READING HALL

DOORS OF WISDOM

HISTORY OF THE POPES FROM THE GREAT SCHISM TO THE SACK OF ROME

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

THE RISE OF THE PAPAL POWER

The change that passed over Europe in the sixteenth century was due to the development of new conceptions, political, intellectual, and religious, which found their expression in a period of bitter conflict. The state-system of Europe was remodeled, and the mediaeval ideal of a united Christendom was replaced by a struggle of warring nationalities. The Papal monarchy over the Western Church was attacked and overthrown. The traditional basis of the ecclesiastical system was impugned, and in some countries rejected, in favor of the authority of Scripture. The study of classical antiquity engendered new forms of thought and created an enquiring criticism which gave a new tendency to the mental activity of Europe.

The processes by which these results were achieved were not isolated but influenced one another. However important each may be in itself; it cannot be profitably studied when considered apart from the reaction of the rest. The object of the following pages is to trace, within a limited sphere, the working of the causes which brought about the change from mediaeval to modern times. The history of the Papacy affords the widest field for such an investigation; for the Papacy was a chief element in the political system and was supreme over the ecclesiastical system of the Middle Ages, while round it gathered much that was most characteristic of the changing intellectual life of Europe.

The period which we propose to traverse may be defined as that of the decline of the Papal monarchy over Western Europe. The abasement of the Papacy by the Great Schism of the fourteenth century intensified Papal aggression and wrought havoc in the organization of the Church. The schemes of reform which consequently agitated Christendom showed a widespread desire for change. Some of these movements were held to pass beyond reform to revolution, and were consequently suppressed, while the plans of the conservative reformers failed through national jealousies and want of statesmanship. After the failure of these attempts at organic reform the chief European kingdoms redressed their most crying grievances by separate legislation or by agreements with the Pope. A reaction, that was skillfully used, restored the Papacy to much of its old supremacy; but, instead of profiting by the lessons of adversity, the Papacy only sought to minimize or abolish the concessions which had been wrung from its weakness. Impelled by the growing feeling of nationality, it sought a firm basis for itself as a political power in Italy, whereby it regained prestige in Europe, and identified itself with the Italian mind at its most fertile epoch. But by its close identification with Italy, the Papacy, both in national and intellectual matters, drifted apart from Germany; and the result was a Teutonic and national rebellion against the Papal monarchy—a rebellion so far successful that it divided Europe into two opposing camps, and brought to light differences of national character, of political aim and intellectual ideas, which had grown up unnoticed till conflict forced them into conscious expression.

Important as this period may be, it deals only with one or two phases of the history of the Papacy. Before we trace the steps in the decline of the Papal monarchy, it will be useful to recall briefly the means by which it rose and the way in which it was interwoven with the state-system of Europe.

The history of the early Church shows that even in Apostolic times the Christian congregations felt a need of organization. Deacons were chosen by popular election to provide for the due ministration of Christian benevolence, and elders were appointed to be rulers and instructors of the congregation. As the apostles passed away, the need of presidency over meetings of the representatives of congregations developed the order of bishops and led to the formation of districts within which their authority was exercised. The political life which had been extinguished under the Roman Imperial system began reviving in the organization of the Church, and the old feeling of civic government found in the regulation of ecclesiastical affairs a new field for its exercise. A line of separation was gradually drawn between the clergy and the laity, and the settlement of controversies concerning the Christian faith gave ample scope for the activity of the clerical order. Frequent assemblies were held for the discussion of disputed points, and the preeminence of the bishops of the chief cities was gradually established over other bishops. The clergy claimed authority over the laity; the control of the bishop over the inferior clergy grew more definite; and the bishop in turn recognized the superiority of his metropolitan. In the third century the Christian Churches formed a powerful and active confederacy with an organized and graduated body of officials.

The State looked on this new power with suspicion, which at times passed into persecution. Persecution only strengthened the organization of the Church and brought into prominence the depth of its influence. As soon as it became clear that, in spite of persecution, Christianity had made good its claim to be ranked as a power amongst men, the Empire turned from persecution to patronage. Constantine aimed at restoring the Imperial power by removing its seat to a new capital, where it might rise above the traditions of its past. In the new Rome by the Bosphorus the old memories of freedom and of paganism were alike discarded. The gratitude of a Christian people to a Christian Emperor, combined with the servile ideas of the East to form a new foundation for the Imperial power on a ground cleared from those restraints which the past history of the city of Rome seemed to impose on claims to irresponsible sway. The plan of Constantine so far succeeded as to erect a compact power in the East, which withstood for centuries the onslaughts of the barbarian invaders who swept over Western Europe. But though Rome was left widowed of her Imperial splendor, the memories of empire still hung around her walls, and her barbarian conquerors bowed before the awe inspired by the glories of her mighty past. In the rise of the Papacy on the spot left desolate by the Empire, the mysterious power of the old city claimed the future as her own by breathing her stern spirit of aggression into the power of love and brotherhood which had begun to bind the world into a vaster system than even the Roman Empire had created.

Moreover, in the East the Imperial system had no intention of conferring on the new religion which it adopted a different position from that held by the old referred religion which it had laid aside. Christianity was still to be a State religion, and the Emperor was still to be supreme. The internal development of Oriental Christianity strengthened these Imperial claims. The subtlety of the Oriental mind busied itself with speculations as to the exact relationships involved in the doctrine of the Trinity, and the exact connection between the two natures of Christ. A feverish passion for logical definition seized clergy and laity alike, and these abstruse questions were argued with unseemly heat. Patriarchs hurried into rash assertions, which calmer enquiry showed to be dangerous: and the patriarchates of the East lost respect among the orthodox because their holders had been at times associated with some shallow or over-hardy doctrine. As the struggles waxed fiercer in the East, men’s eyes turned with greater reverence to the one patriarch of the West, the Bishop of Rome, who was but slightly troubled by the conflicts that rent asunder the Eastern Church. The practical tendency of the Latin mind was comparatively free from the temptations to over-speculation which beset the subtle Greek.

