BOOK VI.
FROM THE DEPOSITION OF POPE GREGORY VI. TO THE DEATH
OF POPE CELESTINE III, A.D. 1046-1198.
CHAPTER VIII.
FROM THE CONCORDAT OF WORMS TO THE DEATH OF POPE
ADRIAN IV.
A.D. 1122-1159
1
BERNARD DE CLAIRVAUX
ALTHOUGH the concordat of Worms had been welcome both
to the papal and to the imperialist parties as putting an end to the contest
which had long raged between them, the terms of the compromise embodied in it
did not remain in force beyond the death of Henry V, which took place at
Utrecht in May 1125. Henry had not taken the precaution of providing himself
with a successor to the empire or to the German kingdom, nor was there any one
who could pretend to election as being his natural heir; and the princes of
Germany saw in the circumstances of the vacancy an opportunity for gaining
advantages at the expense of the crown. A letter is extant, addressed by such
of them as had assembled for the emperor's funeral at Spires to their absent
brethren, whom they exhort to remember the oppressions under which both the
church and the kingdom had suffered, and to take care that the future sovereign
should be one under whom both church and kingdom might be free from “so heavy a
yoke of slavery”. It is supposed that this letter was drawn up by Archbishop
Adalbert of Mayence, the bitter and vindictive enemy of the late emperor, and
in the election of a new king this prelate’s influence was exerted in the
spirit which the document had indicated. For this election sixty thousand men
of the four chief nations of Germany—the Franconians, the Saxons, the Swabians,
and the Bavarians—assembled near Mainz, in the month of August, encamping on
both sides of the Rhine, while the conferences of their leaders were held
within the city. The attendance of prelates and nobles was such as had not been
seen within the memory of living men; and under the direction of a papal
legate, who was present, it was settled that the election should be conducted
in a form analogous to that of a pope—that, as the pope was chosen by the
cardinals, and the choice was ratified by the inferior clergy, so the king
should be elected by ten representatives from each of the four chief nations,
and their choice should be confirmed by the rest. Three candidates were proposed—
Frederick, duke of Swabia, Lothair, duke of Saxony, and Leopold, marquis of
Austria; to whom some authorities add the name of a fourth—Charles “the Good”,
count of Flanders. Both Lothair and Leopold, however, professed, with strong
protestations, a wish to decline the honour; and it appeared as if the election
were about to fall on Frederick, the son of Frederick of Hohenstaufen, who in
the reign of Henry IV had suddenly emerged from the undistinguished crowd of
German nobles, and had been rewarded for his services with the dukedom of
Swabia and the hand of the emperor s daughter. But the younger Frederick was
obnoxious to the hierarchical party on account of his connection with the
Franconian emperors, whose family estates he had inherited; while many of the
lay princes, as well as the clergy, were unwilling to give themselves a king
who was likely to assert too much of independence. Through Adalbert’s artful
policy it was contrived that the election should fall on Lothair, who, while he
still protested, struggled, and threatened, was raised on the shoulders of his
partisans and proclaimed as king.
Lothair, who was already advanced in life, had been
conspicuous for the steadiness of his opposition to the late dynasty, and on
that account was popular with its enemies; he was respected for his courage and
honesty; and, after a slight display of opposition in some quarters, his
election was received with general acquiescence. But, although he had always
professed himself a champion of the church, the clerical party, which had borne
so large a part in his advancement, held it necessary to bind him by new conditions.
It was stipulated that the church should have full liberty of election
to bishoprics, without being controlled, “as formerly”, by the presence of
the sovereign, or restrained by any recommendation; and that the emperor, after
the consecration of a prelate so elected, should, without any payment, invest
him with the regalia by the sceptre, and should receive of him an oath of
fidelity “saving his order”— a phrase which was interpreted as excluding the
ancient feudal form of homage. No mention was made of the concordat of Worms,
by which the presence of the prince at elections had been allowed, and, while
the formality of homage had been left untouched, it had been provided that, in
the case of German bishops, investiture should precede consecration; and this
disregard of the reservations made at Worms in behalf of the crown was
justified by the hierarchical party under the pretence that they had been
granted to Henry V alone, and not to his successors. A further proof of the
change which had taken place in the relations of the papal and the imperial
powers is furnished by the circumstance that two bishops were sent to Rome,
with a prayer that the pope would confirm the election of the king.
The pontificate of Calixtus II was distinguished by
the vigour of his home administration. At the Lateran Council of 1123, he
enacted canons against the invasion of ecclesiastical property and the
conversion of churches into fortresses. He suppressed the practice of carrying
arms within the city, which had grown up during the long contest with the
empire, and had become the provocation to continual and bloody affrays; and in
other ways he exerted himself successfully against the lawlessness and disorder
which had prevailed among the Romans. On the death of Calixtus, in December
1124, a cardinal named Theobald Buccapecus (or Boccadipecora) was chosen as his
successor, and assumed the name of Celestine; but, after he had been invested
with the papal robe, and while the cardinals were engaged in singing the Te
Deum for the election, Robert Frangipani, the most powerful of the
Roman nobles, burst with a band of armed men into the church where they were
assembled, and insisted that Lambert, cardinal bishop of Ostia (a prudent and
learned man, who had acted as the late pope’s legate at Worms), should be
chosen. Theobald, although his election was unimpeachable, and although he had
received the vote of Lambert himself, thought it well to prevent a schism by
voluntarily withdrawing from the contest; and Lambert, having some days later
been elected in a more regular manner, held the papacy, under the name of
Honorius II, until 1130. But on his death a serious schism arose, through the
rival elections of Gregory, cardinal of St. Angelo, and Peter Leonis, cardinal
of St. Mary in the Trastevere, the grandson of a wealthy Jew, who had been
baptized under the pontificate of Leo IX, and had taken at his baptism the name
of that pope. The “Leonine family”, or Pierleoni (as they were called), had
since risen to great power in Rome; their wealth had been increased by the
continued practice of those national arts which they had not renounced with the
faith of their forefathers; while their political ability had been displayed in
high offices, and in the conduct of important negotiations. For a time the
Jewish pedigree seems to have been almost forgotten, and their genealogy (like
that of other great medieval families, and probably with equal truth) was
afterwards deduced from the illustrious Anicii and the imperial Julii of
ancient Rome. The future antipope himself had studied at Paris, had been a
monk of Cluny, had been raised to the dignity of cardinal by Paschal II, and
had been employed as a legate in England and in France—on one occasion as the
colleague of his future rival, Gregory. The circumstances of the election are
variously reported; but from a comparison of the reports it would appear that
Gregory (who styled himself Innocent II) was chosen in the church of St.
Gregory on the Caelian, immediately after the death of Honorius, with such
haste that the proper formalities were neglected; whereas the election of
Peter, which took place in St. Mark's at a later hour of the same day, was more
regular, and was supported by a majority of the cardinals. And the inference in
favour of Peter (or Anacletus II) is strengthened by the circumstance that his
opponent's partisans, while they continually insist on the question of personal
merit, are studious to avoid that of legality as to the circumstances of the
election.
The rival popes were not, as in former cases,
representatives of opposite principles, but merely of the rival interests of
the Frangipani and the Leonine factions. Each of them, at his election, had
gone through the pretence of professing unwillingness to accept the papacy; and
each of them now endeavoured to strengthen himself for the assertion of his
title to it. In Rome itself Anacletus prevailed. His enemies tell us that not
only was he supported by the power and wealth of his family, but that he had
formerly swelled his treasures by all the corrupt means which were open to him
as a cardinal or a legate; that he plundered the treasury, that he compelled
pilgrims by imprisonment and hunger to submit to merciless exactions, that he
melted down the plate of churches, even employing Jews to break up chalices and
crucifixes when Christian tradesmen shrank from such impiety. His connection
with the hated and unbelieving race is eagerly caught up as matter of reproach;
and he is charged with scandalous and even revolting dissoluteness. That
Innocent is not assailed by similar reproaches may have been the effect either
of superior character in himself or of greater forbearance in the party which
opposed him. The wealth of Anacletus was employed in raising soldiers and in
corrupting the venal Romans; he got possession of St. Peter’s by force;
and in no long time the nobles who had adhered to Innocent, and had sheltered
his partisans in their fortified houses—even the Frangipani themselves—were
gained over by the rival pope or were terrified into submission. Finding
himself without support in his own city, Innocent resolved to throw himself on
that kingdom which had lately afforded a refuge to his predecessor Gelasius; he
therefore left Conrad, cardinal-bishop of Sabina, as his representative at
Rome, sailed down the Tiber in the end of May, and after having spent some time
at Pisa and at Genoa, he landed in September at St. Gilles in Provence. The
course which the king and the church of France were to take in the dispute as
to the papacy was mainly determined by two abbots, who stood in the highest
repute for sanctity, Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter of Cluny.
Bernard, the third son of a knight named Tesselin, was
born at Fontaines, near Dijon, in 1091. His mother, Aletha, or Alice, was a
woman of devout character, and dedicated her children—six sons and one
daughter—in their infancy to God; but Bernard—a gentle, thoughtful, studious,
and silent boy—was the one in whom she placed the strongest hope of seeing her
desire fulfilled. As he was entering on youth, Aletha died, taking part to the
last moment of her life in the devotions of the clergy who were gathered around
her bed; but her influence remained with him. The earnestness of his resistance
to the temptations of youth was shown by standing for hours up to the neck in
chilling water; and other stories to the same purpose are related of him. He
believed that his mother often appeared to him in visions, for the purpose of
warning him lest his studies (like those of many others in that time) should
degenerate into a mere pursuit of literature, apart from the cultivation of
religion; and, after much mental distress, the crisis of his life took place as
he was on his way to visit his brothers, who were engaged in a military
expedition under the duke of Burgundy. Entering a church by the wayside, he
“poured out his heart like water before the sight of God”; he resolved to
devote himself to the monastic state, and forthwith endeavoured to bring his
nearest relations to join in the resolution. The first of his converts was his
uncle Waldric, a distinguished and powerful warrior; and one by one his five
brothers also yielded. The eldest, Guy, who was married and had children, was
restrained for a time by his wife’s unwillingness; but a sudden illness
convinced her that it “was hard for her to kick against the pricks”. To another
brother, Gerard, who was strenuous in his refusal, Bernard declared that
nothing but affliction would bring him to a right mind, and, laying his finger
on a certain place in his side, he told him that even there a lance should
penetrate. The prophecy was fulfilled by Gerard’s being wounded and made
prisoner; and, on recovering his liberty (not without the assistance of a
miracle) he joined the company which Bernard was forming. As Bernard at the
head of his converts was leaving the family mansion in order to fullfill their
resolution, the eldest brother observed the youngest, Nivard, at play, and told
him that the inheritance would now all fall to him;—“Is it, then, heaven for
you and earth for me?” said the boy, “that is no fair division”; and he too,
after a time, broke away from his father to join the rest. The old man himself
followed, and at length the devotion of the family to the monastic life was
completed by the adhesion of the sister, who renounced the married state, with
the wealth and the vanities in which she had delighted. For six months the
brothers resided in a house at Chatillon, for the purpose of settling their
worldly affairs before entering the cloister. Others in the meantime were
induced to join them, and in 1113 Bernard, with more than thirty companions,
presented himself for admission at Citeaux—a monastery which he chose for the
sake of its rigour, and as offering the best hope of escaping the notice of
men. The progress of the Cistercian order had been slow, on account of the
severity of its discipline, so that Stephen Harding, the third abbot, had
almost despaired of spiritual offspring to carry on his system. But the vision
by which he had been consoled, of a multitude washing their white garments in a
fountain was now to be rapidly fulfilled.
By the accession of Bernard and his company, the
original monastery became too narrow to contain its inmates, and in the same
year the “eldest daughter”, the monastery of La Ferté, was founded. This
was followed in 1114 by the foundation of Pontigny; and in 1115 Bernard himself
was chosen to lead forth a fresh colony to a place which had been the haunt of
a band of robbers, and known as “The Valley of Wormwood”, but which now
exchanged its name for that of Clairvaux—The Bright Valley. For a time, the
hardships which the little community had to bear were excessive. They suffered
from cold and from want of clothing; they were obliged to live on porridge made
of beech-leaves; and when the season of necessity was past, their voluntary
mortifications were such as to strike all who saw them with astonishment. Their
bread, wrung by their labour from an ungracious soil, was “not so much branny
as earthy”; their food (it is said) had no savour but what was given to it by
hunger or by the love of God; everything that could afford pleasure to the
appetite was regarded as poison. A monk of another order, who visited
Clairvaux, carried off a piece of the bread as a curiosity, and used to show it
with expressions of wonder that men, and yet more, that such men, could live on
such provisions. But we are told that miracles came to the aid of the monks.
When they were in the extremity of need, opportune supplies of money
unexpectedly arrived; in a famine, when they undertook to feed the poor of the neighbourhood,
their corn was miraculously multiplied; and from these assistances they drew a
confidence in the Divine protection, so that they ceased to disturb their abbot
with anxieties about worldly things.
Bernard himself carried his mortifications to an
extreme of rigour. He prayed standing, until his knees and his feet failed him
through weariness; he fasted until his digestion was so deranged that to eat
was a torture to him; he grudged the scanty time which he allowed himself for
sleep, as being wasted in a state of death. He shared beyond his strength in
the ruder labours of the monks, such as the work of the fields and the carrying
of wood. “It was”, says one of his biographers, “as if a lamb were yoked to the
plough and compelled to drag it”. Much of his time was spent in study; but,
although he read the orthodox expositors, he declared that he preferred to
learn the sense of Scripture from itself, that his best teachers were the oaks
and beeches among which he meditated in solitude. By the severity of his
exercises, it is said that he had extinguished his bodily senses; for many days
together he ate blood, supposing it to be butter; he drank oil without knowing
it from water; after having spent a year at Citeaux, he could not tell whether
the roof of the novices chamber was vaulted or not, nor whether the east end of
the church had two windows or three; and for a whole day he walked along the
shore of the Leman lake without being aware that any water was near. Hearing
that his life was in danger from his excessive mortifications, William of
Champeaux, bishop of Châlons on the Marne, by whom he had been ordained,
repaired to Citeaux, and, prostrating himself before the abbots of the order,
who were assembled in a general chapter, requested that Bernard might be
committed to his care for a year. The request was granted, and the bishop
placed the abbot in a small hut outside his monastery, “like those usually made
for lepers at the crossings of the highways”, with orders that he should not be
disquieted with business or allowed to indulge in his usual austerities. By
this (although the bishop’s orders were but imperfectly obeyed) Bernard’s life
was probably saved; but, when the year was at an end, he plunged into ascetic
exercises more violently than before, as if to compensate for his forced
relaxations. In later years, Bernard expressed disapprobation of such excess in
mortification as that by which he had weakened his own body and impaired his
vigour yet the appearance of his pale face and macerated form, the contrast of
bodily weakness with inward strength, contributed greatly to enhance the effect
of his powerful voice and his gushing flow of language, his strong conviction,
and the burning fervour with which he spoke. To persons of every class he knew
how to address himself in the style most suitable to their understanding and
feelings and over all kinds of men, from the sovereign to the serf, he
exercised an irresistible power. Whenever he went forth from his solitude, says
a biographer, he carried with him, like Moses, from his intercourse with
heaven, a glory of more than mortal purity, so that men looked on him with awe,
and his words sounded to them as the voice of an angel. To his other means of influence
was added the reputation of prophetic visions and of miraculous gifts. Not only
is it said that he healed by his touch, but there are many such stories as that
bread which he had blessed produced supernatural effects both on the bodies and
on the minds of those who ate it; that water in which he had washed his hands
cured the ailment of a man who had been charged in a vision to drink it; that
his stole cast out a devil; and that a blind man recovered his sight by placing
himself on a spot where the saintly abbot had stood. Of the reality of his
miracles Bernard himself appears to have been convinced, and we are told that
they were a matter of perplexity to him; but that, after much consideration, he
concluded that they were granted for the good of others, and were no ground for
supposing himself to be holier or more favoured than other men. When
recommended by such a man, the rigour which at first had deterred from the
Cistercian order became a powerful attraction; Clairvaux was beset by
candidates for admission; the number of its inmates rose to seven hundred,
among whom the king’s brother Henry, afterward archbishop of Reims, was to be
seen submitting to the same severe discipline as the rest; and the number of
monasteries founded by Bernard, in person or through his disciples, amounted to
a hundred and sixty, scattered over every country of the west, but subject, as
was believed, to a preternatural knowledge of their affairs which enabled him
to watch over all. Wives were afraid for their husbands, and mothers hid their
sons, lest they should fall under the fascination of Bernard’s eloquence, and
desert the world for the cloister. As the chief representative of the age’s
feelings, the chief model of the character which it most revered, he found
himself, apparently without design, and even unconsciously, elevated to a
position of such influence as no ecclesiastic, either before or since his time,
has attained. Declining the dignities to which he saw a multitude of his
followers promoted, the abbot of Clairvaux was for a quarter of a century the
real soul and director of the papacy; he guided the policy of emperors and
kings, and swayed the deliberations of councils; nay, however little his
character and the training of his own mind might have fitted him for such a
work, the authority of his sanctity was such as even to control the
intellectual development of the age which owned him as its master.
