PREFACE.

By way of preface to this additional series of The Lives of the Popes in the Middle Ages, which is now offered to the public, I will simply say, in the words of an old Norse monk who wrote the history of the kings of his country, that “it may be taken as certain that I wish that someone other than myself had undertaken to tell the story of these events; but, as this task has not yet been attempted, I prefer to make the attempt myself rather than that it should not be made at all”.

This much of a preface has been penned that I might find another opportunity of tendering my sincerest thanks to my friends, C Hart, Esq., B.A., F. F. Urquhart, Esq., M.A., and E. Weidner, Esq., and to the Rev. A. Chadwick and A. Harding, Esq., who have with such ungrudging kindness again helped me either with the literary or with the artistic side of these volumes. And I am, moreover, only too glad once more to have a chance of expressing to the authorities of the Public Library of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and of St. Cuthbert’s College, Ushaw, my grateful sense of their readiness to give me any assistance in their power.

H. K. MANN.

 

St Leo IX (1049-1054)

Victor II (1055-1057),

Stephen (IX) X (1057-1058)

Nicholas II (1059-1061)

 Alexander II (1061-1073)  

Appendix I. The Sources of Icelandic History

Appendix II. The Dukes and Kings of Croatia-Dalmatia,

 

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

The century of papal history which it is hoped will be illustrated by the following pages was the age dominated by the great name of Hildebrand, and hence is often described as the saeculum Hildebrandicum. It was the age in which that high-minded and pure-souled monk strove, either by his own exertions or by those which he inspired, to promote that reform in the Church which had been inaugurated by St. Leo IX. The efforts at reform took the shape of a determined struggle against the triple scourge of simony, clerical incontinence, and the tyrannical interference of the powerful in the domain of the Church, and were at length focused in the fight against lay investiture. But the attempt to stifle this abuse which was begun under the saintly Pontiff from Lorraine, was not destined to be concluded either in his reign, during which Hildebrand was trained, or in those of his immediate successors who were under the influence of Hildebrand, or in that of Hildebrand himself It was not to be terminated till the pontificate of Calixtus II; while the general contest between the Papacy and the Empire which took its rise in this attempt at reform was to last till the fifteenth century, and was, in the temporal order, to exhaust both.

The reforming zeal of the Popes of the school of Hildebrand almost everywhere encountered the most stubborn opposition; so deep-rooted were the evils they strove to eradicate, so dear were they to the passions of the clergy, or to the interests of the great. And nowhere did they meet with greater opposition than in Italy. If simony was rife in France, it was worse in Germany, and worst of all in Italy; and if the spectacle of married priests and bishops was not uncommon in other countries of Europe, it was nowhere more obvious than in Italy, and especially in Milan and in Lombardy generally. The reason of this is not far to seek. Though the Church in Italy, especially in its northern portion, had, owing to the power of its bishops, and to the comparatively rare interfering visits of the German emperors, been free to a very large extent from the royal oppression under which it groaned in other countries, it had become thoroughly demoralized by the terrible anarchy of the tenth century, and its bishops were, for the most part, as loose in their morals as their secular compeers.

Though, then, the fight for independence and reform upon which the Popes had entered was to be long and bitter, and was to bring upon them a very large share of suffering from the Franconian emperors and their contemptible antipopes, they were not to stand alone in the combat. The words of such fiery champions of reform as St. Peter Damian must never be taken too literally. There were always good priests and even good bishops, and that too even in Italy, who were longing for a reformation in manners, and who were only waiting for an opportunity to help to promote it. Especially were the Popes supported by the religious orders, by the Camaldolese, founded by St. Romuald (1009), by the Premonstratensians (1125), and especially by the Benedictines, revivified by the reforms of Cluny and by those of the Carthusians (1084), and of the Cistercians (1098), and producing from such centres as Bec and Clairvaux men like Lanfranc and SS. Anselm and Bernard. They were sustained also in their conflict against the powers of evil by men deservedly conspicuous for their sanctity, by St. Peter Damian, by St Bruno of Segni, by St. John Gualbert, with his order of Vallombrosa, and by St. Bruno with his Carthusians, who by their silence and penitential life protested loudly against the disorders of the age.