The barbarian settlements in the West called out a missionary zeal which was concerned with enforcing the great moral principles of religion on the consciences of men rather than attempting to commend its details to their intelligence by acuteness of definition. The Western Church, which recognized the precedence of the Bishop of Rome, enjoyed the blessings of inward peace, and more and more frequently were questions referred from the troubled East to the decision of the Roman bishop.

The precedence of the Bishop of Rome over other bishops was a natural growth of the conditions of the times. The need of organization was forced upon the Church by internal discords and the hardships of stormy days: the traditions of organization were a bequest from the Imperial system. It was natural that the Council of Sardica (A.D. 347) should entrust Bishop Julius of Rome with the duty of receiving appeals from bishops who had been condemned by synods, and ordering, if he thought fit, a fresh trial. It was natural that the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) should accept the letter brought by the legates of Leo the Great as an orthodox settlement of the weary contests about the union of the divine and human natures in the person of Christ. The prestige of the Imperial city, combined with the integrity, impartiality, and practical sagacity of its bishops, won for them a general recognition of precedence.

The fall of the shadowy Empire of the West, and the union of the Imperial power in the person of the ruler of Constantinople, brought a fresh accession of dignity and importance to the Bishop of Rome. The distant Emperor could exercise no real power over the West. The Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy scarcely lasted beyond the life-time of its great founder, Theodoric. The wars of Justinian only served to show how scanty were the benefits of the Imperial rule. The invasion of the Lombards united all dwellers in Italy in an endeavor to escape the lot of servitude and save their land from barbarism. In this crisis it was found that the Imperial system had crumbled away, and that the Church alone possessed a strong organization. In the decay of the old municipal aristocracy the people of the towns gathered round their bishops, whose sacred character inspired some respect in the barbarians, and whose active charity lightened the calamities of their flocks.

In such a state of things Pope Gregory the Great (AD 590-604) raised the Papacy to a position of decisive eminence and makes the marked out the course of its future policy. The piety of emperors and nobles had conferred lands on the Roman Church, not only in Italy, but in Sicily, Corsica, Gaul, and even in Asia and Africa, until the Bishop of Rome had become the largest landholder in Italy. To defend his Italian lands against the incursions of the Lombards was a course suggested to Gregory by self-interest; to use the resources which came to him from abroad as a means of relieving the distress of the suffering people in Rome and Southern Italy was a natural prompting of his charity. In contrast to this, the distant Emperor was too feeble to send any effective help against the Lombards, while the fiscal oppression of his representatives added to the miseries of the starving people.

The practical wisdom, administrative capacity, and Christian zeal of Gregory I led the people of Rome and the neighboring regions to look upon the Pope as their head in temporal as well as in spiritual matters. The Papacy became a national center to the Italians, and the attitude of the Popes towards the Emperor showed a spirit of independence which rapidly passed into antagonism and revolt.

Gregory I was not daunted by the difficulties nor absorbed by the cares of his position at home. When he saw Christianity threatened in Italy by the heathen Lombards, he boldly pursued a system of religious colonization. While dangers were rife at Rome, a band of Roman missionaries carried Christianity to the distant English, and in England first was founded a Church which owed its existence to the zeal of the Roman bishop. Success beyond all that he could have hoped for attended Gregory’s pious enterprise. The English Church spread and flourished, a dutiful daughter of her mother-church of Rome. England sent forth missionaries in her turn, and before the preaching of Willibord and Winifred heathenism died away in Friesland, Franconia, and Thuringia. Under the new name of Boniface, given him by Pope Gregory II, Winifred, as Archbishop of Mainz, organized a German Church, subject to the successor of S. Peter.

The course of events in the East also tended to increase the importance of the See of Rome. The Muhammadan conquests destroyed the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem, which alone could boast of an apostolical foundation. Only Constantinople remained as a rival to Rome; but under the shadow of the Imperial despotism it was impossible for the Patriarch of Constantinople to lay claim to spiritual independence. The settlement of Islam in its eastern provinces involved the Empire in a desperate struggle for existence. Henceforth its object no longer was to reassert its supremacy over the West, but to hold its ground against watchful foes in the East. Italy could hope for no help from the Emperor, and the Pope saw that a breach with the Empire would give greater independence to his own position, and enable him to seek new allies elsewhere.

An opportunity was not long in coming. The great Emperor, Leo the Isaurian, in his endeavor to organize afresh the shattered mechanism of the Imperial system, saw the need of rescuing Oriental Christianity from an effeminate sentimentalism which sapped its strength. A spirit of ecstatic and transient devotion had taken the place of a serious sense of the hard duties of practical life. By ordering the restriction of images to the purpose of architectural ornaments, Leo hoped to infuse into his degenerate people some of the severe puritanism which marked the followers of Mohammed. He hoped, moreover, by enforcing his decree, to assert the power of the Emperor over the Church, and so to strengthen the Imperial authority. In the East his edict met with serious opposition; in the West it was regarded as a needless and unauthorized interference of the Imperial power in the realms of Church government. Combining political and ecclesiastical animosity, Pope Gregory II loudly protested against the execution in Italy of the imperial decree. The Romans drove from the walls the imperial governor, and the Pope was left undisputed head of the Imperial city of the West.

In this abeyance of the Empire the Lombard King naturally aspired to seize the vacant dignity, and the only possible help for Italy was to be found in the Frankish kingdom, which, under the strong rule of kingdom, the house of Pippin of Landen (A.D. 740-756), had renewed its early vigor. In consolidating his power Pippin the Short saw the usefulness of ecclesiastical organization as a means of binding to the Frankish monarchy the German tribes across the Rhine. Through the labors of Boniface, the apostle of the Germans, the Papacy reaped a rich return for Gregory I’s gift of Christianity to the English by the formation of an alliance between the Pope and the ruler of the Franks. There were more ways than one in which these two vigorous powers could help each other. Pippin wished to set aside in name, as he had done in deed, the Merovingian line, which still held the titular sovereignty of the Franks. Relieved from their scruples by the supreme priestly authority of the Pope, the Franks elected Pippin, who had hitherto been Mayor of the Palace, as their king; and the bishops gave peculiar solemnity to this transfer of national allegiance by the ceremony of anointing the new sovereign with holy oil. Soon Pope Stephen III asked for help in his turn, and fled to Pippin before the triumphant advance against Rome of the Lombard King.