In the schism which had now arisen, Bernard zealously
espoused the interest of Innocent. At a council which king Lewis summoned at
Étampes for the consideration of the question, the abbot of Clairvaux is said
to have spoken as if by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost; and the assembly, in
accordance with his opinion, pronounced in favour of Innocent—not, apparently,
as having been the most regularly elected (for it is said that the notorious
disorderliness of Roman elections led them to pay little regard to this point),
but mainly on the ground of his superior personal merit.
Unequalled as Bernard’s influence became, however,
perhaps that of Peter “the Venerable” was at this time yet more important to
Innocent. For Anacletus had himself been a monk of Cluny, and had reckoned on
the support of his order; so that the ready and spontaneous declaration of the
abbot in behalf of Innocent inflicted the severest blow on the rival claimant
of the papacy. And the character of Peter was such as to give all weight to his
decision. Elected to the headship of his order at the age of thirty, he had
recovered Cluny from the effects of the disorders caused by his predecessor,
Pontius, and had once more established its reputation as a seat of piety,
learning, and arts. In him the monastic spirit had not extinguished the human
affections, but was combined with a mildness, a tolerance, and a charity which
he was able to reconcile with the strictest orthodoxy. The reputation of the
“venerable” abbot was such that emperors, kings, and high ecclesiastical
personages revered his judgment; and when it became known that Innocent had
reached Cluny with a train of sixty horses, provided by the abbot for his
conveyance, the effect of this signal declaration against the Cluniac antipope
was widely and strongly felt. At Cluny Innocent spent eleven days, and on the
25th of October, the anniversary of the dedication of the high altar by Urban
II, he consecrated the new church of the monastery. There he was welcomed in
the name of the French king by Suger, abbot of St. Denys; and in the beginning
of 1131 he was received by Lewis himself at Fleury, with the deepest
demonstrations of respect. With a view of enlisting Henry of England in the
same cause, Bernard had undertaken a journey into his continental territory;
and, notwithstanding the opposition of many prelates, who are said to have
represented that Innocent, as a fugitive, would be a burden to the king and to
his people, the abbot had met with his wonted success. On Henry's
hesitating,—“Are you afraid”, asked Bernard, “that you may sin by giving your
obedience to Innocent? Think how you may answer for your other sins, and let
this rest on me!”. The king’s reluctance was overcome, and he accompanied
Bernard to Chartres, where Innocent received his assurances of support, with
the magnificent presents which accompanied them.
Anacletus had proposed that the question between
himself and his rival should be decided by an ecclesiastical council or by the
emperor; but the proposal was declined by Innocent, on the ground that he was
already rightful pope. Each party continued, by strenuous exertions, to
endeavour to enlist adherents. The cardinals who supported Innocent wrote to
Lothair, that, after their election had been made at the third hour, the Jewish
antipope was chosen at the sixth—the hour when the Redeemer was crucified by the
Jews, and when a thick darkness overspread the world. They dwell on his alleged
impieties and other misdeeds; they assure Lothair that the whole East joins in
anathematizing the pretender, and they entreat the king of the Romans himself
to support their caused
With no less eagerness and confidence, Anacletus endeavoured
to make interest in all quarters. He insisted on the validity of his election,
which he described as unanimous, although he admitted that he was opposed by a
few sons of Belial, on whom he lavishes all the treasures of ecclesiastical
abuse. He reminds some to whom he writes of their ancient friendship with his
father; to others he recalls his own friendly relations with them; to the
Cluniacs, his connection with their order and its chief monastery. He, too,
boasts of his powerful supporters—that he is acknowledged throughout the whole
of Rome, and that the East is with him and it would seem that he endeavoured to
verify this boast by a letter to the king of Jerusalem, in which he vaguely
promises to do great things for the holy city. But the success of these
endeavours was very small. For a time bishops of the opposite parties contended
in dioceses, and rival abbots disputed the headship of monasteries but the
great orders all declared in favour of Innocent. The letters which Anacletus
addressed to princes and prelates remained without acknowledgment, and the only
secular power which he was able to secure to his side was that of the southern
Normans. The position of the rivals was expressed by a verse which spoke of
Peter as having Rome, while Gregory had the whole world.
Although Anacletus had declared himself in favour of
Lothair, instead of throwing himself into the interest of the Hohenstaufen
family, and although Lothair had been importuned in his behalf by a letter
written in the name of the Romans, Germany was won to the side of Innocent by
legates who appeared before a diet at Wurzburg, and it was arranged that the
king should meet the pope at Liège. The assemblage collected in that city
for the occasion was imposing from the number of prelates and nobles who
attended. Lothair received the pope with the greatest reverence, held the rein
of his horse while he rode through the streets, and, with his wife Richenza,
was crowned by his hands in the cathedral. The king promised to go into Italy,
and to seat Innocent in St. Peter’s chair; but when, in consideration of this
aid, he desired that the privilege of investiture should be restored to
him,—representing, it is said, that the weakening of the imperial power by the
cession of this was a weakening of the papacy itself—a serious difference
arose. To the Romans who were present, the proposal appeared to involve evils
even worse than the ascendency of the antipope in Rome; but their repugnance
might have been unavailing if it had not been reinforced by the authority of
Bernard, to whose firm opposition Lothair found himself obliged to yield. But
in questions which soon after arose as to various sees—especially those of
Treves and Verdun—he showed that he was no longer disposed, as at the time of
his election, to give up the privileges which had been reserved to the crown by
the concordat of Worms, but, agreeably to the terms of that treaty, he insisted
that the bishops should receive investiture before consecration.
Returning into France, Innocent spent the Easter
season at Paris and St. Denys, where he was received with splendid hospitality,
and in October he held a council at Reims, which was attended by thirteen
archbishops and two hundred and sixty-three bishops. Norbert, the founder of
the Premonstratensians, and now archbishop of Magdeburg, appeared on the part
of the German king, to renew his promises of assistance, and to efface the
remembrance of the late disputes. The kings of England, of Aragon, and of Castile
were also represented by prelates who tendered in their names assurances of
obedience and support. Lewis of France was present in person; and, as his son
and colleague, Philip, had lately been killed by a fall from his horse in a
street of Parish a younger son, Lewis, at that time ten years old, was crowned
in his stead. Bernard had by his personal intercourse acquired an unbounded
influence over Innocent, so that although the pope still appeared to consult in
public with his cardinals, it was known that he was really under the guidance
of the abbot of Clairvaux, to whom all who desired any favour from the pope
addressed themselves. From Reims Innocent proceeded to visit Clairvaux, where
he was the more deeply impressed by the austerity of the Cistercian system from
its contrast with the magnificence of Cluny. The “poor of Christ”, according to
Bernard’s biographer, received him, not in purple and fine linen, not with the
display of gilded books and splendid furniture, not with the loud blare of
trumpets; but their coarsely-attired procession carried a cross of stone, and
greeted him with a low chant of psalms. The pope and his attendant bishops were
moved to tears at the sight, while the monks, with their eyes fixed on the
ground, would not allow themselves to look at their visitors. It was with awe
that these beheld the simple oratory with its naked walls, the refectory with
its bare earthen floor, the rude and scanty provisions of the brotherhood—even
fish being served up for the pope’s table only. The solemnities of the choir
were painfully disturbed by a monk who suddenly exclaimed, “I am the Christ!”,
but we are told that the demon who had prompted this outbreak was immediately
quelled by the prayers of Bernard and his brethren.
In April 1132, Innocent crossed the Alps on his return
to Italy, having addressed from Lyons a letter to Bernard, by which, in
acknowledgment of his services, the pope bestowed exemptions and other
privileges on Clairvaux and on the whole Cistercian order. After having spent
the summer in Lombardy, he met Lothair in the plains of Roncaglia in November.
Since the election of the German king, the interest of the Hohenstaufen had
been strengthened by the return of Frederick’s brother Conrad from the Holy
Land; and as Conrad had taken no oath of fealty to Lothair, he was now set up
as the head of the party. In 1128 he was crowned as king of Italy at Monza by
Anselm, archbishop of Milan, who, on the ground of his church's independence,
had refused the pall from pope Honorius. In consequence of having officiated at
the coronation, Anselm had been declared by Honorius to be deposed, and, having
afterwards accepted the pall from Anacletus, he was excommunicated by Innocent
and driven from his city, while Conrad was excommunicated by both the claimants
of the papacy. Yet the opposition of the Hohenstaufen was still so formidable
in Germany that Lothair, when he proceeded into Italy, in fullfillment of the
promise which he had made at Liège, could only take with him a body of 1,5oo or
2,000 horse, which excited the mockery of the Italians. With this small force,
however, he conducted the pope to Rome, where they arrived on the 30th of April
1133.
Attempts were made by Anacletus (who still held
possession of a great part of the city) to obtain an inquiry into his
pretensions; but Lothair, under the influence of the opposite party, rejected
his overtures, and issued an edict in condemnation of him. On the 4th of June,
Lothair and Richenza were crowned in the Lateran by Innocent; for St. Peter’s,
the usual scene of the imperial coronations, was in the hands of the antipope.
Before entering the church, the emperor swore, in the presence of the Roman nobles,
to defend the pope’s person and dignity, to maintain those royalties of St.
Peter which innocent already possessed, and to aid him with all his power
towards the recovery of the rest. A compromise was arranged as to the
inheritance of the countess Matilda, which, in consequence of Henry V’s refusal
to admit her donation, had become a subject of dispute between the papacy and
the empire. Lothair was invested with the lands by the ceremony of the ring,
and was to hold them under the Roman see on payment of a hundred pounds of
silver yearly; and after him they were to be held on like terms by his
son-in-law Henry, duke of Bavaria, at whose death they were to revert to the
papacy. In this arrangement it is evident that Lothair was more eager to secure
the interest of his own family than that of the elective imperial crown. But
beyond the temporary settlement of this question and his formal acknowledgment
as emperor, Lothair’s expedition to Italy had no results. His declaration in
favour of Innocent was not supported either by the force which would have
suppressed opposition, or by the wealth which would have bought over the
Romans; and he found himself obliged to retire before the dangers of the
climate, leaving Rome a prey to its exasperated factions. Innocent was speedily
again driven out, and withdrew to Pisa, where he remained until the beginning
of 1137.
At Pisa a great council was held in May 1136, when
Anacletus was excommunicated, and the sentence of deposition, without hope of
restoration, was pronounced against his partisans. At this assembly Bernard was
the person most remarkable for the influence which he exerted, and for the
reverence which was paid to him : but we are assured by his biographer that he
remained unmoved by all the honours which were pressed on him. From Pisa he
proceeded to Milan, in order to complete the work of reclaiming the citizens
from their adhesion to the antipope and Conrad. When his approach was known,
almost the whole population poured forth to meet him at a distance of some
miles. They thronged to touch him; they pulled out threads from his clothes, to
be treasured as relics or employed for the cure of the sick. Bread and water
were brought from a distance for his blessing, from which they were believed to
derive a sacramental virtue; and a vast number of miracles was wrought, which
were ascribed by the Milanese to his sanctity, and by himself to the willing
and eager faith of the people. The turbulent city submitted implicitly to his
words; the ornaments of the churches were put away, sackcloth and coarse
woollen garments were generally worn, and women as well as men manifested their
repentance by submitting to be shorn of their hair. Bernard was entreated to
accept the archbishopric, which he did not absolutely refuse; but he declared
that he would leave the matter to be decided by the course which his palfrey
should take on the morrow, and in obedience to this sign he rode away from
Milan. A new archbishop, Robald, was soon afterwards elected, and, at Bernard's
persuasion, the Milanese consented to his accepting the pall from Innocent, and
taking an oath to the pope by which, in the words of the chronicler Landulf,
“he turned the liberty of the church of Milan into the contrary”. The
jurisdiction of the see had lately been diminished by the erection of an
archbishopric of Genoa, with metropolitan authority over some dioceses which
were withdrawn from the province of Milan.
On Bernard’s return to France, his influence was again
remarkably manifested. Gerard, bishop of Angouleme, who had taken a prominent
part in forcing Pope Paschal to recall his compact with Henry V, had been
employed by successive popes as legate for Aquitaine and the adjoining
provinces of Spain. He had written to the council of Étampes a letter in favour
of Innocent, but, having been unable to obtain from that pope a renewal of his
legation, he had espoused the party of Anacletus, and had received from him a
fresh commission. It was in vain that he attempted to draw Henry of England and
some princes of Spain and Brittany into the antipope’s interest; but he was
able to secure the adherence of William IX, count of Aquitaine, and, relying on
the count’s support, he seized on the see of Bourges, and ejected several
bishops and abbots, filling their places with men whose birth is said to have
been their only qualification for such office. Peter of Cluny had endeavoured
to reclaim the count of Aquitaine, but without success; but at the request of
Innocent’s legate, Geoffrey, bishop of Chartres, Bernard undertook the task.
After having listened to his arguments, the count, who was really indifferent
as to the claims of the rival popes, professed himself willing to join the
party of Innocent. But as to the deprived bishops, he declared that he would
not and could not restore them, because they had offended him beyond
forgiveness, and he had bound himself by an oath to the contrary; nor could he
be persuaded by Bernard's assurances that such oaths were not to be regarded as
valid. The abbot proceeded to the celebration of mass, while William, as an
excommunicate person, remained without the church-door, until Bernard again
came forth, with a sternness of countenance, a fire in his eyes, and an awful
solemnity in his whole demeanour, which appeared more than human, and bearing
the consecrated host in his hands. “Often”, he said, “have we entreated you,
and you have despised us, the servants of God. Lo, here comes to you the Son of
the Virgin, the Lord and Head of the church which you persecute. Here is your
Judge, at whose name every knee shall bow of things in heaven and things on
earth and things under the earth—your Judge, into whose hands your soul will
fall. Will you despise Him too, as you have despised His servants?”. At these
words, while all around were in trembling expectation of the event, the count
fell on the earth, foaming at the mouth, and apparently senseless. He was
raised up by some soldiers of his guard, but his limbs refused to support him,
until Bernard, touching him with his foot, desired him to stand up, and hear
God's sentence. The demand that he should restore the ejected prelates was
immediately obeyed, and his reconciliation with the church was signed with the
kiss of peace. Gerard of Angouleme still resisted all attempts to gain him; but
it is said that he was soon after found lifeless in his bed, having died
excommunicate and without the last sacraments. His body was torn from the grave
by order of the legate Geoffrey of Chartres, the altars which he had
consecrated were thrown down, all who had been promoted by him to
ecclesiastical offices were ejected, and the schism was suppressed in France.
In 1137, Bernard, in compliance with a request from
Innocent and his cardinals, undertook another journey into Italy, for the
purpose of labouring against the antipope. The interest of Anacletus had by
this time greatly declined; his money was exhausted, his state was diminished,
even the service of his table had fallen into a condition of meanness and
neglect; and Bernard, on arriving at Rome, discovered that most of the antipope’s
adherents were inclined to a reconciliation with Innocent, although many of
them were withheld by oaths, by family ties, or by other private
considerations. The whole strength of the party now rested on Roger II of
Sicily. Roger, an able, stern, and ambitious prince, had undertaken, on the
extinction of Robert Guiscard’s line by the death of William of Apulia in 1127,
to unite under his own power the whole of the Norman acquisitions in Italy,
and, in addition to the possessions both of the Hauteville family and of the
earlier settlers in Campania, he had seized on the duchy of Naples, which until
then had been connected with the Greek empire. Pope Honorius, after having
thrice denounced him excommunicate, and after having vainly endeavoured to
resist his progress by an armed alliance, was compelled in 1228 to invest him
in his new conquests with the title of duke; and two years later, Roger, having
assumed the title of king, received a confirmation of it from Anacletus, by
whom he was crowned at Palermo.