The era of which we are now about to write in detail was an era not only of ardent work for reform, but of great and glorious deeds, the soul of which was faith, both in the social and political as well as in the ecclesiastical order. It was the age in which the Crescent began its steady decline before the Cross; it saw the birth of the Crusades, “the Lord's doing, a wonder unknown to preceding ages and reserved for our days”. It was a time wherein, owing to the spread of the work of the Truce of God, and then to the departure of much of its warlike element to the East, there was, in spite of feudalism, greater peace in Europe. Under its blessed shadow learning at once revived.

 Guibert, abbot of Nogent (d. 1124), assures us that “wandering clerklings of modern times” are more learned than were the professed grammarians in the time of his boyhood, or immediately before it.

Towards the end of the eleventh century French and Provençal poetry made their appearance, and the parent of modern literature is said to have been the Frenchman, William of Poitiers, the chaplain of William the Conqueror. It was at the same period that the Moors in Spain began their final retreat before the arms of the Christians. The great legendary hero of Spain, Roderick Diaz de Bivar, the Cid, died in 1099, and it is far from unlikely that the Castilian Muse was, within fifty years of his death, busy with the rich verses of the Poema del Cid, or with the first of the mystery plays, the Misterio de los Reyes Magos.

Side by side with the lighter forms of learning, there sprang into activity the more serious figures of law and medicine, philosophy and theology. As early as 1050 Salerno was known throughout Europe as a great school of medicine, and by his studies on Roman Law, Irnerius (c. 1113) was to render Bologna for ever famous as a primary fount of legal learning. And whilst he and his successors in the teaching of Civil Law were to be partisans of the German emperors, and by their study of the Digest and the other jurisprudence of Justinian were to give intellectual support to their absolutism, Deusdedit (who wrote in 1087) and the other canonists of the latter part of the eleventh century, and particularly Gratian, with his immortal Decretum (1142), were to give no little help to the cause of the Popes and to civilization generally. And if St. John Damascene and John the Scot are remote ancestors of scholasticism, Roscelin (d.1106), St. Anselm of Canterbury, William of Champeaux (d. 1121), and Abelard (d. 1142) are its immediate parents. The ages wherein men “had been content to gather up and reproduce the traditionary wisdom of the Fathers”  had passed away, and the powers of reason were to be used to inquire into and to systematize the masses of theological truths grouped together by the patient labor of Bedes and Alcuins.

The appearance of scholastic theology shows us that this age possessed an increased scientific knowledge of God and of the truths of God; the revival of art (manifesting itself in connection with church building and decoration) which took place during it is evidence enough of an increase of devout feeling for the things of God. In every country we find architectural masterpieces arising which have excited the admiration of every succeeding age that has itself been blessed with any degree of enlightenment. What Raoul Glaber tells us of the remarkable increase in church building during this epoch is abundantly borne out by what is known of the history of the great European ecclesiastical structures. France saw arising the great cathedrals of Autun (1060), Cahors (1096), Chartres (1108), Evreux (1112), and Laon (1114), etc. In the country of her modern ally, the erection of churches at Novgorod (1056), Kieff (1075), and Pskof (1138) is recorded. In England most of our cathedrals date back to this age, as in Scotland do Glasgow Cathedral (1123) and the abbey churches of Kelso and Waverley (1128), and as in Ireland do St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (1090), and King Cormack’s Chapel in Cashel ( 1127). Many a cathedral too in Germany, Italy, and Spain can proudly trace back its origin to this remote period, as can even Lund (1072) and Westaras (1100) in Sweden, and Roeskilda (1084) in Denmark. So great was the zeal for the erection of magnificent churches that in many instances existing buildings were pulled down in order that they might be rebuilt in what was regarded as a more perfect style. It was to this impulse in this great period of Romanesque architecture that we owe many of the existing Romanesque cathedrals. And just as many a basilica had in this age to give place to a Romanesque cathedral, so in the next many a Romanesque building, e.g., the Romanesque cathedral of Chartres, was leveled to the ground that the present Gothic structure might, on the same site, raise its noble front to the glory of God on High. But beautiful churches were not the only buildings which graced the Gregorian revival. It was distinguished by the erection of edifices of all kinds for the benefit of the energetic, or the consolation of the suffering. And we find his biographer noting with regard to St. John Gualbert (d. 1073) that he was a great bridge builder, and founder of hospitals throughout the whole of Tuscany. The winter of the early Middle Ages, with its darkness and its violent storms, had gone, and their springtime had come, instinct with bursting growth and gladdened with fresh life, even if troubled with violent winds and sweeping showers.

