The Church and the Empire; being an outline of the history of the Church from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304

;ru

LD

.01

i

Enitersal

VOLUME IV

THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL
BRIEF HISTORIES OF HER CONTINUOUS LIFE

A SERIES of eight volumes dealing with the history
of the Christian Church from the beginning to the present day.

Edited by
THE REV. W. H. HUTTON, B.D.

FELLOW AND TUTOR OF S. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD,
AND EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER

The Church of the Apostles.

The Rev. LONSDALE RAGG, M.A., Vicar of Tickencote,
Rutlandshire, and Prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral.
4^. 6d. net.

" Mr. Ragg has produced something far better than a mere text-book ;
the earlier chapters especially are particularly interesting reading. The
whole book is well proportioned and scholarly, and gives the reader the
benefit of wide reading of the latest authorities. The contrasted
growth and fortunes of the Judaic Church of Jerusalem and the Church
of the Gentiles are particularly clearly brought out." — Church Times.

" Written in a clear and interesting style, and summarises the early
records of the growth of the Christian community during the first
century. " — Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette.

"A careful piece of work, which may be read with pleasure and
profit. " — Spectator.

The Church of the Fathers. 98-461.

The Rev. LEIGHTON PULLAN, M.A., Fellow of St. John's
College, and Theological Lecturer of St. John's and Oriel
Colleges, Oxford. $s. net.

" If we may forecast the merits of the series by Mr. Pullan's volume,
we are prepared to give it an unhesitating welcome. We shall be sur
prised if his book does not supersede some of the less interesting Church
histories which have served as text-books for several generations of
theological students. " — Guardian.

" The student of this important period of Church history — the forma
tive period — has here a clear narrative, packed with information drawn
from authentic sources and elucidated with the most recent results of
investigation. We do not know of any other work on Church history
in which so much learned and accurate instruction is condensed into a
comparatively small space, but at the same time presented in the form
of an interesting narrative. Alike the beginner and the advanced
student will find Mr. Pullan a useful guide and companion."

Church J^imes.

THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL— Continued.

The Church and the Barbarians. 461-1003.

The EDITOR. 3*. 6d. net.

"In so accomplished hands as Mr. Hutton's the result is an in
structive and suggestive survey of the course of the Church's develop
ment throughout five hundred years, and almost as many countries
and peoples, in Constantinople as well as among the Wends and
Prussians, in Central Asia as well as in the Western Isles."

Review of Theology and Philosophy.

"The volume will be of great value as giving a bird's-eye view of
the fascinating struggle of the Church with heathenism during those
spacious centuries." — Church Times.

V The Church and the Empire. 1003-1304.

By D. J. MEDLEY, M.A., Professor of History in the University
of Glasgow. 4-r. 6d. net.

The Age of Schism. 1304-1503.

By HERBERT BRUCE, M.A., Professor of History in the
University College, Cardiff. 3*. 6d. net.

" We commend the book as being fair in its judicial criticism, a

great point where so thorny a subject as the Great Schism and its

issues ase discussed. The art of reading the times, whether ancient

or modern, has descended from Mr. W. H. Hutton to his pupil."

i Pall Mall Gazette.

" It is a great period for so small a book, but a master of his subject
knows always what to leave out, and this volume covers the period in
comfort." — Expository Times.

"Usually such an 'outline' is a bald and bloodless summary, but
Mr. Bruce has written a narrative which is both readable and well-
informed. We have pleasure in commending his interesting and
scholarly work." — Glasgow Herald.

THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL— Continued.

The Reformation. 1503-1648.

By the Rev. J. P. WHITNEY, B.D. , Professor of Ecclesiastical
History at King's College, London. $s. net.

" A book on the Reformation as a whole, not only in England, but
in Europe, has long been needed. . . . This present volume fills,
therefore, a real want, for in it the Reformation is treated as a whole.
. . . The value of the book is quite out of proportion to its size, and
its importance will be appreciated by all those whose duty or inclina
tion calls to study the Reformation." — Guardian.

"It is certainly a very full and excellent outline. There is scarcely
a point in this momentous time in regard to which the student, and,
indeed, the ordinary reader, will not find here very considerable help,
as well as suggestive hints for further study." — Church Union Gazette.

The Age of Revolution. 1648-1815.

By the EDITOR. 4^. 6d. net.

" The period is a long one for so small a book, but Mr. Hutton has
the gift not of condensing, which is not required, but of selecting the
essential events and vividly characterizing them." — Expository Times.

" Mr. Hutton's past studies in Ecclesiastical History are sure to
secure him a welcome in this new venture. There is a breadth of
treatment, an accurate perspective, and a charitable spirit in all that
he writes which make him a worthy associate of Creighton and Stubbs
in the great field of history." — Aberdeen Journal.

The Church of Modern Days. 1815-1900.

By the Rev. LEIGHTON PULLAN, M.A. {In preparation.

LONDON: RIVINGTONS

THE CHURCH
AND THE EMPIRE

BEING AN OUTLINE OF

THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH

FROM A.D. 1003 TO A.D. 1304

BY

D. J. MEDLEY, M.A.

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW

R I V I N G T O N S

.34 KING STREET, CO VENT GARDEN

LONDON

1910

JAN 2 8 1963

EDITORIAL NOTE

"IT7HILE there is a general agreement among
* * the writers as to principles, the greatest
freedom as to treatment is allowed to writers in
this series. The volumes, for example, are not
of the same length. Volume II, which deals
with the formative period of the Church, is,
not unnaturally, longer in proportion than the
others. To Volume VI, which deals with
the Reformation, has been allotted a similar
extension. The authors, again, use their own
discretion in such matters as footnotes and
lists of authorities. But the aim of the series,
which each writer sets before him, is to tell,
clearly and accurately, the story of the Church,
as a divine institution with a continuous life.

W. H. HUTTON

PREFACE

THE late appearance of this volume of the
series needs some explanation. Portions of
the book have been written at intervals ; but it
is only the enforced idleness of a long con
valescence after illness which has given me the
requisite leisure to finish it.

I have tried to avoid overloading my pages
with details of political history ; but in no
period is it so easy to miss the whole lesson
of events by an attempt to isolate the special
intiuences which affected the organised society
of the Church. The interpretation which I
have adopted of the important events at Canossa
is not, of course, universally accepted ; but the
fact that it lias seldom found expression in any
English work may serve as my excuse.

The Editor of the series, the Eev. W. H.
Hut ton, has laid me under a deep obligation,
first, by his long forbearance, and more lately,
by his frequent and careful suggestions over
the whole book. It is dangerous for laymen to
meddle with questions of technical theology. I
trust that, guided by his expert hand, I have
not fallen into any recognisable heresy !

HEARS ASHBY,

October, 1910.

C O N T E N T S

HAGF.

INTRODUCTORY . . 1

CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHURCH REFORM

CHAPTER II
GREGORY VII AND LAY INVESTITURE 21

CHAPTER III
THE END OF THE QUARREL . 39

CHAPTER IV
THE SECULAR CLERGY . 57

CHAPTER V
CANONS AND MONKS . .73

CHAPTER VI
ST. BKRNARD . .92

CHAPTER VII
THE SCHOOLMEN AND THEOLOGY . Ill

CHAPTER VIII
GUELF AND GHIBELLINE (I) 125

xii THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

CHAPTER IX

PAGE

INNOCENT III 145

CHAPTER X
THE PAPAL POWER IN THE CHURCH . . 163

CHAPTER XI
DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH . . 181

CHAPTER XII
HERESIES . .198

CHAPTER XIII
THE MENDICANT ORDERS . . 216

CHAPTER XIV
THE CHURCH AND THE HEATHEN . . 232

CHAPTER XV
GUELF AND GHIBELLINE (II) . . . 246

CHAPTER XVI
THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE AND OF THE PAPACY . . 262

CHAPTER XVII

THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST . . 280

APPENDICES

I. BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . 289

II. LIST OF EMPERORS AND POPES . . 291

INDEX 295

THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

INTRODUCTORY

THE period of three centuries which forms our
theme is the central period of the Middle Ages.
Its interests are manifold ; but they almost p0ijticai
all centre round the great struggle between thought
Empire and Papacy, which gives to mediaeval in Middle
history an unity conspicuously lacking in A£es-
more modern times. The history of the Church
during these three hundred years is more political
than at any other period. In order to understand
the reason for this it will be well at the outset to
sketch in brief outline the political theories pro
pounded in the Middle Ages on the relations of
Church and State. So only can we avoid the in
evitable confusion of mind which must result from
the use of terms familiar in modern life.

Medieval thought, then, drawing its materials from
Eoman, Germanic and Christian sources, conceived
the Universe as Civitas Dei, the State of
God, embracing both heaven and earth, Umty of
with God as at once the source, the guide
and the ultimate goal. Now this Universe contains
numerous parts, one of which is composed of man
kind; and the destiny of mankind is identified with

2 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

that of Christendom. Hence it follows that mankind
may be described as the Commonwealth of the Human
Eace; and unity under one law and one government
is essential to the attainment of the divine purpose.

But this very unity of the whole Universe gives a
double aspect to the life of mankind, which has to be
Duality spent in this world with a view to its con-
of organi- tinuation in the next. Thus God has ap-
sation. pointed two separate Orders, each complete
in its own sphere, the one concerned with the arrange
ment of affairs for this life, the other charged with
the preparation of mankind for the life to come.

But this dualism of allegiance was in direct conflict
with the idea of unity. The two separate Orders
Relations were distinguished as Sacerdotium and
of Church Regnum or Imperium ; and the need felt
and State, by medigeval thinkers for reconciling these
two in the higher unity of the Civitas Dei began
speculations on the relation between the ecclesiastical
and the secular spheres.

The champions of the former found a reconciliation
of the two spheres to consist in the absorption of the
Theory secular by the ecclesiastical. The one com-
of Church munity into which, by the admission of all,
party. united mankind was gathered, must needs be

the Church of God. Of this Christ is the Head. But in
order to realise this unity on earth Christ has appointed
a representative, the Pope, who is therefore the head of
both spheres in this world. But along with this unity
it must be allowed that God has sanctioned the separate
existence of the secular no less than that of the
ecclesiastical dominion. This separation, however,
according to the advocates of papal power, did not

INTRODUCTORY

affect the deposit of authority, but affected merely the
manner of its exercise. Spiritual and temporal power
in this world alike belonged to the representative of
Christ.

But the bolder advocates of ecclesiastical power
were ready to explain away the divine sanction of
temporal authority. Actually existing states sinfui
have often originated in violence. Thus the origin of
State in its earthly origin may be regarded State.
as the work of human nature as affected by the Fall
of Man : like sin itself, it is permitted by Clod. Con
sequently it needs the sanction of the Church in order
to remove the taint. Hence, at best, the temporal
power is subject to the ecclesiastical : it is merely a
means for working out the higher purpose entrusted
to the Church. Pope Gregory Yll goes farther still
in depreciation of the temporal power. He declares
roundly that it is the work of sin and the devil.
"Who does not know," lie writes, "that kings and
dukes have derived their power from those who,
ignoring God, in their blind desire and intolerable
presumption have aspired to rule over their equals,
that is, men, by pride, plunder, perfidy, murder, in
short by every kind of wickedness, at the instigation
of the prince of this world, namely, the devil ? " But
in this he is only re-echoing the teaching of St. Augus
tine ; and he is followed, among other representative
writers, by John of Salisbury, the secretary and cham
pion of Thomas Becket, and by Pope Innocent III.
To all three there is an instructive contrast between
a power divinely conferred and one that has at the
best been wrested from God by human importunity.

There are two illustrations of the relation between

4 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

the spiritual and secular powers very common among
Illustra- papal writers. Gregory VII, at the begin-
tion of ning of his reign, compares them to the
relations. two eyes in a man's head. But he soon
substitutes for this symbol of theoretical equality a
comparison to the sun and moon, or to the soul and
body, whereby he claims for the spiritual authority, as
represented by the soul or the sun, the operative and
illuminating power in the world, without and apart
from which the temporal authority has no efficacy
and scarcely any existence. An illustration equally
common, but susceptible of more diverse interpreta
tion, was drawn from the two swords offered to our
Lord by His disciples just before the betrayal. It was
St. Bernard who, taking up the idea of previous
writers that these represented the sword of the flesh
and the sword of the spirit respectively, first claimed
that they both belonged to the Church, but that, while
the latter was wielded immediately by St. Peter's
successor, the injunction to the Apostle to put up in
its sheath the sword of the flesh which he had drawn
in defence of Christ, merely indicated that he was not
to handle it himself. Consequently he had entrusted
to lay hands this sword which denotes the temporal
power. Both swords, however, still belonged to the
Pope and typified his universal control. By virtue of
his possession of the spiritual sword he can use spiritual
means for supervising or correcting all secular acts.
But although he should render to Cresar what is
Caesar's, yet his material power over the temporal
sword also justifies the Pope in intervening in tem
poral matters when necessity demands. This is the
explanation of the much debated Translatio Imperil,

INTRODUCTORY

the transference of the imperial authority in 800 A.D.
from the Greeks to the Franks. It is the Emperor to
whom, in the first instance, the Pope has entrusted
the secular sword ; he is, in feudal phraseology, merely
the chief vassal of the Pope. It is the unction and
coronation of the Emperor by the Pope which confer
the imperial power upon the Emperor Elect. The
choice by the German nobles is a papal concession
which may be recalled at any time. Hence, if the
imperial throne is vacant, if there is a disputed
election, or if the reigning Emperor is neglectful of
his duties, it is for the Pope to act as guardian or
as judge ; and, of course, the powers which lie can
exercise in connection with the Empire he is still more
justified in using against any lesser temporal prince.

To this very thorough presentation of the claims of
the ecclesiastical power the partisans of secular
authority had only a half-hearted doctrine Theory of
to oppose. Ever since the days of Pope Imperial
Gelasius I (492-6), the Church herself Part7-
had accepted the view of a strict dualism in the
organisation of society and, therefore, of the theo
retical equality between the ecclesiastical and the
secular organs of government. According to this
doctrine Sacerdotium and Imperium are independent
spheres, each wielding the one of the two swords
appropriate to itself, and thus the Emperor no less than
the Pope is Vicarius Dei. It is this doctrine behind
which the champions of the Empire entrench themselves
in their contest with the Papacy. 1 1 was asserted by the
Emperors themselves, notably by Frederick 1 and
Frederick II, and it has been enshrined in the writings
of Dante.

6 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

The weak point of this theory was that it was rather
a thesis for academic debate than a rallying cry for
the field of battle. Popular contests are
Its weak- £Qr victorVj no^ for delimitation of territory.
And its weakness was apparent in this, that
while the thorough-going partisans of the Church
allowed to the Emperor practically no power except
such as he obtained by concession of or delegation
from the Church, the imperial theory granted to the
ecclesiastical representative at least an authority and
independence equal to those claimed for itself, and
readily admitted that of the two powers the Church
could claim the greater respect as being entrusted
with the conduct of matters that were of more per
manent importance.

Moreover, historical facts contradicted this idea of
equality of power's. The Church through her re
presentatives often interfered with decisive effect in
the election and the rejection of secular potentates up
to the Emperor himself : she claimed that princes were
as much subject to her jurisdiction as other laymen,
and she did not hesitate to make good that claim even
to the excommunication of a refractory ruler and — its
corollary — the release of his subjects from their oath
of allegiance. Finally, the Church awoke a responsive
echo in the hearts of all those liable to oppression or
injustice, when she asserted a right of interposing in
purely secular matters for the sake of shielding them
from wrong ; while she met a real need of the age in
her exaltation of the papal power as the general re
feree in all cases of difficult or doubtful jurisdiction.

Thus the claims of each power as against the other
were not at all commensurate. For while the

INTRODUCTORY 7

imperialists would agree that there was a wide sphere
of ecclesiastical rule with which the Emperor had no
concern at all, it was held by the papalists that
there was nothing done by the Emperor in any
capacity which it was not within the competence of
the Pope to supervise.

CHAPTER 1
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHURCH REFORM

PKEVIOUS to the eleventh century there had been
quarrels between Emperor and Pope. Occasional
Popes, such as Nicholas I (858-67), had asserted high
prerogatives for the successor of St. Peter, but we have
seen that the Church herself taught the co-ordinate
and the mutual dependence of the ecclesiastical and
secular powers. It was the circumstances of the tenth
century which caused the Church to assume a less
complacent attitude and, in her efforts to prevent her
absorption by the State, to attempt the reduction of
the State to a mere department of the Church.

With the acceptance of Christianity as the official

religion of the Empire the organisation of the Church

tended to follow the arrangements for pur-

.Lay . poses of civil government. And when at a
investiture , . .-...,

ofecclesi- later Periocl C1V11 society was gradually
astics. organising itself on that hierarchical model

which we know as feudalism, the Church,
in the persons of its officers, was tending to become
not so much the counterpart of the State as an integral
part of it. For the clergy, as being the only educated
class, were used by the Kings as civil administrators,
and on the great officials of the Church were bestowed
extensive estates which should make them a counter
poise to the secular nobles. In theory the clergy and

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHURCH REFORM 9

people of the diocese still elected their bishop, but in
reality he came to be nominated by the King, at whose
hands he received investiture of his office by the
symbolic gifts of the ring and the pastoral staff, and to
whom he did homage for the lands of the see, since by
virtue of them he was a baron of the realm. Thus for
all practical purposes the great ecclesiastic was a
secular noble, a layman. He had often obtained his
high ecclesiastical office as a reward for temporal
service, and had not infrequently paid a large sum of
money as an earnest of loyal conduct and for the
privilege of recouping himself tenfold by unscrupulous
use of the local patronage which was his.

Furthermore, in contravention of the canons of the
Church, the secular clergy, whether bishops or priests,
were very frequently married. The Church, clerical
it is true, did not consecrate these marriages ; marriage,
but, it is said, they were so entirely recognised that the
wife of a bishop was called Episcopissa. There was
an imminent danger that the ecclesiastical order would
shortly lapse into an hereditary social caste, and that
the sons of priests inheriting their fathers' benefices
would merely become another order of landowners.

Thus the two evils of traffic in ecclesiastical offices,
shortly stigmatised as simony and concubinage — for
the laws of the Church forbade any more
decent description of the relationship-
threatened to absorb the Church within the
State. Professional interests and considerations of
morality alike demanded that these evils should be
dealt with. Ecclesiastical reformers perceived that
the only lasting reformation was one which should
proceed from the Church herself. It was among the

io THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

secular clergy, the parish priests, that these evils were
most rife. The monasteries had also gone far away
from their original ideals ; but the tenth century had
witnessed the establishment of a reformed Benedictine
rule in the Congregation of Cluny, and, in any case, it
was in monastic life alone that the conditions seemed
suitable for working out any scheme of spiritual
improvement. The Congregation of Cluny was based
upon the idea of centralisation ; unlike the Abbot of
the ordinary Benedictine monastery, who was con
cerned with the affairs of a single house, the Abbot
of Cluny presided over a number of monasteries, each
of which was entrusted only to a Prior. Moreover,
the Congregation of Cluny was free from the visitation
of the local bishops and was immediately under the
papal jurisdiction. What more natural than that the
monks of Cluny should advocate the application to
the Church at large of those principles of organisation
which had formed so successful a departure from pre
vious arrangements in the smaller sphere of Cluny ?
Thus the advocates of Church reform evolved both a
negative and a positive policy : the abolition of lay
investiture and the utter extirpation of the practice
of clerical marriages were to shake the Church free
from the numbing control of secular interests, and
these were to be accomplished by a centralisation of
the ecclesiastical organisation in the hands of the
Pope, which would make him more than a match for
the greatest secular potentate, the successor of Csesar
himself.

It is true that at the beginning of the eleventh
century there seemed little chance of the accom
plishment of these reforms. If the great secular

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHURCH REFORM n

potentates were likely to cling to the practice of in
vestiture in order to keep a hold over a body of
landowners which, whatever their other
obligations, controlled perhaps one-third of

the lands in Western Christendom ; yet the
Kings of the time were not unsympathetic to ecclesias
tical reform as interpreted by Cluny. In France both
Hugh Capet (987-96) and Robert (996-1031) appealed
to the Abbot of Cluny for help in the improvement of
their monasteries, and this example was followed by
some of their great nobles. In Germany reigned Henry
II (1002-24), the last of the Saxon line, who was
canonised a century after his death by a Church
penetrated by the influences of Cluny. It was the
condition of the Papacy which for nearly half a cen
tury postponed any attempt at a comprehensive
scheme of reform. Twice already in the course of the
tenth century had the intervention of the German
King, acting as Emperor, rescued the see of Koine
from unspeakable degradation. But for nearly 150
years (904-1046), with a few short interludes, the
Papacy was the sport of local factions. At the begin
ning of the eleventh century the leaders of these factions
were descended from the two daughters of the notorious
Theodora ; the Crescentines who were responsible for
three Popes between 1004 and 1012, owing their influ
ence to the younger Theodora, while the Counts of
Tusculum were the descendants of the first of the four
husbands who got such power as they possessed from
the infamous Marozia. The first Tusculan Pope,
Benedict VII 1 (1012-24), by simulating an interest
in reform, won the support of Henry II of Germany,
whom he crowned Emperor; but in 1033 the same

12 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

faction set up the son of the Count of Tusculum, a
child of twelve, as Benedict IX. It suited the Emperor,
Conrad II, to use him and therefore to acknowledge
him ; but twice the scandalised Eomans drove out the
youthful debauchee and murderer, and on the second
occasion they elected another Pope in his place. But
the Tusculan influence was not to be gainsaid.
Benedict, however, sold the Papacy to John Gratian,
who was reputed a man of piety, and whose accession
as Gregory VI, even though it was a simoniacal trans
action, was welcomed by the party of reform. But
Benedict changed his mind and attempted to resume
his power. Thus there were three persons in Eome
who had been consecrated to the papal office. The
Archdeacon of Kome appealed to the Emperor Conrad's
successor, Henry III, who caused Pope Gregory to
summon a Council to Sutri. Here, or shortly after
wards at Eome, all three Popes were deposed, and
although Benedict IX made another attempt on the
papal throne, and even as late as 1058 his party set
up an anti-pope, the influence of the local factions was
superseded by that of a stronger power.

But the alternative offered by the German Kings

was no more favourable in itself to the schemes of the

reformers than the purely local influences

influence °f the lasfc 15° yearS> As Ott° l in 963)
so Henry III in 1046 obtained from the

Eomans the recognition of his right, as patrician or
princeps, to nominate a candidate who should be
formally elected as their bishop by the Roman people;
and as Otto III in 996, so Henry III now used his
office to nominate a succession of men, suitable indeed
and distinguished, but of German birth. This was not

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHURCH REFORM 13

that freedom of the Church from lay control nor the
exaltation of the papal office through which that free
dom was to be maintained. Indeed, so long as fear
of the Tusculan influence remained, deference to the
wishes of the German King, who was also Emperor,
was indispensable, and when that King was as powerful
as Henry III it was unwise to challenge unnecessarily
and directly the exercise of his powers.

But Henry, although, like St. Henry at the be
ginning of the century, he kept a strong hand on his
own clergy, was yet thoroughly in sympathy with
what may be distinguished as the moral objects of the
reformers ; and, indeed, the men whom he promoted
to the Papacy were drawn from the class of higher
ecclesiastics who were touched by the Cluniac spirit.
Henry's first two nominees were short-lived. His
third choice was his own cousin, Bruno, Bishop of
Toul, who accepted with reluctance and only on
condition that he should go through the canonical
form of election by the clergy and people of Rome.
On his way to Koine, which he entered as a pilgrim,
he was joined by the late chaplain of Pope Gregory VI,
Hildebrand, who had been in retirement at Cluny
since his master's death. Not only did the
new Pope, Leo IX, take this inflexible , °8_
advocate of the Church's claims as his chief
adviser, but he surrounded himself with reforming
ecclesiastics from beyond the Alps. Thus fortified
lie issued edicts against simoniacal and married clergy;
but finding that their literal fulfilment would have
emptied all existing offices, he was obliged to tone
down his original threats and to allow clergy guilty
of simony to atone their fault by an ample penance.

i4 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

But Leo's contribution to the building up of the papal
power was his personal appearance, not as a suppliant
but as a judge, beyond the Alps. Three times in
his six years' rule he passed the confines of Eome
and Italy. On the first occasion he even held a
Council at Eheims, despite the unfriendly attitude
of Henry I of France, whose efforts, moreover, to
keep the French bishops from attendance at the
Council met with signal failure. Here and elsewhere
Pope Leo exercised all kinds of powers, forcing bishops
and abbots to clear themselves by oath from charges
of simony and other faults, and excommunicating and
degrading those who had offended. And while he re
duced the hierarchy to recognise the papal authority,
he overawed the people by assuming the central part
in stately ceremonies such as the consecration of new
churches and the exaltation of relics of martyrs. All
this was possible because the Emperor Henry III
supported him and welcomed him to a Council at
Mainz. Nor was it a matter of less importance that
these visits taught the people of Western Europe to
regard the Papacy as the embodiment of justice and
the representative of a higher morality than that
maintained by the local Church.

Quite unwittingly Henry Ill's encouragement of
Pope Leo's roving propensities began the difficulties
for his descendants. It is true he nominated Leo's
successor at the request of the clergy and people
of Eome ; but Henry's death in 1056 left the German
throne to a child of six under the regency of a woman
and a foreigner who found herself faced by all the
hostile forces hitherto kept under by the Emperor's
powerful arm. And when Henry's last Pope, Victor II,

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHURCH REFORM 15

followed the Emperor to the grave in less than a year,
the removal of German influence was corn- Effect of
plete. The effect was instantaneous. The Henry Ill's
first Pope elected directly by the Komans death,
was a German indeed by birth, but he was the brother
of Duke Godfrey of Lorraine, who, driven from Ger
many by Henry, had married the widowed Marchioness
of Tuscany, and was regarded by a small party as a
possible King of Italy and Emperor. Whatever danger
there was in the schemes of the Lotharingian brothers
was nipped in the bud by the death of Pope Stephen
IX seven months after his election. Then it became
apparent that the removal of the Emperor's strong
hand had freed not only the upholders of ecclesiastical
reform but also the old Eoman factions. The attempt
was easily crushed, but it became clear to the reformers
that the papal election must be secured beyond all
possibility of outside interference. At Hildebrand's
suggestion and with the approval of the German
Court, a Burgundian, who was Bishop of Florence,
was elected as Nicholas IF. The very name was a
challenge, for the first Nicholas (858-67) was per
haps the Pope who up to that time had asserted the
highest claims for the See of Koine.

The short pontificate of the new Nicholas was de
voted largely to measures for securing the freedom of
papal elections from secular interference. provisjon
By a decree passed in a numerously at- for papal
tended Council at the Pope's Lateran palace, election,
a College or Corporation was formed of the seven
bishops of the sees in the immediate neighbourhood of
Koine, together with the priests of the various Koman
parish churches and the deacons attendant on them.

16 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

To the members of this body was now specially arro
gated the term Cardinal, a name hitherto applicable
to all clergy ordained and appointed to a definite
church. To all Koman clergy outside this body and
to the people there remained merely the right of
assent, and even this was destined to disappear. More
important historically was the merely verbal reser
vation of the imperial right of confirmation, which
was further made a matter of individual grant to each
Emperor who might seek it from the Pope. In view of
the revived influence of the local factions it was also
laid down that, although Koine and the Koman clergy
had the first claim, yet the election might lawfully
take place anywhere and any one otherwise eligible
might be chosen; while the Pope so elected might
exercise his authority even before he had been en
throned.

But in the presence of a strong Emperor or an
unscrupulous faction even these elaborate provisions
Papacy might be useless. The Papacy needed a
and champion in the flesh, who should have

Normans, nothing to gain and everything to lose by
attempting to become its master. Such a protector
was ready to hand in the Normans, who, recently
settled in Southern Italy, felt themselves insecure in
the title by which they held their possessions. Southern
Italy was divided between the three Lombard duchies
of Benevento, Capua and Salerno, and the districts of
Calabria and Apulia, which acknowledged the Viceroy
or Katapan of the Eastern Emperor in his seat at
Bari. The Saracens, only recently expelled from the
mainland, still held Sicily. Norman pilgrims return
ing from Palestine became, at the instigation of local

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHURCH REFORM 17

factions, Norman adventurers, and their leaders ob
taining lands from the local Princes in return for help,
sought confirmation of their title from some legitimate
authority. The Western Empire had never claimed
these lands, but none the less Conrad II and Henry III,
in return for the acceptance of their suzerainty,
acknowledged the titles which the Norman leaders
had already gained from Greek or Lombard. Rome
was likely to be their next victim, and Leo IX took
the opportunity of a dispute over the city of Bene-
vento to try conclusions with them. A humiliating
defeat was followed by a mock submission of the con
queror. The danger was in no sense removed. Pope
Stephen's schemes for driving them out of Italy were
cut short by his death, and meanwhile the Norman
power increased. Thus there could be no question of
expulsion, nor could the Papacy risk a repetition of
the humiliation of Leo IX. It was Hildebraud who
conceived the idea of turning a dangerous neighbour
into a friend and protector. A meeting was arranged
at Melfi between Pope Nicholas and the Norman princes,
and there, while on the one side canons were issued
against clerical marriage, which was rife in the south of
Italy, on the other side Robert Guiscard, the Norman
leader, recognised the Pope as his suzerain, and obtained
in return the title of Duke of Apulia and Calabria and
of Sicily when he should have conquered it. Pope
Leo's agreement, six years before, had been made by a
defeated and humiliated ecclesiastic with a band of
unscrupulous adventurers. Pope Nicholas was dealing
with an actual ruler who merely sought legitimate re
cognition of his title from any whose hostility would make
his hold precarious. Thus resting on the shadowy basis

i8 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

of the donation of Constantine the Pope substituted
himself for the Emperor, whether of West or of East,
over the whole of Southern Italy. Truly the move
ment for the emancipation of the Church from the
State was already shaping itself into an attempt at
the formation of a rival power.

The value of this new alliance to the Papacy was
put to the test almost immediately. On the death
Alex of Pope Nicholas (1061) the papal and

ander II imperial parties proceeded to measure their
(1061-73) strength against each other. The re-
and Milan. formerSj acting under the leadership of
Hildebrand, chose as his successor a noble Milanese,
Anselm of Baggio, Bishop of Lucca, who now became
Alexander II. He was elected in accordance with the
provisions of the recent Lateran decree, and no im
perial ratification was asked. On the purely eccle
siastical side this choice was a strong manifesto against
clerical marriage. The city of Milan as the capital of
the Lombard kingdom of Italy had for many centuries
held itself in rivalry with Borne. Moreover, it was
the stronghold of an aristocratic and a married clergy,
which based its practice on a supposed privilege
granted by its Apostle St. Ambrose. But this pro
duced a reforming democracy which, perhaps from
the quarter whence it gained its chief support, was
contemptuously named by its opponents the Patarins
or Eag-pickers. The first leader of this democratic
party had been Anselm of Baggio. Nicholas II sent
thither the fanatical Peter Damiani as papal legate,
and a fierce struggle ended in the abject submission of
the Archbishop of Milan, who attended a synod at
Rome and promised obedience to the Pope.

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHURCH REFORM 19

The weak point in the decree of Nicholas II had
been that the German clergy were not represented at
the Council which issued it, and it was con
strued in Germany as a manifest attempt of erma"

opposition,
the reforming party to secure the Papacy

for Italy as against the German influence maintained
by Henry III. The lioman nobles also had seen in
the decree the design of excluding them from any
share in the election. It was only by the introduction
of Norman troops into Home that the new Pope
could be installed at the Lateran. A few weeks later
a synod met at Basle in the presence of the Empress-
Eegent and the young Henry IV. The latter was in
vested with the title of Patrician, and the election of
Alexander having been pronounced invalid, a new Pope
was chosen in the person of another Lombard, Cadalus
Bishop of Parma, who had led the opposition to the
Patarins in the province of Milan. The Normans
were recalled to their dominions, and the imperialist
Pope, Honorius II, was installed in Pome. The
struggle between the rival Popes lasted for three
years (10G1-4), and fluctuated with the fluctuations of
power at the German court. Here the young King
had fallen under the influence of Archbishop Hanno
of Koln, who, surrounded by enemies in Germany,
hoped to gain a party by the betrayal of imperial
interests in the recognition of the decree of Nicholas
II and of the claims of Alexander. Again by the help
of a Norman force Alexander was installed in Pome,
where he remained even when Hanno's influence at the
German court gave way to that of Archbishop Adalbert
of Bremen. Honorius, however, despite the desertion by
the imperialist party, found supporters until his death

20 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

in 1072, and it was only by the arms of Duke Godfrey of
Tuscany acting for the imperialists and those of his own
Norman allies that Alexander held Rome until his death.
Meanwhile the ecclesiastical reformation went
steadily on under the direction of Hildebrand. The
Ste s y°uno King Henry endeavoured to free

towards himself from the great German ecclesiastics
reforma- who held him in thrall, by repudiating the
tion- wife whom they had forced upon him. He

was checked by the austere and resolute papal legate,
Peter Damiani, and was obliged to accept Bertha of
Savoy, to whom subsequently he became much attached.
Peter Damiani's visit, however, brought him relief in
another way, for the legate took back such a report
of the prevalence of simony that the archbishops of
Mainz and Koln were summoned to Rome, whence
they returned so humiliated that their political in
fluence was gone. It is almost equally remarkable
that the two English Archbishops also appeared at
Rome during this Pontificate, Lanfranc of Canterbury
in order that he might obtain the pall without which
he could not exercise his functions as Archbishop, and
Thomas of York, who referred to the Pope his con
tention that the primacy of England should alternate
between Canterbury and York. In France, too, we
are told that the envoys of Alexander interfered in
the smallest details of the ecclesiastical administration
and punished without mercy all clergy guilty of simony
or of matrimony. Almost the last public act of Pope
Alexander was to excommunicate five counsellors of
the young King of Germany, to whom were attributed
responsibility for his acts, and to summon Henry him
self to answer charges of simony and other evil deeds.

CHAPTER II
GREGORY VII AND LAY INVESTITURE

THE crowd which attended the funeral of Alex
ander II acclaimed Hildebrand as his successor.
The Cardinals formally ratified the choice Gregory
of the people, and contrary to the wish of VII
the German bishops the young King Henry (1073-85).
acquiesced.

The new Pope was born a Tuscan peasant and
educated in the monastery of St. Mary's on the
Aventine in Rome. His uncle was the Abbot, and
the monastery was the Roman lodging of the Abbot of
Cluny. Hildebrand entered the service of Gregory VI,
whom lie followed into exile. On his master's death
in 1048 Hildebrand retired to Cluny. Hence he was
drawn once more back to Rome by Pope Leo IX.
From tliis moment his rise was continuous.
Leo made him a Cardinal and gave him the Hls nse
charge of the papal finances. In 1054 he
sent him as legate to France in order to deal with the
heresy of Berengar of Tours. Hildebrand was no
theologian, and he accepted a very vague explanation
of Berengar's views upon the disputed question of
the change of the elements in the Sacrament, On
Leo's death Hildebrand headed the deputation which
was sent by the clergy and people of Rome to ask
Henry III to nominate his successor; and again, on

21

12 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

the death of Victor II, although Hildebrand took no
part in the choice of Stephen IX, it was he who
went to Germany to obtain a confirmation of the elec
tion from the Empress-Kegent. On Stephen's death
Hildebrand's prompt action obtained the election of
Nicholas II. It was probably Hildebrand who worded
the decree regulating the mode of papal elections,
and whose policy turned the Normans from trouble
some neighbours into faithful allies and useful instru
ments of the papal aims. Nicholas rewarded him
with the office of Archdeacon of Home, which made
him the chief administrative officer of the Eoman
see and, next to the Pope, the most important person
in the Western Church. Hildebrand was the chief
agent in the election of Alexander II ; and the ulti
mate triumph of Alexander meant the reinstatement
of Hildebrand at head-quarters. Thus it had long
been a question of how soon the maker of Popes
would himself assume the papal title, and this was
settled for him by the acclamations of the people.
In memory of his old master he took the title of
Gregory VII. As yet he was only in deacon's orders.
Within a month he was ordained priest ; but another
month or more elapsed before he was consecrated
bishop.

At last the individual who was most identified in
men's minds with the forward movement in the Church
o was the acknowledged head of the ecclesi-

tunityof astical organisation in the West. For more
reform. than twenty years he had been at head
quarters intimately knowing and ultimately directing
the course of policy. It was mainly by his exertions
that the Church was now officially committed to the

GREGORY VII AND LAY INVKSTITUfcE 23

views of the Cluniac reformers. Yet so much opposi
tion had been called forth as to show that the success
of the party hitherto had depended merely on the
circumstances of the moment. The time seemed to
have arrived when matters should be brought to an
issue. The continued existence of the Roman factions
and the power of Henry III had made compromise
necessary, and the general result of the reformers'
eflbrts upon the Church had been inappreciable. lUit
the lapse of time had done at least two things — it had
cleared the issue and it had brought the opportunity.

The Church was so entirely enmeshed in the feudal
notions of the age that at first it was not very clear

to the reformers where it would be most

Direction
effective to begin in the process of cutting -m which

her free. But by this time it was seen reform
that the real link which bound the Church should
to the State was the custom by which
princes took it on themselves to give to the new
bishop, in return for his oath of homage, investiture
of his office and lands by the presentation of the ring
which symbolically married him to his Church, and
of the pastoral staff which committed to him the
spiritual oversight of his diocese. Probably there
was not a single prince in Western Europe who
pretended to confer on the new bishop any of his
spiritual powers ; but the two spheres of the episcopal
work had become inextricably confused, and in the
decay of ecclesiastical authority the lay power had
treated the chief ecclesiastics as mainly great officers
of State and a special class of feudal baron. In the
eyes of the reformers the entire dealing of the King
with the bishops was an act of usurpation, nay, of

24 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

sacrilege. Ecclesiastics owed to the sovereign of the
country the oath of fealty demanded of all subjects.
But for the rest, neither bishop, abbot, nor parish
priest could be a feudal vassal. The land which any
ecclesiastic held by virtue of his office had been given
to the Church ; the utmost claim that any layman
could make regarding it was to a right or rather duty
of protection. If the Church was to be restored to
freedom, investiture with ring and staff, and the
control of the lands during vacancy of an ecclesiastical
office must all be claimed back for the Church herself.
The oath of homage would then naturally disappear,
and there would no longer be that confusion of spheres
which had resulted in the laicisation and the degrada
tion of the Church.

Moreover, the moment was propitious for asserting
these views to the fullest extent. The chief repre-
Henr IV sentative of lay authority was no longer
and the a powerful Emperor nor even a minor in
German the tutelage of others. He was a King
clergy, of full age, whose wayward, not to say
vicious, courses had alienated large numbers of his
people. It is true that Henry IV never had much
chance of becoming a successful ruler. Taken from
his mother at the age of twelve, for the next ten years
(1062-72) he had been controlled alternately by two
guardians, of whom one, Adalbert, Archbishop of
Bremen, allowed him every indulgence, while the other,
Hanno, Archbishop of Koln, hardly suffered him to
have a mind of his own. Since he had become his own
master he had plunged into war with his Saxon
subjects. Henry, entangled in this war, answered
Gregory's first admonitions in a conciliatory tone;

GREGORY VII AND LAY INVESTITURE 25

but in 107") he decisively defeated the Saxons and
was in no mood to listen to a suggestion for the
diminution of the authority of the German King in
his own land, which ho had just so triumphantly
vindicated. For Henry imitated his predecessors in
practising investiture of bishops both in Germany and
in Italy; and he realised that the summons of the
Pope to the temporal princes that they should give
up such investiture would mean the transference to
the Papacy of the disposal of the temporal fiefs.
This would involve the loss at one blow of half the
dominions of the German King. Moreover, he was
encouraged in an attitude of resistance by the feeling
of the German Church. At the first Lenten Synod
held in the Lateran palace after Gregory's accession
canons were issued forbidding all married or sinion-
iacal ecclesiastics to perform ministerial functions
and all laity to attend their ministrations. Immediate
opposition was raised ; the German clergy were
especially violent : they declared that this prohibition
of marriage was contrary to the teaching of Christ
and St. Paul, that it attempted to make men live
like angels but would only encourage licence, and
that, if it were necessary to choose, they would
abandon the priesthood rather than their wives.
Gregory, however, sent legates into various districts
armed with full powers, and succeeded in rousing
the populace against the married clergy.

It was under these circumstances that Qreg:or »s
Gregory determined to bring to an issue decree
the chief question in dispute between Church against
and State. Hitherto he had said nothing investiture-
against the practice of lay investiture. Now, how-

26 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

ever, at the Lenten Synod in 1075, a decree was
issued which condemned both the ecclesiastic, high
or low, who should take investiture from a layman,
and also the layman, however exalted in rank, who
should dare to give investiture. The decree had no
immediate effect, and at the end of the year Gregory
followed it up with a letter to the King, in which he
threatened excommunication if before the meeting
of the next usual Lenten Synod Henry had not
amended his life and got rid of his councillors, who
had never freed themselves from the papal ban.

Henry's answer was given at a Synod of German

ecclesiastics at Worms. Cardinal Hugh the White,

who for personal reasons had turned against

Henry's Gregory, accused him of the most incredible
answer. •" J , , . , . ,

crimes, and a letter was despatched in which

the bishops renounced their obedience. Henry also
addressed a letter to the Pope, which quite surpassed
that of the bishops in violence of expression. " Henry,
King not by usurpation but by the holy ordination of
God, to Hildebrand now no apostolic ruler but a
false monk." It accused him of daring to threaten to
take away the royal power, as if Henry owed it to
the Pontiff and not to God: and it concluded by a
summons to him to descend from his position in favour
of some one " who shall not cloak his violence with re
ligion, but shall teach the sound doctrine of St. Peter."
It was nothing new for a Pope to be deposed by a
Council presided over by the Emperor. And it is
true that the same resolution, transmitted by delegates
from Worms, was adopted at Piacenza by a Synod of
Italian bishops. But on this occasion the sentence
was uttered by an assembly of exclusively German

GREGORY VII AND LAY INVESTITURE 27

bishops, presided over by a King who was not yet
crowned Emperor. If such a sentence was to be
effective, Henry should have followed it up by a
march to Rome with an adequate army. He merely
courted defeat when he gave the Pope the opportunity
for a retort in kind. Anathema was the papal weapon,
and while the King's declaration might even be re
sented by other rulers as an attempt to dictate to
them in a matter of common concern to all, the papal
sentence on the King was regarded by all as influenc
ing the fate, not of the King only, but of all who
remained in communication witli him, if not in this
world, at any rate in the world to come. Moreover,
in this particular case, while no one believed the
monstrous charges against Gregory, there was sufficient
in Henry's past conduct to give credibility to anything
that might be urged against him.

Gregory's rejoinder was delivered at the Lenten
Synod of 1076. As against the twenty-six German
bishops assembled at Worms, this Council Gregory
contained over a hundred bishops drawn deposes
from all parts of Christendom, while among Henry,
the laity present was Henry's own mother, the Empress
Agnes. Gregory used his opportunity to the full. In
the most solemn strain he appealed to St. Peter, to
the Virgin Mary, to St. Paul and all the saints, to
bear witness that lie himself had unwillingly taken
the Papacy. To him, as representative of the Apostle,
God had entrusted the Christian people, and in re
liance on this he now withdrew from Henry, as a
rebel against the Church, the rule over the kingdoms
of the Teutons and of Italy, and released all Chris
tians from any present or future oath made to him.

28 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Finally, for his omissions and commissions alike,
Henry is bound in the bonds of anathema " in order
that people may know and acknowledge that thou
art Peter, and upon thy rock the Son of the living
God has built His Church, and the gates of hell shall
not prevail against it."

The rhetorical nourish of the King's pronouncement
against the Pope withers before the tremendous appeal
of the Pope to his divinely delegated power to judge
the King. Gregory's procedure was little less revolu
tionary than that of the King, but the claim to depose
might appear as only a concomitant to the power
already wielded by Popes in bestowing crowns, while
for Gregory it had by this time become the coping-
stone in the fabric of those relations between Church
and State which he and his party were building up.

Gregory's position was not devoid of difficulties.
Numerous protests were raised against this assertion
of papal power. But events concurred to
Gregorys jlls^fy Gregory's bold action. At the be
ginning of his pontificate the Normans
were quarrelling among themselves ; but in Tuscany
the Countess Matilda had just become complete mis
tress of the great inheritance which in-

cluded a lar§e part of Cenfcral Italy- She

was an enthusiastic supporter of the Papacy,
and secured North Italy by a revival of the Patarine
party against the Italian bishops who had repudiated
Gregory at Piacenza.

But Gregory's most effective allies were Henry's
rebellious subjects. The Saxons broke out again into
rebellion in the north, while the nobles of Southern
Germany with the concurrence of the Pope met at

GREGORY VII AND LAY INVESTITURE 29

Tribiir, near Mainz, in October, 1076. Henry was
forced to accept the most abject terms. He Rebeiiious
was to submit to the Pope, and the nobles German
further agreed among themselves that the nobles.
Tope should be invited to pronounce the decisive
judgment at a diet to be held at Augsburg a year
later. If by that time Henry had not obtained the
papal absolution, the kingdom would be considered
forfeit, and they would proceed to the election of a
new King without waiting for permission of the Pope.
The nobles were hampered by the rivalry of those
who hoped each to be Henry's successor, and they did
not wish to found the election of the new King on the
acknowledgment of the papal power of deposition.
They acted, therefore, as if so far, apart from the ex
communication, the papal sentence of deposition had
been only provisional.

Henry saw that to be reinstated by the Pope in an
assembly of his rebellious subjects would be even more
damaging for his prestige than the original

deposition, and, knowing nothing of the Henrys

action
agreement of the nobles for a new election,

he determined to go and get his absolution from the
Pope at Koine. He treated the points in dispute
between himself and his opponents as practically
settled by his promise of submission, whereas the Pope
desired to pose as arbiter between the contending
parties in Germany ; while the nobles aimed at elect
ing a new King. Quite unconsciously Henry was
forcing the hands of both parties of his opponents,
whose obvious interests were in favour of delay. It was
necessary that he should drink the cup of humiliation
to the dregs ; but the astute King preferred that it

30 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

should be at his own time and place — at once and in
Italy, instead of a year hence in Germany.

Henry carried out his design, even though it was in
the middle of winter ; and neglecting the welcome of
the imperialists of North Italy, he ulti
mately tracked the Pope to the Countess
Matilda's fortress of Canossa, in the Apennines, above
Modena. But Gregory would listen to no mediation,
and demanded absolute submission to his judgment.
So Henry again took the method of procedure into his
own hands and appeared at intervals during three
successive days before the castle in the garb of a peni
tent, barefooted and clad in a coarse woollen shirt. The
picturesque account of this world-famous scene, which
we owe to Lambert of Hersfeld, must be regarded as
the monastic version current among the papal parti
sans. Gregory himself, who was scarcely likely to
minimise his own triumph, in his letter to the German
nobles says nothing of these details. He only relates
that even his own followers exclaimed that " tyrannical
ferocity " rather than " apostolic severity " was the
characteristic of his act.

Thus Henry forced the hand of the Pope, who as a
priest could not refuse his absolution to one who
showed himself ready to submit to the
esu ° severest possible penance for his sins. The
only course open to Gregory was to accept
the situation on which he had lost the hold, and to try
to get some political concessions in the negotiations
which must follow. The terms did not differ much
from those arranged at Tribur : Henry should accept
the decision of the diet of the German nobles, pre
sided over by the Pope, as to his continued right to the

GREGORY VII AND LAY INVESTITURE 31

crown, while if the judgment was favourable, he should
implicitly obey the Pope for the future in all that
concerned the Church. But, on the other hand, the
papal excommunication and absolute sentence of
deposition were removed, and the whole excuse for
continued rebellion was thus withdrawn from his
German opponents. Henry had undoubtedly been
humiliated and had acknowledged the papal arbitration
in Germany : but modern feelings probably exaggerate
the humiliation of the penitential system, and Henry
had at least divided his enemies. The Tope had
undertaken to see fair play between Henry and his
German subjects : the German nobles had based their
action on Henry's past conduct, for which he had now
done penance. Henry had obtained an acknowledg
ment from the Pope that his right to the kingship
was at any rate an open question.

The German nobles had been betrayed by the Pope,
but they could not afford to quarrel with him. They
had been outwitted by Henry, and against Election of
him they proceeded as having violated the an anti-
Agreement of Tribur. A Diet met at kin£-
Forcliheim, in Franconia, in March, 1077. It was
chiefly composed of lay nobles, but papal legates were
present, whom Gregory instructed to work for a post
ponement until he himself could come. But the
nobles were determined, and Henry's brother-in-law,
Duke Rudolf of Suabia, was chosen King. Gregory,
however, did not intend to have his hand forced again,
and for three years (1077-80) he refused to acknow
ledge Rudolf and tried to pose as arbiter between
him and Henry. Five times Rudolf's supporters wrote
remonstrating indignantly against this neutrality.

32 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Gregory excused himself on the ground that his legates
had been deceived and had acted under compulsion in
acquiescing in the action of the diet at Forchheim.
He had good reasons for his delay. He was deter
mined to secure recognition of the right which he
claimed for the Papacy as the real determining force
in the dispute, an act which the nobles had deliberately
prevented. Moreover, he was a little afraid of a trial
of strength with Henry at the moment. For while
Henry's promptness had caused the Pope to break
faith with his allies, Gregory's severity had gathered
round Henry a party which made the King more
powerful than he yet had been. Thus in Lombardy
the Countess Matilda was faced by a revived
imperialist party which seriously threatened her
dominions, while in Germany the clergy, the lesser
nobles and the cities rallied round the King.

So long, then, as the contest seemed doubtful
Gregory withheld his decision. At length, in 1080,
Gregory when, despite two victories, Eudolf was
accepts gaining no advantage, Gregory felt that
him- further delay might make Henry too strong

to be affected by the papal judgment. Accordingly, at the
usual Lenten Synod he renewed the excommunication
and deposition of Henry, recognised Eudolf as King of
Germany, and even prophesied for the excommuni
cated monarch a speedy death. One papal partisan
afterwards explained this as referring to Henry's
spiritual death ! Gregory is further said to have sent
a crown to Kudolf, bearing the legend uPetra dedit
Petro, Petrus diadema Eudolpho," but the story is
doubtful. The answer of Henry's party was given in
successive synods of German or Italian bishops, who

GREGORY VII AND LAY INVKSTITUHE 33

declared Gregory deposed, and elected as his substitute
Henry's Chancellor, Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna,
who took the title of Clement III".

Gregory's decisive move was a failure. There were
now two Kings and two Topes, and all hope of a
peaceful settlement was gone. None of the Death
nations of Europe responded to Gregory's of anti-
appeal. Robert Guiscard, the Norman King-
leader, was busy with his designs on the Eastern
Empire. Gregory's only chance was a victory in Ger
many and the fulfilment of his rash prophecy. In
October, 1080, Henry was defeated in the heart of
Saxony on the Elster, but it was Gregory's accepted
King, Rudolf, who was killed. One chronicler reports
Rudolf as acknowledging in his dying moments the
iniquity of his conduct. Saxony remained in revolt ;
but until a new King could be agreed upon Henry was
practically safe and could turn to deal with the situa
tion in Italy. There could be no thought of peace.
Gregory's supporters were upheld by the enthusiasm
of fanaticism, while by acts and words he had driven
his enemies to exasperation, and what had begun as a
war of principles had now sunk to a personal struggle
between Henry and Hildebrand.