The pope had joined with the dispossessed princes of
the south in entreating the emperor’s intervention; and Lothair, after having
established peace in Germany by a reconciliation with Frederick and Conrad of
Hohenstaufen (in which Bernard's mediation was added to that of the empress
Richenza), again crossed the Alps at the head of a powerful force. In a single
campaign, with the aid of the fleets of Genoa and Pisa, he deprived Roger of
all his late acquisitions on the mainland. But dissensions arose between the
allies. In a question as to the reconciliation of the abbey of Monte Cassino,
which had been drawn by the Sicilian power into the antipope’s interest, the
emperor bitterly reproached the pope’s representatives for their master’s
ingratitude to him, and even threatened to forsake his party; and when a new
prince, Rainulf, was to be invested at Salerno, after a month’s discussion
whether the suzerainty belonged to the pope or to the emperor, the difficulty
was for the time overcome by an arrangement that both should at the ceremony
hold the banner by means of which the investiture was performed. Having
restored Innocent to Rome, and apparently pacified Italy, Lothair set out
homewards; but at Trent he fell sick, and on the 3rd of December he died at Breitenwang,
an obscure place between the rivers Inn and Lech. A diet was summoned to meet
at Whitsuntide 1138 for the election of a successor, and it was expected that
the choice of the Germans would fall on Henry, duke of Bavaria, the son-in-law
and representative of the late emperor. But Henry, by conduct which had gained
for him the epithet of “The Proud”, had offended many of the electors, and the
influence of the pope, who dreaded a too powerful emperor, was exerted in
opposition to the family which had restored him to the possession of his
capital. Without waiting, therefore, for the appointed diet, a small party of
the electors, headed by the archbishops of Treves and Cologne (Mayence being
vacant in consequence of the death of Adalbert), chose Conrad of
Hohenstaufen—once an excommunicated pretender to the Italian kingdom—as king of
Germany, and he was crowned by the papal legate, cardinal Theotwin, at
Aix-la-Chapelle. For some years which followed, Germany was again a prey to the
contests of parties struggling for supremacy, and it is said that in the course
of these contests—at the battle of Weinsberg, in 1140—the names of Welf and
Waiblingen (Guelf and Ghibelline), “those hellish names”, as a Genoese
chronicler calls them, which afterwards became so notorious in the feuds of
Italy, were first heard as the rallying cries of the opposite parties.
While Lothair was yet on his way towards the Alps,
Roger again appeared in Italy, and speedily recovered a large portion of his
conquests. In answer to overtures from Innocent, which were made through
Bernard, he proposed a conference between representatives of the rival
popes,—in the hope, it is said, that Peter of Pisa, one of the ablest partisans
of Anacletus, would by his learning and rhetorical skill prove superior to the
abbot of Clairvaux. After Peter had stated the claims of Anacletus, Bernard began
his reply by insisting on the unity of the church, and then proceeded to apply
the doctrine by asking whether it could be thought that Roger alone was in the
one ark of salvation, while all other Christian nations, and all the holy
orders of monks, were to perish? Then, seeing the impression which his words
had made on his hearers, “Let us”, he said to Peter, taking him by the
hand, “enter into a safer ark”. The antipapal champion, whether really
convinced, or gained by a promise that his dignities should be secured to him,
yielded to the appeal and returned with Bernard to Rome, where he professed his
submission to Innocent; but Roger still held out with a view of making
conditions as to some property of the Roman see which he had seized.
The death of Lothair was followed within a few weeks
by that of Anacletus, who, notwithstanding , the decay of his power, had to the
last kept possession of the Vatican. His body was secretly buried, lest it
should be treated like that of Pope Formosus; and, although a successor was set
up, under the name of Victor the Fourth, this was rather with a view to making
favourable terms of reconciliation than with any serious hope of prolonging the
schism. Innocent spent large sums in buying over the adherents of
Anacletus,—among them the members of the late antipope’s own family, who
humbled themselves at his feet, and took the oath of fealty to him; and such
was Bernard's influence that the new antipope went to his lodging, by night,
renounced his claims, stripped off his insignia, and was led by the abbot in
triumph to prostrate himself at the feet of Innocent. The joy of the Romans at
the restoration of peace was unbounded; but Bernard, to whom they ascribed the
merit of it, escaped with all speed from their demonstrations of gratitude, and
returned to resume in the quiet seclusion of Clairvaux his mystical exposition
of the Canticles.
In April 1139, Innocent, now undisputed master of
Rome, assembled at the Lateran a general council, which was attended by a
thousand archbishops and bishops. The pope in his opening speech asserted the
feudal authority of St. Peter's successor over all other members of the
hierarchy, as the superior under whom all ecclesiastical power is held. The
ordinations and other acts of Anacletus and his partisans, such as Gerard of
Angouleme, were annulled, and some bishops who had received schismatic
consecration were severely rebuked by the pope, who forcibly snatched their
pastoral staves from their hands, plucked off their robes, and took from them
their episcopal rings. Roger of Sicily, although he had given in his adhesion
to Innocent, was denounced excommunicate, with all his followers canons
relating to discipline were passed; and the Truce of God, in its fullest
extent, was re-enacted. Yet the remainder of the pope’s own life was
almost entirely spent in war—partly against his immediate neighbours, and
partly against the Sicilian king. Roger was carrying on the war in the south
with great barbarity—slaughtering defenseless people, plundering, destroying
trees and crops, tearing from the grave and treating with the basest
indignities the body of Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, who had accompanied
Lothair on his last expedition, and that of duke Rainulf of Salerno, who had
died at Troja about the time of the Lateran council. In June 1139 Innocent set
out against the invader, at the head of an armed force, accompanied by Robert,
prince of Capua, who had been again dispossessed of his territories. But, like
Leo IX, the pope fell into the hands of the Normans, and, as in Leo’s case, the
victors contented themselves with exacting the papal sanction for their
conquests, with the confirmation of Roger’s kingly title.
The contest for the papacy had long diverted Bernard’s
attention from the studies in which he most delighted. We shall next find him
engaged in a conflict of a different kind; but before proceeding to this, it is
necessary to trace in some degree the intellectual movements of the age, and
the history of the celebrated man to whom Bernard was now to be opposed.
During the latter part of the eleventh century, a
fresh impulse had been given to intellectual activity by the labours of
Lanfranc, Berengar, Anselm, and other eminent teachers. The old cathedral
schools were developing into seminaries of general learning, frequented by
numbers beyond the example of former times, and exercising an important
influence. And the monastic discipline, which for some was merely a mechanical
rule, while for spirits of a mystical tendency it offered the attractions of
contemplation and devotion, stimulated minds of a different character to
exercise themselves in speculations which often passed the boundaries of
orthodoxy.
The question as to the existence of universals—such as
genus, species, differentia, proprium, accidens,—which had divided the
schools of ancient philosophy, had been generally ruled in the church by the
authority of St. Augustine, who held with Plato the real existence of
universals; yet there had been some who, with Aristotle, asserted that they
were mere names or ideas. This nominalism (as it was styled) was now taken up
by Roscellin, a canon of Compiègne, and perhaps a Breton by birth, who is said
to have taught that universals were nothing more than words, and to have denied
the existence of anything but individuals—of collective wholes, because they
are made up of individuals; of parts, because they are not entire individuals.
It was, however, by the application of his system to the doctrine of the
Trinity that Roscellin became most famous. If, he said, we would avoid the
error of supposing the Father and the Holy Ghost to have been incarnate with
the Son, we must believe the divine Persons to be three real beings, as
distinct from each other as three angels or three souls, although the same in
power and in will. This proposition, although advanced not in opposition to the
doctrine of the church, but with a view to explain and support it, naturally
gave rise to a charge of tritheism, for which Roscellin was cited to answer
before a council at Soissons, in 1092. Anselm, then abbot of Le Bec, on being
informed by a monk named John that Roscellin claimed for his opinion the
authority of Lanfranc and his own, strongly denied the imputation, declaring
that Roscellin either was a tritheist, or did not understand his own words; and
he requested Fulk, bishop of Beauvais, who was about to attend the council, to
clear both himself and Lanfranc from the charge. He also began a treatise on
the subject, but broke it off on hearing that Roscellin had retracted at Soissons;
although he afterwards completed it on being told that Roscellin, like
Berengar, had only yielded for a time out of fear, and had since resumed the
profession of his old opinions. Finding himself unsafe in France, Roscellin
withdrew into England; but his opposition to Anselm, who was now archbishop of
Canterbury, and his maintenance of the strict Hildebrandine view as to the
unfitness of the sons of clergy for ordination, combined to render him
unpopular, so that in 1097 he was compelled to leave the country. He was,
however, kindly received by Ivo of Chartres, who appears to have reconciled him
with the church, and, probably through his interest, he became a canon of St.
Martin's at Tours but his unfortunate application of nominalism to theology had
excited such a prejudice against the theory altogether, that John of Salisbury
speaks of it as having almost disappeared with Roscellin.
Among Roscellin’s pupils was Peter Abelard, born in
1079 at Palais or Le Pallet, near Nantes. In the “History of his Misfortunes”
(an autobiographical epistle which abundantly displays his vanity and
indiscretion), he tells us that, although the eldest son of Berengar, who was
lord of the place, he very early preferred “the conflicts of disputation to the
trophies of arms”, and, resigning the family inheritance to his brothers, he
betook himself to the life of a scholar. He had already travelled over many provinces
of France, displaying his dialectical skill in disputes with all who chose to
encounter him, when, at the age of twenty-one, he became a pupil of William of
Champeaux, archdeacon of Paris and master of the cathedral school, who was in
enjoyment of the highest reputation as a teacher. William was at first charmed
with the pupil’s abilities; but when Abelard began to question his doctrines,
to argue with him, and sometimes to triumph over him, both the master and the
other scholars were not unnaturally disgusted. Notwithstanding the endeavours
of William to prevent him, Abelard opened a school of his own at Melun, then a
royal residence, and, after a time, removed to Corbeil, with a view of being
nearer to the capital. The fame and the popularity of William began to wane
before the new teacher, whose eloquence, boldness, clearness of expression, and
wit drew crowds of admiring hearers. An illness brought on by study compelled
Abelard to withdraw to his native province; and, on returning to Paris, after
an absence of some years, he found that William of Champeaux had resigned his
archdeaconry and school, and had become a canon regular at the abbey of St.
Victor, without the city walls, where, however, he had resumed his occupation
as a teacher. Notwithstanding their former rivalry, Abelard became a pupil of
William in rhetoric; but the old scenes were renewed; for Abelard not only
controverted an opinion of his master on the subject of universals, but obliged
him to renounce it, or, at least, the form in which it was expressed. By this
defeat William’s credit was greatly impaired; many of his pupils deserted to
Abelard, who now gained a more regular position, being invited by William’s
successor to teach in the cathedral school; but through the envy of William (as
the case is represented to us), this master was ejected, and Abelard was again
driven to teach independently at Melun. After a time, William retired to the
country, and Abelard thereupon returned to Paris, where (in his own language)
he “pitched his camp on the Mount of St. Genevieve, without the city, as if to
besiege the teacher who had taken possession of his place”. On hearing of this,
William again began to lecture at Paris; the cathedral school was deserted; and
the students were divided between William and Abelard, while both the masters
and the pupils of the rival schools engaged in frequent conflicts. Abelard,
however, was again obliged to go into Brittany, in order to take leave of his
mother, who was about to enter a cloister, as her husband had done before; and
on his return to Paris, as the old rivalry had been ended by the promotion of
William to the bishopric of Châlons on the Marne, he resolved to turn from the
study of philosophy to that of theology.
For this purpose he repaired to the school of Laon,
which had long flourished under Anselm, a pupil of Anselm of Canterbury. It was
said of Anselm of Laon that he had argued a greater number of men into the
catholic faith than any heresiarch of his time had been able to seduce from it;
pupils flocked to him, not only from all parts of France but from foreign
countries; and among them were many who, like Abelard, had themselves been
teachers of philosophy before placing themselves at the feet of the theologian
of Laon. But to Abelard the plain, solid, and traditional method of Anselm
appeared tame and empty. It seemed to him that the old man's fame was founded
rather on his long practice than on ability or knowledge; that he had more of
smoke than of light; that if any one came to him in uncertainty as to any
question, the uncertainty was only increased by Anselm’s answer; that he was
like the barren fig-tree which the Saviour cursed. “Having made this
discovery”, he adds, “I did not idle away many days in lying under his shadow”;
and the rareness of his attendance at Anselm's lectures began to be noted as
disrespectful towards the teacher. In consequence of having expressed contempt
for the traditional glosses on Scripture, he was challenged by some of his fellow-students
to attempt a better style of exposition; whereupon he undertook the book of
Ezekiel, as being especially obscure, and, declining the offer of time for
preparation, began his course of lectures next day. The first lecture found but
few hearers; but the report which these spread as to its brilliancy drew a
greater audience to the second, and the few soon became an eager multitude.
Anselm, on receiving reports as to the lectures from two of his chief pupils,
Alberic and Letulf, was alarmed lest he should be held accountable for any
errors which might be vented in them, and made use of a privilege which
belonged to his office by forbidding Abelard to teach at Laon; whereupon
Abelard once more returned to Paris. He now got uncontrolled possession of the
principal school, from which he had formerly been ejected, and his theological
lectures became no less popular than those which he had before delivered in
philosophy. Even Rome, it is said, sent him pupils. Wealth as well as fame
flowed in on him; his personal graces, his brilliant conversation, his poetical
and musical talents, enhanced the admiration which was excited by his public
teaching; but now, when all went prosperously with him, the passions which he
represents himself as having before kept under strict control, began to awake.
He tells us that he might have won the favour of any lady whom he might have
chosen; but he coolly resolved on the seduction of Heloisa, a beautiful maiden
of eighteen, whose extraordinary learning and accomplishments were already
famous. With a view to this, he insinuated himself into the confidence of her
uncle, with whom she lived,—a canon named Fulbert; and, by lamenting to Fulbert
the troubles of housekeeping, he drew him into an arrangement agreeable both to
the canon's love of money and to his affection for his niece—that Abelard
should board in Fulbert’s house, and should devote his spare hours to the
culture of Heloisa’s mind, for which purpose he was authorized to use even
bodily chastisement. “I was no less astonished at his simplicity”, says
Abelard, “than if he were to entrust a tender lamb to a famished wolf”; and the
result was such as might have been expected.
In the meantime, Abelard’s scholars could not but
remark a change in their master. The freshness and life of his teaching were
gone; he contented himself with listlessly repeating old lectures; and his
mental activity was shown only in the production of amatory verses, which, as
he complacently tells us, were long afterwards popular. At length the rumours
which had been generally current reached Fulbert himself. The lovers were
separated; but on Heloisa’s announcing to Abelard, “with the greatest exultation”,
that she was pregnant, he contrived to steal her from her uncle’s house, and
sent her to his sister in Brittany, where she gave birth to a son, Astrolabius.
Fulbert furiously insisted on a marriage, to which Abelard consented, on the
condition that, for the sake of his reputation and of his prospects, it should
be kept secret. But against this Heloisa remonstrated vehemently and in an
unexpected strain. She assured Abelard that her uncle would never be really
appeased. She entreated her lover not to sacrifice his fame, in which she
considered herself to have an interest. She strongly put before him the
troubles of married life—the inconveniences which children must cause in the
modest dwelling of a philosopher—fortifying her argument with a host of quotations
from writers both sacred and profane. For herself, she said, she would rather
be his friend, having no hold on him except by favour, than connected with him
by the bonds of wedlock. She was, however, brought back to Paris, and the
marriage was secretly performed. But no sooner was the ceremony over than
Fulbert broke his promise of silence, while Heloisa with oaths and even with
curses denied the marriage; and Abelard, in order to withdraw his wife from her
uncle's cruelty, placed her in the convent of Argenteuil, where she had been
brought up. Here he continued to carry on his intercourse with her; but as she
wore the monastic dress, Fulbert began to fear that Abelard might rid himself
of her by persuading her to take the vows, and resolved on a barbarous revenge.
Abelard’s servant was bribed to admit into his lodging some ruffians whom the
canon had hired; and entering his chamber at night, they inflicted on him a
cruel and disgraceful mutilation
The report of this atrocity excited a general feeling
of indignation. Two of the agents in it, who were caught, were subjected to a
like penalty, with the addition of the loss of their eyes; and Fulbert was
deprived of his preferments, although sheltered by his clerical character from
further punishment. Abelard, overwhelmed with shame and grief, retired to St.
