BOOK VI.
FROM THE DEPOSITION OF POPE GREGORY VI. TO THE DEATH
OF POPE CELESTINE III, A.D. 1046-1198.
CHAPTER XIII.
SUPPLEMENTARY.
I.
THE HIERARCHY
By the labours of Gregory VII and his followers the
papacy was exalted, not only in opposition to the secular powers, but in its
relations to the rest of the hierarchy; and the continual increase of its
influence over the whole church was unchecked by those frequent displays of
insubordination among the subjects of its temporal power which compelled the
popes of this time to be in great part exiles from their city. While emperors,
instead of confirming the elections of popes, as in earlier ages, were fain to
seek the papal confirmation of their own election—while they and other
sovereigns were required to hold the pope’s stirrup, to walk as grooms by the
side of his horse, and to kiss his feet—while it was taught that to him
belonged the “two swords”, that kingdoms were held under him, and that the
highest earthly dignities were conferred by him—the principles of Gregory went
beyond those of the False Decretals by making St. Peter’s successor not merely
the highest authority in the church, but the sole authority—all other spiritual
power being represented as held by delegation from him. Thus Innocent II told
the Lateran council of 1139 that all ecclesiastical dignity was derived from
the Roman see by a sort of feudal tenure, and that it could not be lawfully
held except by the pope’s permission. We have seen that an oath of fidelity to
the pope was exacted of St. Boniface, when sent as a missionary bishop into
Germany; and in other special cases such oaths had been sometimes required.
Now, however, an important change was introduced by Gregory, who in 1079
exacted of the patriarch of Aquileia a new episcopal oath, which was in part
modelled on the oath of secular fealty, and which thus implied a feudal
dependence of the bishop on the pope, as the source of all his powers. By
Gregory himself this was not imposed on any others than metropolitans and his
own immediate suffragans; but in no long time it was exacted of all bishops,
who now professed to hold their office not only “by the grace of God”, but also
by that “of the apostolic see”. In some instances Gregory appeared to scruple
as to interfering with the ancient right of metropolitans to consecrate their
suffragans; and even later popes thought it well to make courteous apologies
for having invaded the metropolitan privileges by such acts. But Gregory's
council of 1080 had decreed that the election of bishops should be approved by
the pope or the metropolitan and, as bishops-elect became more and more
disposed to flock to Rome (especially in cases of disputed election, as to
which the popes claimed an exclusive right to decide, and in most cases
established it before the end of the century), the power of confirmation and
consecration was gradually transferred from the metropolitans to the pope
alone.
The exercise of penitential discipline was also now
assumed by the popes in a greater degree, although they still make occasional
professions of respecting the rights of the local bishops. The fondness for
appealing to Rome in every case is a subject of complaint, not only on the part
of princes, such as Henry II of England, but of such ecclesiastics as Hildebert
of Tours and Bernard. Gregory VIII complained of being distracted by needless
appeals, and tried to check the practice; but his pontificate was too short to
have much effect. As excommunication deprived of the power of appearing in
ecclesiastical courts, bishops and archdeacons sometimes resorted to it as a
means for the prevention of appeals; but this was forbidden by the Lateran
council of 1179.
But it was not by appeals only that causes were
transferred from the provinces to the Roman court. There was a tendency to
carry questions at once to the pope—passing over the local authorities to whose
jurisdiction they in the first instance belonged and the reservation of
“greater causes” to the pope alone became more and more injurious to the rights
of the bishops and metropolitans. Among these causes were canonization, which
(as we have already seen) was for the first time reserved to the holy see by Alexander
III, and dispensations as to marriage, oaths, translation of bishops, and other
matters. Dispensations, in the sense of a license given beforehand to do
something which was forbidden by the laws of the church, had been unknown in
earlier times, when the only kind of dispensation granted was a forgiveness of
past irregularity. But now popes began to claim the right of granting
dispensations beforehand, and of exercising this power in all parts of the
church, concurrently with the local bishops. In this, as in other things, the
tendency of the age led men to apply to the pope or to his legates rather than
to their own bishops; and thus by degrees the pope’s authority in such matters,
from having been concurrent with that of the bishops, was established as
exclusive by Innocent III.
Among the means of enforcing the idea that all
ecclesiastical power belonged to the pope, the system of legation was the
chief. In former times, the only representatives whom the popes had maintained
in foreign countries were their “apocrisiaries” at Constantinople, or at the
court of the earlier Frankish emperors at a later date, such legates as were
sent forth were employed only on special occasions, and for some particular
business. But from the time of Leo IX legates were appointed with commissions unlimited
either as to the nature of their business or as to the duration of their power;
and this system was developed by Gregory VII so that every country had its
regular legate—whether one of the local prelates, or an emissary sent directly
from the papal court. These legates, according to Gregory, were to be heard
even as the pope himself. It had before been held that the pope, on personally
visiting a country, might summon the bishops to a council; and now this power
was extended to the legates, in contempt of the authority of the metropolitans.
The legates acted everywhere as the highest authorities, although themselves
perhaps in no higher order than that of deacon or subdeacon. They cited
metropolitans and all bishops under pain of suspension, deposed bishops,
wrested cases from the ordinary courts, and threatened the vengeance of the
pope against all who might oppose them. Yet the alliance of these Roman
emissaries was so important to bishops, and especially in strengthening them
against the secular power, that few bishops dared to provoke their enmity. The
assumption, the rapacity, the corruption of the legates were excessive and even
proverbial. They were authorized to draw their maintenance from the countries
which they passed through, as well as from those to which they were destined,
and no limits were set to the demands which they were allowed to make for
procurations, so that John of Salisbury speaks of them as “raging in the
provinces as if Satan had gone forth from the presence of the Lord for the
scourging of the church”.
Bernard, in a letter to a cardinal-bishop of Ostia,
has given a remarkable picture of another cardinal, named Jordan, in the
character of legate to France—“He has passed from nation to nation, and from
one kingdom to another people, everywhere leaving foul and horrible traces
among us. He is said to have everywhere committed disgraceful things; to have
carried off the spoils of churches; to have promoted pretty little boys to
ecclesiastical honours wherever he could; and to have wished to do so where he
could not. Many have bought themselves off, that he might not come to them;
those whom he could not visit, he taxed and squeezed by means of messengers. In
schools, in courts, in the places where roads meet, he has made himself a
by-word. Seculars and religious, all speak ill of him; the poor, the monks, and
the clergy complain of him”. In some cases sovereigns obtained a promise from
the pope that legates should not be sent into their dominions without their
consent, but such promises were sometimes broken, and were more frequently
evaded by committing the business of legates to persons who were styled by some
other title; while, on the other hand, kings sometimes excluded or expelled
legates from their territories, or made them swear before admittance that they
would do no mischief.
The pretensions of popes with regard to councils rose
higher. Princes now no longer convoked such assemblies as in former times;
indeed the emperors had no longer that general sway which would have
procured for any order of theirs obedience from the subjects of other
sovereigns. The councils of Piacenza and Clermont were summoned by Urban II on
his own authority, in reliance on the general excitement in favour of the
crusading cause. For such a step the ground had been laid by Gregory's
summoning bishops from all quarters to his lenten synods at Rome; and in the
new episcopal oath there was a promise of attendance at all councils to which
the bishop should be cited by the pope. The claims which had been set up for
the popes in the False Decretals were now more than realized; for it was held
that provincial councils required the pope’s authority, not only to confirm
them, but to summon them, and it became usual that papal legates should be the
presidents. And for all such assemblies there was the dread of an appeal to
Rome, with the knowledge that appeals were likely to be favourably entertained.
Towards councils themselves, also, the pope's tone became higher than before;
thus Paschal II, in answer to the objection that the new episcopal oath had not
been sanctioned by any council, declares that the pope is sufficient without a
council, although a council is not sufficient without the pope.
A sort of infallibility now began to be claimed for
the popes—chiefly on the ground of our Lord's words to St. Peter, “I have
prayed for thee that thy faith fail not”. Yet this official infallibility was
not supposed to secure the pope against personal errors; and Gratian goes so
far as to declare that certain words of Gregory II are utterly opposed, not
only to the canons, but to the doctrine of the Gospels and of the apostles..
In consequence of the agitation excited by Hildebrand,
the election of bishops fell into the hands of the clergy, and more especially
of the canons of cathedrals. It was, indeed, admitted by the hierarchical
writers that, according to the precedent of early times, the laity ought to
have some part in the election. But those whom such writers were willing to
admit as representatives of the laity were the great retainers and officers of
the church; the sovereign was declared to be shut out from all share in the
choice and, after the pattern of papal elections, which were now confined to
the cardinals alone, the election of bishops came to be regarded as belonging
to the cathedral clergy exclusively. It was found, however, that the change in
the manner of appointment, instead of doing away with that corruption which had
been the subject of such indignant denunciations, had only the effect of transferring
it from courtiers to canons; and in its new form it worked worse than before,
inasmuch as the clergy might choose a bishop with a view of benefiting by his
defects, or might make a bargain with him which would be more injurious to the
church than any that could be made by a layman. Jealousies, intrigues, and
disputed rights, which led to long and ruinous suits, and sometimes to actual
war, now became rife, and Frederick Barbarossa had probably good reason for
declaring in a well-known speech that the bishops appointed by the imperial
power had been better than those whom the clergy had chosen for themselves.
In many countries, however, the sovereigns still
retained their influence. In France, England, and Spain, the king’s licence was
necessary before an election, and his confirmation of the bishop-elect was also
necessary; while in the Sicilies, Hungary, Denmark, and Sweden the kings still
enjoyed the power of nomination. The appointment of archbishops of Canterbury
was the subject of struggles which were renewed at every vacancy, as, in
addition to the claims of the king and of the monks of the cathedral, the
bishops of the province claimed a share in the election. The most remarkable of
these contests was perhaps that which followed on the death of Becket's
successor, Richard. The bishops made choice of Baldwin, bishop of Worcester,
but the monks refused to concur in this, and pretended to an exclusive right of
election, which, they said, had been confirmed to them by the king in penitence
for the death of St. Thomas. This claim was asserted with such obstinacy as to
provoke Henry to exclaim that the prior of Canterbury, Alan, wished to be a
second pope in England; but after a long contest, and much skillfull management
on the part of the king, it was contrived that some representatives of the
monks, who had been summoned to Westminster, should, after declaring the
election by the bishops to be null, independently elect the same person on whom
the choice of the bishops and of the king had already fallen.
Sovereigns no longer ventured to found bishoprics
without the consent of popes; but they strongly resisted the attempts of the
popes to parcel out their dominions by new foundations or new arrangements of
sees. Yet we have seen that Henry the Lion, of Saxony, although his rank was
not that of king but of duke, took it on himself to erect bishoprics in the
north of Germany, to nominate bishops, and to grant them investiture.
The question of investiture, after the long contests
which it had occasioned, was settled by means of compromises. We have seen how
this was arranged in England, and by the concordat of Worms; and also that in
1119 the form of investing by ring and staff was not used in France. But the
substance of investiture still remained. A distinction was drawn between homagium and ligium—
the former implying general faithfulness and obedience, while the other
included an obligation to serve the feudal lord “against all men who may live
or die”; and it was held that the episcopal homage, being unencumbered with
this last condition, was lawful. The name of investiture was applied to the
ceremony of homage, and Bernard himself speaks of such investiture as
unobjectionable. Hugh of Fleury wrote a tract with the intention of mediating
between the claims of the church and of the state. He holds that temporal as
well as spiritual power is derived from God; that the priesthood, although
higher in order than royalty, cannot claim earthly dignity; and that bishops
may rightly be invested with their temporalities by princes, although the
investiture with ring and staff, as being the symbols of spiritual office,
ought to be reserved for the metropolitans. And, although some bishops were
disposed to claim an exemption from feudal duties, even such popes as Alexander
III and Innocent III acknowledged that in regard of their temporalities they
were liable to the usual feudal obligations, and were subject to the courts of
their liege lord.
In this age popes began to interfere with the
patronage of ecclesiastical dignities and offices throughout the western
church, the earliest instance being a letter of Adrian IV to the bishop, dean,
and chapter of Paris, as to the bestowal of a canonry on Hugh, the chancellor
of Lewis VII. The favoured objects of the papal requests (preces) were
styled precistoe, but, as the requests were the less likely to meet
with attention in proportion as their number was unreasonably increased, the
more peremptory form of a mandate was adopted—at first as an addition to the
requests, and afterwards as a substitute for them. And until a suitable
preferment should fall vacant, the patrons were desired to provide out of their
own funds a pension for the person recommended to them. When, however,
sovereigns attempted any practices of the same kind, the popes were naturally
vehement in denouncing them. As yet the papal recommendations, while
interfering with patronage, admitted that it rightfully belonged to the
prelates, chapters, or monastic societies to whom they were addressed. But in
the next century this came to be denied, and the revenues of the church in
countries north of the Alps—most especially in England—were preyed on by a host
of Italians, forcibly quartered on them by the popes.
RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE
In France the growth of the royal power affected the
relations of the state with the church. Philip Augustus was sovereign of a
territory twice as large as that of Philip I, and the kingdom had advanced very
greatly in culture and in wealth. The kings were getting the mastery over their
great vassals, and, although in their struggle against these they had been
allied with the clergy, they now put forward new pretensions of dignity against
the hierarchy itself; thus Philip refused to do homage for certain lands held
under the church, like the former tenants, the counts of Flanders, on the
ground that the king must not do homage to any one. On the other hand also the
bishops lost, both in Italy and in France, by the rise of the municipal
communities. The amount of this rise, indeed, was less in France, where the
towns were less populous and more distant from each other, where they were not
aided by the influence of the clergy, and, instead of being able to combine
their energies against one common foe, each town had, as its first necessity,
to carry on a feud with some neighbouring noble. All, therefore, that the
French communes as yet claimed was civic freedom—not such independence as the
Italians achieved. In many cases bishops were the lords from whom emancipation
was desired; and, while some struggled against the movement, others
accommodated themselves to it. Sometimes they sold privileges to the citizens;
sometimes they freely granted them; while in many cases, especially under
Philip Augustus, privileges detrimental to the power of the bishops were
granted by the sovereign, on condition of payments to the royal exchequer. By
means of friendly arrangements with the citizens, indeed, the bishops were able
to secure these as allies against the neighbouring nobles; but, although they
still retained their high rank in the state, much of the power which had
formerly belonged to their order had now passed into the hands either of the
sovereign or of the commonalty.
When Gregory VII propounded his doctrines as to the
relations of the ecclesiastical and the secular powers, the imperial cause
found many champions among the clergy. But after a time it began to be
understood how advantageous the hierarchical pretensions were to the whole
clerical body—that the greatness of the pope, as the Hildebrandine system
represented him, was reflected in a degree even on the most inconsiderable
ecclesiastic. When, too, it was believed that all secular power emanated from
the pope, there was less difficulty in believing the same as to spiritual
power; and thus, in no long time, the clergy in general were possessed by ideas
which ranged them on the side of the papacy in its differences with temporal
sovereigns.
The claims of the church as to matters of judicature
were continually growing. In this respect the popes made a great step by
exempting crusaders from all power of civil magistrates, and by forbidding that
they should be sued for debts; and this measure, which was allowed to pass
unquestioned amid the general enthusiasm for the holy war, became a foundation
for other pretensions, which, if they had been nakedly advanced in
ordinary circumstances, would have encountered a strong opposition. As the church
was supposed to have jurisdiction in all matters to which the canons related,
the condemnation of any offence by a pope or a council was supposed to bring
that offence within the cognizance of the ecclesiastical courts, which thus
claimed the power of judging, whether solely or concurrently, of such crimes as
incendiarism and false coining. These courts also claimed exclusive
jurisdiction in all cases relating to wills, marriages, and usury; and this
jurisdiction was extended by ingenious subtleties. Thus, under the head of
usury, a vast number of commercial transactions were brought within their
cognizance, and all dealings with Jews were considered to belong to the
province of the ecclesiastical courts. In like manner, if a contract were
ratified by an oath, a breach of contract became perjury, and a subject for
these courts; and on the ground that the vassal took an oath to his lord, an
attempt was even made in France to claim for them a right of deciding questions
as to fiefs, although this attempt was checked by Philip Augustus and his
nobles. When a French council had forbidden the sale of corn on Sunday, it was
held that all cases as to the sale of corn were matter for the ecclesiastical
tribunals, because the first question in such cases was the inquiry on what day
the sale took place. And such extensions of the province of the spiritual
courts were made with general approbation, as these were usually less violent
in their processes and in their sentences than the secular courts; while
ecclesiastics found an inducement to encroach on the business of the secular
judges, not only in the increase of their power, but in the fees and other
payments which were transferred to them. But the multiplicity of business which
was thus brought into the hands of the clergy became, as St. Bernard complains,
a temptation to neglect their more proper pursuits; and many canons were passed
to check their fondness for acting as advocates, even in the secular courts.
The claim advanced in England, that the church should have exclusive
jurisdiction over clerks, and in all cases relating to them, has been mentioned
in connection with the name of archbishop Becket. In other countries, too,
similar pretensions were set up; but it was soon found that in their full
extent they were too monstrous to be admitted, and compromises were made, by
which, while a large immunity was secured for the clergy, they were yet not to
be exempt from the secular magistrates “for man-slaying, theft, arson, or such
like common crimes which belong to the pleas of the sword”.
The change introduced into the functions of
archdeacons as to the administration of the church has been already mentioned.
But now these officers began to set up pretensions to an increase of dignity
and influence. Whereas they had formerly attended on the bishops in their
visitations, and, if they themselves visited, it was merely as the delegates of
the bishops, they now claimed for themselves independent rights of visitation
and jurisdiction; they tyrannized over the clergy, and defied the episcopal authority.
In some cases, where a new see had been formed by the subdivision of a diocese,
the archdeacons attempted to exercise jurisdiction over the bishops; but this
claim was disallowed by the popes, who also found it necessary in other
respects to check the assumption and rapacity of the archdeacons. When,
however, an archbishop of Canterbury attempted to exempt some places from the
jurisdiction of archdeacons, Alexander III forbade this innovation. The
advantages of the office continued, as in former times, to attract the desires
of laymen, and canons were passed that no one under the order of priest or
deacon should be allowed to hold an archdeaconry. Laymen who for the sake of
gain desire such an office, says Innocent II, are not to be called archdeacons,
but archdevils.
The exactions of archdeacons and rural deans were the
subject of many complaints, especially as to the matter of penance, in which
they are described as making a gain of sins. John of Salisbury, in a letter to
Nicholas de Sigillo on his appointment to the archdeaconry of Huntingdon,
amusingly reminds him of the terms in which he had formerly spoken of
archdeacons as a class excluded from the hope of salvation by their love of
money, which led them to lie and plunder, and to “eat and drink the sins of
the people”. From the time of the council of London in 1108, canons were passed
with a view of checking such practices. Bishops at length attempted to get over
the annoyance which they experienced from the archdeacons, by erecting new
courts of their own, on the principles of the canon law, and by appointing
persons with the title of officials to preside in these, while they employed
“vicars” or rural deans to assist them in their pastoral work. But here again
corruptions crept in; for it was soon complained that the bishops made a gain
of the new offices by selling them or letting them for hire, and thus
compelling the holders to indemnify themselves by extortion; and Peter of Blois
(himself an archdeacon) speaks of the officials by the significant name of “bishops’
leeches”.
In the following century, we find that the practices
of archdeacons in England are still complained of, as to exacting money,
burdening the clergy with the expense of entertaining an unreasonably large
train of their men and horses at visitations, preventing the peaceable
settlement of disputes in order to profit by the expenses of litigation, and
allowing persons who had been guilty of grievous sin to compound for their
offences by pecuniary payments.
The decrease of gifts to the church has been noted at
an earlier date. It seems to have been thought that the endowments were already
ample, and the wealth of the clergy and monks, with the corruptions which were
traced to it, formed a constant theme of complaint for sectaries, for reformers
such as Arnold of Brescia, for visionaries like Hildegard and Joachim, and for
satirical poets who now arose in Germany, France, and England. Yet the church’s
possessions were still increasing by other means. Many advantageous purchases,
exchanges, or other arrangements were made with crusaders who were in haste to
furnish themselves for the holy war. Much was also acquired by bequest; and the
influence of the clergy with persons on their deathbed, together with the
circumstance that all testamentary questions belonged to ecclesiastical courts,
rendered this an important source of wealth, although in some countries the
civil powers already began to check such bequests. And a new species of contract,
by which a landowner made over his property to the church, on condition that he
should receive it back in fee, was also a means of adding to the possessions of
the clergy. For, although these feuda oblate differed from
the precariae, inasmuch as the fief was granted to the donor’s
heirs as well as to himself, the church not only derived some present
advantages from such arrangements, but had a chance of seeing the lineal heirs
become extinct, and so of coming eventually into undivided possession of the
property.
Tithes were also made more productive than before. It
was laid down that they were due on every kind of trade and on military pay;
the commentators on such laws even held that the obligation extended to the
receipts of beggars and prostitutes. It was, however, found impossible to
enforce these rules to the full; and, although Gregory VII designed the entire
recovery of such tithes as had fallen in the hands of laymen, he found it
necessary to give up this intention, in order to secure the alliance of the nobles,
which was essential to him in his enterprise against the power of sovereigns.
The Lateran council of 1179 declared the holding of tithes by laymen to be
perilous to the soul, and forbade the transfer of them to other laymen, under
penalty of exclusion from Christian burial for any who should receive them, and
should not make them over to the church; but this canon (whatever its intended
meaning may have been) came to be interpreted as forbidding only transfers and
fresh alienations of tithe,—the idea of recovering that which was already
alienated being apparently given up. Yet in this time many laymen were
persuaded to surrender the tithes which they had appropriated, although in such
cases the tithe was often given to a monastery, or to some clerk other than the
rightful owner.
First fruits—a thirtieth or a sixtieth part of the
produce—began also now to be claimed.
But while others complained of the wealth of the
clergy, the clergy were incessantly crying out against spoliation. The
advocates subdivided their power by appointing vice-advocates; and these
deputies, with a great train of inferior functionaries attached to them,
rivalled their chiefs in oppressing the churches which they professed to
defend. The advocates built castles not only on that portion of the church’s
land which was allotted to themselves, but on any part of its lands; their
exactions, both from the church and from its tenants, became heavier and
heavier, so that in some cases the tenants were reduced to beggary. Canons were
passed to check these evils, but with little effect; and when Urban III
attempted to do away with the office of advocate in Germany, he found that the
emperor Frederick, although favourable to a limitation of the power of the
advocates, was opposed to the abolition, and that the bishops were not prepared
to support it. The evil pressed no less on monasteries than on cathedrals, and
various means were tried to overcome it. Some churches or monasteries acquired
the right to remove their advocates—a right, however, which could not always be
readily enforced; some bought them off, or were able to bring them under a
measure of restraint by the help of the sovereign while others, in despair of
all human aid, instituted solemn daily prayers for deliverance from the tyranny
of these oppressive protectors.
Nor were the advocates the only lay officers who
preyed severely on the funds of churches and monasteries Great nobles, and even
sovereign princes, enrolled themselves among their officials in order to share
in their revenues. Thus, at Cologne, the ten gates of the city had for their
guardians five dukes and five counts, to each of whom an annual allowance of
2,000 silver marks was paid for his services; and even the emperor Frederick
submitted to become truchsess or seneschal of Bamberg cathedral, as the
condition of obtaining certain lands to be held under it.
By these exactions, and by the necessity of
maintaining soldiers for their feuds, the bishops were heavily burdened, and
were frequently obliged to incur debts to a large amount. They had lost their
old control over the division of the church's income, and had now under their
management only the lands assigned for their own maintenance; and these they
charged with their debts, to the impoverishment of the see. This practice,
however, was forbidden by decrees of Conrad III, of Frederick I, and of Henry VI.
REGALE. JUS EXUVIARUM.
The claims of sovereigns to the regale and
to the jus exuviarium excited much contention. By the first of
these was meant the right to enjoy the income of vacant sees—a privilege which
in Germany did not extend beyond one year, while in England it seems to have
been limited only by the king’s will; and both in France and in England,
although perhaps not in Germany, to this was annexed the disposal of all
patronage belonging to the vacant see. The origin of this custom in France is
traced to the circumstance that in the seventh and eighth centuries, when dukes
or counts seized on the property of a vacant bishopric, the king often
intervened to rescue it from their hands; and hence arose the idea that the
king himself, as chief advocate of the church, was entitled to the custody and
the profits of vacant sees. It is, however, uncertain at what time the claim
was established in France. However it may have originated, the regale was
now grounded on the feudal system, by which a vacant fief reverted to the liege
lord, until again granted away by him; and monasteries were subject to this
exaction during the vacancy of the headship.
