BOOK V.

FROM THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE TO THE DEPOSITION OF POPE GREGORY VI,

A.D. 814-1046.

CHAPTER IX.

SUPPLEMENTARY.

 

The Hierarchy.

 

THE relations of the papacy with secular powers, and especially with the emperors of the west, were governed rather by circumstances than by any settled principles. On each side there were claims which were sometimes admitted and sometimes denied by the other party; but even when they were admitted, the enforcement of them depended on the questions whether the claimant were strong and whether circumstances were favourable to him.

The German emperors still retained the same rights of sovereignty over Rome which had been held by the Carolingians. The imperial share in the appointment of the pope by means of commissioners continued, and popes were even glad to sanction it afresh, as a means of averting the disorders incident to an election carried on amid the fury of the Roman factions and the violence of the neighbouring nobles. A synod under John IX in 898, when Lambert had been crowned as emperor, enacted that, for the prevention of such tumults and scandals as had taken place through the absence of imperial commissioners, the presence of commissioners should be necessary at future elections; and in another canon it threatens the emperor’s indignation, as well as spiritual penalties, against any who should renew the disorders which had been usual on the death of a pope, when the palace was invaded by plunderers, who often extended their depredations over the city and its suburbs. And, although the document bearing the name of Leo VIII, which confers on Otho the Great and his successors the power of nominating to the papacy as well as to the empire, is probably spurious, its provisions agree with the state of things which actually existed at the time. The emperor was regarded as having the right to decide the appeals of Roman subjects who had been aggrieved by the pope. Emperors even deposed popes, and that not by any wanton exercise of force, but as if in the fulfilment of a duty attached to their office; thus we have seen that Otho the Great was extremely reluctant to proceed against the wretched young debauchee John XII. It was considered that even the pope was not irresponsible on earth, and that for the execution of manifest justice on the chief pastor of the church the highest secular authority was entitled to intervene. Yet on the whole the popes were gaining, and were preparing to secure advantages for their successors.

It seems probable that Charlemagne, in projecting the revival of the Roman empire, may have hoped to become master of the popes; but the event redounded to the benefit of the papacy. Leo III surprised Charlemagne himself into receiving the crown from his hands; and although the great emperor was careful that his son should assume it in such a manner that it should appear to be held independently of the Roman sanction, Louis submitted to be crowned afresh by Stephen IV. The popes continued to crown the emperors until an opinion was settled in the minds of men that the highest of secular dignities could only be conferred by God himself through the instrumentality of His chief minister, the successor of St. Peter; and, although the possession of the Italian kingdom was regarded as implying a title to the empire, the imperial name was not assumed by the German sovereigns of Italy until after a coronation at Rome by the pope.

As the eastern bishops, by appealing to the emperor in their differences, had established an imperial supremacy in spiritual things, so the princes of the west, by referring their quarrels to the pope, and by asking him to ratify their conquests, contributed to invest him with a power of arbitration and control which more and more claimed a superiority over all secular government. And this was enhanced by the pope’s assumption of an universal censorship of morals, and by his wielding the terrors of excommunication, which were able to make kings tremble, not only by the direct exclusion from spiritual privileges, but through the apprehension of the effects which such a sentence might produce among their people. The wideness and variety of the scene on which the popes acted were also conducive to the growth of their authority, since an attempt which was foiled by the energy of one opponent succeeded elsewhere against the weakness of another, and thenceforth became a precedent for general application. In newly-converted kingdoms, such as Hungary and Poland, the power of the pope over the national church was from the first established as a principle; nor did the shameful degradation of the papacy during a large portion of the time now under review produce any considerable effect on its estimation in foreign countries, where little or nothing was heard of the pope as an individual, and he was regarded only as the successor of the chief apostle.

The territorial power and income of the papacy were limited by the encroachments of the Italian nobles and by the invasions of the Saracens. But the popes found new sources of wealth in the practice of annexing to their see the revenues of bishoprics and abbeys in various parts of Christendom, and in payments levied from countries which were in communion with them, such as the Peter-pence of England and the tribute paid by Poland. And a continual succession of forgeries made it appear that such territories as the see of Rome possessed were but portions of a far larger inheritance, which of right belonged to it by virtue of donations bestowed by emperors and other sovereigns from the time of Constantine the Great.

The policy of the popes towards the church aimed at centralising all authority in the papacy. The principles of the forged decretals were taken as a foundation of their claims. Titles more pompous than before were given by those who wished to pay court to them, and were not refused. The epithet universal, which Gregory the Great had declared to be unfit for any Christian prelate, was addressed to Nicolas I by Adventius bishop of Metz and by Charles the Bald; and it afterwards became usual. Adventius styles Nicolas “Your Majesty”, a phrase which was very commonly used by Peter Damiani in addressing the popes of his time. Theotmar, archbishop of Salzburg, and his suffragans addressed John IX as “Supreme Pontiff and Universal Pope, not of a single city but of the whole world”. Some bishops avowed that they held their episcopate from God through St. Peter. i.e. through the apostle's successors in the see of Rome. The claims involved in the new pretensions of the papacy were at first somewhat indefinite. What was meant by the pope’s universal episcopate? What was his supreme judicature? When and how was this to be exercised? But when once such vague and sounding titles had been impressed on the general mind, it was in the power of the popes to make almost any deductions whatever from them. The claim which Nicolas advanced for obedience to all the decrees of popes rested on a different ground from that which had sometimes been put forward by his predecessors. In earlier times, such a claim was founded on the supposition that Rome was the most faithful guardian of apostolic faith and practice, or, at the utmost, that the pope was the highest expounder of the law not that he pretended to a power of legislation. But now it was rested simply on the ground that Rome was Rome; and the matter set forth under the sanction of such a pretension consisted of a forgery which professed to derive a new and unheard-of system of papal domination from the earliest ages of the church.

The party which relied on the authority of the decretals was bent on humbling the class of metropolitans. There are circumstances which seem to indicate that metropolitans had begun to assume power greater than that which had in earlier times belonged to them. But the design was not limited to reducing them within their ancient bounds; they were not to be allowed any power of judicature over bishops; and when they were stripped of their judicial power, their authority as superintendents or inspectors was not likely to be much regarded. It was the interest of bishops to aid the popes in a course which annihilated the power of metropolitans and provincial synods over members of the episcopate, and subjected these to the pope alone. There were even inducements which might persuade metropolitans to consent to sacrifice the independence of their own order. They, in common with other bishops, were strengthened against secular princes by an alliance with the papacy. They felt that their dignity was enhanced by a connection with a power which exalted religion above all earthly authority; and the use of the pall was of great effect in reconciling them to the change.

The pall, originally a part of the imperial attire, had been at first bestowed by the eastern emperors on the patriarchs of their capital. In the fifth and sixth centuries it was conferred on other patriarchs; and in time it was given by popes and patriarchs to bishops, although the imperial consent was necessary before the honour could be conferred on a bishop whose predecessors had not enjoyed it.

The pall was sent by the popes to their vicars; it was regarded as the mark of a special connexion with the Roman see, to which the receiver was bound by a strict oath of subjection and obedience. When some metropolitans had thus received it, others, wishing to be on a level with them, made application for a like distinction, so that it came to be regarded as the ensign of metropolitan dignity, and that this dignity came to be regarded as a gift of the pope. Nicolas I, in his answer to the Bulgarians, lays it down that their future archbishop shall not exercise his office until he receive the pall from Rome; such, he says, is the usage in Gaul, Germany, and other countries; and John VIII, at the synod of Ravenna, in 877, enacted that every metropolitan should, within three months after his election, send to Rome a statement of his faith, together with a petition for the pall. While the metropolitans, thus received some compensation for the loss of their independent power, in their special connexion with Rome, and in their exercise of jurisdiction as delegates of the pope, the pall became not only a mark of their subjection, but a source of profit to the Roman treasury.

Although Gregory I had positively forbidden that anything should be given for it, fees were now exacted, and so heavy were they in some cases that Canute, on his pilgrimage to Rome, complained to the pope of the oppressive amount required from English archbishops, and obtained a promise of an abatement in future. That metropolitans submitted to exorbitant payments for the sake of obtaining this ensign, is a proof that the advantage of such a sanction for their authority must have been strongly felt.

The metropolitans lost less in England and in Germany than elsewhere. In England the whole foundation of the church rested on the primacy of Canterbury. In Germany the metropolitans of Mainz, Cologne, Treves, and Salzburg, held high dignities of the empire as annexed to their sees. Yet, in the case of the great German prelates, there was the disadvantage that the popular opinion unconsciously referred their power not to their spiritual but to their secular offices.

In addition to their vicars, the popes appointed legates to exercise some of their functions, such as that of holding councils for the investigation of cases which had been referred to Rome, or in which the popes took it on themselves to interfere. These legates were sometimes ecclesiastics sent from Italy; but, as foreign ecclesiastics were regarded with suspicion by princes, it was more usual to give the legatine commission to some bishop of the country in which the inquiry was to take place. Even kings were sometimes invested with the authority of papal deputies, as we have seen in the instance of Charles the Bald at the council of Pontyon.

The claim of the popes to exclusive jurisdiction over bishops was uncontested from the time of the victory gained by John XV and Gregory V in the affair of Arnulf of Reims. Persons nominated to bishoprics, if they found any difficulty in obtaining consecration from their own metropolitan, sought it at the hands of the pope; and a Roman synod under Benedict VI, held probably in 983, with a view to the suppression of simony, directed that not only bishops but priests or deacons should repair to Rome for ordination, if it were not to be obtained without payment at home. Yet to the end of the period the prelates of France and Germany resisted some attempts of the popes to encroach on their rights.

The title of “universal bishop” was admitted only as implying a power of general oversight not as entitling the popes to exercise episcopal functions in every diocese. This resistance was especially shown when the popes attempted to interfere with the penitential discipline. Every bishop had been formerly regarded as the sole judge in cases of penance within his own diocese, as the only person who could relax the penance which he had himself imposed. The bishop's power of absolution was still unassailed; there were not as yet any cases reserved for the decision of the pope alone. But the popes began to claim a jurisdiction as to penance similar to that which they were gradually establishing over the church in other respects; they asserted a right of absolving from the penance to which offenders had been sentenced by other bishops. The resort of penitents to Rome had been encouraged by various circumstances. In many instances bishops had themselves consulted the pope, or had recommended an application to him, either with a view of escaping responsibility in difficult cases, or in order that the long and toilsome journey to Rome might itself in some measure serve as a penitential exercise. But when penitents began to flock to Rome for the purpose of obtaining from the pope the absolution which was refused by their own diocesans, or in the belief that the absolution of St. Peter's successor was of superior virtue, the practice drew forth strong and frequent protests from councils and from individual bishops. Ahyto (or Hatto) of Basel, about 820, orders that penitents who wish to visit the apostolic city should first confess their sins at home, “because they are to be bound or loosed by their own bishop or priest, and not by a stranger”. When an English earl, who had been excommunicated by Dunstan for contracting an unlawful marriage, had succeeded, by the employment of influence and money at Rome, in obtaining from the pope a mandate that the archbishop should restore him, Dunstan firmly refused to comply. “I will gladly obey”, he said, “when I see him repentant; but so long as he rejoices in his sin, God forbid that, for the sake of any mortal man, or to save my own life, I should neglect the law which our Lord has laid down for His church”. And to the end of the period a like opposition to the papal assumptions in this respect was maintained. All that was as yet conceded to the pope was a power of granting absolution on the application, or with the consent, of the bishop by whom penance had been imposed. But in this, as in other matters, principles had already been introduced by which the popes were in no long time entirely to overthrow the ancient rights of the episcopal order.