Pippin recognized his obligations to the Pope. In two campaigns he beat back the Lombard King and made him relinquish his conquests. Wishing, moreover, to give a signal token of his gratitude, he bestowed on the Pope the territory which the Lombards had won from the Emperor, the district reaching along the eastern coast from the mouth of the Po to Ancona. Thus the possessions of the Emperor passed into the hands of the Pope, and their acquisition gave definiteness to the temporal power which circumstances had gradually forced upon the Papacy. On the other hand, the Imperial suzerainty over Italy devolved on the Frankish King, and the vague title of Patrician of Rome, bestowed on Pippin by the Pope as representative of the Roman people, paved the way for the bestowal of the full Imperial title of the West upon Pippin’s more famous son.

Charles the Great, son of Pippin, extended still further the power and renown of the Frankish monarchy, till he won for himself a position which was in Papacy and truth imperial over Western Europe. He crushed the last remains of the Lombard power in Italy, and extended over the Papacy his protecting arm. Leo III fled across the Alps to beg for protection against his foes, who had attempted a murderous outrage upon him. Charles led back the Pope in triumph to the rebellious city, where on Christmas Day, 800, as he knelt in S. Peter’s Church in the garb of a Roman Patrician, the Pope advanced and placed upon his head a golden crown, while the Church rang with the shout of the assembled Romans, “Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific Emperor!”. In such strange fashion did the city of Rome assume once more its right of setting up an emperor, a right which, since the time of Romulus Augustulus, it had been content to leave to the new Rome in the East.

Everything tended to make this step both easy and natural. The Eastern Empire was in the hands of a woman, and was sunk for the time both in feebleness and moral decay. The Germans, on the contrary, were united for the first time into a strong power, and were ruled by a vigorous hand. No longer was there any antagonism between Germans and Latins: they had found the need in which each stood of the other, and were joined in firm alliance. The coronation of Charles corresponded to the ambition of Latins and Germans alike. To the Latins it seemed to be the restoration to Rome and to Italy of their former glory; to the Germans it was the realization of the dream which had floated before the eyes of the earliest conquerors of their race. To Latins and Germans alike it was at once the recognition of their past achievements and the earnest of their future greatness. No one could have foreseen that the power which would reap the greatest benefit was that represented by him who, in his twofold capacity of chief magistrate of the city of Rome and chief priest of Christendom, placed the crown on the head of the kneeling Charles, and then fell prostrate before him in recognition of his high Imperial dignity.

The coronation of Charles may be explained on grounds of temporal expediency; but it also had its root in the ideal aspirations of men’s hearts, an ideal which was partly a memory of the world-wide organization of the old Roman Empire, and partly an expression of the yearning for universal brotherhood which Christianity had taught mankind. It put into definite form the belief in the unity of Christendom, which was the leading principle in mediaeval politics till it was shattered by the movement which ended in the Reformation. It was natural to express this theory in the form of outward organization, and to set up by the side of a Catholic Church, which was to care for the souls of all Christian people, a universal empire, which was to rule their bodies. No disappointment was rude enough to show men that this theory was but a dream. They were not so much concerned with actual practice: it was enough for them that the theory was lofty and noble.

The establishment of this great symbol of a united Christendom could not but produce ultimately an accession to the Papal dignity, though under Charles himself the Pope held the position of a grateful subordinate. The Empire was the representation of God’s kingdom on earth; the Emperor, not the Pope, was the vicegerent of the Most High; the Pope was his chief minister in ecclesiastical affairs, standing in the same relation towards him as did the high priest towards the divinely-appointed king of the Jewish theocracy. But the strong hand of Charles was needed to keep his Empire together. Under his feeble successors local feeling again made head against the tendencies towards centralization. The name of Emperor became merely an ornamental title of him who, in the partition of the dominions of Charles, obtained the kingdom of Italy. Under the degenerate rulers of the line of Charles, it was impossible to look upon the Empire as the representation on earth of the kingdom of God.

It was at this time that the Papacy first stood forward as the center of the state-system of Europe. The Empire had fallen after having given an expression, as emphatic as it was brief, to the political ideas that lay deep in the minds of men. The unity embodied in the Empire of Charles had been broken up into separate states; but it still was possible to combine these states into a theocracy under the rule of the Pope. The theory of the Papal monarchy over the Church was not the result merely of grasping ambition and intrigue on the part of individual Popes; it corresponded rather to the deep-seated belief of Western Christendom. This desire to unite Christendom under the Pope gave meaning and significance to the Forged Decretals bearing the name of Isidore, which formed the legal basis of the Papal monarchy. This forgery did not come from Rome, but from the land of the Western Franks. It set forth a collection of pretended decrees of early councils and letters of early Popes, which exalted the power of the bishops, and at the same time subjected them to the supervision of the Pope. The Pope was set forth as universal bishop of the Church whose confirmation was needed for the decrees of any council. The importance of the forgery lay in the fact that it represented the ideal of the future as a fact of the past, and displayed the Papal primacy as an original institution of the Church of Christ.

The Papacy did not originate this forgery; but it made Pope haste to use it. Pope Nicolas I (AD 858-867) claimed and exercised the powers of supreme ecclesiastical authority, and was happy in being able to exercise them in the cause of moral right. The Frankish Church was willing to allow the profligate king Lothar II to put away his wife that he might marry his mistress. The Pope interfered, sent delegates to enquire into the matter, deposed the Archbishops of Koln and Trier, and forced Lothar into an unwilling submission. In like manner he interposed in the affairs of the Eastern Church, withstood the Emperor, and sided with the deposed Patriarch of Constantinople. On all sides he claimed for his office a decisive supremacy.