By the jus exuviarium was meant the
right to inherit the furniture and other property of deceased bishops. In early
times it had been held that a bishop might dispose by will of his inherited
property, but that any savings out of his official income belonged to the
church. Hence the money which was found in a bishop's coffers, and the
furniture of the episcopal house, were usually shared among the clergy of his
cathedral, and the successor, on taking possession of his residence, found
nothing but bare walls. It is easy to conceive that, in lawless ages, such
opportunities of plunder attracted the rapacity of the nobles; and in the tenth
century we find the council of Trosley, and Atto, bishop of Vercelli,
complaining that, on a bishop's death, his goods became the prey of his
powerful neighbours. In this case, therefore, as in that of the regale,
the intervention of kings for the prevention of worse evils became the
foundation of a claim. In France and Germany this privilege was fully
established in the twelfth century, and when Frederick I defended it against
Urban III, even the refractory archbishop Philip of Cologne admitted that the
emperor's claim, although unbecoming, was not unjust. In some cases the jus
exuviarium belonged to the great vassals; and it was mutually
exercised by the archbishops of Lyons and the bishops of Autun. In England both
the regale and the jus exuviarium were
introduced by William Rufus, who abused his power very scandalously in this
respect.
In this age an attempt was made for the first time by
the clergy to procure an exemption from taxation for secular purposes, such as
contributions towards the national army. Urban II, at the council of Melfi, in
1089, enacted that the laity should not make any exaction from the clergy,
either on account of their benefices or of their inherited property; and that
any clerk holding a possession under a layman should either provide a deputy to
discharge the duties connected with it, or should give it up. The object of
this was to render the clergy entirely independent of the state, and it was
natural that such a scheme should be strenuously opposed, not only by
sovereigns, but by nobles, who saw that any burdens which might be thrown off
by the clergy must necessarily fall on themselves. The claim to exemption,
therefore, could not be maintained; and the third Lateran council contented
itself with an anathema against the arbitrary and unequal manner in which the
clergy had very commonly been assessed, as compared with other classes, in
cases of taxation for public works or for maintenance of soldiers.
But while the popes attempted to exempt the clergy
from national and local imposts, they themselves taxed them very heavily, under
the pretence of a war against the infidels, or for some other religious
purpose, such as the maintenance of a pope in opposition to a rival claimant of
the apostolic chair, or to an emperor who withstood his power. The “Saladin’s
tithe” was at first resisted by the clergy and monks, on the ground that their
prayers were their proper and sufficient contribution towards the holy cause;
those who fight for the church, said Peter of Blois, ought rather to enrich her
with the spoils of her enemies than to rob her. But the popes enforced this
tithe, and continued to exact it long after the necessity which gave rise to it
had come to an end.
The moral condition of the clergy in general during
the twelfth century is very unfavourably represented, alike by zealous
churchmen, such as Gerhoh of Reichersperg, by satirists, like Walter von der
Vogelweide and the author of “Reynard the Fox”, and by sober observers,
such as John of Salisbury. “The insolence of the clergy”, says Bernard, “of
which the negligence of the bishops is mother, everywhere disturbs and molests
the church”. Among the causes of their deterioration may be mentioned the constant
struggles between the popes and secular princes, the frequent internal troubles
of kingdoms (such as the long anarchy of Stephen's reign in England), and the
disorders produced by the crusades. Bishops also contributed not a little to
the discredit of the clerical body by the growing abuse of ordaining clergy
without a titled Gerhoh speaks of many of theseacephali as being
very learned, but regards them as a sort of centaurs—neither clerks nor
laymen—enjoying as they did the ecclesiastical privileges without being bound
by ecclesiastical duties. But it would seem that the great mass of them were
chiefly distinguished, not for their learning, but for their disorderly and
disreputable lives. Attempts were made to check the practice of ordination to
the higher degrees, at least, without a title and with this view the third
Lateran council enacted that any bishop who should ordain a priest or a deacon
without a title should be bound to maintain him until he were provided with a
maintenance from some church. But this rule was open to many evasions—some
bishops even frustrated it by requiring the candidate for ordination to swear
that he would never become chargeable to them—and it proved utterly
ineffectual. Nor did any better success attend some attempts to keep the
acephalous clerks in check by a revival of the ancient letters of communion.
The encroachments of the popes on the power of the
bishops had also a large share in producing the decay of discipline; for now
that the popes held themselves entitled to interfere with every diocese, not
only by receiving appeals, but by acting as judges in the first instance, the
bishops were deterred from exercising discipline by the fear of a mandate from
Rome, which might forbid them to judge or might reverse their sentence.
As in earlier times, there are many complaints of
lay-patronage; of the employment of stipendiary chaplains, as exercised without
the sanction of bishops, and tending to withdraw the clergy from episcopal
superintendence; of pluralities, which grew to an enormous extent, so that,
while the third Lateran council denounces the practice of accumulating six or
more churches on one incumbent, we are told that some clerks had as many as
twenty or thirty, and the preferments enjoyed by Becket while as yet only a deacon
would seem to have exceeded even this ample measured. But of all pluralists, in
England and probably in the whole church, the most rapacious was John Hansel,
who served Henry III in the following century as chaplain, counsellor, judge,
and soldier, and is said to have enjoyed benefices to the value of four
thousand marks a year.
The promotion of boys to ecclesiastical offices and
dignities continued in defiance of all the protests of Bernard and other
eminent men, and of frequent prohibitions by popes and councils; some bishops,
it is said, not only allowed nobles to thrust boys into spiritual preferments,
but themselves made a profit of the abuse by pocketing the income during the
incumbent's minority. And, notwithstanding the war which Gregory VII and his
school had so rigorously waged against simony, the practice still continued. As
on the one hand the definition of simony became more refined, so that under
this name were forbidden not only all payments for spiritual offices, but even
fees for the lessons of cathedral and monastic schools, so on the other hand
the scholastic subtlety was more and more exercised in devising distinctions by
which the condemnations of simony might be evaded. While the popes professed a
zeal for the suppression of this offence, they themselves were continually
accused of it; some of them, indeed, are said to have so notoriously bought
their office that they can be vindicated only by the desperate expedient
of asserting that the pope cannot be guilty of simony. And nothing could exceed
the corruption of the Roman curia, which, in order that it might be
equal to dealing with the increase of business that was referred to the pope,
was newly organized with a staff of ravenous officials. The schemes of Gregory
for delivering the church from secular influence had resulted in the
secularization of the church itself.
The worldly occupations, amusements, and habits of the
bishops and higher clergy were the subject of frequent complaints The German
prelates in particular were so much involved in secular business—leading, for
the most part, the lives of great nobles rather than of clergymen—that
Caesarius of Heisterbach reports a clerk of Paris as having on this account
questioned their salvability. In particular, the warlike propensities of
bishops would seem to have become more active than ever; for now that the wars
against the infidels had consecrated their military service in some cases, the
justification of episcopal fighting was not unnaturally extended to other wars.
The chroniclers describe with a mixture of admiration and reprobation the
exploits of such prelates as Christian of Mainz, who appeared in full armour at
the head of armies, and, after having in one battle slain nine men with his
spiked club, arrayed himself on the following day in pontificals, and solemnly celebrated
a mass of thanksgiving for the victory. Reginald and Philip of Cologne, Absalom
of Lund, and many other bishops, are celebrated for their warlike deeds. Hubert
Walter, bishop of Salisbury, and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, attracted
the admiration of the lion-hearted Richard himself by his prowess as a
crusader, and after his return found exercise for his military talents in the
feuds of his own country. And the story is well-known how Richard, having taken
prisoner Philip, count-bishop of Beauvais, met the pope's interference in
behalf of the warlike prelate by sending to him Philip’s coat of mail, with the
scriptural quotation—“Know now whether it be thy son’s coat or no”.
MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY OF THE CLERGY.
Of all matters relating to the life and morals of the
clergy, the question of marriage 0r celibacy continued to be the chief occasion
of complaint and difficulty. The successors of Gregory VII, in endeavouring to
carry on his policy in this respect, met with a long and obstinate resistance
in many quarters, and as to some points they found themselves obliged to make
concessions. Thus, whereas Gregory had forbidden the faithful to receive
the Eucharist at the hands of a married priest, Paschal II, on being asked
by Anselm of Canterbury whether a person in danger of death might receive from
such a priest, replied that it was better to do so than to die without the
viaticum; and he added that if a married priest, on being applied to in such
circumstances, should refuse his ministry, on the ground of its having been
formerly despised, he would be guilty of soul-murder. In like manner, when the
knights of the order of St. James asked Lucius III whether they might frequent
the churches of married priests, and how they should reconcile the command
against attending the mass of such priests with the principle that the sin of
the minister does not pollute the ordinances which he administers, the pope
replied by distinguishing between notorious sins and those which are hidden or
tolerated—telling them that, so long as the church bears with a priest, they
might rightly receive the sacraments and other rites from him.
With regard to the sons of priests, too, it was found
necessary to deal more gently than the zealots for clerical celibacy would have
wished. There was, indeed, a steady endeavour to prevent the transmission of
benefices from father to son : and with this view it was sometimes enacted that
the sons of priests should not be ordained, unless they became either monks or
regular canons; sometimes, that they should not hold the same benefice which
their fathers had held, or, at least, that they should not immediately succeed
them. But even these prohibitions allow the ordination of the sons of priests
under certain restrictions; and even such a pope as Alexander III was always
ready to deal tenderly with such cases. In 1161 Richard Peche, the son of a
bishop of Coventry, was appointed to succeed his father in the see; and the
chronicler Ralph de Diceto, in relating the fact, takes occasion to cite the
opinion of Ivo of Chartres, that the sons of priests, if their own life be
respectable, are not to be excluded from any ecclesiastical office, even up to
the papacy itself.
Notwithstanding the many prohibitions of marriage to
persons in the higher orders of the ministry, the decree of the first Lateran
council, in 1123, is said to have been the first that dissolved such marriages.
In the following year, John of Crema, cardinal of St. Chrysogonus, held a
council at Westminster, where he severely denounced the marriage of the clergy,
and a canon was enacted against it; but it is said that on the evening of the
same day the cardinal was detected in company with a prostitute, and that he
was obliged to leave England in disgrace. In 1127 Archbishop William of
Canterbury sent forth some strong prohibitions of marriage; but the practice
still maintained a struggle in England. In 1129 Henry I, reverting to an
expedient for raising money which he had attempted in the primacy of Anselm,
imprisoned the housekeepers (who were supposed to be also the wives or
concubines) of many of the London clergy, whom he compelled to pay heavily for
their liberation and it appears that, both in England and elsewhere, even
bishops licensed the cohabitation of the clergy with their wives on condition
of an annual payment. The continued marriage of the English clergy is mentioned
in many letters of Alexander III and among other evidence of it may be mentioned
that of Giraldus Cambrensis, who states that among the parish priests of
England the keeping of focariae was almost universal, and that
the canons of St. David's—especially such of them as were Welchmen—were
notorious for their irregularities in this respect, filling the precincts of
their cathedral with concubines, midwives, children, and nurses, connecting
their families with each other by intermarriage, and transmitting their
benefices by inheritance. He tells us also that the like customs prevailed among
the kindred people of Brittany.
In Normandy we are told that in the beginning of the
twelfth century the priests celebrated their marriages publicly, that they left
their benefices to their sons, and sometimes provided in a like manner for the
portioning of their daughters. Geoffrey, archbishop of Rouen, in endeavouring
to enforce on his province the prohibitions of marriage enacted by the council
of Reims in 1119, was violently assaulted, as his predecessor John had been for
a similar attempt in the pontificate of Gregory, and his life was in danger in
a serious tumult which ensued.
In Spain, where the marriage of the clergy had been
tolerated before the submission of the church to Rome, the legitimacy of their
children was sanctioned by Paschal II. Didacus (Diego), archbishop of
Compostella, endeavoured to enforce the new regulations, but in this and in his
other attempts at discipline he met with obstinate resistance.
In Germany, the last place which retained clerical
marriage was Liège, where, as we have seen, the practice had been defended by
the pen of Sigebert of Gemblours. Even so late as 1220 the canons celebrated
their nuptials "like laymen", and are said to have paraded their
wives in a strange and hardly credible manner.
In Bohemia the first attempt to separate clergymen
from their wives was made by a legate in 1143 but the separation was not
effected until the time of Innocent III or later. In Hungary, which was
affected by the neighbourhood of the Greek church, a council of spiritual and
temporal dignitaries in 1092 forbade the second marriage of priests,—a
prohibition which implies that a single marriage was regarded as lawful; and on
this footing the matter rested in that country until after the middle of the
thirteenth century. The imperfectly organised church of Poland was for a long
time untouched by Gregory's reforms; the clergy married into the families of
the nobles, and even till the thirteenth century their benefices were often
hereditary. The earliest attempt to enforce celibacy in Denmark was made in
1123, but was ineffectual. Even the influence of Breakspear, as legate, was
unable to establish the system in the northern kingdoms. Eskil of Lund, and
other eminent bishops, were themselves married. The apprehension of evils which
might arise from the compulsory celibacy of the clergy was, as we have seen,
among the causes which produced a formidable outbreak in the end of the
century. It appears from a letter of Innocent III that the Swedish clergy
professed to have a papal sanction for their marriage; and the practice
continued into the thirteenth century. In the remote island of Iceland the
license for marriage or concubinage of the clergy took a peculiar form—a
payment to the bishop on the birth of every child.