The secular importance of bishops increased. They took precedence of counts, and at national assemblies they sat before dukes. In France many prelates took advantage of the weakness of the later Carolingians, or of the unsettled state of the new dynasty, to obtain grants of royalties (regalia), privileges especially belonging to the crown, such as the right to coin money, to establish markets, to levy tolls, to build fortifications, and to hold courts of justice, even for the trial of capital offences. Towards the end of the period, however, these bishops for the most part found it necessary, for the sake of security against the aggressions of the nobles, to place themselves under the feudal protection of the sovereign, and in consideration of this the royalties were again resigned.

But it was in Germany that the bishops acquired the greatest power. The repeated changes of dynasty in that country were favourable to them. Each new race found it expedient to court them; and the emperors, partly out of respect for religion, partly from a wish to strengthen themselves by the support of the clergy, and to provide a counterpoise to the lay nobility, favoured the advance of the order by bestowing on them grants of royalties, and whole counties or even duchies, with corresponding rights of jurisdiction.

In proportion as the bishops became more powerful, it was more important for princes to get the appointment of them into their own hands. The capitulary of Louis the Pious, which enacted a return to the ancient system of free elections, had never taken effect to any considerable extent. In France, in England, and in Germany, the choice of bishops was really with the sovereign; even where the right of nomination was contested (as it was by Hincmar in the cases of Cambray and Beauvais), the opponents allowed that the royal licence must precede the election of a bishop, and that the royal confirmation must follow on it. Although the church petitioned for free elections, it would have been well content to secure a right of rejecting persons who were unfit in respect of morals or of learning. Even a pope, John X, allows that, by ancient custom, the king’s command is required in order to the appointment of a bishop, although he also mentions the necessity of election by the clergy, and acclamation by the laity. Election was for the most part nothing more than acquiescence in the sovereign’s nomination; so that while Adam of Bremen always speaks of bishops as being appointed by the emperor, Thietmar generally speaks of them as elected. A sovereign might refuse to confirm an election, and any substitute proposed by him in such a case was sure to be accepted by the electors. And it was in vain that complaints were raised against the system of royal control, or that attempts were made to limit it by laying down new rules as to the qualifications requisite for the episcopate.

A remarkable proof of the degree in which the German sovereigns believed the disposal of bishoprics to be a right of their own office, is found in the fact that Henry the Fowler granted to Arnulf duke of Bavaria the privilege of appointing bishops within that territory. The saintly emperor Henry II made bishops by direct nomination, possibly (as has been suggested) from a wish to secure the appointment of better men than the flocks would have been likely to choose for themselves; and it is said that a comparison between the bishops who owed their sees to his patronage and those who were afterwards elected by the clergy bears out the wisdom and the honesty of his policy. We are told that the emperors were sometimes directed by visions to promote certain deserving persons to vacant bishoprics, or to refrain from opposing their election.

In the Greek church also the emperors continued to nominate to the most important sees. Nicephorus Phocas enacted that no bishop should be appointed without the imperial consent, and when a see was vacant, he committed the revenues to the care of an officer, who was bound to limit the expenditure to a certain sum, and to pay over the residue to the treasury. The patriarch Polyeuctus refused to crown John Tzimisces, unless on condition that the law of his predecessor should be abrogated; but the emperor, immediately after his coronation, proceeded to exercise his prerogative by nominating a patriarch for Antioch.

Bishoprics became objects of ambition for persons of noble or even royal birth, so that it was at length a rare and surprising case, and even serious objections were raised, when any one of obscure origin was elevated to such a position. Attempts were made to render the possession of sees hereditary in certain families; and in Germany these attempts took a peculiar and remarkable turn. A prelate was often able to secure the succession to his see for a nephew or a cousin; and the interest of families in such cases led them not to impoverish but to enrich the see, with a view to the benefit of their own members who were to hold it. It was regarded as a part of the family property, and the bishop might rely on the support of his kinsmen in all his differences and feuds with his other neighbours. Henry II was fond of bestowing bishoprics on wealthy persons, who might be likely to add to the riches of their sees, such as Heinwerc, of Paderborn, of whose relations with his imperial patron and kinsman many humorous tales are told by his biographer.

But the disposal of bishoprics from motives of family interest naturally introduced great abuses. Atto bishop of Vercelli, who, in the earlier part of the tenth century, wrote a treatise “On the Grievances of the Church”, tells us that the princes of his time were indifferent as to the character of those whom they nominated to high spiritual office, that wealth, relationship, and subserviency were the only qualities which they looked for; and not only unfit persons but boys were appointed to sees, from those of Rome and Constantinople downwards. Atto describes one of these boy prelates, at his consecration, as answering by rote the questions which were put to him, either having been crammed with the answers or reading them from a memorandum; as dreading, in case of failure, not lest he should lose the grace of consecration, but lest he should fall under the rod of his tutor; and having no conception either of the responsibilities of his office, or of the temptations which would beset him.

A particularly scandalous case was that of Theophylact, whom his father, the emperor Romanus, resolved to raise to the patriarchate of Constantinople on a vacancy which occurred in 928. As the prince was only eleven years of age, a monk named Trypho was made temporary patriarch; but when desired to resign his office, three years later, he was unwilling to comply. It is said that Theophanes, bishop of Caesarea, waited on him, and, with great professions of friendship, told him that the emperor intended to eject him on the ground that he was ignorant of letters : “If”, he said, “you can disprove this objection, you have nothing to fear”. At the suggestion of his insidious visitor, Trypho wrote his name and style on a paper, which was afterwards annexed to another, containing an acknowledgment that he was unfit for the patriarchate, and expressing a wish to retire from it. Trypho was thus set aside, and, after a vacancy of a year and a half, Theophylact, at the age of sixteen, became patriarch in 933, being installed in his office by legates of pope John XI. During three and twenty years Theophylact disgraced the patriarchal throne. He introduced indecent music and dances into the service of the church; but he was chiefly distinguished by his insane fondness for horses, of which he kept more than two thousand. Instead of the ordinary diet, they were fed with dates, figs, raisins, almonds, and other fruits which were steeped in costly wines and flavoured with the most delicate spices. It is related that once, while performing the eucharistic rites on Thursday before Easter, the patriarch was informed that a favourite mare had foaled. He immediately left the church, and, after having gratified himself by the sight of the mother and her offspring, returned to finish the service of the day. In order to provide for the vast expenses of his stud, he shamelessly sold all sorts of spiritual offices. Theophylact’s end was worthy of his life; his head was dashed against a wall in riding, and, after having lingered two years, he died in consequence of the accident.

Complaints of simony in the appointment to ecclesiastical offices, whether high or low, are incessant during this period. The simoniacal practices of sovereigns are supposed to have originated from the custom of offering gifts on being admitted to their presence. Those who were promoted by them to ecclesiastical dignities testified their gratitude by presents, which in course of time took the nature of stipulated payments. The working of the system became worse when bishops, instead of making payment at the time of their promotion, relied on the revenues of their sees for the means of raising the money, as in such cases they were tempted to dilapidate the episcopal property, to oppress their tenants, to engage in unseemly disputes, and to allow their churches to go to ruin.

In respect of simony the German emperors were pure, as compared with other western princes; they sometimes made formal resolutions to refrain from selling their patronage, and to restrain the simoniacal practices of others; but their necessities interfered with the fulfilment of their good intentions. Cardinal Humbert, who had enjoyed an opportunity of observing the Greek church, when engaged on a mission to Constantinople, states that the sale of bishoprics was not practised there as in the west. The practice of paying for preferments, as distinguished from ordination, found defenders; but the defence was indignantly met by such writers as Humbert and Peter Damiani. The distinction between orders and benefices, says Peter, is as absurd as if one were to say that a man is father of his son's body only, and not of his soul.

Bishops were invested in their sees by the western sovereigns. Symbolical forms of investiture are mentioned as early as the time of Clovis, and it is said that Louis the Pious invested bishops by delivering to them the pastoral staff. But the use of such ceremonies does not appear to have been introduced as a regular practice until the age of the Othos, and was perhaps not completely established until the end of the tenth century.

The investiture related to the temporalities of the see, which the sovereign was supposed to bestow on the bishops. Hincmar, in his answer to Adrian II, when desired to renounce communion with Charles the Bald, marks the distinction between his temporalities, which were at the king’s disposal, and his spiritual office, in which he regarded himself as independent. “If I were to act according to your judgment”, he tells the pope, “I might continue to chant at the altar of my church, but over its property, its income, and its retainers, I should no longer have any power”.

When the feudal system was established, it was natural that bishops, as well as dukes and counts, should be invested in their possessions, and they may have found their advantage in a tie which entitled them to the protection of their liege lord. But it became a matter of complaint that the estates and temporal privileges of bishops were conferred on them by means of instruments which symbolised their spiritual character the ring, the figure of marriage with the church, and the crozier or crook, the ensign of pastoral authority. The use of such instruments provoked objections, because they were liable to be interpreted as signifying that the spiritual powers of the episcopate were derived from the gift of earthly princes.

By the institution of investiture sovereigns gained new means of control over bishops. They not only held over them the fear lest their gifts might be withdrawn, but were able to use the investiture so as to secure for themselves the patronage of sees. In order to elude the royal nomination, bishops sometimes consecrated to a see immediately on the occurrence of the vacancy, and thus threw on the sovereign the difficulty and the odium of dislodging a prelate who was already in possession. But princes were now able to prevent such consecrations, by providing that on a bishop's death his ring and staff should at once be seized and sent to them by their officers; for without these insignia the consecration of a successor could not proceed. Hence, as we shall see hereafter, it was complained that by the system of investiture the right of canonical election was annulled.

Sometimes the election of a bishop was notified to the court, with a petition for his investiture, and in such cases it was always in the prince's power to substitute another person for him who had been chosen. Sometimes investiture was given in the name of the sovereign by the prelate who took the chief part in the consecration.

Notwithstanding all the lofty pretensions which ecclesiastics now set up as to the superiority of spiritual over royal power, they did not practically gain much. Hincmar and his brethren of the council of Quiercy told Louis of Germany that bishops ought not, like secular men, to be bound to vassalship; that it was a shameful indignity that the hands which had been anointed with holy chrism, and which daily consecrated the Redeemer's body and blood, should be required to touch the hands of a liege-lord in the ceremony of homage, or that the lips which were the keys of heaven should be obliged to swear fealty. But they did not obtain any exemption in consequence of this representation; and Hincmar himself was afterwards, as a special affront, required to renew his oath of fealty to Charles the Bald.

Although bishops were exempt from the power of all inferior judges, kings still retained their jurisdiction over them. Hincmar, in his greatest zeal for the immunities of the clergy, went only so far as to maintain that the royal judgment must be guided by the laws of the church. The enactments of some synods, that a bishop should not be deposed except by twelve members of his own order, are not to be regarded as withdrawing bishops from the judgment of the sovereign, but as prescribing the manner in which this should be exercised. And, in cases of treason, princes deposed by their own immediate authority. When Hugh Capet brought Arnulf of Reims to trial before the synod of St. Basle, no complaint was made of his having already imprisoned him; the presiding archbishop's proposal, that before proceeding to the investigation the synod should petition for the security of Arnulf’s life, is a proof that the king's power to inflict capital punishment on the accused prelate was admitted; and it was only through the weakness of Robert and through the support of the emperor Otho that the pope was able in that case eventually to triumph.

