The Power Of The Popes Part 7

6 Annal. Bened. ann. 1014.

7 Annals of Italy, year 1014, vol. 6, p. 45.

8 Lib. 4, c. 6,1. 6, c. 6.

The elevation of an infant to the pontifical throne is not probable; but all circ.u.mstances concur in proving that Benedict IX. was in 1033 but a very young man: he bore to the chair of St. Peter the thoughtlessness and irregularities of youth; and he was equally reproached for his robberies and a.s.sa.s.sinations as for his gallantries. Behold how he is pouryrayed to us by Victor III. one of his successors and contemporaries? :

? J Dialo. 1: 3, In app. Chron. Ca.s.sin. vol. 1.

"I am horrified to state how shame- "ful was the life which Benedict led, how dissolute, how "detestable. Therefore I shall commence my rela- "tion at the period when G.o.d took pity on his holy "church. After Benedict IX. had wearied the Romans "with his thefts, his murders, his abominations, the "excess of his villainy became insupportable; he "was expelled by the people: and to replace him "they elected for a stipulated price, in contempt of "the holy canons, John, Bishop of Sabine, who filled "the Holy See for three months only, under the "name of Sylvester in. Benedict IX. who was de- "scended from the Consuls of Rome, and whom a "powerful party recalled, wasted the environs of the "city, and by the aid of his soldiers, compelled "Sylvester to retire ignominiously to his bishop.r.i.c.k "of Sabine. Benedict in resuming the tiara, did not "leave behind him his manners, always hateful to the "clergy, and to the people, whom his irregularities "continued to disgust; terrified with the outcry "raised against his crimes, given up besides to volup- "tuous pleasures, and more disposed to live as an "Epicurean than as a pontiff, he adopted the re- "solution of selling the pontificate to the arch- "priest John, who paid him a considerable sum "for it. This John nevertheless pa.s.sed in the city "for one of the best of the ecclesiastics; and while "Benedict took up his abode in houses of pleasure, "John under the name of Gregory VI. governed the "church two years and three months, till the arrival "of Henry III., king of Germany."

Such is the picture drawn for us by a pope, of the condition of the Holy See, under three popes, his predecessors, from 1033 to 1046.

It may be proper to observe, that Benedict the VIII. his brother John XIX. and their nephew, Benedict IX. were of the house of the Alberics counts of Tusculum. This is one of the first examples of pontifical nepotism, or of the efforts of a family to perpetuate itself in the Holy See.

We have seen by the statement of Victor III. that in 1045, there existed at the same moment three popes; to wit, Benedict IX. who had retired to his castle; Sylvester III. exiled to his original bishopric; and Gregory VI. seated at Rome, since 1044. This last pontiff, who had purchased his place, wished to reap its fruits, and could not behold them without grief considerably lessened from the loss of many domains, usurped by seculars from the Holy See. He took up arms to reconquer them, without neglecting, however, the excommunication of their possessors. These were the princ.i.p.al acts of his pontifical court. He is represented to us, as a very ignorant man, even for the age in which he fired; it is doubtful whether he could read;4 and history relates, that a coadjutor was given him to perform the pastoral functions, while he was signalizing himself by warlike exploits.

4 Amolice Angerius de Viti Pontific.u.m, p. 340.

At the moment of Henry's arrival, at Rome, the three popes were there, Benedict IX. at the palace of the Lateran, Sylvester III. at the Vatican, and Gregory VI. or John his coadjutor, at Saint-Mary-Major.

Henry deposed the whole three without any difficulty, and caused a fourth to be elected, Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who took the name of Clement II. To this Clement succeeded Damasius II.

Leo IX. and Victor II. all like himself, the creatures of Henry III. The ten years of this emperor's reign, are one of the epochs during which the Romans and the popes have been most decidedly subject to the imperial power.

Leo IX. the relative and subject of Henry, indemnified himself for that obedience which he could not refuse to this emperor, by acts of authority against other sovereigns. He held a council at Rheims in defiance of the King of France, Henry I. proclaimed in it the pontifical supremacy, and deposed and excommunicated prelates and seculars. In a council at Rome, he decreed that the females whom the priests should abuse in the bosom of this city, should remain slaves of the palace of the Lateran.4 This pontiff, whom they have placed in the catalogue of saints, should rather have obtained a place in the rank of warriors. He led an army against the Normans, who defeated him, and kept him prisoner at Beneventum. His ponticate is memorable from the completion of the schism of the Greek church; but the religious discussions which belong to the history of this schism, exceed the limits of our subject: the princ.i.p.al political result of this division was, to extinguish the already very feeble influence of the Emperors of the East over the affairs of Italy.

