THE POPES OF THE GREGORIAN RENAISSANCE

St Leo IX. to Honorius II. 1049-1130

VOL. VI.—1049-1073

ALEXANDER II.

A.D. 1061-1073.

King of France.

                 Philip I., 1060­1108.

Kings of England.

                St. Edward the Confessor, 1042-1066.

               William I., the Conqueror, 1066-1087.

Emperors of the East.

             Constantine X (Ducas), 1059-1067.

             Michael VII (Ducas), 1067-1078.

             Romanus IV. (Diogenes), 1068-1071.

Emperors  of the West.

           Henry IV (only King of Germany and of the Romans, 1056-1106).

However obscure are some of the facts connected with the election of Alexander II, there is no doubt that it was a matter of the greatest moment to the Roman Church, and through it to the world. For, as St. Peter Damian realized at the time, and as is now acknowledged by all classes of historians, its good estate at this epoch was essential to the well-being of Christendom. It was a question whether, softened and enervated by the loss of a celibate clergy, and held in base subjection to the great ones of this world by the bonds of simony, the Catholic Church was to be kept stamped in the mire by the iron heel of feudalism, or whether it was to arise and renew its youth by again forming a ministry at once strong through its celibacy, and free through being gratuitously chosen for its merits. Was the Roman Church to remain the one safe harbour for the poor and for the oppressed, or were its breakwaters too to be broken down by the violent passions of men? Was it to be free to work for the moral and intellectual elevation of Europe, or was it to be bought over to connive at the violation of its own rights, and those of the weak and the down-trodden in every country of the West?

In the year 1061 the forces behind these alternatives met in conflict over the election of a successor to Nicholas II. On the one side were many of the German statesmen, who were little disposed to give up the power they had acquired of nominating the Popes; many of the bishops and priests of Lombardy, who were equally disinclined to abandon their simoniacal and unchaste habits; and lastly, many of the Roman barons, who were determined, if possible, to retain the Papacy as an appanage to their families. Prominent among the leaders of this party were the imperial chancellor Guibert (or Wibert), afterwards an antipope, Gerard of Galeria, the bandit who despoiled Tostig, and Cardinal Hugo Candidus, of whom Bonizo thinks that the less said the better, but whose conduct was as crooked as his eyes. The apologist of the party was Benzo, bishop of Alba, one of the “headstrong bulls” of Lombardy whom Nicholas II tried in vain to tame, and to reclaim from his simoniacal habits. Though a lower type of pamphleteer than even Liutprand of Cremona, he will be sometimes here cited, because he has incidentally preserved some facts which are worth knowing, and because his production serves to show the lengths to which party faction was prepared to go. While “Brother Benzo”, as he is fond of styling himself, “is another Aristeus, binding his enemies with his arguments”, whilst he is “universally beloved” and “dear to everybody”, Pope Alexander “is the heretic of Lucca”, is “Lucencis (of Lucca), or rather Lutulensis (muddy), has “a face like the damned”, and is an ass of every kind —Asinandrellus, Asinelus, Asinander. Hildebrand is even more reviled. Not only is he Prandellus, or Folleprand, but he is a false monk who not merely “consults devils”, but a “cowled devil” and a “limb of the devil”.

On the other side, the material force of the empire was somewhat balanced by that of Godfrey, duke of Tuscany, and of the Normans, who were both prepared to aid the Papacy, at least so far as by so doing they could advance the cause of their own independence. But the former was liable to be swayed by his wife and his daughter, Beatrice and Matilda, who supported a reforming Papacy from purer motives; while over the latter, Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino, was able to exert an influence sometimes sufficient to induce them to give help which was not wholly selfish. But the heart and soul of the party of reform was the monk Hildebrand, archdeacon of the Roman Church, a man hated by some with the same intensity with which he was loved by others. For men felt themselves either strongly attracted towards him or disposed to be bitterly hostile to him. They were either for or against Hildebrand. Among the former in Rome mention has already been made of Leo the son of Benedict the Christian, Cencius Frangipane, and John (or Gerard) Brazutus. Nor were Gregory and his friends in want of a pen at this period.

The literary ability of St. Peter Damian was at their disposal. And if his style and character were very far removed above those of Benzo in dignity and truthfulness, he could at times dip his pen in gall, and say severe things, while his zeal was occasionally only too ardent.

Between the death of Nicholas II and the election of his successor more than two months intervened. What was the cause of this delay? What were the cardinals doing in the meantime? The fact that Nicholas had died outside Rome would account for some delay in the appointment of his successor, but not to the extent noted. There can be little doubt that the hesitation to proceed to the election was due to the schismatical attitude which had been taken up by the German Court when it caused Nicholas to be declared excommunicated. But while the party of reform were waiting to see what the empress and her advisers would do, or were anxiously deliberating what they should do themselves, their hands were forced by the Crescentii and the counts of Tusculum. As they dare not now directly impose one of their creatures on the chair of Peter, they resolved that the men who were striving to put an end to their lawlessness should not elect another reformer. They accordingly surreptitiously possessed themselves of the pontifical insignia and of the ornaments of the patricius, and sent off to Germany a deputation, headed by Gerard of Galena, to request “the boy-king to bestow a pious ruler on the Roman Church”. This decided Hildebrand. The Roman Church must not lose its undoubted right of choosing the supreme Pontiff, and action must be taken at once, as the people were being stirred up to sedition. But as it was felt to be necessary to do all that was possible to avoid trouble with the German Court, a candidate was selected who was both suitable, and known to be on good terms with it. Anselm, bishop of Lucca, the friend of Duke Godfrey, was the object of the choice of the reforming party, and Hildebrand was sent to bring him to Rome for election. At the same time Abbot Desiderius was commissioned to bring up Richard of Capua and his Normans to keep order in the city.

Quite against his will, Anselm allowed himself to be persuaded by Hildebrand, and to be offered to the Romans as a candidate for the Papacy. By a large assembly, gathered together in the Church of St. Peter ad vincula, he was declared duly elected, and was escorted to the Lateran and solemnly crowned. On the following day Richard of Capua again renewed his oath of fidelity to the new Pope, who had taken the name of Alexander, and then withdrew his forces.

The new Pope belonged to the family of Baggio da Baggio, of which mention is found in documents of the ninth century, and which took its name from Badaglum (Badagio, now Baggio), a village some three miles west of Milan. His father’s name is variously given in the catalogues as Anselinus or Ardericus. Part of his studies were made under Lanfranc at Bec; and the favour wichh throughout in his pontificate he showed to monks may be traced to his early connection with that famous monastery.

A glance at the Regesta of Jaffé will show him continuing the policy of his predecessors, and confirming monasteries in the possession of their property, protecting them from the encroachments of bishops and nobles, taking them under his protection, and sometimes exempting them from episcopal control. And this he did in every country in Europe.

Becoming in due course attached to the clergy of Milan, he was, at least, one of the first supporters of the Pataria, and was, even according to Landulf, a diligent preacher of the Word of God. His zeal, especially against the married clergy, was too disturbing for Arch shop Guido, and so he procured his nomination to the See of Lucca (1057). By this device, however, he did not altogether get rid of the influence he dreaded. Anselm continued to encourage the Patarines, and, as we have seen, even appeared in Milan as apostolic legate along with Hildebrand. The first letter he wrote as Pope was to the Milanese, exhorting them to lead purer lives; and he devoted no little of his pontificate to working for their betterment.

Whilst, on the one hand, the new Pope was rejoicing at the congratulations he was receiving from loyal souls, who prayed that he might show himself a worthy representative of God in his government of the Church, he was, on the other, saddened by the news that reached him from Germany. Gerard and his associates had been joined by Cadalous, bishop of Parma. Pretending that he was unaware that a successor to Nicholas had been elected, and taking with him, so the story went, an immense sum of money, he betook himself to the king’s court at Augsburg. Nor did he cease pushing his case with the empress-mother, with the (young) king, and with the bishop of Augsburg (Henry), till he had secured his appointment to the Apostolic See.

Cadalous was the nominee of a number of Lombard bishops who, on the death of Nicholas, had assembled in council under the presidency of the chancellor Guibert. They had decided that the only Pope they would accept would be one “from the paradise of Italy who could com­passionate the infirmities”. The principal supporters of Cadalous. were the bishops Dionysius of Piacenza and Gregory of Vercelli, men whom St. Peter Damian denounces as of a very unepiscopal character, and of whom he says that their habits made them better judges of female beauty than of the proper men to choose as Popes.

The man on whom men of that description fixed their choice was, of course, either like unto themselves, or of such a pitiable character as easily to be made their tool. He was of the family of the counts of Sabulonus, a castle not far from Verona, and, on the death of his father, took up his abode in the city, along with his brothers, at the court of its duke. In 1042 he joined the ranks of the clergy; and three years later, becoming bishop of Parma, he founded the monastery of St. George ex (or in) Braida, on the banks of the Adige, just outside the city, whence Dom Cajetan drew these particulars of his early life. In allowing himself to be made an antipope, and thus “the ruin of the people”, as St. Peter Damian is fond of calling him, he displayed anything but a virtuous character; and that act seems to have been but the climax of an ill-spent life. The last-named author says he was worse than Saul, for he from being good became bad, whereas the bishop from being bad became worse. And he further declares that those who had been present affirmed that it was only the clemency of the Roman Church that saved him from condemnation by the synods of Pavia (1049), Mantua (1052), and Florence (1055). If these words are, however, too vague to allow us to do more than suspect him of simony or concubinage, specific charges of the former crime, at least, are definitely brought against him by the same writer

The council of Basle. October 28, 1061

To give some show of canonical action to their proceedings, the supporters of Cadalous convened a synod at Basle.

The first act in its proceedings was the crowning of the young king as Patricius of the Romans, by Gerard and his associates, with the golden circlet they had brought from Rome. Then, despite the opposition of at least a considerable number of the archbishops and bishops, Cadalous was declared Pope by the young king, was invested with the mitre and the customary red cloak or cope, and took the name of Honorius II. “These doings”, regretfully note the Annals of Altaich, “were the beginnings of troubles”, and were possible “because the king was a boy, and his mother, inasmuch as she was a woman, was easily swayed first by one adviser and then by another; whilst the other chief men of the palace were all slaves to avarice, and would do no justice without money, so that right and wrong were confounded together”.

It is true that by the election decree of 1059 some ill-defined right in connection with papal elections had been left to the emperor. But whatever that right was, it is certain that it was the survival of the right which had been given to him originally with a view to preventing disorderly elections, and that there was no idea in the minds of the framers of the decree that a regular election would be nullified if the right was not exercised. They did not regard the emperor or anything that he might do or not do as essential to a valid election.

But the action of the German Court in its opposition to Nicholas II made it plain that it was not content with the right of exercising a kind of police supervision over papal elections. It had been so long in the habit of exercising a predominating influence over them that it was not disposed to give up its usurped rights. Hence in the matter of the election of Alexander II there was no formal protest on its part against the violation of such rights as had been left to it by the decree of 1059, but a violent attempt to keep a position to which it had no intrinsic claim. It was not even dignified in its violence. It allowed itself to be induced, by whatever means, to sanction the patently uncanonical election of an unworthy candidate, the representative of a base cause, and to allege groundless charges to discredit the obviously canonical election of a desirable candidate, who stood for reform in the best sense of that much-abused word.

Whilst this unwarrantable election brought the greatest joy to that section of the clergy that was devoted to simony and concubinage, “the eye of the Papacy and the immovable support of the Apostolic See”, St. Peter Damian, was filled with anguish of soul. He at once dispatched a long and earnest letter to the intruder. Reminding him of the mercy the Roman See had shown him in not punishing him for the faults of which he had been guilty when he pretended to be nothing more than bishop of Parma, he indignantly asked him how he could dare to allow himself to be elected bishop of Rome, and that too without the co­operation of the cardinal-bishops and the Roman Church? In the strongest language of the Sacred Scriptures he tried to impress upon the usurper the evil he had done and the trouble he was about to bring upon the world. He endeavored to shame him by reminding him that up to this time his transgressions had been known to but few, but that, now he laid claim to be Pope, they were being discussed everywhere. “They are being talked about in markets where the merchants most do congregate, and by the workers in the fields. Boys at school are engaged in pulling your character to pieces, and the citizens who meet together in the streets are condemning you”. He even ventured, in a few verses at the end of his letter, to assert that the intruder would die in the course of the year.

It was all to no purpose. Cadalous at once began to make preparations to establish himself in Rome by force; and instructions were given by the court to its Italian officials to afford him all the necessary help. Meanwhile the notorious Benzo was dispatched to Rome with large sums of money to weld together by its means a strong opposition. In passing through Tuscany, he tells us himself how he bought the support of various counts; and when he had been received in Rome by the malcontents within the city, and lodged in the palace of Octavian, near S. Maria in Aracoeli, he gave them also gold in plenty and promised them mountains of it. If we are to believe his own account of his doings, he displayed the greatest activity for the antipope, not only in a more or less secret manner, but openly. And he has left us quaint pictures of his private conferences with his aristocratic supporters in their tall white mitres, and of his public addresses to the people in the Coliseum or the Circus Maximus. He avers that Pope Alexander himself was present at one of these latter, that he objurgated him for leaving the see given him by King Henry, and for usurping that of Rome by the aid of money and the Normans; that the Pontiff meekly replied that he would send an embassy to Germany to explain his action, and that he then took his departure amid the hootings of the multitude.

As soon as he had formed a more or less strong party, Benzo sent word to the antipope to make is descent on Rome. With a strong force, drawn for the most part from his bishopric, and paid for by its goods, Cadalous began his southward march by way of Bologna, gathering recruits as he went along. Despite the opposition of the Countess Beatrice, he reached Sutri on March 25. Here he was joined by Benzo with “his Roman senators and Galerian princes”.

Meanwhile Hildebrand had not been inactive. He had gathered together some troops, but had failed to induce either the Normans or Godfrey of Tuscany, both intent on their own schemes, to come to his aid. However, when the forces of Cadalous encamped on the Neronian fields, they were assailed by the Romans (April 14). Victory was at first with the antipope, and he all but gained possession of St. Peter’s; but, unable to hold his ground in the Leonine city, he withdrew by the ford at Fiano (Flajanum, the ancient Flavian), some twenty-six miles from Rome, to the other side of the Tiber. The castle of St. Angelo, nevertheless, remained in the power of one of his partisans, Cencius or Crescentius, the son of the prefect Stephen.