Denys, where—more, as he confesses, from such feelings than from devotion—he
took the monastic vows; Heloisa having at his command already put on the veil
at Argenteuil.
But although Abelard profited by the opportunities of
study which his monastic retirement afforded, it was not to give him peace. He
soon made himself unpopular by censuring the laxity of the abbot and his
brethren, and by their contrivance he was removed to a dependent cell, where he
resumed his occupation of teaching both in philosophy and in theology, with
such success that, as he tells us, “neither the place sufficed for their
lodging, nor the land for their support”. The audiences of other professors were
thinned; their envy was aroused, and they beset bishops, abbots, and other
important persons with complaints against their successful rival—that the
cultivation of secular learning was inconsistent with his duty as a monk, and
that, by teaching theology without the sanction of some accredited master, he
was likely to lead his pupils into error. And in no long time an opportunity
for attacking him was given by an “Introduction to Theology”, drawn up at the
desire of his pupils, who had requested him to illustrate the mystery of the
Trinity in words which might be not only pronounced, but understood. Roscellin,
who had made his own peace with the church, denounced Abelard as a Sabellian,
and in the grossest terms reflected on him for the errors and misfortunes of
his life, while Abelard in his turn reproached his former master as alike
infamous for his opinions and for his character. At the instance of his old
opponents, Alberic and Letulf, who were now established as teachers, at Reims,
he was cited by the archbishop of that city before a council at Soissons. At
this assembly he delivered his book to the legate Conon of Palestrina, who
presided, and professed himself willing to retract anything in it which might
be regarded as contrary to the catholic faith. The book was handed to his
accusers for examination, and in the meantime Abelard daily expounded his
opinions in public, with such effect that, although he and his disciples, on
their arrival, had been in danger of being stoned as tritheists, a great reaction
took place in his favour.
On the last day of the council, to which the further
consideration of the case had been deferred, Geoffrey of Chartres, the most
eminent of the bishops present, after having reminded the assembly of Abelard’s
fame, and of the necessity of dealing cautiously, proposed that the charge
against him should be clearly stated, and that he should be allowed to reply.
On this an outcry was raised that no one could withstand such a sophist; that
his book deserved condemnation, if it were only because he had allowed it to be
copied without the sanction of Rome. He was condemned, not for tritheism, but
for the opposite error of Sabellianism; he was required to read aloud the
Athanasian creed, which he did with a profusion of tears, and to throw his book
into the fire. The bishop of Chartres in vain endeavoured to obtain that he
might be sent back to St. Denys; the accusers insisted that he should be
detained within the jurisdiction of Reims, and he was committed to the custody
of Goswin, abbot of St. Medard's, at Soissons. But the severity of this
judgment excited such general reprobation, that those who had shared in it
endeavoured to excuse themselves by throwing the blame on each other, and after
a time Abelard was allowed to return to St. Denys.
It was not long, however, before he again brought
himself into trouble by denying, on the authority of a passage in Bede's works,
the identity of Dionysius the Areopagite with the patron saint of the
monastery. Such an opinion, after the labours of abbot Hilduin, who was
supposed to have settled the matter by long inquiries in Greece, was regarded
as not only profane but treasonable; for St. Denys was the patron of the whole
kingdom, and Abelard was even denounced to the king. It was in vain that he addressed
to the abbot a letter intended to reconcile the different accounts : he was
placed under guard, and, “almost in desperation, as if the whole world had
conspired against him”, he escaped from the abbey by night, and found refuge
with a friend, who was prior of a cell near Provins. Abbot Adam of St. Denys
refused to release him from his monastic obedience; but as the old man died
soon after, a release was obtained from his successor, Suger, on condition that
Abelard should not attach himself to any other monastery; for St. Denys was
proud of so famous a member, and wished to retain the credit of reckoning him
as its own.
He now fixed himself in company with a single clerk,
in the neighbourhood of Nogenton the Seine, where, on a site granted to him by
Theobald, count of Champagne, he built himself an oratory of reeds and straw.
But even in this retreat he soon found himself surrounded by disciples, who,
for the sake of his instructions, were willing to endure all manner of
hardships. By their labour the little oratory was enlarged into a monastery,
with its church, to which he gave the name of the Divine Comforter or Paraclete—a
novelty which, in addition to his popularity as a teacher, excited his enemies
afresh, as it had not been usual to dedicate churches to any other Person of
the Trinity than the Second. Among those enemies he mentions two “new apostles,
in whom the world very greatly trusted”—Bernard and Norbert. These, he says,
talked and preached against him everywhere, and such was the obloquy raised
that, whenever he heard of a synod, he apprehended that it might be summoned
for his own condemnation. He declared that he often thought even of withdrawing
into some country of unbelievers, in the hope of finding that toleration which
was denied him by his fellow Christians.
At this time he was chosen abbot of the ancient
monastery of St. Gildas, at Ruys, on the coast of Morbihan, and, with the
consent of Suger of St. Denys, he accepted the office as promising him a quiet
refuge. But his hopes were bitterly disappointed. The country was wild and
desolate, and, with the ocean filling the whole view beyond it, appeared to be
the extremity of the world. The very language of the people was unintelligible;
the monks were utterly disobedient and unruly, and met his attempts at reform
by mixing poison for him, even in the eucharistic cup, and by setting ruffians
in ambush to murder him. There were quarrels, too, with a rude and powerful
neighbour, who had invaded the property of the monastery; and such was the
lawlessness of the country that no redress of wrongs was to be had. In such
circumstances, moreover, Abelard could not but feel that his intellectual gifts
were altogether useless and wasted.
Abbot Suger, of St. Denys, on the authority of old
documents, brought forward a claim to the nunnery of Argenteuil, which was also
denounced as a place of gross licentiousness; and his claim was admitted by a
council held at Paris under a legate, whose decision was confirmed by Honorius
II, and also by his successor Innocent. The charges against the nuns, however,
do not appear to have extended to Heloisa, who had become prioress and was held
in general veneration; and Abelard, on hearing that she was about to lose her
home, offered the deserted Paraclete to her and such of her sisters as she
might choose for companions. The gift was confirmed by Innocent II, and the
Paraclete received privileges from other popes, and became the mother of a
small orders. Abelard had drawn up the History of his Calamities,
in the form of a letter to a (perhaps imaginary) friend; and it fell into the
hands of Heloisa, who was thus induced to write to him. Her letters are full of
the most intense and undisguised passion; the worship of genius mingles in them
with the glow of carnal love. In the freest language she reminds her husband of
their former intercourse; she declares that by him she and all her family had
been raised to eminence; she charges herself with having caused his ruin, and
declares that she would rather be his friend than his wife—rather his
concubine, his harlot, than an empress. She avows that, however those who know
her not may think of her, she is at heart a hypocrite; that she still cares
more for her lover than for God; that beneath the monastic dress there burns in
her an unabated and unquenchable passion which disturbs her in her dreams, at
her prayers, even at the most solemn devotion of the mass. Abelard’s replies
are in a very different strain; he coldly points out to her the sinfulness of
her former life, and urges her to seek for pardon and peace in the duties of
the cloister. He furnished her and her sisterhood with prayers and hymns, with
a rule which as to externals was conceived in a spirit of Cistercian severity,
and with directions for their studies borrowed in a great part from St. Jerome.
From time to time he visited the Paraclete; but as even these visits excited
scandal, they became infrequent. In 1134, apparently, he finally quitted Ruys,
although he still retained the abbacy; and once more he taught on the Mount of
St. Genevieve, where John of Salisbury afterwards famous for his achievements
in literature and for his connexion with Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, was
one of his pupils.
On many important subjects—the mutual relations of the
Divine Persons and other points connected with the doctrine of the Trinity; the
Divine attributes; the work and merits of the Saviour; the operations of the
Holy Ghost; the sinfulness of man; the gift of prophecy; the inspiration and
the integrity of the Scriptures; the eucharistic presence; the character of
miracles altogether, and the reality of those which were reported as of his own
time; the relations of faith, reason, and church authority; the penitential
system, and the absolving powers of the priesthood—Abelard had vented opinions
which were likely to draw suspicion on him. To this was added the irritation
produced by his unsparing remarks on the faults of bishops and clergy, of monks
and canons; and, in addition to the books which he had himself published, the
circulation of imperfect reports of his lectures tended to increase the
distrust of him which was felt. Yet while he bitterly complained of this
distrust, it seems as if he even took a pride in exciting it. Without
apparently intending to stray from the path of orthodoxy, he delighted to
display his originality in peculiarities of thought and expression; and hence,
instead of a harmonious system, there resulted a collection of isolated opinions,
which, stated as they were without their proper balances and complements, were
certain to raise misunderstanding and obloquy. Ignorant as he was of Greek (for
he owns that on this account he was unacquainted with Plato’s writings), and
having little knowledge of antiquity even at second hand, he idealized the
sages of heathenism—not only the Greek philosophers, but the Brahmans of
India—whom he invidiously contrasted with the monks and clergy of his own day.
While he regarded the knowledge of the Saviour as necessary for all men, he
held that the ancient sages had received this knowledge through the Sibyls; and
he supposed them to have attained to the doctrine of the Trinity, partly by the
exercise of their reason, and partly as the reward of their pure and
self-denying lives. He supposed them to have had saving faith, and all but a
historical knowledge of Christianity; he supposed their philosophy to have been
nearer akin than Judaism to the gospel; and he supposed the rites of the old
law to have been needless for them, because these were not, like the gospel,
intended for all mankind. In a book which bore the title of “Yes and No”, he
had arranged under 158 heads the opinions of earlier Christian writers on a
like number of subjects; not (as had been usual) for the purpose of exhibiting
their agreement, or of harmonizing their differences, but in order that, by
displaying these differences, he might claim for himself a like latitude to
that which the teachers of older times had enjoyed without question. It was not
to be wondered at that such a claim, with the novelty and strangeness of the
opinions which he had advanced, should excite a general alarm. This feeling
found expression through William, formerly abbot of St. Thierry, and now a
Cistercian monk in the diocese of Reims, who addressed a letter to Bernard, and
to Abelard’s old patron, Geoffrey of Chartres, who was now papal legate for
France. William professes much affection for Abelard, but desires to draw
attention to his errors—errors (he says) the more dangerous on account of his
vast reputation, which is described as such that his works were carried across
the Alps and the seas, and even in the Roman court were regarded as
authoritative. He also mentions the “Yes and No”, and a work entitled “Know
Thyself”; but, as he had not seen these, he could only conjecture that their
contents were probably as monstrous as their names.
Bernard and Abelard were not unacquainted with each
other. They had met in 1131, at the consecration of an altar for the abbey of
Maurigny by Pope Innocent, and somewhat later, in consequence of a visit which
Bernard had paid to the Paraclete, and of some remarks which he was reported to
have made on usages which struck him as novel in that place, Abelard had
addressed to him a letter, which by its want of deference to the popular saint,
and by its somewhat satirical tone, was not likely to be acceptable. The old
enmities between Abelard and some of Bernard’s friends—William of Champeaux,
Anselm of Laon, Alberic—and the fact that Arnold of Brescia, who had become
notorious as the agitator of Rome, had once been Abelard’s pupil—may have
contributed to increase the abbot’s dislike of him. The two men were, indeed,
representatives of opposite tendencies. Bernard felt none of Abelard’s
intellectual cravings. Although not an enemy of learning, he valued knowledge
only with a view to practical good; he distrusted and dreaded speculation; and,
while Abelard taught that “by doubt we come to inquiry, and by inquiry we
ascertain the truth”,—thus making doubt his starting-point,—it was Bernard’s
maxim that “The faith of the godly believes instead of discussing”. We may,
therefore, easily understand that he was ready to listen to charges against a
man so different from himself as Abelard; he felt instinctively that there was
danger, not so much in this or that individual point of his teaching, as in the
general character of a method which seemed likely to imperil the orthodoxy of
the church.
On receiving William of St. Thierry’s letter, Bernard
sought an interview with Abelard, and endeavoured to persuade him to a
retractation. Abelard, according to Bernard’s biographer, consented to retract,
but was afterwards induced by his disciples to depart from his promise; in any
case, he requested that the matter might be brought before a council which was
to meet at Sens in the Whitsun-week of 1140. The king of France was present,
with a great number of bishops and other ecclesiastics; and the chief occasion
of the meeting—the translation of the patron saint’s relics—was of a nature to
produce an excitement against anyone who was supposed to impugn the popular
religion, so that Abelard’s life seems to have been in danger from the
multitude. Bernard had at first declined a summons to attend, on the ground
that the question did not especially concern him, and also that he was but as a
youth in comparison with such a controversial Goliath as Abelard. He wrote,
however, to the pope and to the Roman court, in strong denunciation of Abelard,
both for his particular errors and for his general enmity to the established
faith of the Church and at length the urgency of his friends prevailed on him
to appear at the council. The representatives of intellect and of religious
feeling, of speculative inquiry and of traditional faith, were now face to
face. Seventeen articles were brought forward against Abelard, and Bernard, as
the promoter of the charge, desired that they might be read aloud. But scarcely
was the reading begun when Abelard,—losing courage, it would seem, at the
thought of the influence and the prejudices arrayed against him,—surprised and
disappointed the spectators by appealing to the pope. Such an appeal, from
judges of his own choosing, and before sentence, was a novelty unsanctioned by
the laws of the church; but the bishops admitted it, lest, by contesting the
papal privileges, they should create a prejudice in favour of the appellant.
While, however, they refrained from condemning Abelard's person, they proceeded
to examine the propositions imputed to him, and pronounced fourteen out of the
seventeen to be false and heretical.
A ludicrous account of the scene is given by one of
Abelard’s disciples named Berengar, in a letter addressed to Bernard himself
and marked throughout by the ostentatious contempt with which Abelard and his
followers appear to have regarded the most admired saint and leader of the age.
Berengar treats Bernard as a mere idol of the multitude—as a man gifted with a
plentiful flow of words, but destitute of liberal culture and of solid
abilities; as one who by the solemnity of his manner imposed the tritest truisms
on his votaries as if they were profound oracles. He ridicules his reputation
for miraculous power; he tells him that his proceedings against Abelard were
prompted by a spirit of bigotry, jealousy, and vindictiveness, rendered more
odious by his professions of sanctity and charity. Of the opinions imputed to
his master, he maintains that some were never held by Abelard, and that the
rest, if rightly interpreted, are true and catholic. The book, he says, was
brought under consideration at Sens when the bishops had dined, and was read
amidst their jests and laughter, while the wine was doing its work on them. Any
expression which was above their understanding excited their rage and curses
against Abelard. As the reading went on, one after another became drowsy; and
when they were asked whether they condemned his doctrines, they answered in
their sleep without being able fully to pronounce their words. The council
reported the condemnation to the pope, with a request that he would confirm it,
and would prohibit Abelard from teaching; and a like request was urged by
Bernard in letters addressed to Innocent and to some of the most important
cardinals.
Abelard’s hopes of finding favour at Rome were
disappointed. His interest in the papal court was far inferior to Bernard's,
and his connection with the revolutionary Arnold of Brescia, who had attended
him at the council—a connexion which Bernard had carefully put forward—could
not but weigh heavily against him. On reaching Lyons, on the way to prosecute
his appeal, he was astounded to find that the pope, without waiting for his
appearance, without any inquiry whether Abelard had used the language imputed to
him, or whether it had been rightly understood, had condemned him, with all his
errors (which, however, were not specified), and had sentenced him and Arnold
to be shut up in separate monasteries. But in this distress, the “venerable”
Peter, a man of wider charity than Bernard, not out of indifference to
orthodoxy, but from respect for Abelard’s genius and from pity for his
misfortunes, offered him an asylum at Cluny, where, with the pope's sanction,
Abelard lived in devotion, study, and in the exercise of his abilities as a
teacher. Here he drew up two confessions (one of them addressed to Heloisa), in
which he disowned some of the things imputed to him, “the words in part, and
the meaning altogether”, and strongly declared his desire to adhere to the catholic
faith in all points. Yet there is reason to suppose that he would not have
admitted himself to have erred, except to the extent of having used words open
to misconstruction; and, although he had been reconciled with Bernard through
the good offices of the abbots of Cluny and Citeaux, he still blamed him for
interfering in matters which he had not been trained to understand, and
declared that the charges against himself had been brought forward out of
malice and ignorance.