The renewal of the sentence against Henry had
caused a reaction in his favour in Northern Italy.
Soon after the episode of Canossa, the Death
Countess Matilda, having no heir, had of
bequeathed her entire possessions to the Gregory.
Roman see and become a papal vassal for the term
of her own life. But most of the Tuscan cities de
clared for Henry and thus entirely neutralised her
power. Robert Guiscard was not to be tempted

34 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

back from his projects against the Eastern Em
pire, even if it be true that Gregory offered him the
Empire of the West. Thus Henry entered Italy un
hindered early in 1081, and even the news that his
opponents had found a successor to Eudolf in the
person of Herman of Luxemburg did not stop his
inarch. The siege of Eome lasted for nearly three
years (1081-4), but ultimately he obtained posses
sion of all the city except the castle of St. Angelo.
Henry's Pope, Clement III, was consecrated, and on
Easter Day Henry, together with his wife, at length
obtained the imperial crown. But meanwhile he had
made a fatal move. The Eastern Emperor Alexius
persuaded him to make mischief in Apulia. Henry
fell into the trap. Robert Guiscard rushed back to
defend his own territories, and now determined to
carry out his obligations as a papal vassal. Henry
was taken unawares and had to retire before the
Normans, who forced their way into Eome and cruelly
sacked and burnt it. Gregory was rescued, but life
for him in Eome was no longer possible. The Romans
had betrayed him to Henry, and now his allies had
destroyed the city. He retired with the Normans to
Salerno, where, a year later, he died (May, 1085),
bitterly attributing his failure to his love of righteous
ness and hatred of iniquity.

But we cannot ratify Gregory's own judgment on

the reasons for his failure. Eather the blame is to be

laid upon his lack of statesmanship. His

Reasons egotism and his fanaticism worked together

failure ^° ma^e n^m believe that the supremacy of

the spiritual power which he aimed at

might be attained by very secular devices. In action

GREGORY VII AND LAY INVESTITURE 35

he showed himself a pure opportunist, approving at
one time what he condemned at another. And yet ho
had so little of an eye for the line which separates the
practicable from the ideal that at Canossa he humiliated
Henry beyond all hope of reconciliation, and he died
in exile because he would not listen to any compromise
which might be an acknowledgment that he had exag
gerated his own claims. Thus, despite the undoubted
purity of his life and the ultimate loftiness of his ideals,
he is to be regarded rather as a man of immense force
of character than as a great ecclesiastical statesman,
rather as the stirrer-up of divine discontent than as a
creative mind which gives a new turn to the desires
and impulses of the human race.

All this is borne out by his dealings outside Germany
and Italy. He conducted a very extensive correspond
ence with princes as well as ecclesiastics His
all over Europe. Indeed this, as much as activity in
the despatch of legates and the annual Europe,
attendance of bishops at the Lenten Synod, was one
of the means by which the Papacy strove to make
itself the central power of Christendom. These letters
deal with all kinds of subjects and bear ample witness
to his personal piety and high moral aims. But
alongside of these come arrogant assertions of papal
authority. He claims as fiefs of St. Peter on various
grounds Hungary, Spain, Denmark, Corsica, Sardinia-
he gives the title of King to the Duke of Dalmatia;
he even offers to princes who belong to the Eastern'
Church a better title to their possessions as held from
St. Peter.

Gregory's great contest with the Empire has been
described without interruption, as if it were the only

36 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

struggle of his time, instead of being merely the most
important episode in a very busy life. And if we ask
in conclusion why it was fought out in the
imPerial dominions rather than elsewhere,
the answer will be instructive of his char
acter and methods of action. At the beginning of his
pontificate his harshest phrases were directed against
Philip I of France, who added to the crimes of lay
investiture and shameless simony a scandalous personal
immorality. Ultimately Gregory threatened him with
excommunication and deposition. But he never
passed beyond threats. The reason is to be found in
the fact that Gregory was soon in pursuit of larger
game. The French King only shared with his great
nobles the investiture of the bishops in the kingdom.
Moreover, the French bishops were not as a body great
secular potentates like the German bishops. The
opposition to reform in France was passive, not active.
Crown, nobles, and Church stood together in opposition :
there was no papal party. Not enough was to be
gained by a victory, and there was great chance of a
defeat. The result was that Philip continued his
simoniacal transactions and never entirely gave up
investiture, while Gregory allowed himself to be
satisfied with occasional promises of better things.
His dealings with the French bishops are equally
inconclusive. For six years (1076-82) two of the
papal legates divided France between them, practi
cally superseded the local ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and
acted with the utmost severity against all, ecclesiastics
or laymen, who practised the methods now under con
demnation. Great opposition was aroused and the
legates went in peril of their lives. They were only

GREGORY VII AND LAY INVESTITURE 37

carrying out strenuously the principles laid down under
Gregory's guidance in many acts of synods and in
culcated by Gregory in numberless private letters.
And yet Gregory is found frequently undoing their
acts, restoring bishops whom they have deposed, ac
cepting excuses or explanations which cannot possibly
have deceived him.

His policy towards England affords another in
structive contrast. Both in Normandy and in
England William the Conqueror practised
investiture of his bishops and abbots and En land
held his ecclesiastics in an iron grip. He
refused the papal demand for homage for his English
kingdom and he would allow no papal interference with
his clergy without the King's permission. Archbishop
Lanfranc also only consented to accept the decree
against married clergy with a serious limitation — while
married canons were to dismiss their wives at once,
parish priests already married were not interfered
with ; but marriage was forbidden to clergy in the
future, and bishops were warned not to ordain married
men. But William's expedition to England had been
undertaken with the approval of Hildebrand, he did
not practise simony, and he acknowledged the principle
of a celibate clergy, while he promised the payment of
the tribute of Peter's Pence from England. Moreover,
William was not a man to be trifled with : lie was a
valuable friend and would certainly be a dangerous
enemy. Consequently no question of the lawfulness
of investiture was mooted during his lifetime. Gregory
contented himself with threats against Lanfranc. But
the English Archbishop owed a grudge to Gregory, who
had treated with a culpable indulgence the great

38 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

heresiarch Berengar after Lanfranc had vanquished
him and convicted him of heresy ; and Lanfranc knew
that under William's sheltering favour he was safe
from the papal ban.

Thus, while in France Gregory would have to face an
united people, in England he shrank before the person
ality of the King. In Germany, on the other hand, he
found a blameworthy King and a discontented people.
All the elements were present for the successful inter
ference of an external power. Moreover, the peculiar
relations in which this external power — the Papacy
— stood towards the German King, the prospective
Emperor, gave every excuse, if any were needed, for
such interference. Finally and most especially, since
these imperial prospects made the German King the
first among the monarchs of Western Europe, a victory
over him would carry a prestige which lesser potentates
would be bound to acknowledge.

CHAPTER 111
THE EM) OF THE QUARREL

IT remained to be seen whether Gregory's failure
implied Henry's success. The Emperor returned
to Germany, where a strong desire for peace
had grown up and was taking practical

shape. In some dioceses the Truce of God
was proclaimed, which, under heavy ecclesiastical
penalties, forbade hostilities during certain days ot
the week and certain seasons of the year. Henry
took up this idea, which as yet was too partial to
be effective, and in 1085, in a Synod at Mainz under
his presidency, it was proclaimed for the whole king
dom. The unfortunate anti - King Herman found
himself deserted, and died, a fugitive, in 1088. Henry's
moderation concluded what the desire for peace had
begun, and even Saxony seemed to be reconciled to
his rule.

But his triumph was short-lived. Between him and
any lasting peace stood the anti-Pope Clement III;
for all who had received consecration at

Clement's hands were bound at all hazards (lJ8^n }
to maintain the lawfulness of his election.
Moreover, Clement's opponent now was a man to be
reckoned with. The first choice of the Gregorian party,
Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, could not be
consecrated for a year after his election, and four

39

40 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

months later he was dead (September, 1087). The
partisans of Clement were too strong in Kome, and
the next election was carried out with total disregard
of the decree of Nicholas II. It took place at Terra-
cina in March, 1088, and was made by a large number
of clergy in addition to the Cardinals. The choice
fell upon Otto, Bishop of Ostia, a Frenchman of noble
family and a monk of Cluny; but it was some years
before Urban II could regard Home as his head
quarters.

In some ways Urban was more uncompromising
than his master Gregory. He upheld -the papal
His policy legates in their strict treatment of the
against French bishops ; he actually launched
Henry. against Philip I of France the excommuni
cation which Gregory had only threatened; to the
prohibition of lay investiture he added an explicit
command that bishops and clergy should not do
homage to any layman. But while he showed him
self -thus in thorough sympathy with his predecessor,
in his power of dealing with circumstances he proved
himself by far the superior. A succession of clever
if thoroughly unscrupulous measures restored the
fortunes of the papal party. Henry had succeeded
for the moment in dividing and isolating his enemies.
Urban set himself to unite the chief opponents of
Henry on both sides of the Alps. He planned a
marriage between the middle-aged widow, the Countess
Matilda of Tuscany, and the eighteen-year-old son of
Welf, Duke of Bavaria (1089). Matilda was ready to
sacrifice herself for the good of the cause. The Welfs,
ignorant of Matilda's gift of her lands to the Papacy,
eagerly accepted th^ffca^xhut soon discovering that

THH END OF THE QUARREL

they were being used as tools, they ceased to give any
help, and in fact became reconciled to the Emperor.
But meanwhile the Pope had discovered other more
deadly weapons with which to wound the Emperor.
The deaths of the anti-Kings had left the papal party
without a leader in Germany. Events had shown the
firm hold of the hereditary claim and the Salian House
upon a large portion of the Empire. The only accept
able leader would be a member of Henry's own house.
Henry's actions played into their hands. His eldest
son, Conrad, had been crowned at Aachen in 1087
and sent into Italy to act as his father's representative.
He is described as a young man of studious and dreamy
character, unpractical and easily influenced. In 1087
Henry lost his faithful wife Bertha, and a year later
he married a Russian Princess, Praxedis, who was the
widow of the Count of the Northern March. The
marriage was unhappy; eacli accused the other of
misconduct; and Henry, suspecting the relations of
Conrad witli his stepmother, put them both in prison.
Perhaps Conrad had already been worked upon by the
papal party. He escaped, took refuge with the Countess
Matilda, and was crowned King of Italy (1093). But
he was only the tool of others. Far more immediately
dangerous was the escape of Praxedis (1094), who laid
before the Pope the foulest charges against Henry.
To her lasting shame the Countess Matilda was the
chief agent in these family revolts. The effect on
Henry's position in Italy was disastrous. Pope Urban
finally recovered Pome, and Conrad, having won the
cities of Lombardy, took an oath of fealty to the Papacy
in return for a promise of the Empire.

And just as if the success of these diabolical schemes

42 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

was not a sufficient triumph, fortune at this moment
gave the Pope a chance of superseding the Emperor
in the eyes of all Europe, by inaugurating a great
popular movement of which under different circum
stances the Emperor would have been the natural
leader. In 1085 the Eastern Emperor Alexius had
appealed to Henry against the Normans, but now
Henry was a negligible quantity — excommunicated,
Beginning crowned Emperor by an anti-pope, not likely
of the to undertake a distant expedition. In 1095,

Crusades, therefore, when Alexius needed aid against
the Seljuk Turks, it was to the Pope that he sent his
envoys, who appeared at the Synod of Piacenza. Those
late converts to Mohammedanism had established their
kingdom of Eoum over the greater part of Asia Minor
with its capital at the venerable city of Nicsea, and had
captured Jerusalem, which thus passed out of the hands
of the tolerant Caliphs of Cairo into those of the most
fanatical section of Mohammedans. Pilgrims return
ing from Jerusalem spread through Europe tales of the
harsh treatment to which they were subjected. Then
in 1087 a new tribe of Saracens, the Almoravides,
crossed from Africa to Spain and inflicted a severe
defeat upon a Christian army. It seemed almost as
if a combined movement of the Mohammedan world
had begun for the final extinction of Christendom. If
Gregory had been free he would have wished to
promote the reunion of the Churches by sending help
to the Eastern Empire ; so that it was no novel idea
that was suggested to the assembled magnates at
Piacenza. Urban II no doubt saw the opportunity
offered for asserting the leadership of the western
world. Alexius' envoys were heard with sympathy ;

THE END OF THE QUARREL 43

but Urban felt the need of appeal to a larger public,
and summoned a great Council to Clermont-Ferrand
in Auvergne, where he would be among his
own countrymen. Here in November, 1095,
he delivered before a vast concourse of
persons assembled in the open air an impassioned
appeal on behalf of the suffering Christians of the
east. The result answered his utmost expectation,
and the cry of the assembled multitude, " God
wills it," was the ratification of the papal leader
ship. All methods were taken to stir the feelings of
the west. The vast ecclesiastical organisation was
used in order to transmit invitations to possible
crusaders; the penitential system of the Church was
brought to bear on those already conscious of a sinful
life ; popular preachers, such as Peter the Hermit,
were employed to rouse the interest of the masses;
the Tope himself spent the succeeding months in a
tour through Southern France ; and arrangements were
made for the start of the first expedition from the
Italian ports at the end of the summer of 1096, under
the leadership of a legate appointed by the Pope.

It is not possible here to follow the fortunes of the
Crusaders. Several unauthorised expeditions, which
bore witness to the popular enthusiasm,
made their way through Southern Ger- P16 fi!jst
many ; but the disorderly crowds which
composed them perished either at the hands of the
inhabitants of the Eastern Empire, whom they treated
as schismatics, or among the Turks in Asia Minor.
The real expedition passed partly by land, partly by
sea from the Italian ports to Constantinople, whence
the Crusaders set out across Asia Minor. Niciea

44 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

was taken in June, 1097; the Sultan of Eoum was
overthrown in battle at Dorylseum in July ; Antioch
detained the Crusaders from October, 1097, to June,
1098; and it was only in July, 1099, that after a siege
of forty days Jerusalem was captured from the Saracens
of Egypt, who had recently recovered it from the Turks.
But whatever may have been Urban's success in his
own land of France and elsewhere, in Germany, at
Its effect any ra^e' ^s eff°rts to turn the current
on the against the Emperor had entirely failed,
quarrel. Of German lands Lorraine alone sent
warriors to the First Crusade. The movement did
not penetrate to the east of the Ehine, and the
number of Germans who helped to swell the multi
tude of crusaders who marched through Southern
Germany was inappreciable. At the same time the
settlement of the questions at issue between Papacy
and Empire were indefinitely postponed ; for it would
have been treason to the crusading cause to press the
papal claims against Henry at this moment. It was
Henry's turn to experience some good fortune. The
proclamation of the Truce of God under his auspices,
the manifest interest of the German ecclesiastics, and
his own policy of favouring the rising cities combined
to strengthen his position. Thus in 1098 he was able
to obtain from the German nobles the deposition of
his rebellious son Conrad and the election of his
younger son Henry as King, who was made to promise
that during his father's lifetime he would not act
politically against him. Then in 1099 Pope Urban
died, and was followed in 1100 by the anti-Pope
Clement III, and in 1101 by Conrad. All the personal
causes of disunion were being removed. Moreover,

THE KNI) OF THE QUARREL 45

the success of the crusading policy made it impossible
tli at Henry or Germany should stand apart from it
altogether. Although Jerusalem was the capital of a
Christian kingdom and other principalities centred
round Tripoli, Antioch, and the more distant Edessa,
powerful Mohammedan Princes lay close beside them
at Damascus, Aleppo, and Mossul, as well as to the
south in Egypt. There was need of constant rein
forcement, for the fighting was continual. Under
these inducements Germany began to contribute
crusaders to the cause. Duke Welf of Bavaria led
an army eastwards in 1101. In 1103 Henry's efforts
in favour of peace culminated in the proclamation at
the Diet' of Mainz of the first imperial land peace
sworn between King and nobles, which bound the
parties to it for four years to maintain the peace
towards all communities in the land. This was in
tended as a preliminary to Henry's participation in an
expedition to the east.

But this was the very last thing desired by Henry's
enemies, and there began a most unscrupulous attack
which ended only with his death. Pope
Urban's successor, Pascal II, strengthened He** °
by the death of the anti-Pope Clement and
the failure of his party to maintain a successor, re
newed the excommunication against Henry, and did
everything deliberately to stir up strife in Germany.
The nobles were angry at the cessation of private
war and at the favour shown by Henry to the towns.
But again they lacked a leader, and with diabolical
craft the papal party worked upon the young King
Henry by threatening to set up against him an anti-
King who should rob him of the eventual succession

46 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

The result was that the young King broke his solemn
promise, set up the standard of revolt, and was joined
by nobles, ecclesiastical as well as lay, and by the
restless Saxon rebels. By a trick he got his father
into his power and forced him formally to abdicate,
while he himself was crowned King by the papal
legate. But the Emperor escaped, and with marvellous
energy gathered adherents; but a renewal of the
struggle was staved off by his own death after a few
days' illness on August 6th, 1106.

Henry never shook himself free from the difficulties
of his own early misdeeds ; but the rights upon which
His he took his stand were those exercised by

justifica- his predecessors. The uncompromising atti-
tion- tude of his opponents and their humiliation

of him made it a life-long struggle between them.
Henry was no saint ; but his opponents' tactics were
indefensible. Under less adverse circumstances he
might have proved a successful ruler. But he was
the victim of a party which deliberately subordinated
means to ends in pursuit of an ideal which Henry
could scarcely be expected to understand or appreciate.

The papal party in its malice had overreached itself
in selecting Henry V as its champion. True, he had
H nr V destroyed the most stubborn enemy of the
Papacy; but his own interests caused him
to adopt his father's policy. His one object was to
recover the prestige which the German King had lost
in the struggles of the last twenty years. He was
undisputed King in Germany; he showed an un
scrupulous and overbearing demeanour which aroused
opposition on all sides. He was not likely to be con
tent with less power than his father had demanded

THE END OF THE QUARREL 47

over the German clergy, and at the first vacancies he
invested the new bishops.

Henry's bold action was not altogether without
reason. For some years there had been growing up

within the ranks of the advocates of reform

, . , , ., Growth of

a moderate party which, while opposed to a t of

simony and clerical marriage, saw in the compro-
continued and close union of Church and miSQ on in-
State an indispensable guarantee of social ves
order. They aimed therefore at conserving the rights
of the Crown no less than at recovering those of the
Church. This party is found especially among the
French clergy. One of its chief spokesmen, the Canonist
Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, who had suffered much for
his enthusiasm for reform, insists in his correspond
ence even with the Pope himself, that the prohibition
passed upon lay investiture is not among the class of
matters which have been settled by a law for ever
binding, but among those which have been enjoined
or forbidden, as the case might be, for the honour or
profit of the Church, and lie appropriately bids the
papal legate beware lest the Koman clergy should
incur the charge of taking tithe of mint and rue
while they omit the weightier precepts of the law.
Moreover, botli he and his friend Hugh of Fleury, in
a treatise dealing with the " Uoyal Power and Priestly
Office," maintain that the King lias the power, " by
the instigation of the Holy Spirit," of nominating
bishops, or at least of granting permission for their
election ; and that, while the royal investiture, how
ever made by word or act, pretends to bestow no
spiritual authority, but merely estates or other
results of royal munificence, it is for the archbishop

48 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

to commit to a newly elected prelate the cure of
souls.

This distinction, repugnant as it was to the
extremists, soon found practical application. Lan-
c tti franc's successor in the See of Canterbury,

ment in Anselm, was, like his predecessor, an Italian,
England. transferred from Normandy to England.
He had to contend with the typical King of an unre
strained feudalism in the person of William II. A
succession of quarrels ended in Anselm's retirement
to Italy. Eecalled by Henry I, he took back with
him the maxims of the reformers about investiture,
and refused to do the required homage to the new
King. Henry was not an unreasonable man, and he
sent Anselm to bring about some arrangement with
the Pope. However, it was not until a rupture was
imminent that Pope Pascal was persuaded to acquiesce
in an agreement on the lines advocated by Ivo of
Chartres and his party. By this Concordat (1107)
Henry I agreed to give up his claim to invest with
the ring and staff, while Archbishop Anselm allowed
that the elected bishop might do homage for his lands
to the King.

At present neither side in the Empire was suffi
ciently honest in its intentions to be willing to accept
Pascal II so reasonable a settlement. But the fact
(1099- that the Pope had felt himself obliged to
II18)- allow it in one case sensibly weakened his

position and correspondingly strengthened that of the
German King. It was typical of Pascal's position in
general. Though strongly Gregorian in principle, he
was neither clever nor courageous, and was inclined
to take up a position which he could not maintain.

THE END OF THE QUARREL 49

Intent on renewing the prohibition of lay investiture
and afraid of Henry, Pascal determined to support
himself upon France. Here, at any rate, Philip 1 had
gradually dropped the practice of investiture of
bishops. The papal censures of his scandalous pri
vate conduct uttered by Gregory and Urban had had
no effect. Pascal accepted professions of amendment
and acts of humiliation, and ceased to trouble himself
further about Philip's private affairs. A Council of
French bishops was held at Troyes (1107), where the
decrees against lay investiture were renewed. The
one gleam of hope for the future appeared in Pascal's
deliberate abstention from any pronouncement against
the King in person. Henry, occupied on the eastern
border, could not pay his first visit to Italy until the
beginning of 1111, and it was not without significance
that on the eve of setting out he betrothed himself to
the daughter of Henry I of England. He \vas more
fortunate than his father had been in the moment of
his visit. The Lombard cities quarrelling among
themselves were quickly forced to submission; the
Countess Matilda, grown old and tired of strife, sent
her envoys to do homage for the imperial fiefs ; the
Normans had just lost their Duke. Pope Pascal,
finding himself isolated, did not dare to meet by a
simple negative Henry's demand for the right of inves
titure as well as for his coronation as Emperor.

By way of escaping from his difficulty he sent to
the King an astonishing proposal. The King was to
renounce the right of investiture and all
interference in the elections, in return for ** ^^
which the prelates should give up all
imperial lands and rights with which they were

50 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

endowed, retaining merely the right to tithes, offer
ings, and private gifts : the papal rights over the
Patrimony of St. Peter and the Norman lands were
specially excepted. It has been pointed out that this
was the policy which Count Cavour made famous as
"a free Church in a free State." It seems almost
impossible that Pascal should have thought that the
German bishops would accept this solution : he may
have hoped that they could be coerced into it. But
in contracting himself out of the obligations to be
imposed on all other ecclesiastical dignitaries, he
practically renounced any claim to set the policy
of the Church. Henry may have aimed at digging an
impassable ditch between the Pope and the German
bishops. It was an impossible agreement; for neither
bishops nor lay nobles would wish to see so large an
addition to the King's resources, while Henry himself
could not afford to surrender the right of investiture,
since it would stultify his claim to a voice in the
election of the Pope.

The publication of the agreement at Ptome caused
great tumults, Henry contriving that all the odium
should fall upon the Pope. Then, since
Pascal could not fulfil the part of the agree
ment which he had made on behalf of the
Church, Henry forced him, the successor of Gregory,
to acquiesce in the exercise by the German King of
the right of investiture with ring and staff. Henry
was crowned Emperor, though with very maimed
ceremonial, and returned in triumph to Germany.

But his triumph was short, for he was immediately
threatened with danger from two quarters. On the
one side the leaders of the Ultramontane party were

THE END OF THE QUARREL

naturally most wrathful at this betrayal of their
cause, and Pascal, threatened with deposition, placed
himself in their hands. At the Lenten Pascal>s
Synod of 1112 he confirmed all the decrees with-
of his predecessor against lay investiture, drawal.
thus annulling his own agreement with Henry. But
he avoided issuing any sentence of excommunication
against Henry in person. His own legates, however,
had no such scruples, and in France Cardinal Conon
took advantage of the strong feeling among the clergy
to launch excommunications against the Emperor in
several ecclesiastical Councils during 1114 and 1115.
Guido, Archbishop of Vienne, presiding over a Council
of Henry's own subjects at Vienne in 1112, had al
ready condemned their sovereign and forced Pascal to
acquiesce in the resolution.

Henry's right policy would no doubt have been to
compel the Pope to observe the agreement. But it
was more than three years before he could Henr ,s
return to Italy. For revolt had broken out diffi- 3
again in Germany. The nobles had their culties.
own grievances ; the Saxons were always ready to take
arms; the Church was roused because Henry dealt
with ecclesiastical property as if the Pope's original
proposal had been allowed to stand. The royal
bailiffs acted in such a manner with the cathedrals
that of a house of prayer they made a den of thieves.

Henry's forces were worsted in battle and he had
recourse to his father's tactics, seeking in Italy, by
personal dealings with the Pope, to recover the moral
prestige which he had lost in Germany. He had a
pretext in the death of the Countess Matilda (1115);
for the Papacy was claiming not only her allodial

52 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

lands, which she might have a right to bequeath, but
also her imperial fiefs, which were not hers to dispose
of. Henry occupied the dominions of Matilda with
out opposition. His presence in Italy caused Pascal
still to refrain from personal condemnation of the
Emperor, and a year later a party friendly to Henry
opened the gates of Borne to him. Pascal fled to
Albano, and only returned to Borne on Henry's depar
ture, a dying man (January, 1118). His successor,
Gelasius II, refused Henry's advances, and the Emperor
resorted to the old and discredited policy of setting up
an anti-Pope in the person of the Archbishop of
Braga, in Portugal, who took the name of Gregory VIII.
Gelasius excommunicated Henry and his Pope ; but
finding himself threatened in Borne, fled to Burgundy,
and died at Cluny a year after his election (January,
1119). So far Henry's attempts to deal with the
Pope had failed, and the publication of the new Pope's
excommunication in Germany made the opposition so
strong that Henry found it advisable to return.

Gelasius' successor chosen at Cluny was Archbishop
of Vienne, who took the title of Calixtus II. He was

the first secular priest who had occupied the
Cahxtus 1 1 papai ciiair since Alexander II, and he was

related to the royal families of France and
England. Thus he had a wider outlook than the
monks who preceded him, and the nobles would be
likely to listen to a man of their own rank. He had
been the most uncompromising of all Henry's
opponents; but this was a guarantee to the Church
that her position and power would not again be placed
in jeopardy, for events were at length tending towards
a conclusion of the weary strife. The views of the

THE END OF THE QUARREL 53

reformers had gained general acceptance as the
doctrine of the Church. The obligation of clerical
celibacy was acknowledged ; simony had much dimin
ished ; Henry was the only King in Western Europe
who still claimed to invest his prelates. Although it
was some time before all the groat French feudatories
yielded to the spirit of reform, the French King him
self had abandoned the practice of investiture for those
bishops who were under his control. He retained,
however, certain of his rights. The election could not
take place without his permission, the newly elected
bishop took an oath of fealty to the King, and during
the vacancy of the see the revenues were paid to the
Crown. It was more important still that in England
the question of investiture had been settled by a com
promise which recognised the twofold nature of the
episcopal oflice, and that this compromise had received
the sanction of the Pope. Henceforth it was practi
cally impossible for the Church to maintain the position
of the extreme reformers. When Pope Pascal was
forced to grant the right of investiture to the Emperor,
Henry I of England, as Anselm complained to Pascal,
threatened to resume the practice. Already William I
of England had defined the limits of papal power in
his dominions without a protest from Koine, and
Urban II had actually found himself obliged to endow
Roger of Sicily and his successors with the authority
of a papal legate within their own dominions. It was
clear that the papal authority could do little against a
really strong lay ruler. Moreover, the influence of
the Church had greatly diminished. There was
scarcely a see or abbey to which, during the last forty
years, there had not been rival claimants : King and

54 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

nobles alike had not only ceased to increase the endow
ments of the Church, but had caught at almost every
opportunity of encroaching on them.

The accommodation was very gradual, for much
suspicion of insincerity on both sides had to be over
come. The first step was taken in October,

1119< After the failure of direct neg°tia-
tions between Pope and Emperor, a Council

at Rheims, presided over by the Pope, renewed the
anathema against Henry and his party, but only con
sented to a modified prohibition of investitures, since
the office alone was mentioned and all reference to
the property of bishop or abbot was omitted. It was
two years before the next stage was reached, and
meanwhile the anti-Pope had fallen into the hands
of Calixtus, and Henry was still in difficulties in
Germany. Finally, in October, 1121, the German
nobles brought about a conference of envoys from both
sides at Wiirzburg, where in addition to an universal
peace it was arranged that the investiture question
should be settled at a General Council to be held in
Germany under papal auspices. The Council met at
Worms in September, 1122, and the papal legates
were armed with full powers to act. The result was
a Concordat subsequently ratified at the first Council
of the Lateran in March, 1123, which is reckoned
as the ninth General Council by the Roman Church.
By this agreement the Emperor gave up all claim
to invest ecclesiastics with the ring and staff. In
return it was allowed by the Church that the election
of prelates should take place in presence of the
Emperor's representatives, and that in case of any
dispute the Emperor should confirm the decision

THE END OF THE QUARREL 55

arrived at by the Metropolitan and his suffragans.
The Emperor on his part undertook that the prelate
elect, whether bishop or abbot, should be invested
with the regalia or temporalities pertaining to his
oflice by the sceptre, in Germany the investiture
preceding the ecclesiastical consecration, whereas in
Burgundy and the kingdom of Italy the consecration
should come first.

We are naturally tempted to enquire who was the
gainer in this long struggle ? Writers on both sides
have claimed the victory. It is clear, Results of
however, that neither side got all that it struggle in
demanded. Considering the all-embracing EmPire ;
character of the papal claim, the limitation of its
pretensions might seem to carry a decided diminution
of its position. Calixtus' advisers strongly urged that
all over the imperial lands the consecration of prelates
should precede the investiture of temporalities by the
lay power. But the German nobles would not budge.
In Burgundy and Italy conditions were different: in
the former the power of the Crown had been almost
in abeyance; in Italy the bishops had found them
selves deserted by the Crown and had submitted to
the Pope. The Crown had therefore to acquiesce
in a merely nominal control over appointments in
those lands. But in Germany the King perhaps
gained rather than lost by the Concordat. His right
of influence in the choice was definitely acknowledged,
and by refusing the regalia he could practically pre
vent the consecration of any one obnoxious to him.
The prelates of Germany, therefore, remained vassals
of the Crown.

On the other hand, the Papacy had definitely shaken

56 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

itself free from imperial control. Henry III was the
last Emperor who could impose his nominee
Papacy upon the Church as Pope; the proteges of
his successors are all classed among the
anti-Popes. At the same time the papal privilege
of crowning the Emperor and the papal weapon of
excommunication were very real checks upon the
German King; while the success of those principles
for which the Cluniac party had striven established
the theoretical claim of the Pope to be the moral
guide, and the part which he played in starting the
Crusades put him in the practical position of the
leader of Christendom in any common movement.
It was no slight loss to the Emperor that he had
been the chief opponent of the Pope and the re
formers, and that in the matter of the Crusades he
and his whole nation had stood ostentatiously aloof.

CHAPTER IV
THE SECULAR CLERGY

ri^HE »j;reat movement in favour of Church reform,
-L which had emanated from Cluny, had worked
itself out along certain definite lines. It is important
to ask how far it had succeeded in achieving its objects.
We have seen that it was a movement of The worj£.
essentially monastic conception aimed at the Of the
purification of the secular clergy. And we Church
have seen that the evil to be remedied had reformers-
arisen from the imminent danger that the Church
would be laicised and feudalised. From the highest to
the lowest all ecclesiastical posts were at the disposi
tion of laymen who treated them as a species of feudal
fief, so that the holders, even if they were in Holy
Orders (which was not always the case), regarded their
temporal rights and obligations as the first considera
tion and, like all feudal tenants, tried to establish the
right of hereditary succession in their holdings. Thus
the work of the reformers had been of a double nature ;
it was not enough that they should aim at exorcising
the feudal spirit from the Church, at banishing the
feudal ideal from the minds of ecclesiastics : it was
necessary to effect what was indeed a revolution, and
to shake the whole organisation of the Church free
from the trammels which close contact with the State
had laid upon it. It began as a reformation of

57

58 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

morals; it developed into a constitutional revolution.
There was involved in the movement both an inter
ference with what might be distinguished as private
rights and also a readjustment of public relations.
The reformers headed by the Pope ultimately decided
to concentrate their efforts on the latter. Hence we
may begin by enquiring how far they had succeeded in
freeing episcopal elections from lay control.

There were three several acts of the lay authority
in connection with the appointment of bishops to
Episcopal which the Church reformers took exception,
appoint- The King or, by usurpation from him, the
ments. great feudal lord had acquired the right of
nominating directly to the vacant see, to the detri
ment, and even the exclusion, of the old electoral rights
of clergy and people ; and while in some cases nobles
nominated themselves without any thought of taking
Holy Orders, frequently they treated the bishoprics
under their control as appanages or endowments for
the younger members of their family. Then, before
the consecration, the bishop-nominate obtained investi
ture from the lay authority by the symbolic gifts of a
ring and a pastoral staff or cross, not only of the lands
and temporal possessions of the see, but also of the
jurisdiction which emanated from the episcopal office.
Finally, the prospective bishop took an oath to his lay
lord, whether King or other, which was not only an
oath of fealty such as any subject might be called
upon to take, but was also an act of homage, and
made him an actual feudal vassal and his church a
kind of fief.

The result of the long struggle was that in the
matter of episcopal appointments, speaking generally,

THE SECULAR CLERGY 59

the right of election was not restored to clergy and
people, in whom by primitive custom it had been
vested, but that the laity, with the possible

exception of the feudatories of the see,

r election.

were banished altogether, the rural clergy
ceased to appear, and, after the analogy of the papal
election by the College of Cardinals, the canonical
election of the bishop in every diocese tends to be
concentrated in the hands of the clergy of the cathedral.
It was a long time, however, before the rights of the
cathedral chapters were universally recognised. Henry I
of England in his Concordat with Anselm (1107) and
the Emperor Henry V in the Concordat of Worms
(1122) both promised freedom of election. Philip I
and Louis VI of France seem to have conceded the
same right without any formal agreement. But many
of the great French feudal lords clung to their power
over the local bishoprics, and in Normandy, in Anjou,
and in some parts of the south nearly a century elapsed
before the duke or count surrendered his custom of
nominating bishops directly. But the freedom of elec
tion by the Canons of the cathedral, oven when it was
conceded, was little more than nominal. In England,
France, and the Christian kingdoms of Spain
no cathedral body could exercise its right
without the King's leave to elect, nor was
any election complete without the royal confirmation.
By the Concordat of Worms elections were to take
place in the presence of the King or his commissioners.
By the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164) English
bishops must be elected in the royal chapel. King
John tried to bribe the Church over to his side in
the quarrel with the barons which preceded Magna

60 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Carta, by conceding that elections should be free —
that is, should take place in the chapter-house, of the
cathedral ; but even he reserved the royal permission
for the election to be held, and the cong6 d'dlire in
England and elsewhere was accompanied by the name
of the individual on whom the choice of the electoral
body should fall. It was not the rights of the electors
but the all-pervading authority of the Pope which was
to prove the chief rival of royal influence in the local
Church.

The quarrel between Church and State had centred
round the ceremony of investiture, because in the eyes
of the reformers the most scandalous re-
ture suit of the feudalisation of the Church was

the acceptance at the hands of a layman of
the spiritual symbols of ring and crozier. But as
Hugh of Fleury had acknowledged in his tract on
"Boyal Power and Priestly Office," investiture there
must be so long as ecclesiastics held great temporal
possessions. Here again some of the French nobles
clung to the old anomalous form of investiture, but
otherwise the example of the imperial lands, of the
royal domain of France and of England was generally
followed, the gifts of ring and staff were conceded to
the Metropolitan, and where no special form of in
vestiture by the sceptre was retained it was confused
with the ceremony of homage. But in Germany and
England investiture with the lands of the see pre
ceded consecration, so that while on the one hand it
was not a bishop who was being invested by a layman,
on the other hand the refusal of investiture would
practically prevent the consecration of any one
obnoxious to the Crown.

THE SECULAR CLERGY 61

With regard to the feudal ceremony of homage a
distinction came to be drawn by writers on the Canon

Law between homage and fealty, and ecclesi-

, . Homage

astics were supposed to limit themselves to and

the obligations of the latter, which were fealty,
those of every subject. The ceremony was not
precisely the same as in the case of a lay noble being
invested with a fief; but in France, at any rate, the
Crown never really abandoned its claim to a feudal
homage, and in any case ecclesiastics were expected
to fulfil their feudal obligations. Even Innocent III
acknowledged this in a decree (§ 43) of the Fourth
Lateran Council (1215), and in interceding with
Philip II of France on behalf of two bishops who
had been deprived of their temporal possessions for
some neglect of military duty, he argues that they were
" ready to submit to the judgment of your Court, as
is customary in such matters."

Arising out of these feudal relations certain rights
over the possessions of ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical
bodies were claimed by the Crown, which
were the cause of serious oppression.
According to the Canon Law, the bishop was only the
usufructuary of the lands and revenues belonging to
his see. The lands and revenues belonged to the
Church. But inasmuch as these had been originally
in most cases the gift of the Crown, the King claimed
to deal with them in the method applied to feudal
holdings. By the right of reyalc, on the vacancy of
a see through death, resignation, or deprivation of the
bishop, the royal officers took possession of the
temporalities, that is, the land and revenues, and ad
ministered them for the profit of the Crown so long

62 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

as the see was vacant. The Crown did not hesitate
to use the episcopal patronage and to fill up vacant
canonries and benefices with its own followers, and it
often took the opportunity to levy upon the inhabi
tants of the diocese a special tax — tallagium, tallage,
or taille — which a landlord had a right of exacting
from his unfree tenants. It was to the interest of
the Crown to prolong a vacancy, and attempts to
limit the exercise of the right were of little practical
effect.

An even more extraordinary claim was to the right
of spoils (Jus spolii or exuviarium). The canonical

law forbidding the bishop to deal by will
s dls ° w^ ^ne Property attached to his see, was

interpreted as applying to everything which
he had not inherited. Thus the furniture of his house
and the money in his chest were claimed as of right
by the canons of his cathedral, but were often
plundered by the crowd of the city or by the local
nobles. These lawless proceedings provoked the in
terference of the royal officers, who succeeded in most
cases in establishing the right of the Crown to all
movables that the bishop left. The earliest notice of
this royal claim in Germany is found in the reign of
Henry V. It was in full use under Frederick I.
William II is probably responsible for introducing
both the regale and the jus spolii from Normandy
into England. In France these were claimed by the
feudal nobles as well as by the King. Bitter were
the complaints made by the Church against the
exercise of both rights. Kings and nobles clung to
the regale as long as they could, for it meant local
influence as well as revenue. In most cases, however,

THE SECULAR CLERGY 63

the right of spoils had been surrendered before the
thirteenth century. It is to be remembered that
ecclesiastics themselves exercised this right, bishops,
for example, claiming the possessions of the canons
and the parish priests in their dioceses. The Popes in
relaxation of the Canon Law gave to certain bishops
the right of leaving their personal property by will,
and the canons also are found encouraging their
bishop to make a will.

As a set-off against these claims of the Crown upon
the Church, the clergy also advanced certain claims.
These touched the two important matters daims
of taxation and jurisdiction. The Church Of the
claimed for her members that they should clergy,
not be liable to pay the taxes raised by the secular
authorities, nor should they have causes to which any
ecclesiastic was a party tried in the secular courts.

In seeking freedom from lay taxation the Church
did not ask that her members should escape their
feudal obligations, nor even that they should immunity
contribute nothing to the exigencies of the from lay
State. The desire was merely that the clergy taxation,
should be free from oppression and that the Church
should be so far as possible self-governing. Thus
Alexander III decreed in the third Lateran Council
(1179), that for relieving the needs of the community,
everything contributed by the Church to supplement
the contributions of the laity should be given without
compulsion on the recognition of its necessity or utility
by the bishop and the clergy. Innocent III, in the
fourth Lateran Council (1215), provided a further safe
guard against lay impositions in demanding the per
mission of the Pope for any such levy. This does not

64 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

mean that the clergy escaped taxation at the hands of
the State ; it merely means that while the Popes them
selves heavily taxed them for purposes which it was often
difficult to describe as religious, the price paid by the
Crown for leave to tax the clergy was that a large
portion of the money should find its way to Eome.

The clergy were not content with this merely nega
tive position. Besides the right of self-taxation, they
Tithes claimed that the laity should contribute to
from the the needs of the Church. The chief perma-
laity. nent source of such contribution was the

tithe, both the lesser tithes on smaller animals, fruits,
and vegetables, and the greater tithes on corn, wine, and
the larger animals. The Church also claimed tithes of
revenues of every kind, even from such divers classes
as traders, soldiers, beggars, and abandoned women.
Much of the regular tithe had fallen into the hands of
laymen by gift from Kings to feudal tenants, or from
bishops to nobles and others, in return for military
protection. These alienated tithes G-regory VII tried
to recover; but his need for the help of the nobles
against the Emperor forced him to stay his hand. The
third Lateran Council (1179) forbade, on pain of peril
to the soul, the transfer of tithes from one layman to
another, and deprived of Christian burial any one
who, apparently having received such a transfer, should
not have made it over to the Church. This was a
definite claim for tithes as a right of which the Church
had only been deprived by some wrongful act. But in
the very next year (1180) Frederick I, at the Diet of
Gelnhausen, declared that the alienation of tithes as
feudal fiefs to defenders of the Church was perfectly
legitimate. Keligious scruples, however, seem to have

THE SECULAR CLERGY

caused the surrender of tithes by many lay impro-
priators, especially to monasteries.
^ There were many other sources of wealth to the
Church. An enormous quantity of property was be
queathed to pious uses by testators. The
attendance of the clergy at the death-bed Be(*uests-
gave them an opportunity of which they were not
slow to make use. The bodies of those who died intes
tate, as of those unconfessed, were denied burial in
consecrated ground ; all questions concerning wills were
heard in the ecclesiastical courts. The civil power
attempted to check the freedom of death-bed bequest,
especiallyin Germany, where it was held that a valid will
could only be made by one who was still well enough to
walk unsupported. Another common source of revenue
came from purchases or mortgages or other arrangements
made with crusaders, in which advantage was taken of
the haste of the lay men to raise funds for their expedition.
From these and other sources the wealth which
poured in upon the Church was enormous. Individual
gifts in money or in kind as thank-offerings Wealth
on all sorts of occasions reached no small of the
total ; while no religious ceremony, from church-
baptism to extreme unction and burial, could be carried
out apart from the payment of an appropriate fee.
The clergy constantly complained of spoliation, and no
doubt individuals suffered much. The very laymen
who, with the title of advocates, undertook "to defend
a cathedral or a monastery were often its worst robbers.
But the endowments and revenues of the Church were
so extensive as to raise in the minds of many reformers
the question whether they were not largely responsible
for her corruptions.

66 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

The clergy also sought freedom from the jurisdiction
of the secular courts ; in other words, the Church

claimed exclusive cognisance in her own
Immunity . ,

from lay tribunals of all matters concerning those in

jurisdic- Holy Orders. The Decretum of Gratian—
tion- the text-book of Canon Law— laid it down

that in civil matters the clergy were to be brought
before a civil judge, but that a criminal charge against
a clerk must be heard before the bishop. Urban II,
however, declares that all clergy should be subject to
the bishop alone, and the Synod of Nimes (1096), at
which he presided, stigmatises it as sacrilege to hale
clerks or monks before a secular court. Alexander
III (1179) threatens to excommunicate any layman
guilty of this offence; while Innocent III points out
that a clerk is not even at liberty to waive the right
of trial in an ecclesiastical court in a matter between
him and a layman, because the spiritual jurisdiction is
not a matter personal to himself, but belongs to the
whole clerical body. Finally Frederick II, on his
coronation at Eome in 1220, forbade any one to dare to
indict an ecclesiastic on either a civil or a criminal
charge before a secular tribunal. But meanwhile the
frequent perpetration of violent crimes by those who
wore the tonsure made it imperative in the interests
of social order that the Church should not be allowed
to defend these criminals in order to save her own
interests.

The fiercest struggle took place in England. Henry
II did not deny the right of the Church to jurisdiction
over her members ; but he demanded that clerks
found guilty of grave crime should be unfrocked
by the ecclesiastical court, and that then, being no

THE SECULAR CLERGY 67

longer clerks, they should be handed over to the royal
officers, by whom they should be punished according to
their deserts. Archbishop Thomas Becket answered
that it was contrary to justice and the Canon Law that
a man should be punished twice for the same offence ;
that the punishment by the Church involved the
offender's damnation and was therefore quite adequate ;
and that finally lie himself was officially bound to
defend the liberties of the Church even to the death.
Henry II attempted to solve the difficulty by issuing
the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), the third clause
of which decreed that the royal officer should deter
mine whether any matter in which a clerk was con
cerned should be tried in the secular or the ecclesiastical
court, and that even if it went to the latter, the King's
officer should be present at the hearing. As the price,
however, of his reconciliation with the Papacy after
Becket's death, Henry was obliged to withdraw the
Constitutions.

The position of the Church on this question was
clearly stated by Pope Celestine III in 1192. If a
clerk had been lawfully convicted of theft, homi
cide, perjury, or any capital crime, he should be
degraded by the ecclesiastical judge; for the next
offence he should be punished by excommunication,
and for the next by anathema ; then, since the Church
could do no more, for any subsequent offence he might
be handed over to the secular power to be punished by
exile or in any other lawful manner. This, of course,
was a direct licence to the ill-disposed clergy to com
mit more crimes than were allowable for a layman ;
but the laity had to proceed cautiously in opposing it!
In 1219 Philip II of France demanded that a Jerk

68 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

who had been degraded should not be protected by
the Church from seizure outside ecclesiastical pre
cincts by the royal officers with a view to his trial in
a secular court. But here again, both at his coronation
as Emperor in 1220 and again in the code of laws
drawn up for his kingdom of Sicily in 1231, Frederick
II confirmed the privileges of the Church in the
matter of jurisdiction. On the latter occasion, how
ever, he did reserve cases of high treason for the
royal court. Almost the only immediate effect of
these protests on the part of the State was that Popes
and Councils enjoined on the ecclesiastical courts
greater severity of treatment of offenders, even to
the extent of perpetual imprisonment in the case of
those whom the lay tribunals would have condemned
to death.

But this exclusive jurisdiction in all matters that
concerned her own members was only a part of the
authority claimed and exercised by the
of ecctesi- Church in the sphere of justice. Synods
astical of the clergy did not hesitate to take part
jurisdic- in the enforcement of civil law and order,
tion' and threatened with severe ecclesiastical

penalties all who did not observe the Truce of God, or
who were guilty of piracy, , incendiarism, or false
coining. At one time they attempted thus to sup
press usury and trial by ordeal, which at other times
they allowed. They even legislated against tourna
ments and against the use of certain deadly weapons
in battle by one Christian nation against another.
But apart from the special circumstances which called
out and so justified the legislation, the Church claimed
at all times jurisdiction over certain classes of lay

THE SECULAR CLERGY 69

persons and in certain categories of cases. Thus all
persons needing protection, such as widows, minors,
and orphans, came under the cognisance of the ecclesi
astical courts, and to these the Popes added Crusaders.
Furthermore, all cases which could be regarded as in
any way involving a possible breach of faitli were
also claimed as belonging to the jurisdiction of the
Church, and these included everything concerning oaths,
marriages, and wills. Naturally the Church had cog
nisance of all cases of sacrilege and heresy. These
excuses for interference in the transactions of daily
life were susceptible of almost indefinite extension,
especially since the Church asserted a right to hear
cases of all sorts in her courts on appeal on a plea
that civil justice had failed. Even so stout a cham
pion of the Church as St. Bernard complains bitterly
that all this participation in worldly matters tends to
stand between the clergy and their proper duties.
The secular powers constantly protested. Even when
Alfonso X in his legal code allowed that all suits
arising from sins should go to ecclesiastical courts,
the Cortes of Castile constantly protested. The chief
attempts to check the growth of ecclesiastical jurisdic
tion were made in France. Even under Louis IX the
barons combined to resist the encroachments of the
Church, and resolved that "no clerk or layman should
in future indict any one before an ecclesiastical judge
except for heresy, marriage, or usury, on pain of loss of
possessions and mutilation of a limb, in order that,"
they add with a justifiable touch of malice, " our
jurisdiction may be revived, and they [the clergy] who
have hitherto been enriched by our pauperisation
may be reduced to the condition of the primitive

76 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Church, and living the contemplative life they may,
as is seemly, show to us who spend an active life
miracles which for a long time have disappeared from
the world."

The result, then, of the efforts of the Church
reformers to free the Church from the State had been
an enormous increase in the power of the
Simony. Qhurch. But these efforts were in the be
ginning only a means to an end, and that end was the
purification of the Church itself. We have, therefore,
to ask how far the attempts to get rid of simony and
to enforce the celibacy of the clergy had met with
permanent success. Before the movement in favour
of reform the traffic in churches and Church property
was indulged in by laity and clergy alike. Not only
Kings and nobles but bishops and abbots received
payments from those who accepted ecclesiastical pre
ferment at their hands, and were by no means always
careful that ecclesiastical offices were acquired by
those in Holy Orders. Church property, in fact, was
treated by those who represented the original donors
as if it were the private property of the patron. The
reform movement of the eleventh century, at any
rate, succeeded in making a distinction between the
right of ownership and the right of presentation, and
in limiting the power of the patron to the latter.
Beyond this nothing much was permanently effected
in checking the traffic in things ecclesiastical. Prefer
ment continued to be used as patronage : offices and
dignities in the Church were given to children, and
preferments were accumulated upon individuals until
pluralities became a standing grievance. Councils
and Popes still thundered against simony, but with

THE SECULAR CLERGY 71

the extending authority of Rome the staff of the
papal curia was increased, and the traffic in things
ecclesiastical at Koine was notorious.

The efforts of the reformers in checking clerical
marriage had not been much more successful. The
law now stood as follows : the first two

Lateran Councils (1123, 1139) prohibited Clerical

marriage.

matrimony to priests, deacons, and sub-
deacons ; but to those only in one of the three minor
orders of the Church it was still allowed, although
Alexander III ultimately decreed that marriage should
cause them to forfeit their benefice. It was some
time, however, before these decrees could be enforced,
and even the Popes found themselves compelled to
deal leniently with offending clergy. Thus Pascal II
allowed to Archbishop Anselin that a married priest
not only might, but must, if applied to, minister to a
dying person. Attempts were made to forbid ordi
nation to the sons of priests, at least as secular clergy,
but such regulations were constantly relaxed or ignored.
Pascal II actually allowed that in Spain, where
clerical marriage had been lawful, the children should
be eligible for all secular and ecclesiastical preferment.
In the remoter countries of Europe— the Scandinavian
lands, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland — the decrees against
clerical marriage were not accepted until far into the
thirteenth century. Even in part of Germany, notably
the diocese of Liege, the clergy continued openly to
marry until the same century. Rut even in countries
where the principle was nominally accepted it
triumphed at the expense of morality. For example,
in England the decree was published in Council after
Council throughout the twelfth century and was un-

72 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

doubtedly accepted as the law. But in 1129, after the
death of Anselm, who had opposed the expedient,
Henry I imprisoned the "house-keepers" of the clergy
in London in order to obtain a sum of money by their
release. Furthermore, both in England and elsewhere,
bishops finding it impossible to enforce the decree,
frankly licensed the breach of it by individual clergy
in return for an annual payment. It is interesting to
note that several important writers of the age speak
with studied moderation on this question. The great
lawyer Gratian admits that in the earlier period of the
Church marriage was allowed to the clergy. The
Parisian theologian, Peter Comestor, publicly taught
that the enforcement of the vow of celibacy on the
clergy was a deliberate snare of the devil. The Eng
lish historians, Henry of Huntingdon, Matthew Paris,
and Thomas of Walsingham, speak with disapproval of
the attempts to enforce it, and even St. Thomas
Aquinas holds that the celibacy of the secular clergy
was a matter of merely human regulation. Thus the
protest of the reformers of the eleventh century in
favour of purity of life among the clergy had met
with the smallest possible success, but like all such
protests, it helped to keep alive the idea of a higher
standard of personal and official life until such time
as secular circumstances were more favourable.