Meanwhile the Empire fell still lower in prestige and power. The Papacy, allying with the feudal feeling of the great vassals who were striving to make the Frankish kingship elective, declared the Empire to be elective also. Charles the Bald in 875 received the Imperial title from the hands of John VIII as a gift of the Pope, not as a hereditary dignity. If the decay of the Frankish monarchy had not involved the destruction of order throughout Europe, the Papacy might have won its way rapidly to supreme temporal as well as spiritual power. But the end of the ninth century was a time of wild confusion. Saracens, Normans, Slavs plundered and conquered almost at will, and the Frankish kings and the Popes were equally powerless to maintain their position. The great vassals among the Franks destroyed the power of the monarchy. The fall of the Imperial power in Italy deprived the Popes of their protector, and left them helpless instruments in the hands of the Italian nobles, who were called their vassals. Yet, even from its degradation the Papacy had something to gain, as the claims put forth by Nicolas I gained in validity by not being exercised. When Empire and Papacy at last revived, two centuries of disorder threw a halo of immemorial antiquity over the Forged Decretals and the bold assertions of Nicolas I.

From this common abasement the temporal power was the first to rise. The German peoples within the Empire of Charles the Great were at length united the by the urgent necessity of protecting themselves against barbarous foes. They formed a strong elective monarchy, and shook themselves loose from their Romanized brethren, the Western Franks, amongst whom the power of the vassals was still to maintain disunion for centuries. The German kingdom was the inheritor of the ideas and policy of Charles the Great, and the restoration of the Imperial power was a natural and worthy object of the Saxon line of kings. The restoration of the Empire involved a restoration also of the Papacy. But this was not left solely to political considerations. A revival of Christian feeling found a center in the great monastery of Cluny, and the monastic reformers, thoroughly imbued with the ideas of the Forged Decretals, aimed at uniting Christendom under the headship of the Pope. Their immediate objects were to bring back the clergy to purer and more spiritual lives, and to check the secularization of the clerical office which the growing wealth of the Church and the lax discipline of stormy times had gradually wrought. Their cry was for the strict enforcement of the celibacy of the clergy and the suppression of simony. They felt, however, that reform must begin with the head, and that no one could restore the Papacy except the Emperor. Henry III was hailed as a second David, when at the Synod of Sutri he superintended the deposition of three simoniacal or profligate Popes who were struggling for the chair of S. Peter. Then under a noble line of German popes the Papacy was again identified with the highest spiritual life of Christendom, and learned to borrow the strength of the Imperial system, under whose shadow it grew to power.

This condition of tutelage to the Empire could not long continue. The German bishop might be filled with the deepest loyalty to the Emperor; but his ideas and aspirations became enlarged when he was raised to the lofty position of Head of the Church. So soon as the Papacy was re-established it aimed at independence. The next objects of the reformers were to make Rome the center of the new ideas, to secure for the Papacy a safe position in Rome itself, and to free it from its dependence on the Empire. Their leading spirit was an Italian monk, Hildebrand of Saona, who, both at Rome and Cluny, had studied the reforming policy, and then, with keen and sober appreciation of the task that lay before him, set himself to give it effect. Hildebrand combined the resoluteness that came from monkish discipline with the versatility and clear judgment that mark a statesman. He labored patiently at the task of enforcing ideas which might provide a basis for the Papal power. His aim was to make clear the principles on which the Papal monarchy was to rest, and he trusted to the future to fill in the outline which he was careful to trace distinctly. He had the greatest mark of political genius—he knew how to wait till the full time had come. He maintained the German power in Rome till it had crushed the factious party among the Roman nobles. Then, by entrusting the Papal election to the Cardinal-bishops, priests and deacons, a step was taken which professed to check the turbulence of the Roman people, but which also stopped Imperial interference. An alliance with the Norman settlers in South Italy won to the Papal cause soldiers who had a direct interest in opposing the Imperial claims. The Papacy slowly prepared to assert its independence of Imperial protection.

When at length the time was ripe, Hildebrand ascended the Papal throne as Gregory VII (A.D. 1073-1085). Full of zeal and enthusiasm, he was desirous of carrying out the grandest schemes. He wished to summon an army from the whole of Christendom, which under his leadership should conquer Byzantium, unite the Eastern and Western Churches under one head, and then march triumphantly against the Saracens and expel them from the lands where they had usurped an unlawful sway. A worthy domain was to be secured for the Papal monarchy by the restoration of the old limits of Christendom, and the glories of the brightest age of the Church were to be brought back once more. It was a splendid dream — fruitful, like all that Gregory did, for later times; but with a sigh Gregory renounced his dream for the harsh realities of his actual condition. Men were lukewarm; the Church at home was corrupt; kings and rulers were profligate, careless, and unworthy of a lofty aim. The reforming principles must sink deeper before Western Christendom was fitted for a noble mission. So Gregory VII turned to enforce immediate reforms.

The celibacy of the clergy had long floated before the eyes of Christians as an ideal; Gregory VII called on the laity to make it a reality, and bade them abstain from the ministrations of a married priest, “because his blessing was turned into a curse, his prayer into sin”. In the midst of the storm which this severity aroused, he went on to take rigorous measures against simony, and struck at the root of the evil by forbidding all investiture by laymen to any spiritual office. Gregory VII put forward his ideas in their most pronounced and decided form: he claimed for the Church an entire independence from the temporal power. Nor was this all; as the struggle advanced, he did not hesitate to declare that the independence of the Church was to be found solely in the assertion of its supremacy over the State. We read with wonder the claims which he put forward for the Papacy; but our wonder is changed into admiration when we consider how many of them were realized by his successors. Gregory VII did not aim at securing the Papal monarchy over the Church; that had been established since the days of Nicolas I. He aimed at asserting the freedom of the Church from the worldly influences which benumbed it, by setting up the Papacy as a power strong enough to restrain Church and State alike. In ecclesiastical matters Gregory enunciated the infallibility of the Pope, his power of deposing bishops and restoring them at his own will, the necessity of his consent to give universal validity to synodal decrees, his supreme and irresponsible jurisdiction, the precedence of his legates over all bishops.