While the legislation of the church was steady in the
direction of suppressing the marriage of the clergy, it is remarkable that some
of the most eminent writers were very moderate in their opinions on the
subject. Thus Gratian, although he takes the view which the church had
sanctioned in his time, yet allows the greater freedom of earlier ages to be
fully represented in his digest of the ecclesiastical laws. Peter Comestor, a
famous professor of Paris, is said by his pupil Giraldus Cambrensis to have publicly
taught that the devil had never so much circumvented the church as in enforcing
the vow of celibacy; that, although no authority less than that of a general
council could set the clergy free in this matter, there is nothing in Scripture
to forbid marriage; and that Alexander III would have rescinded the law but for
the opposition of his secretary, who afterwards became pope under the name of
Gregory VIII. And while, in the following century, Thomas of Aquino declares
the celibacy of the secular clergy to be merely of human institution, and
differs from the zealots of celibacy in regarding secret marriage as less
culpable than unchastity, the younger Durandus of Mende frankly owns the
futility of all repressive measures, and suggests that it might be expedient to
return to the practice of the early church, as it was still maintained among
the orientals.
Among the clergy who were charged with irregularity of
life, none were more conspicuous than the canons of cathedrals; and the rise of
this class in dignity and importance made their ill example the more
mischievous. Ever since the ninth century, canons had endeavoured to get into
their own hands the independent management of their property; and in this they
had generally been successful. The common table and dormitory, which had been
parts of the original institution, had fallen into disuse, so that, if the
canons ate together on any occasion, it was not in order to fullfill their
rule, but to enjoy the extraordinary cheer of a festival. The canons had become
proud, luxurious, ostentatious in affecting the fashions of the world as to
dress and habits, and utterly neglectful of their ecclesiastical duties, which
were in part devolved on hired substitutes. Preferment of this kind was coveted
by noble, and even princely, families, as a stepping-stone for their members
towards higher dignities, and as affording a comfortable income in the
meantime. Not only was illegitimate or servile birth regarded as a
disqualification, but in many cases it was required that the canons should be
noble by descent on one side, at least, if not (as at Strasburg) on both. Any
who without this qualification were appointed by papal provisions, were
regarded with contempt by the rest; and sometimes a chapter ventured to
withstand even the authority of a pope in defence of its exclusive
restrictions. In some cases canonries became hereditary in families.
The canons were no longer content to be styled brethren,
but were now addressed as domini. The elder among them depressed
the younger, whom they treated as an inferior class—curtailing their share of
the revenues, and in some cases even exacting homage from them. Now that they
had got the election of bishops into their hands, the canons made terms
beforehand with the future bishop, and, in addition to much individual jobbery,
they very commonly extorted from him the right of appointing to places in their
own chapter and to other offices in the church. They affected great
independence of the bishops; they attended councils; they claimed all the
administration of dioceses, and even of provinces, during the vacancy of sees;
and in all their assumptions they were generally supported by their powerful
family connections.
The difficulties occasioned by the degeneracy of the
canons are the subject of continual papal letters. Many attempts were made
to recall them to the practice of living in common and to their other
ecclesiastical duties; while some bishops and princes, regarding such attempts
as hopeless, ejected the secular canons, and planted in their stead either
monks, or canons of the class which was styled regular, and which was
distinguished from the seculars chiefly by the renunciation of all individual
property. In Germany the seculars had such strength that the only course for
reforming bishops was to leave them in possession, and to found new societies
of canons on a more rigid footing.
Monasticism—Religious Associations.
The twelfth century saw the rise of several new
orders, in addition to those which have been already described. Among them was
that of the Carmelites, founded by Berthold, a native of Calabria, who about
the year 1180 settled on Mount Carmel—a place to which, from the fourth century
downwards, many recluses had been drawn by its connection with the prophet
Elijah. But in later times the Carmelites, disdaining to acknowledge Berthold
as their founder, professed to trace themselves up to Elijah himself through a
line which included the Rechabites and some of the Old Testament prophets; and
whereas their oldest rule was really given by Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem,
in 1209, they pretended to reckon among their legislators St. Basil, in the
fourth century, and John of Jerusalem, the contemporary of St. Jerome. These
pretensions led, in the seventeenth century, to a fierce controversy between
the Carmelites—chiefly those of Flanders—and the Bollandist hagiologists, who
maintained the truth of history; and the war was carried on not only in learned
dissertations, but in satirical pamphlets. Innocent XII., in 1698, in
accordance with a decision of the Congregation of the Index, attempted to allay
the quarrel by imposing silence on both parties under pain of excommunication;
but Benedict XIII afterwards countenanced the pretensions of the Carmelites by
allowing a statue of Elijah to be erected in St. Peter's among those of the
great founders of monachism.
On the expulsion of the Latins from the Holy Land, the
Carmelites, who professed to have been warned by the Blessed Virgin to quit
their mountain, acquired settlements in Europe, and it is said (although
perhaps with exaggeration), that at one time they possessed 7,500 monasteries,
with upwards of 180,000 members. The original rule of the order was very rigid;
but on leaving Carmel they petitioned Innocent IV for a mitigation of it, on
the ground that they were no longer hermits. The pope, accordingly, relaxed it
in some respects in 1247; and in the fifteenth century further relaxations were
granted. In consequence of this, the order was divided into two branches—the
stricter being styled barefooted or observants,
while those who adopted the milder rule were known as shod or conventuals.
Another order of this time (which has already been
mentioned on account of the confusion which its name has sometimes
produced between it and the Waldensian sectaries) was that of the Humiliati,
which seems to have been confined to Lombardy. The origin of this order is
traced to some Milanese who were carried off into Germany by an emperor, but
were afterwards allowed to return to Milan. In their exile they adopted a
strict manner of life, and supported themselves by cloth-weaving; and this
occupation was afterwards continued among them—their skill in the art being
famous, and much of their cloth being given to the poor. To the secular men and
women of whom the society at first consisted was afterwards added an order of
monks and nuns; and about 1140 a priest named John of Meda completed the
organization by the addition of an order of priests. The institution was
confirmed by Innocent III, who in 1201 provided it with a rule mainly derived
from that of St. Benedict, and its members were distinguished for their
charitable labours. In the course of centuries, however, the Humiliati showed
the usual degeneracy. An attempt of St. Charles Borromeo, archbishop of Milan,
to reform them provoked a violent uproar, so that his life was even in danger;
and in consequence of this the order was abolished by Pius V in 1571.
Among the other orders of the twelfth century may be
named that of Fiore, which has been already mentioned in connection with its
founder, Joachim and the English order of Sempringham, founded by Gilbert,
after whom the members—male and female—were commonly called Gilbertines.
CLUNIACS AND CISTERCIANS
The new orders, being founded in a spirit of reaction
from the laxity of those which before existed, were likely to excite the
rivalry of their elders; and this rivalry was especially shown in France
between the Cistercians and the Cluniacs. The contrast between the black dress
of Cluny and the white dress of Citeaux was enough to proclaim at sight the
difference of the orders; and, while the Cistercians were not slow to tax the
Cluniacs with degeneracy, these retorted by charges of vanity and presumption against
the younger society. Hence, about the year 1125, a discussion took place
between Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter the Venerable of Cluny—each the chief
ornament of his order, each respecting the other, and both free from the more
vulgar feelings by which many of their partisans were animated. Bernard wrote
his 'Apology' at the suggestion of William, abbot of St. Thierry, a Cluniac,
with a view of satisfying those who complained of the Cistercians as
detractors. In the outset, he is very severe on such of his own brethren as had
indulged in censures on the alleged laxity of the Cluniacs. As men differ in
character, he says, so a corresponding difference of usages may be lawful pride
and censoriousness are evidences of a want of charity far worse than the slight
indulgences which it attacks. He professes a high regard for the order of
Cluny, and says that he had always dissuaded those who wished to forsake it for
the Cistercian order. But from this Bernard goes on to blame the Cluniacs for
their disobedience to the rule of St. Benedict. While admitting the lawfulness
of dispensations, he holds that the secular manner of life which prevails in
some monasteries is such as no dispensation can warrant. Many of the monks,
though young and vigorous, pretend sickness, that they may be allowed to eat
flesh; and those who abstain from flesh indulge their palate without limit by
exquisite varieties of cookery, while, in order to provoke the appetite, they
drink largely of the strongest and most fragrant wines, which are often
rendered yet more stimulant by spices. At table, instead of grave silence,
light worldly gossip, jests, and idle laughter prevail. The Cluniacs have
coverlets of fur or other rich and variegated materials for their beds;
they dress themselves in the costliest furs, in silk, and in cloth fine enough
for royal robes; and a ludicrous picture is drawn of a Cluniac choosing the
stuff for his cowl with feminine care and fastidiousness. This excessive care
for the body, says Bernard, is a consequence of the neglect of mental culture.
But even more than for their personal luxury, he taxes the Cluniacs for the
excessive splendour of their worship, and for the unsuitable magnificence of
their buildings. The walls of their churches are adorned, while the poor are
left in nakedness; the pictures distract the mind, instead of raising it to
devotion; and the monstrous and grotesque carvings which abound are altogether
unfit for a religious house. The chandeliers and tree-like candlesticks are of
vast labour and cost, and are set with jewels; the pavements are inlaid with
figures of saints and angels, which in such a position cannot escape irreverent
usage; the sight of the golden shrines in which the relics are encased fattens
the eyes and unlooses the purse-strings of beholders. Such things, he says,
might be allowable in churches intended for lay worshippers, whose carnal minds
may need them; but for monks, who have renounced the delights of the senses,
they are incongruous and unseemly. Bernard also blames the Cluniacs for their
exemption from episcopal authority, and for impropriating the tithes of
parish-churches; and he denounces the pomp of many abbots, who, on going barely
four leagues from home, took with them baggage enough for a campaign, or for a
journey through the desert—especially of one whom he had seen travelling with
sixty horses, and a train sufficient for two bishops.
Peter's defence of his order, written in 1143,
although addressed to Bernard, is not a reply to his tract, but to the
Cistercian accusations in general. He taxes the Cistercians with breach of the
charity inculcated by their rule, and speaks of their white dress as a blamable
singularity, whereas the black of the older orders was suitable as an emblem of
sadness. He justifies, as far as possible, the Cluniac departure from the
letter of the Benedictine rule, which, he says, is beyond what the men of his
day could bear; and he adds that the Cistercians sin against charity by the
severity of their discipline, which often drives monks to forsake the order, or
renders them discontented, and impairs their health. The use of furs and other
such materials in dress and bedding, and the abatement of the precepts as to
fasting, he excuses under the allowance which the Benedictine rule had made for
diversities of climate, and of the discretion which it vested in the abbot;
moreover, as coats of skins were given to Adam and Eve not for pride but for
shame, the use of furs might serve to remind us that we are exiles from our
heavenly country. If the Cluniacs have lands, they are kinder to their tenants
than lay landowners; if they have serfs, it is because they could not but
accept them with the lands to which they were attached; if they get possession
of castles, they turn them into houses of prayer. They may rightly possess
tolls, since it was only from the injustice of the toll-gatherer's trade that
St. Matthew was called; if tithes were given to the Levites because they had no
inheritance, they may rightly be given to monks, who have forsaken all earthly
possessions; and if they are given to clerks for their pastoral care, why not
to monks for their prayers, their tears, their alms, and their other good works
for the benefit of men? As manual labour was prescribed by St. Benedict by way
of a remedy against idleness, it is needless when idleness may be avoided by
other means; and for men who are weak from the nature of their diet, prayer,
study, psalmody, and spiritual labours are more suitable than the works of
husbandry. The Benedictine precepts as to receiving strangers and washing their
feet could not be literally performed without inconvenience and grievous
waste of time; but they are observed in spirits And whereas the Cluniacs had
been censured for being under no bishops, they have the truest and holiest
bishop of all, the bishop of Rome, while they have the privilege of obtaining
episcopal offices from any bishop of their own choice.
The rivalry between Cluny and Citeaux was exasperated
by the circumstance that the general exemption of the Cistercians from tithes
affected some lands which had formerly paid tithes to the Cluniacs; and from
this collisions frequently arose. In one of these quarrels the Cluniacs burnt
down a Cistercian monastery; and the enmity of the two orders outlived both
Peter and Bernard.