CHAPTER V
CANONS AND MONKS

SO far, in speaking of the attempted purification
of the Church in the eleventh century, we have
dealt merely with the bishops and the
parochial clergy. But a movement which
emanated from the monasteries had a
message also for those ecclesiastics who were gathered
into corporate bodies, and whom we have learnt to
distinguish respectively as canons and monks. Of
these the canons were reckoned among the secular
clergy ; for although they were supposed to live a
common life according to a certain rule, their duties
were parochial, and they were not bound for life to
the community of which they were members. The
body of canons was called a chapter, and of chapters
there were two kinds— the cathedral chapter, whose
members served the Mother Church of the diocese,
and, as we have seen, ultimately obtained the nominal
right of electing the bishop; and the collegiate
chapter, generally, though not always, to be found
in towns which had no cathedral, the members of
which, like those of a modern clergy-house, served
the church or churches of the town. In the eighth
century these communities were subjected to a rule
drawn up by Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz, in accord
ance with which they were required to sleep in a

73

74 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

common dormitory, feed at a common table, and
assimilate themselves as far as possible to monks.
But in the two succeeding centuries there was no
class of clergy which fell so far from the ideal as
the capitular clergy. 'They were important and they
were wealthy, for the cathedral chapters claimed to
share with the bishop in the administration of the
diocese, and both kinds of chapters owned extensive
lands. In some of the more important chapters
great feudal nobles had obtained for themselves the
titular offices ; in nearly all such bodies some, if not
most or even all, of the canonries came to be reserved
for younger members of the noble families. The
common property was divided into shares, between
the bishop and the body of the canons and between
the individual canons : many of the canons employed
vicars to do their clerical duty, and some even lived
on the estates of the capitular body, leading the
existence of a lay noble. Even those who remained
on the spot had houses of their own round the
cloister, where they lived with their wives and
children, using the common refectory only for an
occasional festival.

Thus no body of ecclesiastics stood in need of
thorough reform more than the capitular clergy, and

no class proved so hard to deal with.
Regular Attempts to substitute Cluniac monks for

canons roused the opposition of the whole
body of secular clergy. More successful to a small
degree was the plan of Bishop Ivo of Chartres and
others to revive among the capitular bodies the rule
of common life. But it was difficult to pour new
wine into old bottles, and the reformers found it

CANONS AND MONKS 75

more profitable to leave the old capitular bodies
severely alone, and to devote their efforts to the
foundation of new communities. To these were ap
plied from the very first a new rule for which its
advocates claimed the authority of St. Augustine. It
laid upon the members vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience, and placed them under an abbot elected by
the community of canons. Such was the origin of the
Augustinian or Austin Canons, who came to be dis
tinguished as Regular Canons, and are to be reckoned
with monastic bodies, in comparison with the old
cathedral and collegiate chapters, who were hence
forth known as Secular Canons. These bodies of
clergy, who combined parochial duties with what was
practically a monastic life, became exceedingly popular ;
and by degrees not only were Secular Canons of
collegiate churches, and even of some cathedrals,
transformed into Regular Canons, but even some
monastic houses were handed over to them. Instead
of existing as isolated bodies, like the old Benedictines,
they took the Cluniac model of organisation and
formed congregations of houses grouped round some
one or other of those which formed models for the
rest. Of these congregations of Regular Canons the
most celebrated were those of the Victorines and the
Fremonstratensians.

The abbey of St. Victor at Paris was founded in
1113 by William of Champeaux, afterwards Bishop of
Chalons. The Order came to consist of about
forty houses, and its members strove to
keep the Augustinian ideal of a parochial and monastic
life. But the chief fame of the abbey itself comes
from its scholastic work, and it became known both

76 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

as the stronghold of a somewhat rigid orthodoxy and
as the home of a mystical theology which was de
veloped among its own teachers.

But by far the most important congregation of
Canons Eegular was that of the Premonstratensians.
Premon- Their founder, Norbert, a German of noble
straten- birth, in response to a sudden conversion,
gave up several canonries of the older kind
with which he was endowed ; but finding that a
prophet has no honour in his own country, he preached
in France with astonishing success, and ultimately,
under the patronage of the Bishop of Laon in 1120, he
settled with a few companions in a waste place in
a forest, where he established a community of Eegular
Canons and gave to the spot the name of Prdmontre
— pratum monstratum — the meadow which had been
pointed out to him by an angel. Almost from its
foundation the Premonstratensian Order admitted
women as well as men, and at first the two sexes
lived in separate houses planted side by side. The
Order also began the idea of affiliating to itself, under
the form of a third class, influential laymen who would
help in its work. The Premonstratensian houses
assimilated themselves to monastic communities more
than did the Victorines : their work was missionary
rather than parochial. The Order spread with great
rapidity not only in Western Europe, but, even
in its founder's lifetime, to Syria and Palestine, and
for purposes of administration it came to be divided
into thirty provinces.

Meanwhile Norbert had come under the notice of
the Emperor Lothair IT, who forced him into the
archbishopric of Magdeburg. Here he substituted

CANONS AND MONKS 77

Premonstratensians in a collegiate chapter for canons
of the older kind, and he eagerly backed up Lothair's
policy of extending German influence upon St Norbert
the north-eastern frontier by planting Pro- in
monstratensian houses as missionary centres
and by founding new bishoprics. Norbert, in fact
became Lothair's chief adviser and was an European
influence second only to that of St. Bernard in all
the questions of the day.

It was upon the model of the Canons Regular
that the great military Orders of the religious were
organised. In the year 1118 a Burgundian knight,
Hugh de Payens, with eight other knights, founded at
Jerusalem an association for the protection of distressed
pilgrims in Palestine. From their residence
near Solomon's Temple they came to be
known as the Knights of the Temple. They
remained a small and poor body until St. Bernard
who was nephew7 to one of the knights, took them
under his patronage and drew up for them a code of
regulations which obtained the sanction of Honorius II
at the Council of Troyes in 1128. From that moment
the prosperity of the Templars was assured. Their
numbers increased, and lands and other endowments
were showered upon them in all parts of Europe. As
monks they were under the triple vow of poverty,
chastity, and obedience, and the regulations of the
Order which governed their daily life were among the
most severe. As knights it was their duty to main
tain war against the Saracens. For administrative
purposes the possessions of the Order were grouped
in ten provinces, each province being further sub
divided into preceptories or commanderies, and each

78 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

of these into still smaller units. Each division
and subdivision had its own periodical chapter of
members for settling its concerns, and at the head
of the whole Order stood the Grand Master with
a staff of officers who formed the general chapter
and acted as a restraint upon the conduct of their
head. In addition to the knights the Order contained
chaplains for the ecclesiastical duties, and serving
brethren of humble birth to help the knights in
warfare. Their possessions in Western Europe were
used as recruiting-grounds for their forces in the East ;
but it was only in towns of some importance that
they erected churches on the model of the Holy
Sepulchre in connection with their houses.

The Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem
was a reorganisation of a hospital dedicated to St. John
Knights the Baptist. This had been erected for
Hospital- poor pilgrims by the merchants of Amalfi
lers- before the Crusades began. But it remained

merely a charitable brotherhood living under a monastic
rule and attracting both men and endowments, until
the example of the Templars caused the then master,
Eaymond du Puy, to obtain papal sanction some time
before 1130 for a rule which added military duties
without superseding the original object of the Order.
Their possessions were divided into eight provinces
with subdivisions of grand priories and commanderies,
and the other administrative arrangements differed
in little, except occasionally in name, from those of
the Templars.

Both these Orders obtained not only extensive pos
sessions from the pious, but wide privileges from the
Pope. They were subject to the spiritual jurisdiction

CANONS AND MONKS 79

of the Pope alone; they could consecrate churches
and cemeteries on their own lands without any
interference of the local clergy ; they could
hold divine service everywhere. Interdicts Ofthe
and excommunications had no terrors or military
even inconveniences for them. They were Orders-
free from payment of tithes and other imposts levied
on the clergy. There is no doubt that but for these
Orders the Crusaders would have fared far worse than
they did. The Templars and Hospitallers were the
one really reliable element in the crusading Their
forces. This is no very high praise, and ultimate
their effectiveness was largely discounted ^ate-
by their bitter quarrels with each other and with the
local authorities, both secular and ecclesiastical, alike in
the east and the west. They scandalously abused the
extensive privileges accorded to them, by such acts as
the administration of the Sacrament to excommuni
cated persons, to whom they would also give Christian
burial. In 1179, at the second Lateran Council,
Alexander III was moved by the universal complaints
to denounce their irresponsible defiance of all ecclesi
astical law, and subsequent Popes were obliged to
speak with equal vigour. After the destruction of the
Latin power in Palestine (1291) the Hospitallers trans
ferred their head-quarters to Cyprus till 1309, then to
Khodes, and finally to Malta. The Templars abandoned
their raison d'etre, retired to their possessions in the
west, and placed their head-quarters at Paris, where
they acted as the bankers of the French King. Their
wealth provoked jealousy : they were accused of num
berless and nameless crimes, and their enemies brought
about their fall, first in France, then in England, and

8o THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

finally the abolition of the Order by papal decree in
1313. Such of their wealth as escaped the hands of
the lay authorities went to swell the possessions of the
Hospitallers.

There were many other Orders of soldier-monks

besides these two. The best known are the Teutonic

Knights, who originated during the Third

Knf htlC Crusade at the sieSe of Acre (H90) in an
association of North German Crusaders for
the care of the sick and wounded. The Knights of the
German Hospital of St. Mary the Virgin at Jerusalem
— for such was their full title — gained powerful influ
ence in Palestine ; their Order was confirmed by Pope
Celestine III (1191-8), and in 1220 Honorius III
gave them the same privileges as were enjoyed by the
Hospitallers and Templars. Their organisation was
similar to that of the older Orders. Their prosperity
was chiefly due to the third Grand Master, Herman
von Salza, the good genius of the Emperor Frederick II,
and a great power in Europe. Under him the Order
transferred itself to the shores of the Baltic, where it
carried on a crusade against the heathen Prussians,
and here it united in 1237 with another knightly
Order, the Brethren of the Sword, which had been
founded in 1202 by the Bishop of Livonia for similar
work against the heathen inhabitants of that country.
The Knights of the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acre
was a small English Order named after Thomas Becket
Other and founded in the thirteenth century,

military They, together with those already men
tioned as founded for work in Palestine,
belonged to the Canons Kegular. For convenience,
however, mention should be made here of the great

CANONS AND MONKS 81

Spanisli Orders which were affiliated to the Cistercian
monks. These were founded in imitation of the Tem
plars and Hospitallers for similar work against the
Saracens of the Peninsula. The Order of Calatrava,
founded by a Cistercian abbot when that city was
threatened by the Saracens in 1158, and the Order of
St. Julian, founded about the same time, which ulti
mately took its name from the captured fortress of
Alcantara, were amenable to the complete monastic
rule ; while the Portuguese Order of Evora or A visa,
founded a few years later, was assimilated rather to
the lay brethren of the Cistercians, and its members
could marry and hold property. There was one of the
Spanish Orders, however, which was not connected
with the Cistercians. The Knights of St. James of
Compostella originated in 1161 for the protection of
pilgrims to the shrine of Compostella. Their rule was
confirmed by Alexander III in 1175, and the Order of
Santiago became the most famous of the military
Orders in the Peninsula.

The revival and reorganisation of the common life
among cathedral and collegiate bodies roused the jea
lousy of the monastic houses. The absolute jsjew
superiority of the monastic life over any Monastic
other was an article of faith to which the Orders-
obvious interests of the monks could allow no qualifica
tion ; and the close imitation of the monastic model
adopted by the Regular Canons was suflicient proof
that the Church generally acquiesced in this view.
The great reform movement of the eleventh century
had emanated from the monks of Cluny ; but just as
the degradation of the monastic ideal by the Benedic
tines had called into existence the Order of Cluny

82 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

with its reformed Benedictine rule, so now the failure
of the Cluniacs to live up to the expectations and to
minister to the needs of the most fervent religious
spirits caused the foundation of a number of new
Orders. In each such case the founder and his first
followers strove, by the austerities of their personal
lives and by the severity of the rule which they
enjoined, to embody and to maintain at the highest
level that ideal of contemplative asceticism which was
the object of the monastic life. Such was the origin of
the Order of Grammont (1074) and of Fontevraud
(1094) and of the better known Orders of the Carthu
sians (1084) and the Cistercians (1098).

Thus Stephen, the founder of the Order of Gram
mont, was the son of a noble of Auvergne, who, in

the course of a journey in Calabria, was so
Grammont. . , , ,. ,.» « ,-, i ., •,-, ••-

impressed by the life of the hermits with

which the mountainous districts abounded, that he
resolved to reproduce it, and lived for fifty years near
Limoges, subjecting himself to such rigorous devo
tional exercises that his knees became quite hard and
his nose permanently bent! Gregory VIE sanctioned
the formation of an Order, but Stephen and his first
followers called themselves simply loni homines.
After his death the monastery was removed to Gram
mont close by, and a severe rule continued to be
practised; but the management of the concerns of
the house was in the hands, not of the monks, but of
lay brethren, who began even to interfere in spiritual
matters, and the Order ceased to spread.

The founder of the Carthusians, Bruno, a native of
Koln, but master of the Cathedral school at Kheims,
also took the eremitic life as his model for the

CANONS AND MONKS 83

individual. To this end he planted his monastery near
Grenoble, in the wild solitude of the Chartreuse, which
gave its name to the whole Order and to

each individual house. In addition to a .art u"

sians.

very rigorous form of asceticism his rule
imposed on the members an almost perpetual silence.
The centre of the life of the Carthusian monk was
not the cloister, but the cell which to eacli individual
was, except on Sundays and festivals, at the same
time chapel, dormitory, refectory, and study. The
Carthusian rule has been described as " Cenobitism
reduced to its simplest expression " ; but despite
the growing wealth of the Order, the rigour of
the life was well maintained, and of all the mon
astic bodies it was the least subjected to criticism
and satire.

A different type of founder is represented by
Robert of Arbrissel, in Brittany, who, although he
attracted disciples by the severity of his

life as a hermit, was really a great popular ont.e

vraud.

preacher, whose words soon came to be at
tested by miracles. He was especially effective in
dealing with fallen women, and the monastery which
he established at Fontevraud, in the diocese of Poitiers,
was a double house, men and women living in two
adjacent cloisters ; but the monks were little more
than the chaplains and the managers of the monastic
revenues, and at the head of the whole house and
Order the founder placed an Abbess as his successor.
The rule of this Order imposed on the female mem
bers absolute silence except in the chapter- house.

The foundation of these Orders, greater or less, did
not exhaust the impetus in favour of monasticism.

84 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Single houses and smaller Orders were founded
during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, of which
Cluniac many attained a merely local importance.
Congrega- The common feature of the great Orders
tion. Was that each of them formed a Congrega

tion, that is to say, an aggregate of numerous houses
scattered over many lands, but following the same
rule and acknowledging some sort of allegiance to the
original home of the Order. The invention of this
model was due to Cluny, although even among the
Cluniacs the organisation of the Congregation, with
its system of visiting inspectors who reported on the
condition of the monasteries to an annual Chapter-
General meeting at Cluny, was not completed until
the thirteenth century. From the first, however, the
Abbot of Cluny was a despot ; with the exception of
the heads of some monasteries which became affiliated
to the Order he was the only abbot, the ruler of the
Cluniac house being merely a prior. All the early
abbots were men of mark, who were afterwards
canonised by the Church. The fourth abbot refused
the Papacy ; but Gregory VII, Urban II, and Pascal II
were all Cluniac monks. The real greatness of the
Order was due to its fifth and sixth abbots, Odilo
who ruled from 994 to 1049, and Hugh who held the
reins of office for an even longer period (1049-1109) ;
while the fame of the Order culminated under Peter
the Venerable, the contemporary of St. Bernard.

But the history of the abbot who came between

Hugh and Peter shows the strange vicissitudes to

which even the greatest monasteries might

icay* be subjected. Pontius was godson of Pope

Pascal II, who sent to the newly elected abbot his

CANONS AND MONKS

own dalmatic. Calixtus II visited Cluny, and while re
affirming the privileges granted l>y his predecessors,
such as the freedom of Cluniac houses from visitation
by the local bishop, lie made the Abbot of Cluny
e.i:qfficio a Cardinal of the L'oman Church, and allowed
that when the rest of the land was under an interdict
the monks of Cluny might celebrate Mass within
the closed doors of their chapels. Put as a conse
quence of these distinctions Pontius' conduct became
so unbearable as to cause loud complaints from ecclesi
astics of every rank. Ultimately the Tope inter
vened and persuaded Pontius to resign the abbacy
and to make a pilgrimage to Palestine. Meanwhile
another abbot was appointed. Put Pontius returned,
gathered an armed band, and got forcible possession
of Cluny, which he proceeded to despoil. Again the
Pope, Honorius II, interfered, and Pontius was dis
posed of.

Put such an episode was only too characteristic of
the decay which seemed inevitably to fall on each of
the monastic Orders. The wealth and privi- criticism
leges of Cluny made its failure all the more of St.
conspicuous. A few years after the expul- Bernard,
sion of Pontius, St. Bernard wrote to the Abbot of
the Cluniac house of St. Thierry a so-called apology,
which, while professing a great regard for the Cluniac
Order and pretending to criticise the deficiencies of
his own Cistercians, is in reality a scathing attack
upon the lapse of the former from the P.cnedictinc
rule. He attacks their neglect of manual work and
of the rule of silence: their elaborate cookery and
nice taste in wines : their interest in the out and
material of their clothes and the luxury of their bed

86 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

coverlets : the extravagance of the furniture in their
chapels, and even the grotesque architecture of their
buildings. He especially censures the magnificent
state in which the abbots live and with which they
travel about, and he declares himself emphatically
against that exemption of monasteries from episcopal
control which was one of the most prized privileges
of the Cluniac Order. Something may perhaps be
allowed for exaggeration in this attack; but that
there was no serious overstatement is clear from the
letters written some years later by Peter the Vener
able to St. Bernard, in answer to the accusations made
by the Cistercians in general. He justifies the de
parture from the strict Benedictine rule partly on the
ground of its severity, partly because of its unsuit-
ability to the climate; but his defence clearly shows
how far, even under so admirable a ruler, the Cluniacs
had fallen away from the monastic ideal.

The Cistercian Order, no less than the Orders
already mentioned, owed its origin to the desire to

revive the primitive monastic rule from
Cistercians, which the Cluniacs had fallen away. The

wonderful success which it met with made
it the chief rival of that Order. The parent monas
tery of Citeaux, near Dijon, was founded by Kobert
of Molesme in 1098 under the patronage of the
Duke of Burgundy. But the monks kept the rule
of St. Benedict in the strictest manner, and their
numbers remained small. In 1113, however, they
were joined by the youthful Bernard, the son of a
Burgundian knight, together with about thirty friends
of like mind, whom he had already collected with a
view to the cloister life. At once expansion became

CANONS AND MONKS 87

not only possible but necessary, and the abbot of the
day, Stephen Harding, by birth an Englishman from
Sherborne in Dorsetshire, sent out four colonies in
succession, which founded the abbeys of La Fertc
(1113), Pontigny (1114), Clairvaux and Morimond
(1115). The first general chapter of the Order was
held in 1116: the scheme of organisation drawn up
by Stephen Harding was embodied in Cartu Cari-
tatis, the Charter of Love, and received the papal
sanction in 1119. By the middle of the century (1151)
more than five hundred monasteries were represented
at the general chapter, and despite the resolution to
admit no more houses, the number continued to in
crease until the whole Order must have contained
upwards of two thousand.

The entire organisation of the Cistercian Order
made it a strong contrast to the Cluniacs, both in the
mode of life of its members and in the
method of government. The Cluniacs had J^de of
become wealthy and luxurious : their black
dress, the symbol of humility, had become rather a
mark of hypocrisy. In order to guard against these
snares the Cistercians, to the wrath of the other
monastic Orders, adopted a white habit indicative of
the joy which should attend devotion to God's service.
Their monasteries, all dedicated to the Blessed Virgin
Mary, were built in lonely places, where they would
have no opportunity to engage in parochial work.
This indeed was strictly forbidden them as detracting
from the contemplative life which should be the ideal
of the Cistercian. For the same reason they were
forbidden to accept gifts of churches or tithes. The
monastic buildings, including the chapel, were to be

88 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

of the simplest description, without paintings, sculp
ture, or stained glass ; and the ritual used at the
services was in keeping with this bareness. The
arrangements of the refectory and the dormitory were
equally meagre. Hard manual work, strict silence,
and one daily meal gave the inmates every oppor
tunity of conquering their bodily appetites.

The method of government adopted for the Cis
tercian Order is also a contrast by imitation of the
Cluniac arrangements. It was an essential

Orgamsa- p0jn^ ^^ a Cistercian house should be
tion.

subject to the bishop of the diocese in

which it was situated. The episcopal leave was asked
before a house was founded, and a Cistercian abbot
took an oath of obedience to the local bishop. The
actual organisation of the whole Order may be
described as aristocratic in contrast with the des
potism of the Abbot of Cluny. The Abbot of
Citeaux was subject to the visitation and correction
of the abbots of the four daughter houses mentioned
above, while he in turn visited them ; and each of
them kept a similar surveillance over the houses
which had sprung from their houses. In addition to this
scheme of inspection, an annual general chapter met
at Citeaux. The abbots of all the houses in France,
Germany, and Italy were expected to appear every
year ; but from remoter lands attendance was demanded
only once in three, four, five, or even seven years.

The Cistercians certainly wrested the lead of the

monastic world from Cluny, and until the advent of

the Friars no other Order rivalled them in

popularity. But no more than any other

Order were they exempt from the evils of popularity.

CANONS AND MONKS 89

The very deserts in which they placed themselves for
protection, and the agricultural work with which they
occupied their hands, brought them the corrupting
wealth ; in England they were the owners of the
largest Hocks of sheep which produced the raw
material for the staple trade of the country. They
accepted ecclesiastical dignities ; they became luxu
rious and magnificent in their manner of life ;
they strove for independence of the ecclesiastical
authorities, until in the middle of the thirteenth
century one of their own abbots quotes against them
the saying that "among the monks of the Cistercian
Order whatever is pleasing is lawful, whatever is lawful
is possible, whatever is possible is done."

This degeneracy of the monastic Orders was due in
no small measure to the policy of the Papacy. The
monasteries, in their desire to shake them
selves free from the jurisdiction of the Grant of
bishop of the diocese, appealed to Rome; '
and the Pope, in pursuit of his policy of superseding
the local authorities, encouraged the monks to regard
themselves as a kind of papal militia. Thus from the
time of Gregory VII, at all events, all kinds of ex
emptions and privileges were granted to the mon
astic communities in general and to the abbots of the
greater houses in particular. Exemption from the
visitation of the local bishop was one of the most
frequent grants, until the great Orders became too
powerful to be afraid of any interference. This carried
with it the right of jurisdiction by the abbot and
general chapter over all churches to which the
monastic body had the right of presentation. This
was an increasingly serious matter, for pious donors

9o THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

were constantly bequeathing churches and tithes to
favourite Orders and popular houses, and the abbot
attempted with considerable success to usurp the
definitely episcopal authority by instituting the parish
priest. Nor was this the only matter in which the
abbot substituted himself for the bishop. The mon
astic community might build a church without any
reference to the local ecclesiastical authority, and the
abbot might consecrate it and any altar in it. It is
true that if any monk of the house or secular clergy
man serving one of the churches in the gift of the
house desired ordination to any step in the ecclesias
tical hierarchy, the abbot was limited to choosing a
bishop who might be asked to perform the duty ; but
in the course of the thirteenth century, in some
cases at least, the Popes gave to certain abbots the
privilege of advancing candidates to the minor
Orders. Probably Gregory VII began the grants of
insignia which marked the episcopal office to
abbots of important houses. The Abbot of St.
Maximin in Trier certainly obtained from him per
mission to wear a mitre and episcopal gloves. Urban
II granted to the Abbot of Cluny the right to appear
in a dalmatic with a mitre and episcopal sandals and
gloves.

What could be gained by favour could also be
obtained by payment or claimed by forgery. The

expenses of the Koman Curia increased ; the
Forged monastic Orders were wealthy. Moreover,

the critical faculty was slightly developed.
Certain monasteries became notorious for the manu
facture of documents in their own favour, St. Augus
tine's at Canterbury being especially bad offenders;

CANONS AND MONKS 91

and certain individuals from time to time supplied
such material to all monasteries which would pay for
them ; while, finally, in return for well-bestowed gifts,
the Roman Curia was often willing to recognise the
authenticity of a spurious claim.

CHAPTER VI
ST. BERNARD

/HALIXTUS II died in December, 1124, and in a
\J few months (May, 1125) Henry V followed him to

the grave. The imperial party at Borne
Honorius had disappeared, but, on the other hand,

Calixtus had established only a truce be
tween the Roman factions. The Frangipani and Pier-
leoni families each nominated a successor to him, but
the former forcibly placed their candidate in the papal
chair. The six years of the pontificate of Honorius II
(1124-30) are unimportant.

-It was perhaps fortunate for the Papacy that the
allegiance of Germany was also divided. With

Henry Y expired the male line of the
ot air 1 1. gaj-an Qr Franconian House. He had in
tended to secure the succession for his nephew,
Frederick the One - eyed, Duke of Suabia and
head of the family of Hohenstaufen. But the anti-
Franconian party procured the election of Lothair,
Duke of Saxony, who had built up for himself a
practically independent territorial power on the
north-eastern side of Germany, and had taken a
prominent part in opposition to Henry Y.

Lothair's election, then, was a triumph for the
Papacy, and the Church party could not let pass so
.good an opportunity of revising the relations of

92

ST. BERNARD 93

State and Church in Germany. They had maintained
from the first that the Concordat of Worms was a
personal arrangement between Calixtus 1 1 Lothair
and Henry V. But the exact nature of and the
Lothair's promise on election is a matter of Concordat,
great dispute. According to the account of an anony
mous writer, lie undertook that the Church should
exercise entire freedom in episcopal elections without
being controlled, " as formerly " (an obvious reference
to the Concordat of Worms), by the presence of the
lay power or by a recommendation from it, and that
after the consecration (not before, according to the
terms of the Concordat) the Emperor should, without
any payment, invest the prelate with the regalia
by the sceptre and should receive his oatli of fealty
" saving his Order." Lothair's actual conduct, how
ever, in the matter of appointments seems to have
been guided by the terms of the Concordat.

Frederick of Hohenstaufen did homage with the
rest of the nobles to Lothair, but not unnaturally
Lothair distrusted him. Frederick was Lothair
heir to all the allodial possessions of the and the
late Emperor; but Lothair persuaded the Hohen-
diet to a decision which would have de- staufen-
prived Frederick of a large portion of these, and thus
have rendered him and his house practically innocuous.
When Frederick refused to accept this decision he was
put to the ban of the Empire. The Hohenstaufen
party challenged Lothair's title to the throne, and put
up as their candidate Frederick's younger brother
Conrad, Duke of Franconia, who, having been absent
in Palestine, had never done homage to Lothair.
Conrad was crowned King in Italy, but he was ex-

94 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

communicated by Pope Honorius, and neither in Ger
many nor in Italy did the Hohenstaufen cause
advance.

Meanwhile a crisis at Rome quite overshadowed the
German disputes. Honorius II died in February,
Schism 1130. Immediately the party of the Fran-
in the gipani, who had stood around him, met and

Papacy. proclaimed a successor as Innocent II.
This was irregular, and in any case the act was that of
a minority of the Cardinals. It must have been, there
fore, with some confidence in the justice of their cause
that the opposition party met at a later hour, and by
the votes of a majority of the College of Cardinals
elected the Cardinal Peter Leonis, the grandson of a
converted Jew and formerly a monk of Cluny, as
Anacletus II. There was no question of principle
at stake; it was a mere struggle of factions. The
partisans of Innocent charged Anacletus with the
most heinous crimes. Clearly he was ambitious and
able, wealthy and unscrupulous. Moreover, for the
moment he was successful. By whatever means, he
gradually won the whole of Rome ; and Innocent,
deserted, made his way by Pisa and Genoa to Bur
gundy, and so to France. His reception by the Abbey
of Cluny was a great strength to his cause, and he
there consecrated the new church, which had been
forty years in building and was larger than any
church yet erected in France. In order that the
schism in the Papacy should not be reproduced in
every bishopric and abbey of his kingdom, Louis VI
of France summoned a Council at Etampes, near Paris,
which should decide between the respective merits of
the rival Popes.

ST. BERNARD

95

To this Council a special invitation was sent to the
great monk who for the next twenty years dominates
the Western Church and completely over- Bernard
shadows the contemporary Popes. We have of
seen that it was the advent of Bernard and Clairvaux.
his large party at the monastery of Citeaux in 1113
that saved the newly founded Order from premature
collapse. Although only twenty-four years of age,
Bernard was entrusted with the third of the parties
sent fortli in succession to seek new homes for the
Order, and he and his twelve companions settled in a
gloomy valley in the northernmost corner of Burgundy,
which was henceforth to be known as Clairvaux. Here
the hardships suffered by the monks in their mainten
ance of the strict Benedictine rule and the entire
mastery over his bodily senses obtained by their young
abbot built up a reputation which reacted on the
whole body of the Cistercians, and soon made them
the most revered and widespread of all the monastic
Orders. Bernard himself became the unconscious
worker of many miracles: lie was the friend and
adviser of great potentates in Church and State, and
without the least effort on his own part he was gradu
ally acquiring a position as the arbiter of Christendom.
As yet he had confined his interferences in secular
matters to the kingdom of France and some of its great
fiefs; he had rebuked the King of France Accept.
for persecution of two bishops; he had re- ance of
monstrated with the Count of Champagne Innocent
for cruelty to a vassal. Now he was called IIp
upon to intervene for the first time in a matter of
European importance. The whole question of the
papal election was submitted to his judgment, and his

96 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

clear decision in favour of Innocent carried the allegi
ance of France. Advocates of Innocent could not b.ise
his claims on legal right, and Bernard led the way in
asserting his superiority in personal merit over his rival.
At Chartres Innocent met Henry I of England and
Normandy, and again it was Bernard's eloquence which
won Henry's adhesion. A Synod of German clergy at
Wiirzburg acknowledged Innocent, and Lothair accepted
the decision. But when Innocent met the German
King at Liege in March, 1131, fortunately for the Pope
Bernard was still by his side. It is true that Lothair
stooped to play the part of papal groom, which had
been played only by Conrad, the rebellious son of
Henry IV; that he and his wife were both crowned
by the Pope in the cathedral ; and that he promised to
lead the Pope back to Eome. But in return for his
services Lothair tried to use his opportunity for going
back upon the Concordat and claiming the restoration
of the right of investiture. Bernard, however, came to
the help of the Pope, and, backed by the general indig
nation and alarm at the meanness of Lothair's conduct,
forced the Emperor to withdraw his demands. Inno
cent spent some time longer in France, among other
places visiting Clairvaux, where the hard life of the
inmates filled him and his Italian followers with
astonishment.

Throughout these wanderings since the Council of
Etampes Bernard had been the constant companion
of the Pope, and had ultimately become not merely
his most trusted but practically his only counsellor.
As a matter of form questions were submitted to the
Cardinals, but no action was taken until Bernard's
view had been ascertained, In April, 1132, Innocent

ST. BERNARD 97

once more appeared in Italy. Meanwhile Anacletus,
having failed to obtain the support of any of the great
monarchs of the West, turned to the Normans, and by
the grant of the royal title gained the allegiance
of Roger, Duke of Apulia and Count of Sicily. A few
other parts of Europe still acknowledged Anacletus.
Scotland was too distant to be troubled by Bernard's
influence; but in Lombardy the great abbot worked
indefatigably ; and the Archbishop of Milan, who had
accepted his pallium from Anacletus, was driven out
by the citizens, who subsequently welcomed Bernard
with enthusiasm and tried to keep him as their arch
bishop. Duke William X of Aquitaine also continued
to acknowledge Anacletus, and when at length Bernard
accompanied the legate of Innocent to a conference at
his court, the saint had recourse to all the methods of
ecclesiastical terrorism at his command before he gained

o

the fearful acquiescence of the ruler.

At length Lothair felt himself sufficiently free to
fulfil his promise to Innocent. But the turbulent con
dition of Germany prevented him from
bringing a force of any size, and, despite the
vehement eloquence of Bernard, among the
cities of Lombardy and Tuscany the friend of Innocent
was still the German King and was viewed with much
suspicion. Fortunately, however, Roger of Sicily, the
one strong supporter of Anacletus, was engaged in a
struggle with his nobles and could give no help. But
Lothair desired to avoid bloodshed if possible. He made
no attempt, therefore, to get possession of St. Peter's
and the Leonine city, which were in the hands of
Anacletus and his followers, but contented himself with
the peaceful occupation of the rest of Rome. He and

98 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

his wife were crowned in the church of St. John
Lateran by Innocent (June, 1133). Lothair seems again
to have used his opportunity to attempt a recovery of
the right of investiture from the Pope; but on this
occasion the opponent of the Emperor was his own
favourite counsellor, Archbishop Norbert of Magdeburg,
the founder of the Premonstratensian Order. A few
days later, however, Innocent published two bulls
dealing with the questions at issue between himself
and the Emperor. The first merely confirms the
arrangements of the Concordat, although it certainly
omits all mention of the presence of the King at the
election. The second bull deals with the inheritance
of the Countess Matilda. Henry Y had never recog
nised the donation of the Countess to the Papacy, and
consequently, as a lapsed fief and part of the late
Emperor's possessions, the lands could be claimed by
his Hohenstaufen heirs. This perhaps accounts for
Lothair's readiness to accept the conditions imposed
by the Pope, Innocent invested him by a ring with
the allodial or freehold lands of the Countess in return
for an annual tribute and on the understanding that at
Lothair's death they should revert to the Papacy.
Lothair took no oath of fealty for them, but such oath
was exacted from his son-in-law, Henry the Proud of
Bavaria, to whom the inheritance was made over on
the same conditions. Lothair had perhaps saved the
much-coveted lands from being lawfully claimed by
the Hohenstaufen ; but it was the Pope who had really
gained by these transactions, for he had obtained from
a lawfully crowned Emperor the recognition of the
papal right to their possession. Indeed, the whole
episode of Lothair's coronation was treated as a papal

ST. BERNARD 99

triumph, and by Innocent's direction a picture was
placed in the Lateran palace in which Lothair was
represented as kneeling before the throned Tope to
receive the imperial crown, while underneath \vas
inscribed the following distich : — •

" Rex stetit ante fores, junins prius url>is honores,
Post homo fit papae, suinit quo dante coronani."

Lothair, however, never saw this record of his visit.
He returned to Germany, having secured, at any rate
for himself, the right of investing his ecclesiastics with
their temporalities, the lands of the Countess Matilda,
and, most important of all, the imperial crown be
stowed at Koine by a Pope who was recognised prac
tically throughout the West. So strengthened, lie
intended to crush the still opposing Hohenstaufen.
But the intercessions of his own Empress and the papal
legates were backed up by the fiery eloquence of the
all-powerful Bernard, who appeared at the Diet of
Bamberg (March, 11:55). Lothair was overruled and
terms were granted, which first Frederick of Suabia
and, later on, Conrad were induced to accept. Fred
erick confined himself to Suabia, but Conrad attached
himself to Lothair's Court, and became one of the
Emperor's most honoured followers.

After Lothair's return to Germany, Koger of Sicily
gradually recovered his authority in Southern Italy,
and he even made use of his championship of Ana-
cletus to annex unopposed some of the papal lands.
Finally, to the scandal of Christendom, the abbey of
Monte Cassino, the premier monastery of the West,
declared for Anacletus. Both Innocent and the Nor
man foes of Koger appealed to Lothair, who crossed
the Alps, for a second time, in August, 113G, this time,

ioo THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

accompanied by a sufficient force. He did not delay
long in Lombardy : he ignored Rome, which apart
from Roger was powerless. One army, under Lothair,
moved down the shores of the Adriatic ; another, under
Henry of Bavaria, along the west coast. The fleets
of Genoa and Pisa co-operated, and Roger retired into
Sicily. But both Emperor and Pope claimed the
conquered duchy of Apulia, and the dispute was only
settled by both presenting to the new duke the ban
ner by which the investiture was made. It did not
help to soothe the quarrel when the recovered monas
tery of Monte Cassino was handed over to the Em
peror's Chancellor. Lothair could remain no longer in
Italy ; but he fell ill on his way back, and died in a
Tyrolese village on December 3rd, 1138.

Lothair had done nothing to end the schism. Inno
cent was back in Rome, but Anacletus had never been
The end ousted from it. Meanwhile, in the spring
of the of 1137, Bernard had also responded to the

schism. appeal of Innocent and returned to Italy.
While Lothair was overrunning Apulia Bernard was
winning over the adherents of Anacletus in Rome.
When Lothair retired Roger immediately began to
recover his dominions ; but when Bernard made over
tures to him on behalf of Innocent, he professed
himself quite ready to hear the arguments on both
sides. A conference took place between a skilful
supporter of Anacletus and this " rustic abbot " ; but
although Bernard convinced his rhetorical adversary,
Roger had too much to lose in acknowledging Innocent,
for he would be obliged to surrender the papal lands
which he had occupied and, perhaps, the royal title,
the gift of Anacletus. The end, however, was at hand.

ST. BERNARD 101

Less than two months after Lothair's death Anacletus
died (January 25, 1138). His few remaining followers
elected a successor, but this was more with the desiro
of making good terms than of prolonging the schism.
Innocent bribed and Bernard persuaded, and the anti-
Pope surrendered of his own accord. Bernard, to
whom was rightly ascribed the merit of ending the
scandal of disunion in Christendom, immediately es
caped from his admirers and returned to the solitude
of Clairvaux and his literary labours. These were not
all self-imposed. Among his correspondents were
persons in all ranks of life; and his letters, no less
than his formal treatises, prove his influence as one
of the most deeply spiritual teachers of the Middle
Ages.

Roger of Sicily alone had not accepted Innocent ;
but a foolish attempt to coerce him ended in the defeat
and capture of the Pope. In return for the acknowledg
ment of papal suzerainty, which involved oblivion of
the imperial claims, Innocent not only con
firmed to Koger and his successors both his o°|er °f
conquests in Southern Italy and the royal
title, but even, by the grant of the legatinc power to
the King himself, exempted his kingdom from the
visits of papal legates. Koger was supreme in Church
and State. A cruel yet vigorous and able rider, lie built
up a centralised administrative system from which
Henry II of England did not disdain to take lessons.
His possession of Sicily carried him to Malta and
thence to the north coast of Africa ; and before his
death in 1154 Tunis was added to his dominions. He
was thus one of the greatest among the early Crusa
ders, and perhaps the most notable ruler of his time.

102 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Lothair hoped to leave in his son-in-law a successor
with irresistible claims. But the very influence to

which Lothair owed his own election was
Conrad III. , . . . ,, , . ,,

now to be cast into the scale against the

representative of his family; while the grounds of
objection to the succession of Frederick of Hohen-
staufen to Henry V now held good against Henry
of Bavaria, Saxony, and Tuscany. The Pope and
the German nobles were equally afraid of a ruler
whose insolent demeanour had already won him the
title of " the Proud." They took as their candidate
the lately rejected Hohenstaufen Conrad, whose be
haviour since his submission had gained him favour
in proportion as the conduct of Henry of Bavaria had
alienated the other nobles. Conrad was crowned at
Aachen by the papal legate, and Henry made his
submission. But Conrad, like Lothair, felt himself
insecure with so powerful a subject. Accordingly he
took away from him the duchy of Saxony, and gave
it to the heir of the old dukes in the female line.
When Henry refused to accept the decision Conrad
put him to the ban of the Empire and deprived him
of Bavaria also, which he proceeded to confer upon
a relative of his own. But Conrad's obvious attempt
to advance his own family offended the nobles, and
the death of Henry the Proud in 1139 opened
the way for a compromise. Saxony was made over
to Henry's youthful son, known in history as Henry
the Lion, while Bavaria was to be the wedding portion
of Henry the Proud's widow if she married Conrad's
relative, who was already Margrave of Austria.

But despite this elimination of all rivals Conrad
was so much occupied elsewhere that he never man-

ST. BERNARD 103

aged to reach Italy. And yet his presence there was
eagerly desired. It was under the guidance of their
bishops that the cities of Lombardy had
freed themselves from subjection to the
feudal nobles. But with the growth of
wealth they resented the patronage of the bishops and
were inclined to listen to those who denounced the tem
poral possessions of the Church. The movement spread
to Koine. Here the municipality still existed in name,
but it was quite overlaid by the papal prefect and the
feudal nobles of the Campagna ; and the Iconiaii
people had no means of increasing their wealth by the
agriculture or the commerce which was open to the
cities of Tuscany or Lombardy. A leader was found
in Arnold of Brescia (1138). He seems to have been
a pupil of Abailard, who devoted himself to practical
reforms. He began in his native Lombardy to advo
cate apostolic poverty as a remedy for the acknow
ledged evils of the Church. Condemned by the second
Lateran Council (1139), he retired to France, and in
1140 stood by the side of Abailard at the Council of
Sens. After Abailard's condemnation Arnold took
refuge at Zurich, where, despite the denunciations of
Bernard, he found protection from the papal legate,
who had been a fellow -pupil of Abailard. Arnold
returned to Italy in 1145, and was absolved by the Pope.
The course of affairs in Uome brought him once more
to the front. In 1143 Innocent II had offended the
Komans, who in revenge proclaimed a re- The
pul die with a popularly elected senate and Roman
a patrician in place of the papal prefect. Republic.
Innocent died (September, 1143); his successor sur
vived him by less than six months, and the next

io4 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Pope, Lucius II, was killed in attempting to get
possession of the Capitol, which was the seat of
the new government. The choice of the Cardinals
now fell upon the abbot of a small monastery in the
neighbourhood of Eome, who took the title of Euge-
nius III (1145-53). He was a pupil of Bernard, who
feared for the appointment of a man of such simplicity
and inexperience. But Eugenius developed an un
expected capacity, and forced the Eomans to recognise
for a time his prefect and his suzerainty. But Arnold's
presence in Eome was an obstacle to permanent peace.
Both Arnold and Bernard eagerly sought the same
end — the purification of the Church. But in Bernard's
eyes Arnold's connection with Abailard convicted him
of heresy, and his doctrine of apostolic poverty was
construed by the ascetic abbot of the strict Cistercian
Order as an attack upon the influence under cover
of the wealth of the Church. Nor was Arnold a
republican in the ordinary sense. He expelled the
Pope and organised, under the name of the Equestrian
order, a militia of the lesser nobles and the more
substantial burgesses, such as existed in the cities of
Lombardy. But he did not desire to repudiate the
Emperor; and at his instigation the Eomans sum
moned Conrad to their aid and to accept the imperial
crown at their hands. Eugenius spent almost his
whole pontificate in exile ; his successor, Anastasius IV,
during a short reign, accepted the republic, but Hadrian
IV (1154-9) took the first excuse for boldly placing the
city for the first time under an interdict. The con
sequent cessation of pilgrims during Holy Week and
the loss of their offerings caused the fickle Eomans to
expel their champion, and Arnold wandered about until

ST. BERNARD 105

a few months later Frederick Barbarossa sacrificed him
to the renewed alliance of Empire and Papacy (1154).

Conrad III, then, never was crowned Emperor. It
was no fault of his that he never visited liome.
Bernard's influence caused him to postpone The
his immediate duties for a work which second
every Christian of the time regarded as Crusade,
of paramount importance. The first Crusade had
met with a measure of success only because the
Mohammedan powers were divided. The Crusaders
were organised into the kingdom of Jerusalem and
the principalities of Tripoli, Antioch, and Edessa.
But they quarrelled incessantly. Meanwhile Imad-
ed-din Zangi, the Atabek or Sultan of Mosul on the
Tigris, extended his arms over all Mesopotamia and
Northern Syria, and in 1144 lie conquered the Latin
principality of Edessa. The whole of Europe was
shocked at the disaster. Pope Eugenius delegated to
Bernard the task of preaching a new crusade. The
young King, Louis VII of France, had already taken
the Crusader's vow, but so far the earnest entreaty
of his minister, Suger, Abbot of St. Denys, had kept
him from his purpose. But at the Council of Vezelai
in 1146 the eloquence of Bernard bore down all con
siderations of prudence. Conrad III was much harder
to persuade, for he felt the need of his presence at
home. But Bernard was not to be denied, and by
working upon Conrad's feelings at the moment of the
celebration of the Mass he entirely overcame the
better judgment of the German King.

Events proved in every way the mischievous nature
of Bernard's influence. The Crusade was a total failure.
Only a small remnant of the force which followed either

io6 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

King reached Palestine ; and the only offensive opera
tion undertaken — an attack upon Damascus — had to
be abandoned. Nothing had been done to break the
growing power of Zangi's son, Noureddin, the uncle
and predecessor of the great Saladin.

The effects were scarcely less disastrous in Western
The di- Europe. Suger supplied Louis with money
vorce of and defended his throne against plots, and
Louis VII. ultimately persuaded him to return to
France. But during the Crusade Louis and his wife
Eleanor, the daughter and heiress of William X of
Aquitaine, had quarrelled bitterly. Louis had disgusted
his high-spirited wife by behaving more like a pilgrim
than a warrior ; while Eleanor had attempted to divert
the French troops to the aid of her uncle, Kayinond of
Antioch. Suger alone preserved some sort of harmony
between the ill-assorted pair; but he died in 1151, and
Bernard, who had never approved of the marriage on
canonical grounds, lent his support to Louis' desire
for a declaration of its invalidity, though Louis and
Eleanor had been married for thirteen years and there
were two daughters. The dissolution of the marriage
was pronounced by an ecclesiastical Council in 1152,
and in the same year Eleanor, taking with her all her
extensive lands, married the young Henry of Anjou
and Normandy, who two years later became King of
England.

Bernard and Suger were friends ; but while the
predominant work of Suger's life had been the
supremacy of the House of Capet, it is vain to
attempt to trace in Bernard any prejudice in favour
of a growing French nationality. He represents the
cosmopolitan Church of the Middle Ages; and his

ST. BERNARD 107

career is a supreme instance of the power which results
from an absolutely single-minded devotion Bernard as
to a lofty cause. In masterful vehemence defender of
he challenges comparison witli Hildebrand ; the Faith<
but unlike the Pope, he never identified the Church
with his own interests. He steadfastly refused all
offers of advancement for himself, although he did not
dissuade his own monks from accepting preferment.
He would have preferred to live out his life as the
obscure head of a poor and secluded community;
and even if the political condition of the time had not
brought constant appeals for help to him, his duty to
the Church would have made him a public character.
For the work of his life which was perhaps most
congenial to him was the defence of the doctrine
of the Church against heretical teachers. He has
been called " the last of the Fathers," and his whole
conception and methods were those of the great
Christian writers of the early centuries. To the
great saint self-discipline through obedience to the
ordinances of the Church was the cure for all evil
suggestions of the human heart; while as for the
intellect, its duty was to believe the revealed faith as
propounded by the authorities of the Church. Like
St. Augustine, Bernard did not despise learning;
but he would confine the term to the study of religion.
Secular learning was for the most part not only a waste
of precious time, but an actual snare of the devil. Thus
Bernard stood for all that was most uncompromising in
the theological attitude of the time. Speculative dis
cussion was an abomination ; for the end of conversa
tion was spiritual edification, not the advancement of
knowledge; and what to strong minds might be mental

io8 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

gymnastics, in the case of weaker brethren caused the
undermining of their faith. Against heretics of the com
moner sort, such as the Petrobrusians, who impugned
the whole system of the Church and appealed to the mere
words of Scripture, there was only one line to be taken.
But Bernard was no persecutor. During his preaching
of the Crusade a monk perverted the popular excitement
to an attack upon the Jews in the cities of the Rhine-
land: Bernard peremptorily interfered and crushed
the rival preacher. Similarly with heretics. He trusted
to his preaching — attested, as it was commonly supposed,
by miracles — to convince the people; while the leaders
when captured were subjected to monastic discipline.

But such popular forms of unbelief were merely the
outcome of the speculations of subtler minds, which it

was necessary to stop at the fountain-head.
Abailard. f the time wag peter

Abailard, who routed in succession two great teachers
—William of Champeaux in dialectic in the great
cathedral school of Paris, and Anselm of Laon, a pupil
of Anselm of Canterbury, in theology. He gathered
round him on the Mount of Ste. Genevieve, just outside
Paris, a large band of students, in whom he inculcated
his rationalistic methods. For his was a definite
attempt to obtain by reason a basis for his faith. How
could such teaching be allowed to continue unreproved
by Bernard, who held that the sole office of the reason
was to lead the mind astray ? But in the height of his
fame Abailard, still quite young, loved the beautiful
and erudite Heloise. He abused her trust, and when
she in her infatuation for his genius refused to
monopolise for herself by marriage the talents which
were for the service of the world, she and he both

ST. BERNARD 109

entered the monastic life. Abailard passed through
several phases of this — a monk at St. Denys ; a hermit
gradually gathering a band of admirers round a
church which they built and lie dedicated to the Third
Person of the Trinity, the Paraclete ; and finally the
abbot of a poor monastery in his own native Brittany.
While an inmate of St. Denys a work of his on the
Trinity was condemned at a Council at Soissons pre
sided over by the papal legate (1121). It was twenty
years before he was again subjected to the censures of
the Church. But, meanwhile, lie had more than once
fallen foul of Bernard, and had not hesitated to flout
with his gibes the one man before whom the whole
of Catholic Europe bent in awestruck reverence.
But the time came when Bernard, noting the spread
of the Petrobrusian heresy, determined to strike at the
source of these errors. He appealed for assistance to
the friends of orthodoxy from the Pope downwards.
Abailard determined to anticipate attack and desired
to be heard before an assembly to be held at Sens
(1140). Bernard reluctantly consented to take part
in a public controversy. But when they met, Abailard,
probably feeling himself surrounded by an unsym
pathetic audience, suddenly refused to speak and
appealed to the Pope. On his way to Rome he fell
ill at Cluny, where the saintly abbot, Peter the
Venerable, received him as a monk. He made a con
fession which chiefly amounted to a regret that he had
used words open to misconstruction, and he died in
1142 the inmate of a Cluniac house.

Bernard remained upon the alert, intent on checking
any further spread of the teaching of Abailard's fol
lowers. But he had pushed matters to an extreme,

no THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

and there were many in high place who resented his
efforts to dictate the doctrine of the Church. Thus
Gilbert de la Porree, Bishop of Poictiers, a pupil of
Abailard, was accused at the Council of Kheims (1148)
of erroneous doctrines regarding the being of God and
the Sacraments. Bernard tried to use his influence
over Pope Eugenius in order to procure the bishop's
condemnation, and stirred up the French clergy to
assist him. The Cardinals addressed an indignant
remonstrance to the Pope, pointing out that as he
owed his elevation from a private position to the
papacy to them, he belonged to them rather than to
himself, that he was allowing private friendship to
interfere with public duty, and that " that abbot of
yours" and the Gallican Church were usurping the
function of the See of Eome. Bernard had to explain
away the action of his party, and the Council contented
itself with exacting from the accused a general agree
ment with the faith of the Eoman Church, and this
was represented by Gilbert's friends as a triumph.

Bernard's death restored the leadership of Christen
dom to the official head, and the removal of several
others of the chief actors of the time opened the way
not only for new men, but for the emergence of new
questions. In 1152 Conrad III ended his well-inten
tioned but somewhat ineffectual reign. In 1153 Pope
Eugenius died at Eome, to which he had at length
been restored a few months previously. Six weeks
later St. Bernard followed him to the grave. It was
not long before the papal act ratified the general
opinion of Christendom, and in 1174 Alexander III
placed his name among those which the Church desired
to have in everlasting remembrance.

CHAPTER VII
THE SCHOOLMEN AND THEOLOGY

MEDIAEVAL learning, whether sacred or secular,
was founded upon authority. The Scholas-
ticus, who took the place of the ancient Grammaticus,
was not an investigator, but merely an interpreter.
On the one side the books of the sacred
Scriptures as interpreted by the Fathers Secular
were the rule of faith ; on the other side as
the guide of reason stood the works of the Philoso
pher, as Aristotle was called in the .Middle Ages. J.ut
until the thirteenth century few of his works were
known, and those only in Latin translations. Here
were the materials, slight enough, on which hung
future development. The secular knowledge taught in
the ordinary schools was that represented by the divi
sion of the Seven Arts into the elementary Trivium of
Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, followed by the Quadri-
vium of Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy.
The scope of the Trivium was much wider than the
terms denote. Thus Grammar included the study of
the classical Latin authors, which never entirely
ceased; Rhetoric comprised the practice of composition
in prose and verse, and even a knowledge of the
elements of Roman Law ; Dialectic or Logic became the
centre of the whole secular education, because it was
the only intellectual exercise which was supposed to

1 1 1

ii2 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

be independent of pagan writers. In the Quadrivium —
the scientific education of the time — Arithmetic and
Astronomy were taught for the purpose of calculating
the times of the Christian festivals; Music consisted
chiefly of the rules of plain-song. It was the subjects
of the Quadrivium which were subsequently enlarged
in scope by the discoveries of the twelfth century.
Apart from these subjects little attempt was made at
a systematic training in theology. In so far as any
such existed it was purely doctrinal, and aimed merely
at enabling those in Holy Orders to read the Bible
and the Fathers for themselves and to expound them
to others.

