Leo), he began to reprove us, and me especially (so at least it seemed to me, since he kept his eyes fixed on me), for not commemorating the deeds of the blessed Leo, and not writing what would redound to the glory of the Roman Church, and be an example of humility to many hearers.” These words of Bruno, bishop of Segni, show how, on the revival of authority and vigour in the Roman See, the need of a pontifical book was again felt, and the popes themselves sought to encourage the undertaking. And in fact in the eleventh century we find the lives of the popes, beginning with that of Leo IX (d. 1049), related at great length by writers of some merit who often had been eyewitnesses of the events or nearly so, and connected with them in some way. Thus, for instance, the words which we have just quoted, occur in the life of Leo IX, written by that very Bishop Bruno, who was also abbot of Montecassino, and who in the former chapter showed himself so zealous and active a partisan in the struggle of the Investitures. But this work of his has little value, and was surpassed by others which were composed about the same time, such as a pathetic account of Leo’s death, written in Rome by the priest Libuinus, the guardian of his tomb, and full of real facts as well as of miraculous legends. Also the life written by a monk of Benevento, which is very important for what it tells us of the imprudent expedition of Leo’s against the Normans, and of the imprisonment which followed his defeat. Of still greater importance are two other works by two Germans, Wibert of Toul, and Paul of Bernried, who wrote very diffusely, the first on Leo IX, the second on Gregory VII. Wibert, who was an intimate of Leo’s when this latter was bishop of Toul, especially abounds in details of his early history, but of the remainder, although meritorious, he does not give us so complete an account as not to oblige us to look elsewhere for further materials towards his life. Turning to the history of Gregory VII, left by Paul of Bernried, we find that it was written when the struggle of the Investitures was at an end, and in it we still hear the echo of the old dissensions, while the moral power of Gregory is magnified as if to admonish his adversaries of the risk they would run in renewing that great struggle. Having embraced an ecclesiastical career in 1102, Paul was ordained priest in 1120, but owing to his persecution by the Emperor Henry V., he took refuge in the following year at Bernried, in the diocese of Augsburg. In 1122 he proceeded to Rome, and there perhaps he first thought of writing the life of Gregory VII, for which no doubt he then collected materials, studied the register of the Gregorian letters, and made inquiries touching his hero’s vicissitudes of the eyewitnesses who survived, and among the rest of the pope himself, Calixtus II. After his return to Bernried, he applied himself to his work, and completed it in 1128. He tells his story simply, and without displaying much critical ability, but his sources of information are generally good, he makes free and constant use of official documents, and he writes of what occurred fifty years before his own day with a tone of firm and ingenuous conviction which has a reassuring effect on the mind of his reader. He often has recourse to the supernatural for the explanation of his facts, to which he frequently adds legendary episodes, but he does it with so much simplicity and good faith that the modern critic has no difficulty in distinguishing between them and the trustworthy portion of the narrative, in which, taken as a whole, we find that dramatic age wonderfully reproduced. Villemain, an artistic historian who has painted in brilliant colours the life of Gregory VII, made large use of this biographer in order to add vivacity to his picture, especially in describing that stormy Christmas night in which a noble Roman, called Cencius, entered St. Maria Maggiore, tore Gregory from the altar, and dragged him wounded and a prisoner to his tower. We give here part of this scene as related by the old chronicler, whom it is interesting to compare with the modern historian, since it shows us how the vivid impressions of this simple priest of the Middle Ages have served to inspire one of the finest pages of French historical literature in this century.

“The night has come in which the son of darkness attacks the minister of light. First he sends out an exploring party to make inquiries, and they, calling together a certain set who lived in the street near the church, and hearing everything from them, sent notice of all that they heard to that villain, who lost no time in putting his men into armour and so disposing matters that each man might find a horse ready, in case anyone should think of rising against them, after they had been successful either in compassing his death or in carry­ing him off alive. At last they came to the church, where the pope with great solemnity was chanting the midnight mass before the manger, according to the teaching of the Church, and received the Lord’s body, he and all the clergy with him, the others also who were present partaking of the same sacrament, when suddenly a great noise and shouting arose and filled the whole church. Then searching everywhere and striking all they met with their drawn swords, they made for the place of the manger, where the pope was enthroned high above all, and there, having struck some of those near and broken the doors, they were able to touch with their violent hands a small portion of the manger of the Eternal King and His Mother. Then they laid hands on the pontiff and seized him; and one indeed, brandishing his sword, tried to cut off his head, but the Lord was pleased to prevent him. Yet was he struck on the head and severely wounded, and finally they dragged him with violence from the church before the mass was finished, dealing out on all sides slaughter and blows. But he, like an innocent and gentle lamb, raising his eyes to heaven, returned them no answer, complained not nor resisted, nor did he ask that they should have mercy upon him. At length, having divested him of the pall and chasuble, the dalmatic and tunic, and leaving him only the linen vestment and stole, they dragged him like a thief and placed him behind a sacrilegious fellow on horseback. But that other who had struck him on the forehead with a sword was seized by the devil, and for a long time rolled, foaming at the mouth, before the vestibule of that very church, while his horse fled away, nor was it ever again found.