While feeble princes yielded to the hierarchy, powerful princes often dealt forcibly with its members. Otho the Great, in punishment of political misdeeds, banished an archbishop of Mainz to Hamburg, and shut up a bishop of Strasburg in the monastery of Corbey; and, for the offence of having received a duke of Saxony with honours too much resembling those which were paid to the imperial majesty, he obliged Adalbert, archbishop of Magdeburg, to compound by heavy penalties a horse for every bell which had been rung and for every chandelier which had been lighted. Conrad II, on his last expedition to Italy, carried about with him a train of captive bishops; and when Henry III deposed Widgers from the archbishopric of Ravenna, the act was highly extolled by the greatest zealot for the privileges of the church, Peter Damiani.

Although the German emperors, like the Carolingians, assembled synods, took part in them, and ratified their proceedings, they did not, like the Carolingians, publish the decrees as their own enactments. And the privileges of sovereigns in general with respect to such assemblies were diminished. Although it was still acknowledged that they had the power of summoning councils, their right in this respect was no longer regarded as exclusive, so that both in France and in Germany councils were gathered without asking the sovereign's permission.

Through the carelessness of the bishops, the custom of holding regular synods fell into disuse; and when they were revived in a later age, the powers which kings and emperors had formerly exercised in connexion with them were forgotten.

It was regarded as a right of sovereigns to found bishoprics and archbishoprics, and the German emperors exercised it by erecting and endowing sees, some of them perhaps as much from motives of policy as of devotion. The consent of the prelates whose interest was affected by the new foundation was, however, regarded as necessary, and, in order to obtain it, the founders were sometimes obliged to submit to concession and compromise. Henry II even prostrated himself before a council at Frankfort in 1006, that he might obtain its assistance in overcoming the objections raised by the bishop of Würzburg against the proposed see of Bamberg; and when Otho III took it on himself to erect the archbishopric of Gnesen without asking the consent of the metropolitan of Posen, out of whose province that of Gnesen was to be taken, the chronicler who relates this speaks doubtfully as to the legality of the act. The popes now began to claim the right of confirming these foundations; but, from the fact that princes laboured to propitiate the local prelates, instead of invoking the pope to overrule their objections, it is clear that the popes were not as yet supposed to have supreme jurisdiction in such cases.

Towards the middle of the ninth century there were considerable dissensions on the subject of the chorepiscopi in France. They had become more and more dissatisfied with their position; they complained that their emoluments bore no proportion to their labour, as compared with those of the diocesan bishops, while on the other side there were complaints that the chorepiscopi were disposed to exceed the rights of their commission. The decretals, fabricated in the interest of the bishops, were adverse to the claims of the chorepiscopi. Raban Maur, however, in consequence of an application from Drogo of Metz, wrote in favour of them, and especially in support of their power to ordain priests and deacons with the licence of their episcopal superiors. The troubles occasioned by Gottschalk may perhaps have contributed to exasperate the difference between the two classes, for Gottschalk had been ordained by a chorepiscopus during the vacancy of the see of Reims; and, notwithstanding the powerful authority of the German primate, the order of chorepiscopi was abolished throughout Neustria by a council held at Paris in 849.

In the eleventh century a new species of assistant bishops was for the first time introduced. Poppo, bishop of Treves, in 1041 requested Benedict IX to supply him with a person qualified to aid him in pontifical acts, and the pope complied by sending an ecclesiastic named Gratian, who must doubtless have already received episcopal consecration. The novelty of the case consisted in the application to the pope, and in the fact that the coadjutor was appointed by him. It was not, however, until a later time that such coadjutors became common in the church.

The practice of taking part in war, which had so often been condemned by councils, became more general among bishops during this period. When the feudal relations were fully established, a bishop was bound, as a part of his duty towards his suzerain, to lead his contingent to the field in person, and it was only as a matter of special favour that a dispensation from this duty could be obtained. The circumstances of the time, indeed, appeared in some measure to excuse the warlike propensities of bishops, who might think themselves justified in encouraging their flocks, even by their own example, to resist such determined and pitiless enemies of Christendom as the Saracens, the Northmen, or the Hungarians. Some prelates distinguished themselves by deeds of prowess, as Michael, bishop of Ratisbon, in the middle of the tenth century, who, after losing an ear and receiving other wounds in a battle with the Hungarians, was left for dead on the field. While he lay in this condition, a Magyar fell on him, with the intention of despatching him; but the bishop, “being strengthened in the Lord”, grappled with his assailant, and, after a long struggle, succeeded in killing him. He then with great difficulty made his way to the camp of his own nation, where he was hailed with acclamations both as a priest and as a warrior, and his mutilation was thenceforth regarded as an honourable distinction.

Although donations of land were still made to the church, its acquisitions of this kind appear to have been less than in earlier times partly, perhaps, because such gifts may have seemed to be less required. The clergy, therefore, felt the necessity of turning to the best account the revenues to which they were already entitled, and especially the tithes. Tithe had originally been levied from land only, but the obligation of paying it was now extended to all sorts of income. “Perhaps”, says the council of Trosley, “some one may say, ‘I am no husbandman; I have nothing on which to pay tithe of the fruits of the earth or even of flocks’. Let such an one hearken, whosoever he be, whether a soldier, a merchant, or an artisan : The ability by which thou art fed is God’s, and therefore thou oughtest to pay tithes to Him”. Many canons are directed to the enforcement of tithes on land newly brought into cultivation; and many are directed against claims of exemption. Such claims were sometimes advanced by persons who held lands under ecclesiastical owners, and pretended that it was an oppression to require a second rent of them under another name. The council of Ingelheim, held in 948, in the presence of Otho I, enacted that all questions as to tithes should be subject to the decision of the bishops alone; and a great council at Augsburg, four years later, confirmed the rule

The amount thus added to the revenues of the clergy must, after all possible deductions for difficulties of collection, for waste, and for other allowances, have been very large; but the individual members of the body were not proportionably enriched. The number of the clergy was greatly increased; and, although the principle had been established that “benefice is given on account of office or duty”, it was considered to be satisfied by imposing on the superfluous clerks the duty of reading the church-service daily, and thus they became entitled to a maintenance. The bishops, as their state became greater, found themselves obliged to keep a host of expensive retainers. Knights or persons of higher rank who were attached to the households of the great prelates, often by way of disarming their hostility, were very highly paid for their services; the free men whom the bishops contributed towards the national force, or whom they hired to fight their feuds, were costly, and, as the prelates found themselves considered at the national musters in proportion to the number of their followers, they often, for the sake of supporting their dignity, led more than the required number with them.

According to the system of the age, all these adherents were paid by fiefs, which were either provided out of the estates of the church or by assigning them the tithes of certain lands. Such fiefs in general became hereditary, and thus the episcopal revenues were consumed by the expense of establishments which it was impossible to get rid of.

The vidames or advocates in particular pressed heavily on the church. The wealth and privileges of the clergy continually excited the envy and cupidity of their lay neighbours, who were apt to pick quarrels with them in order that there might be a pretext for seizing their property. Every council has its complaints of such aggressions, and its anathemas against the aggressors. But the denunciations of councils, or even of popes, were of little or no avail; force alone could make any impression on the rough and lawless enemies of the clergy. The vidames, therefore, if they discharged their office faithfully, had no easy task in defending the property of the churches or monasteries with which they were connected. But not only was the price of their assistance often greater than the damage which they averted; they are charged with neglecting their duty, with becoming oppressors instead of defenders, with treating the property of the church as if it were their own.

The oppression, of the advocates was especially felt by monastic bodies, which often found it expedient to pay largely to the sovereign for the privilege of being able to discharge these officers. The advocateship became hereditary; in some monasteries it was reserved by the founder to himself and his heirs, who, thus, by the power of preying not only on the original endowment, but on such property as the community afterwards acquired, were in no small degree indemnified for the expense of the foundation. In some cases, the advocates appointed deputies, and thus the unfortunate clients had two tyrants under the name of defenders. Vast, therefore, as the revenues of the church appear, much of its wealth was merely nominal. A large part passed from the clergy to lay officials, and the rest was exposed to continual danger in such rude and unsettled times.

The condition of the Greek clergy is described by Liutprand as inferior to that of their Latin brethren. Their manner of life struck him as sordid; and, although some of the bishops were rich and others were poor, they were all alike inhospitable. The bishops were obliged to pay tribute to the emperor; the bishop of Leucate swore that his own tribute amounted to a hundred pieces of gold yearly; and Liutprand cries out that this was a manifest injustice, inasmuch as Joseph, when he taxed all the rest of Egypt, exempted the land which belonged to the priests.

An important change took place in the canonical bodies, which, as we have seen, had originated towards the end of the preceding period. Although the canonical life was attractive as offering almost all the advantages of monasticism with an exemption from some of its drawbacks, the restraints and punctilious observances of Chrodegang’s rule were felt as hardships by many who had been accustomed to the enjoyment of independence. The canons had taken a high position. From living with the bishop they were brought into a close connexion with him : their privileged body acquired something like that power which in the earliest ages had belonged to the general council of presbyters; and they claimed a share in the government of the diocese. The bishop, however, had at his disposal the whole revenues of the church, and although he might be obliged to set aside a certain portion for the maintenance of the canons, he had yet in his hands considerable means of annoying them. He could stint them in their allowances, he could increase their fasts, he could be niggardly in providing for occasions of festivity. Complaints of bishops against canons and of canons against bishops became frequent.

The first object of the canons was to get rid of the bishop's control over their property. The composition made between Gunther of Cologne and his chapter, at a time when he had especial reason to court the members, is the earliest instance of its kind. By this the canons got into their own hands the management of their estates, and were even enabled to bequeath their houses or other effects to their brethren without any reference to the archbishop. The instrument was confirmed by a great council held at Cologne in 873 under archbishop Willibert, whose reasons for consenting to it are unknown; and the new arrangement was soon imitated elsewhere.

After having gained this step, the canons in various places, and more or less rapidly, advanced further. They abandoned the custom of living together, and of eating at a common table; each had a separate residence of his own within the precincts of the cathedral. They divided the estates of the society among themselves, but in such a way that the more influential members secured an unfair proportion; while many of them also possessed private property. The canons purchased special privileges from kings and emperors, from bishops and from popes. The vacancies in each chapter were filled up by the choice of the members, and nobility of birth came to be regarded as a necessary qualification. Marriage and concubinage were usual among this class of clergy; and their ordinary style of living may be inferred from the statement of Ratherius, bishop of Verona, that the simplicity of his habits led his canons to suppose him a man of low origin, and on that account to despise him. At length the duties of the choir the only duties which the canons had continued to acknowledge were devolved on “prebendaries” engaged for the purpose, and the canons, both of cathedral and of collegiate churches, lived in the enjoyment of their incomes, undisturbed even by the obligation of sharing in the divine offices.