Now the speculative intellect trained in dialectic
had no material to work upon save what could be got

from the Scriptures, the Fathers, and the
Scholasti- dogmas Of the Church; and Scholasticism

is the name given to the attempt to apply
the processes of logic to the systematisation and
the interpretation of the Catholic faith. The movement
was one which, narrow as it seems to us, yet made for
ultimate freedom of human thought ; for it meant the
exercise of the intellect on matters which for long
were regarded as beyond the reach of rationalistic
explanation. There was much difference of opinion
among the thinkers as to the limits to be assigned to
such freedom of speculation on the mysteries of the
faith, some starting from the standpoint of idealists
and endeavouring to avoid the logical consequences of
their speculations; while others, adopting so far as
possible a position of pure empiricism, set tradition at
defiance, and hoped by the aid of reason to reach the
conclusions of divine revelation.

THE SCHOOLMEN AND THEOLOGY 113

The philosophical problem to which the mediaeval
thinkers addressed themselves is one that it is essential
to the progress of human thought to solve. Whence
do we derive general notions (Universals, as they were
called), and do they correspond to anything which
actually exists ? Thus for the purpose of classifying
our knowledge we use certain terms, such as genera,
species, and others more technical. Do these in reality
exist independently of particular individ- Realists
uals or substances? One school of philoso- and Nomi-
phers, basing their reasoning upon Plato, nallsts-
maintained that such general ideas had a real exist
ence of their own, and hence gained the name of Ideal
ists. But another school, who took Aristotle as their
champion, held that reality can be asserted of the
individual alone, that there is nothing real in the
general idea except the name by which it is desig
nated; while some of these Nominalists, as they came
to be called, even proclaimed that the parts of an indi
vidual whole were mere words, and could not be con
sidered as having an existence of their own. With the
application of these definitions to theological dogmas
we reach the beginning of Scholastic Theology. Here
both sides were soon landed in difficulties. Nominalism,
in its denial of reality to general notions, undermined
the Catholic idea of the Church : in its recognition of
none except individuals it destroyed the whole concep
tion of the solidarity of original sin ; while those of its
professors who allowed no existence of their own to
the parts of an individual whole, resolved the Trinity
into three Gods. On the other hand, the danger of
Realism was that, since individuals were regarded
merely as forms or modes of some general idea, these

ii4 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

philosophers were inclined to make no distinction
between individuals and to fall into pantheism. As a
result, the personality of man, and with it the immor
tality of the soul, disappeared, and even the personality
of God threatened to lose itself in the universe which
He had created. These tendencies will be clear from a
short account of the chief schoolmen or writers on
Scholastic Philosophy.

The first great names are those of Eoscelin and
Anselm of Canterbury. Eoscelin (between 1050 and
Roscelin I125)' primarily a dialectician, rigidly ap-
a^d5" plied his logic to theological dogmas. If

Anselm. we may judge from the accounts of his
opponents, Anselm and Abailard, he took up a position
of extreme individualism and denied reality alike to a
whole and to the parts of which any whole is commonly
said to be composed. The application of this principle
to the doctrine of the Trinity landed him in tritheism,
and he did not shrink from the reproach. Eoscelin,
a theologian by accident, was answered by Anselm who
was primarily a theologian, and a dialectician by acci
dent. If Eoscelin was the founder of Nominalism
Anselrn identified Eealism with the doctrine of the
Church. But Anselm's Eealism is not the result of
independent thought. In his methods he has been
rightly styled the " last of the Fathers." His keynote
was Belief .in the Christian faith as the road to under
standing it. Thus his object was to give to the dogmas
accepted by the Church a philosophical demonstra
tion. To him Eealism was the orthodox philosophical
doctrine because it was the one most in harmony with
Christian theology. He applied philosophical argu
ments to the explanation of those tenets of the faith

THE SCHOOLMEN AND THEOLOGY 115

which later scholastic writers placed among the
mysteries to be accepted without question.

The reputed founder uf definite Realism was
William of Champeaux (1060-1121), a pupil of
Roscelin himself, a teacher at Paris, and
ultimately Bishop of Chalons. By the
account of his enemy Abailard, he held an uncom
promising Realism which maintained that the Univer
sal was a substance or thing which was present in its
entirety in each individual. It was the presence of
such crude Realism as this which gave his opportunity
to the greatest teacher of this early period of Scholasti
cism, Peter Abailard (1079-1142). A pupil of both
Roscelin and William of Champeaux — the two ex
tremes of Nominalism and Realism — he aimed in his
teaching at arriving at a via media to which subse
quent writers have given the name Conceptualism.
According to him the individual is the only true
substance, and the genus is that which is asserted of a
number of individuals ; it is therefore a name used as
a sign — a concept, although he does not use the word.
Thus he does not condemn the Realistic theory
borrowed from Plato, of Universals as having an

o

existence of their own ; he regards them as ideas or
exemplars which existed in the divine mind before the
creation of things. But he opposes the tendency in
Realism to treat as identical the qualities which
resemble each other in different individuals, since that
abolishes the personality of the individual which to
him is the only reality. Like Roscelin he did not
hesitate to apply his dialectic to theology. Here,
while repudiating the tritheism of his master, he
practically reproduced the old heresy of Sabellius

n6 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

which reduced the Trinity to three aspects or attri
butes of the Divine Being — power, wisdom, and love.
"A doctrine is to be believed," he held, "not because
God has said it, but because we are convinced by
reason that it is so." His whole attitude was that of
the free, if reverent, enquirer. "By doubt," he says,
" we come to enquiry ; by enquiry we reach the truth."
His book Sic et Non, a collection of conflicting opinions
of the Christian Fathers on the chief tenets of the
faith, was to be the first step towards arriving at the
truth.

He was condemned twice — his doctrine of the
Trinity at Soissons in 1121, his whole position at Sens

in 1141. The leaders of orthodoxy met
Mysticism. .... J

him not with argument but with a demand

for recantation. St. Norbert during the early part of
his life, and St. Bernard both early and late, pursued
him with their enmity. Their objection was not to
his particular views, but to his whole attitude towards
divine revelation ; and the conclusions in which the
use of the scholastic method landed its advocates
perhaps justified the rigid theologians in the general
distrust of the exercise of reason on such subjects.
St. Bernard did not hesitate to attack even Gilbert
de la Porree, Bishop of Poictiers, an avowed Eealist,
who attempted to explain the Trinity. In fact, St.
Bernard represents the reaction from Scholasticism,
which took the form of Mysticism, that is, the purely
contemplative attitude towards the verities of the
Christian creed. In this he was followed with much
greater extravagance by the school which found its
home in the great abbey of St. Victor — Hugh (1097-
1143), who formulated the sentence " Knowledge is

THE SCHOOLMEN AND THEOLOGY 117

belief, and belief is love," and Ixichard (died in 1173),
who applied to the intuitive perception of spiritual
tilings and to the love of them the same dialectical
and metaphysical methods as the Schoolmen applied
to reason.

The results of Abailard's work are seen in two
directions. His Sic ct Non became the foundation of
the work of the " Summists," who, in the

place of Abailard's purely critical work, ^fteij

. . Abailard.

occupied themselves in systematizing

authorities with a view to the reconciliation of their
conflicting opinions. The greatest of these was Peter
the Lombard (died 1160), who became Bishop of Paris,
and whose ticntcnt'mi' was taken as the accredited
text-book of theology for the next three hundred
years. With the Summists theology returned to its
attitude of unquestioning obedience to the conclu
sions of the early Fathers. But in the second place,
Abailard was indirectly responsible for <( the troubling
of the Ecalistic waters," which resulted in many
modifications of the original position.

A justification for the attitude of the Church to
wards the followers of Abailard is to be found in the
apparent exhaustion of the speculative move
ment which had started at the end of the classlfal

revival.

eleventh century, and the consequent de
generacy of logical studies. It was a result of this
that in the second half of- the twelfth century many of
the best minds were directing their energies into the
channel of classical learning which was to prepare the
way for the next phase of Scholasticism. Besides
being a philosopher and a theologian, Abailard was
also a scholar well read in classical literature. The

n8 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

cathedral school of Chartres, founded by Fulbert at
the beginning of the eleventh century, was the centre
of this classical Eenaissance, and it rose to the height
of its fame under Bernard Sylvester and his pupil,
William of Conches; while the greatest representative
of this learning was a pupil of William of Conches,
John of Salisbury, an historian of philosophy rather
than himself a philosopher or theologian.

It was in the twelfth century and out of the
cathedral schools that the mediaeval universities arose.
The monastic schools had spent their intel-
Origin of lectuai force> an(i during this century they
S' almost ceased to educate the secular clergy.
St. Anselm, when Abbot of Bee in Normandy, was
the last of the great monastic teachers. But it was
not from the school of Chartres but from that of Paris
that the greatest University of the Middle Ages took
its origin. Paris was identified with the scholastic
studies~of dialectic and theology, and it was the fame
of William of Champeaux, and still more that of
Abailard, which drew students in crowds to the
cathedral school of Paris. But no university im
mediately resulted. Indeed, the Guild of Masters,
from which it originated, is not traceable before 1170,
and the four Nations and the Eector did not exist
until the following century. Its recognition as a
corporation dates from a bull of Innocent III about
1210. Its development starts from the close of its
struggle with the Chancellor and cathedral school of
Paris, in which contest it obtained the papal help.
Before the middle of the thirteenth century the
University had acquired its full constitution. But its
great fame as a place of education dates from the

THE SCHOOLMEN AND THEOLOGY 119

teaching of the two great Dominicans, Albertus Mag
nus and Thomas Aquinas in the convent of their
Order in Paris during the middle years of the century.
This new outburst of philosophical studies was due to
the recovery of many hitherto unknown works of
Aristotle, and as a "consequence classical studies were
completely neglected and Chartres was deserted for
Paris.

We have seen that the contemporaries of Abailard
knew none but Aristotle's logical works, and these only
in part and in Latin translations. So far
nothing had interfered witli the develop- Anstotle in

e ,1 i , T T ^^ the east-

ment or thought along purely Western,
purely Latin, purely Christian" lines. Churchmen
who did not disapprove of dialectic altogether, had
accepted and used Aristotle so far as they understood
what they had of his works. Heretics there had been,
but hitherto none had questioned the authority of the
liible or the Church. Meanwhile in the east a com-
pleter knowledge of Aristotle's works had been com
municated by the Xestorian Christians to their
Mohammedan masters. Greek books were translated
into Arabic, and Arabian philosophy, already
monotheistic, became permeated with Aristotelian
ideas. Moreover, the union of philosophical and medi
cal studies among the Arabs caused them to attach
a special value to Aristotle's treatises on natural
science. In Spain the Arabs handed on their know
ledge of Aristotle to the Jews, and it was from the
Jews of Andalusia, Marseilles, and Montpellier that
the works of the Greek philosopher and his Arabian
commentators became known in the west.

By the middle of the twelfth century the chief of

120 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

these works — texts, paraphrases, commentaries — had,
Revival a^ ^e instance of Kaymond, Archbishop of
in the Toledo, been rendered into Latin by Arch-

west- deacon Dominic Gondisalvi, assisted by a

band of translators. But the translations of Aristotle's
own works were not from the original Greek, but from
the Arabic, which laid stress upon the most anti-
Christian side of Aristotle's thought, such as the
eternity of the world and the denial of immortality.
The result was an outbreak of heretical speculation
along pantheistic lines. Swift steps were taken: the
heretics were hunted down, and in 1209 the Council of
Paris forbade the study of Aristotle's own works or
those of his commentators which dealt with natural
philosophy; while in 1215 the statutes of the Uni
versity renewed the prohibition. But such prohibition
did not include any of the logical works ; and in 1231
a bull of Gregory IX only excepted any of Aristotle's
works until they had been examined and purged of all
heresy. Finally, in 1254, a statute of the University
actually prescribed nearly all the works of Aristotle,
including even the most suspected, as text-books for
the lectures. Meanwhile fresh translations were made
from the Arabic by Michael Scot and others at the
instance of Frederick II, so that by 1225 the whole
body of his works was to be found in Latin form.
Further still, the Latin conquest of Constantinople in
1204 had brought back to the west a knowledge of a
large part of Aristotle's writings in their original form.
Translations were now made into Latin straight from
the Greek; and Thomas Aquinas, seconded by Pope
Urban IV, took especial pains to encourage such
scholarship.

THE SCHOOLMEN AND THEOLOGY 121

By this medium there was developed the great
system of orthodox Aristotelianism which was the
form taken by Scholasticism in the later The |ater
Middle Ages. This was the work of the Scholasti-
Friars, who, for the purpose of;, giving to cism-
their own students the best procurable training in
theology, established houses of residence in Paris and
elsewhere. The quarrels between the University of
Paris and the municipality in the first half of the
thirteenth century gave their opportunity to the Friars,
and even after the settlement of the quarrels they
remained and became formidable rivals to the teachers
drawn from the secular clergy. It was only in 1255
that, after a severe struggle, the University was forced
by a bull of Alexander IV to admit the Friars to its
privileges, although it succeeded in imposing upon them
an oatli of obedience to its statutes.

It was the Franciscans who began this new intel
lectual movement in the persons of the Englishman,
Alexander of Hales (died 1245), who was The
the first to be able to use the whole of the change of
Aristotelian writings, and his pupil, the position,
mystic Bonaventura (died 1274). But the scholastic
philosophy as it is taught to this day was the work of
the two great Dominicans, Albert of Bollstadt, a
Suabian, known as Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), and
his even greater pupil, Thomas of Aquino, an Italian
(1227-74). The endeavour of these writers was to
take over into the service of the Church the whole
Aristotelian philosophy. It was a consequence of this
that the old question of the nature of Universals was
not so all-important, or that at any rale it ceased to be
treated from a purely logical standpoint. The great

122 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Dominicans were very moderate Eealists ; but they
treated Logic as only one among a number of subjects.
Albert wrote works which in print fill twenty-one folio
volumes (whence his name Magnus) ; but his fame has
been somewhat obscured by the more methodical, if
almost equally voluminous (in seventeen folio volumes)
works of his successor. The result of their labours
was a wonderfully complete harmonisation of philoso
phy and theology as these subjects were understood
by their respective champions. This was brought about
by the use of two methods. In the first place, the
works of Aristotle on the one side, and the Bible and
the writings of the Fathers on the other side, were
treated as of equal authority in their respective spheres
The ingenuity of the theologians was to be employed
in harmonising them. It is, in fact, only from this
period that " the Scholastic Philosophy became distin
guished by that servile deference to authority " which
we ordinarily attribute to it.

But, in the second place, any such harmonisation
could only be carried out by some demarcation of terri-
Reason ^ory. The earlier orthodox writers like
and Anselm, as we have seen, did not hesitate

faith. to attempt a philosophical explanation of

the doctrine of the Trinity. But Aristotle and his
Arabian commentators were monotheistic, and conse
quently the reconciliation between the Aristotelian
philosophy and the Christian faith could only be
effected by distinguishing between natural and revealed
religion. The truths of the former were demonstrable
by reason, of which Aristotle was the supreme guide.
The truths of the latter were mysteries to be accepted
on an equally good though different authority. By

THE SCHOOLMEN AND THEOLOGY 123

such methods these later schoolmen excepted and
accepted the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incar
nation, though they allowed the doctrine of the exist
ence of God to be susceptible of logical proof. But
notwithstanding these exceptions, the teaching of the
Dominicans was a wonderful attempt to abolish the
inevitable dualism between faith and reason.

The history of Scholasticism after Thomas Aquinas
is largely occupied by an account of the quarrel
between the rival schools of Thomists and Thomists
Scotists. The great teacher of the genera- and
tion after St. Thomas was a Franciscan, Scotists.
Duns Scotus, the "Subtle Doctor/' who taught at
Oxford and Paris and died in 1*308. His teaching
differed in two ways from that of his Dominican pre
decessor. In the first place lie excepted a larger
number of theological doctrines as not being capable
of philosophic proof, so that his teaching tended to
bring back and to emphasise the dualism between
faith and reason. It is for this reason that his system
lias been considered as the beginning of the decline
of Scholasticism. In the second place, the real quarrel
between Thomists and Scotists centred round the
question of the freedom of the will. The followers
of St. Thomas maintained that although the will is
to some extent subordinate to the reason, yet it is
free to determine its own course of action after a
process of rational comparison, by contrast with the
animals which act on the impulse of the moment.
The Scotists, on the other hand, taught that what is
called the will is merely a name for the possibility of
determining without motive in either of two opposite
directions. The importance of this difference of view

i24 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

consisted in this — that whereas the Thomists held that
God subjects His will to a rational determination and
therefore commands what is good because it is good,
the Scotist taught that good is so because God wills
it ; if He chose to will the exact opposite, that would
be equally good — in other words, he attributed to God
an entirely arbitrary will. The two greatest disciples
of St. Thomas were Dante and the Franciscan Eoger
Bacon (1214-92), the latter of whom fell into dis
favour with the superiors of his own Order in con
sequence of his scientific studies, and spent many
years at the end of his life in prison.

The Scholastic philosophy failed to justify the
doctrines of the Church to a rapidly expanding world.
Results of -^u^ ^ *s unJust and ungrateful to stigma-
Scholas- tise its results as barren. In the first place
ticism. it gave a most valuable training in logical
method to the keenest intellects of the time. More
over, the very attempt to establish the Christian faith
by argument was an unconscious homage to the
supremacy of reason as the ultimate guide ; while,
finally, in the philosophy of St. Thomas, all nature was
regarded as a fit subject for enquiry, and some of the
greatest Schoolmen, as we have just seen, were noted
for their investigations into natural phenomena.

CHAPTER VIII
GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. I

HADRIAN IV is interesting to us as the only
Englishman who lias ever sat upon the throne
of St. Peter. As Nicholas Brakespeare he
had led the life of a wandering scholar, chiefly
in France. He entered the house of Canons
Regular of St. Rufus near Avignon, and when Abbot
of this monastery attracted the attention of Eugenius
III, who made him Cardinal Bishop of Albano, and
employed him as papal legate in freeing the Church
in Scandinavia from its dependence on the Bishops
in Germany. The prestige which he acquired in this
work marked him out as the successor of the short
lived Anastasius. Hadrian was a much abler man
than either of his predecessors, and, while fully
conscious of the difficulties of his oilice, he did not
let these deter him from the fulfilment of its obvious
duties. We have seen how lie drove Arnold from
Home. He found, however, a new danger in Sicily.
Roger's son William, known as "the Bad," took up
an attitude of hostility, and when the Pope asserted
his overlordship, William's troops overran the Cam-
pagna. The Pope retorted by excommunicating his
refractory vassals and looking for help from the new
German King.

With the accession of Frederick I the quarrel
125

126 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

between Empire and Papacy enters on a new phase.
On the death of Henry V the natural candidate of

the papal party for the German throne
The new wag Henry the Black Duke of Bavaria,

the head of the family of Welf or Guelf.
But he was old, and related by marriage to the
Hohenstaufen. He was, however, bribed to ac
quiesce in the election of Lothair by the offer of
Lothair's daughter and heiress, Gertrude, as a wife
for his son Henry the Proud. This marriage deter
mined the whole course of German history. Henry
the Proud obtained the duchy of Bavaria from his
father and the duchy of Saxony from his father-in-
law. Thus, if the Hohenstaufen family were the
heirs of the Franconian Emperors, the Guelfs became
the representatives of the opposition to that line
which had centred in Saxony ; and for the old contest
between Papacy and Empire, Saxon and Franconian,
there was now substituted a dynastic struggle be
tween Weiblingen or Gliibelline and Guelf. The
Guelfs were the papal party only in the sense that,
like the Saxons, they were in opposition to the
dynasty which occupied the German throne and
claimed the imperial title. The name, however, was
extended to Italy : it was applied to the collective
opposition to the imperial power, and therefore came
to denote the friends of the Papacy.

So far the contest had been confined to Germany ;
for Lothair had sacrificed the claims of the empire

to his own immediate interests, while
Frederick Conrad had never get foot in itaiy after

his accession to the German throne. But
as the attempt of Lothair to crush the acknowledged

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE 127

Ghibelline leaders had been thwarted, so Conrad had
failed to render the Guelf harmless ; and it was the
pretensions of Henry the Lion, the son of Henry
the Proud, which determined Conrad to waive the
claims of his young son to the succession, and to
recommend to the nobles the choice of his nephew
Frederick. But Conrad's nomination would have
been of little account. Frederick's claims were
largely personal. Already before he succeeded his
father as Duke of Suabia he had shown a combina
tion of boldness in action with a conciliatory disposition
which marked him out as a leader and a statesman.
To this was added, as with Conrad, the prestige of a
crusader ; while in view of the bitter rivalries of the
last two reigns, it was a recommendation that Frederick
united in his person the two families wrhose strife had
divided the kingdom. Two years elapsed from his
accession before Frederick was free to set out for
Italy. As the heir of the Franconians his probable
attitude was a matter of some anxiety at Koine and
in Italy generally, lie was no enemy of the Church.
His first act after his coronation at Aachen (March
9th, 1152) was to announce his accession to the Pope,
who sent him a return message of goodwill. But
from the outset Frederick showed his intention of
taking a high line, for, in a disputed election at
Magdeburg he obtained a party for a nominee of
his own who was already a bishop, and therefore
ineligible, and by virtue of the Concordat lie
decided for his own candidate in defiance of all
ecclesiastical laws, and straightway invested him witli
the regalia.
Moreover, he had a high idea of the imperial

128 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

mission. It was seventeen years since any emperor
had crossed the Alps ; and it is difficult to
say wnether the selfish policy of Lothair
or the non-appearance of Conrad must
have been the more detrimental to the maintenance of
imperial interests. But during the first few months
of his reign appeals poured in from the Pope against
his various enemies, from some barons of Apulia
against the great Roger of Sicily, from the citizens
of Lodi against the tyranny of Milan. These, together
with the ridiculous proffer of the imperial crown from
the lately formed Republic of Rome, seemed to open
an opportunity for the successful recovery of imperial
rights. And, much as the Italians resented the spas
modic interferences of the Emperor, they were proud
of their imperial connection. The commerce of the
East, largely increased by the Crusades, flowed into
Western Europe chiefly through Italy. As a result,
the north and centre of the peninsula were studded
with a number of compact, self-governing communities
inclined to resent any outside interference, however
lawful in origin. But the larger cities were ever
trying to group the smaller round them as satellites ;
and the constant quarrels which resulted, often pro
duced a party which was ready to welcome the
interposition of the Emperor. There was this
common ground, then, between these cities and the
Papacy that, whereas they found it equally necessary
to invoke the aid of the Emperor as an outside power
against their foes, each was threatened by the assertion
of those imperial rights which it was the sole object
of Frederick's journey to Italy to assert.

But the results of Frederick's first expedition to Italy

GUELF AND GHIHELLINE 129

were of a very doubtful kind. It is true that he was
crowned at Koine, that he asserted his imperial rights
both positively in a great assembly on the plains of
Roncaglia and, as it were, negatively by the destruc
tion of three refractory towns, and that he got rid
of Arnold of Brescia. But, on the other hand, his
assertion of power provoked hatred instead of fear;
and although, despite some sharp differences, he parted
amicably from the Pope, his return to Germany left
Hadrian in an impossible position. The republican
party in Koine remained untouched : William of
Sicily was unsubdued.

Shortly after his accession Frederick had made an
agreement with the then Pope that neither should
make peace with the Romans or the Sicilian

King without consent of the other. But T^pal

0 TT . . defiance,

now Hadrian, deserted, accepted the Com
mune as the civil authority in Koine, and even came
to a treaty with William of Sicily, who engaged to
hold all his lands as a vassal of the Pope. Frederick
was naturally angry at the repudiation of the mutual
obligation with regard to peace and of the imperial
suzerainty of William's duchy of Apulia. But he
was too much occupied in Germany to do more than
protest. And before he was able to assert his power
in Italy again Pope Hadrian had, as it were, thrown
down a challenge to him. At the Diet of Besamjon
in Burgundy in 1157 two papal envoys appeared
with a complaint of Frederick's conduct in some
particular. The letter which they bore spoke of the
late coronation of the Emperor by the Pope and
used the equivocal word beneficia to describe the
papal act. When the assembled nobles resented the

130 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

expression as implying a feudal relation between
Pope and Emperor, the papal representative, the
Chancellor Eoland, boldly asked, "From whom,
then, does the emperor hold the empire if not
from the Pope ? " Frederick's authority alone
saved the envoys from violence, and Hadrian found
himself obliged to explain away the objectionable
expressions.

But the papal position had been formulated, and
that before a German assembly. The Pope was no

longer a suppliant : he claimed to be more
breach ^ian an e(lua^ He had thrown down a

challenge. Frederick proceeded to pick
it up. In fact, it was this second expedition of
Frederick to Italy which opened the long contest
between Ghibelline and Guelf, a contest only to be
ended by the practical destruction of one or other
of the parties. It was the complaints of the other
cities against the oppression of Milan, which were the
immediate cause of Frederick's appearance in Italy
in 1158; and the reduction of the Milanese was
followed by the holding of an assembly on the plain
of Roncaglia, to which Frederick summoned the most
famous lawyers of Italy. By their decision rights
and powers were given to him, which placed all the
communes at his mercy. Moreover, these were not
compatible with the rights asserted since the time
of Gregory VII by the papal supporters : the regalia
were given to the Emperor at the expense of eccle
siastical as well as lay landowners and corporations.
If the papal investiture of Apulia infringed the
imperial rights, the investiture of Frederick's uncle,
Welf VI of Bavaria, with the inheritance of the

(iUELF AND GHIBELLINK ,3,

Countess Matilda openly ignored the oft-repeated
claim of the Papacy. Neither side seemed to take
especial pains to avoid a breach. The acrimonious
correspondence which ensued centred round the rela
tions of the Italian bishops to the Emperor, the
respective claims of each party to Koine, anil the
restoration of the Tuscan inheritance and all the other
lands which it claimed, to the Papacy. The excom
munication of the Emperor — the open declaration of
war— was prevented by Hadrian's death on Septem
ber 1,1 159.

A schism was inevitable. The majority of the
Cardinals elected the papal Chancellor Koland who
had defied Frederick at Pesanron, and who
would be likely to maintain Hadrian's high The papal
claims: lie was afterwards consecrated as
Alexander III. The minority got possession of St.
Peter's and proclaimed an imperialist Cardinal as
Victor LY. Neither Pope could be consecrated or
could remain in Home : both appealed by legates
and letters for the recognition of Christendom.
Frederick as Emperor summoned both candidates to
submit their claims to the decision of a Council at
Pavia. Alexander entirely repudiated the Emperor's
implied claim to be the arbiter of Christendom in
a spiritual matter, and found support in the fact
that only fifty bishops, almost entirely from Germany
and Lombard)-, assembled at Pavia. The Council,
of course, decided in favour of Victor IV. Alexander^
however, excommunicated the Emperor, and bent all
his energies to gain the adherence of France and
England. Not only was he successful in this, but
he was also recognised by the Latins of the East

i32 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

and the lesser Christian kingdoms. Victor IVs only
supporter was the Emperor.

Nor did Frederick gain anything by his successes
in Lombardy. It cost him seven months to subdue
the little town of Crema ; while it was three years
(1159-62) before Milan surrendered and was destroyed.
It is true, Alexander could no longer maintain himself
in Italy, but in 1162 sought refuge in France.
Frederick's attempts to drive him from his new
asylum failed. Alexander carried on skilful negotia
tions with Louis VII of France and Henry II of
England ; and at Whitsuntide, 1163, a Council
assembled at Tours, composed of a large number of
cardinals, bishops, and clergy, and acknowledged
Alexander with the utmost solemnity, while at the
joint invitation of the two Kings the Pope took up
his abode at the city of Sens.

The death of the anti-Pope was a further blow to
Frederick's cause, for the action of his representative
in Italy committed him to recognise a second
1 s anti-Pope and laid him open to the accusa
tion of desiring to perpetuate the schism.
It seemed, however, as if his chance had come when
the quarrel between Henry II and Thomas Becket
drove the English Archbishop to take refuge with
the Pope at Sens. Alexander was in a difficulty.
Henry was perhaps the most powerful monarch in
Europe, and his support was of the utmost importance
to the Pope. But the rights for which Thomas was
contending were part of the rights which Alexander
himself was claiming against the Emperor — the right
of the Church to manage her own concerns without
lay interference. While, therefore, prudence forbade

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE 133

him to throw down a distinct challenge to the English
King, it was impossible that he should comply with
Henry's demand for the condemnation of the refractory
Archbishop. Frederick took advantage of Henry's
ill-humour to propose a marriage alliance between
the royal houses and to sound Henry on the ques
tion of a change of alliance. The marriage thus
arranged — of Frederick's cousin, Henry the Lion, to
Henry II 's daughter — ultimately took place. But both
clergy and people in England were for the most part
in sympathy with Docket and unwilling to prolong
the schism. The altars used by Frederick's envoys
in England were purified after their departure ; and
although Henry's representatives appeared at the
Diet of Wiir/burg in May, 1165, and even took an
oath to acknowledge the anti-Pope, the English King
did not dare to ratify their action.

Nor was this the only time when success seemed
possible to Frederick. This failure to move the English
allegiance and the defection of a number Frederick's
even of the German clergy emboldened momentary
Alexander to assume the aggressive, and triumph,
lie ventured to leave France and to take up his abode
at Koine. (December, 1 105.) Again the discontents of
Lombardy were the occasion for the Emperor's visit.
In the autumn of 11GG he crossed the Alps, and after
spending some months in Lombardy he forced an
entrance into Koine, enthroned his own "Pope in St.
Peter's, and himself wore his imperial crown. Frederick
refused to treat with Alexander except on the basis of
the resignation of both existing Popes and the election
of a third. Alexander's position was unbearable and
he tied to Benevento. The Komans accepted Frederick

134 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

as their lord. The Emperor's triumph seemed complete :
Charlemagne's successor had indeed arrived. But the
triumph was short-lived. The summer pestilence,
which so often attacked a German army in Italy, fell
more fiercely than ever before. Frederick fled north
wards before it, and found so much hostility in
Lombardy that it was only by bypaths and in dis
guise that he was able to make his way out of
Italy.

It was seven years (1167-74) before Frederick was
able to return to Italy ; and although by that time his
position in Germany was unquestioned and the mutual
relations of Louis VII and Henry II precluded any
likelihood of interference from France or England, the
Italian foes of the Emperor had gathered strength and
combined their forces. Chief among these were the
cities of Lombardy. Divided as they were into
imperialist and anti-imperialist, or, to use the terms
coming into vogue, Ghibelline and Guelf, they at
first followed no common policy. Milan had taken
the lead of the anti-imperialists. After the destruc
tion of Milan a league formed by the cities of the
Veronese March helped to force Frederick for a time
to abandon his designs upon Italy (1164). During
his expedition of 1166-7 a Lombard League sprang
up and coalesced with the Veronese League ; a
The common organisation was set up, Milan was

Lombard restored, many of the staunchest imperial
League. towns were forced to become members, and
the crowning work of the League was the foundation
of a common stronghold which in compliment to the
Pope was named Alessandria.

The real danger to the Emperor came from alliance

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE 135

of this League with the Pope. The Lombard cities
were the Pope's natural enemies. Some of Alliance
them were the rivals of Rome — Pavia as with the
the capital of the kingdom of Italy ; Milan p°Pe-
as the quondam champion of the cause of the married
clergy; Ravenna as the rival patriarchate in Italy.
Strong local feeling made them resent all outside
interference, of Pope no less than of Emperor.

It was among these free, self-governing communities
that heresy found its chief adherents. But for the
moment the common danger from the Emperor over
shadowed all other differences. The old imperial rights
which Frederick designed to recover included the power
of appointing local officers whether consuls or bishops.
Alone, neither Pope nor Lombard cities could look
for success. In 1162, when all the cities fell before
Frederick, Alexander remained practically untouched.
But although his position was immensely strengthened
since then, experience had shown that the Pope could
not hold his own in Italy or Home without the help of
some secular power. At the same time, in Europe at
large he had proved a most potent force, since he
wielded weapons which were independent of time and
place for their action, and such as the most powerful
secular prince had found it impossible to ignore. It
was under direct encouragement from Alexander that
the cities concluded their League in 1 107. Before the
next imperial expedition it had become all-powerful in
Northern Italy: not only the chief (ihibclline cities,
including Pavia itself, had joined, but even the re
maining feudal nobles had found it impossible to stand
outside.

Nor was this Alexander's only triumph. So long as

136 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Archbishop Thomas Becket remained unreconciled to

Henry II, the English King had done all in

Submission }lis p0wer to influence Alexander. A mar-

ofHenryll. . -1,1 ^

riage alliance was carried out between the

royal families of England and Sicily, solely with the
object on Henry's side of neutralising one of the chief
papal supporters, and Henry scattered his bribes
among the Lombard cities with the same intent. But
the reconciliation to which the attitude of his own
people forced Henry in 1170 robbed him of all excuse
for harassing the Pope, and the murder of the Arch
bishop by four of the King's knights in Canterbury
Cathedral isolated Henry and forced him to a humili
ating treaty with Alexander.

Frederick entered Italy in 1174 with small chance
of success, for his army was composed of mercenaries,
Final an(^ manv °f the leading German nobles,

failure of notably his cousin Henry the Lion, refused
Frederick, to accompany him. He exhausted all the
resources of his military art in a vain attempt to take
the new fortress of Alessandria. The jealousies within
the League made negotiations possible, but these broke
down because Frederick refused to recognise Alessan
dria as a member of the League or to include Pope
Alexander in any peace made with the cities. But the
end was at hand. When at length the forces met at
Legnano on May 29, 1176, the militia of the League
won a decisive victory. All possibility of direct co
ercion was gone, and Frederick was forced to consider
seriously a change of policy. His only chance of good
terms lay in dividing his enemies. He applied to
Alexander, who refused to separate his cause from that
of his allies, though he allowed that the terms might be

GUKLF AND GHIBELLINE 137

arranged in secret. This was done. Frederick under
took to recognise Alexander and to restore all the
papal possessions. For the allies, peace would be
made with Sicily for fifteen years ; the Lombards
should have a truce for six years. After much nego
tiation Venice was agreed upon for a general congress
of all the parties to the contest, and Frederick was
forced to promise that he would not enter the city
without the Pope's consent. Up to the last lie hoped
that mutual suspicion would divide his allies. But the
terms of peace were agreed upon among the allies on
the bases already mentioned ; then Frederick was
admitted into Venice, and a dramatic reconciliation
between Pope and Emperor was enacted (July 2f>,
1177). Frederick returned to Germany at the end of
the year.

The schism was over, the anti-Pope submitted, and
Alexander's conciliatory policy opened the way for
his return to Rome. The Pope signalised Triumph
the close of the long schism of eighteen of
years by gathering in 1179 a General Alexander.
Council, distinguished as the Third Lateran Council,
to which came nearly a thousand ecclesiastics from
various parts of Christendom. The chief canon
promulgated placed the papal election exclusively in
the hands of the cardinals, and ordained that a two-
thirds majority of the whole College should suffice
for a valid election. During the rest of his reign
Alexander was occupied in mediating between Henry
II and his sons, and between Henry and Louis of
France. He died, again an exile from Rome, on
August 30, 1181. His long pontificate is one of the
most eventful in papal history. He was matched

138 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

against an opponent who not only aimed at reviving
the imperial claims, but was himself a man of imperial
character. The difficulties of the situation might have
seemed overwhelming. Where Gregory VII failed
Alexander succeeded. Tact, not force, was the quality
required. The infinite patience and long tenacity of
Alexander met their reward. The Emperor was
forced to violate the solemn oath he had sworn at
Wlirzburg in 1165, never to acknowledge Alexander
or his successors, and never to seek absolution from
this oath. The Pope had successfully asserted his
claim to the civil government of Kome and to many
other purely temporal possessions.

Once more Frederick crossed the Alps. He had

crushed his formidable cousin, Henry the Lion, and

banished him from Germany; he had turned

Frederick's ^ truce with the Lombards into the Peace
new move.

of Constance by acquiescing in the loss of

the imperial rights for which he had fought. His
eldest son, Henry, had been crowned King of Germany
as long ago as 1168. Frederick was now anxious to
secure for him the succession to the imperial title,
and hoped to find the Pope willing to crown Henry
as his father's colleague in the Empire. But although
Lucius III, Alexander's successor (1181-5), had
been driven from Kome, and was dependent on the
Emperor's help, it was impossible for him or for any
Pope to agree to Frederick's wish. Two emperors
at once were a manifest absurdity, and Frederick was
not likely to accept the Pope's suggestion that he
should resign in favour of his son. Moreover, there
lay between Pope and Emperor the still unsettled
question of the inheritance of the Countess Matilda.

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE

139

It was clear that the quarrel must shortly be renewed.
By the nature of the respective claims there could
never be more than a temporary truce. Lucius died,
but his successor, Urban III, was yet more irrecon
cilable. Meanwhile Frederick had resolved on an
act which would make the breach between Papacy
and Empire irreparable. The King of Sicily was
William II " the Good." His marriage to a daughter
of Henry II of England (1177) had proved childless,
and the succession seemed likely to fall to Constance,
daughter of King linger and aunt of the reigning
King. She was over thirty years of age. Frederick's
defeat in 1174 had been due to his failure to divide
his enemies. Now, however, he had his chance. The
Lombards, having got all that they wanted, were quite
favourable to him. He planned to win Sicily also by
a marriage between his youthful son Henry and the
almost middle-aged heiress Constance. A party in
Sicily helped him; and the marriage and the corona
tion of the happy pair as King and Queen of Italy
took place at Milan in January, 1180. Not only had
the Emperor knocked away the staff upon which the
Papacy had been disposed to lean its arm for more
than a century ; but lie had actually picked it up
and proposed to use it in the future for the purpose
of belabouring the Popes. Moreover, lie had really
secured his object of a hereditary empire; for Henry,
now King with his father in Germany and in Italy,
must needs succeed to all the paternal honours. In vain
Urban tried to raise up a party against the Emperor ;
and the sentence of excommunication, which at length
he had determined to pronounce, was stopped only by
the death of the Pope on October l>0, 1187.

HO THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

It was, however, chance and not the policy of the
Emperor that averted the inevitable conflict. On

July 5 the Christians of Palestine had
^eretdherick's suffered a crushing defeat at the battle of

Hittim or Tiberias at the hand of Saladin,
and on October 3 the Mohammedan conqueror
entered Jerusalem. The quarrel was necessarily sus
pended, and a new crusade was preached with such
success that in May, 1189, Frederick set out for
Palestine, to be followed a year later by the Kings
of France and England. But the Emperor never
reached the Holy Land. He made his way by
Constantinople and Iconium into Cilicia, and there
not far from Tarsus he disappeared, apparently
drowned while crossing or bathing in a river.

With the great Emperor's death the contest be
tween Papacy and Empire enters on a new phase.

It is typical of this phase that the one

The new outstanding question between the two
contest. ° \ .

powers after the Peace of Venice was the

question of Tuscany. For the quarrel was now
almost entirely political, and was becoming more
and more confined to Italian politics. The imperial
attempt to subdue Italy to Germany had failed, and
it remained for the Emperor to make it impossible
for the Pope to live at Kome except as a dependant
of the German King. With Tuscany, Lombardy, and
Sicily under the imperial control, there was no room
for papal action in Italy. In a contest of abstract
principles the Emperor had entirely failed to subdue
the Pope ; and the interest and importance of the
contest between Frederick and Alexander lay in
the fact that each was the representative of an idea.

GTELF AND GHIBKLUNK

Tliis is no doubt the reason why Frederick's failure
did not damage his prestige. But lie had learnt
that he could not set the abstract claims of the
Empire against those of the Papacy. The former did
not appeal to any one beyond the limits of Germany ;
whereas the latter could count on sympathy in every
country of Western Europe. Frederick, therefore,
made no more appeals to Europe. His disputes with
the Papacy were now individual matters: they were
contests of policy, not of principle, and he would not
hesitate to turn circumstances to his advantage.
Perhaps, fortunately for Frederick's reputation, he
did nothing more than inaugurate this policy. But
it was a policy which essentially suited the peculiar
genius of his successor.

As soon as Frederick had started for Palestine
Henry was plunged in difficulties. Henry the Lion
returned from banishment and raised a dis- H
turbance. A few months later "William II
of Sicily died, and Pope Clement III (1187-91) im
mediately invested with the kingdom Tancred, Count
of Lecce, an illegitimate member of the Hauteville
family, who had been elected by the party opposed to
the German influence. On the top of these difficulties
came the news of Frederick's death. There was thus
a double reason for an expedition to Italy — Henry
must assert his wife's claim to the throne of Sicily,
and he must do this without quarrelling with the
Pope, from whom he must obtain the imperial crown.
His first expedition was only a formal success. Pope
Celestine III (1191-8), who took office just after
Henry entered Italy, dared not refuse to crown him
emperor, nor could he prevent Henry from either

142 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

courting the Eoman Commune with success or
prosecuting his claim to the Sicilian crown. But
Henry failed before Naples : his army was deci
mated by the plague, and his wife fell into Tancred's
hands.

This ill-success revived the Guelf opposition in
Germany, whose most powerful supporter was Henry
His the Lion's brother-in-law, Eichard of

success England. Kichard on his way to Palestine
in Italy. }mc[ macle an alliance with Tancred against
the common Hohenstaufen enemy. But returning
from crusade Eichard fell into the hands of Leopold
of Austria. Leopold was forced to hand him over
to the Emperor, and the anti-Hohenstaufen alliance
fell to pieces. For whatever reason, Henry kept the
English King for more than a year, and turned a deaf
ear to the papal remonstrances against his detention
of a crusader. Fortified by the failure of the threat
ened combination against him, and by the money from
Eichard's ransom, Henry returned to Italy. Fortune
favoured him at every turn. Since he left Italy
Tancred and his eldest son had died, and Henry
found no difficulty in getting hold of the youthful
son of Tancred, who had been placed upon the throne
under his mother's regency. Apulia and Sicily were
overrun. The toils were closing round the Pope.
Celestine had excommunicated all concerned in
Eichard's imprisonment until they should have re
stored his ransom. Thus by implication Henry was ex
communicate. The money had been spent in subduing
the papal fief of Sicily; while Henry further made
his brother Philip Marquis of Tuscany, and planted
his followers about in the lands of the Church. Yet

GUELF AND GHIHELLINE 143

Celestine did not dare to pronounce the fatal sentence
against the Emperor directly.

Henry meditated one more step which would have
rendered the Pope powerless. Frederick, with the
mere prospect of the Sicilian succession for ^-s
his son, desired to make the imperial title imperial
hereditary ; much more was Henry, the schemes,
active sovereign of Sicily, anxious to accomplish this.
The lay princes could have been bribed to consent by
the recognition of hereditary succession to their fiefs.
lUit the German ecclesiastics, with the Pope at their
back, had no desire to increase the power of the
Emperor, and the utmost that Henry could secure was
the election as German King, and therefore King of
the liomans, of his two-year-old son Frederick.

Henry's projects stretched out beyond the lands
under his rule. The death of Saladin encouraged the
idea of a new crusade. Henry as crusader
might propitiate the Pope. P>ut such an "ls
expedition once started might have been
diverted, as indeed happened a few years later, for an
attack upon Constantinople, which should lead to the
union of both empires under the ambitious Hohen-
staufen. Pretexts were not wanting. Henry collected
a number of German crusaders upon the coast of
Italy, and many of these had actually sailed for
Palestine when everything was changed by Henry's
sudden death on September 28, 1197. He had reigned
eight years, and was only thirty-two years of age.
Despite his youthful age and his short reign lie had
raised the imperial power to a height which it had
scarcely ever touched before and which it was never
to reach again. Endowed with ability at least equal to

144 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

his father's, his very selfishness and ruthlessness gave
him a success denied to his predecessor. All Henry's
acts were associated with his own aggrandisement, and
the result shows that the Papacy no less than the
Empire was dependent for its influence chiefly upon
the personality of the holder of the office. Henry had
to deal at Eome with Popes of inferior capacity.
Had Innocent III been elected a few years earlier, the
tragedy of Anagni — the maltreatment of Boniface VIII
by the emissaries of the King of France — might have
been anticipated by a century.

CHAPTER IX
INNOCENT III

pELESTINE III died less than four months after
\J the Emperor Henry VI, and the centre of interest
immediately shifted from the Empire to
the Papacy. For, in their desire to shut The new
out the Roman clergy and people from any
share in the election, the Cardinals made haste to find
a successor. As it happened, the object of their choice
was also the favourite of the Roman people. Lothair
of Segni was the youngest of the Cardinals, being only
thirty-seven years of age. He was sprung from a
German family which had settled in the tenth century
in the Campagna, He had studied in Paris and
liologna, and had been made Cardinal by his uncle,
Clement III. Celestine was of the rival familv of
Orsini, and during his reign the young Cardinal re
mained in retirement and consoled himself by writing
a book on the Deqnte of the WurbL Thus he was
young, noble, wealthy, and distinguished. He showed
his power of self-control at once by doing nothing to
shorten the canonical time before his consecration as
priest and bishop; while the magnificence of the
coronation ceremonies typified the view which he took
of the office and position.

The work of Innocent III was European in import
ance, and he found his opportunity in the disturbed
L MS

146 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

condition of the time. The rivalry of Ghibelline and
Guelf in Germany and Italy, and the rivalry of
The con- the nouses °^ Capet and Plantagenet in
dition of France, forbade any concerted action on
Europe. ^}ie par^ Of Christendom, whether against
pagans on the eastern frontier of Germany or against
Mohammedans in Spain or Syria. Hungary and
Poland were both in a state of ferment ; in Spain the
Almohades from Morocco were making serious ad
vances. Saladin's death might seem to offer a pecu
liarly favourable chance of recovering for Christendom
what had been so recently lost. But the Empire was
divided ; England and France neutralised each other,
the Eastern Empire was weakened by the success of
an usurper, the knightly orders were quarrelling with
each other. And this state of disunion was not the
most dangerous feature of the moment. The moral
condition of Europe was seldom worse. Philip of
France had repudiated his Danish wife, Ingebiorg,
apparently for no more valid reason than that he liked
some one better ; Alfonso of Castile took his own half-
sister to wife. Oriental manners, imported from Pales
tine or learnt from commercial intercourse in the
Mediterranean, seemed to be invading the furthest
regions of the West. Perhaps to the same influence
may be attributed the spread of religious heresies.
Much of this was provoked by direct antagonism to a
powerful and corrupt Church ; but the actual form
assumed by the positive beliefs of those who organised
themselves apart from the Catholic Church were
largely Oriental in character.

Everything combined to encourage Innocent's inter
ference, and it may be pointed out at once that his

INNOCENT III ,47

success was largely due to the selfish ambitions and
desires of the lay princes, which enabled him to pose
as the undoubted representative of moral force or
ganised in the Church. In all his most important
acts he was the mouthpiece of popular opinion. Thus
his contest with Philip of France in favour of the re
pudiated Ingebiorg commanded the sympathy of every
right-thinking person in Europe ; his desire for the
separation of Italy and Germany under different rulers
was popular in Italy; while to attempt an union of
the Churches of East and West, to crush out heresy in
the south of France and elsewhere, to promote a new
crusade in the East, were all regarded as duties falling
strictly within the papal sphere.

The importance of this great activity lies in the fact
that it was based upon the most advanced theories of
papal power. It was the controversy over H is claim
lay investiture which first caused the de- for the
fenders of the Church to formulate their Papacy,
views of the sphere of ecclesiastical influence as against
the influence of the secular authority. P>ut the ex
treme claims put forward for the Papacy as the head
of the Church, by Gregory VII and his followers, had
provoked the counter definitions of the jurists of
Bologna on behalf of the imperial power. P>ut the
claim of universal dominion by the Emperor was con
tradicted by facts, and never rose above the dignity
of an academic thesis ; whereas in the century which
elapsed from the days of Gregory VII to those of
Innocent III the papal power was becoming an in
creasing reality in the Church. It is indeed a little
difficult to see wherein it was possible for any successor
of Gregory VII to make an advance upon the claims

148 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

put forward by that Pope. Gregory is fond of pointing
out that the power of binding and loosing given to
St. Peter was absolutely comprehensive, including all
persons and secular as well as spiritual matters.
Innocent tells the Patriarch of Constantinople that
the Lord left to Peter not only the whole Church, but
the whole world to govern. To the Karolingian age it
was the Emperor who was the Vicar of God. The
Church reformers, while attacking this title, do not
seem to have claimed in words for the Pope a higher
title than Vicar of St. Peter. Innocent, however, more
than once asserts that he is the representative " not of
mere man, but of very God." In fact, such develop
ment as is to be found in the papal office during the
twelfth century consists merely in making rather more
explicit positions which have already been asserted.
Gregory, in writing to William the Conqueror, had
used the figures of the sun and moon to illustrate the
relations of Church and State. Innocent draws out
the analogy in much detail : " As God, the builder of
the universe, has set up two lights in the firmament
of heaven, the greater light to rule the day and the
lesser light to rule the night, so for the firmament of
the universal Church, which is called by the name of
heaven, He has set up two great dignities, the greater
to rule souls, as it were days, and the lesser to rule
bodies, as it were nights ; and these are priestly
authority and royal power. Further, as the moon
obtains its light from the sun, seeing that it is really the
lesser both in quantity and quality, and also in posi
tion and influence, so royal power obtains the splendour
of its dignity from priestly authority." He points out
on another occasion that " individual kings have indi-

INNOCENT III ,49

vidual kingdoms, but Peter is over all, as in fulness
so also in breadth, because lie is the Vicar of Him
whose is the earth and the fulness thereof, the round
world and they that dwell therein. Further, as the
priesthood excels in dignity, so it precedes in antiquity.
Both kingdom and priesthood," he allows, (< were insti
tuted among the people of God ; but," lie adds, " while
the priesthood was instituted by divine ordinance, the
kingdom came into existence through the importunity
of man." Hence it is not strange that " not only in
the Patrimony of the Church, but also in other spheres,
we occasionally exercise temporal jurisdiction," for "lie
to whom God says in Peter, ' Whatsoever thou shalt
bind on earth, etc.', is His Vicar, who is priest for ever
after the order of Melchisedek, ordained by God to
be judge of the quick and the dead."

lUit while the Pope assumed this all-embracing posi
tion, a considerable share of his energies was absorbed
in a very small and purely selfish matter —
the extension of the temporal dominion of He secures
the Papacy; and the use for this personal powerm
object of the great powers which men willingly acknow
ledged in the Pope as the upholder of the standard of
morality greatly prejudiced the success of Innocent's
policy elsewhere. In its origin this was a policy of self-
preservation. The civil government of Home was in
the hands of a prefect representing the
Emperor and a senator who was the spokes
man of the Commune. The Pope was either a prisoner
or a nonentity in his own capital. The Empire being
in abeyance, it was not difficult to transform the prefect
into a papal oflicer, but a greater triumph was the
nomination of the senator, for it carried the ultimate

150 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

control over the municipality, and thus undermined
the power of the Commune, which had paralysed the
papal influence in Eome for nearly sixty years. This
signal victory was not gained without a struggle. The
democratic party even drove the Pope from the city
for a time; but by 1205, Innocent, by apparent con
cessions and the use of bribery, had won his end.

Meanwhile an even more important movement had
been accomplished. The centre of the peninsula out
side the Patrimony of St. Peter was in
Central tne hands of Henry VI's German followers.
One was driven from Spoleto, another from
Ravenna, and both these districts \vere added to the
papal dominions. Tuscany had been made over to
Henry YI's brother, Philip ; but he went off to secure
the German crown, and his subjects did homage to the
Pope. There existed, however, a League of Tuscan
cities, and the Pope, leaving to them their indepen
dence, merely accepted the office of President of the
League. It was the addition of these substantial do
minions to the lands of the Patrimony which, as
between Pope and Emperor, effectually solved the
question of the long-contested Matildan inheritance,
and laid the foundation of the temporal dominions
of the Papacy as they remained until 1860.