“... So all the clergy, their shepherd being struck down, ran hither and thither, and dismantled almost all the altars, nor were Divine services held in any of the churches on that day, except what had preceded this event. But the elements, which up to that time had been so disturbed, became calm in order not to hinder the people who were zealous in the zeal of the Lord, and the earth absorbing nearly all the water which had collected during that heavy downpour, showed a dry surface to all who were ready to avenge this deed. So the whole night through signals and trumpets were sounded, and the soldiers patrolled all the roads, lest by any subterfuge he should be carried out of the city, but no trace of him could be found. Then while all were in doubt and ignorance even whether he were alive or dead, certain persons made it known to the crowds gathered together in the Capitol, that he was held captive in a certain tower. Then all the people began to raise their voices to the skies, and as soon as daylight had returned to the earth, they encouraged each other, and made for the house of that antichrist in immense numbers. So the battle began; but at the very first attack the hostile party took to flight, and the whole faction shut itself up in that same tower. Then fire was set to the whole of the fortifications, and engines and battering rams being brought, the wall was broken, and everything within the, enclosure became the prey of the people of God. No one heeded his own danger, but each man, forgetful of himself, fought with might and main.

“But a certain man, together with a certain noble matron, had followed the Father Gregory, and they were of some comfort to him. For the man warmed him, suffering as he was from the length of the way he had been dragged and the cold of a winter night, with furs which he had brought, and cherished his feet in his bosom, while that matron fomented our father’s wound, all wet from the great flow of blood, with medicaments, weeping and denouncing all those men as enemies of God and sacrilegious murderers; acting like another Mary, for as that one, bewailing her sins, had washed the Lord’s feet with her tears, so this one, declaring the crimes of all those men, was bathing with her tears this great shepherd ...

“But great as was her courageous fidelity, equally great was another woman’s perfidy of tongue. For as formerly, in the time of the Lord’s Passion, the maiden who kept the gate had terrified Peter, so this one disturbed his vicar with biting insults. And she was the sister of that traitor, and for this reason did not hesitate to curse this great father. But there was another servant also and follower of the traitor who, holding a drawn sword, declared with blasphemies that he would, that very same day, cut off this great man’s head. Yet the swift judgment of God was not slow in avenging his impiety. For a lance hurled from without and transfixing his throat, the passage of his cruel voice, flung him to earth dying and gasping, and thus despatched him to hell....

“Finally the pious pope, standing in the window with outstretched hands, commanded the excited crowd to be calm, and to let some of the principal people come up to him in the tower. Some, however, fancying that he was urging them on to the work they had begun, made a great effort and broke into the tower. And so he was taken into the open air, the whole populace weeping for joy and compassion; for now they could see how he was covered with blood, which struck them with such horror that they all raised their voices to the skies. After this victory, following Pope Gregory to the same church of the Mother of God from which he had that night been dragged, they all congregated there, their hearts filled with no small joy. Then, at that same hour, their common father finished the mass which those ministers of Satan had stopped in the night, and gave them the blessing of God upon their victory.

“But the son of perdition had, in the meantime, escaped with all his family and his dependants, and, far from repenting, led a worse life than before, col­lecting around him many others like himself, and continuing, while he lived and when he could, to devise evil against him who had preserved him.”

Party contests now more than ever seconded the revival of history in connection with the papacy, each side hoping to find support in a narrative of the facts; and since it is but very rarely that men can judge of facts quite irrespectively of the persons who are responsible for them, the lives of the popes are very frequently represented in a favourable or unfavourable light according to the sympathies of the writer. In Rome itself some writings were produced by these contending parties, which have been published under the name of Roman Annals, and exhibit the two contrary currents of thought in that day. The first of these writings, intended really to continue the old Liber Pontificalis, contains the lives of the various popes who followed each other at short intervals between the years 1044 and 1049. This writing, anonymous like all the others of this collection, is carefully composed, and full of details relating to the affairs of the town and of the noble families of Rome. Two other narratives follow this, which include the series of popes from Leo IX to Alexander II (1049-1072), written by partisans of the Empire, and consequently enemies to the papacy. On the other hand, the latter is favoured in another writing, which gives us a simple and graphic description of the violence to which Paschal II was subjected in the Vatican, when Henry dragged him away from Rome as a prisoner. This writer was present at the occurrences which he relates, for he tells us : “We have written down the exact truth of these things just as we suffered them, saw them with our eyes, and heard them with our ears”; and he goes on to describe also the lives of the antipopes who set themselves up against Paschal II and Gelasius II. The last continuation reaches later times, and embraces the short papacies which followed each other quickly between Lucius III. and Clement III (1181-1188), and the controversies of these popes with Frederick Barbarossa. All these writings are biased, exaggerated both in praise and blame, and we find in all of them the party predilections of the authors, yet from having been composed on the spot, and while the events were happening, they are full of useful information, and, from a literary point of view, their rude and popular Latin is not without interest on account of its Italian forms of expression, suggesting the great change in language which that age of transformations was preparing for Italy.