At Fiano, Cadalous received some fresh recruits, and then moved to Tusculum, where he was joined by its counts, and where—a most unexpected remark from the artificial Benzo—all “were delighted by the most fragrant scents of herbs and flowers”. Whilst still encamped beneath the towers of Tusculum, the party of the antipope were greatly elated by the arrival in their midst of three gorgeously attired envoys from the Eastern Emperor. It would appear that Benzo had already been trying to effect an alliance with the Greeks against the Normans, through the agency of Pantaleon, patricius of Amalfi. At any rate, besides carefully discussing the situation, the ambassadors are credited by Benzo with having handed to Cadalous the following letter : “To the patriarch of Rome, by royal charter raised over the universal Church, Constantine Doclitius (Ducas), basileus of Constantinople, health”. The emperor expressed his desire of forming an eternal friendship with the young Henry with the double object of their together striving for the recovery of the Lord’s sepulcher, and for the expulsion of the Normans. As a guarantee of his good faith he offered to put his son as a hostage into the hands of the king, and to place his treasury at his disposal.

But the joy of Cadalous on hearing the contents of this Arrival of this epistle was quickly damped, not only by his receiving another stinging letter from St. Peter Damian, but by the arrival on the scene of Godfrey of Tuscany with a large army (c. May). Pitching his camp by the Ponte Molle, he commanded both Alexander and Cadalous to cease their contentions for the Papacy, and to retire to their respective bishoprics, till such times as the king and the Empress Agnes should pass an authoritative decision on their claims. Though convinced that Godfrey was acting in the interests of his opponent, Cadalous could not resist. His money was exhausted, and his mercenary followers were falling away from him. He had to return to Parma as well as he could, while Godfrey escorted Alexander to Lucca.

Kaiserswerth, April 1062

Godfrey’s action on this occasion was but one act of a conspiracy to bring to an end the existing regency in Germany. He was in touch with Anno of Cologne, and other ecclesiastics who were jealous of the power possessed in the councils of the empress-regent by Henry, bishop of Augsburg, and with Otho, duke of Bavaria, and other lay nobles who were equally envious of the favored bishop, and who bore uneasily the yoke of a female ruler. By a clever ruse the malcontents contrived to possess themselves of the person of their youthful sovereign at a place on the Rhine where now stands the town of Kaiserswerth. He was at once conveyed up stream to Cologne by the boat into which he had been entrapped.

There was considerable excuse for Anno’s share in this affair, if it be the fact that he had been named by the emperor “the guardian of the kingdom and of his son”. At any rate, he was now master of the situation. Nicholas II, against whom he had had a personal dislike, was dead, and Cadalous was the nominee of the party of the empress. And, as the archbishop at once replaced her chancellor of Italy, Guibert, by Gregory, bishop of Vercelli, policy, at least, if not conscience, dictated to him the advisability of supporting Alexander. It was decided to hold a great diet at Augsburg in October. St. Peter Damian prepared the way for this assembly’s passing a judgment in favor of Alexander by the arguments which he set down in his Disceptatio synodalis, and with which the reader has already been made familiar.

It is very unfortunate that but few facts with regard to the diet of Augsburg have been transmitted to us. Besides a number of German and Italian bishops and nobles, there were present at it Anno and his protégé, King Henry, as well as, probably, Godfrey of Tuscany. The more conscientious among the bishops seem to have felt themselves in the same awkward position as did many of the successors in the Great Schism of the West. They realized that the case seemed to be one of disciples sitting in judgment on their master, and would appear to have come to a decision that was rather practical than theoretical in its nature. This would seem the most satisfactory inference from a comparison of what actually took place immediately after the diet, viz., the restoration of Alexander, with the fact of the legality of his elect on being rediscussed at the council of Mantua. It is true St. Peter Damian says that Cadalous was “condemned and deposed” at Augsburg, but the statement cannot be said to be more than practically correct. The better informed Annals of Altaich give it as the decree of the assembly “that he who had been consecrated (Pope) should again return to the Apostolic See, until such times as a canonical and synodal decision should definitely rule whether he was to retain it or to be deposed from it”. And they add, “Alexander returned to Rome not long after this”.

Alexander Anno’s nephew, Burchard of Halberstadt, was meanwhile commissioned by the diet to proceed to Rome and “to satisfy himself regarding the truth of what had been alleged for and against Alexander’s election. Burchard’s declaration that he had been properly elected was followed early in the year 1063 by his restoration to Rome under the escort of Duke Godfrey.

In accordance with ancient custom, Alexander ordered a synod to meet soon after Easter (April, 20). Over a hundred bishops answered to his summons. The first matter which occupied the attention of the assembly was the aggress on of Cadalous. Examination soon showed that he had endeavored to obtain possession of Rome, “the mother of the churches”, both by gold and steel. And as he had neither come himself nor sent a representative to plead his cause, it was unanimously decided to declare him excommunicated. The synod next turned itself to the work of reform, and published twelve canons against simony, whether on the part of priests or people, against clerical and lay concubinage, against marriage within the forbidden degrees of kindred, and against laics taking orders without due preparation in the clerical body. To help the observance of these decrees, the faithful were forbidden to hear the Mass of a priest who did not obey the decrees of the Church with regard to clerical chastity.

This action of the Lateran synod with regard to Cadalous would seem to have galvanized his party into new life. Gathering together “what bishops and clerics he could at Parma”, the antipope declared that he was the true Pope, inasmuch as “he had been elected and installed by the king as patricius of the Romans”, and he anathemacised Alexander, who, he maintained, had not been canonically elected by the Roman clergy and people, but fraudulently by the Normans, “the enemies of the Roman Empire”.

Then, after he had gathered together a large sum of money, which he scattered freely in all directions, he again marched on Rome. Contriving to elude the troops stationed by Duke Godfrey to watch him, he succeeded in surprising the Leonine City by night, “with the aid of the capitanei and certain pestiferous Romans”. Compelled, however, to abandon it on the following day, he took refuge with Cencius in the castle of St. Angelo, for both and Johannipolis were in the hands of Alexander’s enemies.

Once again the streets of Rome resounded with the notes of battle, and its great buildings re-echoed the fierce battle-cry, War! War! of the Normans, whom Hildebrand had again summoned to Alexander’s assistance. Though they failed to carry the castle of St. Angelo by assault, they succeeded, with the help of Godfrey, in reducing Cadalous to extremities. It was in vain that Benzo appealed to the Greeks, and visited Germany on his behalf. He obtained nothing but words. Even Cencius wearied of fighting for the antipope, who was at length compelled to give his host three hundred pounds of silver, and to take his departure in secret from the castle. He reached Berceto in the early part of the year 1064.

It appeared to many in Rome that the only way to put an end to these unseemly conflicts was to obtain from the German Court a formal declaration as to the legitimacy of the election of Alexander or of his rival. An embassy was accordingly dispatched to Germany to make these views known. About the same time, St. Peter Damian, who was on a mission in France, and who was always strongly, if unreasonably, opposed to clerics supporting their rights by arms, wrote to Archbishop Anno in order to induce him to complete the work begun at Augsburg. To put an end to the evil which was being wrought by Cadalous, “the devil’s herald and the apostle of Antichrist”, he adjured him to cause the assembling of a general council as soon as possible, so that the thorns which were troubling the wretched world might be eradicated.

The king and his advisers accordingly decided to hold a synod at Mantua, where both Popes, if it be right to use such a phrase, along with the German, Roman, and Lombard bishops, might meet together. The synod was fixed for the feast of Pentecost; “and although”, as Bonizo notes, “the proceeding was derogatory to the dignity of the Roman Pontiffs, nevertheless, seeing that it was a case of hard necessity”, Alexander not only agreed to be present at the assembly, but actually summoned it himself.

On the appointed day a great many important personages met at Mantua, and were received with the greatest honor by the Countess Beatrice. In the first place came Pope Alexander, “who ever strove to comply with the canons”; then Archbishop Anno, with a number of German bishops and nobles; and, finally, “innumerable” bishops, abbots, and princes “from all parts of Italy”.

Cadalous, who had promised to present himself at the synod, failed to do so, but took up a position close at hand, with a number of armed men, at Aqua nigra. Hence he sent to Anno to say that he would not come to the assembly unless he were allowed to be its supreme president. Of this impertinent announcement the king’s representatives took no notice, as they regarded Alexander as at least Pope de facto. Thus rebuffed, Cadalous contented himself with sending a number of spies into the city, in order that he might be kept well informed as to what went on.

The first session of the synod was held in the church on Whit-Monday, and it was obvious that there was considerable difference of opinion amongst its members. However, after the invocation of the Holy Ghost, when all had taken their seats, Alexander addressed them on the need of peace and harmony, and then ordered him to speak who had anything to say. Thus adjured, Anno rose and said that it had come to the ears of the king that Alexander had been elected by simony, and had been maintained in his position by the Normans, enemies of the Roman Empire. To this Alexander is said by the annalist of Altaich, who professes to give his very words, to have made the following reply : “What truth there is in my accusers you may judge from this, that, unlike me, they have not dared to present themselves before this assembly. But to what has been alleged against me I am willing to make answer, not upon compulsion, but of my own accord; for all know that it is not the proper thing for disciples to accuse or to judge their masters. Hence, that God’s Holy Church may not be scandalized through me, I call to witness the Holy Spirit, whose coming we are now celebrating, that my soul has never been stained with simony, and that I was duly installed in the chair of Peter quite against my will. And this was done by those who are acknowledged to have the right, according to the ancient custom of the Roman Church, of electing and consecrating the Pope. With regard to friendship with the Normans, there is no need that I should say anything. However, when the king, my son, comes to Rome to receive the imperial crown, he will be able to discover for himself what measure of truth there may be in what is said concerning it”.

These simple words of Alexander were enough for the assembled prelates. They acclaimed him Pope, and intoned the Te Deum. Then, on the motion of the sovereign Pontiff, they unanimously condemned Cadalous.

Another session was held on the following day. Emboldened by the fact that for some reason Anno was not present at it, a number of armed supporters of the antipope burst into the church, denouncing Alexander as a heretic, and threatening to kill him. Most of the bishops fled in terror. But Alexander boldly kept his place, guided by the advice of the abbot of Altaich, Wenceslaus, who, says our annalist with ill-disguised contempt, knew well the ways of the Lombards, which were to threaten much more than they had the courage to accomplish. And so it happened on this occasion; for the opportune arrival of the Countess Beatrice with her soldiers caused an instantaneous resumption of order.

After two more sessions, and after he had conferred certain privileges on the bishop of Mantua, Alexander returned to Rome by way of Lucca, and was acknowledged by all.

Though now almost universally discredited, Cadalous in retirement continued to style himself Pope, and ceased not till the hour of his death issuing decrees as though he were the supreme Pontiff, and constituting himself a center of disaffection. He died either at the close of the year 1071 or at the beginning of 1072. And while on the walls of the Lateran there was to be read an inscription to the effect that Alexander reigns, whilst Cadalous falls, in Parma ascriptions were erected in which the positions of the two were reversed. An ancient sepulchral epitaph found by Affó, and composed as an address to Rome, set forth that Parma in tears had interred in a narrow tomb her duly elected Pope. With him as her ruler she would with great power have won back the honors of the world for the Apostolic See. The Normans would have been expelled, and Apulia and Calabria would have been freed from the servitude in which they are now lying; while Rome, the head of the world, would have set her foot upon the haughty. But, as it was, unhappy in the ruler she retained, she acted against the one who conquered her, strong as she was, but who, with her, would have subdued the world for her, had long enough life been granted him.

According to Rangerius, it was in prison that Cadalous expiated the crimes of his life by his death.

If the coming of Anno to Italy had been advantageous to Alexander, it was not so to the archbishop himself. His absence from the court had been utilized by his rivals. It was only natural that Henry should remember that Anno had taken the principal part in the outrage which had been put upon him at Kaiserswerth, and he had found him a more severe mentor than he wished to have. He, therefore, favored the advances of another who left him more to himself and his passions; and when Anno returned to Germany, he found that his place had been taken by the able and aspiring Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen, of whose splendid ambition mention has already been made. The empress-mother Agnes returned to court; but such influence for good as she exercised over her wayward son was more than neutralized by that which the young dissolute Count Werner exerted over him in an opposite direction.

1065. Henry comes of age

To increase his influence over the youthful Henry, the patriarch of Hamburg-Bremen, for so Adalbert loved to be called, caused him to be proclaimed of age when he was only fifteen years old (March 29, 1065).

One result of the advent of Adalbert to power would seem to have been that encouragement was again given to Cadalous by the German Court. This action called forth a strong letter from St. Peter Damian to “Henry, son of the emperor Henry (II) III, king of the Romans”. In prophetic language he warned him that the man who should divide the Church would be himself divided; he suggested that the empire’s treatment of the Roman Church was perhaps the reason of the losses it was sustaining at the hands of the Normans and others; and he exhorted him to let the force of his wrath fall upon Cadalous, that enemy of man’s salvation, that sink of vices, that fuel of hell.

This letter was not without its effect on the king’s council, and an expedition into Italy was decided upon. Owing, however, it would appear, to the diplomatic maneuvers of Adalbert, ii was first postponed, then abandoned altogether. And, despise is own wishes, Alexander was, as we shall see, forced to endeavor to strengthen the papal alliance with the Normans.

Fall of Adalbert. Jan. 1066.

Though fortune-tellers, in whom he trusted, had assured that he would be the head of the government for a long time, a coalition of his enemies brought about his fall as early as the beginning of the year 1066. The party of Anno once again became all-powerful in the realm; and while archbishops and dukes contended for the chief place in his kingdom, the young king was made to remain a mere cipher in its government, but was allowed to become an adept in every ignoble vice.

With a view to putting a term to the growing licentiousness of their youthful monarch, his councilors insisted on his marrying Bertha, the daughter of Adelaide, countess of Turin, to whom his father had long before caused him to be betrothed. The ceremony was accordingly gone through at Tribur, July 13, 1066; but for many months Henry refused to consummate the marriage. Although Bertha was amiable and beautiful, and, as the sequel abundantly proved, loved her husband, he conceived the greatest dislike to her—partly, no doubt, because pressure had been put upon him in the matter by Anno.