The German influence also threatened to be para
mount in the south of the peninsula. For Henry VI,
while giving to Queen Constance the nomi-
South nai regencv during the minority of their

son Frederick, took care that the real au
thority should be in the hands of his German followers.
Constance, however, had no desire for the continued
union of the German and Sicilian crowns; and here

INNOCENT III 151

she found a staunch supporter in the Pope. First with
Celestine, and then with Innocent, she entered into
close relations. Frederick took the old Norman oath
of vassalage for his dominions ; and when Innocent
confirmed the title, he compelled Constance in return
to surrender the ecclesiastical privileges connected witli
elections, legatine visits, appeals, and councils originally
granted by Urban II to Count Koger of Sicily, and to
promise an annual tribute. The Pope, however, aided
her to clear her country of the Germans, many of
whom he afterwards again hunted from Central Italy.
It was natural, therefore, that on her death in Novem
ber, 1198, Constance should commend her child to the
guardianship of Innocent. Innocent himself was far
too much occupied to take the personal direction of
affairs, and eight years of incessant warfare (1200-8)
were necessary before the German influence could be
finally got rid of, and then Innocent secured his
influence through a regency of native nobles under the
presidency of his own In-other.

Even on the German side there was little need
to anticipate that the two crowns of Germany and
Sicily would remain united. The nobles The
were scarcely likely to keep their promise contest in
of crowning Henry's young son. He was Germany,
a mere child, three years of age ; not yet baptised,
perhaps because his father was excommunicate ; brought
up in Italy and in the hands of Italians ; a protege of
the Pope. Thus his uncle Philip was easily persuaded
by the Hohenstaufen supporters in Germany to take
the place intended for his nephew, and was chosen and
crowned as King of Germany (March, 1198). But the
enemies of the Hohenstaufen could not let the oppor-

152 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

t unity go by, and three months later, at the suggestion
of Eichard of England, they elected and crowned his
nephew, Otto of Brunswick, a son of Henry the Lion
of Saxony, whom Eichard had made Count of Poitou
and York. Thus was revived the struggle between
Ghibelline and Guelf.

Innocent undertook the decision of the question as
a matter belonging to his sphere, " chiefly because it
was the Apostolic See which transferred

the EmPire from tlie east to the west> and
lastly because the same See grants the

crown of the Empire." In the divided condition of
Germany much depended on his attitude. It was
scarcely likely that he would accept a Hohenstaufen
who was lord of Tuscany. But Philip was the nominee
of the most numerous and important section of the
German nobles, while the death of Eichard of England
(1199) deprived Otto of his chief supporter. As
Gregory VII on a similar occasion, so now Innocent
delayed his decision between the rivals until he could
make up his mind that Otto had some chance of suc
cess. Meanwhile he did everything to prejudice the
minds of the German people against Philip, who, as
the holder of lands claimed by the Papacy, was
already excommunicate. After three years of de
liberation Innocent declared himself. Otto paid a
heavy price for the decision in his favour. By the
Capitulation of Neuss (June, 1201) he swore to pro
tect to the utmost all the possessions, honours, and
rights of the Eoman Church, both those which it
already held and those which he would help it to
recover. The extent of land was denned as including
not only the Patrimony of St. Peter (from Eadicofani

INNOCENT III 153

to Ceperano), but also the Exarchate, the Pentapolis,
the March of Ancona, the Duchy of Spoleto, and the
territories of the Countess Matilda.

lint in the course of the next few years Innocent
was obliged to take up a totally different attitude in

this struggle in consequence of disappoint-

?° , nMl . Innocent II I

nients elsewhere. lliere were* two such and

which fell especially heavily upon him Philip
during the first half of his reign. He in- Augustus
herited from his predecessor a quarrel witli c
Philip Augustus of France. Philip lost his first wife
in 1190; in 1193 his designs against England caused
him to marry Ingebiorg, a sister of the King of Den
mark. Immediately after the marriage he took a
dislike to her, refused to live with her, and obtained
from an assembly of his own clergy a sentence of
divorce, founded on an allegation of some very distant
relationship between him and his new wife. Ingebiorg
and her brother appealed to Pope Celestine III, who
declared the sentence of divorce illegal and null. Philip
not only paid no attention to the numerous letters and
legates of the Pope, but he tried to make the divorce
irrevocable by taking a new wife. After several re
buffs he found in Agnes of Meran, the daughter of a
Bavarian noble, one who was willing to accept the
dubious position (1196). Innocent III at once took up
an uncompromising attitude, and instructed his legates
that if Philip refused to send away Agnes and to
restore Ingebiorg, they should put the kingdom under
an interdict preparatory to a sentence of personal
excommunication against Philip and Agnes them
selves. Those bishops who dared to publish the inter
dict were seriously maltreated by the King ; but after

154 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

nine months of resistance the distress of his people at
the cessation of religious services caused him to submit ;
he pretended to take back Ingebiorg, and the interdict
was raised (1200). But he did not send away Agnes,
and a renewal of the interdict was only averted by
Agnes' death in 1201. Innocent, desiring to be con
ciliatory, actually declared Agnes' two children legiti
mate. Philip still, however, pressed for a divorce from
Ingebiorg, declaring that he was bewitched by her.
After his victory over John of England in 1204 he
became more than ever obdurate to papal remon
strances, and he even contemplated a new marriage.
Innocent was not in a position to drive him to ex
tremes, and was obliged to temporise for a time.
Eventually, however, he reduced Philip to submission.
But Innocent suffered more definite defeat in the
matter of the Crusade. The crusading fervour had
much diminished, and it has been pointed

e our ou^ ag characteristic of the age that a fourth
Crusade.

crusade was determined on at a tournament

in Champagne in 1199. Celestine III had vainly tried
to rouse the interest of Europe, but the preaching of
Fulk, the priest of Neuilly, recalled the efforts and the
success of Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard. Innocent
III lent his whole influence to the enterprise. But
from the first everything seemed to go contrary to his
wishes. The death of Theobald of Champagne (1201),
who was the papal nominee for the leadership, placed
at the head of the crusaders Boniface, Marquis of
Montserrat, an Italian and kinsman of Philip of France
and a typical representative of the worst side of
feudalism. From that moment Innocent lost all con
trol over the expedition. Instead of going directly to

INNOCENT III 155

the Holy Land, the barons decided to attack the
Mohammedan power in Egypt — perhaps the sounder
policy. They made an agreement with the Venetians
to find the shipping for the host in return for a large
sum of money. But the long delay caused many
crusaders to set off to the Holy Land ; so that when
the main force arrived at Arenice it was so diminished
in numbers that the leaders could not raise the sum
for which they had pledged themselves to Venice.
Probably there was no deep-laid plot for the diversion
of the crusading host from the first. But the Vene
tians suddenly found themselves with the practical
direction of a formidable army ; they had enemies in
the Adriatic against whom they had hitherto been
powerless ; they had old causes of rivalry and enmity
with Constantinople. At the same time King Philip
of Germany was urging the cause of his brother-in-law,
who had been deposed from the Byzantine throne.
The crusaders, unwilling to disperse and unable to
insist, allowed themselves to be diverted, first to an
attack upon Zara, a nest of pirates in the Adriatic,
although it belonged to the King of Hungary, who was
himself a crusader ; and then to Constantinople, which
they ultimately captured (1204), and where they set
up a Latin Empire. Innocent did everything to pro-
vent this diversion of his cherished scheme. He
forbade the attack upon Zara, he excommunicated the
Venetians for going to Constantinople, and threatened
the whole host with the same penalty. But he was
powerless. The few in the army who were moved by
some of the crusading spirit were overruled ; and when
the papal legates for the expedition to Palestine joined
the army at Constantinople, all thought of going on to

156 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Palestine was abandoned. Innocent was forced to
accept what was done and to console himself with the
thought of the blow thus dealt to the Eastern Church.
These rebuffs seriously diminished Innocent's in
fluence in Europe for a time. Moreover, Innocent
soon had reason to regret his championship

difficult^3 of Ofcto- Philip was wealthy and Personally
popular, while Otto's brusquerie and selfish
ness alienated many supporters. Consequently from
1203 Philip distinctly obtained the upper hand, and at
length in 1207 Innocent opened negotiations with him.
But these were rendered futile when Philip fell victim
to the assassin's knife in June, 1208. Otto's acceptance
now became inevitable, and he did everything to con
ciliate his opponents. He submitted himself to a fresh
election by the German nobles, and won the Hohen-
staufen by marrying Beatrice, the daughter of his late
rival. He made new concessions to the Pope, which
practically amounted to a renunciation of the powers
confirmed to the Emperor in the matter of elections
by the Concordat of Worms ; he undertook to give up
the right of spoils and to help in the eradication of
heresy. And all this he promised because he was
" King of the Komans by the grace of God and of the
Pope."

But Otto's acceptance was only the beginning of the
end. He knew that he owed his position merely to
the accident of Philip's death and to the
^tt.° s absence of any eligible Hohenstaufen can

didate. He had therefore no feelings of
gratitude towards Innocent. Moreover, he was now
surrounded by Ghibelline influences, and was anxious
to be crowned emperor. Thus, despite his promises of

INNOCENT III 157

1201 and 1209, to recover to the Papacy all the lands
and rights which it claimed, lie began to realise that
the task to which he must give himself was the restora
tion of the connection between Italy and Germany,
which had been entirely broken since Henry Vl's
death. In fact, this Guelf prince took up the work of
the Hohenstaufen. When, therefore, Otto and Inno
cent met in Italy a year later, Otto declined to give
more than a verbal promise that after his coronation
he would do what was right. Innocent, in return, did
not refuse the crown indeed, but made a new departure
in naming Otto Emperor without consecrating him as
such, and thus denied to him the divinity of the imperial
office (October, 1209).

Otto immediately set to work. He recovered for
the Empire all the lands of Central Italy which Inno
cent had already annexed to the papal
dominions, including, of course, the Matil- s ° gg
dan inheritance ; he made the Roman Prefect
an imperial oflicer again ; and entering into alliance
with the German followers of Henry VI, who had
never been entirely dislodged from the southern kin*'-

i/O O

dom, he overran Apulia and prepared, by the aid of a
fleet lent by Pisa, to pass over into Sicily. Innocent
did everything in his power to check the conqueror.
He excommunicated him (August, 1210); in conjunc
tion with Philip Augustus of France, the old ally of
Henry VI, he roused disaffection against Otto among
the German nobles. Innocent was somewhat taken
aback when Otto's subjects, finding that the Pope in
his anathema had absolved them from their fealty to
the King, held Otto as deposed, and proceeded to elect
in his place the young Frederick Roger, Henry Vl's

158 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

son and the papal ward, who was already King of
Sicily. This choice also threatened to produce that
very union of Germany and Italy which Otto was bent
on accomplishing. But the need of checking Otto
forced Innocent to acquiesce, and Frederick did every
thing to allay the papal fears.

Since Frederick could not stop Otto's progress in the
south, it was arranged that he should go north to
Innocent Germany in the hope of drawing Otto away.
and Before he left, Frederick had his young

Frederick, child Henry crowned, as an earnest that he
did not intend to join the kingdom he was going to
seek with that which he already held. He passed
through Eome on his way north, and Innocent obtained
from him a repetition of his liege homage for Sicily
and a promise that the two kingdoms should be kept
separate. In return Innocent gave him the title of
" Emperor elect by the grace of God and of the Pope,"
and supplied him with money. Innocent thus hoped
that he had taken every precaution to avoid the
dangers which he feared, while Frederick, young and
inexperienced, seems to have accepted the conditions
willingly and to have intended to keep them. His
ambition and the unexpected prospects thus opened to
him led him on regardless of consequences.

Frederick's move was perfectly successful. Otto
rushed back to Germany, and the death of his wife
Beatrice did away witli any obligations
which the partisans of the

Hohenstaufen might have felt towards
him. Frederick was elected and crowned (December,
1212), and renewed the old Hohenstaufen league with
France. Otto turned for help to his uncle, John of

INNOCENT III 159

England. John was excommunicate, but now made
liis peace with the Pope. Philip, at first encouraged by
Innocent to attack England and then after John's
submission forbidden to go, turned his arms against
Flanders. A coalition was formed against him, and
was joined by John and by Otto ; but Philip's victory
at Bouvines (July, 1214) broke up the coalition and put
an end to Otto's hopes. For the four years of life
which remained to him his power was confined to
Brunswick.

Meanwhile Frederick had, as it were, put the crown
upon his work of submission to the Papacy. By the

Golden Bull (July, 1213), he repeated the ,

\ AT . Frederick's

promises winch Otto had made at Neuss in acceptance

1201 with the additions of 1209. In 1215
lie went through a second and more formal coronation at
Aachen, and took the cross in conjunction with a
number of German nobles. In 1210 lie further pro
mised, in a formal deed, that in return for the imperial
crown his son Henry should become King of Sicily,
entirely independently from himself and under the
supremacy of the Roman Church. Thus Frederick in
his eagerness put himself completely in the hands of
the Papacy.

Otto's cause had been linked with that of his uncle
John, over whom Innocent won the greatest of his
victories. On a vacancy in the see of Can- innocent
terbury (1200) the right of election was and
disputed, as usual, between the monks of England,
the monastery of Christchurch at Canterbury and the
bishops of the province. King John thrust in his
nominee. Innocent settled the matter by making an
appointment of his own. But John refused to accept

160 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Stephen Langton; and Innocent proceeded to force his
consent. In 1208 the country was laid under an
interdict; and John treated the bishops who published
it as Philip Augustus had treated the French bishops
ten years before. In 1209 Innocent excommunicated
John, and in 1212 declared him deposed. Despite the
continued obstinacy of Philip of France in the matter
of Ingebiorg, Innocent called upon him to execute the
papal sentence ; and Philip, thinking that the aid of
Denmark would be useful, ended the twenty years'
dispute and accorded to Ingebiorg the position of
Queen for the rest of his reign. It was certainly a
measure of the growing strength of the royal power in
France that it had been able to defy the Papacy for so
long in a matter in which the King was so clearly in
the wrong. Philip's threatened attack brought John
to his knees ; and in 1213 he not only accepted Stephen
Langton, but even surrendered his kingdom to the
Papacy to receive it back as a papal fief, and under
took to pay an annual tribute. The sequel was not
quite so satisfactory for Innocent The surrender to
the Pope and the defeat at Bouvines so enraged the
barons and clergy in England that they combined to
force John to sign Magria Carta (1215). But John
was now under the protection of the Pope; and
although Innocent's own archbishop took the lead in
the movement against John, Innocent issued a bull in
condemnation of the charter ; but so long as John
lived, even the interdict and excommunication which
followed failed to move the barons. Innocent's suc
cessors reaped the benefit of his triumph in the in
fluence which they were able to exert in England
during the greater part of the reign of Henry III,

INNOCENT III ,6 1

Nor was John the only King who laid his crown at
the feet of the Pope. Peter, King of Aragon, hoped to
escape the claims of the King of Castile innocent»s
and the tyranny of his uwn barons by successes
making his kingdom tributary to the Papacy. in Europe.
Prince John of Bulgaria actually asked for and obtained
a royal crown from Innocent. The struggles of Sancho,
King of Portugal, to free himself from the submission
made by a predecessor ended in failure. Leo, King of
Armenia, sought the papal protection against the
crusaders. The King of Denmark appealed to Innocent
on behalf of his much-wronged sister. The contending
parties in Hungary listened to his mediation.

But we have already seen that Innocent was not
always successful, and that most of his successes were
won only after a prolonged contest. Their matrimonial
irregularities brought him into conflict with nearly all
the Christian Kings of Spain, and the kingdom of Leon
was struck by an interdict which was not removed
for five years. It was a more serious matter for the
future that the papal acts for the first time roused the
opposition of the people in more than one instance;
while it is right to notice that Innocent often got
acknowledgment of his claim to adjudicate by accept
ing what had already been done. But despite some
notable failures, lie did meet with considerable success;
and since he got so much, it is not surprising that he
aimed at more. Perhaps the greatest disappointment
of his life was the failure of the Fourth Crusade.
Innocent found some compensation in the great victory
won by the united chivalry of Spain and France over
the Almohades on the field of Las Navas de Tolosa in
1212. But he is responsible for inventing a new kind

162 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

of crusade — that of Christians against Christians — in
the undoubtedly papal duty of dealing with the Albi-
gensian heretics ; and it is, in modern eyes at least,
a small condonation that he encouraged the founder of
the Dominicans and received Francis of Assisi with
sympathy.

Innocent's pontificate ended in a blaze of glory.
After the settlement of the strife in Germany he called
The Fourth together a Council which is distinguished as
Lateran the Fourth Lateran or the Twelfth (Ecu-
Council, menical Council. It met in 1215, and was
composed of more than two thousand persons, includ
ing envoys from all the chief nations of Europe. Its
resolutions were embodied in seventy canons dealing
with a vast variety of subjects in the endeavour to
bring about a drastic reformation of the Church. This
is perhaps Innocent's most solid claim to the name of
a great ruler. But it only serves, to emphasise the
wholly external nature of his rule. And subsequent
ages have recognised this limitation to his claims for
honour in that, while they have freely accorded to him
the name of a great man and a great Pope, if not the
greatest of the pontiffs, the "Church has never added his
name to the role of Christian saints.

CHAPTER X
THE PAPAL POWER IN THE CHURCH

THE interest of the period with which we are
dealing is largely concerned with the attempted

definition of the relations between Church TI.

The basis

and State. The peculiar form of media-val of papal
thought resolved this into a struggle of the claims,
papal power to make itself supreme over all temporal
rulers. P>ut scarcely less important or interesting is
the concomitant effort of the Papacy to gather up into
itself the whole immediate authority of the Church.

This effort was very materially helped by the fact
that various national churches which had retained
their own customs were gradually brought into com
munion with Home. William the Conqueror put an
end to the schism which had cut off the Anglo-Saxon
Church from Rome, and drew the Church in England
into closer contact witli Rome than she had enjoyed
since the days of Archbishop Theodore. Through
Queen Margaret, the Anglo-Saxon wife of Malcolm
Canmore, Roman customs superseded those of the
Celtic Church in Scotland. Gregory VII prevailed on
the Spanish churches to accept the Roman for the
Mozarabic liturgy. Alexander III attracted to Rom,'
the long-isolated Church in Ireland, and Innocent II
reconciled the Milanese at last to the papal supremacy.
The foundation for the high claims on the part of the
Papacy rested on what are known as the Pseudo-

163

164 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Isidorian Decretals. Decretals are answers to questions
referred to the Bishop of Borne from other churches.
The earliest of these was of date 385. Compilations of
the Canons of the Church, in which these answers were
included, were put out in the sixth and the seventh
centuries, the latter under the name of Bishop Isidore
of Seville. In the middle of the ninth century appeared
a third compilation, also published under the name of
Isidore, and containing fifty-nine additional letters and
decrees of earlier date than 385. Inasmuch as the
Latin edition of the Bible, which St. Jerome did not
translate until about the year 400; is quoted in some
of these, this compilation has not unnaturally been
styled the False or Forged or Pseudo-Isidorian
Decretals. The object of this forgery was the exalta
tion of the Papacy as " the supreme lord, lawgiver,
and judge of the Church," since all previous claims
were brought together and were referred back to the
foundation of Christianity. Two centuries later
another document of doubtful authenticity, called
Didatus Papae, sets forth in a sufficiently true spirit
the principles proclaimed by Gregory VII. This
states, among other things, that the Koman pontiff
can alone bo called Universal, that his name is unique
in the world, that he ought to be judged by none ; and
it ascribes to him, without the intervention of any
intermediary, the supreme and immediate power in all
executive, legislative, and judicial matters.

The history of the Church during the two succeeding
centuries is merely an exemplification of these claims.
It was in the spirit of this document that Innocent II,
in the speech with which he opened the Second Lateran
Council in 1139, reminded his hearers that Eome was

THE PAPAL POWER IN THE CHURCH 165

the head of the world, and that the highest ecclesiastical
oflic.es were derived from the IJoman pontiff as by
a kind of feudal right, and could not be law
fully held without his permission. Innocent ttesote1*
III, we have seen, describes himself as the authority
Vicar of God or of Jesus Christ. Thus, in the
although the Pope is potentially present Church-
everywhere in the Church, he cannot exercise the great
power belonging to the office personally, so that lie has
called in his brethren, the co-bishops, to share in the
care of the burden entrusted to himself ; but in doing so
he has subtracted in no whit from the fulness of power
which enables him to enquire into individual cases and to
assume the office of judge at will. Others, then, may
be admitted to a share in the care of the Church
(jjars wlicitudinis)', but to the Pope has been given
the fulness of power (plat Undo potcxtutix). Thomas
Aquinas shows how bishop and archbishop equally
derive their authority fiom the Pope, and finds
parallels to the relationship between the Pope and
the other officers of the Church in the dependence
of all things created upon God and the subordination
of the proconsul to the Emperor. This deliberate
policy on the part of the Papacy to absorb into itself
the whole spiritual authority of the Church may be
traced in its attempts to set itself up as supreme
administrator, supreme lawgiver, and supreme judge.
Before the Pope could claim to be supreme admin
istrator within the Church it was necessary
to deprive all other ecclesiastical officers of assupreme
their independence. The custom of the adminis-
gift of the pall to archbishops who exer- trator.
cised the oftice of Metropolitans had already made these

1 66 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

highest officers of all into little more than delegates
of the Papacy. Gregory VII failed in his attempt to
force them to come in person to Rome in order to
receive the pall. He succeeded, however, in imposing
upon them an oath which, founded upon the oath
of fealty, made their position analogous to that of a
feudal vassal. By this a Metropolitan swore to be
faithful to St. Peter and the Pope and his successors
who should have been canonically elected ; that he
would be no party to violence against the Pope ; that
he would attend in person or by representatives at
every synod to which the Pope summoned him ; that,
saving the rights of his Order, he would help to
defend the Papacy and all its possessions and honours;
that he would not betray any trust reposed in him
by the Pope; that he would honourably treat the
papal legate ; that he would not knowingly com
municate with excommunicates ; that when asked he
would faithfully help the Roman Church with a force
of soldiers. To this was often added an undertaking
that he would appear at Rome himself or by a repre
sentative at stated intervals ; that he would cause his
suffragans at their consecration to take an oath of
obedience to the Roman pontiff; that he would not
part with anything belonging to his official position
without the knowledge of the Roman See.

Gregory's successors imposed this oath by degrees

on all bishops, and thus gradually substituted the

Pope for the Metropolitan. The Dictates

Claim over p ciaimed for the Pope the right of
bishoprics. L . *

deposing or reinstating bishops without

reference to a synod ; of transferring a bishop from
one see to another ; of dividing a wealthy see or join-

THE PAPAL POWER IN THE CHURCH 167

^—— — ^— —

ing together poor bishoprics. It was the papal policy
to champion the suffragans against the Metropolitans
until the original metropolitical power of confirming
the elections of their newly elected suffragans and
consecrating them to the episcopal office was entirely
superseded by the growing authority of the Pope.
The right of confirmation implied the power of gnash
ing an election, and this could easily grow into a
power of direct appointment. This last power was
only exercised habitually in certain cases — after a
vacancy had lasted for a certain time ; if the bishop
had died at Rome; if the bishop had been transferred
from one see to another. From the end of the eleventh
century cases are found of bishops designated to be
such, not only, according to the ancient formula, " by
the grace of God," but also by that "of the Apostolic
See," and such description becomes fairly common in
the thirteenth century.

And as the Topes passed over Metropolitans in order
to obtain a direct hold on the suffragans, so they went
on in course of time to pass over the bishop

in every diocese by claiming the disposition Clai™ over

. . i . . , , , benefices.

01 individual benefices. Such a claim began

in the first half of the twelfth century in letters of
recommendation and petitions for the appointment
of papal favourites to prebends or benefices. But so
quickly did this system develop that where Hadrian
IV recommended Alexander III commanded, and the
mandates of Innocent III were enforced by specially
appointed officers. Clement IV lays it down that
ancient custom has specially reserved to the Roman
pontiff the collation of churches and offices which
become vacant through the death of the holder at

168 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Eome, but that this is only part of the greater right
which is known to belong to Eome and gives to the
Pontiff the full disposal (plenaria dispositio) of all
offices and benefices both at the time of vacancy and
by provision beforehand. But so flagrant was the
abuse of this power of appointment that it roused
the indignant remonstrance of the most ardent sup
porters of the papal authority in the Church. England
under Henry III was so much exploited by its papal
guardian as to gain the name of the " Milch-cow of the
Papacy " ; but there were many protests.

Eobert G-rossteste, Bishop of Lincoln, the most re
vered English Churchman of the thirteenth century,

was bidden by Innocent IY to find a canonry
Clerical «n j^g ca^]ie(jrai for a nominee of the Pope,
opposition. „

who, moreover, was still a child. He an
swered in a rebuke of such severity and dignity as can
have rarely been addressed to Eome by one devoted to
its service. "Next to the sin of Lucifer," he tells the
Pope, " there is not, there cannot be, any kind of sin so
adverse and contrary to the evangelical doctrine of the
Apostles as the destruction of souls by defrauding them
of the duty and service of a pastor." He adds that the
most holy Apostolic See cannot command anything
that tends to a sin of such a kind except by some
defect or abuse of its plenary power : that no faithful
servant of the Papacy would comply with a command
of that kind " even if it issued from the highest order
of angels " ; and he therefore, filialiter ct obedienter,
flatly refuses to obey. Scarcely less severe were the
strictures of Louis IX's ambassadors, who laid the
grievances of the French bishops and barons before
the same Pope. They tell Innocent IV that the devo-

THK PAPAL POWER IN THE CHURCH 169

tion which the French people have hitherto felt towards
the Roman Church is now not only extinguished, but
is turned into vehement hate and rancour, and that the
claim for subsidies and tribute for every necessity of
Koine — a claim which was enforced by the threat of
excommunication — was unheard of in previous ages.

The Pope also gradually established his authority as
supreme and sole lawgiver within the Church. The
Dictates Papae asserts that for him alone it The Pope
is lawful to frame new laws to meet the as supreme
needs of the time. Meanwhile the Forged legislator.
Decretals had found their place in the various collec
tions of the Canons made in the eleventh and early
twelfth centuries. In the middle of the twelfth cen
tury Gratian, a Benedictine monk of Bologna, put out
his Concordantia discordantium Cn.nomun, commonly
known as the Dccrduin Grat'mni, which combined a
theoretical disquisition with illustrations drawn from
the documents which had appeared in previous collec
tions. This became the standard media- val treatise in
ecclesiastical law, and its appearance much encouraged
the systematic study of the Canon law. The Popes of
the succeeding century and a half made great additions
to the law of the Church, partly through the decrees
issued by the General Lateran Councils, partly by their
own edicts. Such new matter was embodied from time
to time. Thus in 1234 the Dominican
Raymund de Pennaforte gathered five books
of Decretals at the command of Gregory
IX; Boniface VIII was responsible for a sixth book in
1298, while other additions were made by Clement V
(1308) and John XXII (1317). All these, together
with the earlier compilations and some later additions,

i yo THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

formed the Corpus Juris Canonici. This enormous body
of law was full of contradictions and not devoid of
falsification and forgery. The growing study of it
caused the foundation of Chairs at the universities,
and the Popes found it a most convenient method to
publish their new decrees through the lecture-rooms.
The old Canon Law was entirely superseded by the
later Papal Law.

The Popes made no pretence of hiding their claims
to the legislative power. Urban II strongly affirms
Power that it nas alwavs been in the power of the
over Roman Pontiff to frame new laws ; and two

Councils. centuries later Boniface VIII embodies in
his addition to the Canon Law the words of an earlier
writer, that the Eoman Pontiff is considered to hold all
laws in the repository of his breast. There was no
room in such a theory for any effective co-operation of
ecclesiastical Councils, however representative. The
Dictatus Papae djeclares that no General Council can
be held without the papal command. Pascal II points
out that no Council can dictate the law of the Church,
because every Council comes into existence and receives
its power by authority of Rome, and in its statutes the
authority of the Pope is clearly not interfered with.
But the Popes often found it convenient to obtain the
sanction of a General Council for their legislation, and
the four Lateran Councils (1123, 1139, 1179, 1215)
were the occasions for great and important additions
to the Canon Law. But from the time of the third
Lateran Council, at all events, all ordinances of a
General Council were issued in the name of the Pope,
although the approval or the fact of the Council was
likewise expressed. Thomas Aquinas merely expresses

THE PAPAL POWER IN THE CHURCH 171

the recognised law of the 'Church when lie says that
the Holy Fathers gathered together in Councils can
make no laws except by the intervention of the
authority of the Eoman Pontiff, for without that
authority a Council cannot even meet.

It followed from this assumption of the supreme
legislative power that, in the first place, the Pope him
self claimed not to be bound by the laws

which he made. Thus in the thirteenth °Pes

above law.
century papal writers denied that the Roman

Church could commit simony. Certain acts are simoni-
acal because they have been prohibited as such by
Canon Law ; but inasmuch as it is the Pope who had
forbidden them, the prohibition does not bind him.
And in virtue of this power, from the time of Innocent
IV the Popes added to their bulls a mm olxtantc.
clause whereby they suspended in a particular instance
all laws or rights which might otherwise stand in the
way of their grant.

It followed, further, that the Pope claimed also the
power of granting dispensations from existing laws and
absolution for their infringement. Every papai
bishop was armed with the power of grant- dispensa-
ing pardon in Clod's name for breaches of tion-
the law which had already been committed. The Pope,
however, claimed not only this power concurrently
with all other bishops, but he oven developed a right
of granting dispensations beforehand, so that the ten
dency was to ignore the bishop of I he diocese and to
apply directly to the Pope or his representatives, \vho
thus were willing to permit infractions of the law.
Thomas Aquinas declares that any bishop can grant
dispensation in the case of a promise about which

172 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

there is any doubt ; but that to the Pope alone, as
having the care of the Church Universal, belongs the
higher power of giving unconditional relaxation from
an oath of perfectly clear meaning in the interests of
the general good.

But even papal writers sometimes complain of the
irresponsibility of the papal acts, and Popes themselves
had to allow that there were spheres outside their
legislative interference. Thus Urban II acknowledges
that in matters on which our Lord, His Apostles, and
the Fathers have given definite decisions, the duty of
the Pope is to confirm the law. Thomas Aquinas,
while holding that the Pope can alter the decisions of
the Fathers and even of the Apostles in so far as they
come under the head of positive law, yet excepts from
the possibility of papal interference all that concerns
the law of nature, the Articles of Faith (which, he says
elsewhere, have been determined by Councils), or the
sacraments of the new law.

The third wide sphere of action within the Church
in which the Pope established his supremacy was that
The Pope °^ j118^06- The Dictatus Papae asserts not
as supreme only that the Pope should be judged by no
judge. one, but that the " greater causes " of every

Church should be referred to him, that none should
dare to condemn any one who appealed to Borne, and
that no one except the Pope himself can interfere with
a papal sentence. Litigants of all kinds were only too
ready to appeal against the local tribunal, and the
Pope gave them every encouragement. St.

Appeals Bernard indignantly pointed out to Inno-
to Rome. J . \

cent II that every evil-doer and cantanker
ous person, whether lay or cleric or even from the

THE PAPAL POWER IN THE CHURCH 173

monasteries, when he is worsted runs to Home and
boasts on his return of the protection which he has
obtained. It is true, Gregory VIII (1187) tried to
check the practice of appeals; but his short reign gave
no time for any real result. lUshops and archdeacons
tried sometimes to stop appeals by excommunication,
which prevented the victim from appearing in an
ecclesiastical court; but the third Lateran Council
(1179) forbade this method of defence. Alexander 1 1 1
definitely laid it down that appeals could be made to
the Pope in the smallest no less than in the greatest
matters, and at every possible stage, before and after
trial, at the pronouncement of the sentence and after
it has been awarded; and this, he points out, is not the
case in civil law, where an appeal is only admitted
after judgment. Indeed, the most serious matter with
regard to papal appeals was the reservation by the
Pope to his own decision of cases which were regarded
as too serious for the local courts. The bishops had
themselves largely to thank for the development of
this direct papal jurisdiction ; for they began the
custom of referring to Koine the cases of great
criminals and of serious crimes. P>ut these "greater
causes," claimed for the Pope as early as the time of
Gregory VII, included not only grave moral crimes
such as murder, sacrilege, and gross immorality, but
also cases of dispensation beforehand, of absolution
after excommunication for certain offences. Under the
same head would come the right of canonisation exer
cised by archbishops until Alexander III claimed it
exclusively for the Pope, and the right of translating a
bishop from one see to another, which involved a dis
solution of the metaphorical marriage between the

i74 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

bishop and his see and therefore needed a special
dispensation.

These extensive powers could only be put in practice
by an elaborate machinery for their enforcement. In
The the first place the Pope was surrounded by a

papal numerous body of officials to whom is applied

Curia. from the middle of the eleventh century the

title Curia. Gerhoh of Keichersberg, an ardent papal
supporter writing about a century later, objects to the
substitution for the word " Ecclesia " of this term
"Curia," which would not be found in any old letters of
the Eoman pontiffs. The rapacity of the officials became
a byword throughout Christendom. John of Salisbury
told Hadrian IV, with whom he was on terms of
intimacy, that many people said that the Eoman
Church, which is the mother of all the churches,
shows herself to the others not so much a mother as a
stepmother. "The Scribes and Pharisees sit in it, lay
ing intolerable burdens on the shoulders of men, which
they do not touch with a finger. . . . They render
justice not so much for truth's sake as for a price. . . .
The Eoman pontiff himself becomes burdensome to
all, and almost intolerable." Honorius III in 1226
acknowledged to the English bishops that this greed
was a long-standing scandal and disgrace, but he
ascribed it to the poverty of Borne, and proposed that
in order to remove the difficulty two stalls should be
given to him for nomination in every cathedral and
collegiate chapter. The magnates considered the
remedy, if possible, worse than the disease. The
popular songs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
contain many references to the fact that nothing
was to be had at Eome except for money, and that

THE PAPAL POWER IN THE CHURCH 175

success in a cause went to the richest suitor. And
yet Rome had many sources of wealth. She drew
regular revenues from estates which had been given to
the papal see ; from monasteries which were subject
to visitation of papal officers alone ; from kingdoms,
such as England, whose kings had made themselves
feudal vassals of the Pope. Several nations, moreover,
paid special taxes, such as Peter's Pence, a kind of
hearth tax, which went from England. The Papacy
also exacted a number of dues on various pretexts
which increased witli the growth of papal power.
Such were the Annates or Firstfruits and analogous
payments, which amounted to the value of the first
year's income, and were claimed from newly appointed
bishops and abbots as an acknowledgment of the
papal rig] it of confirmation. Nor did Metropolitans
get their pall, which was necessary for the exercise of
their special authority, without the payment of con
siderable sums. Over and above these regular and
occasional sources, the Popes exacted on especial occa
sions, such as the Crusades, a tax amounting to a tenth
on all ecclesiastical property, and even allowed kings
to take it with their leave. But these formed a small
portion of the money which found its way to Rome.
When the papal legate found fault with Ivo of Chartres
because simony was still prevalent in his diocese, the
bishop retorted that those who practised it excused
their action from the example of Rome, where not even
a pen and paper were to be had free. Dante addresses
the shade of Pope Nicholas III in the Inferno (xix.) :—

" Your gods ye make of silver and of ^old ;

And wherein differ from idolaters,
Save that their God is one — yours manifold ? "

1 76 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

And he ascribes the evil which he is condemning to the
so-called Donation of Constantine.

The most manifest agents and organs of papal
authority throughout Christendom were the legates.
The Pope had appointed permanent repre-
Papal sentatives called Apocrisiaries at Constan

tinople, and had sent emissaries to General
Councils and for other special matters. But from the
time of Leo IX legates began to be appointed with a
general commission to visit the churches; and
Gregory VII developed this method of interference
with the local authorities into a regular system. In
some cases local hostility was disarmed by the appoint
ment of the Metropolitan as ordinary legate, and the
position was accepted with the object of retaining the
chief authority upon the spot. Such the Archbishop
of Canterbury became after 1135. But the existence
of this official did not prevent the despatch from time
to time of legates a later e, as they were called. The
ordinary legate exercised the concurrent jurisdiction
claimed by the Pope, that is, the right of interference
in every diocese; these legates coming from the side
of the Pope were armed with the power of exercising
most of the rights specially reserved for the personal
authority of the Pope. The Dictatus Papae asserts
that the Pope's legates take precedence of all bishops
in a council even though they may be of inferior rank,
and Gregory VII applies to their authority the text
"He that heareth you heareth me." In 1125 John of
Crema, a legate sent to England, presided at a Council
at Westminster, where were present ecclesiastics from
the archbishops downwards and a number of nobility ;
and " on Easter day he celebrated the office of the day

THE PAPAL POWER IN THE CHURCH 177

in the mother church in place of the supreme pontiff,
and although he was not a bishop, but merely a
Cardinal Priest, he used pontifical insignia." A Metro
politan in his oath of loyalty to the Pope was made to
swear that he would treat with all honour the Roman
legates in their coming and going, and would help
them in their needs ; and the procuration or main
tenance from all countries which they not only visited,
but merely passed through, was arbitrarily assessed.
Innocent III enforces it by directing against ecclesi
astics who were contumacious a sentence of distraint
of goods without any right of appeal. The burden was
no light one. Wichmann, Archbishop of Magdeburg,
writing on behalf of Frederick I, tells the Pope that
the whole Church of the Empire is subject to such
heavy exactions at the hands of the papal officials,
that both churches and monasteries, which have not
enough to supply their own daily wants, are yet com
pelled "beyond their utmost possibility" to find money
for the use of these legates, sustenance for their train
of attendants, and accommodation for their horses. In
more picturesque language John of Salisbury describes
the legates of the Apostolic See as "sometimes raging
in the provinces as if Satan had gone forth from
the presence of the Lord in order to scourge the
Church." It is true that Alexander IV commanded
an enquiry into the amount which his legates
had demanded under pretext of procuration, and
which he heard they had enforced by the sacri
legious use of the powers of excommunication, suspen
sion, and interdict. But the parallel which Clement
IV drew between the ordinary legates and the pro
consuls and provincial presidents of the early Empire

178 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

showed how little likelihood there was of redress being
got from the Papacy itself.

The effect of this absorption of power by the Papacy
is to be traced in many directions. Here we may
Increase of take n°tice of two of the most remarkable.
papal In the first place, he who had grown

ceremony, from the Vicar of St. Peter to be directly
the Vicar of God naturally surrounded himself with
an increasing amount of ceremony. The Didatus
Papae claims that the Pope alone can use imperial
insignia, and that it is his feet alone that all princes
should kiss. We have noticed the disputes which
arose when the Pope demanded from Lothair and from
Frederick I that the Emperor should perform the
office of groom to the Pope — hold his stirrup as he
mounted and walk by the side of the mule. St.
Bernard rightly points out that in thus appearing in
public adorned in jewels and silks, covered with gold,
riding a white horse, and surrounded with guards, the
Pope was the successor not of Peter, but of Constantine.
And if he required so much state outside the Church,
much more did he insist upon a special ceremony in
the services. Thus at the Mass the Pope received the
elements not kneeling at the altar, but seated and on
his throne; while the Host was carried before him in
procession whenever the Pope went outside his
palace.

A far more important result of the supreme position

accorded to the Papacy was the gradual emergence of

the doctrine of papal infallibility. " The

infaltibilit Church of Koine," says Gregory VII,

" through St. Peter, as it were by some

privilege, is from the very beginnings of the faith

THE PAPAL POWER IN THE CHURCH 179

reckoned by the Holy Fathers the Mother of all the
Churches and will so bo considered to the very end ;
for in her no heretic is discerned to have had the rule,
and we believe that none such will ever be set over
her according to the Lord's special promise. For the
Lord Jesus says, 'I have prayed for thee that thy faith
fail not.'" And in accordance with this principle the
Dictating Pupae lays it down that "the lioman Church
has never erred, nor, as Scripture testifies, will it ever
err." Innocent III pertinently asks how he could
confirm others in the faith, which is recognised as a
special duty of his ofiice, unless he himself were firm
in the faith. P>ut many writers, including Innocent
himself, believed that it was possible for a Pope to err
in some individual point, and that it was the duty of
the Church to convert him. Thomas Aquinas, while
holding it certain that the judgment of the Church
Universal cannot err in these matters which belong to
the faith, gives to the Pope alone, as the authority by
whom synods are summoned, the final determination
of those tilings which are of faith. Yet even he allows
that in matters of fact, such as questions of ownership
and criminal charges, false witnesses may lead the
judgment of the Church astray.

We have seen that the Papacy did not attain its
supremacy without encountering much opposition.
But the protests on the part of bishops King's and
were unavailing, and they were themselves papal
largely to blame for the height to which the claims,
papal power had grown. Such effective remonstrance
as there was came from the Kings, though even they
were often ready to invoke the papal aid to obtain an
advantage against their own ecclesiastics or even their

iSo THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

own subjects. Thus in England William II agreed
with Urban II that no legate should be sent to the
country unless the King was willing to re
ceive him ; while Henry II, in the Constitu
tions of Clarendon, lays it down that no one should appeal
to Koine without permission of the King. But Henry's
submission after Becket's murder nullified the Consti
tutions, and John's humiliating surrender made it
difficult to object to the exercise of any papal power
in England. During the minority of Henry III the
papal legate was the most important member of the
Council of Regency ; and at a later stage, when Henry
had quarrelled with his barons, he was glad to obtain the

papal support against them. In Germany

Germany. ^Tr, . r* i • i ^ ^ -^ -i • -i T

Hadrian IV complained that Frederick I

used force in order to prevent any of his subjects from
carrying their causes to Rome ; and Otto IV was obliged
to swear in 1209 that no hindrance should be placed to
ecclesiastical appeals to Rome, a promise subsequently
exacted also from Frederick II and from Rudolf.

Not dissimilar was the submission of Alfonso X of

Castile, who set his seal to the papal encroachments ;

. but his object was to obtain the support of

Rome in his campaign against the local

liberties in his kingdom. In his code of law known as

11 Siete Partidas " power was given to the Pope to deal as

he liked with bishops and with benefices and to receive

all appeals. On the other hand, St. Louis was

not above a bargain with Rome. He refused

to the Pope the tithes of the French Church for three

years for the object of carrying on the war against

Frederick II; but in 1267 he himself obtained the papal

consent to take these tithes for the purpose of crusade.

CHAPTER XI

DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE
OE THE CHURCH

IT was during the period covered by this volume
that some of the most characteristic doctrines of the
Roman Church were developed. In this development
the whole sacramental system of the Church Number Of
comes under consideration. The word the sacra-
"sacramentum" in the sense of a holy mark merits,
or sign (wen'. m xiyni'ni) was used with a very wide
meaning as denoting anything " by which under the
cover of corporeal things the divine wisdom secretly
works salvation." Hugh of St. Victor, writing in the
first half of the twelfth century, distinguishes three
kinds of sacraments — those necessary for salvation,
namely, baptism and the reception of the I5ody and
Blood of Christ; those for sanctification, such as holy
water, ashes, and such-like ; and those instituted for
the purpose of preparing the means of the necessary
sacraments, that is, holy orders and the dedication of
churches. Elsewhere he chooses out rather more
definitely seven remedies against original or actual
sin, namely, baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance,
extreme unction, marriage, and holy orders ; and
after the twelfth century the Church gradually re
stricted the use of the word Sacrament to these
seven. There was much disputing among the school
men on the need of institution by Christ Himself.

181

182 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Peter Lombard, and after him Bonaventura, denied
this necessity ; Albertus Magnus and Thomas
Aquinas asserted it. But how account for extreme
unction and confirmation ? This is St. Thomas' ex
planation. " Some sacraments which are of greater
difficulty for belief Christ himself made known ; but
others He reserved to be made known by the Apostles.
For sacraments belong to the fundamentals of the
law and so their institution belongs to the law-giver.
Christ made known only such sacraments as He Him
self could partake. But He could not receive either
penance or extreme unction because he was sinless.
The institution of a new sacrament belongs to the
power of excellence which is competent for Christ
alone : so that it must be said that Christ instituted
such a sacrament as confirmation not by making it
known, but by promising it."

Of these seven sacraments the one round which the
whole doctrine and discipline of the Church increas
ingly centred was, of course, the Sacrament of the
Lord's Supper or the Eucharist. The view

Jh\ generally held in the Church was that of

Eucharist. » J . .

St. Augustine, which linds a place in the

homilies of Aelfric and in the controversial work of
Katramnus of Corbie (died 868). According to this
view, Christ is present in the consecrated elements of
the sacrament really but spiritually. " The body of
Christ," says Katramnus, " which died and rose again
and has become immortal, does not now die : it is
eternal and cannot suffer." But the tendency of the
Middle Ages was to materialise all conceptions how
ever spiritual; and Katramnus had written to con
trovert Paschasius Eadbertus, Abbot of New Corbie,

DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE 183

who had applied these materialistic views to the
Eucharist. "Although," lie asserts, "the form of bread
and wine may remain, yet after consecration it is nothing
else but the tlesh and blood of Christ, none other than
the flesh which was born of Mary and suffered on the
cross and rose from the sepulchre." During the two
succeeding centuries this theory of the corporeal
presence gained so much vogue in the Church that
when Berengar of Tours taught in the cathedral
school of his native city the doctrine of Itatramnus,
he was condemned unheard at a Synod at
Koine in 1050. But he gained the favour Beren^ar'
of Hildebrand, who was then at Tours in 1054 as papal
legate, and was content with the admission " panem
atque vinuiii altaris post consecrationem esse corpus
et sanguis Christ! "; and relying on his protection
Berengar went to Home (1059). Here, however, his
opponents forced him to sign a confession in conformity
with the materialistic view. His repudiation of this as
soon as he got away from Itome began a long controversy,
the champion on the materialistic side being Lanfranc,
then a monk of Bee in Normandy, to whom Berengar
had originally addressed himself. Lanfranc held the
position that the consecrated elements are " ineffably,
incomprehensibly, wonderfully by the operation of
power from on high, turned into the essence of the
Lord's Body." In 1075 the matter was discussed at
the Synod of Poictiers, and Berengar was in danger of his
life. Again Pope Gregory, as he had now become,
tried to stand his friend, and at a Synod at Home in
1078 to get from Berengar a confession of faith in
general terms. But the violence of Berengar's enemies
made compromise or ambiguity impossible. Again

1 84 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Berengar repudiated the forced confession; and Gregory
only obtained peace for him until his death in 1088,
by threatening with anathema any who molested him.
Berengar's objections to the doctrine of Paschasius
were shared by all the mystics, who held a more
spiritual belief. Thus, St. Bernard distinguishes
between the visible sign and the invisible grace which
God attaches to the sign; and Rupert of Deutz declares
that for him who has no faith there is nothing of the
sacrifice, nothing except the visible form of the bread
and wine.

But apart from these writers the trend of opinion
and inclination told entirely in favour of the material
istic school of thought. To the ordinary folk the

miraculous aspect of the doctrine was a
Transub- ... , ,.

stantiation Posltlve recommendation to acceptance.

And the word Transubstantiation, even
though it did not necessarily imply a materialistic
change, undoubtedly became associated in men's minds
with that idea. As early as the middle of the ninth
century Haimo of Halberstadt had said that the
substance of the bread and wine (that is, the nature
of bread and wine) is changed substantially into another
substance (that is, into flesh and blood). But the word
" transubstantiate " is used first by Stephen, Bishop of
Autun (1113-29), who explains "This is My Body"
as " The bread which I have received I have transub
stantiated into My Body." Sanction was first given
for the use of the word in the Lateran Council of
1215. In the confession of faith drawn up by that
Council it is asserted that " there is one Universal
Church of the Faithful, outside of which no one at all
has salvation : in which Jesus Himself is at once priest

DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE 185

and sacrifice, whose Body and Blood are truly received
in the sacrament of the altar under the form of bread
and wine, the bread being transubstantiated by the
divine power into the Body and the wine into the
Blood, in order that for the accomplishment of the
mystery of the unity we may receive of His what He
has received of ours. And this as being a sacrament
no one can perform except a priest who si mil have
been duly ordained according to the Keys of the
Church, which Jesus Christ Himself granted to the
Apostles and their successors."

This " mystery of the unity " became, on the one
side, the subject of a long and intricate controversy on
the method by which the change in the
elements was effected, while on the other
side it lent itself to much mystical medita
tion. Of neither of these is there space to give illus
tration : but the hymn of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is
familiar to English readers under the form of "Now, my
tongue, the mystery telling," blends the two sides with
astonishing success. It is a mistake to describe the view
of the sacrament thus sanctioned by the Church as either
more " advanced " or " higher " than the older view. It
was merely more elaborate, and as being such it led on
to certain definite results or changes in custom.

Thus, in the first place, hitherto children had par
taken of the sacrament. This had come partly from the
teaching of the need of the sacrament for salvation,
partly from the early custom of administering com
munion directly after baptism. The fear of profanation
now caused the gradual discontinuance of children's
communions, and in the middle of the thirteenth cen
tury they were definitely forbidden.

186 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

A far more important change, and for a similar
reason, was the refusal of the cup to the laity. St.
Refusal of Anselm is responsible for the dictum (after-
cup to wards accepted by the whole Church) that
laity. " Christ is consumed entire in either ele

ment " ; from this came the inference that there
was no need for the administration of both. The
heaviness of a single chalice made the danger of
spilling its contents so great that several chalices
were used. This, however, only increased the chances,
and various methods were adopted with a view to mini
mising the difficulty. Sometimes a reed was used ; later
on, bread dipped in wine was administered, as was
already usual in the case of sick persons or children ; or
even unconsecrated wine was given. Some of these
methods came under papal condemnation ; and the
withdrawal of the cup found powerful apologists in
Alexander of Hales and Thomas Aquinas. But the
administration of both elements continued to be fairly
common until far on into the thirteenth century.

A third result of the new views is to be seen in the
extension of the doctrine and practice of adoration of
Adoration the sacrament. The rite of elevation existed
of the in the Greek Church at least as early as

Sacrament. ^IQ seventh century, but was not adopted by
the Latins until four centuries later. In either case,
however, it was only regarded as an act symbolical of
the exaltation of Christ. But following on the sanction
of the doctrine of transubstantiation by the Lateran
Council, Honorius III in 12 17 decreed that " every priest
should frequently instruct his people that when in the
celebration of the Mass the saving Host is elevated every
one should bend reverently, doing the same thing when

DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE 187

the priest carries it to the sick." A logical outcome of
this was the foundation of the festival of Corpus Christi
for the special celebration of the sacramental mystery.
This was first introduced in the bishopric of Liege in re
sponse to the vision of a certain nun. Urban IV, who
had been a canon of Liege, adopted it for the whole
Church in 1264, but it only became general after
Clement V had incorporated Urban's ordinance as part
of the Canon Law in the Clementines (1311).

While there was a growing elaboration of the .sacra
mental rite, the laity in many parts of Europe came
from slackness less frequently to receive communion.
As early as Bode, in England, though not in Koine,
communions were very infrequent. English and
French Synods tried to insist on communion three
times a year, but could not enforce the rule.
Innocent III, in the fourth Lateran Council, with
a view to compel confession, prescribes once a
year. "Every one of the faithful," runs the canon of
the Council, " of either sex, after lie has come to years
of discretion, is to confess faithfully by himself all his
sins at least once a year to his own priest, and is to be
careful to fulfil according to his power the penance
enjoined on him, receiving with reverence the sacra
ment of the Eucharist at least at Easter."

Finally, the discussion of this theory of transub-
stantiation led to the development of a special view
of the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. Peter
Lombard and Thomas Aquinas call the sacrament a
representation of the sacrifice of Christ upon the
cross. But to Albertus Magnus it is not merely a
Representation, but a True Sacrifice, that is, " an Ob
lation of the thing offered by the hands of the priests,"

i88 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

and St. Thomas elsewhere declares that the perfection
of the sacrament consists not in its use by the faithful,
but in the consecration of the element, that is to
say, that the main point was the act of the priest.
The prevalence of this view appears to have en
couraged the idea in the laity that a mere atten
dance at the service was in itself so meritorious
as almost to dispense wTith the need of communion,
except once a year and on the death-bed. Similarly,
private Masses for the dead were instituted, chantry
chapels were founded for the celebration of them,
and priests were appointed for the sole purpose of
serving the altar of the chapel.