It would seem that Bernard’s Apology,
written soon after the scandals which the misconduct of abbot Pontius had
occasioned among the Cluniacs, contributed to suggest the important reforms
which Peter effected in his order. But the Cistercians themselves, although
they continued to find eulogists, although their salvation was declared by
visions, and although for a time their order was the refuge of spirits which
sought a rigid discipline, began early to show symptoms of decay. A prophetess
of Lorraine in 1153 addressed to them a letter on their decline in zeal and
love. The records of their general chapters contain many significant notices;
thus, in 1181 it is said that some monasteries had run into debt by purchasing
wine; in 1182 it appears that their rule had been broken by the introduction of
painted windows into churches; in 1191 the chapter endeavours to take measures
for the removal of the imputations of greediness which had been fixed on the
Cistercians. Alexander III found it necessary to reprove them for having
deviated from their rule by possessing farms and mills, parish-churches and
altars, receiving fealty and homage, holding the offices of judges and
tax-gatherers, and using all their endeavours to enlarge their borders on
earth, whereas their conversation ought to be in heaven; and he threatens, if
they live like ordinary men, to take away the privileges which had been granted
to them in consideration of their extraordinary strictness. Privileges had,
indeed, been so largely bestowed on the Cistercians that pope Clement IV, in
the middle of the thirteenth century, speaks of these as “against the law of
God and man”, and already they had everywhere acquired exemptions like those
which Bernard had strongly censured in other orders. Walter Map in the end of
the twelfth century speaks of the Cistercians with especial abhorrence, and
ridicules their pretensions to superior holiness and mortification.
The increase of monachism, through the foundation of
the new orders, and other causes, was enormous. Thus, it is said that whereas
in England there had not at the Conquest been above a hundred monasteries, the
number founded under Henry I and his two successors was upwards of three
hundred. Of these some owed their origin to compositions for vows of service in
the holy war. There was a general desire for all sorts of papal privileges;
and, as has been already stated, where these could not be proved by genuine
documents, recourse was often had to forgery. The abbots aimed at entire
independence of the episcopal authority—even attempting, like the lawless
barons of the time, to present clerks to parish-churches without submitting
them to the bishop of the diocese for institution. They affected the use of
episcopal ornaments, and the episcopal right of bestowing benedictions. “How
much more would they pay”, asks St. Bernard, “if they might have the name as
well as the privileges of bishops?”. Peter of Blois says that the monasteries
most distinguished for holiness were those which either had never desired such
privileges or had voluntarily resigned them; that in any one but a bishop the
use of episcopal ornaments is a mark of pride and presumption: and he prevailed
on his own brother to give up an abbacy to which the pope had granted the use
of those ornaments. So jealously was the privilege of exemption guarded that
when Maurice, bishop of Paris appeared at the consecration of the new church of
St. Germain-des-Prés by Alexander III the monks rose in tumult, as if his very
presence were a claim of jurisdiction over them, and the pope sent three
cardinals to beg that he would withdraw. In England we find quarrels of this
kind between the bishops and the great monasteries in many quarters; thus the
bishops of Chichester had contests with the abbots of Battle, the bishops of
Bath with the abbots of Glastonbury, the bishops of Sarum with the abbots of
Malmesbury, the bishops of Lincoln with the abbots of St. Albans. But nowhere
was there a more remarkable display of such differences than in the city of
Canterbury, where the archbishops were engaged in long and bitter feuds, not
only with the abbots and brethren of St. Augustine's, but with the monks of
their own cathedral.
The great monastery founded by the apostle of England
was the first in rank of English religious houses, and in western Christendom
was second only to Monte Cassino. It was the burial-place of Augustine and of
his successors in the throne of Canterbury, and on that account its members
looked down on the cathedral of Christchurch or Trinity, until Archbishop
Cuthbert, when dying in 758, took measures that his death should be kept secret
from the Augustinians until he should have been interred in the cathedral. From
that time the archbishops, with the exception of Cuthbert’s second successor,
Janbert, who had himself been abbot of St. Augustine's, were buried in the
cathedral, and its monks were thus enabled to take a higher standing than
before against their Augustinian neighbours. But in the twelfth century serious
disputes arose between the archbishops and the monks of St. Augustine’s. The
monks asserted that their house had been wholly independent of the see of
Canterbury until Lanfranc, taking advantage of his ancient friendship with the
Norman abbot Scolland, persuaded him to cede privileges which the monastery had
before enjoyed; while on the other side it was maintained that the abbey and
the patronage of the abbacy had belonged to the archbishops until the Norman
conquests. The abbots claimed that the archbishops should give them the
benediction in their own monastery, and without exacting any payment, or any
profession of obedience. They claimed, not only the patronage of
parish-churches on their estates, but exclusive jurisdiction over the
incumbents. They disputed certain yearly payments which they were required to
make to the cathedral, and the archbishop's charges for supplying them with
consecrated oil and chrism. They professed to have privileges, reaching down
from the age of king Ethelbert and St. Augustine, by which the monastery was
rendered independent of all power, ecclesiastical or secular. In one of these
documents Augustine was made to charge his successors in the see to regard the
abbot not as their subject, but as their “brother, colleague, and
fellow-minister in the word of God”. According to another document, pope John
XIII ordered that the abbot should be treated “as a Roman legate”; and (as we
have seen) it was said that the abbots had been privileged by Alexander II to
wear the mitre (with the sandals and other episcopal ornaments), although they
did not make use of the right until a hundred and twenty years later. These
claims were the subject of continual appeals to the popes, who, according to
their usual policy, for the most part sided with the abbey, while the officials
of the Roman court were not sorry to make a profit out of the complicated
litigation. At one time, when Eugenius III had desired archbishop Theobald to
bless abbot Sylvester without exacting any profession, the archbishop repaired
to the monastery for the purpose; but there (by his contrivance, according to
the Augustinian chroniclers), the prior of Christchurch appeared, with a force
of armed men, to protest against the benediction; and the archbishop caught at
this pretext for delay, although a further reference to Rome obliged him at
last to perform the office in the manner required. At another time, when
Alexander III had ordered the benediction of abbot Roger, not only the
archbishop of Canterbury, but the bishop of Worcester and the archbishop of
Rouen refused to officiate; and the abbot found it necessary to seek the
blessing from the pope himself, who gave it at Tusculum, granting to the abbot
the use of the episcopal mitre, ring, and gloves, but with a reservation of the
archbishop’s rights. On another occasion, when Theobald had interdicted England
in consequence of his differences with king Stephen, the Augustinians continued
to ring their bells and to celebrate divine offices as usual; but for this they
were put to penance by pope Eugenius, on the ground that they were bound to
obey Theobald as legate, if not as archbishop; and when the pope, after some
difficulty, absolved them, he declared that he acted not as apostolic pontiff
but in the room of the archbishop of Canterbury.
The monks were extremely unwilling to produce the
originals of the privileges on which they relied; but, after having eluded two
papal orders for their production, they were at length, in 1182, compelled to
exhibit them to three commissioners appointed by Alexander III; when it was
found that as to materials, form, and substance, the documents which pretended
to the greatest antiquity were suspicious in the extreme. They were, however,
approved by Lucius III, and archbishop Richard was obliged to withdraw the
charge of forgery which he had thrown out against them. A compromise was agreed
on as to some of the rival claims; but as to the benediction in the monastery
all the papal authority was unable to enforce obedience from the archbishops;
and the abbots were obliged to receive their blessing, sometimes from the pope
in person, sometimes from any bishop who could be persuaded to give it, until
in 1406 abbot Thomas Hunden was blessed in St. Paul's, London, by archbishop
Arundel, who acknowledged him, in the words of the charter ascribed to St.
Augustine, as his “brother, colleague, and fellow-minister”.
But while the monks of Christchurch were allied with
the archbishops against the rival monastery, their own relations with them were
far from harmonious. “It seems”, wrote John of Salisbury during Becket’s
exile, “as if hatred of their archbishops were an inheritance of the monks of
Canterbury. When Anselm was twice banished for righteousness’ sake, they never
bestowed any consolation on him. They despised Ralph, they hated William, they
laid snares for Theobald, and now, without any cause, they insatiably persecute
Thomas”. Theobald turned out two of their priors (who were the virtual heads of
the monastery, as the archbishop himself was supposed to be abbot); and at a
later time a more serious difference broke out. The circumstances of archbishop
Baldwin’s election had naturally left unpleasant remembrances on both sides;
and soon after entering on his see, the archbishop and the monks were violently
embroiled. They complained that he interfered with their revenues and
privileges; that he seized the management of their estates, expelled their
officials, whose places he filled with his own servants, suspended the prior,
confined the monks within their own precincts, cutting off their supplies of
food, so that they were indebted for the means of life to the charity of their neighbours—even
of Jews; and that he excommunicated them.
In order to rid himself of the annoyances resulting
from his connection with them, he formed the scheme of erecting a new church of
secular canons, to bear the name of St. Thomas the Martyr, and of supporting it
chiefly at the expense of Christchurch. As the germ of this, he began to
rebuild and enlarge the church of St. Stephen at Hackington, about a mile
distant from the cathedral, and afterwards removed the site to another place in
the neighbourhood. In order to carry out his scheme he caused collections to be
made throughout all England, with the inducement of ample indulgences; he
endeavoured to draw the other bishops into taking part in the foundation; and
he was encouraged by the support of Henry II, who had abundant reasons for
disliking the monks of Christchurch. These, however, showed themselves
determined to resist by appealing to the pope, and enlisting in their cause the
influence of the French king and of other foreign patrons. They declared that
the archbishop intended, by bestowing the canonries of his new church on the
bishops of his province, not only to transfer to these the rights of the
cathedral as to the election of archbishops, but to constitute himself a pope,
surrounded by a college of cardinals, subject to the influence of the crown in
ecclesiastical matters, but independent of the apostolic see. The popes were
naturally inclined to side with the monks, more especially as the usual means
of securing the favour of Rome were largely employed; and, with the exception
of Gregory VIII, they showed themselves favourable to the convent. In 1189 two
legates were sent by Gregory to investigate the matter; but one of them died by
the way, and the other, John of Anagni, was not allowed to approach Canterbury
until the question had been compromised by Richard I, on the footing that a
prior whom Baldwin had nominated should be otherwise provided for, that another
should be appointed by the king and the archbishop, and that the archbishop
should give up the project of a collegiate church on condition of receiving
from the monks the same obedience which they had paid to his predecessors. The
legate indignantly declared that this agreement was void, as having been
extorted from the monks, and it was afterwards annulled by Celestine III, who
ordered the new buildings to be destroyed. Baldwin, before setting out on the
crusade, directed that the materials should be removed to Lambeth, which he had
lately acquired for his see but on hearing of his death at the siege of Acre,
the monks of Christchurch drove out their prior, appointed another in his room,
and elected to the primacy Reginald, bishop of Bath, who ordered the demolition
of his predecessor's college at Lambeth. Reginald, however, died before
consecration, and his successor, Hubert Walter, revived the project. But,
although he had the support of king Richard, although all the Cistercian abbots
in England exerted themselves for him, and although the authority of
archbishops Anselm, Theobald, and Thomas was alleged in favour of the design,
he was compelled by Innocent III in 1199 to pull down the buildings which he
had begun to erect.
In other English cathedrals which were in the hands of
monks, similar troubles often arose; and it is said that archbishop Baldwin
induced all the bishops to promise that they would follow his example by
turning their episcopal churches into colleges of secular clergy. Hugh of
Nunant, bishop of Lichfield, nephew of Arnulf of Lisieux, incurred the especial
abuse of the monastic writers, with the single exception of Giraldus
Cambrensis, by substituting secular canons for the monks of Coventry, and is
said to have advised Richard I to suppress all the monks in England; but a few
years after he was obliged to succumb, and archbishop Hubert, in obedience to
papal authority, reinstated the monks whom Hugh had ejected.
While monks were thus brought into rivalry and actual
collision with secular canons, they were involved in a continual controversy
with the regular canons as to the superiority of their respective manners of
life, while the canons denied the right of the monks to preach, and would have
confined them to the strict duties of religious seclusion. Among the writers
who took the monastic side were Abelard, Hugh of Amiens, archbishop of Rouen,
and Rupert, abbot of Deutz; among the champions of the canons were Anselm,
bishop of Havelberg, Philip of Harveng, a Prémonstratensian abbot in the
diocese of Cambray, and Lambert, abbot of St. Rufus, near Avignon.