ITALY

Turning our eyes from the West in general to Italy, the more immediate field of papal labor, we are at once struck with the fact that the three empires which, in the last epoch, were so vigorously contending for the possession of its fair form, are now fading from its shores. The power of the Saracen Empire declined everywhere before the close of the tenth century. At the beginning of the eleventh century it had no permanent centres of aggression on the mainland of south Italy, and was being taught by bitter experience the might of the new maritime powers of Venice and Pisa. Even its predatory incursions became less frequent as the century advanced.

 The same age saw the disappearance from the peninsula of the more disciplined troops of Constantinople. Their occupation of southern Italy, begun by the capture of Bari in 876, was brought to a close by their expulsion from it by the Normans in 1071. And if the rights of the German Empire were not yet to be extinguished in northern Italy, the rise of the people and of the communes or free burghs, which was to prove fatal to them, had already begun; so that during this epoch southern Italy became rapidly more and more Norman; northern Italy made steady advances towards becoming the land of free cities; and central Italy, especially through the Donation of the Countess Matilda, fell more than ever under the direct influence of the temporal sovereignty of the Popes.

 It is, however, owing to the great dearth of documentary evidence, very difficult to say what was the precise extent of the papal domination at the opening of this epoch. In theory at least the states of the Church were as extensive as ever, and, by the junction to them of Benevento (1051), might even seem to be actually, i.e., de facto, more extensive than ever. But though it is true that Otho I renewed the donations of the Carolingians, the effective control of the Popes over their states was rather diminished than increased by that sovereign and his immediate successors. They protected the Exarchate of Ravenna in the name of the Pope; and in their own name, despite the protests of the Popes, disposed of its territories to men of their own choice. Even in the Duchy of Rome, the power of the Popes, like that of the other sovereigns of the West, was very largely controlled by the feudal rights and customs which had been usurped by the nobility. And what had befallen the sovereign claims of the Popes during Rome’s Dark Age had also, to a very large extent, overtaken their ownership rights. Their privy purse had become as empty as their State treasury. We have, or shall soon have, seen the low ebb at which Stephen (V) VI and St. Leo IX found the papal finances. To restore them we shall find the Popes of this period endeavoring to develop comparatively fresh sources of revenue. During the century in which they lost the patrimonies of the Church, the monasteries of Europe had begun to pay them taxes in return for privileges;  and the English had set the example to other countries of paying to the Popes the voluntarily imposed tax of Peter’s pence. We shall see Alexander II and Gregory VII urging its regular payment on William the Conqueror, as the former had already done on the King of Denmark. We need not then begin to think of greed of gold or lust of power when the efforts of Gregory and other Popes of this period to obtain money, or to extend their regal authority, are brought to our notice. As little could be done without money in the Middle Ages as now, and both gold and temporal authority were required by the Popes if, especially in an age of violence, they were to be in a position to exercise the charity of the priest, or to preserve in any way the dignity and independence befitting the Head of the Church.

Position of the Popes in Rome.

During the saeculum Hildebrandicum, the position of the Popes improved not only from a pecuniary point of view, and with regard to their real authority over their States generally, but also in the matter of their control over the turbulent Romans. Owing to the collapse of the Byzantine power before the arms of the Lombards, civil authority in Rome had fallen into the hands of the Popes by default, and had practically remained there during the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries. But during the eighth century, owing to the establishment of a local militia, a military aristocracy had begun to be formed, which, of course, increased in importance when the Popes became temporal rulers, and had more wealth and lucrative positions at their disposal. This body, which had made its influence bear so heavily on the papal government that, during the ninth century, the latter had had to appeal to the Carolingian rulers for assistance against its encroachments, obtained its own way completely when the Frankish Empire went to pieces. For a century and a half the Roman nobles, with their fortress-houses in Rome, and their great estates outside it, lorded it over the city, and reduced it and the Papacy to the very lowest depths. But, partly broken by the Othos, who re-established the prefect of the city as their representative, partly kept in subjection by the firm hand of Hildebrand, who took away from them all opportunity of interfering in papal elections, and partly checked by the growing power of the people, who in the last years of this epoch (1143) asserted their independence of both Pontiff and baron, the nobles had to give way to the power of the Popes.