Besides this collection of pontifical lives, which may to a certain extent be regarded as a popular continuation of the ancient Liber Pontificalis, there is another continuation of a more official character, written almost under the eyes of the popes, by two dignitaries of the Curia, Petrus Pisanus and Pandulph. The first of these writers, doubtless a native of Pisa, was already in the Curia in the time of Urban II, about 1094, while still very young, as notary of the apostolic palace, and continued in that office until he was named cardinal deacon, between 1104 and 1116, during the pontificate of Paschal II. When in 1108 the pope was obliged to go into Apulia, it appears that Peter was chosen to remain, together with Ptolemy of Tusculum, and Walfred, chief of the soldiery, in the territory of the lower Marittima round Terracina, in order to guard the rights of the Church. If this was so, the choice was a good one, for this was the only province which remained to a great extent quiet and loyal, while Rome and its neighbourhood were kept in a state of disturbance by the nobility opposed to the pope, and Ptolemy himself went over to the rebels. In the following year the pope returned to Rome, and Peter seems to have returned with him, but for some years we cannot follow his movements with any certainty. When the crusaders from Pisa made a victorious expedition to the Balearic Isles against the Saracens (1114, 1115), he was apparently there with his country people, and has left us an account of their deeds, of which we shall have occasion to speak. He certainly was cardinal in 1116, and we find him again in Rome, commissioned by Paschal II to quell a tumult; and when not successful, endeavouring at least to protect the old pope’s life, which was menaced with danger by the Roman rebels. Afterwards, when the pope was compelled to fly, Peter, still in Rome, was one of those cardinals who refused to consecrate Henry V, who had returned to Rome to receive the imperial crown. He joined the sick pope later at Anagni, and took part in the election of Gelasius II, whose troubled destiny and exile he shared, remaining faithful to him and to his two successors, Calixtus II and Honorius II. After the death of this last, there was schism in the Church, and Petrus Pisanus, being on the side of the antipope Anacletus against Innocent II, was for eight years regarded as the soul of the schism on account of his learning and eloquence. At last, after a warm and lengthy discussion, carried on at Salerno in presence of King Roger, St. Bernard prevailed upon him to desert, the antipope (A.D. 1137). It is strange that although this was a conversion of the greatest use to his cause, Innocent II should have tried to deprive Peter of his dignity as cardinal, and perhaps he would have really done so had not St. Bernard opposed with great vigour such an act of injustice, in a letter to the pope which well depicts the ardent nature of this apostolic man. “To you,” he wrote to the pope—“to you I appeal, judge you between me and you! In what, I ask, has your son deserved so badly from your paternity that you should be pleased to brand and design him with the marks and name of a traitor? For did not your grace appoint me as your vicar in the reconciliation of Petrus Pisanus, if perchance God would deign to recall him through me from the filth of schism? If you deny this I will prove it by as many witnesses as were in the Curia at that time. And was not this man, after these things, finally received into his order and dignity according to the word of my lord? Who then has by counsel, or rather by fraud, obtained that things promised are withdrawn, and the words which proceeded from your lips made of no effect? And this I say, not in order to blame the apostolic severity and zeal which has kindled the fire of God against the schismatics ... but ... neither is it fitting that there should be involved in the same sentence he who abandoned his sin with those whom rather their sins abandoned. For His sake, who, to save sinners, spared not Himself, remove this ignominy from me, and by restoring him whom you estab­lished, consult also thereby your own sound and upright reputation.” Nor was this letter written in vain. Petrus Pisanus continued to be cardinal, and in that character took part in the Lateral council of 1139, and died in this dignity at an advanced age, in the year 1144. The histories of the popes who governed the Church from Leo IX to Calixtus II (1049-1124), may be in a way regarded as so many acts of a drama which culminates in the pontificate of Gregory VII. All those pontificates had a single aim, and struggled for a principle, which the monk Hildebrand sustained before becoming pope, and, when he died, left as a legacy to his successors. From which we can easily understand why the pontifical book once more treats on a larger scale the lives of the popes, beginning with Leo IX, since with him also begins a new period in the history of the Church. In the words quoted above, according to which Gregory VII exhorted Bruno of Segni to speak of Leo, we already catch a glimpse of this idea, and the same is followed out by Petrus Pisanus. Indeed, he has left us an almost uninterrupted series of the lives of the popes during that period, two of which, those of Gregory VII and Urban II, are valuable for their many precise details; but superior to all, and showing a wide and searching knowledge of the facts, is that of Paschal II. What we have said of the personal experiences of Peter during this latter papacy will have sufficiently indicated the facilities he had for knowing the exact state of things, and the importance of his testimony. He was a man of great talent and eloquence, “of whom,’ says John of Salisbury, “there was hardly the equal in the whole Curia”; he was well acquainted with all the most important official documents with which he completed his narrative, quoting from them, and sometimes giving the whole of them. He thus depicts very vividly the course of that long and momentous pontificate, and writes in a pure style and with a serenity of judgment extremely rare in his day. In this last respect he may be compared to his illustrious contemporary and companion in the purple, Leo Ostiensis, to whom he is, however, very inferior; for Leo is a true historian and works upon a wide canvas, whereas Peter, as a biographer, has to remain within narrower limits. In another work, which we shall mention later, he gave more freedom to his imagination; but in this he wisely restrains it, for in a narrative of events which touched him so nearly he might easily have fallen into exaggeration, and lost sight of that just measure and sober treatment of the subject which should be the special care of all authors.