Finding that his guest’s health was failing, Peter
removed him, in the hope of recovery, from Cluny to the dependent monastery of
St. Marcel, near Châlons on the Saone; and there Abelard ended his agitated
life in 1142. His body, in compliance with the desire which he had expressed,
was sent to the Paraclete for burial. At Heloisa’s request, the abbot of Cluny
pronounced him absolved from all his sins, and the absolution was hung on his
tomb; and Peter, who, in announcing his death to Heloisa, had highly praised
his piety, humility, and resignation, composed an epitaph in which he was
celebrated at once for his intellectual gifts and for that better philosophy to
which his last days had been devoted. Heloisa survived her husband until the
year 1163.
2
THE SECOND CRUSADE
A.D. 1122-1159, STATE OF ITALY. ARNOLD OF BRESCIA
Ever since the beginning of the contest between the
papacy and the empire a spirit of independence had been growing among the
Italian cities. The emperors were rarely seen on the southern side of the Alps,
and although their sovereignty was admitted, it was practically little felt.
Most of the Lombard cities set up governments of their own, under a republican
form; and, with that love of domination which generally accompanies the
republican love of liberty, the stronger endeavoured to reduce the weaker to subjection.
In this movement towards independence, the claims of the bishops were found to
stand in the way of the inhabitants of the cities; and this, with other
circumstances, had prepared the people to listen to any teachers who might
arise to denounce the hierarchy. Such a teacher, named Arnulf, had appeared at
Rome in 1128, professing a divine commission to preach against the pride and
luxury, the immorality and greediness, of the cardinals and of other
ecclesiastics. Arnulf, after having disregarded warnings, met with the death
which he had expected and courted—being seized and thrown into the Tiber by
night; but in no long time a more formidable successor arose in Arnold of
Brescia.
Arnold was born at Brescia, probably about the year
1105, and grew up amid the agitations and struggles which marked the rise of
Lombard independence, and in which his native city largely shared. That he was
a pupil of Abelard appears certain, although the time and the place are matters
for conjectured. But although the master and the scholar were both animated by
a spirit of independence, it would seem that Arnold had nothing of Abelard's
speculative character (for he is not even distinctly charged with any heresy),
but was bent entirely on practical measures of reform. After having officiated
for a time as a reader in the church of Brescia, Arnold separated himself from
the secular clergy, embraced a strict monastic life, and began to inveigh
unsparingly against the corruptions of both clergy and monks in a strain which
resembled at once the extreme Hildebrandine party and their extreme opponents.
There had been much in the late history of Brescia to produce disgust at the
assumption of temporal power by ecclesiastics; and Arnold, filled with visions
of apostolical poverty and purity,—of a purely spiritual church working by
spiritual means alone,—imagined that the true remedy for the evils which had
been felt would be to strip the hierarchy of their privileges, to confiscate
their wealth, and to reduce them for their support to the tithes, with the freewill
offerings of the laity. These doctrines were set forth with copious eloquence,
in words which, as Bernard says, were “smoother than oil, and yet were they
very swords”. Nor can we wonder that they were heard with eagerness by the
multitude, who, according to the preacher’s scheme, were both to be enriched
with the spoils of the church and for the future were to hold the clergy in
dependence. The bishop of Brescia complained to the pope; and the Lateran
council of 1139, without having called Arnold before it, condemned him to
silence and to banishment beyond the Alps. On this he withdrew into France, and
in the following year he appeared at Sens as Abelard's chief supporter—“the
shield-bearer of that Goliath”, as Bernard styles him. Although, however, he
was sentenced by the pope in consequence to imprisonment in a monastery, it
would seem that the French bishops did not feel themselves concerned to carry out
the sentence; and for some years Arnold lived and taught at Zurich unmolested,
being tolerated by Herman, bishop of Constance, and even admitted as an inmate
into the house of the papal legate, Guy of Castello, although Bernard, by
applications both to the legate and to the bishop, endeavoured to dislodge him.
In the meantime his principles had made way at
Rome—although rather in their political than in their religious character—and
the more, perhaps, on account of the attention which had been drawn to him by
the Lateran condemnation. Provoked by the pope's having concluded peace with
Tivoli in his own name alone, and having granted too favourable terms, the
Romans in 1143 burst into insurrection, displaced the government, and
established in the Capitol a senate on the ancient Roman models They resolved
that their city should resume its ancient greatness—that it should be the
capital of the world, as well in a secular as in a religious sense; but that
the secular administration should be in different hands from the spiritual. As
the popes were connected with the southern Normans, the revolutionary party
felt themselves obliged to look for an alliance in some other direction. They
therefore turned towards Conrad, king of the Romans; and perhaps it was at this
time that they addressed to him a letter in which they profess themselves
devoted to his interest, represent their services in opposition to his and
their common enemies,—the clergy and the Sicilians,—and entreat him to receive
the imperial crown at Rome, and to revive the glories of the empire by ruling
as a new Constantine or Justinian, with the assistance of the senate,
in “the city which is the capital of the world”. Conrad, however, would
seem to have suspected that these proposals were not so much intended for his
interest as for that of the party from which they came; and he preferred an
alliance with the pope, whose envoys waited on him at the same time.
The revolt of the Romans was fatal to Innocent II, who
died in September 1143, and was succeeded by Celestine the Second, the same
who, as Cardinal Guy of Castello, had been the pupil of Abelard and the
protector of Arnold. Celestine was a man of high character, both for learning
and for moderation; but his pontificate of less than six months was marked by
no other considerable act than the removal of an interdict under which
Lewis “the Young” of France had lain for some years on account of some
differences as to the archbishopric of Bourges. The royal power had been
rapidly growing in France. The number of the great fiefs had been diminished
through the failure of male heirs, in consequence of which many of them had passed
into new families by the marriage of the heiresses; the kings had made it their
policy to raise the commons, and had strengthened themselves by allying
themselves with them against the nobles; agriculture was greatly extended;
population, industry, and wealth were increased. Lewis VII, who had become sole
king by the death of his lather in 1137, had very greatly extended the royal
territory by his marriage with Eleanor, heiress of Aquitaine, and the
successful outset of his reign had gained for him a reputation which was ill
maintained by his conduct in later years. For a time he showed himself
indifferent to the ecclesiastical sentence which had been pronounced against
him; but in 1143 a change was produced in him by a terrible incident which took
place in the course of a war between him and Theobald, count of Champagne—the
burning of 1300 men, women, and children, who had taken refuge in a church at
Vitry. Deeply struck with horror and remorse on account of the share which he
considered himself to have had in their death, he solicited absolution, which
Celestine readily bestowed—the questions in dispute between the crown and the
church being settled by a compromise.
Under Celestine’s successor, a Bolognese who exchanged
his name of Gerard de' Caccianemici for that of Lucius II, the republicans of
Rome ventured further than before. Arnold himself appears to have been now
among them, having perhaps repaired to Rome in reliance on Celestine's
kindness, although the time of his arrival is uncertain. The constitution was
developed by the creation of an equestrian order, and by the election of
tribunes. A patrician named Jordan, who appears to have been a brother of the late
antipope Anacletus, was substituted for the papal prefect of the city, and, as
a matter of policy, this patrician was theoretically regarded as a
representative of the emperor, whose lordship the revolutionary government
affected to acknowledge. The palaces and houses of cardinals and nobles were
destroyed; some of the cardinals were personally assaulted; and the pope was
required to surrender his royalties, and to content himself and his clergy with
tithes and voluntary offerings. Lucius, who was supported by a powerful party
of nobles (among whom were the patrician's own brothers), resolved to put down
the republic, and, at the head of a strong force, proceeded to the Capitol with
the intention of dispersing the senators; but the senate and the mob combined
to resist, and in the tumult which ensued the pope was wounded by a stone,
which caused his death.
The vacant throne was filled by the election of Peter
Bernard, a Pisan by birth, who had been a pupil of Bernard of Clairvaux, and
had been appointed by Innocent II to the abbacy of St. Anastasius at the Three
Fountains, near Rome—a monastery which that pope rebuilt, and, in gratitude for
Bernard’s services, bestowed on the Cistercian order. The character of the new
pope, who styled himself Eugenius III, had been chiefly noted for an extreme
simplicity, so that his old superior, while he congratulated him on his
election and expressed the fullest confidence in his intentions, thought it
necessary almost to blame the cardinals for the choice which they had made, and
to bespeak their forbearance and assistance for him; but Eugenius, to the
surprise of all who had known him, now displayed an eloquence and a general
ability which were referred to miraculous illumination. The rites of his
consecration were disturbed by an irruption of the citizens, demanding that he
should acknowledge their republican government; and he withdrew to the
monastery of Farfa, where the ceremony was completed. The anathemas which he
pronounced against his contumacious people were unheeded; but after residing
for some time at Viterbo, he was enabled to effect a re-entrance into Rome, where
he agreed to acknowledge the senate on condition that its members should be
chosen with his approval, and that he should be allowed to nominate a prefect
instead of the patrician. But the Romans, finding that he refused to gratify
their enmity against the inhabitants of Tivoli, to whom he had been chiefly
indebted for his restoration, drove him again from the city, and the people,
excited by the harangues of Arnold, who had brought with him a body of two
thousand Swiss, continued their attacks upon the nobles and the clergy; they
fortified St. Peter's and plundered the pilgrims, killing some of them in the
church itself Bernard strongly remonstrated with the Romans on the expulsion of
Eugenius, and urged the emperor elect to interfere for his restoration. But
during the pope's residence at Viterbo tidings had been received from the East
which for the time superseded all other interests.
The Latins had kept their footing in the East chiefly
in consequence of the dissensions of their enemies, but had failed to learn
from them the necessity of union among themselves. The great feudatory princes
of Antioch, Edessa, and Tripoli quarrelled with the kings of Jerusalem and with
each other. The barons were defiant and unruly, and their oppressive treatment
of their inferiors rendered them more hateful to the Christians than they were
to the infidels. The patriarchs quarrelled with the kings and with the popes;
the patriarchs of Jerusalem quarrelled with those of Antioch; while the
archiepiscopal province of Tyre, which, on the acquisition of that city in
1127, had been assigned by Pope Honorius to Jerusalem, but was claimed by
Antioch, suffered under the tyranny of both. The military orders already began
to display an intolerable pride and a contempt of all external authority. The
relations of the Latins with the Greek empire, although improved since the days
of Alexius Comnenus, were still uneasy. The religious motive which had given
birth to the Latin kingdom was forgotten, so that pilgrims were objects of
mockery in the Holy Land, and were disliked as intruders. The successors of the
crusaders had in general settled down into a life of ease and luxury, in which
the worst features of oriental life were imitated; and a mongrel race, the
offspring of European fathers and of eastern mothers, had grown up, who were
known by the name of Poulains, and are described as utterly
effeminate and depraved—“more timid than women, and more perfidious than
slaves”.
In December 1144, Zenghis, prince of Mosul and Aleppo,
taking advantage of the enmity between the Frank rulers of Edessa and Antioch,
made himself master of Edessa, chiefly through the assistance of an Armenian
whose daughter had been debauched by the count, Jocelin. The archbishop, who is
said to have allowed the capture to take place rather than expend his treasures
in the payment of soldiers, was crushed to death. A frightful slaughter of the
Christian inhabitants was carried on, until it was stopped by the command of
Zenghis, and a multitude of captives were sold as slaves. Zenghis himself was
soon after assassinated, and during the absence of his son Noureddin the
Christians regained possession of the place through an agreement with the
Armenian inhabitants; but when they had held it a few days, Noureddin recovered
it with great slaughter, punished the inhabitants with terrible severity, and,
after having enriched himself by the plunder of the city, utterly destroyed it.
The exultation of the Mussulmans at this great success
was boundless; and not less intense were the feelings of grief and indignation
with which the tidings of their triumph were received among the Christians of
the west. The city of King Abgarus, who had been honoured by a letter from the
Saviour himself; the city where the miraculously-impressed image of the
Saviour’s countenance, his gift to Abgarus, had been preserved for centuries,
and had served as a protection against the attacks of infidel besiegers; the
city where the apostle St. Thaddeus had preached, which still possessed his
body, and that of St. Thomas, the apostle of the Indies; the city which had
maintained its Christianity while all around it fell under the Mussulman yoke,
was now in the hands of the unbelievers ; thousands of Christians had been
slain, and the enemy of the cross was pressing on, so that, unless speedy aid
were given, the Latins would soon be altogether driven from the Holy Land.
Eugenius resolved to stir up a new crusade; and on the 1st of December 1145 he
addressed to the king, the princes, and the people of France, a letter
summoning them to the holy war. The privileges formerly offered by Urban II
were renewed—remission of sins for all who should engage in the expedition; the
protection of the church for their families and property; no suits were to be
brought against them until their return; those who were in debt were discharged
from payment of interest, and it was allowed that the possessors of fiefs
should pledge them in order to raise the expenses of the war.
It was natural that such a call should be first
addressed to France, the chosen refuge of expelled popes, the country which had
given princes, and laws, and language to the crusading colonies of the East.
And Lewis VII, then about twenty-six years of age, was ready to take the
cross—from feelings of devotion, from remorse for the conduct which had drawn
on him the censures of the church and for his guilt in the calamity of Vitry,
from a belief that he was bound by a promise which his brother Philip had been
prevented by death from fulfilling; perhaps, too, by the hope of sharing in the
saintly glory which crowned the names of Godfrey and Tancred. At a parliament
which was held at Bourges, at Christmas 1145, he proposed the subject to his
nobles, and the bishop of Langres excited them by a description of the scenes
which had taken place in the East; but as the number of those who were present
was not great, the business of a crusade was adjourned to a larger meeting,
which was to be held at Vezelay at the following Easter. To this Lewis summoned
all the princes of Gaul, and, as neither the abbey church nor the marketplace
of Vezelay could hold the assembled multitude, they were ranged along the
declivity of the hill on which the little town is built, and in the valley of
the Cure below. The pope had been requested to attend, but had been compelled
by the renewed troubles of Rome to excuse himself and had delegated the
preaching of the crusade to Bernard, who, although for some years he had been
suffering from sickness, enthusiastically took up the cause. At Vezelay,
Bernard set forth with glowing eloquence the sufferings of the eastern
Christians, and the profanation of the holy places by the infidels. His speech
was interrupted by loud and eager cries of “The cross! The cross!”. Lewis
and his queen were the first to take the sign of enrolment in the sacred cause;
princes, nobles, and a multitude of others pressed forward, until the crosses
which had been provided were exhausted, when the abbot, the king, and others
gave up part of their own dresses in order to furnish a fresh supply. It was
agreed that the expedition should be ready to set out within a year, and the
great assembly of Vezelay was followed by meetings in other towns of France, at
which Bernard's eloquence and the prophet-like authority which he had gained,
were everywhere triumphant, and enlisted crowds of zealous followers. At
Chartres he was urged to become the leader of the crusade; but, warned by the
failure of Peter the Hermit, he felt his unfitness for such a post, and told
the assembly that his strength would not suffice to reach the distant scene of
action; that they should choose a leader of a different kind. “There is more
need there”, he told the abbot of Morimond, “of fighting soldiers than of
chanting monks”.
The scenes of the first crusade were renewed.
Miracles, prophecies, promises of success drawn out of the Sibylline oracles,
contributed to stir up the general enthusiasm. Bernard tells us that cities and
castles were emptied; that the prophecy of “seven women taking hold of one man”
was almost fulfilled among those who remained behind. Many robbers and other
outcasts of society embraced the new way of salvation which was opened to them;
hymns took the place of profane songs; violence ceased, so that it was considered
wrong even to carry arms for the sake of safety. Yet amid the general
excitement and zeal, many bitter complaints were raised (especially from the
monastic societies) against the heavy taxation by which the king found it
necessary to raise money for his expedition.
From France Bernard proceeded into Germany, where an
ignorant and fanatical monk, named Rudolf had been preaching the crusade with
much success, but had combined with it a denunciation of the Jews, of whom
great numbers had been slaughtered in consequence. At such times of
excitement against the enemies of Christ the Jews were generally sufferers.