Thus by degrees the system which Chrodegang had instituted became extinct. The revivals of it which were attempted by Adalbero of Reims, by Willigis of Mainz, and other prelates, were never of long continuance; and in a later time that which had been a violation of the proper canonical discipline became the rule for the foundation of cathedral chapters on a new footing.

The dissolute morals of the clergy are the subject of unceasing complaint. The evils which arose out of the condition of domestic chaplains increased, notwithstanding all the efforts of bishops and of councils to introduce a reform. The employers of these chaplains engaged them without any inquiry as to their morals, their learning, or even their ordination; they claimed for them the same exemption from episcopal jurisdiction which was allowed to the clergy of the royal chapel, and every employer considered it a point of honour to support his chaplain in any violation of canons or in any defiance of bishops.

The mischiefs connected with this class of clergy were in great measure chargeable on the practice of the bishops themselves in conferring orders without assigning a particular sphere of labour to the receiver. The origin of such ordinations has been already traced; but now even the higher orders of the ministry were thus bestowed, for the sake of the fees which had become customary. Canons were passed that no one should be allowed to officiate in a church without the bishop's licence, and without producing a certificate of his ordination; while other canons forbade the appointment of chaplains without the bishop’s consent. The council of Ravenna, under John VIII, in 877, enacted that every presbyter should, at ordination, be appointed to some particular church; but the custom of ordaining without such a title was already too firmly established.

Among the many abuses which arose out of the sale of spiritual preferments was the practice of patrons who insisted on presenting their nominees without allowing the bishop to inquire into their qualifications, or even into the validity of their ordination. In opposition to this the council of Seligenstadt, in 1022, ordered that no layman should present a clerk without submitting him for examination to the bishop.

But the chief subject of complaint and of ecclesiastical legislation is the neglect of celibacy and chastity by the clergy. The older canons, which forbade clergymen to entertain in their houses any women except their nearest relations, were found, instead of acting as an effective restraint, to tempt them to more frightful kinds of sin; and even the company of mothers, aunts, and sisters was now prohibited. Riculf, bishop of Soissons, ordains, in 889, that, lest the sins of Absalom and of Lot should be repeated, not even the nearest kinswomen of the clergy should dwell with them; if a clergyman should invite his mother, his sister, or his aunt to dinner, the women must return before nightfall to their own home or lodging, which must be at a distance from the parsonage. As experience seemed to point out more and more the expediency of relaxing the law of celibacy, councils became stricter in their requirements. Subdeacons were required at ordination to promise that they would never marry, or, if already married, they were required to renounce their wives; a council at Augsburg in 952 enacted that all manner of clerks of mature age should be compelled to observe continency, even although unwilling.

The clergy, however, when forbidden to marry, indemnified themselves by living in concubinage sometimes, as appears from a canon passed at Poitiers in 1000, resorting to strange expedients for the purpose of concealing their female companions; and they married in contempt of the prohibitions. Atto describes clergymen as openly living with meretriculoe a term which he would probably have applied to wives no less than to unmarried companions as making them the heads of their establishments, and bequeathing to them the money which had been gained from the holy oblations; thus diverting to harlots that which of right belonged to the poor. In consequence of these scandals, he says, many persons, to their own spiritual hurt, withheld their oblations; and the clergy, when called to account for their misconduct by bishops, had recourse to secular protectors, whose alliance enabled them to defy their ecclesiastical superiors. From the bishops downwards, it was common both in Germany and in Italy for the clergy to have wives, and that without any disguise; and the same was the case in Normandy, as well as in the independent church of Brittany. In order to judge fairly of such persons we must not regard them from the position of either the modern opponents or advocates of clerical celibacy. Living and holding office as they did under a law which forbade marriage, we cannot respect them for their violation of that law. Yet if they believed the prohibition to be merely a matter of ecclesiastical discipline, and not enforced by the Divine word, if they saw that the inexpediency of such discipline was abundantly proved by experience, and if they found that those who were charged with the maintenance of the canons were willing to tolerate a breach of them in this respect, provided that it were managed without any offence to public decency, we may suppose that the clergy in question were reasonably justified to their own consciences. We may hold them excusable, if we cannot join with those who would admire them as heroic or enlightened.

The acts of Dunstan in England have been already related, and we have seen that his reformation, which for the time appeared to be triumphant, was not of any long continuance at least in its full extent. Reformers in other quarters failed to obtain even a temporary success. Among the most remarkable of these was Ratherius, a native of Liege, who acquired great fame for learning, eloquence, and strictness of life, and in 931 was advanced to the see of Verona by Hugh the Great of Provence, in fulfilment of a promise which Hugh was disposed to evade, but which was enforced by the authority of the pope.

Ratherius represents the Italian clergy in the darkest colours : they were, he says, so grossly ignorant that many of them did not know the Apostles’ creed, while some were anthropomorphites; and their obstinate unwillingness to chant the Athanasian creed suggested suspicions of Arianism. They were stained by all manner of vices; the bishops were altogether secular in their manners, and even in their dress limiting, hawking, gaming, delighting in the company of jesters and dancing-girls. They were luxurious in their food and drink; they were utterly careless of their duties, and set the church's laws at nought; instead of dividing their revenues according to the canons, they appropriated all to themselves, so that the poor were robbed, and churches, which had suffered from the negligence of bishops or from the violence of pagans, lay in ruins; they despised all who showed the fear of God; they took pride in splendid furniture and equipages, without any thought of Him who was laid in a manger and rode on an ass. Unhappily Ratherius was altogether wanting in the prudence which would have been requisite for dealing with such persons; his intemperate zeal, his personal assumption, his passionate impatience of opposition, his abusive language and unmeasured severity in reproof alienated the clergy, laity, and monks, with whom he had at first been popular, while his independent spirit and his determination to maintain the rights of his see provoked the licentious and cruel king. Hugh, on a charge of treason, imprisoned him at Pavia for two years and a half, while the bishopric was given to Manasses, archbishop of Arles, who also held the sees of Trent and Mantua, and had the effrontery to justify his pluralities by alleging that St. Peter had been bishop of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. In 939, Hugh for reasons of policy restored Ratherius; but the bishop was again obliged to leave his see, and his impracticable character provoked his expulsion or compelled his withdrawal from other preferments which he successively obtained from Liege, to which he had been promoted by the influence of Bruno of Cologne; in a third time from Verona, which he had recovered through the patronage of Otho the Great, by the ejection of a more popular bishop (A.D. 963); from the abbey of St. Amand, which he is said to have purchased of king Lothair; from the abbey of Haumont, and from that of Lobach or Lobbes, on the Sambre, the place of his education, which he had held with the bishopric of Liege, and of which in his latter days he again became the head through the expulsion of his predecessor Folcuin. Ratherius died at Namur, in 974, at the age of 82. He was throughout a vehement opponent of marriage among the clergy; yet he seems at last to have been convinced that the attempt was hopeless, and to have contented himself with endeavouring to preserve the hierarchy from becoming hereditary, by desiring that the married priests should choose laymen as husbands for their daughters, and should not allow their sons to become clerks.

It was not on religious grounds only that the celibacy of the clergy was enforced; for the possessions of the church were endangered by the opposite practice. The married clergy often contrived to make their livings hereditary; or they alienated ecclesiastical property to their children, whom, in order to render such alienations secure, they placed under vassalage to some powerful layman. Clergymen of servile birth were careful to choose women of free condition for wives and concubines, so as to ensure for their offspring the privileges of freemen, by virtue of the legal principle that the child must follow the condition of the mother. Benedict VIII, at a council held at Pavia in 1022, inveighed with great severity against those who by such means impoverished the church. “Let the sons of clergy be null”, he says; “and especially the sons of such clerks as belong to the family (i. e. to the serfs) of the church. Yea, let them let them, I say, I say they shall, be null”. They shall neither follow their mother in freedom nor their father in inheritance; they shall be serfs of the church for ever, whether born of wives or of concubines; they may in mercy be allowed to serve as, Nethinims hewers of wood and drawers of water, but must not aspire to any higher ministry. Their mothers shall be driven out, and shall be compelled to leave behind them all that they have gotten from the church. The pope's address to the council is followed by canons which enact that no member of the clergy shall have a wife or a concubine; that the children of clerks shall be condemned to hopeless servitude; and that no judge shall, under pain of anathema, promise them freedom or the power of inheriting; and these canons were confirmed by the authority of the emperor Henry II.

Some canons forbade, not only that any one should give his daughter in marriage to a clerk, but that any lay person should intermarry with the child of a clerk; and there were canons which forbade the ordination, of the sons of clergymen, as being an “accursed seed”. In this respect, however, the humaner principle that the innocent should not suffer for the sins of their parents appears to have more generally prevailed.

Dearly as the benefit was bought, we must not overlook one great good which resulted from the enforcement of celibacy that to this is chiefly to be ascribed the preservation of the clergy during the middle ages from becoming, like other classes whose dignity had at first been personal and official, a hereditary caste.

 

Monasticism.

 

During the earlier part of this period, the monastic life was on the decline. Some of the abuses which had arisen among the Greeks may be gathered from the canons of the synod which was held at Constantinople in 861, and which is known as the “First and Second”. It is there stated that many persons professed to consecrate their substance by founding monasteries, yet contrived to make such foundations a source of profit; and that some assumed the monastic habit with the view of gaining a reputation for piety, but lived with the freedom of laymen. In order to guard against these evils, it is enacted that no monastery shall be built without leave of the bishop in whose diocese it is situated, and that no one shall be admitted to the monastic profession until after a noviciate of three years. Another canon orders that bishops shall not dilapidate the property of their sees for the purpose of founding monasteries.

In the west, the reform undertaken by Louis the Pious soon passed away. The practice of impropriating the revenues of abbeys (an abuse which was also largely practised in the eastern church) increased. Abbacies were granted by French kings to laymen as hereditary possessions; some of them were even assigned to queens or other ladies. Kings took the revenues of abbeys into their own hands, and bishops were not slow to imitate the example; thus Hatto of Mainz, who died in 912, annexed to his archiepiscopal dignity the abbacies of twelve monasteries, and some abbacies were fixedly attached to certain sees.

The want of due superintendence which arose from this practice combined with other causes to produce a great decay of monastic discipline. Such was this decay in France that the monks are said to have been generally unacquainted with the rule of St. Benedict, and even ignorant whether they were bound by any rule whatever. In many monasteries the abbots openly lived with wives or concubines

The council of Trosley, in 909, laments the general corruption. Some monasteries, it is said, have been burnt or destroyed by pagans, some have been plundered of their property, and those of which the traces remain observe no form of a regular institute. They have no proper heads; the manner of life is disorderly; some monks desert their profession and employ themselves in worldly business; as the fine gold becomes dim without the workman's care, so the monastic institution goes to ruin for want of regular abbots. Lay abbots with their wives and children, with their soldiers and their dogs, occupy the cloisters of monks, of canons, and of nuns; they take it on themselves to give directions as to a mode of life with which they are altogether unacquainted, and the inmates of monasteries cast off all regard for rule as to dress and diet. It is the predicted sign, the abomination of desolation standing in the place where it ought not. About the same time we are told that John, afterwards abbot of Gorze, on resolving to become a monk, could not find any monastery north of the Alps, and hardly any one in Italy, where the regular discipline was observed.