In political matters he asserted that the name of Pope was incomparable with any other, that he alone could use the insignia of empire, that he could depose emperors, that all princes ought to kiss his feet, that he could release from their allegiance the subjects of wicked rulers. Such were the magnificent claims which Gregory VII bequeathed to the mediaeval Papacy, and pointed out the way towards their realization

Such views as these necessarily led to a struggle between the temporal and spiritual power. The conflict was first with the Empire, which was connected in the most vital way with the Papacy. Gregory VII was happy in his adversary, the profligate and careless Henry IV. Strong as were the opponents whom the rigorous policy of Gregory raised up, the opponents of the misgovernment of Henry were still stronger. The Saxons rose in revolt against a ruler of the house of Franconia; the enemies of the King combined with the Pope, and Henry’s moral weakness gave Gregory the opportunity of impressing by a striking dramatic act his view of the Papal power upon the imagination of Europe. Three days did the humbled monarch in the courtyard of the castle of Canossa sue for absolution from the triumphant Pope. Gregory as priest could not refuse absolution to a penitent, and by obtaining absolution Henry could overthrow the plans of his opponents; but Gregory, as a politician, resolved that the absolution so reluctantly extorted, which frustrated his designs for the present, should work for the future furtherance of his aims. The humiliation of Henry IV was made a type to posterity of the relations between the temporal and spiritual power.

Gregory VII boldly plunged the Papacy into an interminable strife. He was not daunted by the horrors which followed, when Rome was plundered by the Normans whom he summoned to his aid. He died in exile from his capital, still confident in the justice of his aims, and left the fruits of his labors for others to reap.

The course of events in Europe carried away men’s interests to a field where the Papacy came into prominence which there was none to dispute. The outburst of crusading zeal united Christendom for common action, in which the unity of the Church, which had before been a conception of the mind, became a reality, and Europe seemed one vast army under the leadership of the Pope. But, in the pious enthusiasm of Urban II at Clermont, we miss the political wisdom of Gregory VII. Urban could animate but could not guide the zeal with which men’s hearts were full; and, instead of the scheme of organized conquest which Gregory VII had mapped out, he kindled a wild outburst of fanaticism which led only to disillusionment. Yet the movement corresponded too closely to men’s desires for any failure to extinguish it. The old roving spirit of the Teutons was turned into a new channel by its alliance with revived zeal for the Church. The materialism of the Middle Ages long sought to find the spirit of Christ in local habitation of those fields which His feet had trodden. So long as the crusading movement lasted, the Papacy necessarily occupied the chief place in the politics of Europe.

Other influences were also at work which tended to strengthen the building which Gregory VII had raised. Gregory had gathered around him a school of canonists whose labors put into legal form the pretensions which he had advanced. The University of Bologna, which became the great center of legal teaching throughout Western Europe, imbibed and extended the ideas of the Isidorian Decretals, and of the Hildebrandine Canonists. From Bologna issued in the middle of the twelfth century the Decretum of Gratian, which was accepted throughout the Middle Ages as the recognized code of canon law. It embodied all the forgeries which had been made in the interests of the Papacy, and carried to its logical consequences the Hildebrandine system. Moreover, the University of Paris, the center of mediaeval theology, developed a system of theology and philosophy which gave full recognition to the Papal claims. In law and philosophy alike men’s minds were led up to the acknowledgment of the Papal supremacy as the necessary foundation both of Christian society and thought.

The struggle about investiture ended, as was to be expected, in a compromise but it was a compromise in which all the glory went to the Papacy. Men saw that the Papal claims had been excessive, even impossible; but the object at which they aimed, the freedom of the Church from the secularizing tendencies of feudalism, was in the main obtained. The conflict aroused by Gregory VII deepened in men’s minds the sense of spiritual freedom; and if it did not set up the Church as independent of the State, at least it saved it from sinking into a passive instrument of royal or aristocratic oppression. But the contest with the Empire still went on. One of the firmest supporters of Gregory VII had been Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, over whose fervent piety Gregory had thrown the spell of his powerful mind. At her death, she bequeathed her possessions, which embraced nearly a quarter of Italy, to the Holy See. Some of the lands which she had held were allodial, some were fiefs of the Empire; and the inheritance of Matilda was a fruitful source of contention to two powers already jealous of one another. The constant struggle that lasted for two centuries gave full scope for the development of the Italian towns. Courted first by one side, and then by the other, they learned how to wring privileges from the Emperor in return for the help they gave him; and when the Imperial pretensions became irksome, they sided with the Pope against their common foe. The old Italian notion of establishing municipal freedom by an equilibrium of two contending powers was stamped still more deeply on Italian politics by the wars of Guelfs and Ghibellins.

The union between the Papacy and the Lombard Republics was strong enough to humble the mightiest of the Emperors. Frederick Barbarossa, who held the strongest views of the Imperial prerogative, had to confess himself vanquished by Pope Alexander III, and the meeting of Pope and Emperor at Venice was a memorable ending to the long struggle; that the great Emperor should kiss the feet of the Pope whom he had so long refused to acknowledge, was an act which stamped itself with dramatic effect on the imagination of men, and gave rise to fables of a still more lowly submission. The length of the strife, the renown of Frederick, the unswerving tenacity of purpose with which Alexander had maintained his cause, all lent luster to this triumph of the Papacy. The consistent policy of Alexander III, even in adverse circumstances, the calm dignity with which he asserted the Papal claims, and the wisdom with which he used his opportunities, made him a worthy successor of Gregory VII at a great crisis in the fortunes of the Papacy.