Notwithstanding the frequent attempts at a reformation
of monastic life, and the institution of new orders with a view to a greater
severity of discipline, we still find that the state of monachism is a subject
of frequent complaint. Godfrey of Vigeois describes the monks of his day as
spurious heirs of the older coenobites; as lax in their diet, devoted to the
vanities of fashion, and otherwise unfaithful to the true idea of their
profession. In some cases the monastic food and clothing were commuted for an
allowance in money—an arrangement utterly opposed to the principles of the
monastic system. Giraldus Cambrensis mentions as a chief cause of disorder
among the English monks the custom of sending them by twos or threes to remote
cells, where they were free from the discipline of the convents on which the
cells depended. Although the life in such places often involved much of
roughness and privation, the monks greatly preferred it to the “imprisonment of
the cloister”, on account of its freedom from restraint; but the system became
the cause of general laxity, and of frequent and serious scandals. Wibald of
Stablo speaks of some monastic societies as careless of their rule, and
engrossed by talk of canons, decrees, appeals, councils, rights, laws, condemnations
and the like; as devoted to bodily indulgences and temporal good things, and
impatient of all control from their superiors. Nor were the attempts at reform
always of such a kind as to deserve approval. Thus cardinal Walter of Albano,
after mentioning with praise the zeal of some abbots and others who had agreed
to meet annually at Reims with a view to monastic reformation—that by their
means houses which had been temples of voluptuousness, the haunts of owls and
hedgehogs, syrens and satyrs, had become “glorious sheepfolds of Christ”—goes
on to censure them for indiscreet innovation in some respects. Anselm of
Havelberg represents people as perplexed by the number, the eccentric
affectations, and the contradictory rules of the new orders which had arisen;
and John of Salisbury strongly denounces the practices of hypocritical monks,
who pretended to an extreme severity of life in order to cloak their ambition,
avarice, and malignity.
MILITARY ORDERS.
The history of the military orders of the Temple and
the Hospital has in part been noticed by anticipation, and partly in connection
with the crusades. In addition to their quarrels with each other, with the
patriarchs, and with their other neighbours in the east, we find them
continually engaged in disputes as to privileges and exemptions in the west. By
the abuse which they made of these (as by keeping their churches open in time
of interdict, receiving excommunicate persons to the sacraments, and giving
them Christian burial) they were drawn into frequent collisions with the bishops
and clergy; and such abuses were strongly denounced by Alexander III and by the
Lateran council of 1179.
In addition to the templars and hospitallers, other
orders, in which religion was combined with special objects, took their origin
from the crusades.
The Teutonic order, which afterwards became famous,
arose out of the association of about forty crusaders from north Germany, who,
at the siege of Acre, formed themselves into a brotherhood for the care of the
sick and wounded—sheltering them in tents made out of the sails of their
vessels. The new society gained the patronage of the king of Jerusalem, of the
patriarch, and of other important personages; and Frederick of Swabia, during
the short interval between his arrival at Acre and his death, recommended it to
his brother, Henry VI, and also to pope Celestine, who in 1196 confirmed its
institution. The order was governed by provincials, with a grand-master at its
head. The first master was Henry of Walpot, but the great extension of the
order was due mainly to his third successor, Herman of Salza, who, according to
a chronicler, had the pope and the emperor, with other princes and great men,
in his own hand, so that he obtained whatever he might ask for its honour and
advantage. Under him it acquired great privileges and emoluments, and entered
on its career of conquest on the shores of the Baltic; and whereas Herman had
expressed a wish that by the sacrifice of one of his eyes he might raise the
order to the number of ten military brethren in arms, it counted soon after his
death more than 2,000 knights of noble German families.
At Acre also was instituted an English order of
hospitallers, named after St. Thomas the Martyr, whose birth came by a romantic
story of later date to be connected with the Holy Land; and in the last year of
the century arose the order of Trinitarians or Mathurins, founded by John of
Matha, a priest of Provençal birth, for the redemption of captives from the
infidels, and confirmed by Innocent III.
In Spain various military orders arose, such as those
of Calatrava and Avisa, both instituted for the defence of the faith against
the Moors, and connected with the Cistercian order; and the order of St. James,
intended for the protection of pilgrims to the shrine of the apostle at
Compostella.
An association which in so far resembled the military
orders as it was formed under a religious sanction for a warlike purpose, was
that of the Caputiati, or White Hoods of Auvergne. Large bodies of
the mercenary soldiers whom it had become usual to employ in war, and who, from
the province which originally supplied them, were known by the name of
Brabançons, had betaken themselves to a life of plunder and violence, and kept
that country in terror. Their numbers were swelled by desperate and
disreputable persons of all classes, among whom it is said that there were many
clerks, monks, and even nuns. These “hellish legions”, as they were styled by a
chronicler of the age, robbed, burnt, slew, carried off the precious ornaments
of churches, profaned the holy sacrament, and treated the clergy with savage
insult and cruelty, so that some even died of their blows. Although in this
they appear to have been moved rather by utter irreligion than by any heretical
opinions, they were condemned by the Lateran council of 1179 in the same canon
which proscribed the Cathari. But the beginning of active measures against them
was made in 1182 by one Durand, a carpenter of Le Puy-en-Velay, which had been
a popular place of pilgrimage until the outrages of these ruffians made the
roads unsafe. Durand professed to have been repeatedly warned by the blessed
Virgin to exhort his neighbours to the establishment of peace and the bishop of
Le Puy gave his sanction to the undertaking. Bishops and abbots, nobles,
clergy, and men of all classes banded themselves together in an association for
the purpose. The members were pledged to eschew gaming, excess in meat and
drink, swearing, and other vices; to do no wrong, and to carry on implacable
hostilities against all wrong-doers; and such, it is said, was their union,
that, if one had killed the brother of another, the surviving brother admitted
the slayer to the kiss of peace and was bound to supply his needs. The mark of
their profession was a white hood, of monastic shape, with a leaden image of
the Virgin sewed on to it.
The enterprise thus set on foot was crowned with
success; it is said that in one engagement 7,ooo of the Brabançons or cottereaux were slain, but the clergy of the victorious party disgraced themselves by
inciting their companions to cruelties against the prisoners, and fifteen
hundred wretched women of loose life, who were among the number, were burnt at
a slow fire. The country which had been infested by the cottereaux was
speedily cleared of them; but the white-hoods themselves began to show symptoms
of opinions dangerous to social order, maintaining the equality of all men, and
attacking the nobles who were within their reach; so that Philip Augustus, who
had aided their undertaking at the outset, found it necessary to suppress the
association.
Rites and Usages
In the early church, the term sacrament had
been applied to any symbolical religious act, so that, while baptism and the
Eucharist were regarded as rites having a peculiar character of their own,
there was no limit to the number of things which might be styled sacraments.
And thus, as late as the twelfth century, we find the name given by Godfrey of
Vendome to the symbolical ring and staff which were used in the investiture of
bishops, and by Bernard to the symbolical washing of feet. From this vagueness
in the use of the term, the number of sacraments had been very variously
stated. Thus Raban Maur and Paschasius Radbert, in the ninth century, laid down
that there are four sacraments—Baptism, Unction, the Body and the Blood of the
Lord, whereas Peter Damiani, in the eleventh century, speaks of twelve, but
elsewhere distinguishes three as chief—namely, Baptism, the Eucharist, and
Ordination.
In the eastern church, although John of Damascus
speaks only of Baptism and the Eucharist, yet from the time of the pretended
Dionysius the Areopagite, in the sixth century, six sacraments had been
generally acknowledged—namely, Baptism, the Eucharist, the Consecration of
Chrism, Ordination, Monastic Profession, and the Rites for the Dead. But now,
in the western church, the mystical number of seven was fixed as that of the
sacraments, from the idea of a correspondence with the sevenfold gifts of the
Holy Ghost. This number is insisted on in the report of Otho of Bamberg's
missionary teaching, and may be gathered from the writings of Hugh of St.
Victor, although he also uses the term sacrament in the more
general sense of the older writers; but the establishment of the number is
chiefly to be ascribed to the “Sentences” of Peter Lombard, the most popular
theological manual of the age, in which the sacraments are said to be Baptism,
Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Ordination, and Matrimony.
The doctrine of Berengar as to the Eucharist,
although condemned, was not extinct. Thus we are told of some who, while they
held with Berengar in substance, joined with the church in condemning him,
because, instead of contenting himself with the language of Scripture, he had
put forward his ideas too nakedly. Abelard speaks of the question, “whether the
bread which is seen be only a figure of the Lord's body, or be also the real
substance of the Lord's very flesh”, as being yet undetermined. And Rupert of Deutz
expresses himself in such a manner as to the continuance of the bread and wine
in their own substance as at least to need a subtle vindication of his
conformity with the modern Roman doctrine against the apparent meaning of his
words. But the doctrine of transubstantiation—a word which is first found in a
treatise professing to contain the opinions of Peter Damiani,—made way, and the
impression of it on the popular mind was strengthened by an ever-increasing
multitude of miraculous tales—as that the eucharistic wafer was seen by the
priest to change into a beautiful infant; that the bread appeared as flesh, and
the wine as blood; and that the consecrated host resisted the power of fire.
The growing opinion of a material presence in the
eucharist introduced an important change in the manner of administration. In
early ages, the sacrament had been always given under both kinds, although in
Africa it had been usual to allow morsels of the consecrated bread to be
carried from the church for the sick, or for the use of devout persons at times
when they could not attend the public communion. The declaration of pope
Gelasius I against a separation of the elements has been already quoted; and,
although primarily directed against the Manicheans, who condemned the use of
wine, it is equally applicable against all mutilated administration. Now,
however, it began to be thought that there was a danger of profanation in
receiving the wine, from the dipping of the beard into the chalice, or from the
inability of sick persons to swallow. In order to guard against such accidents,
it had been usual from the eighth century to employ a tube in drinking from the
chalice; but in the latter part of the eleventh century, a custom arose of
dipping the bread into the wine, and so administering both elements together,
and, from having at first been practised in the communion of infants and of the
sick, it was extended to other cases. This usage was condemned by Urban II at
the council of Clermont, and by Paschal II in a letter to abbot Pontius, of
Cluny, which allows no exception other than the cases of infants or very sick
persons, who could not swallow the breads Ernulf, bishop of Rochester, however,
on being questioned by a friend as to the propriety of thus administering in a
manner different from, and almost contrary to the Saviour’s institution,
answered by maintaining the right of the church to legislate in such matters,
and defending the practice as a safeguard against profanation. And in England
it kept its ground until forbidden by the council of London in 1175. The
doctrine of concomitancy—that Christ is contained entire under each of the
eucharistic elements —had been laid down by St. Anselm on independent grounds,
and, while stating it, he had spoken of communion in both kinds; but it was now
brought to support the novel practice of administering in one kind only. The
writers of the age, in general, however, —even those who held that
administration in one kind was sufficient, and that a contrary opinion was
heretical,—yet maintained the ancient usage of administering in both kinds.
The belief in the necessity of infant-communion had
died out in the West, and, in consequence of the supposed especial danger of
profanation by spilling the consecrated wine, the practice was now forbidden,
although it was not yet wholly disused. In this case, as in that of adults,
unconsecrated wine was sometimes given as a substitute for the eucharistic cup;
but Hugh of St. Victor (or a writer who has been identified with him) ascribes
such usages to the ignorance of the clergy, and declares that it is better to
rely on the grace of baptism, as sufficient for the salvation of young
children. At a later time the communion of infants became a subject of
controversy between the Greeks, who retained it, and the Latins.
The more rigid view as to the observance of the Lord’s
day continued to grow in the church, and attempts were made to enforce it by
some of those pretended revelations which have been used in behalf of the same
cause from the time of Charlemagne, or earlier, to the miracle of La Salette in
our own days. Thus, when Henry II of England was at Cardiff on his way from
Ireland to Normandy, as he was mounting his horse after mass, he was accosted
by a man apparently about forty years of age, tall and spare in figure, with
yellow hair displaying a tonsure, dressed in a white robe, with a girdle around
his waist, and with naked feet. After having greeted the king in English this
personage charged him, in the names of the Saviour, the Blessed Virgin, St.
Peter, and St. Paul, to allow no markets to be held, or any but the most
necessary secular works to be done, on the Lord's day, and warned him that a
neglect of this command would be followed by heavy judgments; and having
delivered his message he disappeared. Again, in 1199, it was said that a letter
from the Saviour was found in the church of the holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem,
denouncing terrible chastisements for breach of the Lord's day; and this letter
was used by Eustace, abbot of Flai, in the diocese of Beauvais, who preached in
England with great effect. Eustace denounced the holding of markets on the
Lord’s day, and the sale of anything, except that of necessary food and drink
to travellers—in the case of which sale, one-fourth of the price was to be
devoted to pious and charitable uses. He prescribed the observance of rest from
the ninth hour on Saturday to sunrise on Monday; and it is said that his
preaching was confirmed by miraculous judgments on some who ventured to profane
this extended Sabbath. But a chronicler tells us that the king and other great
men questioned the truth of the abbot’s doctrine, and that the people feared
them more than God.
The observance of the Lord’s day, and of other holy
days also, is said to have been especially strict in Norway, so that the people
never ventured of their own accord to do anything either great or small.
To the great festivals of the year Trinity Sunday was
now added. It differed from the rest in character, inasmuch as it was not the
commemoration of any event, but was consecrated to a doctrine; yet it seemed a
fitting completion for the circle of festivals, and, although not without some
opposition on the ground of novelty, it succeeded in establishing itself and
has continued to hold its place.