Soon after this a reformation was set on foot in various quarters. The lead was taken by Berno, abbot of Beaume, and founder and abbot of Gigni. He had already established a reform in these two societies, when in 912 he was invited to Cluny by William, duke of Auvergne or Upper Aquitaine, who desired him to choose a spot within the dukedom for the foundation of a monastery; and Berno made choice of Cluny itself. A society of canons had been founded there in the preceding century, but the buildings were then occupied by the duke's hunting establishment. In his “testament”, or charter, William declares that he gives the estate for the foundation of a monastery in honour of St. Peter and St. Paul; first, for the love of God, then for the souls of the late king Odo, of his own wife, kindred, and friends, for the good of the catholic faith, and of all orthodox Christians in times past, present, or to come. Berno is to be the first abbot, and after his death the monks are to enjoy the uncontrolled election of their superior. They are to be exempt from all interference of the founder and his family, of the king's majesty, and of every other earthly power. The duke solemnly charges all popes, bishops, and secular princes to respect their property; he prays the two apostles and the pope to take the monastery under their special protection, and imprecates curses on any one who shall invade it.

Berno, like St. Benedict and other monastic founders, began with a company of twelve monks. The institutions of Cluny excited emulation, and other monasteries were committed to the abbot for reform. In 927, Berno was succeeded by his disciple Odo, whose fame so much eclipsed that of his master that even some members of the Cluniac order have spoken of Odo as their founder. To the rule of St. Benedict Odo added many minute observances. Thus the monks were required at the end of meals to gather up and consume all the crumbs of their bread. There was at first a disposition to evade this regulation; but when a dying monk exclaimed in horror that he saw the devil holding up in accusation against him a bag of crumbs which he had been unwilling to swallow, the brethren were terrified into obedience. Periods of strict silence were enforced; and stories are told of the inconveniences to which the Cluniacs submitted rather than break this rule as that one allowed his horse to be stolen, and that two suffered themselves to be carried off prisoners by the Northmen. For their communications among themselves at such times a code of signals was established, which the novices were obliged to learn. The monks were bled five times a year, and it is doubtful whether Odo permitted the use of any medical treatment except bleeding and the application of cautery. When two of his monks entreated him to allow them some medicine, he consented, but told them in anger that they would never recover; and the result justified his foresight, if not his humanity.

The fame of Cluny spread. Odo, at the request of popes, thrice visited Italy for the purpose of reconciling princes, and he availed himself of these opportunities to introduce his reforms in that country. Under his successor, Aymard, no fewer than 278 charters, either bestowing or confirming gifts, attest the wealth which was attracted to the monastery by the spectacle which it exhibited of revived austerity. A series of conspicuous saints maintained and advanced the renown of the Cluniacs. Majolus, or Mayeul, who, in consequence of Aymard’s having lost his sight, was appointed his coadjutor in 948, and became sole abbot in 965, had before joining the congregation refused the archbishopric of Besançon, and on the death of Benedict VI, in 974, he declined the popedom. The fifth abbot, Odilo, was equal to any of his predecessors in reputation and in influence. Popes treated him as an equal; kings and emperors sought his friendship and were guided by his advice; bishops repaired to Cluny, to place themselves as simple monks under his governments His contemporary Fulbert of Chartres styles him “the archangel of the monks”; another contemporary, the notorious Adalbero of Laon, in a satirical poem calls him “King Odilo of Cluny”. He was believed to have the power of miracles, and an extraordinary efficacy was ascribed to his prayers. Benedict VIII, it is said, appeared to John bishop of Porto, telling him that he was suffering torments, but that he could be delivered by the prayers of Odilo. The abbot, on being informed of this, engaged in the charitable work, and after a time the release of the pope was shown in a vision to one of the monks of Cluny. In days when the popes were far from saintly, the people looked away from them to the great head of the monastic society, whose position was such that he refused to exchange it for an archbishopric, or even for St. Peter's chair.

The reform begun at Cluny extended far and wide. When a revival of the true monastic asceticism had been displayed in any province, a regard for public opinion and for self-preservation urged the imitation of it on the other communities of the neighbourhood. A general zeal for monachism sprang up; multitudes of men became monks, many offered their children, some even devoted themselves and their posterity as serfs to a monastery, in the hope of a reward in heaven. Princes or bishops often employed the Cluniacs in carrying out a forcible reformation; many monasteries of their own accord conformed to the Cluniac rule, and placed themselves in connexion with the mother society.

The nature of this connexion was various; in some cases, the affiliated monastery was in strict subjection, so that it not only looked to Cluny for its abbots and priors, but did not even receive a novice without a reference to the “archabbot”; in other cases the lesser monastery enjoyed independence in the administration of its own concerns and in the choice of its superiors, while it acknowledged the great abbot as its chief, and regarded him as invested with a supreme authority and authorised to watch over its discipline. Thus was formed the “Congregation of Cluny”, the first example in the west (if we except the peculiar system of St. Columba) of an organisation which had been introduced into Egypt by Pachomius in the earliest age of monasticism. The work of establishing this organisation was accomplished by the sixth abbot, Hugh, who succeeded Odilo at the age of twenty-five in 1049, and governed the society for sixty years.

The number of monasteries connected with Cluny, in France, in Germany, in Italy, in England, and in Spain, amounted by the end of the twelfth century to two thousand.

Another famous society was founded by Romuald, a nobleman descended from the ducal family of Ravenna. Romuald’s early life was dissolute, but at the age of twenty he was suddenly reclaimed from it. His father, Sergius, had been engaged in a dispute as to some property with a kinsman. The two met, each at the head of his partisans, and Sergius slew his opponent. Romuald, who had been concerned in the fray, although he had not himself shed blood, was so much shocked by the result, that he entered the monastery of St. Apollinaris with the intention of doing penance for forty days, and while there, he was determined, by visions in which the patron saint of the house appeared to him, to embrace the monastic life.

After having spent three years in the monastery, he placed himself under the tuition of a hermit named Marinus, who was in the habit of daily reciting the whole psalter, saying thirty psalms under one tree and forty under another. Romuald was required to respond in these exercises, and whenever he failed (as often happened from his slowness in reading), he received a blow from the hermit's staff. By the frequent repetition of this, he lost the hearing of his left ear, whereupon he humbly begged that the chastisement might be transferred to the right ear. Although he used afterwards to relate the story of his training as a matter of amusement, his own piety savoured too much of his eccentric master's zeal.

When living on the borders of Spain as a hermit, he heard that his father, who had withdrawn into a monastery, was inclined to return to the world, and he resolved to prevent such a step. The people of the neighbourhood, on learning that he was about to leave them, were unwilling to lose so holy a man, and, by a strange working of superstition, laid a plan for murdering him, in order that they might possess his relics. Romuald escaped by feigning madness, and made his way barefoot to Ravenna, where he assailed his father with reproaches and blows, fastened his feet in stocks, and loaded him with chains until the old man was brought to a better sense of the monastic duty of perseverance.

Throughout his life Romuald was involved in a succession of troubles with monks in various places, on whom he attempted to force a reform with too great violence and rigour. Among his own ascetic performances, it is related that he was once silent for seven years.

Stirred to emulation by the labours of his friend Bruno or Boniface, who had been martyred by the heathens of Prussia, he undertook a mission to Hungary. On the way he fell ill, and thought of returning, whereupon he suddenly recovered; but as often as he resumed his intention of proceeding, his sickness again attacked him. At length he yielded to what he supposed to be a providential intimation that the work was not for him; but fifteen of his companions went on, and laboured in Hungary with good effect.

Romuald’s great work was the foundation of Camaldoli among the Apennines in the year 1018. He began by building five cells and an oratory. The inmates were to live as hermits, and were not to associate together except for worship. Their duties as to devotion, silence, and diet, were very rigid; but Romuald, although he often passed days in entire abstinence, would not allow his disciples to attempt a like austerity; they must, he said, eat every day, and always be hungry. A vision of angels ascending Jacob’s ladder induced him to prescribe a white dress, whereas that of the Benedictines was black. Romuald died in 1027, at the age of a hundred and twenty. Rudolf who was “general” of the Camaldolese from 1082, mitigated the severity of the rule, and added to the hermits an institution of coenobites, whose habits gradually became very different from those of the original foundation. These monks became an order, with monasteries affiliated to Camaldoli, but it did not spread to any great extent, although it has continued to the present day.

Another monastic reformer was John Gualbert, a Florentine of noble birth, whose conversion, like that of Romuald, arose out of one of the feuds which were characteristic of his age and country. Having been charged by his father to avenge the death of a kinsman, he met the murderer on Good Friday in a narrow pass near the bottom of the hill on which stands the monastery of St. Miniato, and was about to execute his vengeance; but when the guilty man threw himself from his horse and placed his arms in the form of a cross, as if expecting certain death, Gualbert was moved to spare him in reverence for the holy sign and for the solemn day. He then ascended the hill in order to pay his devotions in the monastic church, and while engaged in prayer, he saw a crucifix incline its head towards him, as if in acknowledgment of the mercy which he had shown. By this miraculous appearance, Gualbert was moved to become a monk, but his father, on hearing of his design, rushed to St. Miniato, assailed him with reproaches, and threatened to do mischief to the monastery. Gualbert, however, persevered in his resolution, and distinguished himself so much by his asceticism that ten years later his brethren wished to elect him abbot. But he declined the dignity, and soon after left the monastery in disgust at the election of a simoniacal abbot, according to some authorities, while others suppose that he withdrew out of a desire to avoid the distraction occasioned by crowds of visitors. After a sojourn at Camaldoli (where he learnt from Romuald’s institutions although the founder was already dead), Gualbert fixed himself at Vallombrosa, and there founded a society of hermits in 1039. To these coenobites were afterwards added, and the organisation of the order was completed by the institution of lay-brethren, whose business it was to practise handicrafts and to manage the secular affairs of the community, while by their labours the monks were enabled to devote themselves wholly to spiritual concerns. The rigour of the system was extreme; novices were obliged to undergo a year of severe probation, during which they were subjected to degrading employments, such as the keeping of swine, and daily cleaning out the pigsty with their bare hands; and Gualbert carried his hatred of luxury so far as to condemn the splendour of monastic buildings. His anger against offences is said to have been so violent that delinquents “supposed heaven and earth, and even God Himself, to be angry with them”; but to the penitent he displayed the tenderness of a mother. For himself he declined ordination, even to the degree of ostiary. He deviated from the Benedictine rule by attiring his monks in gray, but the colour was afterwards changed to brown, and eventually to black. Gualbert built and reformed many monasteries, and in obedience to pope Alexander II he reluctantly became head of the order which he had founded. His death took place in 1093.