The history of the early years of the reign of King Henry IV furnishes an admirable illustration of the truth that it is an evil thing for a nation to have a child-ruler. During that period the whole of Germany was kept in a turmoil by the unchecked self-seeking of its chief men. Whilst Anno’s nepotism was causing, as one of its results, the violent death of one of his nephews, a bishop-elect, the quarrels of Adalbert with Magnus, duke of Saxony, were ending in the ruin of his diocese, in an outburst of paganism, and in his own great humiliation.

In their struggles for influence the heads of the various parties strove to secure the support of the Pope. There is still extant a letter to Alexander from Siegfried, archbishop of Mainz or Mayence, in which he begs his paternity, inasmuch as he is the crown of their kingdom, and the diadem of the whole Roman Empire, ever to have his son, their sovereign lord Henry, in his good memory, and with apostolic constancy to continue, as he has done in the past, to support him with his advice and help till he secure the imperial crown. The part soon to be taken by Siegfried in the affair of the king’s divorce throws light on this rapprochement between Henry and the archbishop of Maine.

Whilst the German king was passing his time in gratifying his passions, Italy was slipping away from the empire. Godfrey of Tuscany was much more powerful there than was the Franconian Henry. To reassert imperial influence in the peninsula, it was again decided that the king should lead an expedition into it, and with that object he came to Augsburg (February 2, 1067). But most of the great princes of the empire had their own ends to work out in Germany. Knowing that he would not be loath to return to his pleasures, they easily persuaded Henry that his ideas on the subject were those of a boy, and that he had better go back himself to Saxony, and send an embassy into Italy instead. It seems to have been the intention of the princes that Duke Godfrey should accomplish the mission. But, as we shall see later, he chose to work (1067) rather for his own interests and those of the Papacy than for those of the empire.

Accordingly, in the following year (1068), Anno of Cologne, Biohop Henry of Trent, and Otho, duke of Bavaria, entered Italy in then sovereign’s name, and at once incurred the displeasure of the Pope by freely holding intercourse with Cadalous and with his equally excommunicated partisan, Henry, archbishop of Ravenna. Another reason that made Alexander disposed to treat Anno coldly was that he had been informed that he was aiming at the Papacy; and he was, moreover, annoyed at the way in which, despite his prohibition, he was harrying the monks of Stavelo or Stablo. Hence, when the ambassadors reached Rome, Alexander for some time refused to see them. However, after they had humbly offered satisfaction, the Pope granted them indeed a hearing, but apparently refused to conform at least to all their wishes, and, taking up a firm stand, bade them lay his views before the king.

How far the embassy was successful in impressing upon the people of Italy the power of Germany, or the advantage or necessity of union with it, may be gathered from what the Annals of Altaich tell us of the return of the ambassadors.

Instead of going back to Germany with the bishops, Otho of Nordheim, duke of Bavaria, remained behind, as though to treat with the princes of Italy on its affairs. With a great multitude of Italians, Duke Godfrey went to meet him on the plains round Piacenza. When, however, Otho attempted to enter upon business, the Italians, moved by their pride, and, as it were, inborn hatred of the Germans, refused to give him a hearing, shouted him down, and compelled him to depart without accomplishing anything.

Another matter to which Henry and his advisers failed to induce the Pope to agree was his wish to divorce Bertha. Whether because she had in a sense been forced upon him, or because he objected to the restraints of married life, or because he had taken a personal dislike to her, he desired to procure a divorce from her. It was in 1069 (June), and to Siegfried of Mainz (Mayence), that Henry first opened his mind on the subject, and, according to a conjecture of Lambert, offered to force the Thuringians to pay him the tithes, if he would help him to attain his end. When, by whatever means, he had secured the adhesion of the archbishop to his base designs, he began to speak publicly of his relations to Bertha with much the same loathsome hypocrisy as our own Henry VIII spoke of his towards Catherine of Aragon. He had no fault to find with her, but could no longer keep from men that “by what judgment of God he knew not”, he could not live with his wife, and that he had never treated her as such. It was accordingly decided to hold a synod on the matter at Mainz in the week following the feast of St. Michael. Meanwhile the queen was relegated to the abbey of Lorsch.

Whether because he hoped to beguile Alexander into sanctioning his action, or because he feared the consequences if he did not communicate so important a matter to him, Siegfried forwarded to him a garbled account as to what had taken place up to that moment regarding the projected divorce. He pretended that he had opposed the king’s wishes in the matter until both king and queen had assured him that she was incapable of becoming a mother; and he declared that nothing should be done without the Pope’s authority.

The practical reply of the Pope was to send the fearless and inflexible ascetic, St. Peter Damian, as his legate to the appointed synod.

Full of hope of a speedy release from the matrimonial bond, Henry had set out for Mainz (Mayence), when word was brought to him of the arrival in that city of the Pope’s legate, and of the fact that he had already threatened to excommunicate Siegfried for the part he had taken “in this wicked attempt at separation”. Made a coward by his conscience, and filled with bitter disappointment, the king was at first disposed to return to Saxony without presenting himself before the synod. It required all the persuasive powers of his friends to induce him to face the legate. It was pointed out to him that the attention of all was directed to the synod; that by his own command the great ones of the empire would assemble at Mainz, and that he must meet them. However, when he reached Frankfort, he gave orders that the gathering should be held in that city instead.

The synod was accordingly held there in the beginning of October (1069), and it was soon evident that Henry had no case. Supported by justice, by the commission of the Pope, and by his own character, the authority of the legate was irresistible. The divorce was not to be. When the king had heard the princes of the empire express their adhesion to the words of the legate, and declare that the decision of the Roman Pontiff was just, “broken rather than convinced”, he said, “he would bear as best he could a burden he could not lay down”. Then, without waiting for the queen, he hurried back to Saxony with an escort of barely forty men. Bertha, however, regained her rights both as a queen and as a wife.

It would appear that St. Peter Damian utilized his stay in Germany to examine into the state of its Church. At any rate, in obedience to the Pope’s summons, the arch­bishops of Cologne and Mainz and the bishop of Bamberg betook themselves to Rome in the beginning of the year 1070 to answer a charge of simony. The bishop of Bamberg extricated himself out of his difficulties, not by giving presents to the Pope, as Lambert suggests in one place, but by perjury, as the same author shows in another place. The great archbishops, now humble enough before the Pope, were only permitted to return home after they had taken an oath never again to be guilty of the vice of simony.

The opposition which Siegfried and others offered after this to the simoniacal practices of King Henry shows that the spirit of the Gregorian reform was beginning to sink deep.

Adalbert of Bremen again in power. 1069

For a second time was a journey to Italy fatal to the ascendancy of Anno. No sooner did Henry see that he had fallen under the displeasure of the Pope than he re­called Adalbert of Bremen to manage the affairs of state. But the brightness and brilliancy of the archbishop had departed, and left behind them only a senile cunning. He thought merely of acquiring wealth for his church, of leaving the king to work his will, and of avoiding coming into adverse contact with the magnates of the realm. He had no concern how badly the weak and helpless were treated either by himself or others. Of all his great powers, his ready speech alone did not desert him; so that at this declining period of his life it might have been said of him, as it was of an English king, viz., that he never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one. But his end was near. He d\;d on March 18, 1072.

After what has been said of the last doings of Adalbert, the condition of things at his death may be easily imagined. Murmurs were loud and deep. The king was alarmed, and succeeded in inducing Anno to take up once more for the general good the reins of government. To help the archbishop in his efforts to bring Henry to some sense of his duty, his mother left Italy, and came to add her exhortations to those of the new minister. It was all to no purpose. Roused for a time by the vigor of Anno’s administration, Henry soon fell back, and continued his career of vice and folly, wantonly offending great and small alike. Unable to check him, Anno begged to be allowed to retire and to apply himself exclusively to the affairs of his diocese. Henry was nothing loath, “and, as it were delivered from a most severe master, at once burst all the bonds of moderation and plunged headlong into every kind of wickedness” (Christmas 1072).

1073. Henry’s first encounter with the Holy See

There was, however, one firm barrier at least in his way, and against it he soon struck. It was the Holy See. His counter struggle with Hildebrand was about to begin. But the first blows in the deadly combat between the monarch and the Popes were struck by the dying hand of Alexander. In a Roman synod held in Lent a month or so before he died, he publicly excommunicated, at the request of the empress-mother Agnes, some of the king’s advisers whose counsels were eminently calculated to lead to his being cut off from the communion of the Church. Ekkehard of Aura (Urach), indeed, goes much further. He pretends that Anno, who had gone to Rome to receive some moneys due to the king, returned with papal letters summoning Henry to Rome to answer the charges of simony and other crimes which had been lodged against him. These accusations, as we learn from the same author, had been preferred against him by the Saxons, whom he had been fiercely oppressing. Their statements of their wrongs had won over Siegfried of Mainz, and many others, and through them had enlisted the sympathy of the Pope. But it would seem more likely that in this instance Bonizo was more correct, and that it was Henry’s counselors and not himself who received the summons to present themselves before the Pope to answer for their inquiries. Still, whatever be the truth in the matter, it is evident that the power of the Papacy is beginning to make itself felt in the immediate vicinity of the king’s person. It will not be long before it will fall upon him.

Affairs of Italy. Milan

Now that we have sketched the relations between the empire and Pope Alexander to the day of his death, we may turn to other events in different parts of the Church with which he was connected. It is only natural that we should begin with the affairs of Italy, and with those of one of its most important cities, Milan. The reform inaugurated in that city by St. Peter Damian was not final; but as long as the authority of Alexander hung in the balance, and papal interference was scarcely possible, Guido, its refractory archbishop, was content to acknowledge that Pontiff as head of the Church. No sooner, however, was his position rendered secure than he went over to the party of Cadalous. The Patarines, however, headed now by the deacon Ariald and the knight Herlembald, who took the place of his deceased brother Landulf, resumed their old activity against the married clergy (1066). Herlembald had, when in doubt, been encouraged to attach himself to Ariald by Pope Alexander and the cardinals, “who gave him, in the name of St. Peter, a wondrous standard, that, when the storm of heresy raged furiously around him, he might, by holding his banner in his hand, be able to allay it”.

As Guido showed himself false to the promises he had made to St. Peter Damian, and resumed his simoniacal practices, Ariald sent Herlembald to Rome for instructions as to what should be done. Whilst he was away, party feeling was intensely aroused. On the one hand, the archbishop had persecuted two clerics who had given up their former mode of irregular living and had joined the Patarines, and, on the other, the latter had, in the name of the liturgical rites of the Church of Rome, attacked certain Ambrosian customs. This caused quite a popular commotion, and of this the archbishop made good use when Herlembald returned to Milan with a papal bull declaring him excommunicated. He declared that Milan had never obeyed the Roman Church, and called upon the people to do away with those who would destroy their liberties. No more was needed to inflame the passions of men. By the friends of the archbishop Ariald was attacked, and left for dead; and by the supporters of the deacon, Guido’s palace was sacked, and himself nearly done to death. But a lavish distribution of money provoked a general feeling against Ariald. He was compelled to fly from the city, was captured by the partisans of the archbishop, and put to death in a manner too horrible to be here described.

 Such a crime could not long remain hidden, and Ariald conquered in death. His mutilated body was brought back in triumph to Milan (1067), and soon after two cardinals arrived there from Rome to restore peace and order to the distracted city (August). Their one object was to put a term to the factions whose terrible reprisals were causing such misery in the city. Hence, they said nothing about the death of Ariald, and, though they renewed the decrees which St. Peter Damian had issued (1059) regarding simony and clerical celibacy, they absolutely forbade those who had banded themselves together to eradicate those vices to proceed in the future by any measures of violence. They must act canonically, and denounce delinquents to the archbishop or the bishops. The legates would also seem to have allowed the excommunication of Guido to lapse, perhaps on condition that he should resign his office. For, on the one hand, we know that Hildebrand had declared that the only remedy for the sad state of affairs in Milan was the resignation of Guido, and the canonical election of another archbishop, with the consent of the Holy See; and, on the other, that he did actually resign about this time.

But if the legates of the Holy See showed by their moderation that their one aim was the establishment of peace, the conduct of Guido evinced plainly either that the general good was of little concern to him, or that he had no idea of how to work for it. When he resigned his see, instead of committing the choice of his successor to the clergy and people of Milan, and giving the Holy See an opportunity of expressing its approval of their choice, he sent his crozier and ring to the king of Germany, and asked him to appoint as his successor a subdeacon of the name of Godfrey. He preferred to surrender the liberties of his church into the hands of the empire, rather than into those of the Papacy. Godfrey, who had schemed to secure his nomination by Guido, was equally successful with Henry, to whom he gave money, and a promise to destroy the Patarines. But though he was consecrated at Novara, Rome would have none of him, nor would the people of Milan. And even Guido, before he died (August 23, 1071), abandoned him, and made his peace with the reform party.

All during the interval between the nomination of Election of Godfrey and the death of Guido, active opposition was kept up towards the former by Herlembald. On the demise of the old archbishop, Herlembald put himself in communication with Rome, and it was decided to proceed to choose a new archbishop. Cardinal Bernard was sent from Rome to watch the election; and the party of the Patarines selected a young cleric of noble blood named Atto (January 6, 1072). But he was scarcely elected before he was seized by the opposite faction, wounded, and compelled to swear that he would renounce the bishopric. He was, however, rescued by Herlembald, and his oath was declared null by the Pope. But, unable to maintain himself in Milan, he went to Rome, and though Gregory VII took up his cause, he was never able to obtain his see, as King Henry supported a second intruder, Theobald, on the death of Godfrey.

In many other cities of northern Italy besides Milan did struggle for reform in their bishops resist the efforts of the Holy See to reform them, and many other cities witnessed tragic scenes, when a large section of the people seconded the zeal of Rome. But the event which made the greatest sensation was the trial by fire which took place at Florence to prove that its bishop, Peter of Pavia, was guilty of simony (February 1068). A monk passed unscathed between two blazing pyres, each ten feet long by four and a half wide, and separated only a foot or two from each other. This monk, since known from this fiery ordeal as Peter Igneus, afterwards became cardinal-bishop of Albano.

It will be readily understood that this uprising of the people against even worthless men in authority was not without its dangers. While many acted from the purest motives, and were well able to understand how to obey a properly constituted authority, and when an unlawfully imposed one might be resisted, many evil-minded men opposed the simoniacal bishops merely for the satisfaction of thwarting authority, and many, in ignorance, began to think that, if an official was personally wicked, he lost his powers and might be disobeyed with impunity. And so the cry was raised in Florence: “There is no Pope, no King, no Archbishop, and no Priest!” Hence, says the saint, who lets us know of this black side of the work of reform, “it is said that some thousand people, deceived by these childish sophisms, died without receiving the sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood”.