Reverence for the blessed Virgin was continually
rising to a greater and greater excess. The idea of her acting as a mediatrix
for those who might fear to approach the Saviour immediately is inculcated by
St. Bernard. She was spoken of as “Queen of heaven”; the angelic
salutation was repeated as an address to her fifty, a hundred, or even a
thousand times a day, and in monasteries offices were said in her honor from
the time of Gregory VII. As Sundays and festivals were dedicated to God, so
Saturdays and eves were dedicated to St. Mary; and the recitation of her office
on Saturday was ordered by Urban II at the council of Clermont. The new orders
of monks—above all the Cistercians—were under her especial protection. The most
extravagant and hyperbolical language was employed to express her greatness;
while on the other hand, in the vernacular poetry of Germany, she was addressed
in strains which borrowed something from the feelings of chivalry.
The heightened reverence for the Virgin had long
assumed that she was without sin; but it had been supposed, as by Paschasius
Radbert and by Anselm, that she was conceived in sin, and was afterwards
sanctified, either before or after her birth, by the special operation of the
Holy Spirit. A festival was instituted in honour of her conception, and
although it met with opposition in some places, was generally received in
England in the course of the century. But now the opinion began to be broached
that she was herself conceived without sin, and about 1140 the canons of Lyons
proceeded to celebrate the new doctrine by a festival of the Conception, on the
8th of December. By this, Bernard was drawn to write a letter of remonstrance,
in which he states his belief that the Virgin was sanctified in her mother’s
womb, but that Christ alone was conceived without sin. If, he says, we were to
suppose that the Saviour’s mother must have been so conceived in order that she
might be fitted to give him birth, we might be required to suppose the like as
to her parents also on both sides, and so of all her ancestors; and he censures
the institution of such a festival without the sanction 0f the apostolic see.
Other eminent divines of the age took the same view with Bernard; as Peter of
La Celle, who strongly defended him in two letters against a monk of St.
Alban’s named Nicolas; Potho, a monk of Prüm; and the ritualist John Beleth,
who says that the feast of the Virgin's immaculate conception ought to be
suppressed, forasmuch as she was conceived in sin..
The ancient pagan festival of the Saturnalia, with its
wild license and misrule, had affected the Christian celebration of the
Christmas season, as appears by the protests of a chain of witnesses which
reaches down from the fourth century. Out of this arose a class of mock
festivals, in which the rites of religion were parodied in a strange and
startling fashion—at first, perhaps, without any evil intention, but gradually
developing into gross profanity. The Feast of Fools was celebrated in some
places on the Circumcision, and in others on the Epiphany or its octave, when
the subdeacons chose a Bishop of Fools. This prelate was arrayed in
pontificals, and performed a burlesque mass, during which his attendant
minister ate sausages, and carried on all manner of extravagant gambols in
church. In 1198 a papal legate, cardinal Peter, strongly condemned this profane
mummery at Paris, and in the following year it was suppressed in that church by
bishop Eudes of Sully. In the thirteenth century, a still stranger festival of
like kind—the “Feast of Asses”, in mock commemoration of the ass which carried
the infant Saviour into Egypt—was celebrated at Rouen and elsewhere and in
England the boy bishop or abbot was chosen by the choristers of the greater
churches on the feast of St. Nicolas, the patron of children, down to the time
of the Reformation.
The passion for relics was greatly encouraged and
nourished by the crusades, which introduced to the Christians of the West many
saints before unknown to them—such as the virgin Catharine of Alexandria—and
supplied a vast quantity of materials for superstitious reverence. Among the
chief of the relics which now became famous was the “holy dish”, brought
by the Genoese from Caesarea, after the capture of that place in 1101, and
still preserved in the cathedral of their city—a vessel which, although in
reality made of green glass, was believed to be of emerald, and was venerated
as having been used at the last supper. Another was the Veronica—a cloth on
which our Lord was said to have miraculously impressed his countenance while on
his way to Calvary. The Veronica was exhibited in St. Peter's at Rome from the
year 1011, and was connected with a legend that it had been brought to Italy
for the cure of the emperor Tiberius, when afflicted with leprosy, and a saint Veronica
was imagined as the person who handed the cloth to the Saviour. Another relic
of great fame was the seamless coat of our Lord found at Argenteuil in 1156—one
of many coats which claimed the same sacred connection, but distinguished from
the rest as having been made for Him in his childhood by his virgin mother; and
from this age also comes the first authentic mention of the holy coat which the
empress Helena was said to have presented to an imaginary archbishop of her
pretended birthplace, Treves.
To a different class belong the renowned relics at
Cologne—the bodies of the holy three kings, which, as we have already seen,
were translated from Milan by archbishop Reginald, and those of St. Ursula and
the 11,000 virgins. The legend of the British princess and her virgin
companions, who are said to have been martyred by the Huns at Cologne, had been
told by Sigebert of Gemblours, early in the twelfth century, under the date of
453. But when heresy afterwards became rife at Cologne, and miraculous aid was
desirable in opposition to it, some bodies were opportunely found, and were
sent to St. Elizabeth of Schonau, who referred the martyrdom of the virgin company
to the year 238—a date inconsistent with the story of their martyrdom by the
Huns—and had visions of their heavenly glory. In connection with this affair,
it is mentioned that the relics had been suspected, because some persons were
in the habit of practising frauds in such matters for the sake of money; and of
such practices there is abundant evidence.
In the end of the eleventh century, Guibert of
Nogent-sous-Couci was led to compose a treatise “On the Relics of
Saints”,—the immediate provocation being the impudence and the success with
which the monks of St. Medard’s at Soissons displayed a pretended tooth of our
Lord. Guibert altogether denies that such bodily relics of the Saviour could be
genuine; he opposes the practice of disturbing the saints in their graves, and
enclosing their remains in gold and silver; and he speaks without reserve of
the arts by which both relics and saintly reputations were manufactured. As a
specimen of the audacity with which impostures of this kind were carried
through, he mentions that once, while listening to a sermon, he was astonished
by the preacher's pointing at him as a witness for the genuineness of some
crusts which were said to have come from our Lord's own table!, and that,
although he blushed at the falsehood, he allowed it to pass, out of deference
for those who had taken such means of filling their monastic purse. The
superstition which Guibert attacked, however, found a zealous defender in his
contemporary Thiofrid, abbot of Epternach, and continued in undiminished
popularity.
The practice of pilgrimage had produced the great
movement of the crusades, and, after the success of the Latins, the crowds
which flocked to the Holy Land were, for a time, greater than ever. Particular
indulgences were attached to the longer pilgrimages—such as those of Rome,
Compostella, and Jerusalem; and Innocent III complains that, for the sake of
the privileges connected with the Compostella pilgrimage, the scallop-shells
which were the token of it were counterfeited. But warnings continued, as in early
times, to be lifted up by eminent teachers against a reliance on pilgrimage.
Thus Hildebert praises a widow for having chosen, instead of running after the
Saviour’s burial-place, to “follow Him in his burial” by entering a convent,
and remonstrates with count Fulk, of Anjou, for neglecting his duties that he
might go on pilgrimage to Compostella:—“Among the talents which the Householder
hath distributed to his servants”, he says, “no doctor and no scripture
mentions that of wandering round the world”. In like manner, Bernard exhorted
against leaving the duties of home in order to visit the Holy Land; and Peter
of Cluny strongly reproves a monk for intending to set out on pilgrimage. “It
is”, he says, “a greater thing to serve God continually in humility and poverty
than to perform the journey to Jerusalem in pride and luxury. If it be well to
visit Jerusalem, where the feet of our Lord stood, it is far better to pant
after heaven, where He himself is beheld face to face”. It was held that a vow
of pilgrimage was fulfilled by entering a monastic order—that so to vow the
whole life to God was more than the partial vows of pilgrims. Other
commutations for the longer pilgrimages were also sanctioned; thus Calixtus I
allowed the English and Scots, instead of going to Rome, to content themselves
with resorting to St. David’s—two visits to the Welsh sanctuary being reckoned
as equivalent to one pilgrimage to Rome. And in this, as in other things, the
idea of performing duties by proxy was introduced; for instance, a lady left
estates to a Danish convent in 1272 on condition that, for the good of her
soul, the monks should send off three pilgrims to Jerusalem, Rome, and Aarhuus.
The belief in the continued performance of miracles
was unabated; and special collections of miraculous stories were formed, as by
Peter of Cluny, Herbert, archbishop of Torre, in Sardinia, and in the next
century by Caesarius of Heisterbach; to which may be added the books on the
miracles of St. Thomas of Canterbury, by William of Canterbury and Benedict of
Peterborough. Yet Abelard ventured to deride the miracles of his most famous
contemporaries, such as Norbert and Bernard—declaring that they did not rely on
their prayers alone for a cure, but sometimes employed medicine in simple
cases; that they sometimes ludicrously failed; and that all such failures were
set down to the unbelief of the people, while the cures were ascribed to the
holiness of those who wrought them..
The system of penance became more and more widely
different from what it had originally been. Not only did pecuniary commutations
hold their ground (especially in England), notwithstanding all the prohibitions
which councils could utter against them, but other things of a new kind
contributed to destroy the ancient system. Among these new influences, the
pope's assumption of a right to interfere with the penitential discipline in
every diocese has been already mentioned. But most especially the penitential discipline
suffered from a system which now superseded the penitential books of earlier
times—the system of indulgences which were granted by way of inducement to
perform some service for the church. These, unlike the indulgences of former
days, were not limited to the forgiveness of particular sins, but extended to
all. Thus Gregory VII, in the names of St. Peter and St. Paul, promised
absolution of all their sins to those who should take part with Rudolf of
Swabia against Henry IV; and Victor III endeavoured by a like promise to enlist
men for a religious war against the Saracens of Africa. This system was brought
into its fullest operation by the crusades, from the time when Urban II at
Clermont proclaimed a plenary indulgence for all who should share in the holy
war. These indulgences, indeed, were intended as remissions of those temporal
penalties only which it was believed that the sinner must undergo either in
this life or in purgatory; but the people in general understood them, and
persisted in understanding them, as promises of eternal forgiveness, while they
overlooked any conditions of repentance or charity which had been annexed to
them. And the license which marked the lives of the crusaders, and of the
Latins who settled in the Holy Land, is an unquestionable proof of the sense in
which the papal offers were interpreted.
In addition to the enterprises in which life was
risked, and to which, therefore, the ancient belief in the cleansing power of
martyrdom might be extended, indulgences of lesser degrees were granted by
bishops for all manner of small performances—such as the recitation of a
certain prayer before a certain altar, visiting a church on a certain day,
pilgrimages to relics and miraculous pictures, or the like; and in furtherance
of local undertakings, such as the building or enlargement of a church, the building
of a bridge, the making of a road, or the enclosure of a forest. Payment
towards the expenses of the holy war was rewarded with indulgences in
proportion to its amount; and the allowance of indulgence was greatly
increased. Thus an act which in an earlier age would have earned an indulgence
of forty days, was now rewarded with absolution from a hundred years or more of
purgatorial pain. There were, however, those who, as Abelard, and Stephen,
abbot of Obaize, did not hesitate to express their objections to the trade
which was driven in indulgences, or their doubts as to the efficacy of theses
The question whether confession to a priest were necessary in order to
forgiveness of sin was often discussed. Both Gratian and Peter Lombard give the
arguments on each side; Gratian, with some qualification, decides against the
necessity, while the Master of the Sentences takes the opposite view. Peter
teaches, as Hildebert had before taught, that true repentance must consist of
three parts—the compunction of the heart, the confession of the mouth, and the
satisfaction of work; but he holds that, if the assistance of a priest cannot
be had, confession to a lay Christian is allowable. As to the effect of
priestly absolution, he thinks that the priest cannot forgive sins, but can
only declare them to be remitted or retained; that, although we may have been
forgiven by God, yet absolution by the priest's judgment is necessary “in the
face of the church”; but that this absolution is valid in so far only as it
agrees with the Divine judgment. This opinion is spoken of by Richard of St.
Victor as frivolous and ridiculous; yet Richard himself did not venture to
maintain that the priest had absolute power to forgive as with God’s authority;
and as yet the form of absolution continued to be precatory, not declaratory.