In Germany the attempts at monastic reform met with much stubborn resistance. The monks sometimes deserted their house in a body, as when Godehard, afterwards bishop of Hildesheim, attempted to improve Hersfeld, although he at length succeeded in bringing them back. Sometimes they rose in rebellion against their reforming abbots, beat them, blinded them, or even attempted their lives. The general feeling of his class is expressed by Widukrod of Corbey, who gravely tells us that a “grievous persecution” of the monks arose about the year 945, in consequence of some bishops having said that they would rather have a cloister occupied by a few inmates of saintly life than by many careless ones, a saving which the chronicler meets by citing the parable of the tares. Yet in Germany some improvement was at length effected. Among the agents of this improvement William abbot of Hirschau is especially eminent. He raised the number of his monks from fifteen to a hundred and fifty, founded some new monasteries, reformed more than a hundred, and in 1069 formed the monks into a congregation after the pattern of Cluny, adopting the system of lay-brethren from Vallombrosa. The virtues of William were not limited to devotion, purity of life, and rigour of discipline; he is celebrated for his gentleness to all men, for his charity to the poor, for the largeness of his hospitality, for his cheerful and kindly behaviour, for his encouragement of arts and learning. He provided carefully for the transcription of the Bible and of other useful books, and, instead of locking them up in the library of his abbey, endeavoured to circulate, them by presenting copies to members of other religious houses. The sciences included in the Quadrivium, especially music and mathematics, were sedulously cultivated at Hirschau, and under William the monks were distinguished for their skill in all that relates to the ornament of churches in building, sculpture, painting, carving of wood, and working in metals.

In the course of these reforms, the lay impropriations were very generally got rid of. Many of the holders spontaneously resigned their claims; others were constrained by princes to do so, and new grants of like kind were sparingly made. The practice, however, was not extinct, and monasteries, as we have seen, suffered grievously from the exactions of the advocates whose duty it was to protect them. Kings often interfered in their affairs, and the privileges of free election which monastic bodies had received, or even purchased, from bishops, from princes, and from popes, were found in practice to be utterly unavailing against a royal nomination of an abbot.

The change of dynasty in France had a very favourable effect for monasteries. Hugh Capet, before his elevation to the throne, had held the abbacies of St. Denys and St. Germain, and was styled abbot-count. But from a wish, probably, to secure to himself the interest of the monks, he resigned his abbacies, restored to the monastic communities the power of choosing their superiors, and on his deathbed charged his son Robert to refrain from alienating monastic property, and from interfering with the right of free election.

The power of bishops over monasteries was diminished during this period. Any impression which the decay of monastic discipline might have made on the popular mind in favor of episcopal superintendence was neutralised by the sight of the disorders which prevailed among the bishops themselves, and by the fact that many of them, by impropriating the revenues of abbacies, contributed largely to the evils in question. And when the monks had been restored to reputation and influence by the reforms of the tenth century, they began to set up claims against the episcopal authority. Abbo of Fleury led the way by refusing to make the customary profession of obedience to his diocesan, the bishop of Orleans. A spirit of strong hostility arose between the two classes, and was signally displayed when a council at St. Denys, in 997, proposed to transfer to the parochial clergy the tithes which were held by monastic bodies, as well as those which were in the hands of laymen. The monks of St. Denys rose in tumult, and with the aid of the populace dispersed the assembled prelates; the president of the council, Siguin archbishop of Sens, as he fled, was pelted with filth, was struck between the shoulders with an axe, and almost killed. Abbo, as the leader of the monastic opposition, was charged with having instigated the rioters; and, although he vindicated himself in a letter addressed to king Hugh and his son, it is evident, from the relish with which his biographer relates the flight of the bishops, that the monastic party were not unwilling to see their opponents discomfited by such means. Abbo went to Rome for the assertion of the monastic privileges, and afterwards, when sent on a mission as to the question of the archbishopric of Reims, he obtained from Gregory V a grant that the bishop of Orleans should not visit the monastery of Fleury except by invitation from the abbot.

Monastic communities were naturally disposed to connect themselves immediately with the papal see since the pope was the only power to which they could appeal against bishops and princes. Some of them, as that of Cluny, were placed by their founders under the special protection of the pope, and a small acknowledgment was paid to Rome in token of such connexion. Yet the exemption which monasteries thus obtained from the control of their diocesan bishops was not as yet intended to debar the bishop from exercising his ordinary right of mural oversight, but to secure the monks against abuses of the episcopal power against invasion of their property, interference in the choice of abbots, unfair exactions, or needless and costly visitations. And such papal grants as affected to confer privileges of greater extent were set aside. Sylvester II acknowledged, in a question as to a monastery at Perugia, that a monastic body could not transfer itself to the pope’s immediate jurisdiction without the consent of the diocesan. The contest between the abbey of Fleury and its diocesans was not concluded by the grant bestowed on Abbo; for some years later we find John XVII complaining to king Robert that the archbishop of Sens and the bishop of Orleans treated the apostolical privileges with contempt, and had even ordered Gauzelin, the successor of Abbo, to throw them into the fire; while Fulbert, bishop of Chartres, who endeavoured to act as a mediator, declares that it was impossible for the abbot to escape from his duty of canonical obedience. Gregory V failed in an attempt to exempt Hirschau from the authority of the bishop of Constance; and when a later pope, John XVIII, granted the abbot of Hirschau a licence to say mass in the episcopal habit (for this was one of the forms in which the assumption of abbots displayed itself) the bishop complained to Conrad the Salic. Pressed at once by the emperor and by the bishop, the abbot was obliged to give up to his diocesan the episcopal staff and sandals which he had received from the pope, and these insignia were publicly burnt at the next diocesan synod. In 1025, at the synod of Anse (near Lyons) a complaint was made by the bishop of Macon, within whose diocese Cluny was situated, that the archbishop of Vienne had officiated at consecrations and ordinations in the abbey. The abbot, Odilo, produced a privilege from the pope, authorising the brotherhood to invite any bishop whom they might choose for the performance of such offices; but the council declared that no privilege could be valid against the ancient canons which invested bishops with jurisdiction over the monasteries within their dioceses. As the question continued to be disputed, Alexander II, in 1063, committed the investigation of it to cardinal Peter Damiani, who (as might have been expected from his monastic character and prejudices) gave a decision in favour of the abbot; and the pope renewed the grant, allowing the Cluniacs to call in any other bishop than their diocesan, and ordering that no bishop should lay them under interdict or excommunication. Although the time was not yet ripe for the full display of monastic independence, the course of things was rapidly tending in that direction.

The continued popularity of monachism is shown, among other instances, by the means which secular persons took to connect themselves with it. Carrying out the principle of the brotherhoods which from the sixth century had been formed for the purpose of commending their deceased members to the Divine mercy by prayers and masses, it became usual to seek enrolment as confraters of a monastery, and by such a connection the confrater was entitled to expect spiritual benefits from the prayers of the society. In this manner Conrad I was associated with St. Gall, and Henry II with Cluny. Another practice, which has been traced by some as high as the seventh century, was that of putting on the monastic habit in dangerous sickness, a new form, apparently, of the obligation to penance which had been more anciently undertaken in such circumstances. If one who had taken the habit, on recovering, returned to secular life, his relapse was disapproved; but it was sometimes found that even the monastic habit, where it was retained, was no security against a return to the sins of the earlier life.

Monasteries or monastic orders were often connected with each other by the bond of mutual intercession and by mutual commemoration of deceased brethren; and the deaths of abbots or of other distinguished members in any monastery were in such cases announced to the other houses of the association by circulars which were conveyed by special messengers.

In the eleventh century, then, monasticism was again in the fullness of its influence. The scandals of its past decay were more than retrieved by the frequent and widely extended reformations which had taken place each of them displaying in freshness and fervour a zeal and a rigour which for the time captivated the minds of men, and forbade them to admit the thought that that which was now so pure might itself also in time decline.

 

Rites and Usages.
 

The ninth century saw the rise of a class of ritualists, who wrote commentaries on the services of the church. The first of them was Amalhart or Amalarius, a chorepiscopus of Metz (already mentioned in the history of the predestinarian controversy), who about 820 composed a treatise “On the Offices of the Church”, in which he applied to these the system of mystical torture which had long been exercised on Holy Scripture. All the incidents of Divine service, every attitude and gesture, the dresses of the clergy, the ornaments of the church, the sacred seasons and festivals, were expounded as pregnant with symbolical meanings. Raban Maur and Walafrid Strabo, abbot of Reichenau, followed with liturgical writings in a similar style before the middle of the century; but another eminent writer of the time, Agobard, had taken a strongly different line. Being offended by the mass of irrelevant matter which he found in the service-books of the church of Lyons, he ejected from them all hymns and anthems but such as were taken from Scripture. For this he was censured by Amalarius in a book "On the Order of the Antiphonary"; and he replied in tracts which, with much display of indignation against his opponent, maintain the principle on which his liturgical reforms had been executed. The archbishop declares the pieces which he had expunged to be “not only unfit and superfluous, but even profane and heretical”; he denounces the practice of devoting excessive attention to music, while the study of Scripture is neglected a practice, he says, which puffs up clerks who know nothing but music with a conceit of their accomplishments; and, when Amalarius published his work on the Divine Offices, Agobard not only reprobated the idle character of his comments, but charged him with errors in doctrine. At a later time, Florus, master of the cathedral school at Lyons, who had been opposed to Amalarius in the case of Gottschalk, assailed him with much asperity for his ritual system, and cited him before two councils, the second of which, on finding that his mystical theories rested on no better a foundation than his own fancy, pronounced them to be dangerous. But the style of exposition which Amalarius introduced was followed by the ritualists of the middle ages; it has been kept up in the Roman church; and attempts (which, however, can hardly be regarded as serious) have even been made to revive it in the English church of our own day.

In the ninth century were formed some collections of lives of saints, arranged according to the order of the calendar, and bearing the title of Martyrologies. Among the compilers of these were Florus, Ado, archbishop of Vienne, Usuard, a monk of St. German's, at Paris, and Notker of St. Gall. Biographies of individual saints were produced in vast numbers. Older lives were re-written; new legends were composed, as substitutes for the more authentic records which had perished in the ravages of the Northmen; many narratives, with the holy men and women who were the subjects of them, sprang from the invention of the monks. Not only was there much likeness of detail between stories of this kind, but even the whole accounts of some saints were identical in everything except the names. Few men in those days shared the scruples of Letald, a monk of Mici, who, in the preface to a biography, blames the practice of attempting by falsehoods to enhance the glory of the saints, and says that, if the saints themselves had been followers of lies, they could never have reached their perfection of holiness.

From the time when St. Dionysius, the martyr of Paris, was identified with the Areopagite, other churches endeavoured to invest their founders with a like venerable character. Among them was the church of Limoges, which, as its first bishop, Martial, had been reckoned by Gregory of Tours with the companions of Dionysius in the third century, now referred him, as well as the founder of the see of Paris, to the apostolic age. At a council held at Limoges in 1023, a question arose as to the proper designation of the saint : the bishop, Jordan, was for styling him confessor, but Hugh, abbot of St. Martial’s, insisted that his patron was entitled to be called apostle, as having been one of the seventy disciples. Among the most strenuous advocates of the abbot's view was the chronicler Ademar, who had received his education in the monastery of St. Martial : in a vehement letter on the subject, he professes his belief in a legendary life of the saint, as being of apostolic antiquity, and no less authentic than the four Gospels; and he strongly declares that no mortal pope can deprive of the apostolical dignity one whom St. Peter himself reveres as a brother apostle. The matter was taken up by councils at Poitiers and at Paris; whosoever should refuse the title of apostle to St. Martial was branded as being like the Ebionites, who, out of enmity against St. Paul, limited the number of apostles to the original twelve; and John XVIII, on being appealed to, declared that it would be madness to question the saint's right to a name which was given not only to the companions of the first apostles, but to St. Gregory for the conversion of England, and to others for their eminent labours as missionaries. The apostolic dignity of Martial, which raised him above martyrs, to whom as a confessor he would have been inferior, was confirmed by councils at Bourges and at Limoges in 1031, and bishop Jordan acquiesced in the decision.