Even Peter of Cluny on this occasion wrote to the French king, denouncing them
as more distant from Christianity and more bitter against it than the Saracens,
and advising that, although they ought not to be slain, their wealth should be
confiscated for the holy enterprise. But Bernard was against all measures of
violence towards them, and wished only that they should be forbidden, as the
pope had forbidden all Christians, to exact usury from the crusaders. He
therefore reprobated Rudolf's preaching in the strongest terms, and, as the
monk disowned submission to any ecclesiastical authority, Bernard, at the
request of the archbishop of Mainz, undertook a journey into Germany for the
purpose of counteracting his influence. In an interview at Mainz, Rudolf was
convinced of his error; filled with shame and sorrow for the effects of his
preaching, he withdrew into a cloister; and although such was the exasperation
which he had produced among the people that Bernard was almost stoned on
attempting to dissuade those of Frankfort from violence and plunder against the
Jews, the abbot’s humane exertions were successful in arresting the
persecution.
At Frankfort Bernard had interviews with Conrad, whom
he endeavoured to draw into the crusade. In Germany, where there was not that
special connection with the eastern Latins which had contributed to rouse the
French to their assistance, less of sympathy was to be expected than in France;
and the king’s age, his knowledge of the difficulties, acquired in an earlier
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and most especially the political state of
Germany, of Italy, and of Rome, combined to dissuade him from the expedition.
Although, therefore, Bernard was able to remove some of the obstacles by
reconciling him with princes who might have been likely to take advantage of
his absence, Conrad steadily resisted his solicitations, and Bernard was about
to return to Clairvaux, when he was invited by Herman, bishop of Constance, to
wait for a diet which was to be held at Spires, and in the meanwhile to preach
the crusade in the diocese of Constance.
The fame of Bernard and his reputation for miracles
were already well known in Germany, and, as he journeyed up the Rhine, crowds
everywhere flocked to him, entreating his pity for the cure of the sick, the
blind, the lame, and the possessed. His own enthusiasm (for, although he
disavowed all credit on account of his miracles, he believed them to be real,
and to be attestations of his cause) and the enthusiasm of the people were
raised to the highest degree; every day, says a biographer who had accompanied him
on his mission, he did some miracles, and on some days as many as twenty. As he
was unacquainted with the language of the country, his discourses were
explained by an interpreter; but his looks and tones and gestures penetrated to
the hearts of the Germans far more than the chilled words of the translator;
they wept and beat their breasts, and even tore the saint's clothes in order
that they might take the cross. Returning to Spires, Bernard there again urged
his cause on Conrad with such force that the king promised to consult his
advisers, and to answer on the morrow. But at the mass which followed
immediately after this interview, Bernard, contrary to custom and without
notice, introduced a sermon, which he wound up by a strong personal appeal to
Conrad—representing him as standing before the judgment-seat, and as called by
the Saviour to give an account for all the benefits which had been heaped on
him. The “miracle of miracles”, as Bernard styled it, was wrought. Conrad burst
into tears, and declared himself ready to obey the call to God's service; and,
amid the loud shouts of all who were present, Bernard, taking the banner of the
cross from the altar, delivered it to the king as the token of his engagement.
Among the chiefs who followed Conrad’s example in taking the cross were his
nephew Frederick of Hohenstaufen, Welf of Bavaria, Henry, marquis of Austria,
and the chronicler Otho, bishop of Freising, uterine brother of Conrad, and
formerly a pupil of Abelard. The Saxons declined the expedition, on the ground
that their duty called them rather to attack their own idolatrous neighbours,
and for this purpose they engaged in a home crusade against the pagans on their
northern border. But from all other parts of Germany recruits poured in; and
Bernard left the abbot of Eberach to take his place in organizing the
expedition.
Returning home by way of Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, and
Cambray, Bernard everywhere produced the greatest effect by his eloquence and
his miracles; and he reappeared at Clairvaux with thirty followers, whom, with
an equal number of others, he had persuaded to embrace the monastic life. In
February 1147 a great meeting was held at Étampes, and Bernard was eagerly
listened to as he reported the success of his late journey. On the second day
of the meeting, the question of the route which should be taken by the French
crusaders was discussed. Letters or envoys had been received by the king from
various sovereigns to whom he had announced his expedition. Roger of Sicily
advised him to proceed by sea, and offered him a resting-place by the way.
Conrad of Germany and Geisa of Hungary, wishing to divert the stream from their
own territories, advised that the French should take ship; but Manuel of
Constantinople made flattering promises of aid and furtherance, and Lewis,
disdaining the doubts which were raised as to the Greek’s sincerity, and the
representations which were offered as to the difficulties of the way, decided
on making the journey by land.
On the following day the question of a regency was
proposed. The king left the choice to his nobles and prelates, and Bernard
announced that it had fallen on the count of Nevers, and Suger, abbot of St.
Denys. “Behold”, he said, “here are two swords; it is enough”. The count,
however, declined the office on the ground that he was about to become a
Carthusian; and the regency was committed to Suger, with two colleagues whose
share in it was little more than nominal.
Eugenius now appeared in France, and was met at Dijon
by Lewis, who displayed the greatest reverence towards him. The two celebrated
Easter at St. Denys, where the pope overruled Suger’s reluctance to undertake
the regency. The king took from the altar the —the banner of the county of the
Vexin, which he held under the great abbey—and, as a feudal vassal, received
Suger’s permission to engage in the crusade, with the pope’s blessing on his
enterprise.
It had been agreed that the forces of France and of
Germany should proceed separately, as well for the sake of avoiding quarrels
among the soldiers as for greater ease in obtaining provisions. In the spring
of 1147, Conrad set out from Ratisbon, after having endeavoured to secure the
peace of Germany by the election and coronation of his son Henry as king of the
Romans. His force consisted of 70,000 heavy-armed cavalry, with a huge train of
lighter horsemen, footmen, women and children; and Lewis was to follow with an
equal number. The Germans embarked on rafts and in boats which conveyed them
safely down the Danube; but in Hungary they were met by envoys from the Greek
emperor, who required them to swear that they had no designs against him; and
on entering the imperial territory they found difficulties on every side.
Manuel is accused by the Latins of treachery, and the Greek Nicetas joins in
the charge, while other Greeks charge the crusaders with the blame of the
differences which arose. There was plundering by the strangers, and attacks
were often made on them by the Greek soldiery. Although markets for provisions
had been promised, the Greeks shut themselves up in their towers, and let down
their supplies over the walls in buckets; they insisted on being paid
beforehand, and it is complained that their provisions were shamefully
adulterated, that sometimes they gave nothing in return for the payment,
and that in exchanges they cheated the Latins by means of false money which
Manuel had coined for the purpose. By a sudden rising of the river Melas in the
night, a considerable part of Conrad's force was swept away, with his tents and
camp equipage. On reaching Constantinople, the scenes of the first crusade were
renewed. The Byzantines were shocked by the rudeness of the Germans, and
especially by the sight of women armed and riding in male fashion, “more
masculine than Amazons”. There were quarrels about markets; the Germans, in
indignation at the treatment which they met with, plundered and destroyed many
splendid villas near the city; there were irreconcilable and interminable
disputes as to matters of precedence and ceremony. Although the two emperors
were brothers-in-law, Conrad left Constantinople without having seen Manuel,
and crossed the Bosphorus with a host which, after all the reduction that it
had suffered, was still reckoned to exceed 90,000 men.
In the meantime a force composed of men from Flanders,
England, and other northern countries, assembled in the harbour of Dartmouth,
and sailed for Portugal, where they wrested Lisbon from the Saracens in October
1147. But it would seem that they were content with their successes in the
Spanish peninsula, and did not proceed onwards to join in the attempts to
deliver the Holy Land.
The French crusaders assembled at Metz, where a code
of laws was drawn up for their conduct in the expedition; but a chronicler
declines to record these laws, inasmuch as they were not observed by the nobles
who had sworn to them. The host passed through Germany and Hungary without any
considerable misfortune, although even from the Hungarian frontier the king
found it necessary to write to Suger for a fresh supply of money; and at
Constantinople their superior refinement at once made them more acceptable than
the Germans, and enabled them better to conceal their dislike and distrust of
the Greeks. But the hollowness of the oppressive civilities with which Manuel
received Lewis was deeply felt; the Greeks were found to be false and
fraudulent in all their dealings; and the exasperation of the crusaders was
increased by religious differences, so bitter that the Greek clergy thought it
necessary to purify the altars on which the Latins had celebrated, and even to
rebaptize a Latin before allowing him to marry a wife of the Greek communion.
The bishop of Langres proposed to seize the city, by way of punishing them for
their schism and their perfidy; and but for the eagerness of the crusaders to
go onwards, his counsels would probably have been acted on. After reaching the
Asiatic shore, Lewis did homage to the eastern emperor; but an eclipse of the
sun, which took place on the same day, was interpreted as portending some
diminution of the king’s splendour.
Lewis had reached Nicaea in safety when he was met by
Frederick of Hohenstaufen with tidings of disasters which had befallen the
Germans. The main body of these, under Conrad, had intended to march by
Iconium, while the rest, under the bishop of Freising, were to take the less
direct way by the coast; but, before Conrad and his division had advanced far,
it was found that they had miscalculated, and had been deceived by the Greeks,
both as to the distance and as to the difficulties of the way. Encumbered as
they were by helpless women and children, they advanced but slowly. Their
provisions were nearly exhausted, and no more were to be procured; the Greek
guides who had led them into the desert country, after having deluded them with
falsehoods of every kind, deserted them during the night, and returned to
deceive the French with romantic fables as to the triumphs of the crusading
arms. Squadrons of Turks, lightly armed and mounted on nimble horses, hovered
about them, uttering wild cries, and discharging deadly flights of javelins and
arrows, while the Europeans, worn out with hunger and toil, loaded with heavy
armour, and having lost their horses, were unable to bring them to close
combat: and, as they were still within the imperial territory, there was reason
to believe that the enemies of the cross had been incited to attack them by the
treachery of Manuel. At Nicaea Conrad himself appeared in retreat, with less
than a tenth of the force which he had led onwards from that city. The Greeks
refused to supply his hungry followers with food, except in exchange for their
arms : and most of them returned in miserable condition towards Constantinople,
whence a scanty remnant found its way back to Germany. In order that Conrad
might not appear without a respectable force, Lewis ordered the Lorrainers,
Burgundians, and Italians, who were feudally subject to the empire, to attach
themselves to him; and, having resolved to proceed by the longer but less
hazardous road, the army reached Ephesus. But quarrels had arisen between the
nations of which it was composed a coolness took place between the two leaders;
and Conrad, under pretext of illness, gladly accepted an invitation from his
imperial brother-in-law, and returned to winter at Constantinople.
After having spent Christmas at Ephesus, Lewis
directed his march towards Attalia (Satalia). The crusaders crossed the
Maeander, after a victory over a Turkish force which opposed their passage. But
as they advanced they found themselves unable to obtain food, and the treachery
of the Greeks became continually more manifest. In a narrow defile, where the
van and the rear had been accidentally separated, the army was attacked, and
suffered heavy loss both in slain and in prisoners; the king’s own life was in
great danger. The survivors continued their march in gloomy apprehension, and
dangers seemed to thicken around them. In their extremity, it was proposed by
Lewis that a brotherhood of five hundred horsemen should be formed for the
protection of the rest. A knight named Gilbert, of whom nothing is known except
the skill and valour which he displayed on this occasion, was chosen as its
head, and even the king himself served as a member of the band. By Gilbert’s
generalship, two rivers were successfully crossed in the face of the enemy, who
were afterwards attacked and routed with great slaughter; and, although the
crusaders were in such distress for provisions that they were obliged to eat
most of their horses, they reached Attalia on the fifteenth day of their march
from Ephesus.
From Attalia Lewis embarked for Syria, by advice of
his counsellors, taking with him part of the force, and having, as he thought,
secured a safe advance for the rest under the protection of an escort. But the
Greeks who had been hired for this purpose abandoned them; and the crusaders,
after having fought bravely against an assailing force of Turks, were driven to
fall back on Attalia. There, however, the inhabitants who, during the king’s
stay in the city, had used every kind of extortion against the Franks, shut the
gates on them, and they found themselves obliged to crouch under the walls,
hungry and almost naked, while violent storms of wind and rain increased their
misery. At length, in utter desperation, they attempted again to march onward.
But the Turks surrounded them in overpowering numbers, and the whole remnant of
the unhappy force was cut off with the exception of three thousand, who
surrendered themselves into slavery. Some of them apostatized, although their
masters did not put any force on them as to religion.
Lewis landed at the mouth of the Orontes, and
proceeded to Antioch, where he was received by his wife’s uncle, prince
Raymond; but he declined the prince’s invitation to join in an expedition
against Noureddin, and continued his way to Jerusalem, where he arrived towards
the end of June, in a guise befitting a penitential pilgrim rather than a
warrior who had set out at the head of a powerful army, and with an assured
hope of victory and conquest. In July, a meeting of the Frank chiefs, both lay
and ecclesiastical, was held at Acre, and among those present was Conrad, who,
after having been hospitably entertained at Constantinople through the winter,
had reached Jerusalem at Easter, with a very few soldiers in his train. An
expedition against Damascus was resolved on, and the siege of that city was
begun with good hope of success. But jealousies arose among the Franks, and
some of them—it is said the Templars—were bribed by the enemy's gold, so that
the expedition was defeated. Sick in body, depressed in mind, and utterly
disgusted with the Christians of the Holy Land, Conrad embarked for
Constantinople in September, and thence, by way of Greece and Istria, made his
way to Ratisbon, where he arrived in Whitsun week 1149. Lewis, ashamed and
penitent, lingered in the Holy Land until July of that year, when, yielding at
length to Suger’s earnest solicitations, he took ship for Sicily—his queen
following separately. In passing through Italy he had an interview with the
pope, and he soon after reached his own dominions. But of the vast numbers
which had accompanied him towards the East, it is said that not so many as
three hundred returned.
The miserable and shameful result of this expedition,
which, while it had drained Europe of men and treasure, had only rendered the
condition of the Christians in the Holy Land worse than before, excited loud
murmurs against Bernard, as the man by whose preaching, prophecies, and
miracles, it had been chiefly promoted; and all his authority was needed in
order to justify himself. We are told that, when the dismal tidings from the
East were filling all France with sorrow and anger, a blind boy was brought to
him for cure. The abbot prayed that, if his preaching had been right, he might
be enabled to work the miracle; and this attestation of his truth was granted.
He referred to his earlier miracles as certain signs that his preaching of the
crusade had been sanctioned by Heaven; he declared himself willing to bear any
blame rather than that it should be cast on God. He regarded the failure of the
expedition as a fit chastisement for the sins of the crusaders; and an Italian
abbot assured him that St. John and St. Paul had appeared in a vision,
declaring that the number of the fallen angels had been restored from the souls
of those who had died in the crusade.
During the absence of Lewis in the East, his kingdom
had been successfully administered by Suger. Suger was born of humble parents
in 1081, and at an early age entered the monastery of St. Denys, where he
became the companion of Lewis VI in his education, and so laid the foundation
of his political eminence. His election as abbot in 1122 was at first opposed
by Lewis, because the royal permission had not been previously asked; but this
difficulty was overcome, and Suger became the king’s confidential adviser. In
the midst of the political employments which continually increased on him,
notwithstanding his endeavours to withdraw from them, he performed his monastic
duties with the most scrupulous attention. He reformed the disorders which
Abelard had censured among the monks of the abbey; he skillfully improved its
finances, and extended its property; he rebuilt the church and furnished it
magnificently. In his own person he had always been rigidly monastic; and
although it is supposed that he was the abbot whom Bernard censures for going
about with upwards of sixty horses, and a train more than sufficient for two
bishops, he afterwards reformed his pomp, and received Bernard’s warm
congratulations on the change. Under Lewis VII Suger’s influence became greater
than ever. While left as regent of the kingdom, he employed not only his
secular authority, but the censures of the church, which the pope authorized
him to wield, in checking the violent and lawless tendencies of such nobles as
had remained in France. He defeated the attempts of Robert of Dreux, who had
returned from the crusade before his brother Lewis, to supplant the absent
king, and he exerted himself diligently to raise and transmit the supplies of
money for which Lewis was continually importuning him by letters. When the
unhappy expedition was projected, Suger had opposed the general enthusiasm for
it. But after its failure, the tidings which arrived from the East stirred him
with new feelings. Raymond of Antioch had been slain, and other chiefs were
taken prisoners. Jerusalem itself was threatened by the infidels, while within
its walls a bitter contest for power was raging between the young king Baldwin
III and his mother Melisenda. It seemed as if the Latins were about to be swept
from the Holy Land. Suger was excited to attempt to raise a fresh crusade,
which Bernard advocated with his old enthusiasm. Meetings for the purpose were
held at Laon and at Chartres; but both nobles and bishops received the project
with coldness, and when it was proposed that Bernard himself should go to
Jerusalem, in order to provoke others to emulation, the Cistercians refused to
allow him. Suger, however, resolved to devote to this purpose the treasures
with which St. Denys had been enriched by his administration. He sent large
sums of money to the East, and intended to follow with a force of his own
raising. But his death in 1151 put an end to the projected expedition.