4 Fleury's Eccles. Hist 1. 59, n. 75.

'Tis under Leo IX. that Hildebrand begins to be distinguished, a man the most celebrated of his age. Born in Tuscany, where his father, they say, was a carpenter, he studied in France, embraced the monastic rule there, and returned into Italy to give counsel to Leo IX. Nicholas II. and Alexander II. and finally to succeed them in the pontifical throne. The idea of a universal theocracy had a.s.sumed in his fiery and iron soul the character of a pa.s.sion; all his life was devoted to the undertaking. To a.s.sure the empire of the priesthood over the rest of mankind, he saw the necessity of reforming their manners and concentrating their relations, to isolate them more strictly, and to form them into one great family, the members of which should no longer recollect having belonged to a secular one. Ecclesiastical celibacy was as yet but a general practice, introduced into and renewed in almost every church, but in almost all, nevertheless, modified by exceptions or transgressions. Hildebrand resolved to reduce it to a rigorous law: at his instigation, Stephen IX.

in 1058 declared marriage incompatible with the priesthood; treated as concubines all the priest's wives; and excommunicated both them and their husbands, if the union was not instantly divided. The clergy made some resistance; the priests of Milan, especially, objected the permission granted them by St. Ambrose to marry, but in first nuptials only, and provided it was with a virgin.4 Hildebrand to cut these remonstrances short, cla.s.sed in the number of heretics the obstinate gain-sayers.4

4 Landolph Senior. Hist Mediol. 1. 3. et 4;-Rer. Italic. t. 4, p.

96, See.-Cocio. Hist, of Milan, pa. 1, b. 6, &C.

4 Baron. Ann. Leoies. ad ann. 1069.

Under Nicholas II. Hildebrand changed the mode of electing the popes.

Until his time, all the Romans, clergy, n.o.bles, and people, had a.s.sisted in these elections. It was ruled that for the future they should be selected by the cardinal bishops alone, to whom the cardinal clerks should afterwards be united, and they were to close the matter by demanding the approbation of the rest of the clergy, and even that of the body of the faithful. The cardinal bishops are no others than the seven bishops of the Roman territory: Nicholas, in the same decree calls them his fellow countrymen, "comprovinciales episcopi.44 With respect to the cardinal priests or clerks, it was those who administered the offices of the twenty-eight princ.i.p.al churches of the city of Rome. Long before Nicholas, these twenty-eight priests and these bishops, had been designated by the appellation of 'cardinals'; but now for the first time, behold them invested with the exclusive and determinate privilege of nominating the new popes: the rest of the clergy and the people preserve no more than the power of rejecting the proposed. Such was the origin of the Electoral College of Cardinals; a college, however, which received subsequently, and by degrees, its present organization. It had, as we see, for its first founder, Nicholas II. or rather Hildebrand. Let us not omit the clause which terminates this decree:45

44 Mabillon. Mus. Italic, v. 2. p. 114.-Fra. Pagi. Breviar. Pontif.

Roman, vol. 2, p. 374.-Thoma.s.sin. Dicipl. vet. et nor. 1.2, c.

lid, 116.-Muratori. de origine Cardinalatus. Ant Ital. v. 6. p.

156.

45 Concilior. tom. 9. p. 11,36.-Fleury Hiat.Eccles. 1.60 n 31.

'saving the honour and respect due to king Henry, 'future emperor, to whom the Apostolic See has given 'the personal privilege of concurring in the election 'by consent.'

The rights of the emperor were as yet too firmly founded to permit being silent on them: they satisfy themselves by misrepresenting them, and by referring to them as a concession granted by the Holy See, as a personal privilege with which it was pleased to gratify Henry.

In founding ecclesiastical benefices, kings and n.o.bles had reserved to themselves the right of appointing to them; none could possess them until after they had been invested by the donor or his heirs. It was a simple application of the feudal system to ecclesiastical domains; but the Court of Rome complained of the bad selection to which this system led, and especially of the bargains which were driven between the patrons and the candidates. A vast number of benefices were disposed of no doubt: but this traffic has subsisted under every regime; the question never has been other than that of knowing for whose benefit it should be earned on. Hildebrand armed himself with a sanctified zeal against this abuse: to extinquish it, he ventured to dictate for Nicholas II. a decree, which prohibited the acceptance of a benefice from a layman, even gratuitously.46 This decree, published in 1059, in the same council which confined to the cardinals the election of the popes, presented itself under the form of a special rule against simony.

Little attention was at first given to it, it was rarely carried into effect; but we are bound to point it out here as the prelude to the quarrels about invest.i.tures.