The epoch of which we are writing will not have passed away before some at least of these “sophisms” put forward by the dangerous, because impractical, eloquence of Arnold of Brescia will have wrought a world of mischief.

In the north of Italy, then, many of the bishops on whom the Pope, in his efforts to effect a general reformation of morals, ought to have been able to rely, proved themselves his most bitter opponents. And, at the same time, in the south of Italy the Normans showed that their help could not be securely counted on by the Papacy, but that they were as ready to use their swords against it as for it, according as best suited their interests. Whilst Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger were securing their conquests in Apulia and Calabria, and were beginning to rend Sicily from the Saracens (1061), Richard of Aversa turned his arms northward. Capua fell completely under his sway in May 1062, and he made the fact that the Pope had accepted services of William of Montreuil, who had shown himself a disobedient vassal, his excuse for invading his territory.

Taking no account of the fact that William had returned to his allegiance, and not considering the efforts Alexander had made to prevent William from repudiating his wife, who was Richard’s daughter, the Norman count seized Ceprano and advanced on Rome (1066). He had conceived the idea of making himself Patricius of the city, and ruling the Pope like the Alberics of the tenth century. It was to no purpose that Alexander, who had sent letters and messengers to ask Henry for help, threatened the advancing Normans with the vengeance of the German king. They had grown quite accustomed to treating him with contempt. This time, however, Henry was in earnest; for he wished to receive the imperial crown as well as to chastise the Normans. His host assembled at Augsburg in the early part of 1067. But whether because the German princes did not desire an Italian expedition, or because Henry’s presence was required “in other parts of the empire”, or whether, more likely, because Duke Godfrey, who ought to have come to furnish the vanguard and to lead it into Italy, did not put in an appearance, the king disbanded his army.

But if the imperial viceroy in Italy was not anxious to see Henry and his Germans in Rome, he was far from desirous that Norman influence in Rome should outweigh his own. Accordingly, collecting a large army, he marched to Rome with his wife and his step-daughter, the famous Matilda; for they were touched by the troubles of their Tuscan Pope (May 1067). After a little fighting and some negotiation, the Normans surrendered their conquests, and secured the withdrawal of the duke by the payment of a large sum of money. “This”, notes Bonizo, “was the first service which Matilda, the most excellent daughter of Boniface, was able to offer the Blessed Prince of the Apostles; but it was not long before the many gracious services which she rendered in the same direction merited for her the title of Daughter of Blessed Peter”.

Peace being thus effected between the Normans and the Pope, he was enabled, in company with Hildebrand and others, to go about among them, and remedy some of the wrongs they were everywhere perpetrating. One of those he was anxious to help was Alfanus, archbishop of Salerno, a man whom Giesebrecht has pronounced to be worthy of the highest praise on many counts; for he was, he tells us, “a most fervent monk, a most zealous defender of ecclesiastical liberty, a most ardent lover of antiquity, and, for his age, a perfect grammarian”. He was, moreover, a great friend and admirer of Hildebrand; and among his verses, second to none of his time, there is a long poem in his honor. To Alfanus it seemed that Rome owed no more to the Scipios and to its other heroes than to Hildebrand, and that through him its ancient sway had returned.

Like so many others, Alfanus had been robbed by the Normans. William, one of the sons of Tancred, had taken violent possession of property belonging to the See of Salerno; and as before a synod held at Melfi (August 1, 1067) he refused to restore his ill-gotten goods, he was excommunicated. A short time afterwards, however, he and his followers restored them at Salerno and at Capua.

 With the exception of another brief misunderstanding with Richard of Capua, brought about again apparently by William of Montreuil, Alexander maintained satisfactory relations with the Normans during the rest of his pontificate. Their successes were in many ways a gain to the Holy See, and occasionally brought it curious presents. In his Sicilian campaign, Roger had gained a decisive victory over the Saracens at the river Cerami near Traina (1063). The count realized that it was to God and St. Peter that he owed this great victory. Not to be ungrateful for so great a favor, he sent by Meledius four camels to Pope Alexander, who was then holding in Rome the place of St. Peter and governing with prudence the Catholic Church. Delighted much more at the victory over the infidels which God had granted than at the presents he had received, the Apostolicus, in virtue of his power and with his apostolic benediction, granted to the count, and to all who might assist in wresting Sicily from the infidel, and in the work of its lasting conversion, the remission of their sins, on the condition of their being sorry for them and avoiding them in the future. He also sent them a standard, blessed by apostolic authority, that, full of confidence in St. Peter, they might fight against the Saracens with greater impunity.

If the reign of Alexander was to see the beginning of the end of Saracen rule in Sicily, it was to behold the complete dominion termination of Byzantine authority in south Italy. The last period of Greek power in Italy began by their seizure of Bari (876); it was closed by its capture by the Normans in 1071. Less than a year after, the taking of Palermo by the same redoubtable warriors (January 1072) gave the deathblow to the Saracen sway in Sicily. The most important result of these exploits, as far as the Pope was concerned, was the return of south Italy and Sicily to his spiritual jurisdiction. Through the action of the Greek emperors Leo III and his son Constantine Copronymous (741-775), their churches had been reunited to the synod of Constantinople, seeing that the Pope and Old Rome is under the domination of the barbarians. Through the action of the Norman rulers they again fell under the authority of Rome. In Sicily the speedy establishment of that authority was simple. The Saracens had destroyed all its episcopal sees by the end of the ninth century; it was therefore merely a question of reconstituting them. But in south Italy the sees were in the hands of Greeks, and the Greek rite was in general use. Change, therefore, in these matters could in those districts only be effected by degrees. Where there was a large Latin population of Normans and Lombards, the Greek bishops and the Greek rite were replaced by Latin ones as the sees fell vacant; and thus in less than thirty years the four metropolitan and seven suffragan sees were completely Latinized. But where the Greek population was numerous no immediate change was made. Hence we find that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there were still many Greek bishops. Even as late as the sixteenth century the succession had not quite died out, and the Greek lite, protected by the Holy See, was still surviving in the seventeenth century. But the fourteenth century may be taken as the date of the fusion of the Greek and Latin races. Though, therefore, the power of the emperor of Constantinople and of its patriarch in south Italy and Sicily came to end in the eleventh century, and was replaced by the authority of the Pope and of the Norman kings, Greek influence did not cease to make itself felt there. Indeed, through the monastic foundations of the twelfth century it experienced quite a renaissance.

The change of rulers in south Italy is noticeable in the of consecration of the new church at Monte Cassino. The eleventh century is justly regarded as the golden age of this glorious abbey, and Desiderius (1058-87), the most distinguished of its long line of abbots, as the Leo X of the Gregorian renaissance. From the total renovation of the buildings of the monastery which he effected, he is called its fourth founder. He naturally paid special attention to the church. To decorate it he brought from Rome columns, precious marbles, and other splendid architectural relics of imperial times; and from Lombardy, Amalfi, and especially from Constantinople, sculptors, mosaists, and painters. When the church was finished, and its walls were all aglow with mosaics, and its pavement gay with slabs of coloured marbles arranged in geometrical patterns, Desiderius begged the Pope to come and consecrate his new building. Alexander at once summoned all the bishops of Campania, the Principate (of Capua), Apulia and Calabria. In consequence of the summons of the Pope, there assembled in and around the abbey not only an enormous number of the nameless crowd, but all those who in that part have left their mark on the world. With the Pope were Hildebrand, St. Peter Damian, and other cardinals, ten archbishops, and over forty bishops, several of whom were from Greek sees.

With Richard, prince (or duke) of Capua, were the principal Norman and other princes of southern Italy, except f Robert Guiscard, who was then besieging Palermo. The high altar —that of St. Benedict— was consecrated by the Pope himself, who granted to all who throughout the octave came to Monte Cassino and confessed their sins a full absolution. The number of people who flocked to the abbey was such that its great resources were taxed to the utmost. But Benedictine hospitality rose to the occasion, “so that scarce one of that countless multitude could be found who did not declare that he had been supplied with all that he needed to eat”.

Speaking of Pope Alexander, a Frenchman, who was contemporary with him, says of him that he was “one who France, well deserved to be consulted and obeyed by the universal Church; for his decisions were fair and sound. The sun held not more exactly to its assigned course than did he to the path of truth, everywhere correcting whatever evil he could, and never showing himself a respecter of persons”. Anyone who examines his relations with the country to which William of Poitiers belonged must form the same conclusion. After carefully surveying the history of the fourteen ecclesiastical provinces into which France was then divided, Delarc's inferences quite bear out the statements of the Conqueror’s chaplain. He writes: “By his letters and by his legates Alexander II was perpetually intervening in the difficulties and in the multifarious incidents of the inner life of the Church in France. And it cannot be called in question that this intervention of his was most beneficial, nay, in some cases, even providential”.

By the ancient canon law of the Church, a bishop was to Episcopal be freely elected by the clergy and people of the diocese; but at this period throughout almost the whole of France, freedom of election was a thing of the past. Bishops were imposed on clergy and people by the power of the king or of some feudal overlord; and, as money was the sole aim of most of these men, it will be readily understood that most of the bishops of France held their sees because they had paid the price. And when once the civil magnates had secured their price for a bishopric or an abbey, they cared nothing about the character of the man who through them became a bishop or an abbot, nor about the subsequent fate of the diocese or monastery. Simony and its attendant evils stalked with sardonic smile from one end of France to the other. And those who had to suffer under the oppressive tyranny of the simoniacal invaders of bishoprics and abbeys had no other resource, but in person, or by letter, to implore “the justice of St. Peter, and consolation from his successor in the midst of the wrongs they had to endure”. The archbishops who ought to have been the most strenuous opponents of simony were its open or secret allies; for, as Alexander pointed out, no one would buy a bishopric if he knew he could not obtain consecration from his metropolitan. It was then but natural, it was but proper, that the head of the Church should try to provide a remedy for this sad state of things, and should strive to wrest the right of election from the hands of worldly -minded men, and take it as far as possible into his own. With a view to effecting this transfer, we find Alexander declaring that to the Popes alone belonged the right of settling the boundaries of bishoprics, and not unfrequently assuming the right of approving the selection of episcopal candidates.

If at this period, owing especially to the countless evils caused by simony, the Church in France did not fall into complete chaos, it was due to the reforming intervention of the Holy See. It exerted its influence to a very large extent by the legates it dispatched thither one after another. They summoned and presided over councils, encouraged local efforts at reform, deposed unworthy bishops, and authoritatively settled the disagreements which they found in the French clerical world—differences among the clergy themselves, or between divers churches, or again between the seculars and regulars. Even the most powerful prelates of France were fain to beg the Pope to send a legate a latere to aid them in the midst of their troubles. And appeals to the Pope for his help came to Rome from every rank of men throughout France :  from simple priests oppressed by their bishops; from women robbed of their property and of their good name by lustful husbands; from monasteries which had been plundered of their relics, of their rights, and of their possessions by bishops of the baronial type; from abbots and monks forcibly expelled from their monasteries by simoniacal intruders; from broken-hearted sinners who came to beg from the successor of the apostles pity and penance for their great transgressions; and from bishops struggling against the savage tyranny of brutal barons.

It is not a little curious to find that one of the appeals to Rome for help came from Berengarius of Tours. When he returned home after his retractation at Rome (1059) with regard to the Blessed Eucharist, he is said to have continued to propagate his views, as though he had in no way compromised his position. But he was soon to find that others had changed, if he had not. His former friend, Eusebius Bruno, bishop of Angers, would no longer support him, but reminded him that his opinions had been condemned once and for all “by the synod of the Apostolic See”. What was felt much more keenly by Berengarius was the death (1060) of his powerful lay patron, Geoffrey Martel. The new count, Geoffrey the Bearded, the nephew of Martel, disliked Berengarius just as heartily as his uncle had loved him; and he would have been no Angevin if he had not made his dislike felt by its object. He soon rendered the position of Berengarius as archdeacon of Angers untenable.

In sorrowfully making the fact known to Cardinal Stephen, Berengarius says that he is aware that it is open to him to appeal “to the dignity and sublimity of the Roman Church”, but he would be glad if the cardinal himself would present his respects to the Pope, and approach him on his behalf. Alexander had already, he assured his correspondent, sent him his blessing. “The divine clemency would, through you, grant me a very great favour if you could induce the Pope to write to the archbishop (of Tours) and to the bishops of Le Mans and Angers, bidding them defend me against the presumption of the envious and the stupid”.

Presumably ignorant that Berengarius had, despite his retractation of 1059, continued to teach as before regarding the Blessed Eucharist, Alexander, besides sending a kind letter of sympathy to the archdeacon himself, wrote to the bishops of Tours and of Angers. He bade them not to allow Geoffrey to persecute Berengarius on pretence of defending the Christian faith, as that was their affair, and not his. He also addressed two letters “to his very dear son Geoffrey, count of the Angevins”, one before and one after he had dispatched Cardinal Stephen to France on this and other business. In both he very paternally exhorted Geoffrey to cease to molest Berengarius, of whose unbounded charity especially he had received a very good account. But, like the rest of his house, Geoffrey “neither feared God nor regarded man”. He took no heed either of the Pope’s letter or of his legate, Stephen, and if he had had his own way he would have continued to play the tyrant not only towards Berengarius, but towards the monks of Marmoutier and the whole diocese of Tours. Of this we have proof in the letter which Bartholomew, archbishop of Tours, wrote to Alexander denouncing the oppressions of Geoffrey, “this contemporary Nero who surpasses in impiety all the counts his predecessors”.

But Geoffrey was destined to get less of his own way in life than most men. His brother Fulk, Rechin, or “the Quarreller”, wished to possess himself of his inheritance, and in the Lent of 1067 succeeded in securing Geoffrey’s person. The bearded count was now himself in the position of needing the Pope’s aid, and was fortunate enough to secure it. Stephen, Alexander’s legate, induced Fulk to set his brother at liberty.

No sooner, however, was he a free man than he recommenced oppressing the Church. Naturally irritated at such ingratitude, the cardinal summoned a council, excommunicated him, and “in virtue of the authority of St. Peter”, gave the county of Anjou to his younger brother Fulk.

Not long after the publication of this sentence, Geoffrey again fell into his brother’s hands (1068), who, undeterred by papal excommunication, kept him prisoner in the castle of Chinon for twenty-eight years. At the close of that period the unhappy man was released through the efforts of Urban II. Shattered in mind and body, he only regained his freedom to die.