State of Learning
The rise of great schools, and the increase of
intellectual activity which marked the twelfth century, have been already
noticed. The foundation of the university of Oxford has been referred to
Alfred; that of Paris, to Charlemagne; while Bologna has been carried back, by
fable which has called forgery to its support, as far as the reign of
Theodosius II, in the year 433. For Cambridge too has been claimed an origin
from Sigebert king of Essex, in the seventh century, from the British hero
Arthur, in the fifth, and even from some date as early at least as the second
century, when the professors of Cambridge are said to have converted king
Lucius to the Christian faith. But in truth the oldest of these famous
seminaries cannot be traced to any earlier time than the twelfth century; nor
can any formal foundation of them be shown, inasmuch as they did not owe their
origin to any acts of papal or sovereign authority, but to the spontaneous
concourse of lecturers and students. Their distinct organization and the bestowal
of privileges by papal, imperial, or other charters, followed on the
establishment of each body, as regulation became necessary, and as privileges
were felt to be desirable; and at a later time the sanction of popes and
princes was called in to give new universities a rank equal with those of
earlier foundation, and especially to secure a general recognition for the
degrees which they conferred. The name of University, by which these great
schools became distinguished, was not derived from their teaching of
universal learning, but from the usage of the Roman law, in which it signified
a corporation. Thus, according to the varieties of constitution, the
“university” might consist of the masters only (as at Paris), or might include
the students also (as at Bologna); a single faculty might form an university,
as we And the expressions universitas artistariun (i.e. the
professors and students of the arts included in the trivium and quadrivium)
and universitas juristarum; and that which is popularly styled
the university of a place might in reality consist of two or more
universities—as at Bologna, from the time of Innocent VI., there were four
universities, each under its own rector—two of them being devoted to law, one
to medicine and philosophy, and one to theology.
The story that the knowledge of Roman law, after
having been extinct for ages, was revived by the discovery of a celebrated copy
of the Pandects at Amalfi on the taking of that place by Lothair in 1135—that
the emperor presented the book to his allies, the Pisans, in whose city it was
long preserved with reverence—and that, at the instance of the great jurist
Irnerius, he decreed that all men should thenceforth obey the Roman law
only—appears to be utterly fabulous. For traces of acquaintance with the Roman
law are to be found throughout all the ages which had intervened since the time
of Justinian, and not only were other copies of the Pandects known before the
date of the alleged discovery at Amalfi, but there is reason to believe that
the book in question had been at Pisa long before that date— perhaps even from
the days of Justinian himself.
The increased study of Roman law would seem rather to
have grown out of the needs of the Lombard cities, which, long before they
extorted an acknowledgment of their liberties from Frederick Barbarossa, set up
pretensions to independence, and wished for a system of law more suitable to
their circumstances than the barbaric codes. Moreover, the ancient civil law
was regarded as having a claim on all the West beyond the immediate occasion,
inasmuch as from the time of Charlemagne the states of western Europe had all
been considered as forming one empire. Hence arose the law-school of Bologna,
under Irnerius, who has been supposed by some to have been a German, but was
more probably a native of the city; and the first formal recognition of it is
in a rescript which Frederick issued at Roncaglia in 1158. By this document
special privileges are bestowed on the schools. The students, and the
messengers or posts by whom they kept up communication with their homes, are to
travel without hindrance; it is ordered that no one shall be held liable for
the misdeeds or for the debts of his countrymen; the students are exempted from
the jurisdiction of the secular magistrates, and are subjected to the judgment
of their professors or of the bishop.
The method of teaching and the writings of Irnerius
and his followers, the “Four Doctors of Bologna”, excited a desire for a
compendium of church-law, which had been regarded as a branch of theology and
the need of such a work was the more felt, because the Bolognese lawyers were
imperialist and antipapalist in their principles. Collections of ecclesiastical
law had, indeed, been formed in times not remote, by Regino, abbot of Prüm, by
Burkhard, bishop of Worms, by Ivo of Chartres, and others. But these collections
were not reduced to a system, and one great purpose of the digest which was now
compiled by Gratian, a monk of Bologna, may be understood from the title which
was given to it (although possibly not by the author), “A Concordance of
discordant Rules”. In this the matter was classified under proper heads; the
various sentences of councils, popes, and fathers were cited, and harmony was
as far as possible established between them, while Gratian, unlike the earlier
compilers, added to the usefulness of the book by introducing his own views and
“dicta”. The genuineness of the False Decretals was assumed, and their
principles were carried throughout the work, which thus served to establish
those principles instead of the older canonical system. The Decretum (as
it was generally styled) was recommended not only by its superiority over other
collections in method and completeness, but by the circumstance that it
emanated from the city which was the chief seat of legal science. It was
valuable as preserving many important fragments which would otherwise have
perished, and became popular as the source of much second-hand learning which
is displayed by writers of the middle ages. But it abounds in uncritical
blunders, and the compiler's attempts at a harmony of authorities were after
all so far from satisfactory that a Cistercian chapter in 1188 ordered the book
to be locked up, lest the promiscuous reading of it should propagate errors.
Eugenius III is said to have approved the Decretum in 1152,
and, although this statement seems to be very questionable, the importance of
Gratian’s compilation for the papacy was speedily understood. It became the
great text-book of the subject; within a few years after its publication,
special professorships of canon law were established both at Bologna and at
Paris; the faculty of canonists or decretalists arose in rivalry to that of
legists, and each conferred degrees on its members. From this time the popes,
if they wished to give currency to new decrees, had only to send them to the
professors of the chief universities, by whom they were eagerly caught up,
expounded, and disseminated through the agency of their pupils.
The university of Paris owes its origin to William of
Champeaux, Abelard, William of Conches, and their contemporaries, whose
lectures attracted a great concourse of hearers to the city; and it speedily
grew to such an extent that the number of students is said to have exceeded
that of the citizens. The earliest documents which recognize the existence of
the university are two decretals of Alexander III. Celestine III exempted the
students in all questions as to money from the jurisdiction of the secular magistrates,
and ordered that they should be judged according to the canon law, before the
bishop, or the abbot of St. Genevieve, and in the last year of the century, in
consequence of a great quarrel between the students and the citizens, a grant
of privileges was bestowed by Philip Augustus, who acknowledges the office of
rector as already existing. As the cathedral school had been the germ of the
university, the chancellor of the cathedral was its superintendent; and hence,
in other universities founded on the same model, the chief officer bore the
title of chancellor. The students of Paris were divided into four nations—a
division which was afterwards imitated elsewhere. This arrangement is said to
have been fully established before 1169, when Henry II of England offered to
refer his differences with archbishop Becket to the judgment of the university;
but the evidence appears unsatisfactory.
As Bologna was the great school of law, so Paris took
the lead in theology; but it also became eminent in the other faculties.
Giraldus Cambrensis, who had studied at Bologna as well as at Paris, tells us
that both civil and canon law were best taught in the French university, and
quotes the opinion of another, that Paris was the best school for every sort of
learning which might be taken up there; and whereas, in John of Salisbury's
time, it was usual for the students of medicine to repair from Paris to Montpellier
or Salerno, which were then in the highest fame as medical schools, Paris
itself under Philip Augustus, was provided with facilities of all sorts for
teaching medical science.
England bore its share in the intellectual progress of
the century. Englishmen, such as Robert Pulleyn, Robert, who, from the place
where he lectured, was styled of Melun, and John of Salisbury, became famous
abroad for their learning; and to this time is to be ascribed the real origin
of the university of Oxford. The earliest fact which seems to be certain in the
literary history of Oxford is the establishment of Vacarius, a Lombard, as
professor of civil law there, under the patronage of Archbishop Theobald, in
1149; from which we may infer that it was already known as a place of study. It
is remarkable that John of Salisbury, although he mentions Vacarius, says
nothing of his having taught at Oxford; but Giraldus Cambrensis, about the year
1185, speaks of Oxford as the place most distinguished in England for the
excellence of its clerks. The sister university of Cambridge, according to the
continuation of Ingulf which bears the name of Peter of Blois, existed as early
as 1109, when Joffrid, abbot of Croyland, taught there. But the authority is
worthless, and the statement is encumbered by the difficulty that Averroes,
whose works Joffrid is said to have expounded, was then unborn. It is not until
the beginning of the thirteenth century that any trustworthy mention of
Cambridge as a seat of learning is to be found.
The theologians of the western church in these times
laboured under the disadvantage of being unacquainted with the original
languages of Scripture. Anselm appears to have been ignorant of Greek;
Abelard’s knowledge of it seems to have been limited to such Greek words as are
to be found in Latin writers, and he avows that he was unable to read some
works of Aristotle and Plato because they had not been translated into Latin;
John of Salisbury, although his knowledge of the classical Latin authors vas
unrivalled among his contemporaries, on meeting with the word ousiain
a treatise of St Ambrose, was unable either to understand it or to find any
western teacher who could explain it to him. In consequence of this ignorance,
the expositors of Scripture did not so much aim at discovering its real sense
as at forcing into it such matter as they supposed to be edifying; and hence
they not only disguised all that they treated by a mystical system of
interpretation, but in their choice of subjects there was an especial fondness
for the obscurest books, such as the Canticles, Ezekiel, and the Apocalypse.
The theologians of the time were divided into three classes—those who, like
Bernard, followed the ancient expositors; the more speculative and adventurous
thinkers, of whom Abelard is the chief representative; and a middle class, who,
after the example of Lanfranc and Anselm, endeavoured to combine original
thought with a deference to antiquity. These three classes were respectively
known as Positives, Scholastics (a word which, from having been used as a
general term for learned men, was now applied more especially to signify the
professors of philosophical theology), and Sententiaries.
A service like that which Gratian had rendered to
ecclesiastical law was performed for theology by Peter Lombard, a native of
Novara, who, after having long taught with great reputation at Paris, became
bishop of that city in 1159, and died in 1164. The name of Sentences had before
been given to the collections of ancient authorities which had been popular
since the seventh century. Such a collection of opinions had been formed by
Abelard, under the title of “Yes and No”, with a view of exhibiting their
contradictions; but Peter Lombard, on the contrary, in his “Four Books of
Sentences” aimed a harmonizing them. He discusses questions down to those
raised by Abelard, although without naming the authors; and the authorities
which he cites come down to the time of Bede. The method which was observed in
the work gave it the charm of novelty, while in substance it was intended to
accord with antiquity; and it speedily obtained a great popularity. The “Master
of the Sentences”, indeed, was not exempt from censure; Gerhoh of Reichersperg
denounced him to Alexander III, and one of his own pupils, John of Cornwall,
attacked him both while living and after death. An opinion imputed to him—that
our Lord, in so far as He is man, is nothing—was brought before the council of
Tours in 1163, and before the Lateran council of 1179, and was condemned by
Alexander, who directed the French bishops to teach “that Christ, as He is
perfect God, so also is He perfect man, consisting, according to his manhood,
of soul and body”. Joachim of Fiore also charged Peter with heterodoxy, as has
been already mentioned; but the Fourth Lateran council in 1215 pronounced in
favour of the Master of the Sentences; and from that time his reputation and
authority were greatly increased. Lectures and commentaries on his “Sentences”
were composed in vast abundance, and among the authors of them were the most
eminent teachers of the church; England alone is said to have produced no less
than a hundred and sixty-four writers who illustrated this famous text-book.
Yet the work, while it aimed at settling every point of doctrine, was often
found rather to suggest questions than to answer them; and in the year 1300 the
professors of Paris extracted from it sixteen propositions as to which the
Master’s opinions were not generally held.
The school of St. Victor at Paris, founded by William
of Champeaux, while it endeavoured to reconcile the scholastic method of
inquiry with practical piety, was especially opposed to the dialectical
subtleties which were now in fashion, and was itself inclined to mysticism. The
most famous teachers of this school were Hugh—a Saxon, according to some
writers, while others suppose him a native of Ypres—who died in 1141; Richard,
a Scotsman, who died in 1170 and Walter, who, in 1174, wrote against “The
Four Labyrinths of Gaul”, under which name he denounced Abelard, Gilbert de la
Porrée, Peter Lombard, and his disciple Peter of Poitiers.
Other writers, who were no enemies to letters or
philosophy, agreed in censuring the dialectical arts which, from having been
regarded with suspicion in the preceding century, were now the great weapon of
the most popular teachers. John of Salisbury complains of the modern systems of
study as ruinous to solid knowledge, and describes a professor whom he styles
Cornificius as teaching his pupils to despise all that was ancient, to neglect
the old methods of learning, and to consider themselves accomplished philosophers
after a course no longer than the time in which young birds become fledged.
Other writers of the age agree with John in their complaints as to the waste of
time in speculations, the fondness for words rather than things, the abuse of
dialectical art in mere quibbling, the too prevalent separation between
knowledge and practice in those who professed themselves followers of
literature, the tendency to hurry on to the higher subjects without having laid
a substantial foundation. It was complained that Scripture was neglected in
comparison of the new and showy kinds of knowledge, that the study of law drew
men away from that of other literature; and, useful as the labours of Gratian
and Peter Lombard were, when rightly employed, they tended, by offering a short
and easy way to an appearance of familiarity with earlier writers, to
discourage any endeavour after a deeper acquaintance with the original works
from which their materials were derived.
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