It was reserved, however, for Innocent III to realize most fully the ideas of Hildebrand. If Hildebrand was the Julius, Innocent was the Augustus, of the Papal Empire. He had not the creative genius nor the fiery energy of his great forerunner; but his clear intellect never missed an opportunity, and his calculating spirit rarely erred from its mark. A man of severe and lofty character, which inspired universal respect, he possessed all the qualities of an astute political intriguer. He was lucky in his opportunities, as he had no formidable antagonist; among the rulers of Europe his was the master mind. In every land he made the Papal power decisively felt. In Germany, France, and England, he dictated the conduct of the Kings. His very success, however, was fraught with danger for the future. In England, the Pope might treat the kingdom as a fief of the Holy See; but when he attempted to use the Papal power in his vassal’s aid against the old liberties of the land, he awakened a distrust of the Papacy which quickly grew in English hearts. On all sides Innocent III enjoyed successes beyond his hopes. In the East, the crusading zeal of Europe was turned by Venice to the conquest of Constantinople, and Innocent could rejoice for a brief space in the subjection of the Eastern Church. In the West, Innocent turned the crusading impulse to the interest of the Papal power, by diverting it against heretical sects which, in Northern Italy and the South of France, attacked the system of the Church. These sectaries consisted of men opposed partly to the rigidity of sacerdotalism, partly to the intellectual narrowness of the Church doctrine, partly to the immoral and unspiritual lives of the clergy; others again had absorbed Manichaean heresies and vague Oriental mysticism; while others used these sects as a cover for antinomian views, for religious heedlessness, and profligacy of life. Looked at from the point of view of our own day, they seem a strange mixture of good and evil; but from the point of view of the Middle Ages they were a spectacle which could only be regarded with horror. They destroyed the unity of religious belief and practice; and, without the visible unity of the Church Christianity became in men’s eyes a mockery. It was in vain to hope for God’s blessing on their arms against the infidels in the Holy Land, if they allowed unbelievers within the pale of Christendom to rend asunder Christ’s seamless coat. Innocent III did not speak in vain when he proclaimed a crusade against the Count of Toulouse, whose dominions afforded the chief shelter to these heretics. Political jealousy and a desire for booty strengthened religious fanaticism; the storm of war swept over the smiling fields of Languedoc, and the taint of heresy was washed away in blood. From this time forward the duty of seeking out heretics and bringing them to punishment became a prominent part of the episcopal office.

Moreover Innocent saw the beginning, though he did not perceive the full importance, of a movement which the reaction against heresy produced within the Church. The Crusades had quickened men’s activity, and the heretical sects had aimed at kindling greater fervor of spiritual life. The old ideal of Christian duty, which had grown up among the miseries of the downfall of the Roman world, gave way to an impulse towards more active zeal. By the side of the monastic aim of averting, by the prayers and penitence of a few, God’s anger from a wicked world, there grew up a desire for self-devotion to missionary labor. Innocent III was wise enough not to repulse this new enthusiasm, but find a place for it within the ecclesiastical system. Francis of Assisi gathered round him a body of followers who bound themselves to a literal following of the Apostles, to a life of poverty and labor, amongst the poor and outcast; Dominic of Castile formed a society which aimed at the suppression of heresy by assiduous teaching of the truth. The Franciscan and Dominican orders grew almost at once into power and importance, and their foundation marks a great reformation within the Church. The reformation movement of the eleventh century, under the skillful guidance of Hildebrand, laid the foundations of the Papal monarchy in the belief of Europe. The reformation of the thirteenth century found full scope for its energy under the protection of the Papal power; for the Papacy was still in sympathy with the conscience of Europe, which it could quicken and direct. These mendicant orders were directly connected with the Papacy, and were free from all episcopal control. Their zeal awakened popular enthusiasm; they rapidly increased in number and spread into every land. The Friars became the popular preachers and confessors, and threatened to supersede the old ecclesiastical order. Not only amongst the common people, but in the universities as well, did their influence become supreme. They were a vast army devoted to the service of the Pope, and overran Europe in his name. They preached Papal indulgences, they stirred up men to crusades in behalf of the Papacy, they gathered money for the Papal use. Nowhere could the Pope have found more effective servants.

Innocent III did not realize the full importance of these new helpers; and even without them he raised the Papacy to its highest level of power and respect. The change which he wrought in the attitude of the Papacy may be judged from the fact that, whereas his predecessors had contented themselves with the title of Vicar of Peter, Innocent assumed the name of Vicar of Christ. Europe was to form a great theocracy under the direction of the Pope.

If Innocent III thus realized the Hildebrandine ideal of the Papacy, he at the same time opened up a dangerous field for its immediate activity. Innocent III may be called the founder of the States of the Church. The lands with which Pippin and Charles had invested the Popes were held subject to the suzerainty of the Frankish sovereign and owned his jurisdiction. On the downfall of the Carolingian Empire the neighboring nobles, calling themselves Papal vassals, seized on these lands; and when they were ousted in the Pope’s name by the Normans, the Pope did not gain by the change of neighbors. Innocent III, was the first Pope who claimed and exercised the rights of an Italian prince. He exacted from the Imperial Prefect in Rome the oath of allegiance to himself; he drove the Imperial vassals from the Matildan domain, and compelled Constance, the widowed queen of Sicily, to recognize the Papal suzerainty over her ancestral kingdom. He obtained from the Emperor Otto IV (1201) the cession of all the lands which the Papacy claimed, and so established for the first time an undisputed title to the Papal States.

Innocent was an Italian as well as a Churchman. As a Churchman he wished to bring all the kings and princes of Europe into submission to the Papal power; as an Italian he aimed at freeing Italy from foreign rulers, and uniting it into one State under the Papal sway. In this new sphere which Innocent opened up lay the great danger of Innocent’s successors. The Papal monarchy over the Church had won its way to universal recognition, and the claim of the Papacy to interfere in the internal affairs of European States had been established. It was natural for the Papacy at the height of its power to strive after a firm territorial basis on which to rest secure; what had been gained by moral superiority must be kept by political force. However distant nations might tremble before the Papal decrees, it often happened that the Pope himself was exiled from his capital by the turbulent rabble of the city, or was fleeing before foes whom his Imperial antagonist could raise against him at his very gates. The Papacy was only obeying a natural instinct of self-preservation in aiming at a temporal sovereignty which would secure it against temporal mishaps. 