It is characteristic of the vain weakness of Berengarius  that about the very time he was appealing to the See  of Peter for help, he appears to have been perpetually abusing its doings and its occupants. From fragments of his writings which have come down to us in one way or another, and which are believed to have been published at this period, we see how little his vanity could brook opposition. “It was either in 1068 or 1069” that he wrote his Liber prior de sacra coena, and it was seemingly some four years later that he brought out a second book on the same subject in answer to Lanfranc’s Liber de corpore Domini, which his first publication had provoked. In both works the archdeacon descends to abuse, and in both decries the council of 1059, Cardinal Humbert, and Nicholas II. Humbert is a vagabond and an imbecile who does not understand his adversary; Lanfranc, if learned, is a knave who, like Paschasius Radbert, falsifies texts; and Pope Nicholas is an ignoramus, unworthy of his position, a prophet of lies.

The French Cardinal Stephen was not the only legate sent into France by Alexander. One of the first of those whom he dispatched thither seems to have been St. Peter Damian, who volunteered to go in order to settle one of the many disputes which were then being carried on between the seculars and regulars.

When we reflect that, on the one hand, the spirit of reform at this period had its home among the monks, that the monastery was its centre, and that not only its chief exponents, but its authoritative supporters in the Church, were monks, and that, on the other hand, the bishops were not unfrequently the representatives of feudal domination and license, we may be prepared to find the abbot’s crook and the episcopal crozier in frequent opposition. And if the bishops generally had might on their side, the abbots usually had right. To adjust these differences without destroying the energetic life which gave them birth was one of the most vital duties of the Popes and their agents.

There had appeared before the Roman synod of 1063, Hugh, surnamed the Great, abbot of Cluny, and the real founder of its congregation. He had come for protection against Drogo, bishop of Macon, in whose diocese Cluny was situated, and who by force of arms wished to deprive that famous monastery of its privilege of exemption from episcopal control. Alexander listened readily to Hugh’s appeal, accepted the offer of St. Peter Damian, “the eye and immovable foundation of the Apostolic See”, to mediate between the two parties, and warmly recommended him to the archbishops of France.

Undaunted either by his great age, his weak health, the terrors of the Alps, or by the wiles of Cadalous, who, like a tiger, was thirsting for his blood, the saint set out for France. On foot and without guides he crossed the great St. Bernard, and at length reached the famous abbey, where he was received with the greatest honor and joy. Without loss of time letters were dispatched to the neighboring bishops, ordering them in the name of the Pope to meet in synod at Chalons-sur-Saone. Most of the bishops came prepared to support their colleague of Macon; but the eloquence and authority of the saint prevailed. And when the deeds of privilege granted to Cluny by its founder William, duke of Aquitaine, and by many of the Popes were read, the opposition of the bishop of Macon broke down. He declared that he had sinned in ignorance, and had no wish to oppose Pope Alexander or any of the Popes. Various other affairs were settled at this council, and certain simoniacal intruders condemned, so that “the synod which was convoked for one case, turned out to the profit of many”. Refusing the presents which the grateful monks would have pressed upon him, “lest temporal reward might destroy the eternal”, the saintly legate of the Apostolic See returned to the solitude of Fonte Avellana (October 1063).

Mention has already been made of the embassies of the cardinal subdeacon Peter, and of that of Cardinal Stephen.

Spain

It remains to speak of yet another, viz. of that of Cardinal Hugo Candidus, who proved as faithless to his duty on this occasion as he had been previously untrue to Pope Alexander. Finding that in the service of the antipope (Cadalous) he was suffering much and receiving but little, Hugo sought and obtained not only Alexander’s forgiveness, but some measure of his confidence. And out of respect for the memory of St. Leo IX, who had advanced him, Alexander sent his former adversary on an important embassy to the country on both sides of the Pyrenees. As we shall see, however, the falseness of his character reasserted itself; and “when acting as legate in Spain, he pulled down whatever he had built up; for he first prosecuted the simoniacs, and then on receipt of money condoned their offences”.

Hugo began his mission on this side of the Pyrenees, and in the archdiocese of Auch—a province remarkable for the number of its pluralist bishops. He held his first synod at Auch itself. Merely noting that it condemned “symbolic feasts in churches”, and that “by order of Pope Alexander”, he held another council at Toulouse, we shall pass on with him into Spain. There, after furthering the movement of reform and of the Truce of God in public assemblies at Gerona and Vich, he entered upon a campaign against the liturgy that is known as the Mozarabic. Seeing, however, that it is the rite which had been in use in Spain since the time of the conversion to Christianity of its Visigothic invaders in the fifth century, i.e., for some seven hundred years, it would be better called the Visigothic liturgy. Still, as it survived longer among the Mozarabs, or Mostarabes, as they should properly be called, it received their name. They themselves were Christians who, from the fact of their continuing to live amongst the Moors, came to receive a name which denoted that they had, in some respects at least, become Arabs.

Until the second half of the eleventh century, the Mozarabic liturgy was in general use throughout Spain, as well among the Catholics of the independent northern  Christian states as among the Mozarabs. But before then it had begun to be viewed With suspicion by the former. Naturally influenced by their Frankish neighbors, who, from the time of Charlemagne, had adopted the Roman liturgy, they too had commenced to turn towards it, and insensibly to be alienated from the Mozarabic. It was remembered that the Adoptionists had essayed to support their heresy by quotations from it; and, moreover, it was the Liturgy employed by the Mozarabs, of whose orthodoxy the Spanish kings would naturally be as suspicious as they were of their patriotism.

The great Christian conquests over the Moors began after the eleventh century had passed its zenith, and it was doubtless felt by the Christian kings that to take away their liturgy from the Mozarabs would be to break one more of their links with a mode of life which they wished them to forget. Whatever force there may or may not be in this reflection, it must not be pushed too far; for not a few, at least, of the bishops and many of the people were in favor of the national liturgy. And so when about the year 1065 legates of Pope Alexander were anxious for its suppression, the Spanish bishops in anger sent three of their number, viz., the bishops of Calahorra, Alava, and Auca (or Oca, then transferred to Burgos) to the Pope himself with their liturgical books, the Liber Ordinum, the Liber Missarum, the Liber Orationum, and the Liber Antifonarum. The volumes were carefully examined by the Pope and a council, and pronounced free from heterodoxy. Moreover, so at any rate it is said by a contemporary Spanish document, “apostolic authority forbade anyone in future to attack the office of the Spanish Church”.

But, despite this pronouncement, the attack continued, and it is certain that Frankish influence and the desire of the Popes and of the great churchmen for orthodoxy and unity were potent factors in the abolition of the Mozarabic liturgy. Of the combined action of the Holy See and distinguished ecclesiastics in this matter we have an example in the letter which Alexander II wrote about this time (October 18, 1071) to Aquilinus, abbot of the famous monastery of S. Juan de la Pena in Aragon. Understanding, he said, that in Spain the unity of the Catholic faith had lost its integrity, and that almost all had erred in the matter of ecclesiastical discipline and the divine worship, he had sent thither the cardinal-priest Hugo Candidus, who had restored the integrity of the faith, had expelled simony, and had unified the divine worship. King Sancius (Sancho Ramirez, king of Aragon, 1063­1094), embracing the perfect faith, had submitted himself to the apostolic dignity, had placed all the monasteries of his kingdom under the jurisdiction of the Roman Church, and had dispatched you (Aquilinus) to Rome to obtain for your monastery the special protection of the Roman Church, agreeing to pay to it an annual tax of an ounce of gold. This patronage Alexander professed himself pleased to bestow, and informed the abbot in conclusion that he granted him “the glory and protection of the apostolic privilege”.

One result, then, of the mission of Hugo was the abolition of the Mozarabic rite in Aragon and Navarre in 1071; another was that the manner in which he conducted his embassy brought upon him the opposition of St. Hugh and the monks of Cluny. Recalled to Rome, the cardinal succeeded for the time in defending himself against their accusations, so that Gregory VII, in sending him once again into Spain (1073), declared it to be his belief that he was practically innocent. The second legation of Hugo, and a letter of the Pope to the kings of Leon and Castile, had not the same rapid success against the old liturgy in their kingdoms as corresponding acts had had in those of Aragon and Navarre. But it was doomed, and was soon in the position of being barely tolerated in a few churches. Revived at the close of the fifteenth century by the great Cardinal Ximenes, it is still followed, as a liturgical curiosity, in some churches in Toledo.

A second defection of Hugo from the line of the true Popes caused his whole conduct to be thoroughly examined. He was degraded in 1075 and anathematized at the Roman Council of February 1078, not only on account of his adhesion to first one antipope and then another, but also on account of the unfaithful manner in which he had discharged his office of apostolic legate.

In the successful expeditions against the Moors which the Spanish kings were carrying out at this period, many of the nobles of France took part. Among others who were desirous, moreover, of striking a blow against the infidels on their own account was Ebles or Eboli (Evulus) count of Rouci, near Rheims.

Certainly for over three hundred years the idea of the paramount position of the Pope in the West had been steadily growing; and here there is question not of his spiritual position merely, but of his position among men from every point of view. This sentiment, which no doubt had its origin in the contemplation of his spiritual supremacy, and of the Christian faith and civilization which the Western nations had received through him, was deepened by many political considerations. The decision of Pope Zachary had legalized the extinction of one dynasty, and the establishment of another. Charlemagne, the greatest ruler whom the new nations had seen, had received an imperial crown at the hands of Pope Leo III. And when, through the failure of the line of his descendants, the empire which a Pope had inaugurated had faded away, the West saw rise up, at the touch of his hand; a new creation, “The Holy Roman Empire of the German nation”. Ever since the sixth century, men in every Western land had become accustomed to seeing emperors and kings, bishops and abbots, dukes and counts, asking the Pope to take their religious and philanthropic foundations under his protection, to give his sanction to important political transactions of all kinds, and to grant them his assistance in extricating themselves from difficulties which more powerful neighbors or other circumstances had brought upon them. Through the action of the princes of the Hungarians, of the Slavs, and of the Normans, it had become no uncommon spectacle to see kingdoms placed under the patronage and protection of the Holy See. Even in the reign of Alexander himself, Ramiro I (king of Aragon, 1035-1063), beset with political difficulties, made his kingdom “tributary to the Holy See”, and in sign thereof paid it an annual tax. Then, was it not definitely asserted in the supposed Donation of Constantine, to which public appeal had at length begun to be regularly made, that the first Christian emperor had made over the whole West to the Popes? It is only natural then to find the opinion gaining ground that the West was subject to the suzerainty of the Popes, and that lands newly acquired by Christians should be held of him in feudal tenure.

At any rate we shall find Gregory VII boldly asserting that “the kingdom of Spain” was subject to St. Peter; while, to gain the support of Alexander, Ebles of Rouci, before undertaking his expedition against the Spanish Moors, agreed to hold his conquests “of St. Peter”.

Among those who suffered from the swords of the Franks Alexander in Spain were the ever-unfortunate Jews. In Alexander, jews, however, they found a friend. Both bishops and counts were given to understand that he highly disapproved of the ill-treatment which had been meted out to them. It seems, too, that the Spanish bishops had also done their best for the Jews, for their conduct is praised by the Pope. “We have just heard with pleasure”, he wrote to them, “that you have protected the Jews who dwell in your midst, preventing them from being killed by those who have entered Spain against the Saracens. Through brutish ignorance or blind cupidity, these men wished to kill those whom, it may be, the divine clemency had predestined to eternal salvation. So the blessed Gregory forbade the killing of Jews, pronouncing it impious to wish to slay those whom God had preserved in order that, after the loss of their country and their liberty, they might, in lasting penance for the wrong done by their fathers in shedding the Saviour's blood, live dispersed throughout the world. The case of the Jews and the Saracens is very different. War is justly waged against the latter, who attack the Christians, and drive them from their homes and from their country. But the former are everywhere ready to live in subjection”

St. Wulstan

Now that the royal houses of Spain and England are united by marriage, transition in thought from the one country to the other is easy. Alexander will probably ever be thought of by Englishmen as the Pope who countenanced the invasion of this country by William the Conqueror. He had had, however, other relations with the English before that event. We have already seen that Nicholas II consented to grant the pallium to Ealred of York only on the condition that he resigned the See of Worcester. To watch the due performance of this agreement and to transact other business, two legates (Ermenfried, bishop of Sion, and another) were dispatched to England by Nicholas’s successor, Alexander (1062). King Edward received them with the profound reverence with which he was wont to bestow on all that was Roman. Then, in obedience to the command of the Pope, Ealred accompanied them in a visitation which they made of nearly the whole of England, and finally left them at Worcester in charge of Prior Wulstan, who spared no pains “that they might experience the unbounded hospitality of the English”. Through the representations of the legates, supported by those of the archbishops of Canterbury and York and of Earl Harold, Wulstan himself was elected to fill the see which Ealred had vacated. But it was only when put under obedience to the Pope that the saint would accept the bishopric. He was in due course consecrated at York by Ealred; because, as we have already noticed, “the Roman Pope had interdicted Stigand of Canterbury from exercising the functions of his office”.

The king, who, in his inimitable manner, was so devoted to the customs of Rome, died on January 5, 1066, and for “forty weeks and one day” was succeeded by Earl  Harold. But if he became king de facto, William, duke of Normandy, claimed to be king de jure, and at once prepared to make good his claim by appealing both to the Pope and to arms. The ambassadors he sent to Rome assured Alexander that the Confessor had promised that he should succeed him, and that Earl Harold, who had now usurped the throne, had already sworn fealty to the duke as his liege lord. When Gislebert, archdeacon of Lisieux, William’s chief envoy, arrived in Rome, he did not find any one from England to oppose him. For Harold had neglected to send ambassadors thither to justify his pretensions, “either because he was proud by nature, or distrusted his cause; or because he feared that his messengers would be obstructed by William and his partisans, who beset every port”. He did not, however, stand in want of friends, and a fair hearing was given to the question. But, unfortunately for Harold, his case was opposed by Hildebrand. It was to no purpose that some pointed out that the expedition would cause great blood­shed. Hildebrand’s motto was fiat justitia, ruat coelum; and with the prevailing notions of feudal equity, he had no difficulty in showing that Harold was William’s liegeman and must submit to him. The debate finished by the Pope’s encouraging the Norman duke boldly to take up arms against the perjured Saxon, and sending him a banner of St. Peter.