The very active personal part which Petrus Pisanus was obliged to take in the events of his day, forced him to discontinue the compilation of the pontifical book, which was then carried on by Pandulph, descendant of a noble Roman family and an officer of the Curia from the time of Paschal II. During the schism he, like Peter, took part with the antipope Anacletus, and by him was made cardinal, but, when the schism ceased, his rank does not seem to have been recognized, and we have no further record of him. He wrote the lives of Gelasius II, Calixtus II, and Honorius II, the two latter but briefly, the former more at length, and it is the best written and most important of the lives which we have from his pen. Unlike his predecessors, Pandulph does not bring forward documents to support his story, but draws upon his memory for the materials of his work. The story he has to tell is of things seen and suffered by himself in very anxious times. His pictures are vivid and graphic, and the dramatic force and feeling with which he depicts them, reproduces and fixes in the reader’s imagination that agitated past just as he had himself ex­perienced it. Thus, for instance, no one who has read it will forget the scene as described by him of the painful flight to Gaeta of the old and careworn Pope Gelasius II, escaping from a sudden attack made upon him by Henry V (A.D. 1118).

There succeeded to this Roman Pandulph, in the compilation of the pontifical lives, an Englishman, Cardinal Boso, who held his title from the church of St. Pudenziana. He appears to have first belonged to the Curia about the year 1147, when Eugenius III was in France, and continued in his office of apostolic writer until the elevation to the papal throne of Adrian IV, the only Englishman who ever filled the Roman See. Then Boso, as he himself tells us, “having been appointed his chamberlain from the beginning of his apostolate and ordained (cardinal) deacon in the church of the holy Cosma and Damianus, remained with him constantly and intimately until his death.” Raised in this manner to the dignity of cardinal, fie managed the papal finances with great care, re­duced to subjection some rebellious vassals of the Church, and went as legate to England. After the death of Adrian he warmly supported the election of Alexander III, opposed by the Emperor Frederick I, and until the election was over protected the conclave sitting in St. Peter’s from the armed threats which surrounded it. From Alex­ander he received the title of cardinal priest of St. Pudenziana, and shared with him in the famous struggle revived between Empire and papacy which, transformed into a national movement by the league of the Lombard communes, weakened the power of the Empire at the battle of Legnano. After the peace of Anagni, Boso was present at the meeting in Venice between pope and emperor, and followed the pope on his return to Rome, March 12, 1178. Soon after that, all mention of him in the pontifical registers ceases, and we may infer that his life closed about this time.

Boso’s work embraces, with but little interrup­tion, the history of the popes from Stephen VI till Adrian IV and Alexander III, but can lay claim to be original only in these two last pontificates. For all the rest he reproduces almost verbally the old catalogues and what had been written by the pontifical writers before his time, and especially for the eleventh century by Petrus Pisanus, Pandulph, and in the Liber ad Amicum of Bonizo, of which we are about to speak. But if the first part of Boso’s work is a mere useless repetition, the second and longer portion makes ample compensation for this. His intimacy with the two popes of whom he writes, his high position in the Church, the varied and arduous offices which he held, and which procured for him a personal acquaintance with all the principal men in Europe, made Boso an invaluable biographer. Less talented than Petrus Pisanus, less graphic than Pandulph, he is at the same time more diffuse, more precise than they are, and gives us in minute detail all the events which took place in the Curia at that time, and their connection with the general events of the age. The first disagreements between Adrian and Frederick Barbarossa, the death of Arnold of Brescia, the relations of the pope with Southern Italy, the struggle of Alexander III and the Lombard league against the Empire, and finally the interview between pope and emperor at Venice are the most salient features in the large picture which Boso has given us. His narrative, which may be said to close this older part of the pontifical book, makes us feel that we have entered on a new phase of history; the perusal of these two lives brings before us the rapid transformations which society was then undergoing, and we catch a glimpse of fresh and wide horizons disclosing the new destinies which we shall presently meet with in the municipal chro­nicles. And, indeed, Boso gives much important testimony to the relations of the papacy, not only with the Empire, but also with the Italian municipalities, both when he quotes from documents in the pontifical archives, and when he describes from memory things which he has seen. Especially for the study of the history of Rome itself, he appears to us worthy of more attention than he has hitherto received, as enabling us to correct the exaggerations of the imperial partisans too exclusively followed by some modern historians. Nor in this work of correction and comparison must we adopt all that Boso says without criticism, and it is only by weighing impartially the writings of the two parties against each other that we can arrive at that exact truth which can seldom be expected from one, however well intentioned he may be, who has taken an active part in the events of which he writes. And least of all could we expect it from Boso. Even without taking into account the personal affection he felt for both the popes whose lifes he wrote, it would not have been possible for any man to avoid all party feeling in that period of romantic struggles, when for a moment the national cause in Italy was inter­woven with that of the Church, and the resistance made by the Lombards to a foreign foe seemed to take the proportions of a holy war.