Yet the whole significance of the Papacy was altered when this desire to secure a temporal sovereignty in Italy became a leading feature of the Papal policy. The Papacy still held the same position in the eyes of the of men, and its existence was still held necessary to maintain the fabric of Christendom; but a Pope straining every nerve to defend his Italian possessions did not appeal to men’s sympathies. So long as the Papacy had been fighting for ecclesiastical privileges, or for the establishment of its own dignity and importance, it had been fighting for an idea which in the days of feudal oppression awakened as much enthusiasm as does a struggle for freedom in our own day. When the Papacy entered into a war to extend its own possessions, it might win glorious victories, but they were won at a ruinous cost.

The Emperor Frederick II, who had been brought up under Innocent’s guardianship, proved the greatest enemy of the newly-won sovereignty of the Pope. King of Sicily and Naples, Frederick was resolved to assert again the Imperial pretensions over Italy, and then win back the Papal acquisitions in the center; if his plan had succeeded, the Pope would have lost his independence and sunk to be the instrument of the house of Hohenstaufen. Two Popes of inflexible determination and consummate political ability were the opponents of Frederick. Gregory IX and Innocent IV flung themselves with ardor into the struggle, and strained every nerve till the whole Papal policy was absorbed by the necessities of this strife. Europe groaned under the exactions of Papal tax-gatherers, who, under the old pretense of a crusade, wrung money from the ecclesiastics of every land. The great interests of Christendom were forgotten in the struggle for self-preservation, and the temporal and spiritual power changed places in Europe. Instead of the Pope, the pious King of France, Louis IX, led the last crusading expeditions against the infidels, and in his saintly deeds, rather than in the by-ways of Papal policy, men found the highest Christian ideal of their age. The Papacy baffled the plans of Frederick II, but Europe had to pay the costs of a struggle with which it felt no sympathy, and the moral prestige of the triumphant Papacy was irrevocably lowered.

Frederick II died, but the Popes pursued with their hostility his remotest descendants, and were resolved to sweep the very remembrance of him out in of Italy. To accomplish their purpose, they did not hesitate to summon the aid of the stranger. Charles of Anjou appeared as their champion, and in the Pope’s name took possession of the Sicilian kingdom. By his help the last remnants of the Hohenstaufen house were crushed, and the claims of the Empire to rule over Italy were destroyed for ever. But the Papacy got rid of an open enemy only to introduce a covert and more deadly foe. The Angevin influence became superior to that of the Papacy, and French popes were elected that they might carry out the wishes of the Sicilian king. By its resolute efforts to escape from the power of the Empire, the Papacy only paved the way for a connection that ended in its enslavement to the influence of France.

Immersed in narrow schemes of self-interest, the Popes lost their real strength in the respect and sympathies of Europe. Instead of being the upholders moral of ecclesiastical independence, they became the oppressors of the clergy and the infringers of ecclesiastical rights. Hence, in France, lawyers developed a fruitful conception of the liberties of the Gallican Church — freedom of patrons from Papal interference, freedom of election to chapters, and a prohibition of Papal taxation except with the consent of the Church and the Crown. Instead of being the upholders of civil liberty, the Popes ranked with the princes of Europe and had no sympathy with the cause of the people. In England, during the Barons’ War the Papacy was on the side of its pliant ally, Henry III, and steadily opposed all efforts to check his feeble misgovernment The great English Churchmen, on the other hand, sided with the Barons, and the English Church was the strongest element in the struggle against royal oppression. Similarly, in Italy, the Popes deserted the party which in each city was striving to maintain municipal freedom against foreign aggressors, or too powerful nobles at home. When the Empire had been reduced to feebleness, the Popes had no more need of their republican allies, but were intolerant of civic liberties. Hence they were so short-sighted as to permit the suppression of republican constitutions by powerful lords, and to allow dynasties to establish, within the Papal States, a sway which proved to be the greatest hindrance to the assertion of the Papal sovereignty.

In this career of purely political enterprise the Papacy again became associated with the factions of contending families in Rome, till in 1202 the assembled Cardinals were so equally divided between the parties that they found it impossible to elect. At last, in utter weariness, they chose a holy hermit of the Abruzzi, Piero da Morrone, whose fame for piety was in the mouths of men. The Pontificate of Celestine V, for such was the name Morrone assumed, might seem to be a caricature on the existing state of the Papacy. A man had been elected Pope by a sudden impulse solely for his holiness: no sooner was he elected than the Cardinals felt that holiness was not the quality most requisite for the high office of Head of the Church. Never did election awaken more enthusiasm among the people, yet never was Pope more powerless for good. Ignorant of politics, of business, of the ways of the world, Celestine V became a helpless instrument in the hands of the King of Naples. He gave up the government of the Church to others, and bestowed his favors with reckless prodigality. The crowd thronged around him whenever he went abroad to crave his blessing; a new order, the Celestinians, was founded by those who were eager to model their life on his; but the Cardinals groaned in secret dismay over the perils with which his incompetence threatened the Papacy. After a pontificate of five months he abdicated, to the joy of the Cardinals, and to the grief of the people, which showed itself in hatred for his successor. Henceforth it was clear that the Papacy had become a great political institution: its spiritual significance had been merged in its worldly importance. It needed a statesman to baffle princes by his astuteness, not a saint to kindle by his holiness spiritual aspirations among the masses.

Celestine’s successor, Boniface VIII, attempted, when it Boniface was too late, to launch the Papacy upon a new career. Though endowed with all the fire of Gregory VII, and with the keen political instincts of Innocent IV, he failed to understand either the disastrous results of the policy of his predecessors, or the hidden strength of the opposition which it had kindled. The Papacy had destroyed the Empire, but in its victory had fallen with its foe. In overthrowing the Empire it had weakened the outward expression of the idea on which its own power was founded, and had first used, and then betrayed, the growing feeling of nationality, which was the rising enemy of the mediaeval system. When Boniface VIII aimed at absorbing into the Papacy the Imperial power, when he strove to weld together Europe into a great confederacy, over which the Pope was to preside, at once the head of its religion and the administrator of a system of international law, he only brought to light the gulf which had been slowly widening between the aims of the Papacy and the aspirations of Europe. His weapons were the weapons of this world, and though his utterances might assume the cover of religious phrases, his arts were those of an adventurous politician. First he resolved to secure himself in Rome, which he did by the remorseless overthrow of the Colonna family. In the rest of Italy he aimed at bringing about order by crushing the Ghibellins and putting the Guelfs in power. He called in French help to restore the unity of the Sicilian kingdom, which had been broken by the rebellion of 1282, and Charles of Valois overthrew the Ghibellins in Florence, and drove Dante into exile; but, beyond drawing on himself and the Pope the hatred of the Italian people, he accomplished nothing.