The first to benefit by the increased freedom and wealth was the city of Rome itself. Under Paschal II and Calixtus II not a few churches were repaired and embellished, and under Innocent II we see a revival in mosaic work. Art never perished in Rome, even during the dark days of the tenth century, but, helped by the Popes, it took during this age a new development in the hands of the Roman marmorarii or marble-cutters. For it was about the beginning of the twelfth century that there began to be cultivated in Rome that beautiful geometrical arrangement of pieces of coloured marbles which, from one of its later distinguished artists, came to be known as Cosmatesque work. At once architects, decorators, and sculptors, these Roman marmorarii formed a guild which rose and fell with the prosperity of the Popes in Rome. It originated during the twelfth century, did its best work in the thirteenth, and disappeared in the fourteenth.

In enumerating the cities which led the way in the revival of Italian art, Sir Martin Conway places Rome first, and adds that in Rome during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries no inconsiderable amount of interesting work was done, and, as just noted, was done under the direction of the Popes. Building and artistic operations were almost forced upon them owing to the necessity of repairing the damage wrought on the city by the terrible fires that devastated it during the eleventh century or thereabouts. It is the custom of historians to ascribe all the destruction inflicted on Rome by fire during the eleventh century to that which took place in 1084, when Robert Guiscard relieved Gregory VII. But we are informed that the city “was almost wholly destroyed” by a fire which occurred about 993;  that under Pope Leo IX, on the feast of St. Eustachius, “a great part of the city was burned”, and that in the days of Alexander II that portion of the city was consumed by fire which stretched from the Parrione quarter to St. Felix in Pincis. There was need, then, of works of restoration before 1084, and that date was not awaited to begin them. “The frescos of S. Clemente are certainly the foundation stone of the revival of painting, and they date from Hildebrand’s time; so do those of S. Pudentiana, which he restored, and those in the Cappella del Martirologio at S. Paul’s. In fact, Hildebrand undertook a radical restoration of this basilica and its annexes ... It is even thought that the present monastic buildings and cloister of S. Prassede are the work of Hildebrand”. Of course, after the year 1084, there was more need than ever of building and decorative activity. Hildebert of Lavardin, who visited Rome in 1100, gives us a sad picture of the state of ruin in which he found the city, but suggests that all the resources of his time could not build anything equal even to Rome’s ruins. “Rome was”, he says, and yet :

“Bid wealth, bid marble, and bid fate attend.

And watchful artists o'er the labour bend.

Still shall the matchless ruin art defy

The old to rival, or its loss supply.

No art can equal that which still doth stand,

No skill make good what lieth on the sand.”

It was in the days of Pope Paschal that Hildebert came to Rome, and it was he who, during the few years of peace which he had after the year 1112, “made the first attempts to rebuild the city . . . Modern researches are continually enlarging the scope of this brief activity”. The labors of Hildebrand had prepared the way for him, and “there were artists of a kind at his disposal when he began to attack his problem of renovation, to tear down the half-ruined buildings, establish new levels and new lines of streets, and lay the foundations of modern Rome, as it was until its dismemberment by the Renaissance Popes, and its disruption by the Italians, after the annexation in 1870. We know the names of a few of these artists: Paulus, chief among his architects and decorators, Guido and Petrolinus among his painters”.

THE EAST

For many centuries the influence of the Bishops of Rome over the churches of the East had been but small. And we have seen them sever their connection with them (1053) by a stroke which was destined to be final, and to be rapidly followed by the ruin of the Eastern Roman Empire. The last period of its military glory came to an end before the close of the Macedonian Dynasty in 1057, and the final bright epoch of its literary life, inaugurated by Photius, expired with the school of Psellus (d. 1078). Within twenty years after the legates of St. Leo IX pronounced the excommunication of Michael Cerularius, the Byzantine Empire received a blow from which it never recovered. By the battle of Manzikert, when Alp-Arslan with his Seljukian Turks defeated the emperor Romanus Diogenes, the Empire was broken. This was in 1071, and it was in the same year that the loss of Bari deprived Constantinople of its hold on Italy. It was “utterly ruined” by the Crusaders’ raid in 1204, “and from that time till the capture by the Turks it was a feeble wreck”.  But over both the schism of the Greeks and their temporal misfortunes the Popes grieved. Their miseries overwhelmed them with sorrow;  and, as we shall see, they made one vain effort after another to heal a gaping wound which for well-nigh a thousand years has refused to close.