But while following the course of the pontifical book we have left the eleventh century far behind, and we must now retrace our steps. The dispute regarding the Investitures, long, obstinate, and violent, gave rise to many polemical writings which have also more or less historical value, and of which some deserve the name of history. We have already mentioned the Orthodoxa Defensio Imperialis, a short treatise generally, but perhaps incorrectly, attributed to Gregory of Catino, and composed certainly at Farfa in the days of Paschal II. A temperate and able work, which may almost be said to be the best written at that time in favour of the Empire, and with the intention of giving canonical proof of its rights, it seems the precursor of Dante’s De Monarchia, and merits special attention. There is another defence of the imperial rights based on the authority of the Roman law, and written by Petrus Crassus, besides some other noteworthy writings in favour of the antipope Wibert, especially one by Wido, bishop of Ferrara, who after being attached to the cause of Gregory VII and writing in defence of it, changed sides on the death of that pontiff and confuted his own arguments in another work full of historical in­formation. Also of a polemical character and in support of the imperial pretensions is a sort of panegyric of Henry IV, written by Benzo, bishop of Alba, in rhymed and rythmic prose, abject in its adulation of the emperor and in the vile insults directed against the Gregorian party; and still worse than this is the libel entitled Vita Gregorii VII, which Benno, one of Wibert’s cardinals, wrote not only against. Gregory but also against his predecessors and Urban II. Both these abusive writings have a certain value, not for the facts they relate, but as an expression of the state of men’s minds and of the violence with which the two adverse parties fought. For if, as Wattenbach observes, this violence showed itself in Italy with more bitterness and fewer scruples among the imperial followers, while the Gregorian party had the advantage on their side of greater culture and a higher morality, still these latter by no means exhibited much gentleness in their writings. Party feeling is evident in all the literature of that age, and as we have already found it in Bruno of Segni and in the authors of the pontifical lives, so it shows itself among other instances in the angry poem which laments the imprisonment of Paschal II, and in a writing on the honour of the Church composed by Placidus, prior of the Abbey of Nonantola, as in another, but recently discovered, on the pope’s right to excommunicate the emperor, attri­buted to Lambert of Ostia, later Pope Honorius II. But we cannot here go minutely into all the polemical literature of this period, and as we have already mentioned sufficiently Bruno of Segni, it will be enough to speak only of two other writers of this kind, Peter Damiani and Bonizo of Sutri.

Among the papal apologists in the eleventh century, the first place certainly belongs to St. Peter Damiani, one of the most singular men of his age, always contending between the instinctive mysticism which drove him into solitude and rigorous penances, and the inflexible will of Hildebrand who forced him to come out of his convent and join in the warfare with all that passionate vehemence which characterized him. A nervous nature full of complex sensibilities, a strange mix­ture of tears and fire, of tenderness and violence, Peter Damiani left the mark of his own individu­ality on all his writings, which for the most part seek their justification in recent events, and contain arguments drawn from the state of society and, above all, of the clergy, for whose reform he worked with fiery zeal. He insisted On the celibacy of the clergy, and his treatises are our principal guides in following out the development of that question, so angrily contested and, notwithstanding all resistance, then definitely settled according to the wish of the Roman Church. Not only for this, but for all the burning questions of that day, Peter Damiani laboured, wrote and spoke, in councils, in courts, among the people, as theologian, ambassador, and agitator; so that it would be impossible to give the history of the Church and of Italy in the eleventh century, without taking into account the polemical works and still more the correspondence of this monk, in whom were so strangely blended the opposite characters of a vehement partisan and of a contemplative eastern mystic.

Strange also is the life of Bonizo, whose Liber ad Amicum is more than anything else a history of the papacy in his times, written in the form of a polemical treatise. Born, as may be conjectured, in the second quarter of the eleventh century, he makes his appearance in 1074 as subdeacon at Piacenza, and as one of the most zealous chiefs of a popular party then formed in Lombardy, and called the Pataria, which, favoured by the pope and favouring him, was bitterly opposed to the imperialist tendencies of the higher Lombard clergy, and to the marriage of priests. At the head of his party, Bonizo soon entered into a struggle with Dionysius, bishop of Piacenza, which ended in the defeat of this latter, who was rebuked by Rome and driven out of his see by the Pataria, who would have no more to do with him. In 1078 Gregory VII appointed Bonizo to the bishopric of Sutri—a town which, on account of its position near Rome and on the road to the north of Italy, required a thoroughly faithful bishop, one of determined energy in the temporal as well as in the spiritual struggle, and ready at need to take up arms in defence of the Church. In that same year, as things were looking bad in Lombardy, Bonizo was sent there by the pope as apostolic legate; and again we find him there in 1081, always among the most active leaders of the Pataria, and so formidable that Benzo of Alba, in the panegyric mentioned above, when congratulating the emperor on his having seized Runtius, the head of the Pataria in Cremona, blinded and killed him, adds : “O Runtius, sleep in thy sightless deformity! Praise be to God that he who had dared to insult thee (the emperor) could not succeed in escaping from thy hands! It is known in the four quarters of the globe how thou, most dreadful power, didst avenge thyself on Runtius of Cremona, and on several others. But as to Bonizellus, Armanellus, and Morticiellus, those three demons, the whole nation laments that the same did not befall them also.” As soon as he had escaped from this danger, he left Lombardy and hastened to rejoin the pope when the emperor moved towards Rome; and afterwards, on the emperor’s return northwards, he quickly went to his see of Sutri, where the following year Henry, when again in that neighbourhood, seized him and carried him off prisoner. But whether he was released or escaped by flight, certain it is that we find him, after a short interval, again on the scene as apostolic legate in Lombardy, in Tuscany, and with the Countess Matilda, to whom he was a trusty counsellor, always indomitably active and courageous. Perhaps to enable him to direct better the energies of the Pataria, of which he was the soul, he was transferred from the see of Sutri to that of Piacenza, where he had begun his career, and where—it is not known, in what year, but certainly before 1092—he met with a tragic end and died a martyr to his cause. “Bonizo of pious memory”—such is the record of him by the annalist, Bernold of Constance—“bishop of Sutri, but expelled thence for his faithfulness to St. Peter, at last after many captures, tribulations and exiles, chosen as bishop by the Catholics of Piacenza, having had his eyes put out by the schismatics of that same place, and nearly all his limbs torn asunder, was crowned with martyrdom.” Thus the ardour with which he fought excited revenge, and the fierce wish expressed by Benzo of Alba was triumphantly fulfilled.