Strong in the papal approval of his enterprise, William had no difficulty in raising an army for the invasion of England. When his arms had been crowned with success, and the last Anglo-Saxon king had fallen on the field of Senlac, he displayed his appreciation of what the Pope’s decision had done for him. He sent to Alexander untold gold and silver, ornaments “which would have been reckoned splendid even at Constantinople”, and Harold’s great standard with the figure of an armed man woven upon it in gold.

Naturally gratified by this display of the Conqueror’s goodwill, the Pope took occasion to ask for the renewed payment of Peter’s Pence, as the troubles consequent on the death of Edward the Confessor had resulted in a suspension of its collection. In the fragment of the letter in which this request is made, Alexander makes a statement which we shall find more strongly urged by Gregory VII, and firmly contradicted by William. “Your Prudence”, wrote the Pope, “is aware that, from the time when the name of Christ was first made known in England, that kingdom remained under the protection and patronage of the Prince of the Apostles, till certain men, imitating the pride of their father the devil, broke the bond of God, and turned the English away from the path of truth ... As you well know, whilst the English were faithful, in order to show their religious devotedness, they were accustomed to pay an annual charge to the Apostolic See. Of this money, part went to the service of those attached to the Church of St. Mary which is called the School of the English, and part to the Roman Pontiff”.

William, it would seem, made no difficulty in agreeing to pay the Peter’s Pence which had been paid by Edward the Confessor, and at the same time asked the Pope to send legates solemnly to crown him again, and to help him to settle the affairs of the Church in England; for his original coronation by Ealred of York had been anything but auspicious. By the year 1069 he had become really master of England. He wished, therefore, to have the sanction of the Pope for the completion of his undertaking, as for its commencement. Alexander, accordingly, dispatched to England Ermenfried, bishop of Sion (Sitten), a man already acquainted with the affairs of this country, and two cardinals.

Received by William as angels of God, their first act was to confirm the Conqueror’s position as king of England by solemnly crowning him at Winchester (Easter 1070). They then proceeded to help him in dealing with the Church. As no little of the opposition which he had encountered in his efforts to render the country completely submissive to him had been brought about by churchmen, he made it his policy “to deprive of their ecclesiastical positions as many of the English as possible, and to fill up their places with men of his own nation, in order to confirm his power in a kingdom which he had but recently acquired”. Besides, the Conqueror was a man who wished to be obeyed in matters spiritual as well as temporal. However, as he was really anxious to have the Church holy, and endeavored to appoint pious and learned men to bishoprics and abbacies, speaking generally, more good than harm was the immediate result at least of his arbitrary conduct, for “he was mild to those good men who loved God, and beyond all bounds stark to those men who withstood his will”. And there is no doubt that the action of the Normans on the Church in England was greatly to its benefit. It put new life into its dry and decaying bones. This much is allowed even by William of Malmesbury. The Normans, he says, “revived by their Coming the observances of religion which in England were everywhere grown lifeless. You might see churches rise in every village, and monasteries in the towns and cities, built after a style unknown before, and you might behold the country flourishing with renovated rites”.

After William's coronation by the papal legates, “at his command and by consent of Pope Alexander, a great council was holden at Winchester ... In this council Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, was degraded on three grounds: because he was unlawfully holding the bishopric of Winchester, together with his own archbishopric, and because during the life of Archbishop Robert he had not only taken possession of the archbishopric, but for some time during the celebration of Mass had worn his pallium, which had been left at Canterbury after his violent and unjust banishment from England, and because he had afterwards received the pallium from Benedict, who had been excommunicated by the Holy Roman Church for having simoniacally obtained possession of the Apostolic See”. For Stigand, whom the Conqueror had hitherto treated with diplomatic respect, and for the other bishops and abbots who were deposed at this and at a subsequent synod held in the following month (May), nothing can be said. They deserved their fate. And in the case of Stigand in particular, it must be borne in mind that he had been already condemned by the Holy See. For “nineteen years had he remained in his obstinacy of heart”, and during that period no fewer than five Popes, from St. Leo IX, had sent their legates into England to deal with that recalcitrant prelate. But in some of the depositions decreed by these synods, justice was not always done. Among others who were thus unwarrantably driven from their sees even into dungeons was Egelric or Alric, bishop of Chichester.

The unjust deposition of bishops, however, could not be tolerated by the Pope, and in 1071 a letter reached William on behalf from Alexander in which he pleaded for the oppressed in bishop of general, and for Alric in particular. After praising the king for his zeal against simony and for his love for the liberties of the Church, and reminding him that the crown was only given to those who persevered to the end, he exhorted him to adorn the churches of Christ with sound regulations, to govern his kingdom with justice, and mercifully to protect from injuries ecclesiastical persons, widows, orphans, and the oppressed generally. To this end he is to follow the counsels of Archbishop Lanfranc, “one of the first sons of the Roman Church”. “Moreover, we wish to inform your eminence that the case of Alric, formerly bishop of Chichester, and deposed by our legates, does not seem to us to have been properly discussed. Accordingly, in accordance with the canons, we have decided that he must first be restored, and then have his case carefully re-examined by our brother, Archbishop Lanfranc ... In deciding causes he will represent us, so that whatever just decisions he shall form shall be held to be final, as though defined by us.” This letter was brought by Lanfranc from Rome, whither, in company with Thomas, archbishop of York, he had gone for his pallium. Certain, it is that for some time it produced no effect; for, somewhat later, we find Alexander asking Lanfranc if the continuance of the captivity of the bishop was due to his negligence or to the disobedience of the king. Whether or not the Pope’s remonstrances were finally hearkened to or not, does not appear to be recorded. What evidence there is seems to show that they were not.

Lanfranc had written to Rome to request that the pallium might be sent to him; but he was politely informed by Hildebrand that the old rule must be observed, and that he must come in person to receive it; that if an exception could be made for any one, it should be made for him, but that it could not; and that besides the Holy See wished to consult him on various matters.

Arrived in Rome with Thomas of York and Remigius of Lincoln, he was received most cordially by the Pope, not merely as an archbishop of an important see, as the learned instructor of many of his relations, and as his own master, but as a great and holy man, and as the champion of the Church against the heretic Berengarius. When he came before Alexander, the Pontiff rose from his seat to greet him, not because, as he said, he was an archbishop, but because he had been his master. “And now”, continued the Pope, “that I have given its due to honor, do you pay what is owing to justice, and, like all archbishops, prostrate yourself at the feet of the vicar of St. Peter”. Then with his own hand did he put round the arch­bishop’s neck his own pallium, afterwards presenting him with another from the confession of St. Peter in the usual manner.

But the reception accorded by the Pope to Thomas and Remigius was very different. They were deprived of the the emblems of their episcopal office, of their croziers and rings, because the one was the son of a priest, and the latter was judged to have purchased his bishopric from William by the assistance he had supplied him in his invasion of England. However, as Lanfranc interceded for them, the Pope bade him act towards them as he thought fit. They were at once reinvested.

The This act of kindness on the part of Lanfranc did not prevent Thomas of York from appealing to the Pope against the claim for precedence set up by the archbishop of Canterbury. According to Malmesbury, he resisted Lanfranc’s demand for an oath of obedience because, being a stranger, he did not understand the customs of England. Although Lanfranc supported his pretensions “with strong sayings”, Alexander would not settle the matter himself, but decided that it must be referred for final judgment to the united bench of the bishops and abbots of England.

Consequently, on Lanfranc’s return a council was called at Windsor “by the command of Pope Alexander, and the permission of King William”, and it was decided that the Church of York was subject to that of Canterbury, and that the archbishop of York was to take an oath of canonical obedience to him of Canterbury. The council was overcome by the logical eloquence of Lanfranc. “When our Lord and Saviour”, he contended, “said to St. Peter, ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church’ etc., He might, had it so pleased Him, have added, ‘the like power I grant to thy successors’. But the omission of such words in no wise diminishes the dignity of the successors of that apostle ... Do you advance anything in opposition to this? It is impressed on the consciences of all Christians that, no less than if the acts were those of St. Peter himself, they should tremble when his successors threaten, and reverently rejoice when they show themselves serene. And then only is the arrangement of any ecclesiastical matters ratified and binding, when the successors of St. Peter have given it their sanction. And what causes this but the power of divine grace diffused through the Lord Jesus from St. Peter among his vicars”.

“As Christ”, continued the southern metropolitan, “said to all the bishops of Rome what he said to Peter, so what Gregory (the Great) said to all the successors of Augustine he said in the person of Augustine, hence it is that as Canterbury is subject to Rome because it received its faith from it, so let York be subject to Canterbury, which sent its preachers to it”

As soon as the council was closed, Lanfranc, “bishop Lanfranc of the holy Church of Canterbury”, at once dispatched a the Pope letter “to the Lord Pope Alexander, supreme guardian of the whole Christian religion, with all subjection and obedience, in which he gave him an account of what had been done in the council summoned by his authority”.

The history of Bede, “a priest of the Church of York and the doctor of the English”, had been brought before the assembly, and from it extracts had been read which proved that, from the time of the conversion of the English to the days of Bede himself, Lanfranc’s predecessors” had had the primacy over the Church of York, over the whole island which is called Britain, and over Ireland”. Some of the bishops of the sees over which Thomas of York claimed jurisdiction had even, “with the authority of the Roman See”, been deposed by archbishops of Canterbury. Councils too had proclaimed the primacy of that see. “Finally, as the very core and foundation of the whole argument were adduced the letters and privileges of your predecessors, Gregory, Boniface, Honorius, Vitalian, Sergius, Gregory, Leo, and John, which, at different times on diverse topics, were sent to the archbishops of Canterbury and to the kings of the English. The authentic letters and their copies which had been sent by other Pontiffs were burnt in the fire which destroyed our Church four years ago”.

Along with this letter, the archbishop forwarded another to Hildebrand, whom he spoke of as the honor and support of the Church. He informed him that he had sent to the Pope an account of the synod, and begged him, with his accustomed kindness, to read it over most carefully.

That Alexander confirmed the decision of the council at Windsor is clear from the fact of his afterwards calling the Church of Canterbury “the metropolitan see of all Britain”. The letter which contained this phrase was written to Lanfranc, because the Pope had been informed “by certain people from England” that some of the clergy, seeking the aid of the secular power, were endeavoring, on the pretext of a relaxation of discipline, to expel the monks not merely from St. Saviour’s Church in Canterbury, but from every episcopal see.

To this new party Lanfranc had offered effective opposition; but, lest it might prevail after his death, he appealed for the support “of the authority of the Roman and Apostolic See”, particularly with regard to the monks of Canterbury. The result of his appeal was the letter just quoted, in which Alexander renewed the decrees of St. Gregory the Great and Boniface IV in favor of the monks, and “in the name of the Apostles” repeated the anathemas they had pronounced against such as contravened their decrees.

If to what has now been told of William’s dealings with the Holy See be added his requests for its confirmation of his religious foundations, it will be an obvious conclusion that he acknowledged, in theory at least, its spiritual supremacy over the whole Church, and so over himself and his people. But at the same time many of his acts show not merely that he understood that the spiritual supremacy of the Pope was one thing and his temporal supremacy quite another, but also that his practice was often not logically consistent with a proper acknowledgment of the Pope’s spiritual power. Without ever going to the length of regarding himself as the spiritual head of the Church either in Normandy or in England, he would not brook interference with his will, whether in matters spiritual or temporal. St. Anselm’s biographer, Eadmer, well sums up this phase of the stark conqueror’s character: “All things, human and divine, were dependent on his will. Briefly to explain this, I will set down some of the novelties which he introduced into England. ... He would not suffer any one throughout all his dominions to acknowledge the duly constituted bishop of Rome as Pope, unless he sanctioned the submission, nor to receive his letters unless they had previously been submitted to him. Nor would he permit the archbishop of Canterbury, when presiding in council over the bishops of the province, to issue any synodal decrees which did not meet with his approval, and had not been first laid down by him. And as little would he allow, without his express sanction, any of his barons or ministers to be accused by a bishop of adultery …  or of any capital offence, or to be bound by any ecclesiastical penalty”.

Norway

The fact that, after having continued for some three hundred years, the terrible Viking expeditions came to an end during the reign of Alexander, is one proof that Christianity had at length begun to take a firm hold of the Scandinavian countries. And, despite immense difficulties, it was at this period bringing forth exceptionally good fruit in Norway; for the men of that country “had learnt to love peace and truth, and were now content with their poverty, nay, were ready to give what they had got, and no longer, as formerly, to gather in what they had not sown”. This change in the character and habits of the Norwegians had been brought about especially by missionaries from England. It is only natural then to find them disposed to turn towards this country in their religious needs.

As we have already seen, ecclesiastical jurisdiction over all the countries of the extreme north of Europe had been conceded to the See of Bremen. And the famous Adalbert, its occupant at this time, “relying on the authority of the Roman Pope”, was throwing himself with great ardor into the work of organizing the Church in his vast arch­bishopric. For Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Orkneys and Ireland, he consecrated no fewer than twenty bishops, in some cases “even against the will of princes”." One of the kings who gave Adalbert trouble was the fierce Harold Hardrada, who from 1047 to kept a heavy hand on Norway, and “extended his bloody rule even to Ireland”. The archbishop was especially annoyed that he sent the bishops of his country to be consecrated in Gaul or in England, whereas the Pope had bestowed the right of their consecration upon himself. He accordingly sent an embassy to protest against the king’s action. But the haughty monarch drove the legates from his presence in a fury, declaring, “The only archbishop or ruler of any kind that I know in Norway is Harold”.

Adalbert turned to the Pope for support, and Alexander at once dispatched a letter to Harold, “king of the North­men”. “Because you are still untrained in the faith, and walk somewhat haltingly in the way of ecclesiastical discipline, it behoves us, to whom has been committed the rule of the whole Church, frequently to admonish you. But inasmuch as distance prevents us from doing this in person, know that we have entrusted the doing of it to Adalbert, the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, our vicar. Now the aforesaid venerable archbishop, our legate, has complained to us that, in contravention of the Roman privileges which have been granted to his church and to himself, the bishops of your province have either not been consecrated at all, or have been simoniacally, and so wrongfully consecrated in England or in Gaul. Hence by virtue of the authority of the apostles Peter and Paul, as is your duty to show respectful reverence to the Apostolic See, so we exhort you and your bishops to display proper submission to the venerable archbishop who is acting in our stead”

This letter probably produced very little effect on the savage ruler of Norway. However, Adalbert managed to consecrate two bishops for his country, and, in one way or another, to secure some promise of obedience from those who were consecrated for it elsewhere. And when in 1066 Hardrada obtained the seven feet of land for a grave promised him by Harold of England, Christianity was able to make more regular progress under his son Olaf Kyrre, or the Peaceable.