While these were his measures in Italy, Boniface VIII advanced with no less boldness and decision elsewhere. He demanded that the Kings of England and France should submit their differences to his arbitration. When they refused he tried to make war impossible without his consent by cutting off one great source of supplies, and issued a bull, forbidding the taxation of the clergy, except by the consent of the Pope. But in England Boniface was repelled by the vigorous measures of Edward I, who taught the clergy that, if they would not contribute to the maintenance of civil government, they should not have the advantages of its protection. In France, Philip IV retaliated by forbidding the export of gold or silver from his realm without the royal consent. Boniface was thus cut off from the supplies which the Papacy raised for itself by taxation of the clergy. Even while professing to fight the battle of clerical privilege, Boniface could not carry with him the staunch support of the clergy themselves. They had experienced the fiscal oppression of Pope and King equally, and found that the Pope was the more intolerable of the two. If they had to submit to the tender mercies of one or the other, the King was at least more amenable to reason. For a time Boniface had to give way; but circumstances soon seemed to favor him. A quarrel arose between Edward I and Philip IV, from which both wished to withdraw with credit. Boniface, not in his Papal, but in his individual capacity, was appointed arbitrator. In giving his award he assumed the character of a Pope, and pronounced the penalty of excommunication against those who infringed its conditions. Moreover, he took up the position of an absolute superior in the affairs of the German kingdom, where he disallowed the election of Albert of Austria. In England he claimed to interfere in the settlement of Edward’s relations towards Scotland. Edward submitted the Pope’s letter to Parliament, which replied to Boniface that the English kings had never answered, nor ought to answer, about their rights to any judge, ecclesiastical or civil. The spirit of national resistance to the claims of the Papacy to exercise supremacy in temporal matters was first developed under the wise government and patriotic care of Edward I.

Yet Boniface could not read the signs of the times. He was misled by the outburst of popular enthusiasm and religious zeal which followed the establishment of a year of jubilee in 1300. The crusading age was past and gone; but the spirit that animated the Crusades still survived in Europe. The restless desire to visit a holy place and see with their bodily eyes some guarantee of the reality of their devotion, drove crowds of pilgrims to Rome to earn by prayers and offerings the promised absolution for their sins. Others since the days of Boniface have been misled as to the real strength of a system, by taking as their measure the outbursts of feverish enthusiasm which it could at times call forth. Men trampled one another to death in their eagerness to reach the tombs of the Apostles; yet in three short years the Vicar of S. Peter found no one to rescue him from insult and outrage.

The breach between Boniface VIII and Philip IV went on widening. As the Pope grew more resolute in asserting his pretensions, the King gathered the French clergy and people more closely around him. The growth of legal studies had raised up a class of lawyers who could meet the Pope on his own ground. As he fortified himself by the principles of the canon law, the French legists rested on the principles of the old civil law of Rome. The canon law, in setting up the Pope as supreme over the Church, had but followed the example of the civil law, which traced its own origin to the Imperial pleasure. The two systems now met in collision, and their fundamental identity rendered compromise impossible. Angry bulls and letters followed one another. The Pope furbished up all the weapons in his armory. On doctrinal grounds he asserted that, “as God made two lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night”, so He set up two jurisdictions, the temporal and the spiritual, of which the spiritual is greater, and involves the temporal in point of right, though not necessarily in point of use. On historical grounds he asserted: “Our predecessors have deposed three Kings of France, and if any King did the wrong which they did, we would depose him like a servant”. Against this was set up the intelligible principle, that in things temporal the King held his power subject to God alone. Both sides prepared for extremities. Philip’s lawyers accused the Pope of heresy, of crime, of simony, and appealed to a General Council of the Church. Boniface excommunicated Philip, and prepared to pronounce against him the sentence of dethronement, releasing his subjects from their allegiance. But Philip’s plans were cunningly laid, and he had Italian craft to help him. The day before the bull of deposition was to have been published, Boniface was made prisoner by a band of Philip’s adherents. The exiled Italian, Sciarra Colonna, planned the attack, and the acuteness of the Tolosan, Guillaume de Nogaret, one of Philip’s lawyers, helped to make its success complete. As he sat, unsuspecting of evil, in the retirement of his native Anagni, Boniface was suddenly surprised and maltreated, without a blow being struck in his behalf. It is true that on the third day of his captivity he was rescued; but his prestige was gone. Frenzied, or heart-broken, we know not which, he died a month after his release.

With Boniface VIII fell the mediaeval Papacy. He had striven to develop the idea of the Papal monarchy into a definite system. He had claimed for it the noble position of arbiter amongst the nations of Europe. Had he succeeded, the power which, according to the mediaeval theory of Christendom, was vested in the Empire, would have passed over to the Papacy no longer as a theoretical right, but as an actual possession; and the Papacy would have asserted its supremacy over the rising state-system of Europe. His failure showed that with the destruction of the Empire the Papacy had fallen likewise. Both continued to exist in name, and set forth their old pretensions; but the Empire, in its old aspect of head of Christendom, had become a name of the past or a dream of the future since the failure of Frederick II. The failure of Boniface VIII showed that a like fate had overtaken the Papacy likewise. The suddenness and abruptness of the calamity which befell Boniface impressed this indelibly on the minds of men. The Papacy had first shown its power by a great dramatic act; its decline was manifested in the same way. The drama of Anagni is to be set against the drama of Canossa.

CHAPTER II.

THE POPES AT AVIGNON.