To his activity in doing, Bonizo added equal activity in writing. As proof of his ecclesiastical erudition he left behind him a collection of canons, a book on the sacraments, and an extract from the works of St. Augustine. But the book which places him in the ranks of polemical and historical writers, is one entitled Liber ad Amicum de Persecution Ecclesiae, in which, with the assistance of the canons and of Church history, he answers two questions submitted to him by some friend, namely, why God had permitted His Church to suffer such calamities, and whether it was lawful to take up temporal weapons in her defence. “Thou askest me, thou my only support in the tribulations which surround me : How is it that in this storm the mother Church on earth groaning cries aloud to God and is not heard, she is oppressed and is not delivered, and the children of obedience and peace are lying prostrate, while the children of Belial exult with their king, especially since He who dispenses all things is also He who judges righteously? There is also another thing for which thou askest me the authority from the ancient examples of the holy fathers: Whether it was or is lawful for a Christian to take up arms on behalf of the faith? To which uncertainties of thy mind, if thou wilt lend the ear of a sound heart, it will be easy to answer, both because we have it ready and because I have seen the great necessity at this time of writing it. Therefore, trusting in the mercy of God, who makes the tongues of infants eloquent, let us begin our discourse.” And to find the answer he goes back to the past, and searches for it in the first vicissitudes of the Church, condensing them briefly with great though confused erudition, down to those of his own time which he relates at length. He sees the plant of Christianity spring from the blood of the martyrs in the first persecutions, take root among the nations and continue to grow in the midst of a thousand heresies from Constantine down to the Lombards, flourish under the first Carolingians, then decline, and again revive with varying fortunes until his own age. And here begins the valuable part of his book, which, leaving almost entirely on one side the questions proposed by his friend, relates at length, with much historical insight and, for the last years, with the knowledge of an eyewitness, the events which had occurred during nearly half a century, from the days of Leo IX to those of Gregory VII. Not an elegant writer, yet without pretensions, he sets down the facts simply as he knows them without ever inten­tionally altering anything, but seeking in them, if not the cause, at least the justification for later facts, and thus inaugurating an almost philosophical study of history, at the same time that Gregory of Catino in his solitary cell was inaugurating the erudite side of that study. Bonizo’s disposition is always to justify the facts he relates by canonical and scriptural examples, for we must remember that his narrative aims at showing that the action of the papacy in his times was correct, and in accordance with the traditions of the Church. For if his ill-digested learning often makes him confuse dates and facts which were far removed from him, yet gradually, as he comes nearer to his own time, he becomes more precise, until in contemporary history, and especially in the life of Gregory, there is an amount of knowledge shown throughout the narrative which gives it considerable authority. Watterich, who in republishing Bonizo’s work has written his life with great care, points out very justly that this is quite natural. His eventful life had made him acquainted with all the principal men of the day, and he had had dealings with them in connection with the events of which he leaves us a record. Gregory VII and his successor Desiderius of Montecassino, the Empress Agnes, the Countess Matilda, Bruno of Segni, the antipope Wibert, and many others, were all known to him personally, and with many he was on terms of intimacy, so that every new circumstance he relates suggests to us the thought that he may have had it related to him by an actor in the event, or at least by an eyewitness. For this reason we select from his work the account of one of the most striking episodes of the Middle Ages—the famous Canossa episode (A.D. 1077)—which he tells just as he must have heard it from the principal persons who took part in it. The history of this scene and the causes which led to it are so generally known, that it is superfluous to add any explanation to Bonizo’s exceedingly clear narrative.