Before this introductory chapter is brought to a conclusion, a word or two may be said in connection with simony and clerical marriage, of which mention will so frequently be made in the pages that are to follow. In the Acts of the Apostles (c. 8) it is related that a certain Simon Magus attempted to buy from St. Peter the power of bestowing the gifts of the Holy Ghost. From this action of the magician the sin of giving or receiving any temporal emolument in direct exchange for any spiritual profit became known as simony. Gregory VII points out that the sin may be committed when other things besides money or money value are given in exchange for what is spiritual. Hence, for the sake of clearness, he divides what may be thus offered into three classes, which he calls “munera (gifts) a manu, ab obsequio, et a lingua!” By the first he understands the giving of money or its worth; by the second the offering of any kind of service; and by the third the promise of the use of influence on the donor’s behalf. On the other hand, by the phrase “things spiritual” is to be understood not merely what are such in themselves, as the gifts of the Holy Ghost, but those temporal things which are closely connected with them, as, for instance, the sacred vessels or the right of patronage. It was, however, the grossest form of simony against which the mediaeval Pontiffs had to direct all their energies, viz., the simony a manu, the simony of which the powerful were guilty when they sold ecclesiastical offices to the highest bidder. There was comparatively little question of the more refined varieties of the crime. Indeed, it would seem that those rulers were regarded as free from simony who kept their hands from taking money for the bishoprics and abbacies of which they disposed. Had there been no question of the grosser simony (simonia a manu), the Popes would not have convulsed Europe on the subject.

Another abuse against which the Popes of this period offered strenuous and successful opposition was that by which bishops and priests took to themselves wives, and lived as married men. The custom had crept in during  the dread days of feudal anarchy, and in many parts of Christendom was tolerated by public opinion. It would appear certain that in the first ages of the Church, down to about the time of the great council of Nice, there were no laws forbidding the clergy to be married; but even during that epoch marriage was very early prohibited to those who had once taken Holy Orders. This canonical discipline on the matter is that still in force in the Greek Church, and in the East generally. But in the West a severer discipline began to be introduced soon after the council of Nice, and, by the time of St. Leo I (440-461), it was well-nigh universally recognized that all those in Holy Orders were bound to lead a celibate life. However, after the break-up of the Carolingian Empire, the laws both of the Church and of the State were largely disregarded. Very many of the clergy married without, it would appear, giving much or any scandal to the laity, and even transmitted their benefices to their offspring. But during all this anarchical epoch neither the Church nor the State ceased altogether to endeavor to enforce its laws, and, as soon as the troublous times began to pass away, the Church at once commenced to re-establish its canons regarding the celibacy of the clergy. An indulgence, however, which in many parts of Christendom at least, had been sanctioned by long custom, was not likely to be surrendered without a struggle. It required to suppress it not merely the exhortations of the most virtuous among the clergy themselves, but the authority of the greatest of the Popes, manifested in drastic legislation. This went so far that, during the course of the twelfth century, the marriage of bishops, priests, deacons, and even of sub-deacons was decreed to be not simply unlawful, but invalid. And this discipline, enforced by the great reforming Pontiffs of the Gregorian Renaissance, is that in vogue in the Catholic Church today.

Now that we have reviewed the arena in which the Popes had to fight, have enumerated the foes against whom they had to contend, and have reckoned those on whose help in the combat they could rely, we must recount their deeds in detail. In reading them we must never lose sight of the end for which the Roman Pontiffs were striving. It was for no other than the moral upraising of both clergy and people. In the course of their struggle to accomplish this all-important object, they may not have always used the best means. In a long and fierce fight, supposing every effort is made to conduct it properly, some deeds are sure to be done, even by the party that is fighting for the right, which are not altogether creditable to it. Hence, in the history of the hard contest between the Church and the Empire, we shall encounter some things which would have been better either not done at all, or, at least, done in a different way. But with the best and the most impartial writers who have treated of this war of Titans, it may unhesitatingly be stated that the end the Popes had in view was the highest, and that in the main their mode of conducting the campaign for liberty, justice, and virtue was most fair and most honorable, and was in harmony with the glorious cause for which they were contending.

ST. LEO IX. A.D. 1049-1054.