The number of saints had increased by degrees. Charlemagne, as we have seen, found it necessary to forbid the reception of any but such as were duly accredited; but the multiplication went on, the bishops being the authorities by whom the title of sanctity was conferred. In the end of the tenth century, a new practice was introduced. At a Roman council, held in 993, Ludolf, bishop of Augsburg, presented a memoir of Ulric, one of his predecessors who had died twenty years before, and referred it to the judgment of the bishops who were present, as being an assembly guided by the Holy Spirit. The sanctity of Ulric was attested by stories of miracles, wrought both in his lifetime and after death; and the pope, John XV, with the council, ordered his memory should be venerated as that of a saint, in words which, while they refer all holiness and religious honour to the Saviour, yet contain the dangerous error of interposing his saints as mediators between Him and mankind.

This was the first authentic instance in which canonisation (i.e. the insertion of a name in the canon or lists of saints) was conferred by the decree of a pope. The effect of such a decree was to entitle the saint to reverence throughout the whole of Western Christendom, whereas the honour bestowed by bishops or provincial councils was only local. But the pope did not as yet claim an exclusive right; metropolitans continued to canonise, sometimes with the consent of popes, sometimes by their own sole authority, until Alexander III, in 1170, declared that, "even although miracles be done by one, it is not lawful to reverence him as a saint without the sanction of the Roman church". Yet, in whatever hands the formal sanction might be lodged, the character of saintship was mainly conferred by the people. When a man of reputed holiness died, miracles began to be wrought or imagined, an altar was built over the grave, and an enthusiasm was speedily raised which easily made out a case for canonisation. Bishops and popes felt the expediency of complying with the popular feeling, and thus the catalogue of saints was continually swelled by fresh additions.

Stories of miracles done by the saints abounded, and they show how the belief in such interpositions, as probable in every variety of occasions and circumstances, was likely to place these lower mediators in the way of the Author of all miracles. The oppressiveness of too frequent miracles, and the bad effects which the possession of wonder-working relics produced on monks, were felt by many abbots, and some of them, like Hildulf a of Moyen-Moutier in an earlier time, took means to deliver their monasteries from such dangerous privileges.

The honours paid to the blessed Virgin were continually advancing to a greater height. The most extravagant language was used respecting her, and was addressed to her. Peter Damiani speaks of her as “deified”, as “exalted to the throne of God the Father, and placed in the seat of the very Trinity”. “To thee”, he says, “is given all power in heaven and in earth; nothing is impossible to thee, to whom it is possible even to raise again the desperate to the hope of bliss. For thou approachest the golden altar of man’s reconciliation, not only asking but commanding; as a mistress, not as a handmaid”. He revels in the mystical language of the Canticles, which he interprets as a song in celebration of her nuptials with the Almighty Father. Saturday was regarded as especially consecrated to the Virgin, and offices of prayer to her were framed. The Ave, or angelic salutation, became an ordinary part of devotion, and traces are found of what was afterwards styled the Rosary the repetition of a certain number of prayers (as the Paternoster fifteen times, and the Ave a hundred and fifty times) in her honour. New titles were invented for her; thus Odo of Cluny styled her “mother of mercy”. The newly converted Hungarians were taught by a Venetian, on whom king Stephen had bestowed a bishopric, to call her “lady” or “mistress”, and they were placed under her special protection as “the family of St. Mary”.

The festival of All Saints, which had been instituted at Rome in the eighth century, and had been already known in England, was in 835 extended to France, Germany, and Spain, by Gregory IV. In the end of the tenth century a new celebration was annexed to it. A French pilgrim, it is said, in returning from Jerusalem, was cast on a little island of the Mediterranean, where he met with a hermit who told him that the souls of sinners were tormented in the volcanic fires of the island, and that the devils might often be heard howling with rage because their prey was rescued from them by the prayers and alms of the pious, and especially of the monks of Cluny. On reaching his own country, the pilgrim, in compliance with the hermit's solemn adjuration, reported this to abbot Odilo, who in 998 appointed the morrow of All Saints to be solemnly observed at Cluny for the repose of all faithful souls, with psalmody, masses, and a copious distribution of alms and refreshment to all poor persons who should be present. The celebration was early in the next century extended to the whole Cluniac order; and eventually a pope (it is not certain who) ordered its observance throughout the church.

The passion for relics was unabated, and was gratified by the “invention” (as it was somewhat ambiguously called) of many very remarkable articles. Among those discovered in France during the tenth century were one of our Lord's sandals at St. Julien in Anjou, part of the rod of Moses at Sens, and a head of St. John the Baptist (for more than one such head were shown) at St. Jean d'Angely. Vendome boasted the possession of one of the tears shed by our Lord over Lazarus, which had been caught by an angel, and given by him to St. Mary Magdalene. The discoveries extended far back into the Old Testament history; there were relics of Abraham and hairs of Noah's beard; for of any additional improbability arising from the greater remoteness of time the age was altogether insensible. These relics drew vast crowds of pilgrims, and became important sources of wealth to the monasteries or churches which possessed them. For the sake of such sacred objects, theft had always been reckoned venial; and now, as we have seen, the peasantry of Catalonia were even ready to murder St. Romuald in the hope of obtaining benefits from his remains.

The impostures connected with this superstition were numberless, and in some cases they were detected. Relics were sometimes tested by fire, as those found in the Arian churches on the conversion of Spain to orthodoxy had been. Radulf the Bald gives an account of a fellow who went about under different names, digging up bones and extolling them as relics of saints. At a place in the Alps he displayed in a portable shrine some fragments which he styled relics of a martyr, St. Just, and pretended to have discovered by the direction of an angel. A multitude of cures were wrought a proof, says the chronicler, that the devil can sometimes do miracles; and the people of the neighbourhood flocked to the relics, “each one regretting that he had not some ailment of which he might seek to be healed”. The impostor grew into high favour with a marquis who had founded a monastery at Susa; and when a number of bishops had met for the consecration, the pretended relics, together with others, were placed in the church; but in the course of the following night, some monks who were watching saw a number of figures, black as Ethiops, arise out of the box and take to flight. Although, however, the fraud was thus miraculously discovered, we are told that the common people for a time adhered to their belief in the relic-monger. Nor were the dealers in relics the only persons who practised on the popular credulity in this respect; another class made it their trade to run about from one shrine to another, pretending to be cured by the miraculous virtue of the saints.

Contests sometimes arose as to the genuineness of relics. The monks of St. Emmeran, at Ratisbon, disputed with the great French abbey of St. Denys the possession of its patron’s body. The body of St. Gregory the Great was believed at once to be in St. Peter’s at Rome, and to have been secretly carried off to St. Medard's at Soissons; while Sens, Constance, and somewhat later Torres Novas in Portugal could each display his head. The monks of Monte Cassino denied the genuineness of the remains which had been translated to Fleury as those of St. Benedict, and that saint himself was said to have confirmed the denial by visions; Canterbury and Glastonbury had rival pretensions to St. Dunstan; and we have seen that both Gnesen and Prague claimed to possess the real body of St. Adalbert, the apostle of Prussia.

Pilgrimages were more frequent than ever. Rome was, as before, the chief resort, and the hardships of the way were sometimes enhanced by voluntary additions, such as that of walking barefoot. Compostella became another very famous place of pilgrimage from the time when the relics of St. James the Greater were supposed to be found there in 816. Many ventured to encounter the dangers of the long and toilsome journey to Jerusalem, where, from the ninth century, was displayed at Easter the miracle of the light produced without human hand “considering the place, the time, and the intention, probably the most offensive imposture to be found in the world”. This pilgrimage was often imposed as a penance; and the enthusiasm for voluntarily undertaking it was intensely excited by the approach of the thousandth year from the Saviour’s birth, and the general expectation of the end of the world. Beginning among the humblest of the people, the feeling gradually spread to the middle classes, and from them to the highest to bishops, counts, and marquises, to princes and noble ladies; to die amid the hallowed scenes of Palestine was regarded as an eminent blessing, as an object of eager aspiration; and, after the alarm of the world's end had passed away, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem still continued to be frequented. In 1010 the church of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed by the caliph Hakem, a frantic tyrant, who invented a new religion, still professed by the Druses of Lebanon. It was believed that the caliph was instigated to this by some western Jews, who alarmed him by representing the dangers likely to result from the interest with which the Sepulchre was regarded by Christians; and the Jews of France and other countries paid heavily in blood and suffering for the suspicion. After the assassination of Hakem the caliphs resumed the former system of toleration. Hakem’s mother, a Christian, began the rebuilding of the church; increasing crowds of pilgrims flowed eastward, carrying with them gifts in aid of the work, and returning laden with relics; and the fashion continued to become more general, until in the last years of the century it produced the crusades.

 

ARCHITECTURE.

 

The beginning of the eleventh century was marked by an extraordinary activity in church-building. There had been little disposition to undertake such works while the expected end of all things forbade the hope of their endurance; but when the thousandth year was completed, the building of churches became a passion. It was not limited to the work of providing for necessity by the erection of new buildings or by enlargement of the old, nor even to the addition of embellishments; but churches which had in every way been found amply sufficient were destroyed in order that more costly structures might be raised in their stead. “It was”, says a chronicler, “as if the world were re-awaking, as if it everywhere threw away its old dress, and put on a white vesture of churches”. And the effect on the art of architecture was important. Charlemagne's great church at Aix had been copied (although not without the introduction of original features) from the Byzantine type, as exhibited at Ravenna, and after it many churches along the Rhine had displayed Byzantine characteristics, especially the surmounting cupola. St. Mark’s at Venice, a church of very oriental style, was built between 977 and 1071. But in general the ecclesiastical architecture of the west was Roman, and the plan of the basilica was preserved. The churches of the eleventh century maintain the continuity of Roman art, but have yet a new character of their own. It is no longer Roman art in debasement, but a style fresh and vigorously original, the solemn, massive, and enduring architecture which, in its various modifications, has been styled Romanesque, Lombard, or Norman.

It would appear that the art of staining glass, which afterwards became so important in the decoration of churches, was already invented, although the date of the invention is unknown. There has, indeed, been much confusion on this subject, through the mistaken assumption that passages which contain any mention of coloured windows must relate to the painting of figures on the glass, whereas the older descriptions of such windows in reality mean nothing more than the arrangement of pieces of coloured glass in variegated patterns. Perhaps the earliest distinct notice of stained glass is in Richer’s history, where we are told that, towards the end of the tenth century, Adalbert, archbishop of Reims, adorned his cathedral with windows "containing divers histories."

 

EXCOMMUNICATION AND ANATHEMA.