Nor was the development of this sacramental system

the only method by which the importance of the

priesthood became enhanced. The whole

fession. penifcentjai system of the Church was

gradually perverted. Originally those convicted of open
sin who submitted to penance were publicly readmitted
to the Church after confessing their sin and making
some form of atonement. People were encouraged to
confess their sins to their bishop or priest even when
their sins were not open and notorious. This was
especially enjoined in the case of mortal sin. But it
was for a long time a matter of discussion whether
this confession to a priest was an indispensable pre
liminary to forgiveness. Peter Lombard marks another
view. God alone remits or retains sins, but to the
priests he assigns the power, not of forgiveness, but of
declaring men to be bound or loosed from their sins. He
adds that even though sinners have been forgiven by
God, yet they must be loosed by the priest's judgment
in the face of the Church. In this ambiguous position

DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE

of the priest laymen were even entrusted with the power
of hearing a confession if no priest was available.
Bnt in the twelfth century, as we have seen, confession
was often reckoned among the sacraments ; and at the
Lateran Council Innocent III enjoined an annual con
fession to the parish priest. Before long the precatory
form of absolution is replaced by the indicative form by
which the priest declared the sinner absolved. Thomas
Aquinas lays it down that c< the grace which is given
in the sacraments descends from the head to the mem
bers : and so he alone is minister of the sacraments in
which grace is given who has a true ministry over
Christ's body ; and this belongs to the priest alone who
can consecrate the Eucharist. And so when grace is
conferred in the sacrament of penance, the priest alone
is the minister of this sacrament ; and so to him alone
is to be made the sacramental confession which ought
to be made to a minister of the Church." There was
no room here for confession to laymen, although
Thomas himself allows that in cases of necessity such
confession has a kind of sacramental character which
would be supplemented by Christ Himself as the high
priest.

The increasing stress laid upon private confession
not only led to the decay of the public procedure, but
also brought about some dangerous develop
ments in the penitential system of the
Church. This had already become very
largely a matter of fixed pecuniary compensations for
moral offences ; so that the new system of compulsory
confession was able to recommend itself to the people
through the adaptation of the old mechanical standards
by the confessors to each individual case. Far more

1 9o THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

important was the extension given to the system of
indulgences. These had their origin in the remission
of part of an imposed penance on condition of attend
ance at particular churches on certain anniversaries,
it being understood that the penitent would present
offerings to the Church. Abailard complains that on
ceremonial occasions when large offerings are expected,
bishops issue such indulgences for a third or fourth
part of the penance as if they had done it out of love
instead of from the utmost greed. And they boast of
it, claiming that it is done by the power of St. Peter
and the Apostles, when it is God who said to them
"Whosesoever sins ye remit," etc. Thus all bishops
took it upon themselves to issue indulgences for the
furtherance of particular objects. But in its claim to
subordinate the episcopal power to its own, the Papacy
began to grant indulgences which were not limited to
time or circumstance. Gregory VI in 1044 made pro
mises to all who helped in the restoration of Eoman
churches; but Gregory VII promised absolution to all
who fought for Eudolf of Suabia against Henry IV ;
while Urban II in the widest manner offered plenary
indulgence, that is, remission of all penances imposed,
in the case of any who would take part in the Crusade.
This offer in whole or in part was constantly renewed
in order to raise an army for the East.

It was of course presupposed by those in authority

in the cases of these indulgences that, confession having

been made, the temporal penalties to be

Effect on undergone either here or in purgatory
populace. L , c

were thus remitted. But preachers in

their eagerness to raise troops asserted that those
guilty of the foulest crimes obtained pardon from the

DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE 191

moment when they assumed the cross, and were
assured of salvation in the event of death. Conse
quently the people in their ignorance overlooked the
conditions attached and regarded these indulgences as
promises of eternal pardon. It is not wonderful that
men released from social restraints of a more or less
stable society should have developed in their new
abode the licence which made crusaders a byword in
the West.

So far the Popes had endeavoured to supersede the
bishops in the issue of indulgences by entering into
rivalry with them. But the power was papai
used by the bishops in such detailed ways indulg-
as perhaps seriously to interfere with the ences.
offerings which should reach the Papacy or be applied
to important projects. Innocent III, therefore, at the
great Laterari Council limited the episcopal power to
the grant of an indulgence for one year at the conse
cration of a church and for forty days at the anniver
sary. Unfortunately this did not mean the suppression
of trifling reasons for the multiplication of indulgence.
The whole system was a convenient method of adding
to the revenues of Rome, and no occasion seemed too
small for the exercise of the papal power of dispensa
tion. Urban IV granted an indulgence to all who
should listen to the same sermon as the King of
France. The Crusades were the great occasion and
excuse for the development of this system, and it
certainly readied its nadir when Gregory IX showed
himself ready in return for a pecuniary penance to
absolve men from the vows which they had perhaps
been unwillingly forced to take by his own agents for
going on crusade. Equally disgraceful was the estab-

i92 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

lishment of the year of Jubilee in 1300 by Boniface
VIII, when plenary indulgence of the most comprehen
sive kind was offered to all who within the year
should in the proper spirit visit the tombs of St. Peter
and St. Paul at Borne.

But how came the Pope to be in possession of this
power of remitting the penalties for sin ? The school
men of the thirteenth century supply the
Treasury answer. Alexander of Hales and Albert
the Great invented the theory and Thomas
Aquinas completed it. According to their teaching,
the saints, by their works of penance and by their
unmerited sufferings patiently borne, have done in this
world more than was necessary for their own salvation.
These superabundant merits, together with those of
Christ, which are infinite, are far more than enough to
fulfil all the penalties due for their evil deeds from the
living. The idea of unity in the mystical body enables
the shortcomings of one man to be atoned for by the
merits of another. The superabundant merits of the
saints are a treasury for use by the whole Church, and
are distributed by the head of the Church, that is, the
Pope. Furthermore, to St. Thomas is due the idea
that the contents of this treasury were equally avail
able for the benefit of souls in purgatory, for whom the
Church was already accustomed to make intercession.

It was to our Lord Himself that the theologians
attributed all merit ; but in the popular mind the
Canonisa- mei'its of the saints took an ever more
tion of important place, since the Church seemed
saints. to make the priesthood a barrier against,

rather than a channel for, the flow of God's
mercy to man ; but popular feeling sought to find

DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE 193

intercessors before the throne of grace in the holy men
and women of the faith. For a long time it was the
bishops who decided the title to saintship. But in
993 Pope John XV, in a Council at Home and in
response to a request of the Bishop of Augsburg,
ordered that a former bishop of that see should be
venerated as a saint. This was the process afterwards
called Canonisation, which involved the insertion of a
name in the Canon or list, and gave it currency not
merely in a single diocese, but throughout western
Christendom. In 1170 Alexander III claimed such
recognition as the exclusive right of Eome. But
despite this assumption of authority, popular feeling
very often dictated to the Tope whom he should
admit into the list. Death followed by miracles at the
tomb, and sometimes the building of an elaborate
shrine with an altar, forced the Pope to grant the
claims of a popular favourite.

A rapid increase in the number of applications for
such official recognition would be the result of any
widely popular movement. Such was the
effect of the Crusades in the twelfth century, and relics
and of the foundation of the Mendicant
Orders in the thirteenth. And the multiplication of
saints meant an increase in the number of relics and
an ever-growing belief in the miraculous. Miracles
frequently took place in connection with living persons
of saintly life. Abailard scornfully pointed out that
some of the attempts made by Norbert or Bernard to
work miraculous cures were quite unsuccessful, while in
successful cases medicine as well as prayers had been
employed. But such rationalism was beyond the
grasp of an ignorant age, and collections of stories of
o

i94 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

miracles, such as remain to us in the "Golden
Legends " of Jacob de Yoragine, a Dominican of the
thirteenth century, fed the popular belief. Miracles
so commemorated often occurred in connection with
relics ; and the traffic in relics and so styled " pious "
frauds, not to say the forcible means used to procure
reputed relics of authentic or supposititious saints,
forms a curious if a discreditable feature in mediaeval
history. An occasional protest was uttered against
the manner in which credit was often obtained for
relics of more than doubtful authenticity ; but the
manufacture of them was easy and profitable, and
pilgrims returning from Palestine could palm off any
thing upon the credulity of a willing and ignorant
populace. The growth of a legend in connection with
relics is fitly illustrated by the history of the eleven
thousand Virgins of Koln. Martyrologies of the
ninth century celebrate the martyrdom of eleven
virgins in the city of Koln. Perhaps these were
described as XL M. Virgines, and the letter which
denoted martyrs was mistaken for the Koman numeral
for one thousand, and so the number of virgins was
ultimately swollen to eleven thousand. A legend,
possibly working on an old one, was invented by a
writer of the twelfth century that these virgins were
martyred by the Huns in the fifth century. In the
middle of that century, when heresy was rife at Koln,
a number of bones of persons of both sexes were found
near Koln, and the authenticity of the relics was put
beyond dispute by the revelations vouchsafed to
Saint Elizabeth, Abbess of Schonau, to whom the
matter was referred. Even though she did give a date
for the event which was historically impossible, the

DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE i95

confirmatory evidence of the Premonstratensian Abbot
Kichard nearly thirty years later put the matter
beyond the doubt of any pious Christian. But the
interest of these unsavoury remains of anonymous
men and women, however saintly, pales before certain
relics of our Lord's life on earth which gained currency.
Of these the most famous were the Veronica, a cloth
on which Christ, on His way to Calvary, was supposed
to have left the impress of His face, and a vessel of a
green colour which was identified with the holy grail,
the cup which our Lord used at the Last Supper. Of
garments purporting to be the seamless coat of Christ
there were a considerable number shown in different
places ; but the most famous to this day remains the
Holy Coat of Treves, which, in Dr. Eobertson's caustic
words, " the Empress Helena (the mother of Constan
tino) was said to have presented to an imaginary arch
bishop of her pretended birthplace, Treves." D urine?
the First Crusade the army before Antioch was only
spurred on to the efforts which resulted in the capture
of the city, by the opportune discovery of the Holy
Lance with which the Ifoman soldier had pierced
Christ's side while He hung upon the cross.

The great increase in the whole intercessory
machinery of the Church culminated in the adoration
of the Virgin Mary. The extravagant expression of
this devotion was widespread. For the
many it found vent in the language of Adoration
popular hymns. Among the monks the virgin.
Cistercians were under her special protec
tion, and all their churches were dedicated to her.
Of the learned men Peter Damiani in the eleventh
century, St. Bernard and St. Bonaventura in the two

196 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

succeeding centuries respectively, especially helped in
various ways to crystallise her position in the Church.
As a result of the efforts of her devotees Saturdays
and the vigils of all feast days came to be kept in her
honour ; the salutation " Ave Maria gratia plena "
with certain additions was prescribed to be taught to
the people, together with the Lord's Prayer and the
Creed. In the thirteenth century its frequent repeti
tion resulted in the invention of the Kosary, a string
of beads by which the number of repetitions could be
counted. The religion of Mary soon showed signs of
development as a parallel religion to that of Christ.
She is styled the Queen of Heaven ; her office, com
posed by Peter Damiani, was ordered by Urban II to
be recited on Saturday ; and a Marian Psalter and
a Marian Bible were actually composed ; while in
place of the dulia or reverence offered to the saints,
there was claimed for the Virgin a higher step, a
liyperdulia, which St. Thomas places between dulia and
the latria or adoration paid to Christ.

A final stage in possible developments was reached
in the twelfth century in the institution of a feast in
honour of the conception of the Blessed Virgin.
Hitherto it had been supposed by Christian writers,

notably by St. Anselm, that the Mother
The imma- Of tjie j^rd had been conceived as others,
ception Towards the middle of the twelfth century

some Canons of Lyons evolved the theory
that she was conceived already sinless in her mother's
womb. St. Bernard strenuously opposed this notion
of her immaculate conception, pointing out that the
supposition involved in the theory could not logically
stop with the Virgin herself, but must be applied to

DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE 197

her parents and so to each of their ancestors in turn
in an endless series. Nor was St. Bernard alone in
his objection : indeed, nearly all the chief theologians
of the thirteenth century, including Thomas Aquinas,
declared that there was no warrant of Scripture for
the theory. But notwithstanding this criticism, the
festival won its way to recognition. Those who kept
it, however, declared that it was merely the conception
which they celebrated ; and St. Thomas interpreting
this to denote the sanctification, was of opinion that
such a celebration was not to be entirely reprobated.
It was Duns Scotus who first among the schoolmen
defended the theory of the immaculate conception, but
in moderate language ; and his Franciscan followers,
who at a General Council of the Order in 1263 had
admitted the festival among some other new occasions
to be observed, in the course of the fourteenth century
adopted it as a distinctive doctrine.

CHAPTER XII
HERESIES

IT was not until the thirteenth century that the
Church had to face that spirit of scepticism or

anti-religious feeling which is the chief bug-
Cause of kear of modern Christianity. Her elaborate

organisation and the gradual development
of her own dogmatic position enabled her to deal with
individual writers of a speculative turn like Berengar
or Abailard. Nor were these in any sense anti-
Christian. But they were the inciters to heresy ; and
a real danger to the Church lay in the filtering down
of intellectual speculations to ignorant classes, by
whom they would be transformed into weapons against
the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith.
Indeed, from the eleventh century onward the Church
was constantly threatened by heresy of a popular kind,
which tended to develop into schism. And for this
she had to thank not only the growing materialisation
of her doctrine, but even more the worldly life of her
ministers. Unpalatable doctrines may commend them
selves by the pure lives which profess to be founded
on them ; but evil doing carries no persuasion to
others.

It is a real difficulty that our sources of information
of all the heretics of these centuries are chiefly the
writings of their successful opponents — the defenders

198

HERESIES 199

of the orthodox faith. But much information remains
to us from the admissions of her supporters as
to the depraved condition of the Church

at this period ; so that we need not believe -T0 *n s
the allegations of their opponents that a chief
inducement to join heretical sects lay in the greater
scope for the indulgence of sin. Charges of immorality
against opponents were the stock-in-trade of the
controversialist, while the greatest authorities in the
Church allow that heresy lived upon the scandals and
negligences of the Church. Moreover, based as they
were upon opposition to the existing organisation, the
doctrines of the various sects had much in common.
The Church did not distinguish between them, but
excommunicated them all alike. If, however, we
would understand the developments of opinion in the
succeeding centuries, it is important to discriminate ;
and a clear distinction can be made between those
opponents of the Church whose views were aimed
against the development of an extreme sacerdotalism
within the Church, and those who, going beyond this
negative position, reproduced the Manichaean theories
of an early age and threatened to raise a rival organ
isation to that of the Christian Church.

The object which those who belonged to the first of
these divisions set before themselves, was to get behind
the elaborate organisation which the Church

had built up and which, instead of being a Anti-sacer-

dotahsts.
help to lead man to God, had now become a

hindrance by which the knowledge of Clod was actually
obscured. They would therefore sweep away all this
machinery and return to the Christianity of apostolic
times. Their objection was primarily moral, but it

200 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

soon became doctrinal ; and among the heretics of this
class there was revived the Donatist theory that the
sacraments depend for their efficacy on the moral con
dition of those who administer them. The campaign of
the Church reformers against clerical marriage seemed
directly to support this view ; but the canons which
forbade any one to be present at a Mass performed by
a married priest had to be explained away as a mere
enforcement of discipline ; and in 1230 Gregory IX
definitely laid it down that the suspension of a priest
living in mortal sin merely affects him as an individual
and does not invalidate his office as regards others.
But such declarations did nothing to meet the common
feeling of the great incompatibility between the awful
powers with which the Church clothed her ministers
and the sinful lives led by a large proportion of the
existing clerical body.

From an early period in the twelfth century sectaries
of this class are found in several quarters. Two extreme
instances are Tanchelm, who preached in the
Netherlands between 1115 and 1124, and
Eon de 1'Etoile, who gathered round him a
band of desperate characters in Brittany about 1148.
They have been described as " two frantic enthusiasts,"
and Eon was almost certainly insane. Eon was im
prisoned and his band dispersed. But Tanchelm found
a large following when he taught that the hierarchy
was null and that tithes should not be paid. He came
to an untimely end; but the influence of his doctrines
continued so strong in Antwerp that St. Norbert came
to the help of the local clergy and succeeded in obliter
ating all traces of the heresy.

It was in the south of France that this and all

HERESIES 201

heresy assumed a more formidable shape. The popu
lation was very mixed ; the feudal tie,
whether to France, England, or the Em-
peror, was slight ; there was more culture
and luxury, the clergy were more careless of their
duties, while Jews had greater privileges, than any
where else in Europe. Moreover, the early teachers
were men of education. Two such were Peter de Bruis
(1106-26), a priest, and Henry of Lausanne (1116-
48), an ex-monk of Cluny. Peter was burnt and
Henry probably died in prison. Peter preached in the
land known later as Dauphine ; and the views of the
Petrobrusians, as his followers were called, so con
tinued to spread after his death that Peter the Vener
able, the Abbot of Cluny, thought it worth while to
write a tract in refutation of them. Henry was more
formidable. He preached over all the south
of France, was condemned as a heretic at
the Council of Pisa (1134), but was released and
resumed his preaching. As the bishops could not and
the lay nobles would not do anything against him,
the papal legate obtained the help of St. Bernard,
who, although ill, preached at Albi and elsewhere with
an effect which was much enhanced by the miracles
which in popular belief accompanied his efforts. Henry
declined a debate to which Bernard challenged him,
and so became discredited, and shortly after he fell
into the hands of his enemies.

The tract of Peter the Venerable is practically the sole
authority for the tenets of the Petrobrusians. Accord
ing to this they were frankly anti- sacerdotal. Infant
baptism was held to be useless, since it was performed
with vicarious promises. Churches were useless, for

202 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

the Church of God consists of the congregation of the
faithful; the Cross, as being the instrument of Christ's
torture, was a symbol to be destroyed rather than
invoked; there was no real presence and no sacrifice
in the Mass, for Christ's body was made and given
once for all at the Last Supper; all offerings and
prayers for the dead were useless, since each man
would be judged on his own merits. Henry with his
followers practically adopted these views and added
attempts at social reform on Christian lines, especially
in the matter of marriage, persuading courtesans to
abandon their vicious life and promoting their union
to some of his adherents.

By far the most important body of these anti-
sacerdotal heretics were the Waldenses. Their
founder was Peter Waldo, whose name takes
many forms— Waldez, Waldus, Waldensis.
He was a wealthy merchant of Lyons who,
moved with religious feelings and himself ignorant,
caused two priests to translate into the vernacular
Eomance the New Testament and a collection of
extracts from the chief writers of the early Church
known as Sentences. From a perusal of these he
became convinced that the way to spiritual perfection
lay through poverty. He divested himself of his
wealth and, as a way of carrying out the gospel
further, he began to preach (1170-80). He attracted
men and women of the poorer classes, whom he used
as missionaries ; and the neglect of the pulpit by the
clergy caused these lay preachers to find ready listeners
in the streets and even in the churches of Lyons.
According to the custom of the day they adopted a
special dress ; and the sandals (sabot) which they wore

HERESIES 203

in imitation of the Apostles gave them the name of
Insabbatati. They called themselves the Poor Men of
Lyons — Pauperes de Lugdimo ; Li Poure de Lyod.
The Archbishop of Lyons excommunicated them ; but
Alexander III, at the request of Peter, allowed them
to preach with permission of the priests. Their dis
regard of this proviso caused their excommunication
by the Pope in 1184 and again in 1190; and from
this time they began to repudiate the Church which
limited their freedom, and to set up conventicles and
an organisation of their own. The date of Peter's
death is not known.

The strong missionary spirit of these sectaries "spread
their doctrines with extraordinary rapidity. They
consisted almost entirely of poor folk scat
tered over an area extending from Aragon
to Bohemia ; and from place to place differ
ences of organisation and doctrine are to be observed.
But they were not Protestants in the modern sense,
and, despite persecution, many continued to consider
themselves members of the Church. Thus on such
doctrinal points as the Eeal Presence, purgatory, the
invocation of saints, in many places they long con
tinued to believe in them with their own explanations,
and their repudiation of the teaching of the Church
was a matter of gradual accomplishment. It is true
that in places they strove to set up their own organ
isation. But the tendency of the Waldenses was
much rather towards a simplification of the existing
organisation. The power of binding and loosing was
entirely rejected : an apostolic life and not ordination
was the entrance to the priesthood. In fact, a layman
was qualified to perform all the priestly functions,

2o4 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

not merely to baptise and to preach, but even to hear
confession and to consecrate the Eucharist. Thus the
whole penitential machinery of the Church was set
aside. Their specially religious teaching was largely
ethical, and by the testimony of their enemies their
life and conduct were singularly pure and simple. The
stories of abominable practices among them perhaps
arose from the extreme asceticism of a sect which
professed voluntary poverty ; but they were no more
true than the similar tales told of the early Christians.
Nor shall we regard from the same point of view as
the Churchmen of the day the charge brought against
them on the ground of their intimate knowledge of
the Scriptures. Of these they had their own ver
nacular translations, and large portions of them were
committed to memory. But such translations spread
broad-cast views unfettered by the traditional inter
pretation of the Church, and the missionary zeal of
the Waldenses was proof against the horrors of the
Inquisition with its prison, torture-chamber, and
stake.

The most formidable development of hostility to
the Church came from the Manichseism of those who
bore at various times and in different
Cathan. piaces the names of Cathari, Patarins, or
Albigenses. The attraction of the Manichsean theory
lay in its apparent explanation of the problem of evil.
There exist side by side in the world a good principle
and an evil principle. The latter is identifiable with
matter and is the work of Satan. Hence sin consists
in care for the material creation. It follows that all
action tending to the reproduction of animal life is to
be avoided, so that marriage was strongly discouraged.

HERESIES

205

To the earlier views was added the doctrine of metem
psychosis, or the transmigration of souls, which, acting
as a means of reward and retribution, seemed
fully to account for man's sufferings. These views
together explain the avoidance as food by the Cathari
of everything which was the result of animal propa
gation, and also the severity of the ascetic practices
which were charged against them.

In the sphere of doctrine the division between the
Cathari and the Catholic Church was absolute.
According to these sectaries Satan is the

Jehovah of the Old Testament : hence all Jheir
d . , if. doctrines.

Scriptures before the Gospels are rejected.

They accepted the New Testament, but regarded
Christ as a phantasm and not a man. Thus the
doctrine of the Eeal Presence had no meaning for them,
indeed, they rejected the sacraments and all external
and material manifestations of religion. Here, of
course, they had much in common with the Waldenses,
whom the Church confounded with them ; and there
seems little doubt that the way for the preaching of
Catharism in the south of France was paved by the
previous work of Peter de Bruis and, even more, of
Henry of Lausanne. But the reasons for opposition
to the Church were not the same among the
Waldenses and the Cathari; and the latter soon
parted company with the seekers after primitive
Christianity by developing an organisation of their
own. Thus as the Cathari grew in numbers and
carried on a vigorous missionary work, their devotees
tended to form themselves into a Church. At least
two distinct Orders were recognised. The Perfected
were a kind of spiritual aristocracy who renounced all

206 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

property and were sworn to celibacy, while they sub
mitted themselves to penances of such rigour that their
lives were often endangered, if not shortened. • Below
them were the mass of believers who were allowed to
marry and to live in the world, assimilating themselves
so far as possible to the ideal set before them by the
higher caste. From the Perfected were chosen officers
with the names of bishop and deacon, the latter acting
as assistants to the chief officers. The ritual was
simple but definite, and the most characteristic cere
mony was the Consolamentum, the baptism of the
Holy Ghost, by which the believers were placed in
communion with the Perfected and so became absolved
from all sin. It was performed by the imposition of
hands together with the blessing and kiss of peace
given by any two of the Perfected. This was the pro
cess of " heretication," the name given by the
Inquisitors to admission into the Catharist Church;
and, except in the case of the ministers, it was post
poned until the believer lay upon his death-bed.

The charges of evil practices against the Cathari

were perhaps no truer than similar accusations against

the Waldenses, and their missionary zeal

'I?eir was proof against even death at the stake,

effect.

Nevertheless there is no doubt that the

cause of progress and civilisation lay with Catholicism
rather than with its opponents. The asceticism of
the Cathari would have resulted, if not in the
extinction of the race, at least in the destruction of
the family : their identification of matter with the
work of Satan would have been a bar to attempts
at material improvement. Moreover, if ever theirs
had become the conquering faith, they would have

HERESIES

207

developed a sacerdotal class as privileged as the
Catholic priesthood. The movement has been aptly
described as "not a revolt against the Church, but a
renunciation of man's dominion over nature."

Whether the Catharist movement was spread
westwards by the Paulicians who in the tenth cen
tury were transplanted from Armenia to ^^ •
Thrace, or sprang spontaneously from origin and
teachers who saw in the dualistic philoso- spread,
phy a condemnation, if not an explanation, of the
materialisation of Christianity by the Church, may
not be very certain ; but there is no doubt
that the Cathari of Western Europe always looked
to the eastern side of the Adriatic as to the head
quarters of their faith. In the eleventh century
we hear of Cathari in certain places in North Italy,
in France, and even in Germany ; but although in
Italy the name of Patarms came to be applied to the
sect, we need trace no connection in the popular rising
at Milan, which was stirred up by the Church re
formers against the simony and clerical marriage
practised by the Church of St. Ambrose. In the
twelfth century the movement is heard of in an in
creasing number of places, in certain parts of France
including Brittany, in Flanders among all classes, in
the Ehine lands. Milan was supposed to be the head
quarters in Italy. In England thirty persons of
humble birth, probably from Flanders, were con
demned in 1166, and an article was inserted in the
Assize of Clarendon against them.

But it was in the south of France that the Cathari,
no less than the Waldenses, were chiefly to be found ;
with this difference, however— that, whereas the Wai-

2o8 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

denses confined themselves chiefly to Provence and
the valley of the Khone, the Cathari were scattered
over a much larger area, although their
chief strength lay in the valley of the
Garonne. The town of Albi gave them their name
of Albigenses, and Toulouse was the chief centre of
their influence. In 1119 Calixtus II condemned the
heresy at its centre in Toulouse. In 1139, at the
second Lateran Council, Innocent II called upon the
secular power for the first time to assist in expelling
from the Church those who professed heretical
opinions. In 1163 Alexander III, at the great
Council of Tours, demanded that secular princes
should imprison them. But the futility of these
measures appeared from the colloquy held in 1165 at
Lombers, near Albi, between representatives of the
Church and of the Albigenses before mutually chosen
judges, for it made plain the boldness of the heretics
and their claim of equality with the Church. Indeed,
in 1167 they actually held a council of their own at
St. Felix de Caraman, near Toulouse, at which the
chief Bishop of the Catharists was brought from Con
stantinople to preside, while a number of bishops were
appointed, and all the business transacted was that
of an equal and rival organisation to the Church of
Eome.

During the next ten years (1167-77), while the
religious allegiance of Europe was divided by the
Attempts schism in the Papacy, Catharism gained a
at suppres- great hold over all classes in Languedoc
sion. an(j Q-asc0ny. Eaymond V of Toulouse,

the sovereign of Languedoc, finding himself power
less to check it, Appealed for help; but the Kings

HERESIES 209

of France and England agreed to a joint expedi
tion only to abandon it, and the papal mission
sent in 1178, composed of the papal legate, several
bishops, and the Abbot of Clairvaux, only made
heroes of the few heretics whom they ventured to
excommunicate. In 1179, at the third Lateran
Council, Alexander III proclaimed a crusade against
all enemies of the Church, among whom were included,
for the first time, professing Christians. The Abbot of
Clairvaux, as papal legate, raised a force and reduced
to submission Eoger, Viscount of Beziers, who openly
protected heretics; but the crusading army melted
away at the end of the time of enlistment, and the
only result of the expedition was the exasperation
produced by the devastation of the land. After this
failure no real attempt was made to stop the spread of
heresy until the accession of Innocent III, while the
fall of Jerusalem in 1186 turned all crusading ardour
in the direction of Palestine.

Meanwhile, in 1194 Raymond V had been suc
ceeded by his son, Raymond VI, who, if he was
not actually a heretic, was at least in
different to the interests of the Catholic ^^°nd
faith. Most of his barons favoured Cath- Toulouse.
arism. He himself was surrounded by
a gay and cultured court, and was popular with
his subjects. At the same time the local clergy
neglected their duties, the barons plundered the Church,
and the heretics, without persecuting the Catholics,
were gradually extinguishing them in the dominions of
Toulouse. Immediately on his accession in 1198
Innocent III appointed commissioners to visit the
heretical district ; but the local bishop, from jealousy,

210 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

would not help. Some effect, however, was produced
when, acting on the suggestion of a Spanisli prelate,
Diego de Azevedo, Bishop of Osma, they dismissed
their retinues and started on a preaching tour among
the people. The Bishop was accompanied by the Canon
Dominic, and this mission was the germ out of which
shortly grew the great Dominican Order. But the
Bishop went back to Spain, and twice the papal
legate excommunicated Eaymond VI because he would
give no help. Once Eaymond made his peace with
the Church, but the second pronouncement against him
was shortly followed by the murder of the legate Peter
of Castelnau, who had made himself peculiarly obnoxi
ous (1208). Eaymond's complicity was never proved,
but Innocent was getting impatient, and his com
missioners had made up their minds that it was easier
and quicker to exterminate the heretics than to con
vert them. Eaymond and all concerned in the murder
were excommunicated, and a crusade was proclaimed
against them. Philip Augustus of France allowed his
barons to go, but excused himself on the ground of
his relations with John of England. Eaymond hoped
to avoid the threatening storm by another abject sub
mission; but he was obliged to surrender his chief
fortresses and to join in person the army which now
assembled for the extirpation of heresy in his own
lands.

Although Eaymond was thus forced to appear in
the ranks of his enemies, a leader in resistance was

found in his nephew, Eaymond Eoger,
Cmsade Viscount of Beziers (1209). But his

capital Beziers was stormed by the cru
sading army under the legate, who, when asked how

HERESIES

211

the soldiers could distinguish Catholics from heretics,
is said to have replied, " Slay them all : God will
know His own." Then Carcassonne, deemed impreg
nable, was besieged, and the young Viscount, decoyed
into the enemies' camp under pretence of negotiation,
was kept a prisoner. He died, and the city was sur
rendered. The conquered territory was practically
forced by the legate on Simon de Montfort, younger
son of the Count of Evreux. who, through his mother,
was also Earl of Leicester.

In 1211 the crusaders attacked Count Raymond's
territories. He had never yet been tried for the murder
of the legate, of which he was accused; and
already Philip of France had warned the Mwtfort
Pope that in any question of Raymond's
forfeiture, it was for the French King as suzerain and
not for the Pope to proclaim it. By a visit to Rome
Raymond hoped that he had gained permission to
purge himself from the impending charges ; but at the
last moment this was pronounced impossible, because
in having failed to clear his lands of heresy, as he
had promised to do, he was forsworn. In a war of
sieges De Montfort's skill took from Raymond every
thing except Toulouse and Montauban. Raymond's
brother-in-law, Pedro II of Aragon, now intervened;
but when Innocent III, misled by his legates, refused
a further offer of purgation on the part of Raymond,
Pedro formally declared war against De Montfort. He
invaded and laid siege to Muret ; but his forces were
defeated and he was killed (1213). So far Innocent III
had avoided the recognition of De Montfort's conquests
in Toulouse. But early in 1215 he ratified the act of
the Council of Montpellier which had elected Simon

2i2 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

de Montfort as lord of the whole conquered land.
Raymond, although he had never yet been tried, was
declared deposed for heresy ; and the fourth Lateran
Council, while confirming this decision, left a small
portion of the territory still unconquered, for his son.
It seems likely that Innocent would have been willing
to deal fairly with the Count of Toulouse; but by
this time there were too many interested in the ruin
of the House of Toulouse, and the Pope was deliber
ately misled by his legates. Hence it came that
a judgment which might, as it was expected that it
would, have righted a great wrong, proved only
a signal for revolt. Raymond and his son were
welcomed back by an united people, and finally in
1218 Simon de Montfort was killed while besieging
Toulouse .

De Montfort's son could make no headway against
a people in arms. But in 1222 Raymond VI
A war of ancl pniliP of France vainly tried to pro-
ag-gres- mote a peaceful settlement between Amaury
sion. de Montfort and Raymond VII. Amaury,

despairing of success, offered his claims to the French
King, and in 1223 Philip's successor, Louis VIII,
overpersuaded by the Pope, accepted them. The young
Count Raymond vainly endeavoured to ward off the
threatened invasion and showed every desire to be
reconciled with the Church. There was scarcely any
longer a pretence of religious war. From the first it
had been largely a war of races, promoted by northern
jealousy at the wealth and civilisation of the south
and by a desire for the completion of the Frank
conquest of Gaul. Thus from the beginning of
hostilities the whole population of the south,

HERESIES 213

Catholic as well as heretic, had stood together in
resistance to the crusading army, and despite his tergi
versations Kaymond VI had never lost their affection
and support. The war lasted for three years (1226-9) ;
Louis VIII led an expedition southwards, which for
some inexplicable reason turned back before it had
achieved complete success ; and after his death the
Queen-Regent, Blanche of Castile, with the encourage
ment of Pope Gregory IX, came to terms with Kaymond
VII. By the Treaty of Meaux (1229) Count Raymond
agreed to hunt down all heretics, to assume the cross
as a penance, to give up at once about two-thirds of
his lands, while the remainder was to go to his
daughter, who was to be married to a French prince,
with the ultimate reversion to the French Crown. In
1237 Jeanne of Toulouse was married to Alfonso,
brother of Louis IX; in 1249, on the death of
Raymond VII, they succeeded to his dominions, and
on their death in 1271 without children Philip III
annexed all their possessions to the dominions of the
French Crown.

The question of the acquisition of territory was
thus shown to be far more important than the sup
pression of heresy. But a university was established
at Toulouse for the teaching of true philo- punish-
sophy, and the Inquisition was set up under ment for
the Dominicans for the suppression of false heresy-
doctrine. The time had definitely gone by when
the Church would rely upon methods of persuasion in
dealing with heretics. And yet for a long time there
was much hesitation among Churchmen. Even as late
as 1145 St. Bernard pleads for reasoning rather than
coercion. And the application of methods of coercion

2i4 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

was equally tentative. At first the obstinate heretic
was imprisoned or exiled and his property was con
fiscated. But the practice of burning a heretic alive
was long the custom before it was adopted anywhere
as positive law. Pedro II of Aragon, the champion of
Kaymond VI, first definitely legalised it (1197). In
1238 by the Edict of Cremona this became the recog
nised law of the Empire, and was afterwards embodied
in the Sachsenspiegel and Schwabenspiegel, the
municipal codes of Northern and Southern Germany
respectively. The Etablissements of Louis IX (1270)
recognised the practice for France. It is a tribute to
English orthodoxy that the Act "de haeretico com-
burendo" was not passed until 1401.

Early usage forbade the clergy to be concerned in
judgments involving death or mutilation. This finds
The expression in the Constitutions of Clarendon

secular (1164); and the fourth Lateran Council
arm. (1215) definitely forbade clerks to utter a

judgment of blood or to be present at an execution.
Thus the Church merely found a man a heretic and
called upon the secular authority to punish him. It
was impressed upon all secular potentates from highest
to lowest that it was their business to obey the be
hests of the Church in the extirpation of heresy.
Indeed, it may almost be said that the validity of this
command of the Church was the principal point at
issue in the Albigensian crusade ; for Raymond's lands
were declared forfeit merely because he would not
take an active part in the punishment of his heretical
subjects. Thus by the thirteenth century all hesitation
as to the attitude of the Church towards heretics had
entirely disappeared. As Innocent III lays it down,

HERESIES 215

" faith is not to be kept with him who keeps not faith
with God," and Councils of this century declared that
any temporal ruler who did not persecute heresy must
be regarded as an accomplice and so as himself a heretic.
We cannot apply modern standards to the medieval
feelings about heresy. The noblest and most saintly
among clergy and laity alike were often the fiercest
persecutors. Church and State were closely inter
mingled ; heresy was a crime as well as a sin ; the
heretic was a rebel ; mild measures only made him
bolder; and in fear of the overthrow of the whole
social system the rulers of State and Church combined
to crush him.

CHAPTER XIII
THE MENDICANT ORDERS

AC the Lateran Council in 1215 Innocent III issued
a decree which practically forbade the foundation
of new monastic Orders. The increase of such Orders
in the name of religious reform had not always tended
Need for to tne promotion of orthodoxy. Moreover,
new kinds the monastic ideal was the spiritual per-
of Orders, fection of the individual, to be gained by
separation from the world; but the growth of large
urban populations with the accompanying disease and
misery called for a new kind of dedication to religion.
There was strength in membership of an Order, and
during the twelfth century there were founded along
side of the newer monastic Orders organisations devoted
to social work of various kinds. Such was the origin
of the Hospitallers and perhaps of the Templars also,
and of a number of small Orders, most of them merely
local in their work and following, which were founded
all over Western Europe for care of the sick and
pilgrims and for other charitable work.

A point that demanded even more immediate
attention was the almost total neglect of preaching
by the parochial clergy and the consequent success of
the Waldensian and other heretical preachers. There
were isolated examples of missionary devotion among
the clergy. Fulk of Neuilly, a priest, obtained a

216

THE MENDICANT ORDERS 217

licence from Innocent III to preach, and met with
marvellous success among the Cathari until he was
turned aside by Innocent's exhortation to preach a
new crusade. But he died before it set out (1202).
Duran de Huesca, a Catalan, conceived the idea of
fighting the heretics with their own weapons, and
founded the Pauperes Catholici as an Order professing
poverty and engaged in missionary work. But the
outbreak of the Albigensian War superseded the work
of the Order by more summary methods of dealing
with heretics.

But these Poor Catholics were the precursors, if not
the actual model of the Preaching Friars of St.
Dominic. The founder was a Spaniard,
who had studied long in the University of
Palencia, and had become sub-prior of the
cathedral of Osma. He accompanied his bishop to
Eome, and thence on a mission among the Albigenses.
He wandered as a mendicant through the most heretical
districts of Languedoc for three years (1205-8) before
the outbreak of war, holding religious discussions with
leading heretics. But amid the clash of arms his
activity took a different shape. Communities had
been founded among the Albigenses for the reception
of the daughters of dead or ruined nobles. For the
protection of such and of any others of the gentle sex
who returned to Catholicism, Dominic founded the
monastery of Prouille (1206). This was established
on the lines of houses in other Orders ; and although
he led a life of extreme asceticism, he did not at first
contemplate imposing a rule of collective poverty upon
his Order. Indeed, he received for the use of Prouille
gifts of all kinds in land and movables, and even

2i8 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

increased the possessions by purchase. Towards the
end of the war Dominic established a brotherhood
which should devote itself to preaching with a view
to refuting heretics. In 1215 he appeared at the
Lateran Council, in order to obtain the papal approba
tion of this new Order. Innocent III, while taking
under his protection the monastery of Prouille, desired
Dominic to choose an already existing rule for his new
community. The Dominican legend depicts Innocent
as converted to the recognition of the Order by a
dream, in which he saw the Lateran Church tottering
and upheld by the support of the Spanish saint. But
Innocent died before Dominic had decided with his
followers that they would place themselves under the
rule of the Augustinian Canons; and it was from
Honorius III that the Friars Preachers obtained the
confirmation of their Order. A parallel story is told
of the papal approval of the Franciscans ; but there is
no proof that St. Francis was present at the Council,
nor is it likely that in the face of the decree against
the foundation of new Orders the sanction of the Pope
should have been given to his rule. But the meeting
of the two great founders at Kome in 1216 is an his
torical event of great importance ; for the example of
the Franciscans caused the adoption of the life of
poverty by the Dominicans also.

Immediately after the papal confirmation the Order

began its work. The first followers of Dominic included

. natives of Spain, England, Normandy, and

spread Lorraine, and the Friars Preachers are soon

found in every country of Western and

Central Europe. The nature of the work to which

they set themselves made them from the beginning

THE MENDICANT ORDERS 219

a congregation of intellectual men. Honorius III
conferred on Dominic himself the Mastership of the
Sacred Palace, which gave to him, and even more to
those who succeeded him in the headship of the Order,
not merely the religious instruction of the households
of popes and cardinals, but also the censorship of
books. Paris, the headquarters of the scholastic
theology, and Bologna, the great law school of the
Middle Ages, became at once the chief seats of train
ing. The Dominicans spread so rapidly that at the
death of their founder in 1221 they possessed sixty
houses, which had just been divided into eight pro
vinces. To these four were subsequently added.
The death of Dominic, like his life, has been almost
overwhelmed in the miraculous ; but for whatever
reason, it was not until thirteen years after his death
that he was enrolled among the recognised saints of
the Church, although the honour of canonisation had
been paid to St. Francis eight years earlier and within
two years of his death.

Jealousy between the conventual and the paro
chial clergy had been of long standing : it had
been based upon the exemption of monks p0puiarity
from the jurisdiction of the local Church, of the
The monks had, however, been definitely friars-
warned off themselves taking part in parochial
work. But the friars began with a missionary pur
pose ; and in 1227 Gregory IX, who as Cardinal
Ugolino had been Protector of the Franciscans, con
ferred on both Orders the right not only of preach
ing, but also of hearing confessions and granting abso
lution everywhere. The rules of the Orders forbade
them to preach in a church without the leave of the

220 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

parish priest ; but they ignored this prohibition, set up
their own altars, at which a papal privilege allowed
them to celebrate Mass, and not only superseded the
lazy secular clergy in all the work of the cure of souls,
but deprived them of the fees which were a chief
source of their income. The secular clergy bitterly
resented the presence of the intruders ; but the Pope
favoured the friars and heaped privileges upon them,
since they formed an international body easy to
mobilise for use against the hierarchy, and able to be
used for transmitting and executing papal orders. The
people also welcomed them, because, at first at any
rate, they worked for their daily bread, and were pre
vented by their vow of poverty from seeking endow
ments ; while the peripatetic character of his life made
the friar popular as a confessor who could know
nothing about his penitents.

The characteristic work of the Dominicans as
preachers and teachers rather determined the par-
Domini- ticular form which the struggle should as-
cans and sume between them and the seculars. The
University University of Paris welcomed the Domini-
0 ans' cans on their first arrival ; the new-comers
soon fixed themselves in the Hospital of St. Jacques
(the site of the Jacobin Club of 1789), on University
ground, and many members of the University became
affiliated to their Order. In 1229 the privileges of the
University were violated by the municipality, and,
since the Crown would give no redress, the whole body
of masters and students dispersed themselves among
different provincial towns. In 1231 a bull of Gregory
IX confirmed their privileges and brought them back
to Paris. But during their absence the Dominicans,

THE MENDICANT ORDERS 221

with the approval of the Bishop, admitted scholars to
their house of St. Jacques and appointed their own
teachers ; while several of the most famous secular
teachers took the Dominican habit. Thus after 1231
there were in the University several theological chairs
occupied by Mendicants. The prosperity and aggres
siveness of the friars, and political and doctrinal
differences between them and the seculars, caused
great tension. Not without reason the seculars com
plained that they were likely to be deprived of all the
theological teaching. Matters came to an issue in
1253, when, on the murder of a scholar by the munici
pal officers, the University in accordance with its
privileges proclaimed a cessation or suspension of the
classes. In this act the Mendicants refused to join
without the papal sanction. The University attempted
to expel them from the teaching body, and under the
leadership of William of St. Amour it so far prevailed
at Rome that Innocent IV, for whatever reason, issued
the "terrible" bull Etsi Animarum, by which the
Mendicants were deprived at one blow of all the
privileges which had given them the power of inter
fering in parochial life. But in the legend of the
Order Innocent was prayed to death by the revengeful
friars. Anyhow, his death (1254) saved the situation,
since his successor, Alexander IV, declared unreservedly
for them. The University was forced to receive them,
and to acknowledge their rights of preaching and hear
ing confessions. On the other hand, it was arranged
under Urban IV that the number of theological chairs
to be held by Mendicant teachers, whose representa
tives at the moment were Thomas Aquinas and Bona-
ventura, should be limited to three. But the war

222 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

against the Mendicants continued, and the bullying to
which the University was subjected, especially by
Benedict Gaetani, the papal legate, in 1290, accounts
perhaps for the support given by the University to
Philip IV in his quarrel with Boniface VIII, and for
the political action of the University at a later date.

The spread of heresy and the feeble attempts of the
bishops to use the machinery at their disposal for deal
ing with it, caused the gradual growth of
Friars and ^e svstem known as the Papal Inquisition.
This was feasible, partly because the civil
government, led by Frederick II, were enacting severe
laws against heresy, but chiefly because in the new
Mendicant Orders there were now to be found men of
sufficient knowledge and training to cope with the
difficulty of unmasking heresy. But it is a mistake to
suppose that the inquisitorial work was a perquisite
of the Dominicans. Both Orders alike were employed
by the Papacy in the unsavoury duty, although ulti
mately the Dominicans took the larger share. For
the service of the wretched, to which the Franciscans
primarily devoted themselves, soon necessitated a
study of medicine in order to cope with disease and a
study of theology in order to deal with heresy. If as
a body they never came to represent learning like the
Dominicans, the names of Bonaventura, Eoger Bacon,
and Duns Scotus sufficiently prove that there was no
necessary antagonism between learning and the Fran
ciscan ideal.

The modern and the Protestant world apparently
finds the life of St. Francis as interesting and wonderful
as his contemporaries found it. It seems no exaggera
tion to say that "no human creature since Christ

THE MENDICANT ORDERS 223

has more fully incarnated the ideal of Christianity"
than he. Even the extravagances of himself and
some of his followers, scarcely exaggerated
by the mass of legends which has grown St
up around him and the Order, cannot conceal
the real beauty of his life ; while they bear eloquent
witness not only to the impression which he made on his
own and succeeding generations, but also to the fact of
his attempt to realise the standard set up by Christ for
human imitation. His devotion to the wretched and
the outcast, especially the lepers; his deep humility;
his childlike faith and absolute obedience, were the
outcome of a desire to attain to the simplicity of
Christ and the Apostles. But the essence of his
system lay in the idealisation of poverty as good in
itself and the best of all good things. Poverty was,
indeed, the "corner-stone on which he founded the
Order." But this did not imply sadness, which St.
Francis considered one of the most potent weapons
of the devil. Sociability, cheerfulness, hopefulness
were characteristics of himself and of the Order in its
early days. Here it is impossible to tell the fascinat
ing story of his own life, to describe his own graphic
preaching, or to illustrate his instinctive sympathy
with animal life. But it must be noted that his
passionate love for Christ the Sufferer caused him to
desire to reproduce in detail the last hours of the
Saviour's life on earth, until the ecstasies may have
ended in producing those physical marks of the cruci
fixion upon the body known as the Stigmata. The
evidence is conflicting and not above suspicion, and
the Dominicans always treated the claim with ridicule.
Certainly the Franciscan Order exalted their founder

224 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

with an extravagance which ultimately (1385) ended in
the production of a Book of Conformities, some forty in
number, in which, by implication, the simple friar
becomes a second if not a rival Christ.

It was in 1210 that Francis and the Brotherhood of
Penitents which he had founded at Assisi appeared
in Rome, and obtained from Innocent III a verbal
confirmation of their rule and authority to preach.
This rule seems to have comprised nothing more than
certain passages of Scripture enjoining a life of
poverty. The first disciples of Francis were drawn
from a variety of social classes, and a revelation from
God is said to have decided him and his little com
pany to abandon their first notion of a contemplative
life in favour of one of active service along evangelical
lines. The missionary work began at once, and they
wandered in couples through Italy, finding their way
quickly into France, England, Germany, and all other
European lands.

The future organisation of the Order was deter
mined by a definitive llule sanctioned by Honorius
III in 1223. Francis refused to alter any of the
clauses at the Pope's request, asserting that
Francis- ^e Eule was not his, but Christ's ; whence
it became a tradition of the Order that the
Eule had been divinely inspired. It was strictly
enjoined that the brethren should possess no property,
should receive no money even through a third person,
and that all who were able to labour should do so in
return not for money, but for necessaries for them
selves and their brethren. And as if these plain
directions were not enough, St. Francis in his will
enjoins that the words of the llule are to be understood

THE MENDICANT ORDERS 225

"simply and absolutely, without gloss," and to be
observed to the end.

The organisation aimed at being non-monastic ;
the houses, which should be mere headquarters of the
simplest kind, were placed under guardians
who had neither the title nor the powers t-on
of the monastic abbot, and were grouped
into provinces ; while the provincial ministers were
responsible to the General Minister stationed at
Assisi, who was himself chosen by the General Chapter
of the provincials and guardians called every three
years, and could also be deposed by them. A Cardinal
watched the interests of the Order at Home. The
rapid spread of the Franciscans is shown from the
fact that the first General Chapter in 1221 is said to
have been attended by several thousand members,
while in 1260, when Bonaventura as General re
organised the arrangements, a division was made
into 33 provinces and 3 vicariates which included
in all 182 guardianships. England, for example,
comprised 7 guardianships with 49 houses and 1242
friars.

The Order included other branches than the fully
professed friars. Some time before 1216 a sisterhood
was added in the Order of St. Claire under a noble
maiden of Assisi, who put herself under the guidance
of Francis and received from Pope Innocent for her
self and her sisters the " privilege of poverty." They
observed the Franciscan Eule in all its strictness, and
their founder was canonised in 1255, two years after
her death.

A very distinctive feature of the Franciscans is the
organisation officially known as the Brothers and
Q

226 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Sisters of Penitence, but more popularly described
as the Tertiaries of the Order. The affiliation of

laymen and women to religious Orders was
Tertiaries. ^Q ^Q^ ^.^ But the ^^ Qf ^^ gexeg

who attached themselves by bonds of brotherhood and
in associations for prayer to the great monasteries
were mostly well-born and wealthy, prospective if not
actual patrons. The Franciscan Tertiaries were as
democratic as the Order itself. The papal sanction
was given in 1221. The members were required to
live the ordinary daily life in the world under certain
restrictions. In addition to the obligations of religion
and morality, they were required to dress simply and
to avoid certain ways of amusement, while they were
forbidden to carry weapons except for the defence of
their Church and their land. The Dominicans
possessed a similar organisation under the name of
Militia Jesu Christi, the Soldiery of Christ. In the
case of both Orders this close contact with the laity
irrespective of class was a source of great strength and
influence. Many, from royal personages downwards,
enrolled themselves among the Tertiaries or hoped
to assure an entrance to heaven by assuming the
garb of a friar upon the death-bed.

Since both Orders were founded with a missionary
purpose, it is not surprising to find that at a very early

date they extended' their efforts beyond
Friars as
mission- Europe. No real distinction of sphere

aries can be profitably made ; but perhaps the

to the Dominican work lay chiefly among heretics,

while the Franciscans devoted the greater
attention to the heathen. Certainly St. Francis himself
did not deal with heretics as such. He did, however,

THE MENDICANT ORDERS 227

try to convert the Mohammedans and became for a
while a prisoner in the hands of the Sultan of Egypt.
Both Orders established houses in Palestine and both
Orders were employed in embassies to the Mongols.
The Dominicans brought back the Jacobite Church of
the East into communion with Home, while the Francis
cans won King Haiton of Armenia, who entered their
Order. Stories of martyrdom were frequent. At any
rate, the friars were among the most enterprising of
mediaeval travellers, and were the first to bring large
portions of the Eastern world into contact with the
West.

The story of the Dominican Order in the thirteenth
century is one of continual progress. Tt was devoted
to poverty no less than its companion Order. Chan
But circumstances soon showed that this fr0m
was a principle which in its strictness made original
too great a demand upon human nature. PrinciPle-
Relaxation of the Rules was obtained from more than
one pope ; the popularity of the Orders brought
them great wealth, and land and other property was
held by municipalities and other third parties for
the use of the friars. Their houses and their churches
became as magnificent as those of the monks. But
while this grave departure from the original ideal
gave rise to no qualms among the more worldly and
accommodating Dominicans, it rent asunder the whole
Franciscan Order in a quarrel which forms perhaps
the most interesting and important episode in the
religious history of the Middle Ages.