“Meanwhile, when the excommunication of the king had reached the ears of the people, our whole Roman world trembled, and the Italians and Ultramontanes judged differently of these things. For the Italians, after Easter, held at Pavia a council of malignants, in which all the Lombard bishops and abbots, under the direction of Wibert, and imitating Fotius and Dioscorus, joined in excommunicating the lord pope of ancient Rome—a thing unheard of in the world that all at once the enemy of mankind should arm so many possessed bishops against the holy Roman Church. While these things were happening in Italy by the persuasions of the devil, the Ultramontane princes meet together, and with wise counsel constitute both parties into a sort of tribunal, that they may clearly see whether the pope can excommunicate the king or not, and whether he can himself with justice be excommunicated. For they did not wish to destroy their law, which prescribes if anyone has not been absolved from excommunication within the year and day, let him lose all the honours of his rank. Therefore the most prudent bishops, abbots, and clergy of that kingdom, having taken counsel according to the decrees of the holy fathers and the examples of the elders, decreed that the king could be excommunicated by the pope, and had been justly excommunicated, on account of his imitating Fotius and Dioscorus. What else? Finding nothing better at the time, after taking the sacrament, and followed by the Dukes Rudolph, Guelph, and Theodoric (for Godfrey, the husband of the most excellent Matilda, had died a few days before), and the rest of the bishops of the kingdom—they resolved that, if the king would acquiesce in their advice, they would bring the pope within the year’s term beyond the Alps, who, un­forced, would absolve him from the chain of excommunication; and they obliged the king to swear with his own mouth, after taking the sacrament, that he would await the pope’s presence and sentence. After which they all again unanimously swore that, if the king would observe the sacrament taken, they would make the expedition into Italy with him, and would, having raised him to the imperial dignity, attack the Normans and deliver Apulia and Calabria from their yoke; but that if, driven by his sins, he took the sacrament in vain, they would never again accept him as king and lord.

“... In the meantime the venerable Gregory, for the sake of peace, was journeying towards Augsburg under great difficulties, for there was then raging a most severe winter. But the king, little heeding the sacrament, entered Italy. And some say that he desired to seize on the pope unexpectedly, which seems probable enough; for Gregory, the bishop of Vercelli, his chancellor, who was commanded by the princes to conduct the pope over the Alps, when he had crossed the Apennines, heard that he (Henry) had secretly entered the city of Vercelli, and told the pope of this, who then went to Canossa, a strong fortress of the most excellent Matilda.

“Meanwhile the king, seeing his machinations discovered, laying aside, as it seemed, all fierceness, and putting on a dove-like simplicity, goes to Canossa, and for some days remaining barefoot on the snow and ice, deceives all the less cautious, and receives from the venerable Gregory the absolution which he craved in the sacrament during the celebration of the mass, in the following manner: For he made him partake of the holy table in the presence of the bishops, abbots, monks, priests, and laity in this manner, that if he humiliated himself in spirit as in body, and believed that the pope was the rightful one, and that he had been excommunicated on account of his imitating Fotius and Dioscorus, and believed that he could be absolved by this sacrament, then might it be given him for his salvation; but if otherwise, might Satan enter into him, as into Judas, by his mouth. What else? During the celebration of the mass they took the communion together. Then it is commanded to all who are absolved from excommunication that they should keep aloof from the society of the excommunicated. But there are some who say that he swore to the pope by his life, and limbs, and honour: I, however, will affirm nothing of which I am quite ignorant.

“Then the king, after he had been absolved from the ban, seemed in appearance sufficiently devoted and obedient to the pope ; for he separated himself from the society of all those bishops, con­sidering them to be excommunicated, agreeing, however, at night, in all their wicked plans, and resolving that in his mind which afterwards was made clear by the result of the matter. And so he acted all the time that he remained at Piacenza, fearing especially the presence of his mother, the most religious empress, who happened to be there.

“At the same time that Cencius, hateful to God, whom we have mentioned above, came to him, whom in the day time he refused to see as being excommunicated, but at night gave himself wholly up to his pestilent counsels; and when he saw that the pope could in no way be torn from the fortress of Canossa, he went to Pavia. There Cencius, hateful to God, died by a bitter death, and Wibert, with other excommunicated persons, celebrated his funeral with great pomp.”

After completing the history of Gregory VII, Bonizo’s book returns to the point whence it started; and from the teachings of the past he comes to the conclusion that, in spite of all its persecutions, the Church is indeed dear to the Lord, and is growing in grace in the midst of difficulties which sometimes oblige her to take up temporal arms, and make it lawful for her to do so. “Therefore,” he concludes, “let the glorious soldiers of God fight for the truth, strive for justice; let them fight with true courage against heresy, which is raising itself in opposition to all that is said or worshipped. Let them emulate in good the most excellent Countess Matilda, a daughter of the blessed Peter, who, with a manly soul and despising all worldly goods, is prepared to die rather than infringe God’s law, and is ready to combat the heresy now raging in the Church, as far as her strength permits. Into whose hand we believe that Sisera will be betrayed, and, like Jabin, will be lost in the river Kishon, because he has destroyed the Lord’s vineyard and devoured it, so that it has become as the filth of the earth. But we pray, as befits our office, that heresy may speedily perish, burned with fire and abashed at the rebuke of Thy countenance.” Such is the conclusion of this book, of which Bonizo wrote a sort of continuation in a work directed against Hugo, a cardinal of Wibert’s, the loss of which is much to be regretted as, from what we know of it, it appears to have contained valuable information regarding the first years of Urban II’s pontificate.