 

The system of Penance underwent some changes. Things which had been censured by councils in the earlier part of the ninth century became authorised before its end; thus the penitential books, proscribed (as we have seen) by the council of Châlons in 813, are named by Regino among the necessary furniture of a parish priest’s library, as to which the bishop is to inquire at his visitation. By means of these books any re-enactments of old canons, or any new canons which appeared to increase the severity of penance, were practically evaded. The rich could commute their penance for payments to churches for works of public utility, such as the building of bridges and making of roads, for alms to the poor, for liberation of slaves or redemption of captives, for the purchase of masses and psalms; while for the poorer classes the Penitentials provided such commutations as pilgrimages, recitations of psalms or other devotional exercises, visiting the sick and burying the dead. The system of vicarious penances, which has been already noticed as existing in England, was, with some varieties, practised in other countries also. Councils might and did enact that with the outward acts which were prescribed the right dispositions of the heart should be joined. But how were these to be secured or ascertained? how were the penitents to be preserved from the delusions which a formal prescription of external acts, as equivalent to repentance, could hardly fail to engender? And the dangers of such a system were the more serious, because, by a departure from the view taken in the early ages, penance was now supposed able not only to restore the offender to the church on earth, but to assure him of the divine forgiveness.

With a view of increasing the hold of church-discipline on the minds of men, a distinction was invented between excommunication and anathema, and the assistance of the secular power was called in to enhance by civil penalties the terror of these sentences. Excommunication was exclusion from the privileges of the church; the heavier doom of anathema placed the offender under a curse. The council of Pavia in 850 enacted that the excommunicate person should be incapable of holding any military office or any employment in the service of the state, and should be debarred from ordinary intercourse with Christians. But anathema inflicted further punishments; the culprit against whom it was pronounced could not be a party in ecclesiastical suits, he could not make or establish a will, he could not hold any property under the church, he could not even obtain justice in secular courts where an oath was required, because he was not admissible to swear. No priest would bless the marriage of such a person; the last sacraments were denied to him, and he was to be shut out from Christian burial, penalties which, if the sinner himself were unmoved by them, were likely to act powerfully on the minds of some who were connected with him, and often drew from these large offers of payment for the reconciliation which it was supposed that the church could bestow even after the offender had passed from the world. The forms of curse became more elaborately fearful, and tales are told of the effect which they took on the unhappy men against whom they were launched, causing them to die suddenly in their impiety, or to wither away under the tortures of long and hopeless disease.

There were, however, some for whom the disabilities annexed to anathema or excommunication had little terror. Emperors and kings, counts and dukes, were strong enough to get justice for themselves, although under a sentence which would have debarred meaner men from it : they could obtain the ministrations of religion from chaplains, in defiance of all ecclesiastical censures; they held their secular positions unaffected by the denunciations of the church. In order to bring such powerful offenders under control, the Interdict was devised a sentence which placed a whole district or kingdom under ban, closing the churches, silencing the bells, removing the outward tokens of religion, and denying its offices to the people, except in such a measure and with such circumstances as tended to impress the imagination with a deeper horror. The infliction of penalties which involved alike the innocent and the guilty had been disapproved in earlier days. The first known attempt at imposing an interdict, that of the younger Hincmar, was defeated by his metropolitan and by his brother-bishops; and the earliest certain instance in which a bishop actually enforced such a sentence was that of Alduin, bishop of Limoges, in 994. An interdict pronounced against a sovereign was expected to act on him not so much in a direct way as by exciting the minds of his subjects; but the terrors of its indirect action were found to be such as few of the boldest, or of those who were least sensible to spiritual impressions, would venture to provoke or to defy.

In the earlier part of the eleventh century, a remarkable attempt was made by the clergy of France to mitigate the violence and the discords of the time. Radulf the Bald dates its origin from 1033, when the promise of an abundant harvest, after three years of terrible famine, appeared likely to open men's minds to the religious impressions connected with the completion of a thousand years from the Saviour’s passion. But it would seem that the movement had really begun somewhat earlier, and that the subject had already been treated by councils, as by that of Limoges in 1031 the same which decreed the apostolic dignity of St. Martial.

With a view of putting an end to the feuds or private wars which had long wasted the population and the soil of France, it was proposed to bind men to the observance of peace; that they should abstain from wrong-doing and revenge, that every one should be able to go unarmed without fear of old enmities; that churches should shelter all but those who should be guilty of breaking the “peace of God”. At the council of Limoges it was ordered that, if the chiefs of the district refused to comply, it should be laid under an interdict; that during the interdict no one, with the exception of the clergy, beggars, strangers, and infants, should receive Christian burial; that the offices of religion should be performed as if by stealth; that the churches should be stripped of their ornaments, that no marriage should be celebrated, that mourning habits should be worn, that no wine should be drunk on Friday, and no flesh should be eaten on Saturday. When the movement became more general, a bishop professed to have received a letter from heaven, commanding the observance of the peace. Gerard, bishop of Cambray (the same who has been mentioned as having converted a party of heretics to the church) alone opposed the scheme, as he had opposed a somewhat similar project some years before. He maintained that it was an interference with matters which belonged to the state; that the exercise of arms was sanctioned by Scripture; that it was lawful to require the restoration of things taken by violence, and amends for bodily injuries; that the proposed fasts ought not to be enforced on all, inasmuch as men were neither alike able to bear them nor alike guilty so as to require such chastisement. The bishop's enemies, however, were able to misrepresent his conduct in such a manner that his flock rose against him as being an enemy to peace; and he found it advisable to withdraw his opposition. The people, it is said, were eager to accept the proposal, as if it had been a revelation from heaven, and from Aquitaine the movement spread into other provinces of France. A harvest equal to that of five years was gathered in; another and another fruitful season followed. But the enjoyment of plenty wore out the popular enthusiasm; violence and vice became more rife than ever and the decrees of councils were little heeded.

In 1038, Anno archbishop of Bourges, as if distrusting the efficacy of purely spiritual threats, assembled the bishops of his province, and agreed with them that an oath should be exacted from their people, by which every male above the age of fifteen should bind himself to wage implacable war against all robbers, oppressors, and enemies of holy church. The clergy were not exempted from the oath, but were to carry their sacred banners on the expeditions undertaken for the pacification of the country; and in consequence of this compact, many castles, which had been the strongholds of violence and tyranny, were destroyed, and ruffians, who had been a terror to their neighbours, were reduced to live peaceably. About the year 1041, a modified scheme was brought forward under the name of the “truce of God”. It was now proposed, not that an unbroken peace should be established, but that war, violence, and all demands of reparation should be suspended during Advent, Lent, and certain festival seasons, and also from the evening of Wednesday in each week to the dawn of the following Monday a time which included the whole interval from the Saviour’s betrayal to his resurrection. And in connection with this other decrees were passed for the protection of the weaker classes the clergy, monks, nuns, and women for securing the privilege of sanctuary, and for mitigating the injuries which were inflicted on the labours of husbandry, as that shepherds and their flocks should not be injured, that olive-trees should not be damaged, that agricultural tools should not be carried off, or, at least, should never be destroyed.

Henry I of Neustria refused to sanction this project, and it is said that, in punishment of his refusal, his dominions were visited by an extraordinary disease, a "fire from heaven", which was fatal to many of his subjects and crippled the limbs of others. But the truce, which found zealous and powerful advocates, such as Odilo of Cluny, was received throughout the rest of France and in other countries; and it became usual for the inhabitants of a diocese or a district to bind themselves by compact to the observance and to organise measures for the enforcement of it. The weekly period of rest was, however, too long to be generally adopted. A council held in 1047 at Elne, an episcopal city of the Spanish march, reduced it to the interval between the ninth hour on Saturday and the daybreak of Monday; and it appears thus abridged in the laws of Edward the Confessor. Yet at a later time we again find the longer weekly rest of four days enacted by councils; and it was in this form that the truce received for the first time the papal sanction from Urban II at Clermont, and was confirmed in the second and third councils of the Lateran. The frequent re-enactments of the truce would, if there were no other evidence, be enough to show that it was but irregularly observed. Yet, imperfect as was the operation of this measure, its effects were very beneficial in tending to check the lawlessness and disorder of the times by the influence of Christian humanity and mercy. “We must”, says a historian nowise favourable to the church of the middle ages, “regard it as the most glorious of the enterprises of the clergy, as that which most conduced to soften manners, to develop the sentiments of compassion among men without injury to the spirit of bravery, to supply a reasonable basis for the point of honour, to bestow on the people as much of peace and happiness as the condition of society would then admit, and, lastly, to multiply the population to such a degree as was able afterwards to supply the vast emigrations of the Crusades”.

 

Chivalry.
 

It was in these times that the institution of chivalry, so powerful in its influence on the middle ages, grew up, and at the end of the period embraced in this book the system was nearly complete

We have seen that during the distractions of France castles multiplied throughout the land; that each castle became an engine of aggression and defence, a centre of depredation. In this state of society every man’s hand was against every man; the lord of the castle lived within its walls, cut off from intercourse with his neighbours, and only sallying forth for war, for private feuds, or for plunder. Yet the isolation of the nobles was not without its good effects. Debarred from other equal society, the feudal lord was obliged to cultivate that of his wife and children; and hence resulted a peculiar development of the family life. The lady, who in her husband’s absence acted as the guardian of the castle, was invested with new responsibilities and a new dignity; while the training of youth occupied much of the time which might otherwise have hung heavily. The sons of vassals were sent to be educated under the roof of the superior, where they grew up together with his own sons; and thus a tie was formed which at once assured the lord of the fidelity of his vassals, and the vassals of their lord’s protection. The nobly-born youths were able, like the deacon in the church, to perform offices of service without degradation. In the evening hours they were admitted to the society of the ladies, and from such intercourse a general refinement of manners arose among the higher classes.

That among the Germans the admission of a young man to the rank of warriors was marked by a public investiture with arms, we know from the evidence of Tacitus; and the continuance of the custom after the Frankish conquest of Gaul is to be traced from time to time in the annals. This ancient national usage now acquired a new importance, and assumed a form which at once signified the admission of the youth to the order of knighthood, and symbolized the tie between the vassal and the superior. It was celebrated with religious ceremonies which nave it the character of a military ordination. The candidate, a son of the lord or one of his vassals, was stripped of his dress, was bathed as if in a baptism, was clothed afresh with garments of symbolical meaning; he watched his arms in the castle chapel; he confessed and communicated; his armour was put on, his weapons were blessed, an exhortation as to his duties was addressed to him; he solemnly vowed to serve God, to protect the ladies and the weak, to be faithful and humble, gentle, courteous, honourable, and disinterested. According to a practice which was common in attesting documents and the like, he received a blow in remembrance of his new obligations, and by this blow, for which a stroke of the sword was afterwards substituted, the ceremony was completed.

The nature of these ceremonies proves that the clergy had taken up the old Teutonic rite of initiation, and had converted it to purposes of religion and humanity; and this is no less evident from the engagements to which the knight was bound differing so widely as they did from the general character of the laity in the times when they were introduced. The warriors, whose rude force was naturally dangerous to the church and to social order, were to be enlisted in the service of both, and bound to it by solemn engagements. And poetry as well as religion soon threw itself around the new institution. The legends of saints, which for centuries had been the only popular literature, were now rivalled by lays and romances of knightly adventure; and the ideal embodied in these compositions “noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship” became the model which the knights aspired to imitate. The history of the ages in which chivalry prevailed shows indeed a state of things far unlike the pure and lofty precepts of the institution; yet, however the reality may have fallen short of the ideal, it was a great gain for civilisation that such a pattern should be established as authoritative that men should acknowledge a noble and elevating standard in their hearts, although their actual lives too commonly presented a sad and discreditable contrast to it.

 

BOOK V.

FROM THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE TO THE DEPOSITION OF POPE GREGORY VI,

A.D. 814-1046.