Denmark.

Whilst Hardrada was ruling, or oppressing, Norway, the southern Scandinavian kingdom (Denmark) was under the dominion of Sweyn (or Svend) II, Estrithson (1047-1076), of whom mention has been made already. He was a man of very different character from the bellicose and sanguinary Harold. If he was a slave to incontinence, he was “the most illustrious among the barbarian kings . . . and was adorned with many virtues”. Among Sweyn’s good qualities, Adam of Bremen specifies his learning, his liberality, and his zeal for the propagation of Christianity. It was from his “truthful and charming narrative that the industrious canon gathered a large portion of the matter for his little book”. The zeal of Sweyn for the spread of the gospel was surpassed by “our archbishop”, as Adam loves to call the “magnificent” Adalbert. “In a more lordly style than his predecessors, he extended his archi- episcopal powers among the outlying nations and at one time formed the design of making a visitation of all the North, i.e., of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Orkneys, and even of Iceland, the extremity of the earth”. But as he was advised that in the then state of Christianity in those parts such a plan was not feasible, “relying on the authority of the Roman Pope, and trusting to the ready help of the king of the Danes, he wished, with his wonted splendid ideas, to hold a council of all the bishops of the North”. Finding, however, that some of the northern bishops were not disposed to recognize his authority, he appealed for the support of the Pope. By way of response, “Alexander, servant of the servants of God”, sent a letter wishing health and the apostolic benediction “to the bishops in Denmark in communion with the Apostolic See and our vicar”. They are commanded to do their best to induce “Edbert, bishop of the Faroe Islands”, against whom various charges are made, to come up for trial to the synod to which Adalbert had in vain often summoned him. By another letter Sweyn and his people are exhorted not to communicate with Edbert until he makes satisfaction to the Pope’s vicar. At the same time, with a view doubtless to keeping Adalbert in his place, Alexander notified the bishops of Denmark “that no archbishop nor patriarch could canonically depose a bishop without a previous sentence of the Apostolic See”.

From a fragment of another letter of Alexander addressed to Sweyn which has come down to us, we gather that, even before this time, the Danes had been in the habit of paying Peter’s Pence. The Pope begged Sweyn, for reasons with which we are already familiar, to cause his offering to be placed not on the altar of St. Peter, but “in our hands or in those of our successors, that more certain cognizance may be taken of it”.

Croatia

On the east of the Adriatic is a province of the Hungarian Empire which bears the name of Dalmatia.

This district, with its broken coast-line, its many islands lying parallel to its shores, its deep gulfs, narrow channels, rapid currents, and sunken rocks, is almost identical in area with that which was known to the Romans under the same name in the days of our Lord. From the time when, during the Roman Empire (fourth century), the province of Dalmatia included, besides the modern province, Herzegovina and parts of Bosnia and Montenegro, and its destinies were directed by a perfectissimus president acting under the Praetorian prefect of Italy, it has been the battle-ground of many nations, and has known many masters. Soon after Gregory I was Pope (590-604), it appears to have been governed by a duke who was dependent upon the Exarch of Ravenna; and it was in the century in which that great Pope first saw the light that Slavs began to make inroads into it. On the authority of the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, it used to be said that the Greek emperors employed the Avars to drive out these marauding Slavs, but had to use other Slavs, viz. the Chrobati, the present inhabitants of the country, to subdue the Avars. Now, however, it seems to be held that the first Slav invaders were subdued by other branches of the Slavonic family, the Croatians and Serbs, acting on their own behalf. The country occupied by the Croatians lay for the most part between two tributaries of the Save, the Kulpa and the Verbas, and included, besides the present Croatia, part of Bosnia, and northern Dalmatia down to the river Cetina.

For a while the Chrobati or Croatians, and the conquered Slavs of Dalmatia were content to acknowledge the supremacy of the emperors of Constantinople, and during that time they appear to have begun to embrace the faith of Christ. The ninth century, however, saw independent Slavonic dukes of the Croatians, whose power, as we have seen, extended over northern Dalmatia.

But during the first few centuries of the history of the Croatians, the political situation was complicated by the fact that several of the coast towns and islands of Dalmatia contrived to resist the power of the Slavs, and remained more than nominally subject to the Basileus at Constantinople. For a season too, about the beginning of the ninth century, the Franks exercised some authority in Croatia. In the course of the eleventh century, Venice began seriously to interfere with the designs of the Croatians, taking possession of such places as her ships could approach. However, in the midst of the darkness of early Croatian history, we find that the dukes who had won independence in the ninth century began, in the course of the tenth century, to call themselves kings. The most famous of these Croatian kings, Cresimir II, or Cresimir Peter, as he generally styles himself (1058-1073), took the title of king of the Croatians and Dalmatians. During his reign and that of his father, Stephen I (1035-1058), communications with Rome were frequent, and records of them have been preserved by authentic letters of the Popes, and by the narratives, more or less confused, of the presbyter of Dioclea (in the second half of the twelfth century), and of Thomas, the archdeacon of Spalato (or Spalatro).

The invasions of the Slavs into the Balkan peninsula had the effect of almost completely breaking up its ecclesiastical organization throughout the greater part of the ancient civil dioceses of Illyricum, Dacia, and Macedonia; and the province of Dalmatia was no exception to the rule. When in 639 the Avars burnt Salona, the chief city of the Roman Empire in Dalmatia, where it had its arsenals for weapons, its weaving-houses, its dye-houses, and its store­houses, and where the Roman Church had its chief see in Dalmatia, the remnant of the inhabitants ultimately took refuge in the enormous and splendid palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalato, only a few miles away. Here for many years they held out against the barbarians, and here founded the modern city of Spalato. Through this harbour of refuge the Popes contrived to keep in touch with Dalmatia. About the year 650 the reigning Pontiff sent a legate, John of Ravenna, to the shores of the Adriatic with instructions to reorganize the Christians throughout Croatia and Dalmatia. Promptly elected their archbishop by the people of Spalato, John was consecrated by the Pope, and obtained for Spalato all the privileges that had belonged to the Church of Salona. John appears to have been a model bishop (d. 680). “He traversed Dalmatia and Sclavonia, restoring churches, consecrating bishops, forming their dioceses, and gradually attracting the barbarians to the Catholic faith”.

After giving us this account of the revival of Catholicity in Dalmatia, the worthy archdeacon of Salona proceeds to inform us that “all the bishops" of Dalmatia, both north and south of the Cetina, obeyed the archbishop of Salona-Spalato”. With the conversion of the Slavs to Christianity other bishoprics besides those of Dalmatia were established among them. But in the course of the century following that in which the Popes revived the hierarchy of Dalmatia, the iconoclastic emperor, Leo the Isaurian, forcibly withdrew the countries east of the Adriatic from the jurisdiction of Rome. In the ninth and tenth centuries, however, as the Slavonic chiefs began more and more to assert their civil independence of the Basileus at Constantinople, they turned more and more to Rome for ecclesiastical guidance. Various Popes, such as John VIII and John X, were in frequent communication with them during that period.

Whilst the bonds, never very strong, which united the Slavs with the eastern Roman Empire gradually became slacker, the cleavage between their different branches grew more pronounced. This caused the Popes to have to modify the ecclesiastical hierarchy which had relations with them, and we shall see Dioclea-Antivari cut off from Salona-Spalato to please the Servians, and later (c. 1145) Zara, in the north of Dalmatia, made into a metropolitical see to satisfy the Venetians. The sovereign Pontiffs were also called upon to intervene in the disputes which arose concerning the language in which the Church’s liturgy was to be said. Besides the natural wish on the part of the Popes to favor the use of the Latin language in order to deepen the sense of Christian unity, there were in its favor the desires of those places whither the Roman fugitives from all parts of Illyria had concentrated, such as Zara, Veglia, Arbe, Spalato, etc. “In these cities, despite all the Slavonic incursions, Latin, and later Italian, always remained the official language; it was also the language of the people all down the coast”. On the other hand, the Slavs were not unnaturally anxious to have the liturgy in Slavonic. The questions, then, of language, reform, and metropolitical jurisdiction in the Slavonic countries that touched the Adriatic occupied the attention of the Popes for many centuries.

About the year 1045 there ascended the arch-episcopal throne of Salona-Spalato a man of the same character as sat on many another episcopal throne in the first half of the eleventh century—a man of a powerful noble family who thought that right which he wanted to do. “He had a wife and children like a layman, and kept them in the archiepiscopal palace, so that his residence for ever resounded with the wailings of children and the shrill voices of servant-maids”, says the indignant archdeacon of Salona. Occupied, too, with worldly affairs, he had very little time left for spiritual duties. Pope Leo IX was not the man to tolerate such “enormities”. He dispatched a legate to Salona, “a very prudent man”, John by name, perhaps John, bishop of Porto. Summoned before a synod, Dabralis, for such was the archbishop’s name, urged that in taking a wife he was simply following the custom of the Oriental Church. “Regarding these excuses as of no account, the legate by apostolic authority definitely deposed him from his see”.

Other legates of Leo’s successors followed John in the work of introducing law and order into the Church of the Croatians.

Among the smaller kingdoms with which Alexander also was in regular communication was Dalmatia. The call for reform raised by the Pope was responded to in that country, but the effort to meet it was complicated by the question of the use of the Slavonic language in the liturgy. Apparently in the year 1060, Mainard, bishop of Silva Candida, had been sent to Dalmatia by Nicholas II to deal with various questions of reform. In conjunction with John IV, archbishop of Spalato, he caused various decrees to be passed relative to clerical continency, discipline, and immunity. It was also decided that “Slavs ignorant of Latin were not to be ordained”, and, as we learn from the archdeacon of Spalato, that the divine mysteries were not to be celebrated in the Slavonic tongue, but only in Latin or Greek. These decrees were confirmed both by Nicholas II and by Alexander (1062), in a letter addressed to the king (Peter Cresimir) and bishops of Dalmatia.

As usual, there was no trouble about the more serious questions; but when, continues Thomas, the decrees about the liturgy had been confirmed by the Apostolic See, all the Slav priests were much troubled, for their churches were closed, and they themselves suspended. They, therefore, appealed to the Pope, who, according to the archdeacon, replied to them as follows: “Know, my children, that I have often heard much said in favour of what the Goths request; but because this liturgy was framed by Arians, I cannot depart from the tradition of my predecessors, nor give the Slavs leave to celebrate the divine mysteries in their own language”. If the Spalatan, who was not born till one hundred and forty years after this, has correctly preserved the words of Alexander, there must have reigned a strange ignorance at Rome which could identify SS. Cyril and Methodius with Arian heretics, unless, indeed, the Pope is simply referring to the Glagolitic characters in which the liturgy was written and of which the origin is still obscure. This decision of Alexander did not settle the question, nor did the action of the legate whom he sent “to extirpate the unspeakable schism”.

In the beginning of the eleventh century Venice had obtained some authority over Dalmatia; and although Peter Cresimir, who became king of Croatia in 1052, took the additional title of “king of Dalmatia”, and replaced Venetian influence over most of it by his own, the republic was still master of a portion of the country even during Peter’s reign. Where Venice held sway, the use of the Slavonic tongue in the liturgy was suppressed, but it was preserved in the other parts of the country; and, as we have already noticed, was finally approved by Innocent IV (1248).

The In the reorganization of the provinces of the Roman Empire effected by Diocletian towards the close of the third century, Dalmatia was divided into two provinces, Dalmatia proper and Praevalitana. Of this latter province, which only just touched the sea (Adriatic), the central portion was Zenta, or the modern Montenegro, and its chief city from about the sixth century was Dioclea (or Doclea, now Duklia, a mass of ruins), situated between the rivers Zenta (or Zetta) and Moraka, just above their junction a mile or two north of Podgoritza. In harmony with this political partition, there were originally two ecclesiastical provinces, one under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan of Salona-Spalato, and the other under that of the archbishop of Dioclea. When, however, Leo the Isaurian forcibly withdrew Illyricum from the western patriarchate, he subjected Dioclea itself and other cities to the jurisdiction of the metropolitan of Dyrrachium in Epirus Nova. But, as time went on, Byzantine influence on the eastern shores of the Adriatic declined before the advancing power of the Slavs, and Dioclea was brought under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Spalato. In the century of which we are now writing, viz., the eleventh, Dalmatia was again divided for ecclesiastical purposes into two provinces, and the metropolitan see of the southern portion was fixed first at Antivari, and, as will be noticed later on, afterwards at Ragusa. The cause of this re- establishment of the southern province of Dalmatia is thus given by Archdeacon Thomas in his history of Salona.

In obeying the summons of its archbishop Dabralis (1030­1045) to a council, four of the bishops of upper or southern Dalmatia were drowned at sea. Thus deprived of their pastors, the people of the bereaved dioceses petitioned the Pope to constitute a separate province for them, “as it was dangerous for them to visit so remote a church”. Wherefore the Roman bishop granted their request, freed all the bishops from Ragusa upwards  from subjection to the old metropolitical see (Salona-Spalato), and made them depend on the new one of Antivari.

But it is believed that what the archdeacon sets down as a cause was really only a pretext. The destruction of the Bulgarian Empire, then the first non-Greek power in the Balkan peninsula, by Basil II (Bulgaroctonus) in 1018, and his subsequent occupation of Bosnia and upper Dalmatia, had not, however, led to the more complete submission of their Slavonic inhabitants to Constantinople. Under the leadership of a Servian Zhupan, Stephen Boitslav (or Dobroslav), the Serbs defeated the Byzantines in a great battle close to Antivari in the defiles of Jeni-bazaar. This took place during the reign of the unwarlike emperor Constantine IX Monomachus, about the year 1043, and laid the foundation of the Servian monarchy.

It was only to be expected that Boitslav would wish to have the bishops of Servia dependent on one of themselves, and that, after throwing off the imperial yoke, he would turn to Rome rather than to Constantinople for the establishment of a local hierarchy. And as Dioclea had been destroyed during the wars (1027), it was proposed to erect the new metropolitan see at Antivari on the coast. Whether, then, the petition for a south Dalmatian or Servian archbishopric proceeded from prince or people, it is certain that it was granted by Rome.