One of Bonizo’s friends and companions in these party struggles was Anselm, bishop of Lucca, nephew of Pope Alexander II, and beloved by Gregory VII, who had proposed him as counsellor to the Countess Matilda, with whom he remained till his death. We have a biography of him, which is not without importance on account of the times and persons it mentions, written by a priest named Bardo, an intimate of his, who collected with affectionate fidelity the records of his virtues and of the miracles said to occur frequently at his grave. Better known, and of greater value, is a curious poem written by Domnizo, a Benedictine monk, belonging to the church of St. Apollonius in the Castle of Canossa, at the time of the Countess Matilda. In extremely rude and often obscure verses, he describes the deeds of his liege lady, moved to do so by his profound attachment and admiration for that remarkable woman. This devotion naturally weakens the authority of his statements, and his official position constrains him sometimes to a prudent reserve, while the confused rudeness of his style makes him tedious and often difficult to understand. This notwithstanding, as a recent admirer of his observes, “All those who write about Matilda and her times are obliged to have recourse to him, and find him very useful.” Incorrect when relating distant events, passing rapidly or in silence over what he fears may offend Matilda, he abounds in sufficiently exact details of the matters in which he has personal experience; and the affection which he retained for his heroine after her death gives a certain eloquence to his rough verses, as in the following passage at the end of his work, when he addresses Canossa, exclaiming, “O white stone ... once thou wert happy and glorious when the great Matilda was with thee; her illustrious forefathers loved thee with ready affection, and built aloft thy walls; the noble race which repose in thee are no more; ... No more breathes the great Matilda, but in thee her memory lives, and while she is blessed in new regions, everywhere resounds the glory of her lofty name.”

These were generations rich in remarkable men, but Gregory VII towered above them all, and was doubtlessly the animating spirit of his age. A great man in the true sense, and superior to all the other successors of the first Gregory, he was both pope and monk, living in the world and with the world, and yet so separate from it in rigid strength of character, as to seem other than human in his nature. This extraordinary man, while he was carving out with iron hand a wonderful historical scheme, was at the same time its unconscious annalist, and marked the milestones of his progress in the register of his letters. From the earliest times, and during the whole of the Middle Ages, the Roman Curia adopted and continued the practice of copying all the acts sent out in its name, and of keeping them in registers for that purpose, arranged chronologically into books, and divided by years. This wise forethought would have prepared an inexhaustible mine of historical wealth, but that all the registers between that of Gregory the Great, and this of Gregory the VII, with the exception of a few letters of John VIII, were lost in the course of time and circumstances. And unfortunately, not even the register of Gregory VII has reached us entire, eight books only having survived, so that his assistance fails us wholly for the last four years of his pontificate. Philip Jaffe, who has given us the best and completest edition of the Gregorian letters, tried partially to supply this want by collecting every other letter he could find, whether published or not; but even so, what remains relatively to this last period is very scanty and unsatisfying. Still, fragmentary though it is, this historical document, more than any of the others which appeared at that time in Italy, throws immense light on the events of that age, and reproduces for us with statuesque distinctness the austerely majestic figure of Gregory, and shows him to us as he was in his intercourse with his contemporaries, and in his daily struggles with the difficulties unceasingly presenting themselves against his vast designs. An admirable book, which merits careful study, and can only be compared to the letters of the Great Gregory, from which, however, it differs in many respects. A comparison of the books is equivalent to a comparison of the authors. Both blessed with the strength which springs from unbounded faith, and moved by an impersonal desire to assure the victory to this faith, both gifted with genius, and each of them superior to his age, yet following and bounded by many of the prejudices inseparable from it, these two popes still differ from each other in character, and in their ideal of the Church, an ideal which naturally varied with the change of times, events, and inspirations. In the first of these men, born on the threshold of the Middle Ages, there still breathes the life of the past, and his mind is formed amidst the traditions of ancient Rome and of the apostolic age—amidst the echoes of the Palatine and the Catacombs. Of an intelligence both far-seeing and flexible, of a heart disposed to indulgence and thirsting for affection and sympathy, of a character essentially human, he stands out as the most perfect figure in the whole course of medieval history. The other appears at the height of those dark ages, after a long night of corruption and barbarism, a monk from his child­hood, not hardhearted, but little disposed to tenderness, calm, severe, unyielding, a born ruler. To reform the Church rotten to the core in consequence of past sins, to transform an enervated clergy into an austere order without worldly interests or affections, to render the episcopate independent of royal authority and devoted to a pontiff, shepherd of nations and kings, supreme leader in the paths of righteousness and peace ; such is the ideal of this seventh Gregory, as it reveals itself in these letters which, if not written by his hand, are certainly inspired by him, and all express in different circumstances the same tendency. And if this ideal, exceeding the limits of possibility and of justice, did not reach its object, but soon giving way to new ideals was partly transformed, the personality of Gregory does not lose in grandeur on this account, and he still remains in history like a soli­tary eagle dominating the vast horizon from his lofty eyrie, and looking downwards in majestic indifference.

CHAPTER VI.

NEW PHASES OF ITALIAN THOUGHT FROM THE TWELFTH TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURIES — SOUTHERN WRITERS OF THE NORMAN AND SUABIAN TIMES — SABA MALASPINA — HISTORIANS OF THE SICILIAN VESPERS — LIVES OF THE POPES — LIFE OF COLA DI RIENZO — LOMBARD MUNICIPAL WRITERS OF THE FIRST PERIOD — OTHO OF FREISING — GENERAL HISTORIES — FRA SALIMBENE OF PARMA — CHRONICLERS OF VARIOUS CITIES OF CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ITALY — CHRONICLERS OF LOMBARDY AND OF THE MARCA TRIVIGIANA — ALBERTINUS MUSSATUS.