It has been mentioned that the queen of the French
accompanied her husband to the crusade, and that she returned in a separate
vessel. Eleanor's haughty and unbending character was ill suited to that of
Lewis, and she scornfully declared that she had married, not a king, but a
monk. Differences had broken out between them at Antioch, and had been fomented
by her uncle Raymond, who was provoked by the king’s refusal to assist him in
his designs against Aleppo. She is charged with infidelity to her husband, whom
it is even said that she had intended to desert for the embraces of an infidel
chief. The marriage was open to a canonical objection, of which Bernard had
spoken strongly during the quarrel between the king and the church; and
although the pope had overruled this objection, it was now brought before a
council at Beaugency, which pronounced for a separation on the ground of
consanguinity. Immediately after, Eleanor entered into a second marriage with
Henry, duke of Normandy, count of Anjou, and afterwards king of England, who
thus became master of her extensive territories; and, by this marriage, the
foundation was laid for a life-long jealousy and rivalry between Lewis and the
great vassal whose territory in France exceeded the king’s own.
The presence of the pope, and the good understanding
between him and Suger, had contributed greatly to the preservation of peace in
France during the crusade; and by corresponding with the archbishop of Mainz,
and Wibald, abbot of Stablo, whom Conrad had left as guardians of his son,
Eugenius conferred a like benefit on Germany. In November 1147 he was induced
by an invitation from Albero, archbishop of Treves, to visit that city, where
he remained nearly three months. Among the matters there brought before him
were the prophecies of Hildegard, head of a monastic sisterhood at St.
Disibod’s, in the diocese of Mainz. Hildegard, born in 1098, had from her
childhood been subject to fits of ecstasy, in which it is said that, although
ignorant of Latin, she uttered her oracles in that language; and these oracles
were eagerly heard, recorded, and preserved. With the power of prophecy she was
believed to possess that of miracles; she was consulted on all manner of
subjects, and among her correspondents were emperors, kings, and popes. Her
tone in addressing the highest ecclesiastical personages is that of a
prophetess far superior to them, and she denounces the corruptions of the monks
and clergy in a strain, which has made her a favourite with the fiercest
opponents of the papal church. Bernard, when in Germany, had been interested by
Hildegard's character, and at his instance the pope now examined her
prophecies, bestowed on her his approval, and sanctioned her design of building
a convent in a spot which had been marked out by a vision, on St. Rupert's
Hill, near Bingen.
From Treves Eugenius proceeded to Reims, where, on the
21st of March 1148, a great council met under his presidency. This council is
connected with English history, not only by the circumstance that Theobald,
archbishop of Canterbury, attended it in defiance of a prohibition from king
Stephen (for whom, however, he charitably obtained a respite when the pope was
about to pronounce a sentence of excommunication), but because among the
matters which came before it was a contest for the see of York between William,
a nephew of the king, and Henry Murdac, abbot of Fountains. In this question,
Bernard, influenced by partiality for Henry, as a member of his order and
formerly his pupil, took a part which is universally acknowledged to have been
wrong; for William had been elected by a majority of votes, and had been
consecrated by his uncle, Henry, bishop of Winchester. The affair had already
been discussed at Paris in 1147, and was now, through Bernard's influence,
decided by the pope against William, who was excommunicated; but he found a
refuge with the bishop of Winchester, until, after the death of his rival, he
was again elected to York, and, with the sanction of Anastasius IV, resumed
possession of the see in 1154. His return was, however, opposed by some of his
clergy, and his death, which took place in the same year, is said to have been
caused by poison administered in the eucharistic chalice. William's sanctity
was attested by miracles at his tomb, and in the next century the archbishop
whom Bernard had branded as a simoniac, and whom Eugenius, at Bernard's
dictation, had deposed, was canonized by Nicholas III.
Another question which came before the council at
Reims related to the opinions of Gilbert de la Porrée, who, after having been
long famous as a teacher, had been raised in 1141 to the bishopric of Poitiers.
Gilbert was, like Abelard, one of those theologians who paid less than the
usual reverence to the traditions of former times. Otho of Freising, his pupil
and admirer, tells us that his subtlety and acuteness led him to depart in many
things from the customary way of speaking, although his respect for authority
was greater than Abelard's, and his character was free from the vanity and the
levity which had contributed so largely to Abelard's misfortunes.
Gilbert had been present at the council of Sens in
1140, and it is said that Abelard, after having heard himself condemned, turned
to the theologian of Poitiers, and warned him in a well-known verse of Horace
that his turn of persecution would come next. The pope, when on his way to
France, was met at Siena by two archdeacons of Gilbert's diocese, who presented
a complaint against their bishop; but when he attempted to investigate the
charge at the council of Paris in 1147, Gilbert was saved from condemnation by
the obscurity of the subject to which his alleged errors related, and by his
own dialectical acuteness. The inquiry was adjourned to a greater assembly, but
the difficulties which had baffled the council of Paris were equally felt at
Reims. The chief errors imputed to Gilbert related to the doctrine of the
Godhead. He was charged with denying that the Divine essence is God, and
consequently with denying that it could have been incarnate; with holding that
God is pure Being, without any attributes, although including in his perfect
Being all that we conceive of as His attributes and to this it was added that
he denied the efficacy of the Sacraments—maintaining that none were really
baptized but such as should eventually be saved. Gilbert defended himself at
great length, and cited many passages from the fathers in behalf of his
opinions. “Brother”, said the pope at last, “you say and read a great many
things which perhaps we do not understand; but tell us plainly whether you own
that supreme essence by which the three Persons are God to be itself God”.
Gilbert, wearied with the disputation, hastily answered “No”, and his answer
was recorded, after which the council adjourned. On the following day, Gilbert,
who in the meantime had held much earnest conference with such of the cardinals
as favoured him, endeavoured by distinctions and explanations to do away with
the effect of his hasty reply. Bernard, in speaking against him, made use of
some words which gave offence to the cardinals—"Let that, too, be written
down", said Gilbert. “Yes”, cried the abbot, “let it be written down with
an iron pen, and with a nail of adamant!”. As Gilbert’s party among the
cardinals was strong, Bernard endeavoured to counteract their influence by
assembling a number of French prelates and other ecclesiastics, and producing
at the council a set of propositions on which these had agreed in opposition to
the errors imputed to the bishop of Poitiers. On this, the jealousy of the
cardinals, who had long been impatient of his ascendency over Eugenius, burst
forth. They denounced the French clergy as attempting to impose a new creed—a
thing, they said, which all the patriarchs of Christendom could not presume to
do without the authority of Rome; they loudly blamed the pope for preferring
the French church to the Roman—for preferring his private friendships before
the advice of those legitimate counsellors to whom he owed his elevation.
Eugenius, unwilling to offend either party, desired Bernard to make peace;
whereupon Bernard declared that he and his friends had not intended to claim
any undue authority for their paper; but that, as Gilbert had demanded a
written statement of his belief, he had desired to fortify himself by the
consent of the French bishops. Gilbert was at length allowed to depart
unharmed, on professing his agreement with the faith of the council and of the
Roman church; he was reconciled with his archdeacons, by whom the charges had
been brought against him; and his friends represented the result of the inquiry
as a triumph.
Eugenius was now able, by the assistance of the
Sicilian king, to return to Rome, where he arrived in November 1149, and he
requested Bernard, as their personal intercourse could no longer be continued,
to draw up some admonitions for his benefit. The result was a remarkable
treatise “On Consideration”, which shows how far Bernard’s reverence for the
papacy was from implying an admiration of the actual system of Rome, and how
nearly in some respects the views of the highest hierarchical churchmen agreed
with those of such reformers as Arnold of Brescia. With professions of deep
humility and deference, the abbot writes as if the pope were still a monk of
Clairvaux. The great object of the book is to exhort Eugenius to the spiritual
duties of his office, and to warn him against the dangers of secularity.
Bernard complains of the manifold business in which popes were engaged; of
their employment in hearing of suits which were rather secular than
ecclesiastical, and fell rather under the laws of Justinian than under those of
the Saviour. These engagements, he says, were so engrossing as to allow no time
for consideration; and the pope is advised to extricate himself from them as
far as possible by devolving some part of his jurisdiction on others, by
cutting short the speeches and the artifices of lawyers, and by discouraging
the practice of too readily appealing to Rome. There is much of earnest warning
against pride and love of rule; Bernard declares that the pomp of the papacy is
copied, not from St. Peter, but from Constantine; that the Roman church ought
not to be the mistress of other churches, but their mother; that the pope is
not the lord, but the brother, of other bishops. He denounces the frequent
exemption of abbots from the authority of bishops, and of bishops from the
authority of their archbishops, the greed, the venality, the assumption of the
papal court; he desires Eugenius to be careful in the choice of his officials
and confidants, to avoid all acceptance of persons—(as to money, he
acknowledges the pope’s utter indifference)—and to advance resolutely, although
gradually, towards a reformation of the prevailing abuses. There is no reason
to doubt that this treatise was received by Eugenius with the respect which he
always paid to Bernard; but the abuses which it denounced were too strong and
too inveterate to be cured by the good intentions of any pope. In it, however,
the great saint of Clairvaux, by the unreserved plainness of his language and
by the weight of his authority, had supplied a weapon which, from age to age,
was continually employed by those who desired to reform the church and the
court of Rome.
Although Eugenius was received by the Romans with
submission to his spiritual authority, his temporal claims were not admitted,
and after a few months he was again compelled to leave the city. In the hope of
aid against the rebels, he entreated Conrad to come to Italy and receive the
imperial crown, while the Romans requested the king to take part with them
against the clergy, and Manuel of Constantinople urged the fullfillment of
an agreement which had been made as Conrad was returning from the East, for a
joint expedition against the pope's Sicilian allies. To each party Conrad
replied that he was preparing for an Italian expedition, and he assured the
pope that no evil was intended against the Roman church. But in the midst of
his preparations he was seized by an illness, which carried him off in February
1152. In the end of that year, Eugenius, whose bounty and mildness had done
much to conciliate the Romans, was allowed to return to his capital; but he
survived little more than six months, dying on the 8th of July 1153. And on the
20th of August in that year Bernard died at Clairvaux— “ascending”, says a
chronicler of the time, “from the Bright Valley to the mountain of eternal
brightness”.
3
ADRIAN IV AND FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.
Henry, king of the Romans, had died about a year and a
half before his father; and, although Conrad still had a son surviving, his
feeling for the public good induced him to choose an heir of maturer age, his
nephew Frederick, son of that Frederick of Hohenstaufen who had been Lothair’s
competitor for the empire. A week after his uncle’s death, Frederick was
elected at Frankfort, and five days later he received the German crown at
Aix-la-Chapelle from Arnold, archbishop of Cologne. On the very day of his coronation
the stern determination of his character was remarkably displayed. In the
minster, where the ceremony took place, one of his officers, who had been
dismissed for misconduct, threw himself at his feet, in the hope that the
circumstances of the day might secure his pardon. But Frederick declared that,
as he had disgraced the man not out of hatred but for justice sake, neither the
festive occasion nor the intercessions of the princes who were present could be
allowed to reverse the sentence. Frederick, who was now thirty-one years of
age, had distinguished himself in the late crusade; he was a prince of
extraordinary ability and indomitable perseverance, filled with a high sense of
the dignity to which he had been elevated, and with a firm resolution to
maintain its rights according to the model of Charlemagne. Yet, although his
struggle for the assertion of the imperial privileges was to be chiefly against
the hierarchy, he appears to have been sincere in his profession of reverence
for the church, and not immoderate in his conception of the relations between
the secular and the ecclesiastical powers. Descended as he was from the houses
of both Welf and Waiblingen, the feud of those houses was dormant throughout
his reign, although it afterwards revived, when the names became significant of
the papal and the imperial parties respectively.
In the very beginning of his reign, Frederick was
drawn into a collision with the papacy with regard to the see of Magdeburg.
Some of the clergy had wished to elect the dean as archbishop, while others
were for the provost; but Frederick persuaded the dean and his partisans to
accept Wichmann, bishop of Zeitz, as their candidate, and, by the power which
the Worms concordat had allowed to the sovereign in cases of disputed
elections, he decided for Wichmann, and invested him with the regalia. The
provost on this carried a complaint to Eugenius, who, in letters to the chapter
of Magdeburg and to the German bishops, ordered that Wichmann should not be
acknowledged as archbishop; it is, however, remarkable that he rested his
prohibition on the canons which forbade translation except for great causes
(such as, he said, did not exist in this case), but did not hint as yet that
the translation of bishops was a matter reserved to the Roman see. Frederick
continued firm in the assertion of his pretensions, against both Eugenius and
his successor, Anastasius IV. A legate whom Anastasius sent into Germany for
the settlement of the question found himself resisted in his assumptions, and
was obliged to return without having effected anything; and Wichmann, whom
Frederick soon after sent to Rome, received from Anastasius the confirmation of
his election, with the archiepiscopal pall. By the result of this affair
Frederick's authority was strengthened in proportion to the loudness with which
the Roman court had before declared itself resolved to abate nothing of its
pretensions.
The long absence of the emperors from Italy had
encouraged the people of that country, which was continually advancing in
commerce, manufactures, and agriculture, in wealth and in population, to forget
their allegiance to the imperial crown. The feudatories came to regard
themselves as independent; the cities set up republican governments of their
own, under consuls who were annually elected, and the right of investing these
magistrates was the only shadow which the bishops were allowed to retain of their
ancient secular power. The cities were engaged in constant feuds with each
other, and each subdued the nobles of its neighbourhood, whom the citizens in
some cases even compelled to reside within the city walls for a certain portion
of the year.
Frederick was resolved to reassert the imperial
rights, and applications from various quarters concurred with his own
inclination in urging on him an expedition into Italy. With the Greek emperor
he formed a scheme of combination against the Sicilian Normans and while
Eugenius entreated his aid against the republican and Arnoldist faction, which
the pope represented as intending to set up an emperor of its own, another
writer addressed him on the part of the Romans, assuring him that the story of
Constantine’s donation had now lost all credit even among the meanest of the
people, and that the pope with his cardinals did not venture to appear in
public. At his first German diet, in 1152, Frederick proposed an expedition
into Italy, for which he required the princes to be ready within two years; and
in October 1154 he entered Lombardy by way of Trent, at the head of the most
splendid army that had ever crossed the Alps. A great assembly was summoned to
the plains of Roncaglia, the place in which the German kings, on their way to
receive the imperial crown, had been accustomed to meet their Italian subjects.
The vassals who failed to appear—among them, some ecclesiastics—were declared
to have forfeited their fiefs. The mutual complaints of the Italian cities were
heard, and severe sentences were pronounced against those who were found
guilty, especially against the powerful and turbulent Milanese, who had treated
Frederick’s admonitions with contempt, and had now added to their offences by
offering to bribe him into sanctioning their tyranny over their neighbours.
Tortona, which had shown itself contumacious, was taken after a siege of two
months, and destroyed; and at Pavia the king was received with a magnificence
which expressed the joy of the citizens in the humiliation of their Milanese
enemies.
In March 1153 Frederick had entered into a compact
with Eugenius, binding himself to make no alliance with the Romans or with
Roger of Sicily unless with the pope’s consent, and to maintain the
privileges of the papacy; while the pope promised to support the power of
Frederick, and to bestow on him the imperial crown, and both parties pledged
themselves to make no grant of Italian territory to “the king of the Greeks”.