In 1067 Alexander issued a bull to Peter, “the venerable archbishop of Dioclea and Antivari”, in which he decreed that his jurisdiction should extend over the sees of what then constituted the kingdom of Servia, and over the monasteries therein, whether of Latins, Greeks, or Slavs: “in order that you may know that all these form one church over which you are to have episcopal control”. He, moreover, in accordance with custom, sent him the pallium, and permitted him to have the cross carried before him “through Dalmatia and Slavonia”, i.e., through Dalmatia south of Ragusa, and through the rest of his archdiocese in Servia, etc.

But though, like their bitter enemies, the Bulgarians, with whom to this day they have ever been at war, the Servians were very glad to turn to the Popes whenever their patronage was of use to them, they finally, again like the Bulgarians, after long playing off Constantinople against Rome, joined the Greek Church, but secured an independent patriarch of their own. The Servian Church may be said to have become thus definitely autocephalous under Stephen Dushan (1336-1356), the most powerful ruler that Servia has ever known.

From the ninth century the Bohemians had been to a greater or less extent dependent on their Teutonic neighbors; but the princes of Bohemia very seldom lost an opportunity of striking a blow for complete freedom from the yoke which ever galled them. Spytihniev II (1055-1061) inherited from his father a fierce hatred of the Germans, and drove them out of Bohemia, as though he were clearing his garden of nettles. To strengthen his hand against them he turned, like so many other Slav princes, to Rome, and begged Pope Nicholas II to grant him the insignia of a king, in order that they might serve as a sign of his absolute independence. It is possible, however, that his request may have been merely to hold his country of the Pope instead of the emperor. At any rate, Cardinal Deusdedit assures us that he found it recorded in a Lateran codex  that Spytihniev was authorized by Pope Nicholas to wear a mitre, “which is not wont to be bestowed on lay persons”, and that the prince promised to pay him annually a sum of a hundred pounds of silver “as a tax”.

The curse of Bohemia was the ever-recurring dissensions in the reigning family. Spytihniev was succeeded by his brother Vratislav (1061-1092), who, among other reasons, because he was rather well-disposed towards the Germans, was soon involved in a long and bitter struggle with his brother Jaromir, and was through it drawn to side with the empire in its war against the Papacy.

In accordance with a common custom, Jaromir, the youngest of the five sons of Bracislav, had been destined by his father for the Church, and to succeed Severus (d. December 9, 1067) as archbishop of Prague. He had, therefore, been devoted to a life of study; but when his brother Vratislav discovered that he had no taste for either study or the Church, but wished to inherit some of the power of Spytihniev, he caused him to be ordained deacon by force. But Jaromir, “despising the grace which had been given him by the imposition of hands, put on the dress of a soldier, and fled with his followers to the duke of Poland (Boleslaus II), and remained with him till the death of Bishop Severus”.

No sooner had that taken place than Jaromir’s two brothers, Conrad and Otho, summoned him from Poland, and bade him resume the tonsure and his clerical attire, with a view to his succeeding the deceased bishop. Despite the opposition of the crafty Vratislav, who wished to nominate a German partisan of his own, Jaromir was elected by the clergy and people (June 1068), was confirmed in his appointment by Henry IV of Germany, and, changing his name to Gebehard, was consecrated.

Thus installed against his brother’s will, it was not to be expected that he would live in harmony with him. Quarrels soon broke out between them. Both parties turned to the Pope, who wrote to them over and over again, begging them to live in peace with one another. He then, at the request of the duke, sent legates to try to settle the matters in dispute between them, and ended by excommunicating Jaromir.

The principal cause of trouble between the brothers was connected with the bishopric of Moravia.

At the request of Vratislav, Severus of Prague had agreed to a partition of his diocese. A new bishopric of Moravia was established at Olomouci (Olmutz) in 1062, and a certain John became its first incumbent. As a recompense for the concession, the bishop of Prague was to receive a sum of money from the duke, and certain properties in different parts of Bohemia. Unable, after four years and more had passed in vain effort, to obtain from his brother either the money or the suppression of the new diocese, the warlike Jaromir swore: “By God! I will either unite the dioceses or lose both of them”. He accordingly paid John an unexpected visit, and is credited with having maltreated him in the most barbarous manner (1073).

Vratislav at once appealed to Rome on behalf of the outraged bishop, and Pope Gregory replied by promptly dispatching legates to Bohemia. But finding that Jaromir paid no heed to them, he ordered him to present himself in Rome by April 13, 1074. Vratislav was also to come to Rome, or to send John and some representatives. Jaromir duly presented himself before the Pope, and, denying some of the charges urged against him, and offering satisfaction for such as he admitted, gained Gregory’s goodwill. He was reinstated in his see, and his brother was asked to restore what belonged to him. It was further decided that the quarrel between the two bishops was to be settled in a synod at which they were both to be present, and to which the duke was asked to send delegates.

But no sooner had Jaromir returned to Bohemia, than, making a false use of Gregory’s letters, he endeavored to rob both his brother and John. This conduct brought down upon him a severe letter from the Pope, and a peremptory order to present himself along with John at the synod already appointed. In due course the two bishops duly presented themselves before the Pope, and a council assembled in the Lateran basilica (March 1075). Fortunately for Jaromir, there was also present at this council “the most powerful lady Matilda ... whose nod, as though she were their own sovereign, the whole senatorial order obeyed, and with whose advice Pope Gregory himself transacted all his business, both spiritual and temporal; for she was a most wise counselor, and in all its troubles and difficulties the greatest support of the Roman Church”. According to Cosmas, she was in some way related to the family of Jaromir, and saved him from being condemned by Gregory as absolutely as he had been by Alexander. Though the Pope says nothing of this intercession of the illustrious countess, he does tell us that Jaromir was pardoned by him, and that, as he could not at the time arrive at the truth in the matter of the disputed points between the two bishops, he ordered them to live at peace with one another, each keeping half the property in litigation between them. He fixed, how­ever, a period of ten years during which either party might make good what he believed to be his just claims.

The last mention of the two bishops made by Gregory is in a letter in which he exhorts Vratislav to keep his dominions in peace, and himself to live at peace with John and Jaromir.

Simony in the church of Germany

If greed of power and gold on the part of the bishop of Prague kept the Church of Bohemia in a state of unrest, similar causes were producing a like result in the Church in Germany. The great bishops of the empire had, for the most part, more in common with lay princes than with churchmen. They were desirous of independence, whether of Pope or king. They acknowledged, indeed, as we have seen in the case of Siegfried of Mainz, that the Pope was their superior, and that with him lay the final decision of important matters, but they strove to prevent them from being referred to him; and in the struggle between the Papacy and the empire many of them were more ready to side with the emperor than with the Pope. So far from co-operating with the Popes in their efforts at reform, they resisted them. Guilty of simony themselves, they were not likely to co-operate in an earnest effort to stamp it out of the German Church. They imitated their temporal rather than their spiritual ruler, for Henry IV was deeply stained with simony. It is true that in a passing mood he acknowledged and deplored his guilt in this direction, but his repentance was but transitory, his sin a habit. He was as reckless in the manner in which he dealt with ecclesiastical appointments as in the way in which he made or unmade the feudatories of the empire. With the utmost contempt for proper legal procedure, and with a total disregard of consequences, he wantonly deprived of his dukedom the powerful Saxon, Otho of Nordheim, duke of Bavaria, and gave it to Welf (or Guelf), the son of an Italian marquis, Azzo, and son-in-law of Otho himself. He was to live to rue his heedless folly.

He lived to find out, also, that he could not treat the Church with impunity. The efforts of the Popes to effect a reformation of manners were telling upon the people, and they were not long before they convinced both king and bishop that the laws of the Church must be respected. Here we purpose, in proof of this, merely to give details of the singularly dramatic case of the double abbey of Stablo-Malmedy, both of which were some twenty miles south of Liege and Aix-la-Chapelle. Both Stablo, in the diocese of Liege, and Malmedy, in that of Cologne, owed their foundations to Sigebert II, acting under the advice of St. Remaclus (c. 651). For a while the saint governed both monasteries, which came to be regarded as one, and sometime after his death (c. 664) was recognized the patron-saint of Stabio.

Brusquely brushing aside all rights, privileges, and precedents, King Henry gave the monastery of Malmedy to Archbishop Anno in 1063. The abbot of the twin houses at once betook himself to Rome, and was well received by Alexander “and by the consuls of the republic”. At his request, and by reason of his duty to the universal Church, the Pope wrote a strong letter to Anno. Telling him that he was surprised that a man of whom he had had such a good account should be guilty of injustice, he bade him respect the rights of others. But Anno paid no heed to the Pope’s words, nor to a promise of amendment which he made to the Pope in person when he was humbled before him in the year 1068. Nor would he listen to the king when he wished to undo the wrong of which he had been guilty. He would not, he said, give up his possession if St. Remaclus himself were to appear before him, and ask him to do so.

Not indeed in the manner conceived by Anno, but the saint did appear before him, and, despite the obstinate archbishop, obtained justice for his monks. Unable to obtain his rights from Pope or king, the abbot had turned to God and his patron-saint and bethought him of a striking scheme.

On the evening of Easter Day (May 8, 1071) the king and queen and the great spiritual and temporal lords of the empire were holding a grand state banquet at Liege. The hall in which they were sitting feasting was brilliant with lights and the splendid dresses of the company. Wine and wit, the fragrance of flowers and savoury viands were doing their work, and the guests were in the highest spirits. Suddenly a low and melancholy chant makes itself heard amid the noise and revelry; it rings louder and louder, and bright cheeks grow pale, and laughter dies away on the lip, when a body of dark-robed monks slowly enter the banqueting-hall, and solemnly set before the king the massive shrine which contained the relics of St. Remaclus. “Look on him, O king!” they exclaimed, “whom you have wronged. Return to him what the world acknowledges to be his. Give him justice now, lest he seek it against you from God”. Panic seized the whole assembly; the queen was in tears, and the king was profoundly moved. “It is through you”, he cried to the arch­bishop, “that this has fallen upon me”.

A scene of great disorder followed. Unmoved by the entreaties of the king and the bishops, or by the objurgations of Anno, the monks refused to remove the body of the saint till justice was done them. Thereupon Henry and his guests hurriedly deserted the banqueting-hall, which was immediately filled by a crowd of excited people crying out: “Why, O just God, do you allow this injustice to be perpetrated upon the earth?”. Their excitement became intense when the table on which the shrine of the saint had been placed, giving way beneath its weight, broke a man's leg, which was seen to be healed instantly by the intercession of the saint. The crowd grew in numbers; miracles were worked all through the night. The king’s officers made a vain attempt themselves to remove the shrine. It could not be stirred.

Thoroughly perturbed by all these events, Henry at length restored to the monks the monastery which he had forced the reluctant archbishop to return to him (May 9, 1071).

During the first few years of his reign, Alexander witnessed two striking renunciations of high station, one in the Church and one in the world. He was not long Pope before he received a request from St. Peter Damian to be allowed to resign his See of Ostia. What Nicholas had refused, Alexander might have granted at once but for the strenuous opposition of Hildebrand. The archdeacon, who knew that the days were evil, believed that it was the duty of all such as were able and willing to oppose wrong not to abandon positions of importance, but to remain in the world, and meet the powers of darkness face to face. Such, however, were not the views of Damian, and he wrote a remarkable letter “to his most beloved the elect of the Apostolic See, and to Hildebrand, the rod of Assur, ... who are the Apostolic See, the Roman Church”. He declared himself ready to be put in prison if only he were released from his office. “But perchance that smooth tyrant, who has ever for me a sort of Neronian pity, who soothes me with blows, and, so to speak, strokes me with an eagle’s talon, will break out into this querulous complaint: ‘See, he seeks a place of refuge, and, under the pretext of doing penance, would shun coming to Rome; by disobedience he would win leisure, and, while others are in the thick of the fight, he would secure for himself an inglorious repose. But to my holy Satan (adversary), I would answer in the words of the sons of Reuben and Gad to their leader Moses: 'We ourselves will go armed and ready for battle before the children of Israel, until we bring them in unto their places ... But we will not seek anything beyond the Jordan, because we have already our possession on the east side thereof' (Num. xxxii. 17 ff)”. Pleading his old age, the difficulties of ruling, and other reasons, he concluded: “May He deliver the wretched Peter from the hands of Hildebrand, at whose order Herod’s prison was thrown open for the great Peter”.

Hildebrand, however, was not in the least disposed to entertain Damian’s wishes, and would seem to have expressed in no uncertain voice his disapproval of the saint’s intentions, and to have induced the Pope to accept his view of the situation. Accordingly, Damian wrote to Hildebrand directly, and, after affectionately upbraiding him for the cooling of his love for him, concluded by saying: “By these letters I return you the bishopric which you gave me, and I cut off from myself all rights and power which I have over it”. Whether Damian’s resignation was accepted is uncertain; but, whether he henceforth ceased to act as bishop of Ostia or not, it is certain that no other person was named its bishop till after the saint’s death (1072).

In the year 1067 Rome, says the same saint, was edified by seeing the Empress Agnes riding into the city on a wretched steed, scarcely larger than a little ass, and clad in a miserable dark-coloured linen garment. She had changed a crown for a veil, and fine purple for sackcloth, and the hand which had grasped a scepter clasped a prayer-book.

Bereft not only of power, but of the guardianship of her son, whose dissolute courses she bitterly deplored, full of grief for her share in the schism of Cadalous, the empress-mother conceived a disgust for the world. She retired first to the abbey of Fructuaria in Piedmont (1066), and then came to Rome to learn “the folly of the fisherman.” Henceforth an ally of the Papacy, she spent her time till the day of her death (1077) serving the poor of Christ. She was buried in the chapel of St. Petronilla.

Some four years before the death of the lady, whose repentance for the wrong she had done him he lived to see, Alexander II closed in death his arduous struggle against the vices of the clergy, and the naturally still greater ones of the laity. This ardent defender of the rights of the Papacy—the source of consolation in the midst of the ills of life—this uncompromising opponent of simony and clerical incontinence was buried in the Lateran basilica near Sergius IV. Like several of his predecessors, he had helped to prepare the way for Hildebrand, and has derived no little of his renown from the cooperation of that master­spirit. Under his guidance, to quote the words of Otto of Frising, “he restored to her pristine liberty the Church, which had long been in a state of servitude”.