The conflict began at once after St. Francis' death.
His successor as General of the Order, Elias of Cortona,
desired to supersede the democratic constitution of

228 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

the Order in favour of a despotic rule, and obtained
from Gregory IX a relaxation of the strict
Develop- ruje Q£ p0ver^y . wnile he raised over the
ment of . L J ' .

extreme remains of the founder at Assisi a magni-

views ficent church which the saint would have

among repudiated. The bitter complaints of the
ciscans Franciscans who wished to observe the Eule
in the spirit of their founder obliged the
Pope to depose Elias, who took refuge at the Court of
Frederick IL But the tendency towards relaxation
continued and was favoured by the Papacy. For the
Spirituals — those who clung to the strict Eule and
regarded it as a direct revelation to St. Francis —
by the severity of their practices tended to isolate
themselves from the life around them and so to escape
the discipline of the Church. In addition to this they
became involved in heresy by identifying themselves
with the prophecies attached to the name of Joachim
de Flore. He was the Abbot of a Calabrian monastery,
who founded an Order at the end of the twelfth
century. He depicted the history of mankind as
composed of three periods — the first under the dis
pensation of the Father ending at the birth of Christ ;
the second under the Son, which by various calculations
he determined would end in 1260 ; and the third ruled
by the Holy Ghost, in which the Eucharist, which had
itself superseded the paschal lamb, should give way
to some new means of grace. Joachim also foretold
the rise of a new monastic order which should con
vert the world, and this the Franciscans concluded to
mean themselves. Curiously enough, the Church did
not condemn Joachim for his prophecies : popes even
encouraged him to write.

THE MENDICANT ORDERS 229

In 1254 there appeared in Paris a book entitled
the Introduction to the Everlasting Gospel, a name
taken from a passage of the Eevelation (xiv. 6). We
know it only from the denunciations of its enemies ;
but it was apparently intended to consist of three
undoubted works of Joachim with explanatory glosses
and an introduction. These were the work of Friar
Gerard of Borgo-san-Donnino, who is represented as
having gone beyond the views of the Calabrian
prophet. He asserted that about the year 1200 the
spirit of life had left the Old and New Testaments in
order to pass into the Everlasting Gospel, and that this
new scripture, of which the text was composed of
Joachim's three books, was a new revelation which did
not, as Joachim held, contain the mystical interpreta
tion of the Bible, but actually replaced and effaced
the Law of Christ as that had effaced the Law of
Moses. It is impossible to tell how far the author
represented the views of all the Spirituals. A share
in the composition was ascribed to the Francis
can General John of Parma (1248-57), who rej^e-
sented the purest Franciscan tradition, and was chietiy
responsible for the more extravagant forms of the
Franciscan legend. He was a gentle mystic, and his
belief in the prophetical utterances of the age probably
did not go beyond the actual works of Joachim. But
his sympathy encouraged the extreme Joachites, who
manufactured and passed from hand to hand a large
number of spurious prophetical writings which were
attributed to Joachim.

Moreover, the extravagances of the Spirituals were
no isolated outburst of religious liberty. In 1251
there appeared in France an elderly preacher, known

230 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

as the Hungarian, who, professing a revelation from
the Virgin Mary and preaching a social revolution,
led a band of peasants and rioters through
Popular flie country, until the leader was killed in
tions a scume and his followers were dispersed.

In 1260 Italy was startled by processions
of persons of all classes and ages, stripped to the
waist, who flogged themselves at intervals in penance
for their sins. These movements of the Pasteauroux
and the Flagellants were merely the best known
among many which bore witness to the restlessness
and yearning of the age.

But despite the manifest danger of these movements
the Papacy acted with great caution. In 1255 a
tribunal of three Cardinals at Anagni
action and investigated the charges against Gerard's
its effect. book. Joachim's orthodoxy remained un
questioned ; the Everlasting Gospel was con
demned, but the Bishop of Paris was told not to
annoy the Franciscans. The most important result
w^s that John of Parma was deposed by the General
Chapter acting under the influence of the Conventual
Franciscans, who welcomed the relaxations of the
severe Kule. For their new head was Bonaventura,
himself a mystic ; but the fact that he had taken the
place of their beau ideal, that he distrusted the rule
of absolute poverty as tending to weaken the social
worth of the Franciscan body, and that he was a
recognised leader in the Church — all increased the
alienation of the Spirituals from the Church and
suggested to their minds the idea of schism.

On the other hand, the Conventuals met the austere
intolerance of the extreme party by persecution.

THE MENDICANT ORDERS 231

The most interesting victim of this religious rancour
was Peter John, the son of Olive, a French friar,
whose works were condemned more than
once, although he died quietly in 1298. separation-
He allowed to the Franciscans only the
sustenance necessary for daily life and the furniture
for the celebration of divine service. In his view
the Eoman Church was Babylon, and the Rule of St.
Francis was the law of the Gospel. For those who
held such views there was no place in the Eoman
Church. The Spirituals began to seek relief in a
return to the eremitic life. But the sudden elevation
of a hermit of South Italy to the Papacy in the person
of Celestine V seemed to present to these dreamers the
chance of the accomplishment of the new Gospel.
His hopeless failure and abdication turned their
thoughts more than ever to separation from the
Church. Celestine, who had gathered some of the
extreme Franciscans into a community of his own, is
said to have released them from obedience to the
Franciscan Order. In any case, Boniface VIII not
only secured the ex- Pope, but also attempted to exter
minate his followers. So far the question at issue had
been a disciplinary question which concerned the
Franciscan Order — whether for the Order absolute
poverty was of the essence of the Rule. The time
was at hand when the question would assume a
doctrinal form, and the Church at large would be
called upon to decide whether absolute poverty was
an article of the Christian faith.

CHAPTER XIV
THE CHURCH AND THE HEATHEN

FROM the time of Otto I it was the policy of the
German Kings to Germanise and Christianise the
Hungary nations on their eastern border, as a pre-
and paratory step to including them in the

Empire. Otto had exacted homage from the
rulers of Hungary, Poland, and Bohemia, but under
his successors they broke away ; and although, mean
while, Christianity was accepted by the rulers in all
three countries, Hungary and Poland both established
their independence politically of the German King,
and ecclesiastically of the German Metropolitan of
Mainz or Magdeburg. Henry III reasserted the
political influence in Germany ; but it was to the
interest of the Pope to encourage the independent
attitude of the Churches in Hungary and Poland so
long as they recognised the Roman supremacy. But
even politically Gregory VII told Solomon, King of
Hungary (1074), that Irs kingdom " belongs to the
holy Roman Church, having been formerly offered by
King Stephen to St. Peter, together with every right
and power belonging to him, and devoutly handed
over." A similar claim, of which the basis was much
more doubtful, was made to Poland.

The Czechs in Bohemia were less fortunate. Boleslas
Chrobry, i.e. the Brave, of Poland (992-1025), had

232

THE CHURCH AND THE HEATHEN 233

aspired to rule over an united kingdom of the Northern
Slavs, but had to be content with the in
dependence of his own Polish kingdom.
Bretislas of Bohemia (1037-55) had a similar ambi
tion ; but he could not shake off the German yoke, and
his bishopric of Prague remained a suffragan of the
Metropolitan of Mainz.

North of Bohemia, in the country lying between the
Baltic, the Elbe, and the Oder, Otto had established
a series of marks or border-lands in which

he had built towns, introduced German fl? (

01 rsremen.

colonists, and founded bishoprics which he
had grouped round a new Metropolitan at Magdeburg.
Here for nearly a century and a half the House of
Billung did much to keep under the surging tide of
paganism. It was the ambitions of Adalbert, Arch
bishop of Bremen (1043-72), which for a time caused
a serious heathen reaction in this quarter. He was
the rival of Hanno of Koln for influence at the Court
during Henry IV's minority. As the most northern
German Metropolitan he aspired to set up a patri
archate in Northern Europe. He met with consider
able success in Scandinavia.

The Christianisation of Denmark had been completed
under Cnut, who also ruled over England (1014-35).
Norway was also being rapidly converted ;

but the forcible methods of King Olaf,

0 . ; navia.

who afterwards became the patron saint of

his country, roused discontent. Cnut added Norway
to his dominions, and was anxious to make his realm
ecclesiastically independent. He established three
bishoprics in Denmark, but did not get his own metro
politan, and his empire fell asunder at his death.

Scandi-

234 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Adalbert made a close alliance with Swein of Denmark,
and thus kept the Danish Church dependent. Harold
Hardrada struggled against Adalbert's attempts to
assert his power in Norway. Sweden had accepted
Christianity under Olaf Stotkonung, i.e. the Lap-King,
who died in 1024 But until towards the end of the
eleventh century heathenism continued to maintain
itself, and the difficulties of the Christian party were
considerably increased by the assertive policy of
Bremen. Adalbert's schemes were wide-reaching. He
sent bishops to the Orkneys, to Iceland, and even to
Greenland, of which the last two lands had been con
verted by missionaries from Norway and ultimately
became subject to the Metropolitan of Norway.

But the real mischief of Adalbert's ambitious
schemes was apparent east of the Elbe. He founded
the bishopric of Hamburg, and held it in
Wends. addition to Bremen. He sent bishops to
Eatzeburg and Mecklenburg across the Elbe. He
encouraged Henry TV's schemes against the Saxons in
order to diminish the power of the House of Bilking,
who were his rivals in that quarter. The various
tribes of the Wends — Wagrians, Obotrites, Wiltzes —
had been drawn together into one kingdom under
Gottschalk (1047-66), himself a Christian, who
founded churches and monasteries, and has been
likened to Oswald of Northumbria in that he inter
preted the missionaries' sermons to his heathen sub
jects. This dominion had been established under the
protection of the Saxon dukes. But Henry IVs
quarrels with Saxony distracted the attention of the
Billungs and their followers; and Gottschalk's death
was followed by a heathen reaction in which, together

THE CHURCH AND THE HEATHEN 235

with the extirpation of other marks of Christianity,
the bishoprics were destroyed, and among them Adal
bert's own foundation of Hamburg. This was the
beginning of the end. Adalbert's successor had to be
content with Bremen alone. Moreover, in the investi
ture struggle he was loyal to Henry IV; and since
Eric of Denmark declared for the Pope, Urban II
made the Danish prelate of Lund the Metropolitan of
the North (1103). This arrangement caused discon
tent in the two other Scandinavian kingdoms, and
ultimately Eugenius III sent Cardinal Breakspear, the
future Hadrian IV, on a mission which resulted in the
establishment of Nidaros or Drontheim as the see of
a primate for Norway, and of Upsala in a similar
capacity for Sweden. It may be mentioned in con
nection with this point that Finland owed its conver
sion to Sweden very shortly afterwards, though the
Swedish attempts in Esthonia failed.

Meanwhile among the Wends Gottschalk's son
revived his father's authority and contact with
German civilisation ; but after 1131 the

Wendish kingdom fell to pieces, and from Their final

conversion,
that moment we can mark the steady

advance of German power to the Oder. The Billung
line of Saxon dukes had become extinct in 1106, and
Henry V had given the ducal name to Lothair, who
succeeded him as Emperor, and who as Duke aimed at
building up a strong dominion in north-eastern Ger
many. As Emperor he took up the civilising role of
Otto the Great and encouraged the Germanisation of
the Slavs. The actual work was done by his chief
adviser Norbert, whom he had almost forced to be
come Archbishop of Magdeburg. He acted in con-

236 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

junction with Albert the Bear, a descendant in the
female line of the Billung dukes and Margrave of the
Northmark, who himself founded bishoprics among his
immediate neighbours the Wiltzes. Albert's soldiers
prepared the way for Norbert's Premonstratensian
canons, and bishoprics were founded with so little
regard for division of territory, even in Poland and
Pomerania, that both Gnesen and Lund found them
selves for a time subordinated to Magdeburg. Two
names are especially associated with the conversion of
the Wends. In 1121, under the patronage of Lothair
who was not yet Emperor, Yicelin began his work
among the Wagrians, and in 1149 he became their
Bishop with his see at Oldenburg. He died in 1154.
It was under the auspices of Henry the Lion, now
Duke of Saxony, that Berno preached to the Obotrites,
converting the Wendish Prince and becoming Bishop
of Mecklenburg. The gradual advance of German
colonisation had weakened the Wendish resistance and
prepared the way for this restoration of Christianity.
Henry the Lion finished the work. In alliance with
Waldemar II of Denmark he repeated with greater
completeness the work of founding bishoprics, estab
lishing houses of Premonstratensians, whose missionary
activity was now shared by the Cistercians, building
towns and introducing colonists, until the whole coun
try between the Northmark and the Baltic was in
cluded in his Saxon duchy.

The fall of Henry the Lion was not followed by any

anti-German reaction ; and meanwhile the work of

conversion had been going forward among

the Slavs beyond the Oder. The first

attempts of the Poles to influence their troublesome

THE CHURCH AND THE HEATHEN

237

Pomeranian neighbours failed. The ultimate success
of a mission was due to a German. Otto, a native of
Suabia, began as a schoolmaster in Poland. From
chaplain to the Polish Prince the Emperor Henry V
made him Bishop of Bamberg (1102) ; and, when
Boleslas III had subdued part of Pomerania and found
his bishops unwilling to attempt its conversion, he
offered the task to Otto of Bamberg who, although an
old man, undertook it with the consent of the Pope
and the Emperor. He paid two visits — in 1124 and
1128 — both to Western Pomerania, and established
the bishopric of Wollin. The conversion was naturally
imperfect, but the country never relapsed. The fierce
islanders of Eiigen could not then be touched, but
ultimately gave way in 1168 before the combined
secular and spiritual weapons of the Danish rulers.

From the middle of the twelfth century the cities of
Bremen and Liibeck had established trading con
nections with Livonia. Following in the
wake of the traders (1186) an Augustinian
canon, Meinhard by name, preached Christianity under
permission from a neighbouring Eussian Prince, and
he was made Bishop of Yrkill, on the Diina, under
the Archbishop of Bremen. His successors, however,
impatient at failure, organised a crusade from Ger
many. The third Bishop, Albert, took the recently
founded trading centre Riga as his bishopric, and
organised the knightly Order of the Brethren of the
•Sword (1202), to be under the control of the Bishop.
He aimed at an united spiritual and temporal power
in his own land, and in 1207 he accepted Livonia as a
fief from King Philip of Suabia. But Albert's chief
foes were those of his own household. The Knights

238 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

of the Sword strove for independence and tried to
establish themselves in Esthonia. Albert appointed
his own nominee as Bishop there, who should act as a
check upon the knights. Innocent III, however, gave
the ecclesiastical supervision of Esthonia to the Danish
Archbishop of Lund. But when the Danish King-
attempted to follow this up by asserting a political
authority his forces were defeated by the Esthonians.
German influences prevailed; Albert took Dorpat,
made it the seat of a new bishopric, and organised the
whole country ecclesiastically until his death in 1229;
although it was not until 1255 that Kiga became the
Metropolitan of the Livonian and Prussian Churches.
The Order of the Sword ceased to resist, and in 1237 it
merged itself in the Teutonic Order in Prussia. The
conversion of Livonia was followed by that of Sem-
gallen in 1218, and finally the inhabitants of Courland,
threatened on all sides, accepted baptism (1230) as the
only alternative to slavery.

Between these lands and Pomerania lay the savage
Prussians. -Among them Bishop Adalbert of Prague,
the Apostle of Bohemia, had ended his
life by martyrdom in 997 : and subsequent
efforts, whether of bold missionaries or of victorious
Polish Kings, equally failed. At length in 1207 some
Cistercian monks from Poland obtained leave from
Innocent III to make another attempt on Prussia.
They were well received, and Christian of Oliva was
consecrated bishop. But the rulers of neighbouring
lands, notably Conrad, Duke of Masovia, which lay
just to the south, schemed to turn these converted
Prussians into political dependents, and Christian
welcomed their armies as a means of hastening on the

THE CHURCH AND THE HEATHEN 239

nominal change of religion. A crusade was set on
foot ; but the natives resisted with success, and began
to destroy the monasteries established in the country.
Consequently, in 1226 Duke Conrad invited some
members of the Teutonic Order to help him. In 1230
came a large number of the knights, and a devastat
ing war which lasted for more than fifty years (1230-
83), ended in the nominal conversion of the remain
ing inhabitants.

During the war German colonists were placed upon
the conquered lands and towns were founded — Ko'nigs-
berg (1256) in honour of Ottocar of Bohemia, who lent
his aid for a time; Marienburg (1270), which became
the headquarters of the Teutonic Order. Indeed, it
was the Order which reaped the benefit of the con
quest. In 1243 Innocent IV divided the country
ecclesiastically into four bishoprics, which were placed
afterwards under the Livonian Archbishop of Eiga as
their Metropolitan. One of these four — Ermland — freed
itself both ecclesiastically from Eiga and politically
from the Teutonic knights, and placed itself directly
under the Pope. The others were less fortunate, and
the Order successfully resisted the joint efforts of the
bishops and the Pope to place them in a similar position.

The spread of Christianity among the tribes upon
the Baltic coast, imperfect though it was, led to per
manent results. In the second great field of

.... -, . . , . . n . , Missions

missionary activity during this period the in Asia

wcrk of the Roman Church was more
interesting than effective. It is difficult now to
realise that in the fourteenth century emissaries from
Rome had nominally organised large districts of Asia
as part of the Christian Church. Nor was theirs the

24o THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

first announcement of the Gospel in those regions.
Christians of the Nestorian or Chaldean faith could
claim adherents from Persia across the Continent to
the heart of China, and had even converted several
Turkish tribes.

About the middle of the twelfth century the report
reached Europe of the conversion as early as the
beginning of the eleventh century of the
Prester Khan of the Karait, a Tartar tribe, lying
south of Lake Baikal, with its headquar
ters at Karakorum. The Syrian Christians, through
whom the report came, misinterpreted his Mongolian
title Ung-Khan as denoting a priest-king named
John, and it was this distant Eastern potentate who
came to be known in Europe as Presbyter Johannes or
Prester John. It was the Syrian Christians who, in
their desire to outvie the boastful arrogance of their
Latin neighbours, together with many apochryphal
tales invented a letter from this dignitary to some of
the sovereigns of Europe, including the Pope. Equally
fabulous seems to have been the report to Alexander
III of a physician named Philip, that this shadowy
personage desired reception into the Eoman com
munion; for Alexander's answer apparently met
with no response. In 1202 the tribe of the Karaites
became the vassals of the great conqueror Ghenghiz
Khan, who is said to have added to his wives the
Christian daughter of the last Ung-Khan of the tribe.
The kingdom of Prester John, however, lived on
in fables, of which the best known relates how the
Holy Grail, the cup consecrated by Christ at the Last
Supper, had withdrawn from the sinful West and
found refuge in this distant land.

THE CHURCH AND THE HEATHEN 241

The conquests of Ghenghiz opened an entirely new
chapter in the relations between Western Europe
and the Mongols. Ghenghiz himself before
his death in 1227 overran China, T^ ™°n'
Central Asia, Persia, and penetrated as lurope.
far west as the Dnieper. His successors
entered Eussia in 1237, conquered the Kipchaks about
the Caspian Sea and pursued their fugitives into
Central Europe, defeated the Poles, ravaged Saxony
and Silesia, and overran Hungary (1240). It was
fortunate for Europe that the death of the Great
Khan in 1242 caused the Mongol leaders to withdraw
their forces back to the East. The chief result of this
Mongolian raid was that 10,000 Kharizmians fleeing
before the Tartars entered the Egyptian service, and
in 1244 captured Jerusalem for the Egyptian Sultan.
At the time of the Tartar invasion the Papacy was
vacant; but in 1243 Innocent IV was elected, and in
1245 at the Council of Lyons a crusade was mooted.
But the renewal of the papal quarrel with Frederick
II so far added to the general indifference that no
crusade was possible. Louis IX of France alone
forced his nobles to take the vow and fulfil it.

To Innocent, however, is due the credit of inaugurat
ing a new method of approaching Eastern nations. It
was well known that Christians were to be
found in the Mongolian armies; and the In™cent

tolerant treatment accorded to them was IV'S mis"

-. . sions.

construed as a favourable feeling towards

Christianity itself. The truth was that for the pur
pose of reconciling all nations to their rule the
Mongols tolerated all religions among their subjects.
Already Mohammedanism and Buddhism competed

242 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

with the Christianity of the Nestorians for the favour
of the Tartar Princes. Their own religion has been
characterised as a vague monotheism. Its lack of
definiteness led the early missionaries in their enthusi
asm to hope that its followers were in a state of mind
to be easily persuaded of the superior claims of the
Catholic faith. Anyhow there existed for some time
quite an expectation in the West that the whole of
Asia would one day acknowledge the spiritual rule of
Kome. Pope Innocent, therefore, fully convinced of
the friendly disposition of the Mongols, despatched
two embassies to them. One was composed of John
of Piano Carpini, a friend of St. Francis of Assisi, and
three other Franciscans. From the Khan of Kip-
chak at the Golden Horde on the Volga they were
passed on to the Great Khan, who ruled now from the
old capital of the Karaites at Karakorum. Here they
were received in friendly fashion by the newly elected
Kuyuk, grandson of Ghenghiz. The other embassy,
composed of four Dominicans, visited Persia ; but they
showed so much want of tact that their lives were
endangered, and they returned with letters written in
the name of the Great Khan, in which all princes of
the earth were bidden to come and pay their homage.
Immediately, then, these visits were without result ;
but they had opened the way for further communica
tions.

It was known in the East that Louis IX of France
was preparing to set out on crusade ; so that when he

halted with his army in Cyprus he was
Louis IX's visjked by an envoy purporting to come

from Kuyuk and seeking an alliance
against Mohammedans. Louis sent two Dominicans

THE CHURCH AND THE HEATHEN 243

to a Christian monarch, as he supposed, armed with
suitable presents ; but Kuyuk was dead, and the
presents were treated as tribute. Perhaps in con
sequence of this failure Louis turned his army against
Egypt instead of Syria ; but the envoys returned to
find him after the disastrous Egyptian campaign in
Palestine, where he spent four years. In consequence
of their report he sent to Kuyuk's successor, Mangu, a
Franciscan, William of Buysbroek or Bubruquis. It
was afterwards reported to the Pope that Mangu and
another Tartar Prince had been converted. Such
fabricated stories were only too common. Bubruquis
has left us much information about the Tartar Court ;
but his public discussions before the Khan with
Nestorians, Mohammedans and Buddhists led to no
practical result.

On the death of Mangu (1257) his dominions were
divided between his two brothers. Hulagu, who be
came Khan of Persia, overthrew the Caliph- Tartars
ate of Bagdad ; but the further progress and
of the Mongol armies was stayed by the Moham-
Mohammedan General, Bibars who, as a '
consequence of his success, shortly became Sultan of
Egypt. Henceforth the Mongols of Persia constantly
sought an alliance with the Christians of the West
against the Mohammedans as represented by Egypt,
the one Mohammedan power which as yet had opposed
them with success. Thus in 1274, at the second
Council of Lyons, two Persian envoys invited the co
operation of Christendom, and, perhaps by way of
raising the expectations of such contact, submitted to
baptism ; but the hostility of Greeks and Latins and
the selfish projects of Charles of Anjou prevented any

244 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

response. The long anarchy in Egypt which followed
the death of Bibars (1277) was too good an opportunity
for the Mongols to lose ; but Kelaun secured the
power in Egypt in time to repeat the exploits of
Bibars. But the remaining Latin princes in Syria
had veered between the Mohammedans and Mongols,
and Kelaun determined to complete the destruction
of such an alien element. By 1291 the kingdom
of Jerusalem was wiped out. Europe watched with
comparative indifference the easy triumph of Mo
hammedanism. Not so the Mongols. Arghun, who
became Khan of Persia in 1284, made three definite
efforts towards an alliance which would mean a new
crusade. In 1287 the Vicar of the Nestorian Patriarch
of China brought letters to the Pope and visited the
Kings of France and England; in 1289 a Genoese
resident in Persia brought the news of Arghun's in
tended invasion of Syria and his professed desire for
baptism ; in 1290, to a yet more pressing call the Pope
returned a somewhat hopeful answer. But it was too
late. Arghun died in 1291, and although his eldest
son, Ghazan, ultimately took up his father's projects
and even decisively defeated the Egyptian army in
Syria (1299), his losses forced him to return to Persia.
It was reported that he had died a Christian and in
the Franciscan habit, but there is no proof of this.

The more purely missionary efforts which were being

made contemporaneously with the events just related,

were directed chiefly to China which, on

mtatas the death °f ManSu» had fallen t0 tllG lot
of Kublai Khan. The opportunity for these

was opened out by the relations already established
with the Mongolians on other grounds. The first mis-

THE CHURCH AND THE HEATHEN 245

sionaries found Nestorian Christians who were sub
jects and others who were captives acting as clerks,
artisans and merchants at the Tartar Court. Besides
these, others in search of fortune or adventure occasion
ally found their way from the West. Such were two
Venetians, Nicole and Maffeo Polo, who, having traded
with the Tartars of the Golden Horde (1260), were led
by force of circumstances further into Asia, until they
reached China. Kublai sent them back to Europe
with a request to the Pope for at least a hundred well-
instructed persons who should initiate his subjects
in Western lore. They returned practically alone ;
but Nicole's son Marco accompanied them. They
remained for seventeen years in the service of the
Khan (1275-93), and Marco Polo lias left a very cele
brated account of his travels. This establishment of
friendly feeling was followed by a definite mission of
Franciscans, headed by John of Monte Corvino, who had
already organised the missions in Persia. He was wel
comed by Kubla'i's successor, and was allowed to preach.
Despite the violent opposition of the Nestorians lie
made converts and built churches. In 1307 he be
came the first Archbishop of Cambaluc or Peking, while
subsequently no less than ten suffragans were grouped
under him. Scarcely less remarkable was the organ
isation in Persia of the archbishopric at Sultanyeh
and six subordinate sees. But this development be
longs almost entirely to the following period.

CHAPTER XV
GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. II

bull of summons to the Lateran Council of
J. 1215 mentions as the two great desires of the
H . Pope's heart- the recovery of the Holy Land
HI and the reformation of the Church Uni-

(1216-27) versal; and it is made clear that the various
and the measures of reform to be placed before the
General Council are intended to bring
Christian princes and peoples, both clergy and laity,
into the frame of mind for sending aid to Palestine.
Moreover, at the Council it was agreed that an ex
pedition should start from Brindisi or Messina on
June 1, 1216. In any case Innocent's death would
probably have caused a delay. His successor, Honoring
III, was a noble Koman of mild and gentle character,
who, during Frederick's youth, had been his tutor and
the guardian of the kingdom of Sicily. No less than his
predecessor was he bent on carrying out the project of
a crusade, and immediately on his accession he appealed
to all Christians in the West to lay aside their enmities,
and refused to allow any excuse for not setting out to
those who had taken the crusading vow. But the
apathy was general, and since Frederick could not
leave Europe so long as his rival Otto was alive, the
expedition was robbed of its natural chief. A crusade,
however, did go, and in accordance with the plan

246

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. II 247

agreed upon at the Council the attack was directed
against Egypt. Damietta was taken (1219), but then
a long pause was made in the expectation of Frederick's
coming. In 1221 arrived a German contingent
under Frederick's friend Herman von Salza; but the
crusaders were now defeated and could only secure
their retreat by the surrender of Damietta.

For despite the death of Otto in 1218 Frederick had
been detained in Europe. Before leaving he was

anxious to secure the election of his son

TT TT- P /-i mi • i Frederick

Henry as King of Germany. This he n

did not accomplish until 1220, and then
only by the surrender to the German princes of many
important royal rights, especially the right of spoils.
It was necessary also to reassure the Pope, who feared
the continued union of Sicily and Germany. Honor-
ius accepted Frederick's assurances and even crowned
him Emperor in St. Peter's (November, 1220); and
Frederick again took the cross. But he found that the
royal rights in the kingdom of Sicily had been much
impoverished during his minority and his subsequent
absence. His efforts to recover them caused a further
delay in his promised crusade and brought him into
conflict with papal claims. Honoring was very long-
suffering. In 1223 he agreed to a postponement of
two years on condition that Frederick should affiance
himself to lolanthe, the daughter and heiress of John

* o

of Brienne, who in right of his wife bore the title of
King of Jerusalem. In 1225 Frederick not only
married lolanthe but followed the example of his
father-in-law by taking the title of King of Jerusalem
in right of his wife, who since her mother's death was
lawfully Queen. On the strength of this act of self-

248 TME CHUkCH AND THE EMPIRE

committal he obtained another delay of two years
until August, 1227, agreeing that if he did not then
start he should be ipso facto excommunicate.

But lapse of time did not make it any easier for him
to leave his dominions. In 1226 the Lombards, fearing
that Frederick's success in the recovery of royal rights
in the South was merely a prelude to his renewal of
imperial claims in North Italy, revived the old Lorn-
bard League. Frederick put them to the ban of the
Empire. But the Pope had approved the League ; and
when both parties agreed to refer the quarrel to him*
he naturally proposed an arrangement favourable to
the Lombards. A breach with Frederick was only-
averted by Honorius' death (March, 1227).

His successor was Gregory IX, a relative of Innocent

III who had made him a Cardinal and employed him

on important embassies. He has been des-

egory cribed as a man " of strong passions and an
iron strength of will." He is said to have
been more than eighty years of age at his accession ;
but he was vigorous and alert in mind and body, a man
of blameless life and ardent faith, eloquent and learned,
especially in law. Hitherto he had been friendly to
Frederick. But he held views even more advanced than
those of Innocent regarding the power of the Papacy.
Hence, while to Honorius the Crusade was the end
towards which his whole policy was directed, Gregory
only desired to use the crusading vow taken by
temporal rulers as a weapon for the assertion of the
papal power against them. It was Gregory who as
Cardinal Ugolino had placed the cross in Frederick's-
hand at his imperial coronation. As Pope he now
demanded the immediate fulfilment of Frederick '&

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. II 249

promise ; and despite his reluctance to go and the
outbreak of an epidemic in his army, Frederick
embarked at Brindisi on September 18th, 1227.
But three days later under the plea of sickness
he turned back. Gregory never hesitated. On
September 29th in the cathedral of Anagni in
fulfilment of the terms agreed to by Frederick him
self, he excommunicated the Emperor with the accom
paniment of every kind of impressive ceremonial.
There seems little doubt that the cause of Gregory's
determination to exact from Frederick the utmost
penalty for his failure to carry out the agreement
lay in Frederick's Italian policy. Frederick had
postponed the crusade in order to build up a power in
Sicily, which he was now trying to extend to North
Italy by crushing the Lombard League. This was a
fatal bar to the policy of a papal state in Central
Italy, inaugurated by Innocent 111. No less imminent
was the danger from the success of Frederick in
baffling the papal schemes for the separation of the
Sicilian and German crowns. It was becoming
apparent that only by the extinction of the Hohen-
staufen line could the papal policy be carried out.

The age of the Crusades was indeed over. Frederick,
in justifying his action to the princes of Europe,
pointed to the conduct of the Papacy to

Kaymond of Toulouse and John of Eng- Frederick>s
i j . , crusade,

land as a warning to secular princes, and

attributed the papal hostility not to a desire for the
promotion of a crusade, but to greed. Gregory's con
duct seemed to bear out this interpretation of his
motives. Despite the excommunication Frederick
once more set sail in June, 1228. But an expedition

2 $6 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

under such circumstances was an independent act
subversive of all ecclesiastical.discipline. Consequently,
instead of his departure being the signal for the
removal of his sentence, Frederick was followed to
Palestine by the anathema of the Church. The Pope
having got Frederick into his power intended to keep
him there. Thus when Frederick reached Palestine
the Templars and Hospitallers held aloof, while the
Mendicant Orders preached against him ; and when,
in accordance with his treaty with the Sultan, he
entered Jerusalem, the city and all the holy places
were laid under an interdict. But Frederick was not
daunted. Since no ecclesiastic would crown him he
took the crown himself off the altar and placed it on
his head. For as in the case of the Pope, so with
Frederick, it was from no religious motives that he
persisted in the crusade. It was a purely political
expedition. He put the Pope in the wrong in the
eyes of European princes by refuting the charge of
the Koman supporters that he never seriously intended
to go on crusade. But, more important still, his own
attitude and act were a manifesto on behalf of the
Empire against the claim put forward by Innocent III
for the Papacy as the head and leader of Christendom.
But the very means of his success added to his enor
mities. It was nothing that he had gained for
Christendom without fighting more than had been
won since the First Crusade. For he had dealt with
the Sultan of Egypt as an equal, and in the treaty
which gave him Jerusalem and several other places
he had undertaken to enforce certain articles favour
able to the Sultan, even in the event of opposition from
Christian Princes. Thus it is not astonishing that while

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. II 251

Frederick was winning this success in Palestine Pope
Gregory was using papal emissaries, in the shape of
the lately founded Orders of mendicant friars, to
denounce the Emperor in every country of Western
Europe, and even let loose on Frederick's Sicilian
territories an army of so-called crusaders under John
of Brienne, who resented the adoption of the title of
King of Jerusalem by his imperial son-in-law. This
monstrous attack upon a successful crusader turned
the sentiment of Europe against the Pope. Frederick
returned in June, 1229, and by the help of his Saracen
troops drove out the invaders. In return for peace
with the Church Frederick was willing to give to the
Pope almost extravagantly generous terms, and a
treaty was arranged at San Germauo in August, 1230,
by which Frederick surrendered his claim over the
Sicilian clergy and obtained in return the removal of
the excommunication, which carried with it a tacit
recognition of his crusade.

It was nine years before the struggle was openly
renewed. There were many causes of difference in the
interval, but Pope and Emperor found two

occasions for common action. In the first Thf Pope

, . . , . . and Roman

place Gregory imitated the policy of his ciaimSi

great relative in using every method for
extending the immediate suzerainty of the Pope over
the towns and barons within the Koman duchy. But
despite Innocent's civic victory the Koman Commune
desired to place themselves on a level with the other
free cities of Italy such as Milan and Florence, and
claimed jurisdiction over the whole district. Twice
already had the Romans expelled Gregory and recalled
him before they demanded from him, in 1234, the sur-

252 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

render of sovereign rights within the duchy. Gregory
fled and appealed for help to Christendom ; and
Frederick supplied the troops which restored the Pope
for the third time and forced the Eomans to withdraw
their claims.

Pope and Emperor also pursued a common policy

against heretics. The Lateran Council of 1215 issued

a series of ordinances against heretics, mak-

edenck ing it the duty of the secular power to
and heresy. ° J

punish them under pain of excommuni
cation. But each country and even each city issued
its own regulations for giving effect to the injunctions
of the Council. Only gradually in the second quarter
of the century was the old episcopal jurisdiction over
heresy superseded by the establishment of the papal
Inquisition. Meanwhile, in 1220 at his imperial
coronation Frederick put out in his own name an edict
for the secular suppression of heresy, which had been
dictated to him from Rome. In 1231 this edict was
enforced in Rome itself when Gregory IX established
the Inquisition there and made it the business of the
Senator, the head of the civic commune, to execute
the sentences of the Inquisitor. The regulations now
drawn up for the conduct of the secular power in such
cases, were sent over all Europe with orders for their
enforcement. In the same year Frederick renewed
his attack upon heretics in his Sicilian Constitutions,
and in the course of the next eight years he issued " a
complete and pitiless code " of " fiendish legislation,"
placing the whole of the machinery of state at the dis
posal of the Inquisitor. But Gregory was not deceived.
Rather he complained that Frederick's orthodoxy took
the form of the punishment of his personal enemies,

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. II 253

of whom many were good Catholics. Certainly
Frederick's anti-heretical edicts were not prompted by
religious zeal. He was more detached than any
ruler of the Middle Ages from the current ideas of the
time. He seems to have been, if it is possible, utterly
non-religious.

Moreover, his regulations against heresy were part
of his general code of law for the government of the
diverse races in his kingdom of Sicily, and
in this code issued in 1231, although their
temporalities were secured to the clergy, and pope
as a class they were subjected to taxation
and to the secular jurisdiction of the State. Pope
Gregory's counter-blast to this policy is contained in
his addition to the Canon Law known as his Decretals
(1234). By these the clergy were declared entirely
exempt from secular taxation and jurisdiction, on the
ground that all secular law was subordinate to the law
of the Church, and that the duty of the secular power
was to carry out the commands of the Church.

Thus each side was maintaining its pretensions until
the opportunity should come for asserting them. This
was found for the second time in the affairs Tne
of Lombardy. The Lombard cities still second
feared the designs of Frederick. In 1235 contest.
they renewed their League. Again the Pope was
accepted as arbiter, and again Frederick complained
witli justice that he was too favourable to the cities.
In 1236 Frederick declared war against the League.
His pretext of punishing heresy which was rife in
Lombardy, deceived no one; while his declaration,
when Gregory desired him to turn his arms to Pales
tine, that " Italy is my heritage, and this the whole

254 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

world knows," confirmed the worst apprehensions of
the Pope and the Lombards. Moreover, Frederick's
first move was entirely successful, and in 1237 he com
pletely defeated the Lombards in battle at Corte Nuova,
took the Milanese standard and sent it to be placed in
the Capitol at Eome. The subjugation of the Lom
bards would mean the union of Italy under Frederick's
rule, while, since the acquisition of Sicily by the
Hohenstaufen, the Lombards remained the only allies
of the Papacy in Italy. Gregory therefore declared
himself, and in March, 1239, he excommunicated
Frederick and released his subjects from their alle
giance. Frederick issued a manifesto addressed to all
Princes, in which he appealed to a General Council.
Gregory's counter-manifesto was couched in terms of
the most unrestrained violence. Frederick was de
scribed as the beast in the Apocalypse (Eev. xiii. 1),
which had upon its seven heads the name of blas
phemy ; and he is charged with saying that the world
had been deceived by three impostors, Christ, Moses
and Mohammed, of whom two had died in glory,
while the third had been crucified.

This is not the place to investigate the interesting
question of the truth of Gregory's charges against
Frederick. The French sent a mission to Frederick to
enquire as to the accusation of infidelity, and he thanked
them warmly and denied it. The Duke of Bavaria
told Gregory in 1241 that most of the German princes
and prelates would shortly go to Frederick's aid. In
fact, the papal exactions had caused intense disgust
over all Western Europe, and no prince would allow
himself to be set up as a rival to Frederick. Yet the
papal condemnation caused many to hold aloof from

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. II 255

the Emperor who, moreover, did not venture to set up
an antipope. He contented himself with persecuting
the friars who were the most active emissaries of
Kome, and with confiscating the estates of the Church,
until it was said at the papal Court that he had sworn
to reduce the Pope to beggary and to stable his horses
in St. Peter's.

Frederick had suggested the calling of a council,
and Gregory summoned one to Borne. But Frederick
had begun to reduce the Boman duchy and, innocent
anyhow, he did not want a council which IV
would merely register the papal decrees. (I243-54)-
So when a number of bishops ignored his prohibition
and met at Genoa in order to embark for Borne, the
fleets of Pisa and Sicily met them off the island of
Meloria and captured nearly the whole of the prospec
tive Council. Frederick's attack upon Borne itself was
only averted by the death of Gregory IX on August 21,
1241. The new Pope died seventeen days after his
election, and then, for some reason, the Papacy was
vacant for two years. The delay was attributed to
Frederick; and the French actually declared to the
Cardinals that if a new Pope were not chosen quickly,
the French nation, in accordance with an ancient
privilege given by Pope Clement to St. Denys, would
set up a Pope of their own. At length, in June, 1243,
Innocent IV was chosen ; and Frederick, alluding to
previous dealings with him, remarked that by this
election he had lost a friend among the Cardinals, since
no Pope could be a Ghibelline.

The truth of this was soon apparent. Innocent de
manded the restoration of all Frederick's conquests in
the States of the Church in return for peace ; and

256 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

although nothing was said about the time of the
removal of the excommunication, Frederick accepted
the terms. But when Frederick saw that there was
no intention of absolving him, he refused to surrender
the papal cities and thereby technically broke the
treaty. Innocent intended to get a treaty which
would carry an acknowledgment of the Emperor's
failure, and then to reduce him to submission by a
council held outside Italy. Negotiations continued
until Innocent fled to Lyons, a practically independent
city. France, England and Aragon, however, declined
to receive him, and Innocent exclaimed that he must
come to terms with the Emperor, " for when the dragon
has been crushed or pacified, the little serpents will be
quickly trodden underfoot."

At Lyons there met in 1245 the General Council to
which Frederick had appealed, and which is reckoned

by the Komans as the thirteenth of the
First (Ecumenical Assemblies of the Church ;

L ons ^^ archbishops and bishops, besides

numerous lesser clergy, were present.
Frederick was represented by a celebrated jurist,
Thaddeus of Suessa, who pleaded the Emperor's cause.
Several points were proposed for settlement ; but all
other matters were brushed aside, and Innocent hurried
on the third and last session of the Council in which
Frederick was declared deposed, his subjects were re
leased from their allegiance, the German princes told to
elect another King, and Sicily kept for disposal by the
Pope in consultation with the Cardinals. All remon
strances were unavailing ; even Louis IX quite failed to
move the Pope. Frederick realised that it was a fight to
a finish, and in a protest he called upon the other princes

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. II 257

of the West to help him in depriving the clergy of the
wealth which had choked their spiritual power. But
this was interpreted as a design for the destruction of
the Church, and despite the testimonies to Frederick's
orthodoxy published by the Archbishop of Palermo,
the papal charge of heresy against him gained wide
belief. Innocent in his reply asserted among other
things that the Pope was the Legate of Christ who had
entrusted him with full powers to act as judge over
the earth, and that the Emperor should take an oath
of subjection to the Pope who, as overlord, gave him
his title and crown. Thus the claims now made on
behalf of the Papacy left no room for a belief in the
balance of spiritual and secular authority.

Both sides resorted to every kind of expedient.
Frederick, " aiming especially at the friars, ordered
that any who spread or even received the

papal letters of condemnation against him ^ea. .

Frederick.
should be burnt ! Innocent declared an

actual crusade against Frederick, stirred up revolt in
Sicily, and at length succeeded in raising a rival King
in Germany. Henry Easpe, Landgrave of Thuringia,
owed his election (12-46) almost exclusively to the
great prelates of the Ehine ; but he died the next
year and, although another King was put forward
in the person of William Count of Holland, a young
man of twenty, he made no progress so long as
Frederick lived. Moreover, in Italy Frederick's cause
was gaining ground, until the revolt of Parma and the
failure of his efforts to retake it ended in the complete
rout of his forces (1248). In 1250 Frederick himself
died directing by his will that all the rights of the
Church should be restored in so far as they did not
s

258 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

conflict with the claims of the Empire, provided that
the Church herself should recognise the imperial
rights. Almost to the last Frederick had been quite
willing to be reconciled to the Church, and he died
unsubdued. But the Papacy was fighting for that
supremacy which experience had shown to be the
condition of its existence. Not that any Emperor
ever cherished the thought of destroying the Papacy
any more than the Pope dreamed of annihilating the
Empire. Many passages have been cited to prove that
Frederick contemplated the establishment of a Church
of his own in Sicily. Here perhaps he did not aim at
anything more than Henry VIII afterwards accom
plished in England or the barons under Louis IX, as we
have seen, threatened on one occasion in France. The
language used by his followers was extrava'gant, even
blasphemous, and he did not discourage it. How far he
ever aimed as setting himself up as Pope is more
doubtful. But in any case, and however much we may
be inclined to sympathise with him, it must be allowed
that there was abundant reason for the hostility of the
Pope.

And the reasons which caused the Papacy to hound
Frederick to death, also determined it not to rest until
it had exterminated the whole "viper's
(Td t brood." Innocent IY expressed the most
for Sicily, indecent joy at Frederick's death, and re
fused all offers of peace from his son and
successor, Conrad IV. But being too weak to wrest
Sicily from the Hohenstaufen he sought for some prince
who would accept it as a papal fief. It was refused on
behalf of Louis IX's brother, Charles of Anjou, and
also by Henry Ill's brother, Kit-hard Earl of Cornwall,

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. II 259

who said that the Pope might as well offer him the
moon. Henry III, however, accepted it for his second
son Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, a boy of eight,
promising to pay the expenses of the conquest. The
Pope's action was utterly unscrupulous. In May,
1254, Conrad died in the twenty-sixth year of his age,
and the only legitimate Hohenstaufen representative
who remained, was his son, distinguished as Conradin,
who was under the guardianship of Berthold Marquis
of Hohenburg. Conrad's Eegent in Italy had been his
half-brother Manfred, the son of Frederick by an
Italian lady, and the most brilliant of all Frederick's
children. Berthold, alarmed at the difficulties, made
way for Manfred, who found Innocent ready to come
to terms. To Manfred was confirmed the principality
of Tarento originally the gift of his father, and he was
recognised as Papal Vicar for the greater part of the
Sicilian kingdom. But the grant of Sicily was con
firmed to Edmund of Lancaster, and the Pope deter
mined to take possession of the kingdom in person.
Manfred, now a vassal of the Church, held the bridle
of the Pope's horse as he entered his new dominions.
But Manfred soon found that the Pope's object was to
reduce him to harmlessness and then to get rid of him.
He therefore raised the standard of revolt and defeated
the papal forces (December, 1254).

At this juncture Innocent IV died at Naples.
Matthew Paris relates the dream of a Cardinal who
saw the Church accusing the Pope before the throne of
God because he had enslaved the Church, had made
her a table of money-changers and had shaken faith,
abolished justice, and obscured truth. However neces
sary to the independence of the Papacy was this stren-

260 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

nous struggle, the utterly unscrupulous means employed
and the almost complete identification of its spiritual
power with its temporal interests is impossible to

justify or even to excuse. The new Pope,
Alexander Alexander IV, a nephew of Gregory IX,
61) 4 without Innocent's ability tried to follow

the policy of his predecessor. In 1255 he
ratified the grant of Sicily to the young English
prince on severe conditions. Indeed, he surpassed
his predecessors in the demands made on Henry III
and the English Church; until in 1258 his claim for
the repayment of the money which he alleged to have
been expended in the prosecution of Edmund's cause,
brought on a grave constitutional crisis in England
and reduced Henry III to impotence.

Meanwhile Manfred had regained all the dominions
of the Sicilian crown in the name of Conradin, but in

1258 he quietly set aside his nephew and
Manfred accepted the throne for himself. However

necessary such a step might be, it divided
Sicily from Germany. This was what the papal party
desired : but Manfred, the son of an Italian mother,
aimed, like his father, at an Italian monarchy. Con
sequently Alexander declared against him. In Italy,
however, the cessation of supplies from England left
Alexander almost powerless, and Manfred was accepted
as the head of the Ghibellines in the peninsula.

But before his death in May, 1261, Alexander had

gained a distinct success in Germany. The

The rival ITT-IT £ TT n J .1

Kings of young King, William of Holland, the
the destined Emperor, had been killed in 1256.

Romans. ^Q -p0pQ forbade the choice of Conradin,
and the votes of the German princes were divided be-

GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. II 261

tween the Englishman, Eichard Earl of Cornwall, and
Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile and grandson of Philip
of Suabia. Eichard, wealthy and attracted by the im
perial title, was crowned Emperor at Aachen in 1257
and bought himself a measure of support so long as he
remained in Germany. Alfonso, on the other hand,
did nothing to secure his new dominions. Alexander
and his successors, by professing a judicial attitude,
gradually established the impression in Germany that
the decision in these matters rested with the Papacy.

CHAPTER XVI

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE
AND OF THE PAPACY

HIRE date of Alexander's death marks the beginning
JL of a new episode in the history of the mediaeval
Papacy. His successor, Urban IV, was a
Frenchman. With more vigour than his
predecessor he pursued the policy of the
destruction of the Hohenstaufen. Since the English
prince had proved a useless tool and no more money
could be wrung from the English people, he obtained
the renunciation of the claims of Edmund to the
Sicilian crown and turned to his native country for
a candidate. Louis IX refused the offer for a son, but
it was accepted by his brother, Charles of Anjou,
whose wife, the daughter and heiress of Raymond
Berengar of Provence, desired to be the equal of her
three elder sisters, the Queens, respectively, of France,
England, and Germany. For the next twenty years
the papal policy centres round the doings of Charles as
much as it had centred for thirty years round the aims
of Frederick II. The Guelf party in Rome had
already elected Charles as senator, or head of the civic
commune, in opposition to the Ghibelline Manfred.
Thus the Pope and the Italian Guelfs once more com
bined to betray Italy to the foreign conqueror. Urban
was able to obtain a promise that Charles would not

262

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE AND PAPACY 263

accept the senatorship for life, although the need for
Charles' presence in Italy as a check upon the vic
torious Manfred enabled the new King to obtain better
terms in regard to Sicily than the Pope had offered at
first.

Fortune favoured Charles from the outset. Before he
could reach Italy Urban had died in Perugia (October,
1264), having never entered Eome during his

pontificate. His successor, Clement IV, a IV

Provencal and therefore a subject of Charles,
had beenoverpersuaded to accept the tiara, and naturally
continued his predecessor's work. Charles arrived by
sea, was welcomed in Eome where he assumed the
office of senator, and was invested with the crown of
Sicily (June, 1265). But from the very first he showed
the arbitrariness and violence which were to charac
terise his relations with Italy. He came destitute of
money ; he took possession of the Lateran palace until
the Pope's remonstrances forced him to withdraw.
His army marched through Italy to join him, plunder
ing as it came. The Pope was helpless ; he had not
yet even ventured to come to Home. Charles and his
wife were crowned King and Queen of Sicily by
a commission of Cardinals; and theirs was the first
coronation of any sovereign other than an Emperor,
which had taken place in St. Peter's.

Meanwhile Manfred was doing everything to meet
the new attack. But there was no patriotism among
the Italians of the south. Frederick II in £nd Of the
founding his strong monarchy had alienated Hohen-
the nobles and the cities; the clergy, of staufen-
course, were his bitter foes. All seemed to think that
Charles' advent would bring freedom and peace. They

264 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

were soon to be disabused. On Charles' march south
wards Manfred, relying solely on Germans and Sara
cens, met him at Benevento, but was beaten and fell
in the fight (February 26, 1266). Charles entered
Naples and the papal aims seemed attained. Charles
was their vassal for Sicily, and was now obliged to lay
.down his office of senator. The German influence in
Italy was destroyed; the "German" Empire was a
thing of the past. But the Eomans still kept the Pope
at arms' length. In 1252 they had for the first time
introduced a foreign senator in the Bolognese Bran-
caleone who, before his death in 1258, was twice over
thrown and restored to power. Thus the election of
Charles was no new departure. And as his successor
was chosen Henry, brother of Alfonso the Wise of
Castile, titular King of the Eomans. He maintained
the interests of the commune against the Pope, and
then, from hatred to Charles, the Ghibelline cause
against the papal party. The Ghibellines found a
rallying ground in Tuscany, and sent to Germany for
Conradin. The boy, now fourteen years of age. was
welcomed by the senator in Eome ; but his forces were
utterly defeated by Charles at Tagliacozzo on August
23, 1268. Conradin fled, but was captured and exe
cuted.

This time it was Charles, and not the Pope, whose
success was the obvious fact. Whether the Pope inter
ceded for the last of the Hohenstaufens or
Schemes , , . ,• • ?

of Charles aPProved his execution, is a matter of some

doubt. But Charles was now elected sena
tor of Eome for life, and Clement offered no opposition to
this violation of the original agreement. Moreover, on
Clement's death (November, 1268), the divisions

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE AND PAPACY 265

among the Cardinals assembled at Viterbo prolonged
the vacancy in the papal chair for nearly three years.
During that time Charles developed the most ambitious
schemes. With the Ghibelline position he took up the
Ghibelline aims. Thus the papal plans for reviving
the Crusades were nothing to him, but he desired to
obtain for himself the crown of Jerusalem ; and since
Constantinople had been recovered by the Greeks in
1261, while on the one side he make a treaty with the
Latin ex-Emperor, Baldwin II, whereby the reversion
of the Byzantine throne should go to the King of
Sicily, on the other side the papal project for an union
of the Greek and Latin Churches was an obstacle to
his hostile design. Charles, in fact, began to equip an
expedition against Constantinople. Louis IX for the
moment checked his brother's schemes and took him
off on the crusade from which Louis himself was not
to return. The diversion of the expedition from
Palestine or Egypt to Tunis is generally attributed to
the influence of the King of Sicily, whose Norman
predecessors had once held the north coast of Africa :
but this charge can scarcely be maintained, for the
crusade thither interfered with his schemes against
Constantinople, which were resumed immediately on
his return to Europe.