46 Baronins. Ann. ecclea. ad. ann. 1069, 5,32,34.

For a long period, kings and n.o.bles had invested prelates in presenting them with a switch or branch, as is practised in the invest.i.ture of counts and knights. But the clergy, from the tenth century, had more than once thought to deprive the patrons of benefices of their privileges, by proceeding without delay to the election and consecration of the prelate. It seemed allowed on all sides, that the consecration rendered the election irrevocable: and if the patron layman had been advertised of neither one nor the other, he lost the opportunity of bestowing or selling the dignity. To escape this stratagem, the sovereigns decreed that, immediately after the death of a prelate, the ring and crozier should be transferred to his successor only in investing him. Adam de Breme47 refers to the reign of Louis le Debonnaire this form of invest.i.ture: but it is infinitely more probable, that it was not introduced until under Otho the Great, after the middle of the tenth century: it was almost universally established in the eleventh.48 Hildebrand promised to himself its abolition, firstly, because it secured to laymen the right of nomination or of sale, and further, as it caused two symbols of the ecclesiastical power to pa.s.s through the hands of the profane.

47 Hist, eccles. 1.1. n. 2.

48 Humbert 1.3. contra Simonaicus c. 7 et 11.

Far from reconciling himself to the continuance of a ceremony, in which the secular authority seemed to confer sacerdotal offices, he pretended, on the contrary, to erect the head of the church into the supreme dispenser of temporal crowns. From the year 1059, he made, in the name of Nicholas II. the first essay of this system. Nicholas received the homage of the Romans, and created one of their chiefs Duke of Apulia Calabria and Sicily, on condition that as va.s.sal of the Apostolic See, this chief, named Robert Guiscard, should take to the Roman Church the oath of fidelity, pledge himself in the same character to pay it an annual tribute, and enter into the same engagement for his successors.4? Such was the origin of the kingdom of Naples; and this strange concession stripped the emperors of Constantinople of every remnant of sovereignty over Grecia Major. Nicholas II. died in 1063; and to elect and instal his successor Alexander II. the imperial consent was in no way sought for. The court of Henry IV. then a minor, was offended, and caused another to be nominated pope, Cadaloo, who named himself Honorous II. Cadaloo defeated the army of Alexander, and succeeded in fixing himself in the Vatican; but the duke of Tuscany drove him thence: Alexander was recognised as the true pontiff, and Hildebrand continued to reign.

4? Baronins. Ann. eccles. ad ann. 1060.-Muratori's Annals of Italy vol. 6. p. 106.

Hildebrand did not sit in person in St. Peter's chair until 1073. We may be surprised he did not sooner occupy it; some authors think the pride and inflexibility of his character indisposed the electors towards him: to us it appears more than probable that he in fact did not aspire to become pope, provided the pope became the sovereign of kings; for were he ambitious of the tiara, if he had desired, as he was capable of desiring it, how easily had he triumphed, since the year 1061, or even previously, over some feeble resistance. It was to the unlimited aggrandizement of the pontifical power, much rather than to his personal elevation, his opinions and character impelled him. We perceive in his conduct none of the manuvering which private interest suggests: it evinces all the outlines of an inflexible system, the integrity of which is never permitted to be compromised by concession or compliance. His zeal, which was not merely active but daring, obstinate and inconsiderate, proceeded from an incurable persuasion. Hildebrand would have been the martyr of theocracy, if circ.u.mstances had called for it; and they were little short of it. Like all rigid enthusiasts, he considered himself disinterested, and became without remorse, the scourge of the world. Without doubt, interest is the spring of human actions: but the success of an opinion is an interest too; and to sacrifice thereto every other, has been in all ages the destiny of some.

There are those who, cautious of troubling their neighbours, compromise only their own happiness; these are the more excusable, as it is perhaps to truth they offer so pure and so modest a sacrifice. Others, like Hildebrand, think to acquire by the privations they impose upon themselves, the privilege of terrifying and tormenting nations: and their melancholy errors cost the world a train of misfortunes.

There are attributed to Gregory VII. the papal name of Hildebrand, twenty seven maxims which compose a complete declaration of the temporal and spiritual supremacy of the Roman Pontiff,5 comprising in it the right of dethroning princes, disposing of crowns, and reforming all laws. It is not very certain whether or not he really drew up or dictated these articles; but the substance of them and their developement will be found in his authenticated letters: they may be ent.i.tled "The Spirit of Hildebrand;" they were the rule of his conduct, the creed which he professed, and would have wished to impose on Christendom. In them it is expressly stated that the pope has never erred, and that he never can fall into any error; that he alone can nominate bishops, convoke councils, preside over them, dissolve them; that princes should stoop and kiss his feet; that by him subjects may be loosed from their oaths of fidelity; and in a word that there is no name upon earth but that of the pope.