Since the date of that compact, Eugenius had been succeeded by Anastasius IV,
and Anastasius, in December 1154, by Nicholas Breakspear, an Englishman, who
took the name of Adrian IV. Breakspear, the son of a poor clerk, who had
afterwards become a monk of St. Albans, is said to have been refused admission
into that house on account of his insufficiency in knowledge, and was driven to
seek his fortune in France, where he distinguished himself by his diligence in
study at Paris, and rose to be abbot of the regular canons of St. Rufus, near
Avignon. In this office he became unpopular with his canons, who carried their
complaints against him to Eugenius III; and the pope at once put an end to the
strife and marked his high sense of the abbot's merit by appointing him
cardinal-bishop of Albano. As cardinal, he was sent on an important legation
into the Scandinavian kingdoms, from which he returned during the pontificate
of Anastasius and now the poor English scholar, whose Saxon descent would
probably have debarred him from any considerable preferment in his native land,
was elected to the chair of St. Peter. “He was”, says a biographer, “a man of
great kindness, meekness, and patience, skilled in the English and in the Latin
tongues, eloquent in speech, polished in his utterance, distinguished in
singing and an eminent preacher, slow to anger, quick to forgive, a cheerful
giver, bountiful in alms and excellent in his whole character”. If, however, we
may judge by his acts, it would seem that Adrian’s temper was less placid than
it is here represented; and his ideas as to the papal dignity were of the loftiest
Hildebrandine kind. Immediately after his election, he refused to acknowledge
the republican government, and issued an order that Arnold of Brescia should be
banished from Rome. To this it was answered that the pope ought to confine
himself to spiritual affairs; and the insolence of Arnold’s partisans increased
until it reached a height which gave the pope an advantage against them. A
cardinal was attacked and mortally wounded in the street; Adrian placed the
city under an interdict; and the severity of this sentence, which had never
before been known at Rome, was the more strongly felt from its being issued in
Lent, a time when the Romans had been accustomed to the pomp and the religious
consolations of especially solemn services. By the absence of these the people
were so intensely distressed that, in the holy week, they compelled the
senators to submit to the pope, who consented to take off his censure on
condition that Arnold should be driven out. On this Arnold fled from the city,
and, after having wandered for a time, he found a refuge among the nobles of
the Campagna, by whom he was regarded as a prophet. But Frederick, as he
advanced towards Rome with a rapidity which excited Adrian's suspicions, was
met by three cardinals, who in the pope’s name requested that he would take
measures against an incendiary so dangerous to the crown as well as to the
church; and in consequence of the king's demand Arnold was surrendered by those
who sheltered him. Frederick delivered him over to the pope, and, under the
authority of the prefect of Rome, the popular leader was hanged, after which
his body was burnt, and his ashes were thrown into the Tiber, lest they should
be venerated as relics by the multitudes who had followed him. “Bad as his
doctrine was”, says Gerhoh of Reichersperg, “I wish that he had been punished
with imprisonment, or exile, or with some other penalty short of death, or at
least that he had been put to death in such a manner as might have saved the
Roman church from question”.
The negotiations which Adrian had opened through his
cardinals were satisfactorily settled by Frederick’s swearing that his
intentions were friendly to the pope, and receiving in turn a promise of the
imperial crown. Having thus assured himself Adrian ventured into the camp at
Nepi, where he was received with great honour; but, although Frederick threw
himself at his feet, the pope took offence at the king's omitting to hold his
stirrup—an act of homage which, although the first example of it had been given
little more than half a century before, by Conrad, the rebellious son of Henry
IV, was already deduced by the papal party from Constantine the Great, who was
said to have performed it to Pope Sylvester. Adrian declared that he would not
give the kiss of peace unless he received the same honour which his
predecessors had always received, while Frederick declared that the omission
was purely the effect of ignorance, but that he must consult his nobles on the
subject. The cardinals in alarm withdrew to Civita Castellana, and a long
discussion was carried on, which was at length settled by the evidence of some
Germans who had accompanied the emperor Lothair to Rome; and, as this evidence
was in the pope’s favour, Frederick next day submitted to do the service which
was required, although it would seem that in the performance he intentionally
gave it the character of a jest. Having overcome this difficulty, the king
proceeded onwards in company with the pope, who strongly represented to him the
disorders of Rome, and endeavoured to draw him into an expedition against the
Sicilians, with a view to recovering Apulia for the apostolic see. Frederick
contrived to defer the consideration of this proposal; but it may be supposed
that the pope’s representations had some share in producing the reception which
the king gave to a deputation from the citizens, which waited on him near
Sutri. After listening for a time to the bombastic oration which one of the
envoys addressed to him in the name of Rome, dwelling on her glories, and
endeavouring to make terms for the Romans in exchange for their consent to the
imperial coronation, the king indignantly cut him short—“These”, he said,
pointing to his German nobles and soldiers, “are the true Latins—the consuls,
the senators, the knights. The glory of Rome and the Romans has been
transferred to the Franks. Our power has not been conferred by you, as you
pretend, but has been won by victory. Your native tyrants, such as Desiderius
and Berengar, have been overcome by my predecessors, and died as captives and
slaves in foreign lands. It is not for subjects to prescribe laws to their
sovereign. It is not for a prince at the head of a powerful army, but for
captives, to pay money; I will submit to no conditions of your making”.
On reaching Rome, Frederick took possession of the
Leonine suburb, while the bridge of St. Angelo, the only means of communication
with the opposite bank, was guarded by his soldiery; and on the 18th of June he
was crowned by Adrian in St. Peter's amid the loud acclamations of the Germans.
But after the ceremony, while the troops had withdrawn from the oppressive heat
of the day, and were refreshing themselves in their tents, a body of Romans
sallied across the bridge, attacking such of the Germans as they found in the
streets or in the churches, and appeared to have a design of seizing the pope.
The noise of this irruption penetrated to the emperor’s camp, and Frederick
immediately ordered his troops to arms. A fierce conflict raged from four in
the afternoon till nightfall; the assailants were driven back as far as the
Forum; the Tiber ran with blood, and it is said that a thousand of the Romans
were slain, and two hundred taken prisoners, while only one of the imperialists
was killed and one captured. At the pope’s intercession the Roman captives were
given up to the prefect of the city, and on St. Peter’s day Adrian pronounced
the absolution of all who had taken part in the late slaughter. Frederick was
soon after compelled by the pestilential air of the Roman summer to withdraw
from the neighbourhood of the city, and, as the time for which his troops were
bound to serve was drawing towards an end, he retired beyond the Alps—on the
way taking and destroying Spoleto, the inhabitants of which had provoked him by
their insolence. At Christmas 1155-6 a diet was held at Worms, where Arnold,
archbishop of Mainz, Hermann, count palatine, and others were brought to trial
for disturbing the peace of Germany during the emperor's absence. The
archbishop was spared in consideration of his age and profession; but the count
palatine and ten of his partisans were sentenced to the ignominious punishment
of “carrying the dog”.
Frederick’s attention was soon again demanded by the
affairs of Italy. William “the Bad”, the son and successor of Roger of Sicily,
had in 1155 refused to enter into a treaty with the pope, or to admit his
ambassadors to an interview, because Adrian, by way of claiming him as a
vassal, had styled him not king, but lord. He besieged
the pope in Benevento, laid waste the surrounding territory, and was denounced
excommunicate. This sentence was not without its effect on the minds of
William’s allies, and, in addition to the fear that these might desert him, the
dread of a combination between the Greek emperor and the pope inclined him
further to peace. His first overtures were refused, but Adrian, after having
seen his own troops and allies defeated, was fain to sue in his turn, and
received the most favourable terms. The king fell at his feet, and, on swearing
fealty to the Roman see, was invested by Adrian with the kingdom of Sicily and
the Italian territories of the Normans (including some which the popes had
never before affected to dispose of); while, in consideration of this, he
promised to aid the pope against all enemies, and to pay a yearly tribute for
Apulia, Calabria, and his other continental dominions. Frederick, who had been
exerting himself with energy and success to reduce Germany to tranquillity, was
greatly displeased that the pope had without his concurrence entered into an
alliance with the Sicilians—an alliance, moreover, which involved the
disallowance of the imperial claims to suzerainty over Apulia. He signified his
displeasure to Adrian, who on his side was dissatisfied on account of the
emperor’s having divorced his wife under pretext of consanguinity, and having
entered into another marriage, which was recommended to him by political considerations.
At a diet at Wurzburg, in 1157, a fresh expedition into Italy was resolved on;
but it was delayed by the necessity of attending to the affairs of Poland, and
in the meantime an incident took place which led to a violent collision between
the pope and the emperor.
Eskil, archbishop of Lund, in that part of modern
Sweden which was then subject to Denmark, in returning from a visit to Rome,
had been attacked, plundered, and imprisoned with a view to the exaction of
ransom, by some robber knights in the neighbourhood of Thionville. No notice
had been taken of this by Frederick, to whom Eskil had probably given offence
by his exertions to render the Danish church independent of the metropolitans
of Bremen and Hamburg. But Adrian, on hearing of it, addressed to the emperor a
letter of indignant remonstrance against the apathy with which he had regarded
an outrage injurious to the empire as well as to the church—reminding Frederick
of his having conferred the imperial crown on him, and adding that, if it had
been in his power, he would have bestowed on him yet greater favours. The
letter was presented to the emperor by two cardinals at a great assembly at
Besançon, where it was read aloud, and was interpreted by the chancellor
Reginald of Dassel (who soon after became archbishop of Cologne). But the
word beneficia which the pope had used to signify favours or
benefits, was unluckily misunderstood by the Germans as if it had the feudal
sense of benefices or fiefs. The pope was supposed to have represented the
empire as a fief of the papacy; and it was remembered that Frederick, at his
first visit to Rome, had been offended by a picture which, with its
inscription, represented Lothair as receiving his crown from the pope’s gift,
and as performing homage for it. A loud uproar arose at the supposed insolence
of the pontiff, and the general feeling was still further exasperated when
Cardinal Roland dared to ask “From whom, then, does the emperor hold his crown,
if not from the pope?”. The palsgrave Otho of Wittelsbach, who carried the
naked sword of state, was with difficulty prevented by the emperor from
cleaving the audacious ecclesiastic’s head with it. “If we were not in a
church”, said Frederick himself, “they should know how the swords of the
Germans cut”. He burst forth into violent reproaches against the legates and
their master; they were abruptly and ignominiously dismissed, and were charged
to return home at once, without staying more than one night in any place of the
imperial dominions, or burdening bishops or monasteries by their exactions.
Frederick, whose exasperation was increased by some strong rebukes which Adrian
had addressed to him on account of his divorce and second marriage, forthwith
sent forth a letter to his subjects, in which he protested that he would rather
hazard his life than admit the pope’s insolent assumptions; that he held his
kingdom and the empire by the choice of the princes and under God alone,
agreeably to our Lord's saying, that two swords are necessary for the
government of the world. Orders were issued that no German ecclesiastic should
go to Rome without the imperial license, and the passes into Italy were guarded
in order to prevent all communication.
On hearing from his legates of the indignities to
which they had been subjected, the pope wrote to the German bishops, urging
them to bring the emperor to a better mind, and to persuade him to exact from
archbishop Reginald and the palsgrave signal and public atonement for their “blasphemies”
against the Roman church. But on this occasion the German prelates preferred
their national to their hierarchical allegiance. They told the pope that they
had admonished the emperor, and had received from him “such an answer as became
a catholic prince” declaring his firm resolution, while paying all due
reverence to the pope, to admit no encroachment of the church on the empire;
and they entreated Adrian to soothe the high spirit of their sovereign. The
pope began to be alarmed, and, at the instance of Henry, duke of Bavaria, he
dispatched two envoys of a more politic character than the last, with a letter
of explanation composed in a moderate and conciliatory style. The word beneficium he
said, meant, not a fief, but simply a good deed (bonum factum) and
surely the emperor would admit that to crown him was such a deed; and by the
crown nothing more had been meant than the act of placing it on Frederick’s
head. The letter was delivered at Augsburg, and was well received; and the
picture which had given offence at Rome was removed, if not destroyed.
At length the projected expedition was ready, and
Frederick, having settled the affairs of Germany, Hungary, and Poland, crossed
the Alps in July 1158, at the head of a force composed of many nations, and
which is reckoned at 100,000 infantry and 15,000 horsed Milan and other
insubordinate cities were compelled to surrender, and felt his severity, while
the enmity of the Italian towns against each other was shown in acts of cruelty
committed by those in the imperial interest, to the astonishment and disgust of
the Germans. Milan was deprived of the privileges which were known under the
name of royalties and was required to submit the choice of its
consuls to the emperor for confirmation. At Martinmas, a great assembly was
held in the Roncaglian plains, where a city of tents was erected, the Germans
and Italians encamping on the opposite banks of the Po. As the extent of the
imperial powers in Italy had been hitherto undefined, Frederick, in an address
to his assembled subjects, declared himself resolved that it should now be duly
ascertained and determined, professing that he would rather govern by law than
by his own caprice; and the matter was committed to four eminent professors of
Bologna, together with twenty-eight judges of the Lombard cities. Filled with
the lofty notions of the imperial dignity which had lately been produced by the
revived study of ancient Roman law, these authorities declared that the emperor
possessed autocratic power, and was entitled to exact a capitation from all his
subjects. The rights of the Italian cities, to the possession of royalties were
investigated, and those for which no authority could be shown were confiscated;
a general tribute was imposed; and by these measures a revenue of 30,000 pounds
of silver was added to the imperial treasury. A few cities were allowed by
special favour to retain their consuls, who were to be appointed with the
emperor's consent; but the ordinary system of government was to be by officers
bearing the title of podestà, who were to be nominated by the
emperor, and were also to be chosen from among strangers to the place over
which they were appointed. Measures were also taken to bind the cities to
mutual peace, to prevent them from combining into parties, and to suppress the
private wars of the nobles.
On hearing of these proceedings, Adrian was greatly
excited. The idea of the imperial prerogative which had been sanctioned at
Roncaglia conflicted with the Hildebrandine pretensions of the papacy. The
resumption of royalties which had been held not only by cities and by nobles,
but by bishops and abbots—the imposition of a tribute from which ecclesiastics
were not exempted—the investiture of Frederick’s uncle, Welf VI of Bavaria, in
the inheritance of the countess Matilda—were circumstances which might well
produce alarm and irritation in the pope’s mind; “it seemed to him”, says a
writer of later date, “as if all that the emperor gained were taken from
himself”. While engaged in settling the quarrels of the Lombard cities,
Frederick received from the pope a letter peremptorily forbidding him to
arbitrate in a difference between Bergamo and Brescia; and instead of being
committed, as was usual, to an envoy of honourable station, this letter was
delivered by a man of mean and ragged appearance, who immediately disappeared.
About the same time Adrian gave additional provocation to the emperor by
refusing to allow the promotion of Guy of Blandrata to the see of Ravenna, on
the evidently trilling ground that he could not be spared from Rome, where he
was a subdeacon of the church. Indignant at these slights, the emperor ordered
his secretaries, in addressing the pope, to use the singular instead of the
plural number, and to reverse the custom, which had prevailed since the time of
Leo IV, of placing the pope’s name before that of the sovereign in the heading
of letters. These changes drew forth a strong remonstrance from Adrian, who
declared them to be a breach of the commandment that we should honour our
parents, and of the fealty which Frederick had sworn to the see of St. Peter;
and he further complained that the emperor exacted homage as well as fealty
from bishops, that he took their consecrated hands between his own hands, that
he closed not only the churches but the cities of his dominions against the legates
of the apostolic see. An embassy was also commissioned to demand redress of
alleged encroachments on the papacy—that the emperor sent messengers to Rome
without the knowledge of the pope, to whom all power in the city belonged; that
his envoys claimed entertainment in the palaces of bishops; that he exacted the
allowance known by the name of the pope’s subjects on other occasions besides
that on which it was admitted to be lawful—the expedition to receive the
imperial crown; that he detained Matilda’s inheritance, and other territories
which rightfully belonged to the apostolic see. To these complaints Frederick
replied that he had been driven by the pope’s new assumptions to fall back on
the older forms in writing to him; that he had no wish for the homage of
bishops, unless they cared to retain the royalties which they had received from
the crown; that the palaces of bishops stood on imperial ground, and therefore
his ambassadors were entitled to enter them; that if he shut out cardinals from
churches and from cities, it was because they were false to their profession,
and were intent only on plunder; that if the pope were sovereign of Rome, the
imperial title was a mockery: and he inveighed in strong terms against the
pride and rapacity of the Roman court.
The exasperation of both parties rose higher and
higher. A proposal of Frederick, that the matters in dispute should be left to
the decision of six cardinals to be named by the pope, and six German bishops
to be chosen by himself, was rejected by Adrian, on the ground that the pope
could be judged by no man. The emperor, indignant at the discovery of letters
exhorting the Lombard cities to revolt, received favourably a fresh embassy
from the Roman senate and people, and entered into negotiations with them.
A rupture of the most violent kind between the papacy
and the empire appeared to be inevitable, when, on the 1st of September 1159,
Adrian died at Anagni.