But again Charles was destined to meet with a
serious check. When at length the Church obtained
a new Pope it was no servile henchman of
Charles who was elected. Gregory X, a
Visconti of Piacenza, had spent his life
outside Italy, and was with Edward I of England in
Palestine when he was chosen. He was the first Pope
since Honoring III, who set before himself the pro-

266 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

motion of a crusade as his primary object. As an
indispensable prerequisite of this he desired to pro
mote the union of the Latin and Greek Churches. It
was these unselfish objects of his which enabled him
to check both Charles' power and his schemes. There
was a still further point. The fall of the Hohenstau-
fen had destroyed the imperial house, and had left
the Papacy not only isolated but face to face with one
who was proving himself " a burdensome protector."
The equilibrium of Europe had been seriously shaken.
The election of two rival Kings of the Romans had
not helped to restore it. But now Eichard of Corn
wall, who had tried to assert his position, was dead,
and Gregory refused to recognise the claims of Alfonso
of Castile. But Louis IX was dead also, and Charles
would be likely to influence his nephew the new King
of France more than he had ever influenced his high-
souled brother. It was necessary to find a new King
of the Romans who might be a counterpoise in Europe,
and perhaps even in Italy, to Charles. Thus
encouraged and almost coerced by the Pope, the
German princes elected Rudolf Count of Hapsburg
(September 1273), a man of "popular qualities" who
was not too powerful.

The success of the papal policy was to be advertised

to Europe in a second Council of Lyons (May-July,

1274). This was attended by five hundred

Second bishops and innumerable other clergy. An

Council ., &t7

of Lyons opportunity was taken to issue a canon, the

object of which was to prevent the recur
rence of the long vacancy in the papal see which had
preceded Gregory's election. It was decreed that ten
days after the death of the Pope the Cardinals should

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE AND PAPACY 267

meet and should be confined in one conclave until
a choice had been made. All intercourse with the out
side world was forbidden ; the food was to be supplied
through a window, the amount of it being diminished
after three days; while a further diminution was to
take place five days later. The duty of supervision
was entrusted to the magistrates of the city in which
the election might be held. Despite the stringent
resistance of the Cardinals the canon was passed with
the aid of the bishops; and although it was more
than once suspended, it has continued to direct the
procedure at papal elections to the present day.

But the real object of the meeting of the Council
was that it should witness the reconciliation of the
Eastern Church with the Western. More Union of
than two centuries earlier (1054) the long Eastern
jealousy of Home and Constantinople had and
ended in the rupture of communion
between the Christians of West and
East ; and the Crusades and the Latin Empire
of Constantinople had prevented any real attempt
at re-union. But just now circumstances were
favourable. Michael Palseologus, who had re
conquered Constantinople for the Greeks and made
himself Emperor, was in difficulties at home with
a section of the clergy, and, threatened by the
designs of Charles of Sicily, he coerced the Greek
clergy into accepting the union with the Western
Church, which gave the only chance of such help as
would hold Charles in check. An embassy of Greeks
appeared at Lyons ; and although Bonaventura and
Thomas Aquinas were present to argue the case for the
Western Church, no perouasion was needed. The

268 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Greeks expressed a readiness to accept the primacy of
Kome, the doctrine that the Holy Ghost proceeded
from both Father and Son (whereas they had main
tained His procession from the Father alone), and all
the customs of the Western Church. It seemed as if
at length a crusade were really possible. The chief
sovereigns of Europe had taken the cross, and Gregory
had even persuaded Charles of Sicily and the Greek
Emperor to sign a truce.

But it was not to be. Gregory's death (January 10,
1276) undid all his work. Charles of Sicily alone
rejoiced at the vacancy, and made desperate efforts to
secure the nomination to the Papacy again. But two
nominees died in quick succession ; and when on the
death of John XXI after a similarly short reign,
Charles again interfered, he was met by
the elecfcion of Nicholas III of the family
of Orsini, who returned to Kome and spent
the three years of his pontificate in neutralising
Charles' power. For this purpose he used the new
King of the Eomans. Charles was forced to resign
the vicariate of Tuscany, which was made over to
Kudolf. Charles also resigned the senatorship of
Kome which he had held for ten years. To this
Nicholas got himself elected, and issued a decree by
which he hoped to make it impossible for any foreign
prince to be elected, or for anyone to hold the post for
more than a year without the papal favour.

But Nicholas was only able to give a German prince
Revival once more a footing in Italy because Rudolf
of the had been effectually barred from reviving
Empire. ^Q Hohenstaufen claims. Already at the
Council of Lyons the envoys of Kudolf had appeared

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE AND PAPACY 269

and in his name had taken the oaths previously exacted
from Otto IV and Frederick II. Kudolf had subse
quently met Pope Gregory at Lausanne in 1275, and
had confirmed the act of his representatives. Thus
Gregory obtained from a crowned German King an
acknowledgment of all the claims advanced by the
Papacy since the days of Charles the Great. Rudolf
was too busy ever to visit Rome ; but in negotiations
with regard to his coronation as Emperor, Nicholas III
exacted the confirmation of all that was promised to
Gregory, and this included especially the lands of the
old Exarchate and the district of Pentapolis, which
had never yet been actually in the hands of papal
officers.

Dante has banned the memory of Nicholas as
the simoniacal Pope. He certainly used his enormous
patronage to enrich his own family.
But his death (August, 1280) nearly proved
fatal to the freedom of Europe ; for
Charles at length obtained his own nominee to the
Papacy in the person of a Frenchman, Martin IV,
who proceeded to hand over to the King for life the
Roman senatorship conferred upon the Pope. All
the work of the preceding Popes was undone. The
temporary union of the Churches was dissolved by the
excommunication of the Greek Emperor on the pre
text that he had not carried out his promises ; and
Charles, who had obtained a footing in the Greek
peninsula and made a league with Venice, prepared
to start on his expedition against Constantinople.
There seemed every prospect of his success.

But Charles' brutality had been imitated by his
French officials ; and the rising known as the " Sicilian

270 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Vespers" in March, 1282, cleared the French out
of Sicily and finally overthrew all Charles'
plans. The fleet prepared for Constanti
nople had to be turned against the rebel
islanders. The Pope, thinking to play the game
of his royal master, refused to mediate ; the Sicilians
thereupon declared that from St. Peter they would
turn for aid to another Peter, and offered the crown to
Peter, King of Aragon, the husband of Manfred's
daughter, Constance, who for some years had wel
comed Sicilian refugees at his court and had been
ready for the summons. The Pope deprived Peter of
his hereditary dominions and bestowed them on
Charles' great nephew Charles of Valois, a son of
Philip III of France ; but the Aragonese fleet under
Eoger di Loria defeated Charles' fleet and captured his
son and heir Charles the Lame. On January 7, 1285,
Charles himself died, and was followed to the grave
very shortly by Pope Martin IV. The same year
saw also the death of Philip III of France and of
Peter of Aragon. Pope Honorius IV followed the
Nicholas P°^cy °f hig predecessor, and to him suc-
IV ceeded Nicholas IV. It was during his

(1288-92). pontificate that the Latin kingdom of
Jerusalem, the result of the First Crusade, was finally
wiped out by the capture of Acre (1291), and the
little stir made by this event affords a measure of the
decay of the crusading spirit.

On the death of Nicholas the division among the
Cardinals reflecting the jealousies of the
Eoman families of Orsini and Colonna,
caused a vacancy in the papal office for more
than two years. Then by a sudden whim, which

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE AND PAPACY 271

in the event of a successful result would have been
called an inspiration, the name of a hermit, Peter,
whose austerities in his cell on Monte Murrone in the
Abruzzi had won him great reverence, was suggested
apparently in all sincerity to the wearied and per
plexed Cardinals. He was elected and took the title
of Celestine V. In accordance with the desire of
Charles II of Naples, he took up his abode at Naples.
But he was utterly unfit for his high office, and after
a pontificate of less than four months (August to
December, 1294) he resigned, thus perpetrating that
" great refusal " which won Dante's immortal phrase
of scorn. How far his act was due to the machina
tions of Cardinal Gaetani is uncertain. At any rate
Gaetani had evidently obtained Charles' sanction be
forehand to his own elevation, which took place ten
days later. But the new Pope did not intend that any
one should be his master. For the moment he and
Charles needed each other, and it was agreed between
them that Sicily should be recovered for Charles, while
Celestine should be given into the keeping of his
successor lest he should become a centre for disaffection.
Boniface VIII — such was the name of the new
Pope — returned to Rome escorted by Charles II and
his son, Charles Martel of Hungary; and Boniface
his coronation surpassed that of all previous VIII
Popes in magnificence. The late Pope was (I294"I3°3)-
soon secured and placed in a tower on the top of a
mountain, where he died in 1296. It was not so easy
for Boniface to fulfil his part of the compact with
regard to Sicily. James, the son of Peter of Aragon,
agreed to surrender Sicily on the understanding that
the new Pope would withdraw the award of Aragon

272 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

made by Martin IV to a French prince, and confirm it
to him. But the Sicilians refused to return
to their French ruler and found a champion
in James' younger brother Frederick, who was their
Governor. He was crowned King of Sicily at
Palermo in 1296. Charles II was too feeble to make
any real headway against Frederick, and even the
title of Standard-bearer of the Church conferred by
the Pope on James of Aragon, did not keep Frederick's
brother permanently on the papal side. In 1301
Boniface fell back upon the French prince Charles of
Valois, to whom Pope Martin had given Aragon, and
sent for him to attack " the new Manfred " in Sicily.
Charles having first failed in an attempt to appease
the Florentine factions, passed on to the south, and
here Frederick ultimately forced him to peace and
a recognition of his title as King of Sicily (1302).
At first Boniface would not ratify a peace from which
all reference to Pope or Church had been omitted;
but in 1303 circumstances caused him to accept it,
though he exacted as a condition that Frederick should
acknowledge himself a papal vassal. Frederick, how
ever, never paid any tribute.

Boniface held views of the papal power of the most

exalted kind. It was in accordance with these that

he once more made Borne the headquarters

Quarrel Of ^Q Papacy. But he soon found himself

Cotonnas involved in a quarrel which, purely local in

origin, assumed an European importance.

The family of Colonna by favour of Pope Nicholas IV

had become one of the most powerful in Eome and the

neighbourhood. The centre of the family property

was the city of Palestrina. Cardinal Jacopo Colonna,

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE AND PAPACY 273

who as the eldest brother administered it, did not dis
tribute it fairly to his brothers, but rather favoured
his nephews, the sons of his dead brother John who
had been Senator of Eome. One of these was the
Cardinal Peter. Uncle and nephew were the most
influential members of the Eoman Curia, and as Eoman
nobles they resented Boniface's design of humbling
the Eoman aristocracy. They refused the papal
admonitions to deal justly with the other members of
the family ; they withdrew from the papal Court, and
having already turned from Ghibelline to Guelf, they
once more became Ghibelline and made an alliance
with Frederick of Sicily. They published a manifesto
in which they refused to recognise Boniface on the
ground that Pope Celestine's abdication had been
unlawful. But Celestine was dead and the Colonnas had
voted for his successor. Boniface deposed the Cardinals
and excommunicated them, even declaring a crusade
against them! The struggle centred round Palestrina,
and it is said that the Pope fetched from a Franciscan
cloister a once famous Ghibelline general, Guy of
Montefeltro, by whose advice he decoyed the Colonnas
out of their fortress by promises which lie did not
intend to keep. Palestrina was levelled to the ground
and the Colonnas fled (1298), finding refuge among
the enemies of Boniface and preparing the way for the
final catastrophe.

Boniface, however, had become his own master at
home to an extent attained by none of his predecessors
since Innocent III. His reign reached what
may be termed its high-water mark in the
Papal Jubilee of 1300. The cessation of
the Crusades had largely increased the crowds of

274 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

pilgrims to Rome, until in 1299 there awoke an
expectation of special spiritual privileges in connection
with the end of the century. Indulgences had been so
freely scattered in attempts to promote the Crusades
that a craving for them had been created. Boniface
recognised the importance of exploiting the popular
feeling, and after a mock enquiry he issued a bull
promising generous indulgences to all who should visit
the Churches of SS. Peter and Paul during the year
for so many successive days, and directing that a
similar pilgrimage should be proclaimed every hun
dredth year. Pilgrims nocked to Rome; 30,000
are reckoned to have entered and left daily, while
200,000 were in Rome at any given moment. The
amount of the offerings must have been enormous, and
the Ghibellines naturally declared that the Jubilee
had its origin in the papal need for money. But most
of the pilgrims were poor ; and even if the size of the
crowds were a just measure of the continued hold
of the Roman Church upon the people of Western
Europe, the absence of all the monarchs except Charles
Martel, the claimant of Hungary, was significant.
Indeed, Boniface had already experienced a foretaste
of the independent attitude of the secular princes,
which eventually proved fatal to him. Rudolf of
Hapsburg died in 1291, and the German princes,
rejecting the claims of his son Albert,
any* elected Adolf of Nassau as their King. But
Adolf proved less submissive than his electors had
hoped to find him. He was deposed and fell in battle,
and Albert was chosen and crowned without any
reference to the Pope — the first occasion on which the
German princes had acted without papal authority.

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE AND PAPACY 275

Boniface had already barred Albert's claims. He now
refused to recognise him, declaring that the Empire
owed all its honour and dignity to the papal favour.
Nevertheless, in 1303 circumstances forced him to
accept Albert, especially since Albert was willing in
return to confirm all that his father Rudolf had
granted to the Papacy.

But this quarrel with Germany sinks into insignifi
cance before the great contest of Boniface with
France, with which his English dispute was pirst
also closely connected. The Hohenstaufen quarrel
had fallen before the Papacy because their with
German kingdom and the "German" Empire France and
rested on no solid foundation. But in his
attempts to coerce France and England into obedience
the Pope found himself face to face with two strong
national monarchies. Boniface failed to grasp the
position. Edward I of England and Philip IV of
France were engaged in war. Each resorted to every
available method of raising money for the conduct of
the war, and among other ways laid heavy taxes on
the clergy. Boniface having failed to make the Kings
submit their quarrels to his judgment, issued a bull,
Clericis Laicos (February, 1296), by which he forbade,
under pain of excommunication, that any prelate or
ecclesiastical body should pay or laymen should exact
from the clergy any taxes under any pretext without
papal leave. Edward I met this manifesto by con
fiscating the lay fees of all ecclesiastics ; while Philip
forbade the export of all money from France, thus
depriving the Pope and all Italian ecclesiastics
endowed with French benefices, of the usual sources of
income from France. The English clergy, with the

276 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

exception of the Archbishop of Canterbury, made their
own arrangements with the King. But in order to
avoid a rupture with France Boniface issued another
bull, Ine/abilis, in which he explained that ecclesias
tics were not forbidden to contribute to the needs of
the State ; and by subsequent letters he allowed that
they might pay taxes of their own free will, and even
that in cases of necessity the King might take taxes
without waiting for the papal leave. He certainly
told his legates to excommunicate the King and his
officials if they should prevent money coming from
France; but in order to gain Philip's favour he granted
him the tithe of the French clergy for three years, he
placed Louis IX among the recognised saints of the
Church, and he promised that Philip's brother, Charles
of Valois, should be made German King and Emperor.

Good relations having been established Philip and
Edward now agreed to submit their differences to
Boniface. Philip, however, stipulated that Boniface
should act in the matter not as Pope but in a personal
capacity, and the Pope issued his award " as a private
person and Master Benedict Gaetani" (June 30, 1298).
But the judgment was in the form of a bull, and
ordered that the lands to be surrendered on either
side should be placed in the custody of the papal
officers. Philip could not reject the award; but he
determined to prepare for a conflict which was clearly
inevitable. He gave refuge to some members of the
Colonna family, and he made an alliance with Albert
of Austria (1299).

Meanwhile Boniface began a second quarrel with
England. Edward I had refused the papal offers of
mediation on behalf of Scotland. But after the battle

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE AND PAPACY 277

of Falkirk the national representatives of Scotland
appealed to Boniface as suzerain of the
kingdom. The Pope wrote to Edward Second
claiming that from ancient times the kingdom ^^e
of Scotland had belonged by full right to England;
the lloman Church, and demanding that
Edward should submit all causes of difference between
himself and the Scots to the Papacy. The English
answer was given in a Parliament called for the purpose
to Lincoln (1301), by which a document addressed to
the Pope asserted for the English Kings a right over
Scotland from the first institution of the English
kingdom, and denied that Scotland had ever depended
in temporal matters on the lioman Pontiff. Any
further action was prevented by the beginning of the
final quarrel between Boniface and Philip.

The Pope found it necessary to complain frequently
of Philip's misuse of the royal right of regale, and in
1301 relations became so strained that lie

sent a legate, Bernard of Saisset, Bishop of ™lth
^ • • .1 ,T p T^ France.

Pamiers in the south of 1 ranee. But Ber
nard was arrogant, and on being claimed by Philip as
a subject, he exclaimed that he owned no lord but the
Pope. Since Boniface administered no reproof Philip
procured the condemnation of the Bishop for treason.
The Pope in fury issued four bulls in one day, the
most important addressed to Philip and beginning
Auscultafili, in which he asserted that God had set up
the Pope over Kings and kingdoms in order to destroy,
to scatter, to build and to plant in His name and
doctrine. Philip caused the bull to be publicly burnt
— " the first flame which consumed a papal bull " —
and called an Assembly of the Estates of the Eealm,

278 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

in which for the first time the commons were included.
The Cardinals, in answering the remonstrances sent by
the nobles and commons, denied that the Pope had
ever told the King that he should be subject in temporal
matters to Home ; and Boniface assured the French
clergy that he merely claimed that the King was
subject to him " in respect of sin."

But in July, 1302, the burghers of Flanders inflicted
a severe defeat on the French forces in the battle of
Courtray ; and the Pope, taking advantage of Philip's
humiliation before Europe, immediately assumed a

more defiant attitude. In a Council at Rome
The final an(j kefore the French envoys, he declared

that his predecessors had deposed three
Kings of France and, if necessary, he would depose
the King " like a groom " (garcio). He followed this
up by issuing the most famous of his bulls, Unam
Sanctam, in which he roundly asserted that the sub
mission of every human creature to Rome was a
condition of salvation. Finally, while on the one
side he excommunicated Philip (April 13, 1303), he
hastened to recognise Albert as King of Germany,
and ratified the peace made between Frederick of
Sicily and Charles of Valois. Philip on his side
abandoned his Scots allies in order to make peace
with England (May 20, 1303), and called for a second
time an Assembly of the Estates. Before its members
the aged Pope was accused of heresy, murder, and
even lust ; and the appeal to a General Council was
now adopted by the representatives of the whole
French nation. But it was certain that the excom
munication of Philip would be followed by his deposi
tion; and Philip and his councillors determined to

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE AND PAPACY 279

forestall this. Urged on by the Colonnas the French
King conceived the plan of seizing the person of the
Pope and bringing him before a council to be held
at Lyons. Boniface was at his native Anagni, and
Philip's emissaries, in conjunction with many Italian
enemies of the Pope, forced their way into the town
and seized the old man (September 3, 1303). He was
rescued and taken back to Koine ; but the shock of the
attack unhinged his reason and hastened his end.
He died on October 11 at the age of eighty- six. His
foes described his last days in lurid colours ; but the
violent behaviour of his enemies caused strong disgust
throughout Christendom.

To a contemporary, Boniface was "magnanimus
peccator," the great-hearted sinner; while a modern
historian describes him as " devoid of every spiritual
virtue." If Canossa was the humiliation for the
Empire which the ecclesiastical annalists describe, in
the pettiness of the stage and the insignificance of the
actors Anagni was an ample revenge of the lay spirit.
The Papacy which had worn down the Empire had
dashed itself in vain against the new phenomenon of
a strong national spirit.

CHAPTER XVII
THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST

AHISTOEY of the Church Universal must needs
take some notice of those Christian communities
The which never acknowledged the supremacy of

Eastern Borne. Chief among these stands the Church
Church. of the Eastern Empire where the Patriarch
of Constantinople strove to make himself at least the
equal of the Bishop of Eome. This mutual jealousy
of the old and the new Eome was only one of the
causes of quarrel between them, a quarrel which was
fanned from time to time by the appeal of a defeated
party in some ecclesiastical dispute at Constantinople
to the Pope. The most famous of these disputes was
that begun by the deposition of the aristocratic
Ignatius from the patriarchate in favour of the learned
Photius. Both Emperor and Patriarch appealed from
Constantinople to Pope Nicholas I ; but when that
masterful bishop decided against the new patriarch,
Photius used his learning to summarise in eight articles
the differences between east and west. Of these, two
concerned such important matters as the doctrine of
the procession of the Holy Ghost and the practice of
clerical celibacy.

The schism made by this quarrel was healed for the
moment, but for the first time the points of difference

280

THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST 281

between the two Churches had been crystallised.
The Eastern Emperors, however, who still Breach
possessed lands in the Italian peninsula, between
felt it to their interest to remain friendly East and
with the pope, and in 1024 an attempt on West
the part of Basil II to adjust the question of dignity
by the suggestion that both the Patriarch and the Pope
should assume the title of Universal bishop, was only
defeated by the inextinguishable jealousy of the
Western Church. The presence of the Normans in
Southern Italy should have united Pope and Eastern
Emperor against the intruders ; but the Greek Church
only saw in the Norman successes a danger lest
Southern Italy should pass from the Greek to the Latin
communion, and the Patriarch Michael Caerularius
joined with the Bulgarian Archbishop of Achrida in
publicly warning the inhabitants of Apulia against
the errors of the Latin Church. The one especially
noted was the use of unleavened bread at the Sacra
ment, with the addition of others of even less import
ance. The Emperor Constantino Monomachos strove
hard in the interests of peace and even compelled a
literary champion of the Greek Church, Nicetas
Pectoratus, a monk of the monastery of Studium, to
repudiate his own arguments. But the violence of the
papal envoys and the obstinacy of the Patriarch made
agreement impossible. Finally the legates laid upon
the altar of St. Sophia's Church a document in which
Michael and all his party were anathematised ; and
the Patriarch responded by summoning a Council,
which in like manner banned the Western Church
(1054). Not only was Michael's action supported by
the clergy and people of Constantinople, but it was

282 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

ratified by the approval of the Patriarchs of Bulgaria
and Antioch.

Attempts to promote reunion between the Churches
were made at intervals. The danger from the
Attempts at Mohammedans forced the Emperors of the
reconcilia- East to seek help in the "West and encouraged
tlon- the theologians of the West in their main

tenance of a perfectly rigid attitude. These approaches
began with the forced intercourse of the First Crusade,
and in 1098 Urban II held a Council at Ban among
the Greeks of Southern Italy, at which Anselm of
Canterbury, then in voluntary exile, was put forward
to propound the Koman view. In 1112 Peter Groso-
lanus the defeated candidate for the archbishopric of
Milan, as an emissary of Pope Pascal II discussed the
points at issue before the Emperor Alexius Comnenus
and was answered by Eustratius Archbishop of Nicaea.
Again in 1135 Lothair III had sent as ambassador to
John Comnenus a Premonstratensian Canon Anselm
afterwards Bishop of Havelberg, who held a debate
with Nicetas Archbishop of Nicomedia. According to
the report which he subsequently drew up at the
request of Eugenius III, the points discussed were the
procession of the Holy Ghost, the use of unleavened
bread and the claims of Kome. A generation later the
Emperor Manuel Comnenus held a conference at
Constantinople (1170) for the promotion of a union
which he sincerely desired ; while extant letters of
Eugenius III and Hadrian IV to ecclesiastics of the
Eastern Church show that the head of the Western
Church did not ignore the question of Christian unity.
But there were too many political causes of division.
The success of the crusaders involved the establishment

THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST 283

of the Latin Church in lands claimed by the Eastern
Empire. And this affected not only the principalities
of Syria, but also Cyprus which Kichard Cceur de Lion
conquered and handed over to Guy of Lusignan in
compensation for his lost kingdom of Jerusalem ; as a
consequence of which the Greek clergy and monks there
were cruelly persecuted. The aggression of the Latin
Church was even more conspicuous when the Normans
conquered Thessalonica in 1186 and treated the Greek
churches and services with contumely, and when
Innocent III took advantage of the fact that the
Bulgarian monarch had repudiated the suzerainty of
Constantinople, to reassert over the Bulgarian Church
the supremacy of Koine. The Greeks did not suffer
without protest and the massacre of the Latins of
Constantinople under the usurper Andronicus (1183)
showed the depth as well as the impotence of the
Greek hatred. The climax of all previous acts of
usurpation wras readied in the capture of Constanti
nople and the organisation of a Latin Church beside
the Latin empire. But the Greek Emperors who
ruled at Nicaea found it politic to pretend a desire for
union of the Churches, and in 1233 and again in 1234
negociations were carried on between the Greek Patri
arch Germanus and some Dominican and Franciscan
emissaries of Geogory IX. But the bargaining was
one-sided ; for while with Ivome Christian unity never
rose above an object to be kept in view, to the Greeks
of the East it presented itself as the only condition
on which they could claim the help which might save
them from gradual extinction. And this became even
more apparent than hitherto after the reconquest of
Constantinople by the Greeks; for it seemed as if the

284 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

prospect of a peaceful reunion of the Churches alone
might remove the pretext now given to the princes of
the West for a new crusade directed against Constan
tinople. This was no imaginary danger ; for Charles of
Anjou and Naples had made himself the champion of the
dispossessed Latin Emperor and was preparing to attack.
So Michael Palaeologus who had rewon Constantinople
for the Greeks and himself, made overtures to Pope
Urban IV; and negociations were thus begun which
ended in the appearance of Greek delegates at the
second Council of Lyons in 1274. These accepted, on
behalf of the Greek Church and empire, the primacy
of Borne and the Latin Creed. In return, the Bul
garian Church was once more restored to its own
Metropolitan at Achrida. But all Michael's coercive
efforts failed to make the union acceptable to his own
clergy and people. It was so difficult to carry out the
promised assimilation of the Greek to the Latin forms
that the Popes became impatient ; and when Nicholas
III, the opponent of Charles of Sicily, was succeeded
by Martin IV, the tool of that ambitious monarch, the
excommunication launched by the new Pope against
the Eastern Emperor was merely a preliminary step
to the general attack on the empire planned by Charles.
Michael's son and successor Andronicus entirely repudi
ated the agreement made at Lyons ; but the misfortunes
of Charles in Sicily removed the serious danger of
invasion from the West. Overtures for ecclesiastical
union were not renewed until the conquests of the
Turks in the Balkan peninsula forced the Greeks to
seek external aid.

The internal condition of the Eastern Church during
these centuries does not 'call for much detailed treat*

THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST 285

ment. The end of the iconoclastic quarrel had been
followed by the development of great elab- internal
oration of ceremonial in the services. It condition
is true that learning was not dead and of Church-
that the Emperors of the Comnenan house distinctly
encouraged it. But the literature of ancient Greece
and the theological works of the Fathers of the early
Church appeared to the writers of these centuries to
have exhausted all earthly possibilities in their re
spective spheres. The writings of learned Christians
did not rescue their religion from pure formalism ;
while the study of the classics led them to the ancient
philosophers and landed many of the students in
paganism. Under the circumstances it is not perhaps
wonderful that there arose a sect called Gnosimachi
who deprecated any attempt after knowledge of the
Scriptures on the ground that God demands good
deeds done in all simplicity. It is, however, among
the monks, if anywhere, that personal piety should
have been retained. But such as existed, was inclined
to take fantastic forms ; and we are told of those who
wrapped themselves round with the odour of sanctity
by self-inflicted tortures of a useless and meaningless
kind. There was no foundation of new monastic
Orders in the East such as during these centuries led
to the maintenance of the missionary spirit in the
West. But it was from the monastic bodies alone
that any opposition was offered to the actions of the
Emperor. The most noteworthy case was that of
the Abbot Nicephorus Blemmydes whose attempts to
promote an understanding between the Eastern and
Western Churches (1245) were foiled, because he had
the temerity to deal harshly with the mistress of the

286 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Emperor John Dukas. Indeed the imperial authority
was an influence stronger than any other, with the
possible exception of hatred of the Latin Church.
Such dogmatic discussions as occasionally arose, were
concerned with unimportant points : but the partici
pation of the Emperor did not necessarily tend to
either truth or peace. Manuel I not only intervened
in such disputes, but even started them himself and
enforced his view by punishing those who took the
opposite side.

The Eastern Church, like that of the West, had to
deal with heretical sects. The Paulicians who in the

ninth century had formed a politico-religious
Heresies. J

community on the confines of the empire,

were deprived of their political power by Basil I in
872 ; while in 969 John Tzimisces transferred a portion
of them from their settlements in Asia Minor to the
district of Philippopolis in Thrace. Here they throve,
until their desertion of the Emperor Alexius in his
war against Eobert Guiscard and the Normans ended
the toleration hitherto extended to the exercise of
their religion, and the " thirteenth apostle," as his
literary daughter Anna Comnena styles him, entered
on a plan of forcible conversion. Alexius also dealt
severely with another body of heretics. The Bogomiles
were perhaps a revival of the earlier sect of the
Euchites or Messalians who are mentioned by writers
of the fourth century. The origin of the name is
obscure, but it is said to mean " Friends of God."
Their tenets resembled those of the Cathari with
whom they were most probably connected. Alexius
by pretending sympathy got from their leader an
avowal of his doctrines and then had him burnt (1116).

THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST 287

But in neither of these cases did violent suppression
achieve its purpose. Despite the foundation of the
orthodox city of Alexiopolis in the neighbourhood,
the Paulicians still continued about Philippopolis,
where they were secretly strengthened in their par-
ticularist attitude by the continued presence of the
remnants of the Bogomiles. Even a century later the
Patriarch Germanus (1230) attacks the latter on the
plea that they are still secretly making converts.

Of the other Christian Churches of the East we
have seen that the Nestorians were very active among
the Tartars throughout Asia. They and other
their Syrian neighbours but dogmatic op- Eastern
ponents, the Jacobites, a monophysite body, Churches,
adopted a conciliatory disposition towards the crusaders.
In 1237 the prior of the Dominicans in Jerusalem
reported to Gregory IX that the Maphrian of the
Jacobites, a kind of lesser patriarch, had acknowledged
the supremacy of Home ; but a submission given from
stress of circumstances carried no permanent weight;
and subsequent correspondence between Innocent IV
and officials of both churches seems to have been
wilfully misunderstood at Kome. There were two
other Christian churches whose conduct was guided by
proximity to the Mohammedans. The small body of
the Maronites on Mount Lebanon kept their ancient
customs but attached themselves to the Eoman Church
in 1182 and remained faithful to her. The more
important Armenian Church wavered between Borne
and Constantinople. Manuel Comnenus made over
tures to the Patriarch or Catholicos, which were pre
vented from coming to any result by the emperor's
death. Shortly afterwards Leo the Great of Armenia

288 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

was recognised as King by the Emperor Henry VI
and was crowned by the Archbishop of Mainz ; and in
return he and his Catholicos recognised the supremacy
of Eome. In 1240 the Greek patriarch tried to win
over the Catholicos to the Eastern Church. In 1292
the Armenian King Haiton II, who became a Francis
can friar, persuaded his church to accept the Koman
customs : but despite this nominal subjection to Eome,
the obstinacy of the people prevented any real change
in either doctrine or organisation.

APPENDIX I

BIBLIOGRAPHY

THIS bibliography aims merely at indicating to students who
are likely to read this book, where they may obtain
rather more detailed information on some of the most
important subjects treated.

GIESELER. Ecclesiastical History (translated from the

German, most valuable for documents).

MOELLER. History of the Christian Church (translated

from the German, useful for reference).

MILMAN. History of Latin Christianity (a standard work,

diffuse).

ROBERTSON. History of the Christian Church (the best

work in English).

GREGOROVIUS. History of Rome in the Middle Ages

(translated from the German).

R. W. and A. J. CARLYLE. Mediaeval Political Theory

in the West.

GIERKE. Political Theories of the Middle Age (translated,
with a valuable introduction, by F. W. Maitland).
POOLE. Illustrations of Mediaeval Thought.
RASHDALL. Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages.
II. C. LEA. Sacerdotal Celibacy.
CHURCH. St. Anselm.

STEPHENS. Hildelrand and His Times (Epochs of Church

History, an excellent short account).

BALZANF. Popes and Hohenstaufen (Epochs of Church

History).

29o THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

MORISON. St. Bernard.
A. LUCHAIRE. Innocent III.
E. GEBIIART. Ultalie Mystique.
SABATIER. Francis of Assist (translated).
REN AN. Studies in Religious History (Essays on St.
Francis and the Everlasting Gospel).
COULTON. From St. Francis to Dante (a resume* of the
Chronicle of Salimbene dealing with the Franciscans).
H. C. LEA. History of the Inquisition (valuable for the

account of mediaeval heretics).

BEAZLEY. Dawn of Modern Geography (for the Friars

in Asia).
L. BREHIER. L'figlise et V Orient au Mot/en Age.

APPENDIX II

LIST OF EMPERORS AND POPES

EMPERORS.

Saxon House.

Henry II, 1002-1024

\Salian or Franconian House.
Conrad II, 1024-1039
Henry III, 1039-1056

Henry IV, 1056-1106

(Anti-kings.)

Rudolf of Suabia, 1077-1080
Herman of Luxemburg, 1082-1088.

Conrad of Franconia, 1093-1101 .

291

POPES.

Sylvester II, 999-1003.
John XVII, 1003.
John XVIII, 1003-1009.
Sergius IV, 1009-1012.
Benedict VIII, 1012-1024.

Gregory (anti-pope).
John XIX, 1024-1033.
Benedict IX, 1033-1046.

Sylvester III (anti-pope),
1044-1046.

Gregory VI, 1044-1046.
Clement II, 1046-1047.
Damasus II, 1048.
Leo IX, 1048-1054.
Victor II, 1055-1057.
Stephen IX, 1057-1058.

Benedict X (anti-pope),

1058-1059.

Nicholas II, 1058-1061.
Alexander II, 1061-1073.

Honorius II (anti-pope),

1061-1062.
Gregory VII, 1073-1085.

Clement III (anti-pope),

1080-1100.

Victor III, 1086-1087.
Urban II, 1088-1099.

292

THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

EMPERORS.

Henry V, 1106-1125

Lothair II, 1125-1138

Holienstaufen or Suabian House.

Conrad III, 1138-1152

Frederick I, 1152-1190

Henry VI, 1190-1197
r Otto IV, 1197-1212 .
1 Philip II, 1197-1208

POPES.

Pascal II, 1099-1118.
(Anti-popes.)

Theodoric | 1100.

Albert [l!02.

Sylvester IV I 1105-1 111
GelasiusII, 1118-1119.

Gregory VIII (anti-pope),
1118-1121

CalixtusII, 1119-1124.
Honorius II, 1124-1130.

Innocent II, 1130-1143.

(Anti-popes.)
Anacletus II| 1130-1138
Victor /1 138.

Celestinell, 1143-1144.

Lucius II, 1144-1145.

EugeniusIII, 1145-1153.

Anastasius IV, 1153-1154.

Hadrian IV, 1154-1159.

Alexander III, 1159-1181.

(Anti-popes.)
Victor IV > 1169-1 164
Pascal III 1 1164-1168
Calixtus III 1 1168-1178
Innocent IIlJ 1178-1180

Lucius III, 1181-1185.

Urban III, 1185-1187.

Gregory VIII, 1187.

Clement III, 1187-1191.

Celestine III, 1191-1198.

Innocent III, 1198-1216.

Honorius III, 1216-1227.

EMPERORS AND POPES

293

EMPERORS.

Frederick II, 1212-1250 .

(Anti-kings.)

Henry Raspe, 1246-1247
William of Holland, 1247-1256

Conrad IV, 1250-1254

( Richard of Cornwall, \ 1957.1972
I Alfonso of Castile, /
Rudolf of Hapsburg, 1273-1291

Adolf of [Nassau, 1292-1298
Albert of Hapsburg, 1298-1308 .

Gregory IX, 1227-1241.
Celestine IV, 1241.
Innocent IV, 1243-1254.
Alexander IV, 1254-1261.
Urban IV, 1261-1264.
Clement IV, 1265-1268.
Gregory X, 1271-1276.
Innocent V, 1276.
Hadrian V, 1276.
John XXI, 1276-1277.
Nicholas III, 1277-1280.
Martin IV, 1281-1285.
Honorius IV, 1285-1287.
Nicholas IV, 1288-1292.
Celestine V, 1294.
Boniface VIII, 1294-1303.

U 2

INDEX

Abailard, his life, 108-10 ; as
classical scholar, 117 ; as critic,
190, 193 ; as philosopher, 114,
115 ; as teacher, 118

Adalbert, Archbishop of Bremen,
19, 20, 24, 233

Adolf of Nassau, 274

Albert of Hapsburg, 274-5, 276,
278

Albertus Magnus, 119, 121, 182,
192

Albigenses, 204, 208, 217

Alexander II, pope, 18, 19, 20,
22

Alexander III, pope, his reign,
131-8 ; and papal power, 167,
173, 193 ; and secular power,
63, 66 ; and heretics, 203, 208,
209 ; and clerical marriage, 71 ;
and monastic orders, 79, 81 ;
and St. Bernard, 110; and
Irish Church, 163 ; and Mon
gols, 240

Alexander IV, pope, 121, 177,
221, 260

Alexander of Hales, 121, 186, 192

Alexius, Eastern emperor, 34, 42

Alfonso X, King of Castile, 69,
180, 261, 266

Anacletus, anti-pope, 94, 97, 99-
101

Annates, 175

Anselm, St., archbishop, as philo
sopher, 114, 122 ; as teacher,
108, 118 ; as theologian, 186,
196, 282 ; and lay investiture,
48, 53 ; and clerical marriage,
71

Appeals, papal, 172, 180

Aquinas, St. Thomas, as philo
sopher, 121 ; as teacher, 119,
221 ; on papacy, 165, 171, 172,
179 ; on councils, 170 ; on cleri
cal celibacy, 72 ; on sacra
ments, 182, 185, 186, 187 ; on
confession, 189 ; on indul
gences, 192 ; on the Virgin
Mary, 196,197
Aristotle, works of, 111, 113, 119.

122

Armenian Church, 227, 287
Arnold of Brescia, 103, 104, 125,

129

Augustine, St., 3, 107, 182
Augustinian canons. 75, 218

Becket, St. Thomas, archbishop,
and clerical immunities, 67 ;
exile, 132 ; popularity, 133 ;
murder, 136

Benedict IX, pope, 12

Berengar of Tours, 21, 38, 183,
198

Bernard, St., his influence, 77,
95, 99, 101, 193; as defender
of the faith, 103, 104, 109, 110,
116, 201, 213 ; on the Papacy,
172, 178 ; on doctrine of the
two swords, 4 ; on worldli-
ness of clergy, 69 ; on the
Cluniac monks, 85 ; on the
Virgin Mary, 195, 196: 197 ;
and the schism, 100 ; and the
second Crusade, 105 ; and the
divorce of Louis VII, 106

Bogomiles, 286

Bohemia, 232

295

296

THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Bonaventura, St., as teacher, 121,
221 ; as Franciscan general, 225,
230 ; on the sacraments, 182 ;
on the Virgin Mary, 195
Boniface VIII, pope, as legate,
222 ; his reign, 271-9 ; on
papal power, 170
Brethren of the Sword, 237
Bulgarian Church, 283, 284
Bulls, papal, Clericis Laicos, 275 ;
Ineffabilis, 276 ; Ausculta Fili,
277 : Unam Sanctam, 278 ;
others, 274, 276, 277

Calixtus II, pope, 52, 55, 85, 92,

208

Canonisation, 173, 193
Canon Law, 169-72, 187, 253
Canossa, 30, 35, 279
Carthusians, 82
Cathari, 204-8, 217, 286
Celestine III, pope, 67, 80, 141,

151, 153, 154

Celestine V, pope, 231, 270
Charles of Anjou and I of Naples,

243, 258, 262, 284
Charles II of Naples, 270, 271,

272
Charles of Valois, 270, 272, 276,

278

Christian of Oliva, 238
Cistercians, foundation, 86 ; mode

of life, 87 ; decay, 88 ; and the

Virgin Mary, 195 ; and the

Spanish orders, 81. See also

St. Bernard

Claire, Order of St., 225
Clarendon, Constitutions of, 59,

67, 180
Clement III, anti-pope, 33, 34,

39,44

Clement IV, pope, 167, 177, 263
Cluniacs, organisation, 10, 75,

81, 84-6, 87 ; popularity, 74,

94. See also 21, 40
Colonnas, 272-3, 276, 279
Concordat of Worms, 54, 59, 93,

96, 98, 127, 156
Confession, 187, 188

Conrad II, 12

Conrad III, 93, 99, 102-5, 126,
128

Conrad IV, 258, 259

Conrad, son of Henry IV, 41,
44, 96

Conradin, 264

Constance of Sicily, 139, 150

Crescentines, 11

Crusades, first, 42-5, 105, 195,
282 ; second, 105-6 ; third, 80,
140 ; fourth, 154, 161 ; of
1217, 247 ; of Frederick II,
249 ; of Louis IX, 265

Curia, papal, 174

Dante, 5, 124, 175

Decretals, 66, 72, 164, 169, 253

Didatus, Papae, 164, 166, 169,

170, 172, 176, 178, 179
Dispensations, papal, 171
Dominic, St., 162, 210, 217-19
Dominicans, spread of order, 218 ;

rivalry with Franciscans, 223 ;

tertiaries, 226 ; as teachers,

121 ; and heresy, 213, 222 ; as

emissaries, 242, 283
Duns Scotus, 123, 197, 222

Eastern Church, internal condi
tion, 284-6 ; quarrel with
Latins, 280-1 ; attempts at re
union, 265, 266-9, 282-4. See
also 156, 186

Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, 259,
262

Edward I of England, 265, 275,
277

Elias of Cortona, 227

Elections, papal, 15, 22, 59, 137,
266 ; episcopal, 58-60, 167

England, and the papacy, 37,
163, 168, 174, 175 ; and cleri
cal immunities, 66 ; and cleri
cal marriage, 71-2 ; and heresy,
207, 214

Esthonia, conversion of, 235, 238

Eucharist, 181, 182, 187, 189,
204

INDEX

297

Eugenius III, pope, 104, 105,

110, 125, 235

"Everlasting Gospel," 229, 230
Excommunication, of the Em
peror, 131, 139, 151, 152, 157,
249, 250, 251, 254, 256; of
others, 125, 142, 153, 155,
159, 160, 199, 203, 209, 210,
278

Finland, 235

Flagellants, 230

Fontevraud, monastic order of,
83

Francis, St. , of Assisi, his order,
222-4, 228 ; canonisation of,
219, 225; and Innocent III,
162, 218 ; and the Mohamme
dans, 226

Franciscans, and Innocent III,
218 ; the Rule, 224 ; tertiaries,
226 ; as missionaries, 226 ; as
emissaries, 242, 283 ; as stu
dents of medicine, 222 ; Spirit
uals and Conventuals, 227-31;
and immaculate conception,
197 ; and later scholasticism,
121

Frederick I, 62, 64, 105, 127,
128, 129-41, 178, 180

Frederick II, 66, 68, 80, 120,
143, 150, 157, 180, 222, 228,
241, 246-58, 263

Fulk of Neuilly, 154, 216

Gelasius II, pope, 52

Gerard of Borgo-san-Donnino,

229

Ghenghiz Khan, 240
Gilbert de la Porree, 110, 116
Grammont, monastic order of, 82
Gregory VI, pope, 12, 21, 190
Gregory VII, pope, as Hilde-
brand, 13, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22,
37, 183 ; contest with empire,
25-38 ; papal claims of, 148,
164, 178 ; compared with St.
Bernard, 107 ; Alexander III,
138 ; Innocent III, 147, 148 ;

influence in Spain, 163 ; in
Hungary, 232 ; and monastic
orders, 82, 89, 90; and bishops,
166 ; and legates, 176 ; and
tithes, 64 ; and appeals, 173 ;
and indulgences, 190
Gregory VIII, pope, 173
Gregory VIII, anti-pope, 52
Gregory IX, pope, his reign, 248-
55 ; as legislator, 169 ; and
clerical marriage, 200 ; and in
dulgences, 191 ; and friars,
219, 220, 228

Gregory X, pope, 265-8, 269
Grossteste, Robert, Bishop of
Lincoln, 168

Hadrian IV, pope, his reign,

125-31 ; and Arnold of Brescia,

104 ; in Scandinavia, 125, 235.

See also 167, 174, 180
Hanno, Archbishop of Koln, 19,

20, 24, 233

Henry II, emperor, 11
Henry III, emperor, 12, 21, 56,

232
Henry IV, emperor, 24-46, 190,

233, 234, 235
Henry V, emperor, 44-56, 62, 92,

98, 235, 237
Henry VI, emperor, 139, 141-4,

150, 157
Henry the Lion of Saxony,

102, 127, 133, 138, 141, 152,

236
Henry, son of Frederick II, 158,

159

Henry of Lausanne, 201,205
Henry I of England, 96
Henry II of England, 106, 132,

134, 135, 137, 180
Henry III of England, 160, 180,

260
Heresy, 135, 156, 198-215, 222,

252, 285, 286

Herman of Luxemburg, 34, 39
Herman von Salza, 80, 247
Honorius II, pope, 77, 92, 94
Honorius II, anti-pope, 19

298 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Honorius III, pope, his reign,
246-8; and friars, 218, 219,
224. See also 80, 174

Hospitallers, Knights, 78, 216,
250

Hungary, 161, 232

Ignatius, Patriarch of Constanti
nople, 280

Immaculate Conception, doctrine
of, 196

Indulgences, 189, 274

Infallibility, papal, doctrine of,
178-9

Innocent II, pope, 94, 96, 98,
101, 103, 163, 164, 172, 208

Innocent III, pope, his reign,
145-62 ; and papal power, 165,
167, 177, 179, 191 ; and secu
lar power, 3, 61, 63, 66, 250 ;
and heresy, 209, 211, 214 ; and
friars, 218, 224, 225. See also
118, 238

Innocent IV, pope, 168, 171,
221, 239, 241, 255-9

Interdict, papal, 153, 160, 177,
250

Investiture, lay, 9, 23, 24, 25,
26, 36, 37, 40, 47, 49, 50, 51,
53, 54, 58, 60, 147

Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, 47, 48,
74, 175

Jacohite Church, 227, 287
Jerusalem, 244, 247, 250
Joachim de Flore, 228, 229, 230
John of Brienne, 247, 251
John of England, 154, 159, 160,

180, 210, 249

John of Monte Corvino, 245
John of Parma, 229, 230
John of Piano Carpini, 242
John of Salisbury, 3, 118, 174,

Jubilee, papal, of 1300, 192,
273

Lanfranc, archbishop, 20, 37, 38,
183

Lateran Councils, 170 ; first, 54,
71 ; second, 71, 79, 103, 164,

208 ; third, 63, 64, 137, 173,

209 ; fourth, 61, 63, 162, 184,
186, 189, 191, 212, 214, 218,
246, 252

Leo IX, pope, 13, 14, 17
Livonia, conversion of, 237, 239
Lombard League, 134, 248, 253
Lothair II, 76, 92, 96-100, 126,

128, 178, 235
Louis VI of France, 94
Louis VII of France, 105, 132,

134, 137

Louis VIII of France, 212
Louis IX of France, 168, 180,

214, 241, 242, 258, 265, 276
Lyons, Council of, first, 256 ;

second, 243, 266, 268, 284

Manfred, 259, 262-4
Manuel Comnenus, 282
Maronite Church, 287
Marriage of clergy, 9, 25, 37,

71, 72, 200, 207, 280
Martin IV, pope. 269
Matilda, Countess, 28, 30, 32,

33, 40, 41, 49, 51 ; her gift to

the Papacy, 33, 40, 52, 98, 99,

130, 138, 140, 150, 153, 157
Metropolitans, 165, 166, 175,

176, 177
Michael Pahfiologus, 267, 284,

286
Milan, 18, 128, 130, 132, 134,

135, 139, 207, 251
Miracles, 193-4
Mohammedans, 105, 119, 227,

241
Mongols, 227, 240

Nestorian Church, 119, 240, 242,

244, 245, 287
Nicholas I, pope, 8, 280
Nicholas II, pope, 15, 17, 18, 22,

40

Nicholas III, pope, 175, 268-9
Nicholas IV, pope, 270

INDEX

299

Norbert, St. , founds Premonstra-
tensians, 76 ; Archbishop of
Magdeburg, 76, 235 ; opposes
Lothair, 98 ; and Abailard,
116, 193 ; and heresy, 200

Normans, 16, 17, 22, 28, 34, 42,
49, 97, 281

Norway, conversion of, 233

Otto of Bamberg, 237
Otto of Brunswick, 152, 156-9,
180, 246

Pascal II, pope, his reign, 48-52.

See also 45, 71, 84, 170
Paschasius Radbert, 182, 184
Pasteauroux, 230
Patarins, 18, 28, 204, 207
Paulicians, 207, 286
Pauperes Catholici, 217
Penance, 181, 189
Peter of Aragon, 270
Peter Damiani, 18, 20, 195, 196
Peter John of Olive, 231
Peter of Murrone, 271
Peter the Lombard, 117, 182, 188
Peter the Venerable, 84, 86, 109,

201

Peter's Pence, 37, 175
Petrobrusians, 108, 109, 201, 205
Philip I of France, 36, 40, 49, 59
Philip II Augustus of France, 61,

67, 146, 153, 154, 157, 159,

160,210

Philip III of France, 213
Philip IV of France, 222, 275,

277-9
Philip of Suabia and Tuscany,

142, 150, 151, 152, 155, 156,

237

Photius, Patriarch of Constanti
nople, 280
Pilgrims, 274
Plato, 113, 115
Poland, conversion of, 232
Polo, Marco, 245
Pontius, Abbot of Cluny, 84-5
Premonstratensians, 76, 98, 236
Prester John, 240
Prussia, conversion of, 238

Ratramnus, 182

Raymond V of Toulouse, 208

Raymond VI, 209-13, 249

Raymond VII, 212-13

Regale, 277

Regalia, 61, 93, 127, 130

Relics, 194

Richard I of England, 140, 142,

152
Richard, Earl of Cornwall, 258,

260, 266

Robert Guiscard, 33, 34
Roger Bacon, 124, 222
Roger of Sicily, 97, 99-101, 128,

139, 151
Rome, Commune of, 103, 128,

142, 149, 157, 251, 262
Roscelin, 114
Rudolf of Hapsburg, 180, 266,

268, 269,274
Rudolf of Suabia, 31, 32, 33, 190

Sacraments, 181, 205
Scandinavia, Christianity in, 125,

233

" Sicilian Vespers," 270
Simon de Montfort, 211-12
Simony, 9, 36, 37, 53, 70, 171,

207

Spain, 161,163
Spanish Military Orders, 81
Spoils, right of, 62, 156, 247
Stephen IX, pope, 15, 22
Stephen Langton, archbishop,

160
Suger, Abbot of St. Denys, 105,

106
Sweden, 234

Tancred of Sicily, 141-2
Taxation, clerical, 63, 275
Templars, Knights, 77, 217, 250
Tertiaries of Franciscan Order,

226

Teutonic Knights, 80, 238
Tithes, 64, 79, 180, 276
Transubstantiation, 184-5
Truce of God, 68
Tusculan popes, 11

300

THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

Universities, 118, 121, 170, 213,
220

Urban II, pope, his reign, 40-4 ;
and papal power, 170, 171,
180 ; and clerical immunities,
66 ; and indulgences, 190; and
lay rulers, 49, 53, 151. See
also 196, 235, 282

Urban III, pope, 139

Urban IV, pope, 120, 187, 191,
221, 262, 284

Vicelin, 236

Victor IV, anti-pope, 131-2
Victorines, monastic Order of,
75-6, 116-17, 181

Waldenses, 202, 216

Wends, 234

William I of England, 163

William II, 180

William I of Sicily, 125, 129

William II, 136, 139, 141

William of Champeaux, 108, 115,

118
William of St. Amour, 221

Medley, D.J. BR

Church and the empire. 141,

.M49