5 Dictalus Papae. Concilior vol. 10 p. 110-Baron. Ann. eccles. ad ann. 1076, sec. 24. De Marca. 1.7, c. 26.8. 9.

With reason has it been remarked how very much circ.u.mstances favoured the designs of Hildebrand. Since the death of Otho the Great, the German Empire had done nothing but weaken itself; Italy was divided into petty states; a young king governed France; the Moors ravaged Spain; the Normans had just conquered England; the northern kingdoms, newly converted, were ignorant of the bounds of the pontifical authority, and were to set the example of docility.

When Gregory VII. saw William the Conqueror established in England, he did not hesitate prescribing to him to render homage for his kingdom to the Apostolic See.5 This strange proposition had for its pretext, the alms which the English had paid for about two centuries to the Roman Church, and which was called Peter's pence. The Conqueror, replied that perhaps the alms would be continued, but it therefore did not follow, that homage should be demanded of those from whom he received charity.

William at the same time forbad the English from going to Rome, and prohibited them acknowledging any other pope than him whom he should approve. This trifling affair had no other consequence; and we only mention it in this place as it evinces better than any other, that Gregory knew not how to fix any bounds to the pretensions of the Holy See. Perhaps he imagined that the newness of William's power in England might incline him to wish for the protection of Rome, and make him willing to purchase it by an act of va.s.salage: but it was evincing a very false idea of the state of this conqueror's affairs, his power, his character, and his ascendancy over his new subjects. The least reflection would have diverted Gregory from so ridiculous a step, shameful because useless.

5 Fleury Hist. Ecclea. 1. 62, n. 63.

Sardinia, Dalmatia, Russia, were in Gregory's eyes but fiefs which ornamented the tiara. "On behalf of St. Peter," thus he writes to Demetrius the Russian prince, "we have given your crown to your son, who receives it from our hands in taking the oath of fidelity to us." We must mention the names of all the princes who reigned in this pope's time, in order to fill up the catalogue of those whom he threatened or struck with his excommunications: Nicephoros Bonotiate, the Greek emperor, whom he enjoined to abdicate his crown5 ; Boleslaus, king of Poland, whom he declared deprived of his authority, and added that Poland should be no longer a king-dom5 ; Solomon, king of Hungary, whom he sent to learn from the old men of his country, that it belonged to the Roman church54 ; the Princes of Spain, to whom he stated that St. Peter was supreme and sovereign lord of their states and domains, and that it would be preferable that Spain should fall into the hands of the Saracens, than cease to render homage to the vicar of Jesus Christ55 ; Robert Guiscard, his va.s.sal, whose slightest neglect he punished with anathemas56 ; the Duke of Bohemia, of whom he exacted a tribute of a hundred marks of silver: Philip I. king of France, whom he affected to subject to similar exactions, and whom he denounced to the French bishops as a tyrant plunged into infamy and crime, who deserved not the name of a monarch, and of whom they would render themselves the accomplices, if they did not rigorously resist him.

5 Concil. Rom. ann. 1078.

5 Dngloss. Hist. Polon. 1. 3. 295.

54 Gregor. Epist 1. 2, ep. 13, 23.-Fleury Hist. Ecoles* L62,n. 9.

55 Fleury Hist eccles. 1. 62. a 9.

56 Greg. Epist 1. 1, 26, 26, 62, 67.-Fleury, 1. 62. n. 9.

"Imitate, says he to them, the Roman Church your mother; sepa- "rate yourselves from the service and communion of "Philip, if he remain obstinate; let the celebration of "the holy offices be interdicted throughout all France; "and know that, by G.o.d's a.s.sistance, we shall deliver "this kingdom from such an oppressor."

But of all the sovereigns of Europe, the emperor Henry IV. who had the princ.i.p.al influence in Italian affairs, was, on this account, the most exposed to the thunderbolts of Hildebrand.57

57 Greg. Epist. 1. 2. ep. 6.-Fleury 1. 62. n. 16.

Against so many potentates, and especially against Henry IV. Gregory had no other support, no other ally, than an Italian princess, with little talent, but much devotion, this was Matilda, countess of Tuscany. She possessed for him a generous and tender friends.h.i.+p; he addressed to her also, as a spiritual director, extremely affectionate letters; she lived unhappily with G.o.dfrey-le-Bossu, her first husband: from this circ.u.mstance, and others, rash inductions have been drawn not supported by any positive fact.58 It is not the tender pa.s.sions we can reproach Hildebrand with; and the ascertained consequences of the connexion with Matilda, belong only to the history of the pontifical ambition.